Dewey Lambdin - The King`s Commission

"Who, sir?"

"The ginger torn lives forrard."

"We've met, sir," Alan stated.

"Worst disposition in a cat I've ever seen," Lilycrop confessed. "Know why I named him Pitt, hey?"

"No, sir."

"Because I absolutely despise the bastard!" Lilycrop boomed with a short bark of laughter at his own wit. "Rapacious, sir, most rapacious mouser I've ever seen. Got the soul of a master-at-arms, though. Come to think of it, those are good traits in a Prime Minister, too."

"With so many cats aboard, I should think Shrike would not be plagued with rodents like other ships, sir."

"Their tribe stand no chance of prosperin'," Lilycrop boasted.

"Then what do the midshipmen eat, sir?" Alan asked.

"Ha ha, you're a wag, sir!" Lilycrop boomed again. "I can tell we'll get on, if there's a brain hidden behind all that dandy-prattery. Well, I'd expect you'd like to get settled into your cabin and get all squared away. You'll find my Order Book and all that bum fodder to look over, and then I expect you'll go over the ship and make your acquaintances, see what we have to work with, God help us."

"Thank you, sir."

"Got any questions, see me on the sly," Lilycrop commanded. "Can't let the people or the warrants think you're slack-witted or not experienced enough. Would you like a kitten?"

"Um, not right now, sir."

"You're not one of those people who can't abide the little darlin's, are you, Lewie?" Lilycrop looked at him sternly.

"Oh, no, sir," Alan assured him quickly. "It's just that none of my other ships ran to pets, and I do want to find my feet first."

"Well, keep it in mind, we've four new'uns ready for weanin' in a week or so. That'll be all, Lewrie."

"Aye aye, sir," Alan replied, standing up and trying to disentangle Henrietta from her death-grip on his shirt. She finally scaled his back, scratching him on the nape on her way down to the chair where she re-ensconced herself and began to wash.

Lilycrop turned to stare at a large, shallow wooden box by the quarter-gallery and bawled for his steward. "Gooch!"

"Aye, sir?" a wizened little mouse of a man asked, popping out of the captain's pantry by the chart-room.

"Cat shit, Gooch!"

"Aye aye, sir, right away, sir."

I've always believed it, Alan told himself as he pored over the captain's Order Book of set instructions in his small cabin. Not one captain on the face of this earth is dealing with a healthy mind. They're all daft as bats. This Lilycrop makes Treghues look sane as a banking house. What did I do to deserve this? Who did I fuck, who did I not fuck?

The officer's wardroom was not in the extreme stern in Shrike, but aft of the main-mast and ahead of stores rooms. As a single-deck ship, she had to cram all her holds and stores onto one deck, along with all her personnel accommodations. There was a solid deck under the fo'c'sle, broken aft of the galley into a capacious hold to allow her to stay at sea for up to three months. Seamen were berthed above the stores kegs and barrels on a temporary mess-deck flooring, swung in hammocks, with the last two rows furthest aft reserved for the Marine complement.

Aft of the Marines, there was room for the officers and senior warrants, with the main after hatch leading down just before the deal partitions that screened it off from the Marines. The captain was kept in his rather spartan splendor in what was called a hanging cabin under the highly steeved quarterdeck, which had a break much like a three-foot-high poop deck near the taffrail to give him standing headroom.

This cut the wardroom off from all sunlight, even though it was above the waterline, but the only openings to the outside were gunports that were kept tightly sealed unless the ship cleared for action.

Alan's cabin was right aft on the larboard side, hard up against the after bread room, spirit store and fish room, which added to the miasma of cat droppings and the usual human odors.

If he thought that promotion to lieutenant would get him any more splendor of his own, he was sadly mistaken. The cabin was six feet wide, which left room for a wash-hand stand and his sea chest, about six feet six inches long to accommodate a fixed berth raised up high enough to give him some storage underneath. Near the door at the foot of the bed there was a tiny portable writing desk, a three-tiered bookshelf already filled with the accumulated reading of an entire commission, and a stool to sit on while he wrote letters or conducted ship's business. Across from his cabin the surgeon, Dr. Lewyss, was housed. The next two cabins were for the sailing master to larboard, and the purser to starboard. Forward of those, the cabins got smaller to make walking space around the fixed dining table and the hatchway to the orlop stores. Walsham the Marine officer, the captain's clerk, Fukes the bosun, Cox the gunner and Mr. Pebble, the enfeebled carpenter, had those cabins. The spare cabin that completed the starboard tier was wardroom stores and the captain's servant and the wardroom servant swung their hammocks in there above the personal food and drink for the officers and warrants.

The many cats may have cut down on the usual rat population, but the ship teemed with cockroaches; small ones, admittedly, since the cats would chase anything large enough to entertain them.

The only blessing for the crew, who normally had only twenty-eight inches in which to sling a fourteen-inch-wide hammock, was that the ship was not at her full-rated complement of one hundred and ten people, but was six hands short in seamen, and four in servants, and that the Marine party, which would not normally be aboard so small a brig, was only sixteen privates, two corporals, a sergeant, and Walsham. Being rated a fourteen-gunned ship in official records could be a blessing.

