A King's Trade Read online

  To hell with tepid dish-water! Once outside in the cold airs, he sat Proteus’s mail sack at his feet and tremulously pried open the seal and ribands, unfolded the flaps, and…

  Sir

  Upon receipt of this letter, copies of which have been despatched to all major naval seaports where you could be expected to call, you will, AT ONCE, attend me to discuss a matter which may, are you not expeditious, redound to your utter peril and ruin. My address is enclosed, and I shall make my self available to you at any hour you are able to arrive. But, be quick about coming to London!

  Z. Twigg

  Twigg, Oh Christ! Lewrie quailed with an audible groan; What’d I ever do t’deserve his company, again? Oh, yes… that. But…!

  Old Zachariah Twigg, that cold-blooded, murderous, dissembling, smug, and arch old cut-throat, that malevolent Foreign Office spy! Had not James Peel said he’d retired, at last; so what good could Twigg do him? “Matter which may redound to your utter peril…,” which meant that some word of his slave-stealing had gotten to England, but no one “official” had taken notice of it… yet! They might not if Twigg still thought it secret, and could do something about it.

  Oh, but Lord, he’d thought himself shot of Foreign Office plots and errands: with his last time paying for all; Guillaume Choundas in American chains, his every scheme scotched; the former French colony of Saint-Domingue’s new masters, the ex-slave armies, isolated, unarmed, and un-reenforced by Paris, and sure to wither and fall into British hands, sooner or later; those French Creole pirates from Spanish Louisiana slaughtered, a raft of stolen Spanish silver recovered, and simply a grand scheme scouted out for a future invasion of that crown jewel of the Mississippi River, the city of New Orleans, delivered to his superiors at both Admiralty and Foreign Office, and getting shot in the process, to boot!

  Wasn’t that enough? Lewrie appealled to the heavens.

  For, did the hideous old Zachariah Twigg still own the “interest” to get him off, Lewrie would owe the skeletal bastard his soul; nothing got done without incurring a heavy debt in English Society. And, that meant that Lewrie would never be rid of neck-or-nothing schemes!

  Worse, yet! Much as he heartily despised that noisome schemer, Twigg, he’d be forced to grovel, lick his boots, buss his blind cheeks, fawn, swallow shite and proclaim it plum duff, and pretend to be…

  Nice to him!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A way in the “diligence-coach” at dawn, a day after meeting at the Commissioner’s; up Portdown Hill inland, thence to Petersfield, a few miles away from wife and home at Anglesgreen, but there was no time for rencontre, just a quick note to Caroline from the posting-house as the horse team was changed. Which note, Lewrie grimly surmised, would be used to light the candles under the chafing dishes to keep her breakfast warm! He didn’t know quite why he even bothered.

  Onwards to Guildford, once more pretending to nod off, too fretful to accept the usual invitation from sailors travelling with him to “caulk or yarn,” passing up the chance, for a rare once, to brag about Proteus’s most recent exploits, or share reminiscences about the Caribbean and the West Indies. He “harumphed” himself deep into his cloak, tipped his cocked hat low over his eyes, closed them, and thought about nooses and jeering crowds.

  In London, at last, he’d hired a horse at the final post-house, strapped his cylindrical leather portmanteau and soft-sided clasp-bag behind the saddle, and set off Northward, following the instructions in Twigg’s demanding letter. He found it vaguely reassuring that his route from the post-house took him very near Whitehall, and the seat of Admiralty, Parliament, and the Army’s Horse Guards; if Twigg lived on a road that led directly back to town and that august warren of government buildings, might he still have needful influence?

  Up Charing Cross, ‘til it became the Tottenham Court Road; then onwards ‘til Tottenham Court crossed the New Road and became known as the Hampstead Road, with the dense street traffic and press of houses, stores, and such gradually thinning. Further onwards, and the breweries, metal-working manufacturies, and craft shops predominated, then those began to thin out, replaced by market gardeners’ small farms, estates of the middling nature, and roadside establishments, with fields and forests and pastures behind them.

