Troubled Waters Page 6

  "Well, as to how close," Lewrie growled, still fuming over those bald-faced lies. I'm a better skulker than that, by God! he assured himself as he got to his own feet, too exercised to sit any longer. Lewrie and MacDougall began a slow, stomping "minuet" about the parlour office, mostly circling the un-used chairs before the desk as if participating in a game of "Odd Man Out," when the music suddenly stops. "There was a broken shoal of reef and rocks a cable distant from the beach, and we fetched-to into the wind three cables shy of that, as I recall."

  "And a cable would be . . . ?"

  "Why, one hundred and twenty fathoms," Lewrie supplied, shocked that such was not common knowledge. "Six feet to the fathom, that'd be seven hundred and twenty feet. Well, the nautical mile is divided into ten cables of six hundred feet each, so, say the reefs and shoals lay six hundred feet offshore, and Proteus was fetched-to eighteen hundred feet further out. There was a break in the reef, right between Proteus and the beach, and we could see the phosphoresence of the waves breaking on the reef and rocks . . . high tide, round midnight, and we planned for that, too, d'ye see, a much dimmer rim of phosphoresence where the waves rolled in on the sand . . ."

  "Twenty-four hundred feet from shore, on a dark night, ah ha!" MacDougall crowed, stopping to wet his quill in an ink-pot before he began tramping a circle of his offices again. "Sideways, were you?"

  "Uh, no," Lewrie told him, feeling as if he was forced to chase his barrister round the office. "Usually, the Nor'east Trades blow to the Sou'west, but for the Blue Mountains, and the shape of the coast, so we had winds out of the East that night, and to fetch-to, we had to place our bows into the Nor-Nor'east, with the fore-and-aft sails forcin' her forrud, but the fore-tops'l laid aback t'keep her idlin' in place, and makin' a slow stern-way, away from those shoals. A person on the beach would've seen us close to bows-on, not abeam."

  "And you could not have gone any closer, I take it," MacDougall asked, juggling loose transcript pages. "The danger of the reef, I'd suppose?"

  "Less than ten feet of water, inshore of the reef, as I recall from the chart," Lewrie answered, "and only twelve to fifteen feet of water to seaward of it, even at high tide. We fetched-to as soon as the lead-line showed six fathoms. Proteus drew eighteen feet, right aft, so we had a safe margin, with deeper water clear of hazards astern, so an hour or so of drifting wouldn't set us on anything that could rip our hull open. Right along the reef, 'twas three feet or less, even at high tide, so . . . will you sit down, sir, or must I trot after you?"

  MacDougall came to a full stop suddenly, looking round his offices as if wondering why he was there, and where was the nearest chair.

  "So, your ship did not lie in profile to the shore," MacDougall pondered, after he'd settled himself once more. "In profile with her bows pointing West towards the cape, or the point, or whatever you . . . ?"

  "God, no!" Lewrie hooted. "The shoreline swings in a great arc in Portland Bight," he continued, taking a welcome chair himself. "To the West of Kingston, is roughly East-to-West, then begins to jut South down to Portland Point. The Beauman plantation, and Cashman's, are on the coast, quite near the Point. Uhm, have you a pen and paper I may borrow? I'll draw you a rough sketch, though a proper chart of the—"

  "A chart?" MacDougall cried of a sudden. "But, of course! You still have the chart you used that night? "

  "Aye," Lewrie told him, puzzled by his attorney's enthusiasm; wouldn't that chart, still with his pencilled markings, prove that he had premeditated the crime, after all? And, he had to wonder why Mr. Andrew MacDougall, Esq., burbled with laughter, rocked on his chair, and kicked his thick legs in seeming joy. To Lewrie, MacDougall looked about to pop like a haggis, all swollen with steam, and a poke with a sharp-tined fork would do him in!

  "One never throws away an accurate chart," Lewrie said, hoping that MacDougall's glee was a good sign. "They're rather rare, d'ye see. Certainly, my Sailing Master, Mister Winwood, has his, as well. Never throws anything away, even pencil stubs, he doesn't. He was my Sailing Master in Proteus, and turned-over into Savage. While he may not need charts of the West Indies for now, I'm sure his charts are still aboard."

  "You must send it me, yours and his, at once, sir!" MacDougall urged, swiping hair from his eyes again, and about ready to leap from his chair and start that infernal pacing once more. "We must have him, this Winwood fellow, too! He was there that night? Oh, capital!"