Alan lay propped up on his bunk, reading. The surgeon was stoking up his harp and singing some Welsh song of unrequited misery, accompanied by someone on a flute who was as mournful a specter as the doctor. Alan didn't think he would enjoy wardroom life, if that was the best entertainment they had to offer. Besides, Lieutenant Railsford had warned him to stay aloof, hard as it would be on his congenial and garrulous nature. Eager as he was for companionship, and no matter how old the others were in the wardroom, he was senior to them, and could only damage his credibility and authority if he was to join in their simple pleasures. He was the captain's voice in all things, the one who would brook no dis-satisfaction with a captain's decisions or allow anyone to carp or cavil.

No wonder old Lieutenant Swift in Ariadne was such a dry stick, Alan sighed, wondering if he was up to all the demands that would be made on his abilities, getting lost in the knowledge that he was pretty much in charge of all the various punishments books, logs, charts, pay vouchers, rating certificates, prize certificates (damned few of those, he noted grimly), quarter-bills, watch bills, and professional records of the entire crew.

It really would have been much nicer to have been second officer in a slightly larger frigate than Desperate, even the fifth or sixth lieutenant in a ship of the line, where he could hide and enjoy the joyous spirit of a drunken officers' mess without having his young arse on the line at all hours.

The paper work was, as usual, putting his mind into full yawn, and he wasn't through half of it. Once more he felt as if a terrible mistake had been made by a clumsy or inattentive clerk in the flagship, putting such a pompous little fraud as himself into such responsibility. No matter what Railsford had said, he felt like a total sham only waiting for the awful moment of truth when he would be exposed to the world.

"Supper," the servant called from beyond the door.

He tossed the paper work to the foot of his bunk and shrugged into his coat to join the others. Cony was there helping out in serving, and the two midshipmen had come up from their small dungeon in the after orlop where they usually berthed with the surgeon's mate, master's mate and other junior warrants. Rossyngton looked presentable, but Alan had a chance to get a good look at Mr. Edgar, and he was a perfect example of pimply-faced perplexity, all elbows and huge feet, a uniform that appeared to be wearing him instead of the other way around, and that none too clean.

He was introduced to Biggs, the only senior warrant he had not met on his first rounds of the ship, and saw why the captain considered him a weasel. The purser was a slovenly man of middle height who gave an impression of being much shorter and rounder, due to his furtive posture and constantly shifting eyes and hands.

I wouldn't sport a bottle for any one of these bastards if I saw them parching in Hell, he thought glumly.

"As senior in the mess, may I propose a toast to our new arrival," Caldwell the sailing master intoned somberly.

"Senior, my eyes, damn yer blood," Mister Lewyss snapped.

"Don't let your dog-Latin go to your head, Lewyss," Caldwell cautioned. "I'm not much of a drinkin' man, but 'tis the spirit of the occasion."

"Since I am seated at the head of the table, let's have done with talk of who is senior, Mister Caldwell," Alan quipped. "And I thank you for your sentiments, but I would prefer if you give me first opportunity to propose a toast instead… to Shrike."

"Aye, to Shrike," they mumbled, a little abashed that Alan had too pointedly reminded them of just who was senior in the mess, young as he was.

Supper wasn't too bad, really. There was an Island pepperpot soup seasoned with every variety of pepper known to man and flavored with shredded bits of fish; roast kid and fresh bread instead of the usual hard biscuit, along with a wine that could only have been fermented from vinegar, cat droppings and bilge scrapings.

"My word, that's terrible," Alan sputtered after his first sip. "Mister Biggs, do you think this wine failed to travel well, or was it dead before boarding?"

"Nothing' wrong with this wine, young sir," Biggs stated as if he was addressing one of the midshipmen. "'Tis s not claret, but suitable for Navy issue from ashore, same's every other ship in harbor."

"The wine stinks, Mister Biggs," Alan said with as much severity as he could summon. "And you shall address me as 'sir,' without the added modifier of 'young.' It tastes to me as if it had been diluted with water, scrubbing vinegar, and a dollop of poor French brandy to give it a disguising character. Do you concur with that, Mister Lewyss? You're a medical man-see what your nose tells you."

"Ratafia for sure, sir," Lewyss said after dipping his long nose into his glass, and pointedly making sure that he addressed the first lieutenant correctly. "As to the water, it is not the usual kegged water from the holds, but it is a thin wine, that cannot be disputed, sir."

"How many gallons of this do we have aboard, Mister Biggs?"

"Um, of this particular lot, that is…?" Biggs got shifty.

"Yes, of this particular lot," Alan went on.

"Why, I believe there was thirty ten-gallon barricoes or so," Biggs replied in a much more humble tone of voice, almost wringing his hands, with his eyes shifting from one side of his plate to the other, unable to match glances with the others at the table. "Got a good price on the lot, but not so much as to make me suspicious of the seller's goods, sir."

"Tomorrow morning, following breakfast, you, the master's mate and the bosun shall hoist all of those barricoes out and taste them to determine their suitability. Mister Fukes, may I trust your palate in judging good wine or bad?"