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 publican’s blue apron called out once he had come out to see what the noise was about. The lad looked like a younger version of Will Cony, but Lewrie couldn’t recall his name, right off. There were three boys born to the Conys, and Lewrie’s sons had played with them, no matter what his in-laws and Uncle Phineas Chiswick thought of it.
“Little Will, sir!” the lad prompted, beaming fit to bust.
“Good Lord, the spittin’ image of your dad at his age!” Lewrie exclaimed as he carefully levered himself off the bench seat into the doorway of the coach. “Where do the years go? ‘Little’, my eye!”
“Father! Captain Lewrie’s come home!” Little Will shouted over his shoulder towards the half-opened doors. “Come quick!”
Lewrie put his good left leg on the first of the folding metal coach steps, clung to the door to place his sore right one on it, then slowly descended, wincing when he put weight upon his bad leg. Once on the ground, his stout walking stick eased the pressure. Just at that moment, Will Cony came out, began to smile a welcome, but froze, and got a worried look oh his face.
“Dear God, sir, but what’ve the bastard Frogs done t’ya!” Will gasped, coming close as if to give him a shoulder to lean on. “Let’s git ya in outta the cold, and sit ya down with a mug o’ warm ale.”
“Wasn’t the Frogs, Will, but the Dons, this time,” Lewrie said. “And aye, a good chair and a pint of your best’d be more than welcome. Ale for all. Summon the coachee and the waggon driver, Pettus, and I expect they’re in need, too.”
Christ, we could make a passable pair o’ drummers! Lewrie imagined as they went inside. Will Cony’s artificial “board foot” boot shuffled and thumped with each step, right alongside the matching tap of Lewrie’s cane almost made a rubato rhythm!
He shed his hat and greatcoat and took ease in a sturdy wooden chair at a table near one of the fireplaces, letting out a wee sigh of relief from pain. A moment later, though, and Lewrie was struggling to rise as Maggie Cony and the other two Cony sons came bustling out from the kitchens. “La, don’t ye be gettin’ up, Cap’m Lewrie!” Maggie cried. “Lord, but it’s good t’see ye back, hurt or no. Ye remember Thomas and Anthony, little Tony? Well, none of ’em so little now. Ye’ll be suppin’ with us here?”
“I sent word ahead to my father’s place that we’d be arriving, so I expect his house staff’s layin’ on something, but thankee for the offer, Maggie,” Lewrie explained. “I wouldn’t want them to put themselves out for nothing. Now I’m ashore on half-pay, you’ll be seein’ more than enough o’ me, for mid-day dinners, and t’read the papers.”
“A pint o’ the fall ale, sir,” the fetching brunette waitress Lewrie recalled from three years before said, bustling to the table with a tray of filled mugs. “An’ may I be so bold as t’welcome ye back, sir,” she added, with a smile and a brief curtsy.
“Thankee, uh…” Lewrie replied, stuck for another name.
“Why, ye recall Abigail, Cap’m,” Will Cony said, laughing out loud. “She started with us a bit afore ya got Reliant and went away. Don’t know what we’d do without ’er.”
“Ye could pay me more, am I that good, Mister Cony,” Abigail teased before turning away to see to the others at the table.
“So, ya paid her off, at last, sir,” Will Cony said, “an’ what o’ th’ local lads I rounded up for ya?”
Lewrie could reassure him that of the twenty volunteers that Will had recruited from Anglesgreen and the farms around, all but two of them were alive and well, though by now surely parcelled out to other ships in need of crew whilst Reliant went into the graving docks to be substantially rebuilt. It was the way of the Navy, as Will Cony ruefully knew.
“Hated t’give ’em up,” Lewrie admitted. “The local lads might have come aboard as raw Landsmen, but they made fine topmen and Ordinary Seamen by the end. All of ’em a parcel better than the dregs from the County Quotas. Even worse than what the ’Press dragged in for us, in the old days, Will. My word, that is a damned fine ale, as good as you’ve ever brewed!” Lewrie told him, after a first, deep taste.
“Aye, we’ve had a couple o’ good years,” Cony modestly boasted, “fine barley, fine rye, and splendid hops, and folk hereabout tell me even the Red Swan can’t match us. But…” he went on, sighing, “nowadays, folk’re callin’ for city-brewed ale, beers, porters, an’ stouts, and there’s chapmen in all the time, floggin’ waggonloads o’ kegs, an’ tryin’ t’sign me up t’one brand, exclusive. Puttin’ th’ squeeze on us somethin’ fierce. Fine for a big town with lots o’ taverns, but here?”
“I’d drink yer ale th’ whole day long, Mister Cony, an’ even say no t’Guinness!” Patrick Furfy hooted from his table.
Lewrie had no time to tell Cony of his adventures, nor how he had been wounded, promising that he would be back in another day, once he’d gotten settled at his father’s estate.
“It may be I’ll become a permanent fixture,” Lewrie said with a grimace, tapping his right thigh. “The Navy may not have me anymore.”
“Well, it ain’t like the Dons shot it off, sir!” Cony exclaimed. “Or, yer ‘saw-bones’ shortened ya. A few months in the country’ll do wonders for ya, we’ll see t’that. Maggie’s cookin’ll put some meat on yer bones, an’ we’ll have ya dancin’ by spring. Look at me, sir, with my foot shot off. I walked meself t’rights, an’ now I’m as spry as a pup, an’ wot I could do, you can do, s’truth. I’m yer man fer that!”
“I may take you up on that, Will,” Lewrie promised, though not putting too much hope in the offer. “As for now, though, we’d better be gettin’ on to my father’s place before dark. What’s the reckoning?” he said, reaching for his coin purse, and the new-fangled paper currency.
“You settle in, and come on back down, when yer up to it, Cap’m Lewrie, and we’ll see to ya,” Cony offered again.
CHAPTER THREE
The Old Ploughman just might be the only place in Anglesgreen where Lewrie felt true comfort. He certainly did not feel at ease at his father’s house. Of only one storey or not, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby had built Dun Roman to ramble all over the gently sloped hilltop, incorporating the ancient ruin of a stone watchtower into it, with a Hindoo-style covered gallery across the front of the central section, English weather be-damned, a gravelled roundabout drive in front of that, with a Mediterranean-styled fountain, replete with three very lasciviously carved water-bearing nymphs in the centre, all surrounded by terra cotta planters and flowering shrubs, in season.