  "Well, in fact 'twas Mister Winwood who took the most interest in the former slaves' welfare, and their spiritual improvement. None had more than a smattering of knowledge of Christianity, before comin' aboard," Lewrie related, made more at ease by MacDougall's elation.

  "Denied the Good News of Christ?" MacDougall scowled. "Why? By omission, or calculated commission, one wonders. If told they're equal in the Lord's sight, might slaves begin to think, and wonder why they are slaves, and whether their own humanity is the equal of a master's, perhaps? Is that common, d'ye think, Captain Lewrie? As a means for their continued oppression?"

  "It may vary from master to master, sir," Lewrie said, digging round the top of MacDougall's desk to find a spare lead pencil, paper, and enough space in which to begin to draw. "Some, I'm told, don't go much beyond one of Saint Paul's letters, the one about 'slaves, obey your masters,' hey? Mister Winwood 'twas the one who helped them take new, freemen's names for ship's books, even used the usual hosing-off under the wash-deck pump that new-come hands get as a sort of baptism.

  "He's Low Church," Lewrie had to caution. "Halfway to 'Leaping Methodist,' mind."

  "Such a character witness, though," Mr. MacDougall mused, with his arms about his chest, rocking once again as if in transports of a heavenly rapture at a Welsh revival meeting. "Oh, capital! Capital! I shall swoon with joy, swear I will, to have him in the box! What a scandal 'gainst the Beaumans I could make!"

  MacDougall stopped rocking, turned grave, and peered anxiously at Lewrie. "Charts. Maps. Where does one get them, from Admiralty?"

  "They don't print their own," Lewrie told him, happily drawing. "But there are plenty of printers who do. Sayer and Bennett in Fleet Street are very good, very up-to-date, if they're still in business."

  "How large are they. Captain Lewrie?" MacDougall pressed.

  "Oh, 'bout three foot square, most of 'em, though it depends," Lewrie said, intent on his depiction of the reef and beach. "Harbour charts and their approaches might not be more than eighteen inches by eighteen, some even smaller."

  "We must have one much larger," MacDougall petulantly declared. "A gigantic reproduction for all in the courtroom to be able to take in . . . judge, jury, and, most especially, the audience, ha ha! They, ah . . . ever make charts that large?"

  "Doubt it," Lewrie replied, looking up from his sketch. "It'd be dear." And, he wondered; will you be billing me for that?

  "Hang the cost!" MacDougall exclaimed, leaping to his feet at last, unable to contain his urgency; which outburst made Lewrie wince. "The Reverend Wilberforce will surely see the necessity. Cost is no object, compared to true justice . . . for you, the former slaves, and the cause of ultimate Empire-wide Abolition.

  "Yes, Captain Lewrie, I, too, support the cause of Abolition," MacDougall quite proudly stated, looking as if he was posing for an heroic portrait. "In this ' one instance, I may not be quite the dry and objective lawyer who presents the most compelling argument in his client's best interests. I am enthusiastic in court, others tell me. Though, not to my detriment, nor to the interests of those who engage me. And I have found that visual evidence is more compelling than dull, yawn-inducing blather, d'ye see?"

  "The 'picture's worth a thousand words,' d'ye mean, sir?" Lewrie supposed aloud.

  "Exactly, my dear Captain Lewrie," MacDougall replied, guffawing with great pleasure, abandoning his stiff "noble" pose as quickly as a poster could be ripped from a tavern wall. "If the printers cannot reproduce your charts large enough, perhaps a canvas, as big as a bedsheet, may serve, and a journeyman artist or sign pain
ter could draw it all in broad strokes. Something on which the jury may gaze as any false evidence is reiterated. Do the Beaumans not bring their witnesses with them, and depend upon a dry reading of their testimony from the Jamaican transcript, well. . . there's confrontation standing mutely in the centre of the courtroom. Do they fetch 'em along, and testify anew, I'll present your officers, and that Mister Winwood, in stark rebuttal."

  "Or, tear them to pieces when you put your question to 'em?"

  "Beg pardon, Captain Lewrie?"

  "When you question them yourself," Lewrie re-stated.

  "Oh, heavens no, sir!" MacDougall pooh-poohed. "The prosecuting attorney puts questions to his witnesses to form a case, then I, as a defence attorney, put our witnesses in the box to refute. Prosecutors under English Common Law cannot examine my witnesses or attestors, nor may I examine his!"

  "What?"

