The King - Dewey Lambdin

Poisson D'Or let fall her tops'ls as she took the night wind abeam, drifting slantwise away from her anchorage. Her taff-rail lanterns were burning, as were many smaller work-lights to illuminate her crew's labors. They could espy Choundas by the quartermasters by her wheel on the quarterdeck. They could watch him stroll over to the starboard bulwarks to look back at them as his ship's bows turned down-river.

There was just enough light, for those with telescopes, to see the smug sense of victory on his face.

IV

"Nunc love sub domino caedes et vulnera

semper, nunc mare, nunc leti mille repente viae."

"But now that Jupiter is lord, there are wounds

and carnage without cease; now the sea slays,

and there are a thousand ways of sudden death."

"The Poet Sick-To Messalla"

– Tibullus

Chapter 1

In March, the trading season ended in Canton. Whampoa Reach emptied slowly, as ships drifted down-river to Macao, at the mouth of the Pearl River estuary. For many traders and merchants, their families awaited them, and for a time, Macao rang with balls and parties in celebration of a successful season. For some ships, there was time enough to celebrate their freedom from the strictures of Chinese law in one of the most sinful seaports known to mankind, then hoist anchor and hope for the best in the South China Seas as the winds shifted more favorably for Calcutta, Pondichery, Chandernargore, He de France in the middle of the Indian Ocean or all the way to the Cape of Good Hope to begin the long voyage home laden with the treasures of the Far East.

Telesto was one of the first ships to put to sea after two perfunctory days of revel and refit in Macao, bearing south for the Johore Straits and the Straits of Malacca. And in her wake, sure as Fate, another ship dared the changing Monsoon winds-Sicard and La Malouine. They could recognize her, hull down over the horizon, during the first day of passage. And though she fell back until only her tops'ls could barely be espied as the days passed, she was there every morning, the sight of which tops'ls made Twigg almost hum a snatch of song now and again in sheer delight.

"Ship's company, off hats!" Lieutenant Choate commanded. The hands, brought aft by the summoning call from the "Spithead Nightingales," the bosun's pipes, took off their flat-brimmed dark tarred felt hats, or the tarred woven sennet ones, and stood swaying and shuffling in a dense pack.

Perhaps they thought it was a call aft to witness punishment.

The sight of their officers and mates wearing steel on their hips was rare. Rarer still was Chiswick's half-company of native sepoys clad in dhotis, red coats and cross-belts, tricornes and puggarees for the first time in over six months, drawn up like a Marine detachment on a proper warship with their muskets held stiffly at shoulder arms, Chiswick and his native subadar and havildars before them.

"Men!" Captain Ayscough began in a rumble that could carry as far forward as the fo'c'sle belfry. "I know there have been some rumors flying below decks about just what it is we're doing out here."

Amen to that, most of the men nodded in agreement.

"What are we doing with such a heavy battery hidden away below. Why do we have Hindoo troops with us," Ayscough continued, hands in the small of his back and rocking easily to Telesto's motion from the vantage point of the quarterdeck nettings overlooking the waist and upper gun deck. "Maybe you wondered why we run this ship 'Admiralty Fashion.' And, I'm sure, since poor Mister Wythy's death in Canton, you've been wondering what led to it. Well, it's come time to tell you all. It's the French, lads! The bloody French!"

Ayscough sketched out for them the fact that they were a Navy vessel in disguise. He outlined what Sicard and Choun-das were up to with the native pirates. How good English sailors had been overcome and slaughtered far from home for opium and silver by not only native pirates, but by the French as well.

He drew a sheaf of documents from one large side pocket of his dark blue frock coat. "I bear a Letter of Marque from 'John Company,' lads! I hold active commission from our good King George the Third! And I have a Frog pirate lurking off my stern-quarters! They risked drawing steel on Mister Lewrie, one of your officers. They murdered an agent of the Crown back in Canton, and then their leader, Choundas, threw his henchman's life away, let him be strangled to death at the hands of those Goddamned heathen Chinee rather than let him answer questions! Choundas is out here somewhere, men, and we're going to find him and kill him, him and all his sneering, torturing, Godless Frog crew. And any pagan pirate that'd deign to shake hands with him. For now, though, the ship that gathers up his spoils, washes good English blood off their foul booty and sails the seas acting innocent as your own babies, is astern of us. Well, we'll stop this bugger's dirty business. We'll do it to save the lives of other God-fearing English seamen. We'll do it to revenge Mister Wythy's murder. And we'll do it to put such a fear of retribution into the bastardly Frogs and all their help-meets in these waters that them that survived'll tremble in their beds and piss their breeches whenever they think of it!"

There was a ragged howl of agreement with Captain Ayscough's sentiments. No fouler creature drew breath than a Frenchman, to true English thinking. No Jolly Jack would abide a pirate. Unless of course he was English, and preyed on other nations' shipping-then he was Drake and Robin Hood rolled into one. And sailors were a most sentimental lot, their feelings simple sometimes, but close to the surface, and closely held dear. Ayscough had them.