  Hampstead, like Islington in the early days, had developed over the years as the seat of weekend “country” get-away cottages, manses, and villas… though, Hampstead catered to a much richer, and select, part-time population than Islington’s artisan-tradesman clientele. He could espy, here and there, stone or brick gate-pillars announcing the presence of a grand-ish house up a gravelled and tree-lined lane, set well back, and landscaped into well-ordered semblances of “bucolic” or gloomily “romantic,” in that fallen-castle, overgrown-bower, mossy-old-but-still-inhabited style that had grown so Gothically popular, of late, and damn all moody poets and scribblers responsible for it, and what it cost to be created by gimlet-eyed landscapers!

  It was not, for a bloody wonder, raining, that mid-day. Lewrie was not soaked to the skin, cocooned in a frousty fug of wet wool and chafing canvas. As it was England, though, it had rained, recently, thus turning the roadway into a gravel-and-mud pudding, and his snow-white uniform breeches might never be the same, and every approaching dray or waggon, and its mud-slinging wheels, was a “shoal” to be avoided like the very Plague!

  His fearful errand was so completely off-putting that Capt. Alan Lewrie, never a stranger to the charms of young, nubile, and fetching farm girls, barely gave them a passing glance, and rarely lifted his hat in salute to a shy smile of approbation, in fact; and must here be noted, if only as a clue to his present state of mind.

  Here an “humble” cottage, there an “humble” cottage; a Bide-A-We to the left, a Rook’s Nook to the right, or so the signboards said to announce the existence of a destination up those lanes leading off the Hampstead Road. Lark’s Nest, a Belle Reve, a rather imposing new two-storey Palladian mansion set back in at least ten acres of woodsy parkland named Villa Pauvre…which proved to Lewrie that the rich could afford a sense of irony.

  At last, Lewrie topped a long, gradual rise, atop which stood a pair of granite, lion-topped pillars flanked by a long-established and nigh-impenetrable hedge to either side. Here, he drew rein and gawped at the house, which lay about two cables off on the right-hand side of the road, up another gradual rise so that the house sat atop the crown of a slightly taller hill that sloped gently down on all four sides…and the signboard read “Spyglass Bungalow”!

  Very apt, for atop the villa was a squat, blocky tower of stone, open to all four prime compass points, very much like the bell towers seen in a Venetian campus, or town square, right down to the wide-arch form of the openings. Or, a hellish-fancy block-house atop a fortress’s gate or corner, Lewrie decided with a gulp of dread. He gazed about, in search of a further signage that might-well have read “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here,” but couldn’t find it. He gazed fearfully at the house… villa… bungalow, whatever, and blinked a time or two in confusion.

  For the house was light, airy, and its stuccoed exterior painted the palest cream, set off with white stone, its roof made of those sorts of overlapping red-clay tiles more often seen in the Mediterranean, or Spanish possessions. There was a massy, circular flower bed before the house, encircled by a well-gravelled carriage drive, which led under a wide and deep portico over the main entrance. Very much like his father’s, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby’s, Hindoo-inspired house near Anglesgreen, which stood on the ruins of an ancient Roman watch-tower and villa, that he’d named Dun Roman. Two storeys, and no full basement, but perhaps a hint of a cellar, so the front door and a gallery-porch were sheltered by the over-wide portico, only four or five stone risers to the short flight of steps leading from the stoop to the ground. It was altogether such a pleasant prospect that Lewrie had to shake his head a time or two, as well as blink a deal more, to realise that this “Spyglass Bungalow” could actually be the residence of a soul-
less, calculating, murderous, and callous son of a bitch like Zachariah Twigg!

  He clucked his tongue, shook the reins, and heeled his mount to motion, once more, up that welcoming gravelled drive, between the bare-limbed trees that would in summer shade the wide lane with fresh green leaves. There were dozens of abandoned nests in those limbs that told him that a springtime arrival would be greeted by the singing of hundreds of birds. Nice birds, who hadn’t a clue how dangerous the master of those trees could be, poor things.

  Set downhill on all sides round the house (Indian bungalow) was an inner wall of about six feet height, topped with round-cut stone…atop which Lewrie could espy the glint of broken glass!

  That’s more like it, he cynically thought; Aha!