  "I fear you've had little exposure to the law, and courts, Captain Lewrie," MacDougall said, with one of those simpering little "how ignorant of you" laughs.

  45

  "Not 'til now, no," Lewrie sarcastically replied. And, why that is, God only knows, the things I've got up to! he thought a tick later. "Well, at least I'll have no fear of scathing questions from whoever it is the Beaumans hire as prosecutor," he concluded with a resigned sigh.

  "Uhm . . . beg pardon again, Captain Lewrie, but. . . ," MacDougall said, looking a bit sorry for his new client. "The accused only speaks upon his own behalf after the verdict is announced . . . most usually in King's Bench cases to plead for mercy . . . transportation to Australia, 'stead of the New Market gallows."

  "What?" Lewrie gawped in alarm. "I just sit in the dock, while everybody else gets t'lie their arses off? Stay mum as a tailor's dummy, while . . . ?"

  "That, ah . . . is the custom, Captain Lewrie," MacDougall sadly informed him. "Ah, look at the time!" he cried as a mantel clock atop the fireplace chimed the hours. "I thought I was beginning to feel a tad peckish. Oh, there's an hundred, a thousand, more matters which I must ask of you in the short time allotted us, but I do believe we may repair to the most excellent chop-house . . . quite nearby . . . and take our mid-day meal. I took the liberty of reserving private rooms where we, and Mister Sadler, who shall prove to be instrumental to the preparation of our presentation, good fellow, may dine. I swear, all you have related to me, and what stir such has caused in my wits, has made me famished. Shall we adjourn for the nonce, Captain Lewrie?"

  Sadler and his tape-worm, Lewrie morosely thought as he gathered up hat and sword in the outer parlour; and you, MacDougall, a dab-hand trencherman yourself. Still a growin lad, in need o' stuffin', hey? Good thing I brought a full purse t'London, 'cause I doubt any attorney treats, or even go shares! Can't speak for myself. . . my God, but I'm bloody doomed!

  Chapter Seven

  "I really can't. . . ?" Lewrie whinged once they were seated in the small but well-appointed private dining room.

  "Not a word, sorry," MacDougall tossed off, intent on the hand-written day's menu and wine list. "Aha! They've fresh oysters up from Sheerness, and a dozen apiece sounds lovely, don't you think, Sadler?"

  "Capital, as you always say, sir," his clerk happily seconded.

  "Their veal's always toothsome, hmm . . .," MacDougall mused aloud, "perhaps only the brace of roast squab, before the main course. Rhenish with that, it goes without saying, and, I see they've still a few dozen of the Château Lafites to go with the veal. Any favourites, sir?" he asked Lewrie. "Anything else catch your fancy? The lobster, perhaps? It is done to perfection, here."

  "Not all that hungry, really," Lewrie replied, ready to finger his purse, to weigh what he had remaining, for the way MacDougall and his perpetually starved clerk were thinking, this mid-day meal might cost as much as the wedding breakfast for Langlie and Sophie down in Portsmouth. "Soup, salad, perhaps the veal with some shore vegetables. Can't get fresh, at sea."

  "Nonsense!" MacDougall said with a snort. "Can't think, can't plot, on an empty stomach, and we've a long afternoon ahead."

  A waiter arrived, took their orders, and set out glasses and chargers, silverware, and napkins, then re-closed the doors to scurry off. Not a tick later, another waiter arrived with a bottle of that grand St. Emilion Bordeaux for them to sample, then disappeared just as softly as the first.

  "Now, sir," MacDougall said, "along with the transcript of your fraudulent trial, and the utter uselessness of your putative counsel dredged up from a Kingston tavern, your friend, Mister James Peel, of the Foreign Office, provided me with some even more intriguing information, most particularly the makeup of the jury that convicted you."

  MacDougall seemed to preen, and, like most people with a secret that you did not yet know, withheld his news with a most smug smile.

  "And, pray, what is that, Mister MacDougall?" Lewrie enquired, fighting down his urge to grab the lout by the lapels and give him a brisk shaking. Why do I always run into the "beg me to tell you " type? Lewrie cynically asked himself. It was hard enough to tolerate it when it came from Peel, or Peel's former superior, the archly inscrutable Zachariah Twigg, but by God he didn't have to take it from a civilian!

  "Peel provided me with the entire list, sir," MacDougall preened a bit more, tapping his noggin sagaciously, "and, their backgrounds and connexions to the Beaumans. While I did not bring it with me, and cannot cite you chapter and verse from memory, I can relate a few of the most suspicious.