Except for one hand, speaking for a pack of whispering mess-mates. "Er, 'scuse me, Cap'um, but… er… beggin' yer pardon an' all, sir, don't mean ter… uhm…"

One of his mates gave him a nudge. "D'zat mean we goes back ter Navy pay, Cap'um?" he finally stammered out.

"It does not!" Ayscough smiled. "Merchantman pay-rate until we pay off back home in old England!"

If anything, that raised an even greater chorus of cheering. "Mister Abernathy, we shall splice the mainbrace!" Ayscough said in conclusion. "Mister Choate? Dismiss the hands."

"Ship's company, on hats and, dismiss!" Choate yelled. "All hands forward to splice the mainbrace!"

Abernathy and his Jack in the Bread Room, the assistant purser, went below with a bosun's mate, master-at-arms and ship's corporals to fetch out a keg of rum. There would be no debts due on this issue. No "sippers" for sewing another man's kit back up, for taking a watch, or for a favor or debt. All would get full, honest measure in addition to whatever issue came at seven bells of the forenoon watch at "clear decks and up spirits."

"Still there, Mister Hogue?" Ayscough shouted up to the cross-trees of the main-mast.

"Still there, sir!" Hogue assured him with an answering yell. "Mister Percival, I'd admire you hoisted the cutter off the midships tiers in the day watch. And dismount the taffrail lanterns."

"Aye, sir," Percival replied.

"Mister Choate, gun drill in the day. watch as well. Sharpen 'em up. Say, an hour and a half on the great guns, and then rig out boarding nettings along the bulwarks, and chain slings aloft on the yards. Strike useless furniture below once it's dark."

"Aye, sir."

"Mister McTaggart, fetch a spare stuns'l boom and a boat compass to install in the cutter, if you'd be so good, sir."

"Aye aye, captain."

"Before dawn, gentlemen, this bastard Sicard will wish he never laid eyes on our Telesto" Ayscough predicted grimly. "We'll begin to get some of our own back with these poxy Frogs!"

It was a nacky ruse, Lewrie had to admit as he saw it put into service. The heaviest ship's boat, the thirty-six-foot cutter, was swayed off the tiers and lowered over the side around three in the afternoon. A studding sail boom about twenty feet long and six inches thick was lashed across her sternposts. At each end of the boom, a heavy glass lantern had been lashed. The captain's cox'n was put in charge of her, given a boat compass and a small crew to set sails, a barricoe of water and some dry rations in case they were away from the ship for longer than planned, and then they were paid out to be towed astern. They were given muskets, pistols, cutlasses and a small boat-gun mounted in the bows, partly to counteract the weight of the lanterns and boom. The cox'n was entrusted with slow-match, flint and tinder, and a hope they could find them in the morning.

As the late afternoon progressed, and the armorer's whetstone competed with the fifers, fiddlers and pipers, Telesto's lower courses were reduced, taken in by one reef. The stays'ls between the fore and main-mast, and the stays'l between main and mizzen, were lowered. The ship soughed a little less lively in the sea, slowing by perhaps half a knot. Just enough to allow La Malouine to draw a few miles closer to them before full dark, so that any lookout from her cross-trees or upper royal mast cap could just barely, with a strong telescope, make Telesto out as riding a slight bit higher above the horizon- enough to make out her tops'Is in full and reassure them she was still there.

Chiswick and Lewrie paced the quarterdeck, from nettings on the starboard side to the taffrail and back, each time pausing by the stern to raise a telescope, though seeing anything from the deck was a forlorn hope. The sun was westering rapidly, and the skies to the east were already gloomy, the skies to their starboard side going amber and the high-piled billows of clouds beginning to take on the colors of sunset in one of those magnificent tropical displays.

"I would suppose the timing of this is rather tricky," Burgess opined, staring down at the cox'n and his crew, lazing happily in the cutter being towed about one decent musket-shot astern in their wake. With time on their hands, one definite job to do and sheer, blessed idleness until they were let slip, they were napping or skylarking to their hearts' content.

"I've heard of it done, mind," Alan admitted. "Never thought I'd see it attempted. Like club-hauling off a lee shore. At least the moon's going to cooperate. Be dark as a cow's arse by eight of the clock. What little is left before the new moon'll get hidden by those clouds, too, I trust."

"What if this Frog sails up too close?" Burgess asked.

"Then we might go about and give him a sharp knock, anyway."

"God in Heaven, what if it's not him, after all?" Burgess fretted. "I mean, it could be any ship, couldn't it? This Sicard could have slacked off once he saw we were headed south, let another ship pass him, and gone off to play silly buggers with his pirate friends."

"If that happens, Burge," Lewrie assured him with a wry grin, "we'll look like no end of idiots. Or Captain Ayscough will."

That would kick the spine out of the crew, Alan thought, taking on some of Burgess' fretfulness and turning to stare at the captain and Mr. Twigg up forward by the wheel binnacle. All the spine he'd put in them that morning. It made the hands easier to control if they knew what they were about, he realized, and he'd seen enough examples of captains who explained things to their crews. Contrariwise, there was the risk of saying too much of one's expectations. And when those expectations or predictions turned out false, a captain could expect to lose renown in his own ship, making the seamen and mates, even the officers, suspect his abilities the next time.