Reefs and Shoals (26 page)

“D’ye think they’d call that
proper
diplomacy?” Lewrie asked.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

They had gotten a late start from the Wilmington docks the morning after supper with the Cashmans, but the barge was back alongside
Reliant,
and Lewrie and the Purser safely on deck, just before dusk. The Bosun and Bosun’s Mate trilled the welcoming call, and the side-party saluted as Lewrie made it in-board of the entry port, doffing his own hat in salute, feeling much relieved to be back on his ship.

Bisquit the dog exuberantly pranced about the shins of the sailors and Marines, yipping, barking, and whining with joy, as if he had been cruelly separated from his master for over a year, and was in paroxysms of rapture to be re-united, which quite ruined the ceremony.

Lewrie gave the dog a pat on the head, reached into his pockets, and offered Bisquit a piece of pemmican, to shut him up. He sniffed, wagged his tail
and
his hindquarters, then chomped down and ran off with his heavenly new treat.

“Welcome back, sir,” Lt. Westcott said.

“Thankee, Mister Westcott. Anything amiss occur while I was away?” Lewrie asked. “Anyone swim ashore and desert?”

“All’s well, sir,” Westcott assured him. “It seems that this little Smithville’s not much of a temptation. I
did
allow the Mids to go ashore, along with Mister Spendlove and Merriman, for an hour or two, just to stretch their legs, but…”

“You did not, sir?” Lewrie asked.

“As I said, sir,” Westcott said with a tight little grin, “it has no temptations, beyond a well-stocked tavern.”

“No women, ah well,” Lewrie teased.

“Might I ask how your trip to Wilmington fell out, sir?” the First Officer enquired as they fell into a side-by-side stroll towards the stern.

“Satisfyin’, in part, un-satisfyin’ in another,” Lewrie said, “and damned frustratin’ at the tail-end. Put a Mid and a work-party to heavin’ up the stores we have in the barge, then join me in my cabins for a mug of ale, and I’ll reveal all.”

“Most grateful, sir,” Westcott said, turning to whistle up men to assist Mr. Cadbury in unloading the barge.

*   *   *

By the time Westcott entered the great-cabins, Lewrie was down to shirtsleeves, sitting on the starboard-side settee and having more fuss made of him by his cats, Toulon and Chalky, who found pemmican a tasty treat, as well.

“An ale for the First Officer, if ye please, Pettus,” Lewrie ordered.

“Right away, sir!”

“Sit, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie bade. “Here, try some of this pemmican. I fetched back an hundredweight of it for our creatures, but it’s really too good for them. Ten Yankee dollars, in all. Two pounds sterling. You, the officers, and the Mids, make up one pound between you, and I’ll call it quits.”

“Damned decent price, sir … uhm, tasty, too!” Westcott said in appreciation.

“First off, our Consul in Wilmington, and the Lower Cape Fear, is a local attorney,” Lewrie told him. “Don’t pull such a long face, sir, for I found him honourable and decent, and quite diligent about representing England’s interests … and America’s strict neutrality, in equal measure. Between him and my old friend, Christopher Cashman, who knows the chandlery trade and the town’s docks as well as any, I think we can write off Wilmington as a potential shelter for enemy privateers. We’ll have to look elsewhere … to the South. Charleston, Georgetown, Beaufort, and Port Royal in South Carolina, for starters.”

“More fun to be had in Charleston than little Smithville, aye sir,” Lt. Westcott said with a hopeful grin. Chalky abandoned Lewrie’s thigh, leapt down, and made his way to Westcott’s lap stretching his neck and pawing for the remaining morsel of pemmican.

“Much more business bein’ done, for certain,” Lewrie agreed, in a way, “and a harbour much more accessible from the sea, with sufficient depth for fully-laden Indiamen. More temptations for local businessmen to dabble in privateerin’, perhaps. Don’t know about Georgetown, The Winyah Bay is rather shallow, with a narrow safe channel, and the town is mostly in the rice-exportin’ trade. I don’t even know if we have a consul there … and won’t, ’til we speak to our consul in Charleston.”

“Oh, here, you little pest,” Westcott said, surrendering to the cat’s manic intent to have the last bite. “You said the rest of your stay in Wilmington was less than satisfying, sir?”

“Well, Cashman’s wife—lovely and gracious woman from one of the finest old Cape Fear families, by the way—laid on a splendid supper party for us,” Lewrie said, making a wee wry grimace. “Took it a step too far, though. It was Cashman and his wife, our local consul, Mister Osgoode Moore, Junior, and his—”

“Junior, sir?” Westcott asked, looking askance.