  "Your jury consisted of a dozen local gentlemen . . . though what constitutes a gentleman on Jamaica is rather a broader definition than that which obtains in the British Isles," MacDougall half-whispered as he leaned a bit closer. "One, for instance, was a captain of a slaving ship . . . a ship 'husbanded' by several rich planters, the Beaumans and their close kin, principally. One gentleman was editor and part owner of a Kingston newspaper . . . the other owner being—"

  "Hugh Beauman, aye," Lewrie grimly interrupted, for he and his friend Christopher Cashman had both suffered that paper's attentions, both before and after the duel. "A damned lyin' rag!"

  "The jury even included tradesmen . . . an importer and chandler who sells 'shoddy' and cast-offs with which to feed and clothe slaves," MacDougall grimly intoned, "and, an overseer, a slave driver from one of the Sellers family's plantations, hey?"

  "The Sellers!" Lewrie spat. "More Beauman kin, and a Captain Sellers was the one I and the judges at that duel had to shoot down!"

  "More reason for the overseer, and another from that family to be disqualified," MacDougall said in an outraged huff. "The rest of the panel consisted of slave-owning planters, all of whom Mister Peel pointed out to me in his affidavit most suspiciously selected from the immediate neighbourhood of the Beaumans' main plantings, and supplied us with their bonds of long affinity, direct or indirect kinship, and ties to business interests or indebtedness, most carefully delineated."

  "A sham from start to finish, sir," Sadler stuck in.

  "I would not have thought such a travesty of justice possible in our more enlightened times," Mr. MacDougall gravelled with a derisive snort, "without the active collusion of the court itself! But, quite happily for your cause, Captain Lewrie, your friend Peel's attestations were all done on paper bearing the letterhead of Lord Balcarres, the island's Governor-General, lending the imprimatur, the 'Guinea Stamp,' of official interest, and disapproval, by the local representative of H.M. Government. . . and his own affidavit was witnessed by the secretary to Lord Balcarres, to boot, ha ha!"

  "Nothing from Lord Balcarres, though," Mr. Sadler was quick to add, taking the edge off Lewrie's joy, "but, the Reverend Wilberforce and his patrons in the House of Lords have written him, requesting he delve into the matter, and, hopefully, return a denouncement of . . ."

  The doors to their private dining room opened, and in came the rolls, three bowls of "cock-a-leekie" soup (the chop-house must have had MacDougall's Scottish tastes graven in stone, by then), and a round ball of butter the size of a man's fist. And it
was a close-run thing as to who scored the first roll, Sadler or MacDougall, with another contest to see who could usurp the fresh-sweating butter!

  The soup deserved a glass of Rhenish, each, no need for a full bottle, really; a second glass to accompany the salad of fresh greens drizzled with oil and vinegar, and, hang it . . . fetch a whole bottle of Rhenish to accompany the pair of squabs that each of them ended up ordering. And, when the plates of oysters arrived—a dozen for each—why, they were so succulent that to forego a bottle of Portuguese sparkling wine to sluice them down, and cut the edge of the horseradish sauce, would be a mortal sin!

  And, of course, the roast veal, the seasoned fried potato quarters and asparagus, demanded that rare Château Lafite, laid down long before the war supposedly (and not smuggled from the south of revolutionary France last month!), so delightful on the palate that two more bottles were necessary!

  Dessert was apple dowdy and ginger snaps, and MacDougall swore that the very best thing with hot, sweet apple dowdy would be a light, sweet Canary—a single glass, no more, thankee Jesus.

  "Coffee for three?" MacDougall asked, once all that repast had finally disappeared. "Clear heads for the afternoon's doings, what?" he jovially suggested, swiping hair from his shiny forehead, dabbing a fine sheen from his cheeks, and a last flick of apple dowdy from his lips. "It is my custom to save the nuts, fruit, and port for supper."

  "Worse things happen at sea," Lewrie commented, feeling a bit glassy-eyed by that point, and his belly constricted like a vise by the waistband of his breeches.

  The doors closed as a waiter went for cups, new spoons, and a coffee service. Once gone, MacDougall leaned over, all chummy-like and more than a bit pie-eyed himself, to simper at Lewrie for a moment, and snicker whilst he stared holes in Lewrie's direction.

  "Aye, sir?" Lewrie at last had to ask, believing that if the man kept eying him so intently, he'd fall out of his chair.