"The true facts which obtain, sirs…" he announced solemnly. "Very early this morning, His Majesty's Brig o' War Childers, standing off-and-on without the harbour of Brest, was fired upon by French batteries. Word has reached us by the semaphore towers that she was struck several times by heavy round-shot. Childers will come in, to display her damage, and the French round-shot… in her timbers, and upon her decks."
"But, are we at war, sir?" several officers demanded.
"Better you should ask of Lord Dundas, or Lord Grenville, for that, sirs," the commodore rejoined, snippish at their lack of deference to a senior officer, and their lack of decorum. "The Secretaries of State, and the Foreign Office… our Sovereign and Parliament, will best answer." The commodore glared them to silence, harumphed a last broadside of displeasure, settled his waistcoat, and stalked away to gather his things.
"It's come!" Alan Lewrie muttered to himself, feeling a thrill run up his spine to be there, on such a momentous occasion. Secretly pleased, though, to know there would be no more indecision, no more delays. Soon he would be aboard a ship again. The time for half-measures and tentative mobilisation was ended. "By God, it's come!"
"It's war!" a lieutenant nearby cried exultantly, lifting his arms in glee. "Glorious war, at last!"
Lewrie cocked his head to peer at him searchingly, as he and his compatriots pummeled each other on the back and chortled happily. Of course, he was very young, the lieutenant, he and all his fellows in badly tailored, ill-fitting "pinchbeck" uniforms. His sword was a cheap Hamburg, not even ivoried or gilded, with a brass grip sure to betray him and turn in his grasp were his palms ever damp.
Second or third sons, the honourably penniless, with no means of livelihood but the sea, and warfare. For these desperately eager young men, peace had been a death sentence, stranding them miserly and sour on half-pay and annual remittance, perhaps, of less than fifty pounds altogether. But war, now…!
Prize-money, full pay, loot from captured ships, and a chance to practice their sea-craft, to gain advancement… to be noticed at last. Weaned as they were, as Lewrie had been, on personal honour, on "bottom" so bold they'd dare Death itself to display gay courage, risk life and limb for undying fame and glory… ox fall gloriously at the very moment of a famous victory… well, now!
Surely, Lewrie thought; the fools must recall the dangers, the fevers… the rancid food, foul living conditions… storms and peril! They weren't ignorant midshipmen, starry-eyed and joining their first ship! They'd gone months without a letter, years of separation, seen shipmates slaughtered, scattered in pieces like an anatomy lesson at a teaching hospital, hopelessly wounded men passed out the gunports alive to clear the fighting decks, dead sewn up in shrouds… or the permanently crippled amputees, the blind, the…!
'Course, there's more'n a few thought me perverse, for sneerin' at death-or-glory. No one, in his right mind, goes out of his way to die a hero, does he? 'Leastways, I didn't. Not to say that Fortune didn't have her way with me, whether I wished or no. I mean, dead is dead, for God's sake, and what's the bloody point of…
"Lewrie?" A voice interrupted his fell musings. "Would Lieutenant Lewrie be present? Alan Lewrie, Anglesgreen, Surrey…?"
"Here!" Lewrie shouted in a loud quarter-deck voice, putting aside all his foul, ungentlemanly, un-English sarcasms and forebodings at once. "Tomorrow" was here!
"The Deputy Secretary, Mister Jackson, will see you upstairs, Lieutenant Lewrie," an old and ink-stained senior writer informed him. "Would you kindly step this way, sir?"
George Jackson, Esquire's offices were a smaller adjunct to the First Secretary's, on the same floor as the Board Room. Lewrie presented himself, fingers twitching to seize the packet of orders which would be his passport. His Fortune.
"Your servant, sir," Lewrie coaxed, to gain the man's notice.
"Ah? Lewrie, well," Jackson said, barely looking up from the burgeoning mounds of documents on either side of his tall clerking-desk, behind which he slaved standing up. He looked down immediately, though, to cluck his lips over an ineptly turned phrase, perhaps some ink smudge, or a clumsy or illegible example of penmanship. "I have your orders, sir. Hmm… these, aye."
"Thank you, sir." Lewrie beamed, accepting the folded sheaf of vellum which one busy hand extended to him. He opened them eagerly, to see to which ship, what sort of ship, he would be assigned.
"Bloody hell?" escaped his lips as he beheld the concise words. "Excuse me, Mister Jackson, sir. There must be some mistake. I'm for the Impress Service? Me, sir? 'Mean t'say-!"
"You wish to question the wisdom of our Lords Commissioners, do you, Lewrie?" Jackson countered quickly, rewarding him with a tiny moue of disgust.