“The American way of tellin’ father from son, I gathered. So, that made six of us, countin’ me and Mister Cadbury,” Lewrie went on. “But, to dine in a Knight and Baronet, she also had in one of the old partners in Livesey, Seabright, and Cashman, Mister Phillip Seabright himself, and his wife Bess … both of whom took active parts in the Revolution in their younger days. That made eight guests, but, apparently Mistress Cashman thought the balance ’twixt gentlemen and ladies was off, so, she whistled up one of her neighbours, a widow, and her spinster daughter.”

“And did you feel ‘buttock-brokered’, sir?” Westcott idly japed. “A knighted widower to be inspected?”

“No, none of that,” Lewrie said, with a sardonic laugh. “The widow lady was in her late fifties if she was a day, though the daughter was fetchin’ enough. Ah, thankee, Pettus,” he said as his cabin servant/steward fetched him a fresh mug of ale. “No, the problem was they were Chiswicks.”

“Ehm…?” Lt. Westcott posed in query, not tumbling to it.

“My late wife’s surname was Chiswick, and she, her parents, and her brothers were from the Cape Fear,” Lewrie explained with a wince. “Loyalist, Tory, supporters of King and Country during the Revolution, whereas
these
Chiswicks were the Rebel side of the family.”

“Well … after all these years, sir, does it really matter any more?” Westcott asked

“It don’t t’me, but it surely still matters to
them
!” Lewrie said, enlightening his First Lieutenant. “There I was, sponged off, clean-shaven, fangs polished, and my breath sweetened with a ginger
pastille,
just fit t’please. Even had my mind primed t’be tactful, witty, an’ charmin’, for God’s sake, as we gathered in the parlour for sherry or Rhenish. The Moores arrived, and it’s a fine beam reach and smooth sailin’, couldn’t
be
more congenial.

“The Seabrights arrive, and it comes out that I was once in Wilmington during the war, after Yorktown, for the evacuation of the British garrison and stores,” Lewrie went on, “and, ‘oh, hasn’t their city grown since,’ and ‘were you truly a witness to Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown?’, and I got off my tale of escapin’ the might before—tell ye that’un, someday—and ‘isn’t it wonderful t’be back at peace these many years?’, and then I asked about the grand old house that used to stand at the top of the hill on Market Street, and Mistress Seabright says that that was the house her father, Matthew Livesey, had built once the firm was profitable,
before
the war came, and I made the mistake of sayin’ that I’d known some people who lodged there just before the evacuation, and I felt the wind veer ahead to a close reach, and turn a tad nippy. The only people who lived there were
Tarleton’s
officers, and refugeed Loyalists, so Mister Seabright launched into a scheme by the local lights t’dam up New Inlet to deepen the channels of Old Inlet t’let in bigger ships. The cat was still in the bag, then, and the change o’ topic was welcome.”

“This was
before
the angry mob with torches and pitchforks came to the door, I take it, sir?” Westcott asked, tongue-in-cheek, enjoying his captain’s discomforture.

Lewrie gave him a scowl suitable to the occasion.

“In sailed the Chiswick ladies,” Lewrie continued his tale of woe. “Fusses, ados, bows, and curtseys, and the introductions, first, and the servants fetched round more wine. Now, Widow Chiswick started out as a pleasant old chick-a-biddy, all grand manners and sweet as your white-haired granny.
Married
into the clan just after the Revolution, but she must’ve swotted up on Chiswick lore from her teens. The spinster daughter was about nineteen … blond, blue-eyed, pertly fetchin’…”

“I see, sir,” Westcott said, rising to the description with an anticipatory grin … a rather feral one. Young ladies did that to him.

“… as miss-ish and coy as any ye ever did see, just primed to thrill … perhaps too much so, ’cause I see no other reason she hasn’t caught a beau, yet. Or, so I gathered,” Lewrie described. “She even paid poor Mister Cadbury a fair share of attention.”

“The lucky bastard, sir,” Westcott commented with a brief scowl of envy to have not been there.

“At last, the major-domo, or butler, or whatever they call ’em in America, says that supper is ready, so off we trot, two columns in line-abreast, find our seats, and I found myself cross from the Seabrights, with the widow lady abeam, and the daughter two points off my starboard bows,” Lewrie laid out, “and at first, things go swimmingly … ’til Mistress Seabright asks do I have family back in England, and do I miss ’em sore, and here it came, cat’s out o’ the bag, at last, with the ends knotted. Wife passed away three years before?
Sugary
expressions o’ sympathy. Daughter farmed out with my brother-in-law, two sons in the Navy … well, I had
t’name
’em, didn’t I, and there went the Chiswick nape hairs!