  Inside the inner wall (fortification?) lay a lawn, unbroken by any trees or shrubs where an interloper might shelter. Lewrie knew a fort’s killing-ground when he saw one, and began to hunt for a hidden ditch or moat, a masking glacis, a redan or ravenel or two where the sharpshooters, or the grapeshot-loaded small cannon, might be placed at time of siege. Off to the left of the villa-bungalow was a coach-house of a matching stucco-and-stone, though with an “humble” thatched roof, that led back into the inner enclosure; up against the wall, as if the hayloft above the stalls and tack rooms held loopholes for marksmen! It was only in the immediate vicinity of the house that greenery was allowed. Lewrie took note that a handsome coach stood outside the stable doors, a groom or coachee swabbing the road’s mud off it, and a servant tending to a team of four matched roans. Getting even closer, Lewrie could make out a large, enclosed equipage, a lighter convertible-topped coach for good weather and short jaunts, and a sporty two-horse chariot inside the building, as well.

  Come at a bad time? he asked himself; Does Twigg have company?

  A guest’s coach, its team led out for oats and water, gave him a small shiver of new dread, for said equipage could belong to an official from a King’s Court, and Twigg’s imperious letter the excuse for him to be lured into a trap! He wouldn’t put such past him, for Twigg had always played people false, whether friend or foe!

  “Ha ha, go it, girl! Heels down, that’s the way!” came a voice from behind the house, and, down the cobbled stableyard from behind the house came the clatter of hooves, the shrill “Yoicks!” and imitations of a foxhorn’s “tara-tara!,” as a pair of ponies appeared, both loping (but no faster!) no matter the urgings of their riders … a small lad and a girl child, the boy appearing no more than ten, and the girl not yet a gangly teen. They whooped their way out of the stableyard, onto the gravelled drive, under the portico to cross Lewrie’s “hawse,” then headed off ‘cross the lawn for another exhilarating circuit of the inner wall, about the house!

  Behind them, afoot, came a brace of adults; a rather handsome woman in a dark riding ensemble, and a much older, spindlier, man in a drab brown suit of “ditto,” white shirt and stock, and brown-topped black riding boots, and waving a crop over his head. Smiling, beaming with enjoyment and pleasure.

  Twigg? Lewrie gawped to himself, gape-jawed for true; he never smiled, not a day in his mis ‘rable life!

  But it was him, to the life, the spitting image of that coldly calculating “chief spider” behind a myriad of bloody-handed schemes on the King’s enemies. And, at that moment, as he shaded his eyes with a hand to his brow—the one holding the whip, o’ course!—Mr. Zachariah Twigg could be mistaken for the nicest sort of genial, and wealthy, country squire who couldn’t swat a wasp without regrets.

  “Aha!” Zachariah Twigg called out, sounding so welcoming that Lewrie, for an instant, thought himself the victim of a sorry supper and a bilious dream. Or, wishing that he was! “Captain Lewrie, you have arrived, ha ha! Alight, and let me look at you, me lad!”

  Spur away! Lewrie warned himself; Spur away, now, and ride like Blazes! Though he was so taken aback that he meekly let his horse go onwards at a sedate plod to the cobblings of the stableyard, drew rein, and swung down as a groom came up to accept the reins and tend to his rented horse.

  “Honoria, pray allow me to name to you one of my young acquaintances from the Far East, and the Mediterranean, Captain Alan Lewrie of the Proteus frigate…. Captain Lewrie, my daughter, Mistress Honoria Staples. I’d introduce you to my grandchildren, Thomas and Susannah, but I fear they’re having too much fun with their new ponies, ha ha! A stout fellow, full of pluck and daring, is Captain Lewrie, my dear, an energetic and clever champion of our fair land, and a perfect terror to Britain’s foes, from our first encounter to the present!”

  “Your servant, ma’am,” Lewrie managed to respond, at last, with a gulp and bob of his head as he doffed his hat to her and gave her a jerky bow, feeling so deliriously put-off that he nearly blushed to be so gawkish and clumsy, like a farm labourer introduced to a princess, all but shuffling muddy shoes and tugging his forelock.

  Clever, daring…plucky? Lewrie felt like goggling to hear an introduction such as that from Twigg, of all people; God above …me?

  “A comrade of old, of course,” Mrs. Staples replied, bowing her head gracefully, and beaming in seeming understanding. “Your servant, Captain Lewrie, and delighted to make your acquaintance. And…you have old times to take stock of, I’m bound, Father? The children and I should be going, then…may I get them off their new ponies,” she stated with a merry twinkle, “though you and Johnathon…my husband, Captain Lewrie…a man as fond of springing surprises on people as Father …spent far too much on them.”

