“Thank God,” Lewrie whispered, faintly smiling as he laid the letter aside. “He’s safe, he’s blooded, and he did do damned well … but Lord, what a way t’learn t’fight!”
Lewrie wondered if he’d even recognise Hugh the next time they met, whenever that might be. He’d seen him off by the King’s Stairs in Portsmouth as an active, lark-happy thirteen year old in 1803. Though only sixteen now, he sounded as adult as any “scaly fish” in his twenties! He’d crossed swords with men out to kill him, fired his pistols, stabbed with his dirk, and had slain men in furious, face-to-face battle! Sixteen or not, he was a man, now.
Lewrie turned to Lydia’s letter, and it was certainly not the plaintive expressions of longing that he had expected! It had been written and sent before news of Trafalgar had reached England, for she made no mention of it. No, her news was of her brother Percy’s wedding to Eudoxia Durschenko, at long last!
They’d planned to marry last summer, when Lewrie was still in the Bahamas, and he’d doubted they’d ever go through with it, but here it was, daft as it sounded.
Lydia had been enjoying late summer in the country at their estates near Reading and Henley-On-Thames, riding daily over their acreage (which consisted of miles and bloody miles of land), dining al fresco with childhood friends, relatives, and neighbours, when she’d gotten an invitation from Hawkinge in Kent, where Percy’s self-raised cavalry regiment was posted to guard against the threat of invasion by the French. Just before the annual London Season, when Parliament re-convened, she and several others had coached down in a gay train of equipages, lodging together each night at the same posting houses, and having a quick round of shopping in London to look their best, when the time came, and the trips each way had been the jolliest.
The church at Hawkinge, near Folkstone, had not been all that grand, but the officers of the regimental mess had decorated it and turned the “happy occasion” into a grand military affair. A troop of horse had escorted Eudoxia’s carriage to the churchyard, another troop had brought the groom. Trumpets had blown fanfares, the band had been boisterous, accompanied by some new-fangled tinkly bell-draped thing called a “Jingling Johnny”, and they had made an arch of swords as the newlyweds left the church, and the wedding breakfast had been held close by under canvas pavilions, all to the delight of the locals.
Eudoxia’s father, Arslan Artimovich, that vicious, sneering, eye-patched old bird, had turned out in new suitings, rather grandly, Lydia wrote, with no muttered curses in Russian, and no sign of his wicked daggers.
The old fart saved his curses for me, whenever he saw me and Eudoxia together, Lewrie told himself; He likes Percy’s horses too much t’curse him! Arslan Artimovich might still despise aristocracy, but Percy comes with too much “tin” attached.
Lydia wrote that the affair had become “soggier” and more exuberant than most weddings, and that Arslan Artimovich had gotten as drunk as only a Russian can, and had tried to teach the subalterns how to do a wild dance, which involved whirling about, turning Saint Catherine’s Wheels, and squatting with arms crossed and kicking legs straight out in turn, to the further delight of local witnesses, before the “happy couple” had coached off.
Despite her initial reservations, Lydia expressed that she had come to like Eudoxia, her outré past aside. Eudoxia had become a good influence on Percy and his penchant for gambling deep, finding her a level-headed, sensible, and clever young woman, and, with her sunny and amiably amusing disposition, she kept Percy distracted enough to submit to her wishes.
After that, Lydia had returned to London to stay at their house in Grosvenor Street for a few days, eschewing most of the public events where she would feel uncomfortable, but had attended some symphonies and new plays, done some shopping to see the new fashions, but expressed how relieved she would be to return to the country and take joy in the Autumn and the holidays to come. Percy, Eudoxia, and the regiment would march back to Reading and their permanent station once the winter weather precluded any attempt by Napoleon to cross the Channel, and be home for the harvest festivals and Christmas.
The rest of her letter expressed fondness, longing for his return, and concern for his safety so far away, at whatever it was that required him to be months away and thousands of miles off. Perhaps it might transpire, she wrote, that they could pick up where they had left off, and see what their relationship could be, in future?
“What a scandalous set we’d be!” Lewrie muttered to himself in wry humour. “Lydia and her un-warranted bad repute as a divorcé … Percy and his mad-cap ways, married to a foreigner who’d been a trick shooter, bareback rider, and actress with Dan Wigmore’s Peripatetic Extravaganza, her lion-tamer papa t’boot! Christ, scandalous little me would fit right in!”
There was a discreet rapping on the great-cabin door. Pettus went to see to it. “Master-At-Arms, sir,” he announced.
“Right, then,” Lewrie said with a groan. “Tell Mister Appleby I’m just retiring, and all the lights will be extinguished in five minutes … if he’ll give me that long, that is.”
“Aye, sir,” Pettus replied with a grin.
Lewrie put the letters away in his desk drawer, and rose to begin undressing, reminding himself to write replies, soonest, and one to Thom Charlton to congratulate him, too, once he was back aboard.
Once in his hanging bed-cot and under the covers, in the dark, Lewrie did feel a faint prickle of worry. As grand and adventurous as he and his officers anticipated their jaunt ashore would be, there was always the risk that he’d never get to write those letters.
He could drown if his boat was overset in the surf upon landing, for he, like many British tars, could not swim a stroke. He could put a foot wrong and meet up with all manner of venomous puff adders and mambas and cobras, rest under the wrong tree and be bitten by the slim green boomslang, be swarmed by scorpions in his sleep, and God only knew what-all. If the Dutch put up a fierce resistance, he could get his fool head shot off!
They don’t pay me half enough t’do what I do, he told himself; They really don’t.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Reliant’s Marines in the barges, and all the supplies in one of the slightly smaller cutters, were landed first. By the time the Navy complement had been put ashore on the crowded beach, it was half-past six in the morning. Blaauwberg Mountain cast the beach, the towering and widespread piles of supplies, and the army encampment in shadow from the rising sun, and it was still pleasantly cool. The air was sour with the smells of burning wood in the many campfires, manure in the horse lines, and un-washed soldiery and their sweated wool coats.
Lewrie strode over the sand and shingle of the beach to higher ground, and the stubbly wild grasses and rock; careful where his boots landed, for there was a fair amount of manure right down to the back of the beach. He took a deep sniff, but it didn’t smell like the Africa he remembered!
“What a pot-mess our army’s made,” he commented to Lt. Simcock, who was amusing himself with his sheathed sword to flip a crab over and over, and herding it to prevent its escape.
“The horses and draught animals aren’t the worst of it, sir,” Simcock said with a faint smile. “They should’ve dug sinks for their own wastes, but it doesn’t smell like it. I have yet to see the waggon they promised us.”
“Well, keep a good guard over our stores ’til we do,” Lewrie told him. “Do soldiers think there’s un-guarded rum about, they’ll fight us for it. Ah, good morning, Mister Westcott! Have you ever seen the like?”
“Perhaps only at a Wapping hiring fair, sir,” Westcott replied. “It appears we’ve landed far South of the main beach, and the rest of the brigade.” He pointed North up the beach to where some large oared barges were struggling to fetch long and heavy siege guns ashore with one piece amidships of each. “Shouldn’t we be up there, sir?”