Kings and Emperors

There was nothing from his daughter, Charlotte, but, by then, he had no expectations that she would ever write him. Oddly, there was nothing about her from his former brother-in-law, Governour Chiswick’s, latest letter, but then, Governour was all about himself and his new prospects; old Uncle Phineas Chiswick had finally died, and he’d left all of his estate to Governour, elevating him from a much-put-upon estate manager to master of all he surveyed, a wealthy man with thousands of acres. Old Sir Romney Embleton had also passed in the Autumn, so his son, Harry, was now Sir Harry, Colonel of the Yeomanry militia, and the borough’s nigh-permanent representative in the House of Commons, for the very good reason that no one would dare run against him. With Harry so busy, Governour had been asked to be the local Magistrate in Harry’s place, too.

God help Anglesgreen, then, Lewrie thought with a scowl, in need of a brandy to wash the sudden sour taste from his mouth; That brayin’ bastard’ll run his court like Tsar Ivan the Terrible!

The read and discarded letters were piling up beside Lewrie on the settee cushions, they were crinkly, daubed with patches of sealing wax, and … chewy. Chalky made a prodigious, tail-wiggling leap from the brass tray table to the pile like diving into a snow heap and pawed right and left, unsure which he’d shred first.

“Those ain’t good eatin’, Chalky,” Lewrie chid him, “better ye come here and keep me warm.”

Chalky would have none of it. The lure of wagging fingers to tempt him only prompted the cat to plop on his back and wriggle atop the letters, paws out to bat at him, his tail thumping on the papers.

“Have it your own way, then,” Lewrie said, opening the last of his personal correspondence. “Well, just damn my eyes!” he had to exclaim once he had opened it.

Percy, Viscount Stangbourne, had written him to a

He’s probably already ashore, Lewrie thought.

Percy and his troopers were to land at Coru

Percy was now the proud father of two fine sons, Eudoxia was well and happy, his father-in-law, Arslan Artimovich Durschenko, was staying in England to recruit remounts to be shipped to Spain later, and that Horse Guards had seen fit to take his regiment into full military service, allowed its own home barracks and second battalion cadre to form a full-strength replacement unit recruited from the Reading and Henley-on-Thames region. He couldn’t be prouder that his patriotic efforts, and his great fortune he’d used to raise, mount, arm and equip his regiment, had finally borne fruit!

By the way, he wrote, we’re no longer Stangbourne’s Horse but the 38th Light Dragoons. Oh, and Lydia is well and content living in the country, with all her childhood friends and their children to spoil, and her good works. She would have come to Spain, but …

Hmm, Lewrie thought at the mention of his former lover’s name; I don’t feel even the slightest twinge.

He had, at the time, been extremely fond of her, almost at the verge of real love, and even at the moment in that bleak Winter garden when she had rejected him and vowed to live alone, and safe, the rest of her life—the moment that he’d recklessly proposed marriage—had experienced the stumbling of his heart, the sinking of his stomach so keenly that he’d thought he would sicken of his loss.

Months later, after taking command of Sapphire and returning to the sea and an active commission, the pangs would disturb him … yet now? Lewrie glanced at Percy’s letter once more, and found that Lydia had asked him to express her fond regards.

Fond regards, and it don’t hurt. Well! he mused. All he did was shrug. Chalky, tired of scattering paper, crawled into his lap with some mews for attention, and a Mrrk or two, and settled down to be stroked and petted, slowly begi

There was a rap of a musket butt on the deck, the stamp of the Marine sentry’s boots, and a shout to a

“Enter!” Lewrie called back, not rising.

Yeovill came in, shaking water from his tarred sailor’s hat and dripping raindrops from his tarpaulin coat. Chalky perked up in a trice, uttered a glad mew of welcome, and went dashing to Yeovill; Yeovill was food, and good smells.

“Fickle,” Lewrie chid him after the cat leapt away. “What is it, Yeovill?”

“Ah, I was wondering about the holidays, sir,” Yeovill began, “and what you might have in mind to serve to dine in our officers and such, sir. With the trade cross the Lines so free, now, I can find almost anything you wish … hams, geese, ducks, even turkeys.”

“Hmm,” Lewrie happily pondered for a moment, “smoked Spanish hams are always fine, but … a really big Christmas goose’d go down well. Devil with it, you might as well pick up one of everything, and we’ll have a two-day feast!”

“Ehm, I was also wondering if we could do something special for the ship’s people, too, sir,” Yeovill went on with his eyebrows up in hope. “A goose or turkey for each eight-man mess, perhaps, with shore bread, puddings or duffs, and fresh vegetables?”

“Good Lord, how would Ta

“I was thinking I could find someplace ashore, sir, to roast whatever I could find, and have it rowed out,” Yeovill went on.

“Hmm,” Lewrie pondered, again, considering the drawbacks of that. On the days that salt-pork or salt-beef was issued to the hands, it came in the form of eight-pound chunks or joints chosen by weekly-appointed messmen from every eight-man dining arrangement. Once chosen, the meat went into that mess’s string bag with a numbered brass tab to identify it, and once boiled to a fare-thee-well, it and the accompanying bread or bisquit, duffs or hard puddings, soup, beans or pease, were hand-carried from the galley to the messes. The meat was sliced into roughly one-pound portions—less all the bone and gristle that the crooked jobbers left on—and doled out.

“’Oo shall ’ave this’un, then?” Lewrie said, chuckling, in an approximation of lower-deck accents. “Only two legs on a duck or goose, Yeovill, and everyone’ll want one. Then there’s the problem of how they’d deal with the carving, and what you’d do with the left-overs.”

“Well, perhaps they’d stuff themselves so full, there wouldn’t be any, sir,” Yeovill suggested, “and if they slice it off in slabs, they could reach over for seconds.”

“I don’t know…,” Lewrie fretted, stroking his chin. “Sailors are a conservative lot, and not exactly welcoming to new foods, as we have learned, hey?”

When his old frigate, Reliant, had been off the American coast, the crew had turned their noses up at plain boiled rice, and now his people aboard Sapphire weren’t fond of couscous, either, and had sent a round letter aft to complain, the spokesmen’s names arranged in a circle round the margins of the paper so no one could be singled out as the instigator.