  “You’ll not dine here, my pet?” Twigg cooed, looking devilish-disappointed that they would not. Damn his blood, but he was almost…wheedling! Or doing a damn’ good sham of it.

  “I told cook we’d be back by one, and there’s just time for us to get home before everything goes cold,” his daughter chuckled, holding up a lace-gloved hand to her children as they completed their lap of the grounds. “Rein in, children, and alight! You’ve shewn Grandfather your presents, and we must go. I mean it! No, you mayn’t ride them back; they’re too fractious, yet. It will rest them to be led at the coach’s boot, unsaddled.”

  “Brush and curry, then stable them proper, once you’re home, as well, my dears,” Zachariah Twigg fondly cautioned. “See to your beasts first. You look after them, and they’ll look after you. Remember, you are English, not cruel Dons or Frenchmen.”

  “Yes, Grandfather,” the children chorused, though unhappy about leaving, or dismounting. Quick as a wink, the team of roans was back in harness and the handsome closed coach led out into the drive, ready for departure.

  “See you all on Sunday, my dears,” Twigg promised as he hoisted the children in, then handed in his daughter, giving her a peck on the cheek like the doting-est “granther” in all Creation. “Church, dinner, then we’ll all go for a long ride together, after.”

  Twigg, in church, hmm … Lewrie silently pondered, wondering if even the most enthusiastic missionaries, desperate for congregants, in the worst stews of Wapping or Seven Dials, would dare have him.

  “Delighted to meet you, ma’am,” Lewrie offered, again.

  “And you, sir,” she replied, though distracted by keeping both her rambunctious, chatter-box offspring in check. Then, off the coach clattered at a sedate pace, with the ponies trotting in-trail.

  “Well, that was…s’prisin’,” Lewrie said with a droll leer, once the coach was out of earshot.

  “Think I spent all my life lurking in the world’s dark corners, ‘thout a private life outside of service to King and Country?” Twigg snapped.

  “Frankly…yes,” Lewrie baldly stated, lifting one eyebrow.

  “But not a patch on yours, Lewrie,” Twigg shot back, purring in his old, supercilious fashion, looking down his long nose. “You have spread your ‘presence’ so widely, and indiscriminately, about the earth, ‘tis a wonder you had time for a public life, haw haw.”

  All Lewrie could do was remind himself that he’d come to beg at his superior’s table and beggars had to suffer abuse in s
ilence; that, and grind his teeth.

  “Well now, you are come, at last,” Twigg said, seeming to relent. “Let us go into the house, where we may discover what may save you from a well-deserved hanging.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The interior of Zachariah Twigg’s “humble” abode was just about as disconcertingly out-of-character to the man he’d known as the stucco outer facade. Once they were past the requisite tiling of the entry hall, done in red-veined Italian marble, the floors of the central passageway were shiny contrasting parquetry, laid out in a complex geometric pattern.

  “Teak and holly,” Twigg tersely allowed, “the teak brought from India.”

  “Indeed,” Lewrie said, as a servant came for his cloak, hat, and sword. The servant was a Hindoo, a short, wizened little fellow, with a bristling grey-white mustachio that stuck out almost to his ears, as stiff as a ship’s anchor-bearing cat-heads, above a thick, round white beard. He wore a tan silk turban above a European’s white shirt and neck-stock, a glossy yellow silk waistcoat, and a voluminous pair of native pyjammy breeches, his suiting completed by thick white cotton stockings, in deference to the weather perhaps, but with stout leather elephant or bullock hide sandals on his feet.

  “Namasté, El-Looy sahib,” he said, with a faint attempt at a smile.

  “Aha!” Lewrie barked back in further surprise. “Ajit Roy, is it you? Namasté t’you, too,” he said, placing his hands together before his chin and sketching out a brief bow. “Haven’t heard myself called that in fifteen years!”

  “Yayss,” Twigg drawled in his superior, amused manner of old. “There’s a thousand other things you’ve been called, since, hmm?”

  “Now, damme …” Lewrie began to bristle, before recalling what peril he was in, and why he’d come. Grovel; fawn! he warned himself.