#1807 adriatic campaign with first orders for Lydia

[akathecentimetre]

@bonnie131313: How about a crossover? Put together two of your Fandoms - Star Wars & Hornblower would be cool or Hornblower with the Rivers of London?

[THIS IS GOING TO BE A THING. THIS IS GOING TO BE A BIG THING. I HAVE SO MUCH PLOTTED OUT YOU HAVE NO IDEA]

Captain Hornblower of His Majesty’s Ship Lydia stood rigidly at the rail, looking down into the wave-tossed boat approaching through Plymouth harbor, and wondered, for the first time in some time, how it was he had come to feel so out of his depth.

You are therefore directed and required, the orders had said, to receive on board Thomas Nightingale, Esq., and whatever companions of his choice - 

There had followed a lot of ordinary Admiralty language about extraordinary, very un-Admiralty notions - including the putative existence of a supernatural being currently running amok in the Adriatic Sea at the service of the King of Italy - which had provoked Hornblower into nearly two days worth of increasingly frantic letter-writing to the Harbourmaster to clarify the nature of the task that was being set to him. In the end, it had required a visit to shore himself, and the unexpected, but never unwelcome, sight of Rear Admiral Pellew to convince him of the truth.

“It’s been done since the War of Jenkins’ Ear, if not before,” Pellew had told him, looking perturbed but no less serious for it. “Harvey had one on board the Temeraire at Trafalgar who worked some sort of sorcery on the winds - only reason she didn’t take herself and Victory to the bottom, so I’m told.”

Hornblower found himself still feeling none the wiser, and all the more astonished when Bush, of all people, upon being tentatively informed of the identity and nature of their future guests, looked most uneasy, as though a secret had been found out.

“Too many sons in my uncle’s family, sir,” he had finally admitted. “One ended up in London, at this - well, I suppose you’d call it a school, sir. I can’t say I know anything about how he turned out. Not entirely sure it’s natural,” he’d ended, and frowned, and then went about asking the much more practical questions about where, exactly, on a packed and sweltering Lydia, they were supposed to house their unwelcome passengers.

And so Captain Hornblower waited at the rail in the middle of the first dog watch, irritated and worn out with the requirements of getting a ship he barely knew ready for sea, and watched as his four guests made their ungainly way up the side of the Lydia, followed by an inordinate number of heavy chests and boxes which had to be painstakingly swung up to the deck. He could see the family resemblance to Bush, as it happened, as the man who must have been Nightingale, impeccably dressed in a gentleman’s frock coat and bright white breeches, looked keenly about him; he carried a heavy cane, though he bore no visible disability. Behind him tumbled three younger people, of which two were similarly but more haphazardly dressed; one, Hornblower was undoubtedly surprised to see, was a mulatto, and the other was a slip of a thing, a bright-eyed blond youth who was already glaring daggers at the members of Lydia’s crew that dared to look curiously at the lot of them. Behind them all hovered - perhaps worst of all - a woman, a milk-pale servant who went silently about the task of straightening the piles of luggage, her efficient movements betraying an uncommon strength.

“Come aboard, sir,” the wizard said politely, handing over a folded and sealed letter which Hornblower could only assume contained his orders. “And might I present my apprentices - Mr Grant, and Mr May.”

The young black man grinned; the young blond looked insolent. Hornblower, sensing Bush’s embarrassment behind him without even looking at the man, felt the distinct sensation of a headache starting to build behind his eyes.

“Ha-h’m,” he said, pocketing the orders without opening them. “Yes, very well. Get us underway, if you please, Mr Bush,” he added in more of a shout to cover his confusion, turning away from the bedraggled little group at the rail. “I should not like to miss this wind.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Bush said, sounding relieved, and hurried to the quarterdeck to start bellowing orders at Gerard and Clay. In the bustle and clamor which followed, in which their unexpected guests were hustled unceremoniously below decks by a crowd of suspicious, unhelpful hands, it was almost possible to believe that there was to be nothing out of the ordinary on this particular journey to the Mediterranean.

Almost.