“My eldest is named Sewallis Lewrie, for my late father-in-law, d’ye see, Mister Westcott, and my daughter’s named for my late mother-in-laws Charlotte Chiswick,” Lewrie painfully elaborated, shifting uncomfortably on the thin settee cushions, “and she’s stayin’ with brother-in-law Governour. After that, I didn’t have to say the name Chiswick, ’cause the family lore’s just bung-full about ’em. My father-in-law, with some other prosperous planter gentlemen, raised a single-battalion Loyalist regiment and armed ’em with Ferguson rifles, and Governour and Burgess Chiswick were officers in that regiment. The old lady put it to me, ‘and was your wife from the Cape Fear, Sir Alan?’ and ye can’t
lie
about such a thing … much as I wished!… so I says that Caroline
was
, aye, and ye’d’ve thought I’d said that she was the bastard git of the Devil himself! A full gale smacked me fine on the bow, leavin’ me all a’back and ‘in-irons’”

Lt. Westcott had himself a serious wince, in sympathy, saying, “Sounds rather … awkward, sir. Ouch! Your own kin … of a sort.”

“Aye, one minute, it was all gushin’, and makin’ cow-eyes over me like I was the Prince of Wales, even if I
am
English.… Cashman was right when he said that even Jacobins’ll go giddy over a ‘lord’,” Lewrie said with a mirthless laugh, “and the next minute, I’m a red-eyed Turk in a turban, Attila the Hun, and ‘Bloody’ Banastre Tarleton all rolled up in one! I got …
lectured,
Mister Westcott, on the barbarities of the British during the Revolution, and the atrocities committed by those who sided with the King, and nothing that my host and hostess, or the Seabrights could do to dissuade ’em. I had t’sit and
take
it, totally dis-masted, and all guns out of action.”

“Lord, how horrible, sir!” Lt. Westcott said, after a silence, and a sip or two of his ale. “Though … your predicament does have a certain bleak humour to it.”

“I’m glad
somebody
thinks so,” Lewrie gravelled. “Well, both the widow granny and the spiteful young mort gave me close broadsides for a goodly time, ’til they ran out of grievances … or air, one or the other,” Lewrie said, shaking his head with a bleak humour of his own. “Christ, what a litany! Every burned haystack, stolen horse, looted house, butchered cow, coin-silver punch bowl, or broken teacup … every torched house and barn, every dead Chiswick or their neighbours, who was imprisoned, whipped … but when they did run out of wind, I got my own back. Didn’t give a tinker’s dam for ‘tactful or diplomatic’, by then.”

“How so, sir?” Westcott asked, both rapt and darkly amused by the tale, by then.

“I told ’em that when I escaped Yorktown, got back aboard my own ship at New York, we sailed to Wilmington, and how I found the Chiswicks,” Lewrie said, lifting his chin with stubborn pride of the doing, “of how my future father-in-law was broken in body and spirit, and how penniless they were, the three of ’em, and their one loyal old slave cook and maid-of-all-work, and what little they’d managed t’salvage, were living in one small room, damned near at the edge of starvation, and, had it not been for my pleas to my old captain, and his generosity and pity, they’d not have been able to buy passage to Charleston, and temporary refuge.

“’Cause their own Chiswick kin, the ones who’d welcomed ’em with open arms t’settle in the Cape Fear country, and my mother-in-law’s long-settled kinfolk, burned
them
out, murdered the youngest brother, George, when he tried to defend them, stole
their
livestock and looted
their
possessions, stole their lands, and drove off their slaves,” Lewrie fumed in a dark taking. “And
damned
if they think to pretend that they were the ones with clean hands, or grievances!”

“Good, sir! Good!”

“Well, I didn’t go
that
far,” Lewrie confessed. “The recapitulation’s harsher than the original, but … let’s say that the supper party did
not
end with music, parlour games, or
écarté.
”

The Chiswick ladies had departed in a huff, before the dessert, and the Seabrights soon after, Lewrie related. Poor Mister Cadbury had been relegated to an embarassed companion to Mrs. Cashman and Mrs. Moore for some
moody
three-handed cards, whilst Lewrie, Cashman, and Moore had remained at-table with port and tobacco, getting the King’s Business settled anent French or Spanish privateers, and an agreement that Cashman and Moore would keep their eyes peeled for any merchants who might be aiding them. If discovered, Moore would lodge protests with the local courts, with the state government, and alert the British Ambassador in Washington City.