"Sir, I'm not so old I dodderl" Lewrie rejoined with some heat. "My sight is excellent, I've all my limbs… I'm sound, in wind and limb! Hale as a dray horse, sir. With all my teeth, which is more'n some may boast! Sir, the Impress Service is for those who-"
"If we're not at war with France this very instant, young sir, we shall be by nightfall," Jackson fussed, giving Lewrie only half of his distracted attention. "No, no. Redo this section before… this whole page, in point of fact, before it goes to Mister Stephens. Now, Lewrie… should there have been an error, which I most surely doubt, you may correspond with us from your new posting to amend it. Prevail 'pon your patrons to write us… but at this instant, we need to man the Fleet. The bulk still lies in-ordinary, and must be got to sea! Orders have come down for a "hot 'press," Admiralty Protections to be waived, and that requires the most immediate reinforcement for the Impress Service. Else merchant seamen will escape our grasp, and England 's 'Wooden Walls' will continue to languish for want of hands! I do not originate orders, Lewrie, I only inscribe them and pass them on. Bloom where you're planted, for the nonce, hey?"
"Sir… Mister Jackson, I implore you," Lewrie continued, in a softer, more wheedling tone of voice, striving to sound reasonable… though what he wanted most at that moment was to leap across the desk and strangle the frazzled old fart. "There was a term of service, in the Far East, a covert expedition… '84 through '86. Notice was put in my packet to the effect that I was unemployable. To disguise my absence, so I could pose as a half-pay officer with no prospects who took merchant service. Were you to but look, sir… perhaps that is still in there, and influenced my assignment…"
"I am aware of that service, sir, and I was most scrupulous, at the First Secretary's behest, to expunge your file of any false information, and to include a true accounting of your deeds, as soon as you paid off. Telesto, 3rd Rate eighty-gunner… Captain Ayscough. And, I also vividly recall your most gracious reception in the Board Room by Admirals Lord Hood and Howe, and Sir Philip Sydney. February of '86, was it not, sir?" The Deputy Secretary fussed, proud of a memory as finely honed as his master, Philip Stephens. "I recall, too, that you received an immediate further active commission to the Bahamas, your first true command, did you not, sir? Hardly a sign of official disapproval, surely. There, d'ye see?"
"Good God, though, sir…" Lewrie shivered.
"Do you object strenuously enough to refuse an active commission, Lewrie," Jackson cautioned with a grim, reassessing stare, "we shall needs select another officer. I might imagine an hundred men would leap at the chance. And you may continue to wait belowstairs. You are not so senior, or renowned, I must advise you, that a refusal now might ever lead to an active commission dearer to your heart. It is customary to demote truculent officers to the bottom of the List. Or strike them off altogether. It is your decision. Well, sir?"
"No, sir," Lewrie all but yelped quickly. "I shall not refuse] It's just… it's just…"
"Needs of the Sea Service, sir," Jackson concluded with a prim smugness. "Which do not, of necessity, happen to coincide with yours. And, we note that you are a married officer, sir. Surely your wife… and children, I note as well…"
"That's not a handicap like being lamed, or… surely!"
"More like an excess of limbs than the lack, Mister Lewrie." Jackson took time to form a laborious jape. "You know the Navy has a chary opinion of the zeal of a married officer. Now, we are quite busy, and you have taken more valuable time than I should have given you. Will there be anything more you wish of me, sir?"
"Uh, no, sir. I suppose not." Lewrie sagged, completely defeated. And burning at the unfairness of it, the peremptory treatment… and the utter shame of it! "Good day to you, sir."
He bowed himself out, staggered down the hall, down the stairs, to the Waiting Room to gather his boat cloak. And reread what seemed a cynical boot up the arse.
"Mine arse on a bandbox!" he muttered bitterly. He wasn't even to go near a real naval port. He'd expected the Nore, down-river near the mouth of the Thames and the Medway; to Chatham, perhaps. Or south to Portsmouth and Spithead. Instead, he was to report to the Regulating Captain of the Dept-ford district, just below London Bridge and the Pool of London. Deptford, hard by Cheapside, Greenwich Hospital and infamous Wapping. He seriously doubted if a single whole seaman, with any wits about him, would be found there after the morrow. Not after word of a "hot 'press" made the rounds!
"I mean, if one's going to pressgang, at least one could have a post worth the trouble!" he sighed. From what he knew of the nefarious ways of Deptford dockyard officials, there'd be five thousand men with Protections by sundown (with a pretty sum in those officials' pockets, too) and the "Wapping landlords," the crimps, would sell a corpse to a merchant master before they'd ever aid an Impress officer. Navy bribes could never rival civilian.
"Dear Lord… is it too late to catch up with Sir George and 'Porker' Forrester?" he wondered as he pocketed his hateful orders and went out into the inner courtyard. "They mightn't be too bad."
"Mi'ng arf on a,…!" Lewrie cursed as he struggled to rise, running a tongue over his teeth to see if they were still all there. He tasted hot blood, coppery-salty; could almost smell it, like the damp winds off the Thames. "Get th' baftuds!" he roared to his "gang" as he got to his feet again, knocked down with a (fortunately) empty chamber pot swung at his head by a desperation-crazed sailor just off a West Indies trader.
It had sounded like a mischievous lark when they'd set out on their raid earlier in the evening. Surround a ramshackle old lodging house converted to a sailors' brothel; confer on the sly with the old Mother Abbess who ran it, so she could sell half a dozen or so of her worst-paying customers, who had taken the place over as a refuge, into the hands of the 'Press; creep up on them as they were well engaged with girls, passed out drunk or asleep, and take them in a well-timed rush.
