The King's Marauder Read Free Page A

his silk shirt-tails, and his muslin underdrawers with long pincers gouging remorselessly for the very last thread.
    That wound was not the only one he’d suffered in his twenty-seven years in the Navy, but by God, it had been the most painful, a shrieking agony that seemed to last as long as the pangs of Hell! Even the thought of it made him shiver. He’d come to from a fever and laudanum-laced stupor to find himself in constant, throbbing pain, bound up in baby swaddles, fouling himself, and helpless, unable to crawl out of his hanging bed-cot and make it to his quarter-gallery, for an embarrassing fortnight. When he did manage to move without the pain immobilising him, it had taken Pettus and his cabin-servant, Jessop, to support him for a fortnight more.
    At least I could wipe mine own arse! he thought.
    When he could put slop trousers or breeches on, and attend to ship’s business once more, there had first been a crutch to aid him, with a watchful Pettus or Jessop at his elbow, still. Graduating to a walking stick had felt like marvellous progress, but … he had had need of it from their break in passage at St. Helena all the way to England, through de-commissioning Reliant, reporting to Admiralty, and going home to Anglesgreen, and his father’s house. At least Sir Hugo had patterned his house after a rambling Hindoo bungalow so there were no stairs to manage!
    He’d gone on half-pay a cripple, a weak-legged shambler with a dubious future. Even mounting or dis-mounting a horse, or taking a morning ride at only a walk, not a trot, was a fearsome chore, and could cause a dull and deep ache! For a time, Lewrie had dreaded that not only would he never be called to service again, there was a good chance that he would be doomed to be only half a full man!
    Thank God, again, for Will Cony, he grimly thought.
    *   *   *
    Over the years since first settling in Anglesgreen near his in-laws in 1789 to live upon a rented farm, whenever Lewrie had returned, whether from London or the sea, his first stop had always been the Old Ploughman public house. In the early days, when old Mr. Beakman had owned it, the Old Ploughman looked and felt smoky, grimy, and ancient, as it indeed was, the interior dim and low-ceilinged, the plastered walls and overhead beams dark with hundreds of years of hearth smoke.
    Its customers were mostly the common folk of the village, with small farmers, cottagers, and day labourers thrown in. The finer Red Swan Inn, a larger and airier red brick building which sat at the far Western end of the long, grassy-green common which ran along the narrow river that bisected Anglesgreen, had always been the best establishment but it had not been for Lewrie. The richer Squirearchy gathered there, including Sir Romney Embleton, the largest landowner around and magistrate, and his spiteful son Harry, who had “had his cap set” for Caroline Chiswick, who had married Lewrie instead, just before taking on his first, command of little HMS Alacrity in 1786. They had returned three years later with one child born and another on the way, making Harry grind his teeth anew. No, Lewrie would never be welcome in the Red Swan, even now that Harry had managed to find a woman who would put up with him and had a family of his own!
    A few years back, Lewrie’s long-time manservant, cabin-steward, and Cox’n, Will Cony, had come back to Anglesgreen with carefully saved prize money, with a foot shot off to end his own Navy service, and he and his wife, Maggie, had bought the Old Ploughman from Beakman, and had turned it into a much cleaner, brighter tavern, where Lewrie would always be welcome.
    And such was the case when his coach rattled to a stop on the gravelled turn-out, bearing Lewrie, Pettus, Jessop, and Yeovill, with a second dray waggon following with Liam Desmond and Patrick Furfy aboard, which bore all his cabin furnishings and personal goods.
    “Captain Lewrie, sir!” a fit and good-looking young fellow in a