His daughter, Charlotte, sent a one-page letter, which stated that "Mama told me you did something Heroic, though extremely Foolish and Reckless, over some Black People, but that is your Nature, as Mama has ever said. Thank you for the dolls from heathen Brazil, they are very pretty, though the package contained a large, black, and hairy Spider as big as my hand. Before Governess squished it, it was most awfully good fun to chase about! Mama says the Admiralty told her you are now in Africa or India. If you can find another spider, I would love it. If not a spider, I would very much like a Monkey!"
And, Caroline, herself, well…
Long-suffering, God-only-knows-what-you-have-done-to-shame-us-this-time, though she did note that the vicar of St. George's in Anglesgreen had delivered a rather impassioned (for him) homily about slavery, and why it should be abolished throughout the realm, as it was already in Great Britain. She also noted that her brother, Governour Chiswick, a former slave-owner himself in the Carolinas before the American Revolution, had nearly stormed out in anger, had not his sweet wife, Millicent, restrained him, and that the two of them were now at-loggerheads over the subject. The vicar had praised their own local "Emancipator," had almost (but not quite!) called him a "True Christian Gentleman" (which might have set off inappropriate laughter, and driven Caroline to storm out, Lewrie suspected) so that almost everyone in Anglesgreen now thought him a fine fellow, even the local squire, Sir Romney Embleton. What his otter-faced son, Harry, thought was not recorded, but then, who cared a damn what Harry Embleton thought!
"… though our lands in the Cape Fear, of such sweet Memory, were, indeed, worked by Negro Labour, never in my mind can I recall an instant of such Brutality as the papers describe in the Sugar Islands of the Caribbean, Alan. Why else would Old Mammy and a few others of our household clew to us so fiercely, and kindly, and my old Mammy to Emigrate with us to England, where, 'til her Passing, she served Mama and Papa and me so Faithfully and Cheerfully, even after Manumission?
"I can only pray that the accounts of the Reformers and Abolitionists are greatly exaggerated to foment their Cause's success, or, should they prove True, that the Reformers succeed, for no one of our former acqaintance in North Carolina, a most genteel and refined Society, could ever have even conceived of such fiendishness. Evidently, the planter class in the Sugar Isles are an utterly Depraved lot, bad as the tobacco-chewing dregs who are now, I am told, populating lower portions of the old Georgia colony!"
Am I too cynical, or is she too naive? he had to wonder at her well-edited remembrances.
"Alan, you have ever been a Puzzlement. Worthy of cursing for an inveterate Rogue and Rake-Hell, a jocular and slothful Lack-A-Day, where an Upright Man would shew Sobriety, Diligence, and Rectitude in his doings. For a man grown, you evince such a Boyish, Indolent face to Life. Surely, such should preclude your Advancement in such a demanding profession as Seafaring, and the Navy, yet, you not only thrive, you are become a great Success, and a Hero.
"I also pray that this recent beau geste of yours is a sign of you turning from Folderol to Rectitude, that the Navy has forced you to so Discipline yourself in your professional and publick Life that some wee bit of that Discipline has, at last, trickled over into your private life, as well. Had you the ability to apply but a Tithe towards mastering your Amatory Nature, our Marriage would have remained a most Happy One, no matter now many years apart, nor how many thousand miles separate us. If only such were True I could own to Complete Approval and Adoration of an heroic Husband! Though, until such is proven to me, you will understand you have won but a Portion of my Praise, you Incomprehensible, Paradoxical, Ever-Amazing Man!"
Which was certainly a lot more warmth than he'd gotten from her past letters, Lewrie decided. Did all England hail him as "Saint Alan the Emancipator"-and they forgot that horrid "Black Alan" quickly, pray God!- Caroline might deign to accept him back, in public, at least. Were they cheered in the London theatres like Horatio Nelson, she might stand beside him in their private box, and even go so far as to wave and smile in appreciation with him… though Lewrie doubted if she'd be gazing up at him in mute adoration, exactly.
Most-like she'd keep her eyes out for the flirty orange-seller wenches, Lewrie grimly thought; and rip the lungs out of the first 'un who tried t 'hug me I Not that I can act'lly blame her…
Still, it was a start towards some sort of reconciliation, but only the iciest sort, and only if he came out his troubles smelling like Hungary Water. There was a chance they might reside under the same roof, again. In the same bedchamber, the same bed, well… he might have to hire-on a food-taster, and sleep with one eye open for a time.
"… Mother Charlotte is failing, Alan, and we despair that we may see her with us by Autumn," Caroline related by long-distance, in her "homebody" persona. "We do hear, though, that, in Response to our informations sent to Burgess in India, he is now of a clear mind to throw up his Commission with the East India Company Army, now that he has achieved a Majority with the 19th Native Infantry, your father's old Bengali regiment, and, with the last remnants of the Tippoo Sultan Uprising quelled, in which Burgess informs us he has amassed quite the "Chicken Nabob" fortune, it his greatest Wish to be home with our Dear Mother whilst she is still well. Who knows, perhaps his Fortune will prove even greater than the one you reaped in the…"
Beyond that news, there was only a formal close, and an almost jocular plea that he closely inspect any packages of gifts he sent for the children in future, and under no circumstances was he to send them anything living. A formal set-piece of a final sentence, worthy of a letter to a corn-merchant of long, but arm's-length, standing, and she signed herself rather coolly simply as "Your Wife, Caroline."
Lewrie determined to write her back, instanter, to strike while the iron was at least luke-warm. And, he'd write Sir Malcolm Shockley, too, and ask him to delve around Twigg's and the Abolitionists', true motives, and whether he really had been set up as a sacrificable cat's-paw!
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It is sinkink?" Eudoxia asked with a puzzled look as she used his telescope to study Proteus as she sat at her anchors out in Table Bay.
"Everything we could shift is moved forrud," Lewrie explained, "to lift her stern as high out of the water as possible. The divers have hammered new gudgeons in place, underwater, and we've 'spliced' the sternpost above the water-line with the timber we fetched back from Simon's Bay. It just looks precarious."
Precarious, indeed, for with all her artillery, round-shot, and victuals casks shifted up near the cable tiers, the frigate sat like a badly-anchored duck decoy on the water. Her bows were immersed as far as her lower gunwale timbers, the sea up almost as high as her hawse-holes and the lowermost beakhead rails, whilst Proteus's stern was up as if she was a live duck, ready to bob and feed off the bottom weeds of a pond. It even made Lewrie sweat to see it. But, without a dockyard and a graving dock, this was the best they could do.
Andries de Witt's multiple oxen team and his timber waggon had rumbled down to the piers with the new rudder, where Lt. Catterall and the Bosun, Mr. Pendarves, had erected a shear-legs to hoist it off the timber waggon's supports, then sway it out and down into a large barge… another of Mr. Goosen's "quite reasonable" hirings. It was as ungainly and squat as a fat-bellied Dutch coaster in the Scheldte or the canals, nearly fifty-four feet long and over sixteen feet in beam, the scruffy sort of thing that usually bore cargo or an entire six months' supply of water in vast casks in her belly; low freeboard, fitted with a dozen sweeps… a cockroach scuttling 'cross a harbour in full daylight, and just about as handsome.