A King's Trade Page 7

  “One could see his reason for pique, yayss,” Twigg mused, those long fingers of his steepled thoughtfully under his chin, not exactly mocking, at that instant. “Though, you do have that effect on people. But, was Commander Fillebrowne still possessed of active commission, I do not see how he could stay…current anent your, ah…pastime.”

  “There’s been nothing… current,” Lewrie querulously replied. “Not since I sailed for the Caribbean. Well, the last bits… about Mistress Connor lodging with me at Sheerness for a week before we departed …” he admitted with a squirm. “And, afore that, about the two-dozen doxies my solicitor was t’pay, for services rendered….”

  “Two-dozen prostitutes?” Twigg barked, as if in breathless awe, going so far as to lay one hand on his heart. “What stamina! Damme, Lewrie, but I am impressed!”

  “For helpin’ me kill belowdecks mutineers, so I had enough true men t’take back my ship and escape the Nore Mutiny!” Lewrie retorted. “’Wos innit f’me? Wos innit f’me?’” he snipped, impersonating lower-class dialect main-well, after twenty years of exposure to it. “They wouldn’t’ve tried it on, else! Christ, my report to Admiralty got ‘em letters of appreciation, ev’ry last one of ‘em! And, I didn’t lay one single finger on any of ‘em, but someone twisted it into a scandal!”

  Idly, and illogically, the face and form of the then-tempting young Sally Blue did cross his mind. Black hair, blue eyes, promising poonts, and a waist ‘bout as slim as a sapling pine… !

  “And was Commander Fillebrowne’s ship at the Nore at this time?” Twigg pressed, looking grimly intent. “And, do you believe Lady Lucy was aware of your doings, as well?”

  “No, don’t think so,” Lewrie had to confess, going as slack as a sail in the Atlantic Doldrums. “So, damme if I know who.”

  “No other suspects, then?” Twigg asked, one dubious brow raised.

  “Well, in my madder moments, I sometimes fancy it was you!”

  Both of Twigg’s brows leaped upwards at that statement. He sat back so quickly in his chair that Lewrie could hear the joinings squeak in protest. Then, to make Lewrie feel even worse (was such a thing possible at that instant), Twigg quite uncharacteristically threw back his head, opened his mouth, and began to guffaw right out loud!

  In an evil way, it went without saying.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lewrie had to bite the lining of his mouth to keep a tranquil face on, as Mr. Twigg exhausted his highly-amused outburst; he eased off from red-faced brays to napkin-covered “titters,” thence at last to a top-lofty and nose-high sardonically-superior air of very faint humour—lordly chuckles of the arrogant kind, which more suited Mr. Twigg’s usual nature.

  “Oh, Lewrie …” Twigg finally drawled, after a restorative sip of wine. “Believe me, sir, did I wish you destroyed, professionally or personally, such a nefarious ploy would never be required. All I’d have to do is sit back and watch you do in yourself! Besides…what reason would I have to attempt such… hmm? Merely because your ways of prosecuting the King’s enemies now and then row me beyond all temperance?”

  “Well…”

  “Which they do…now and then,” Twigg intoned, with a vicious twinkle in his eyes, as if he enjoyed turning this particular victim on his roasting spit. “Despite the mute insubordination you’ve shewn me whenever we’ve been thrown together…your truculent reluctance to sully your hands with underhanded duties that force you to get out of bed earlier than is your wont…or, out of some doxy’s bed, more to the point…I have always been more than amply-gratified with the results you achieved, and have expressed my satisfaction with you, and your methods of fulfilling my aims, to your, and my, superiors following our ev’ry assignment.

  ” Secret reports, of course,” Twigg added, with a casual wave of his free hand, the sort of gesture that put Lewrie in mind of someone tossing tidbits overboard to the sharks. “Bless my soul, must I have gushed? Does your longheld enmity arise from a lack of vocal praise? Was I remiss in not patting you on the back…or the top of the head? Would a box of sweets make up for it?” Twigg posed facetiously.

  “Damn my eyes…!” Lewrie began to say.

  “No matter what you’ve thought over the years, Lewrie, I admire your good qualities,” Twigg stated as he reached for his knife and his fork once more. “On the other hand, your good qualities have at times been rather damned hard to find, but…”

  A mouthful of food, a cock of the head as he savoured it, then a palate-cleansing nibble of bread and a sip of wine followed Twigg’s admission.

  “I will confess that my sense of duty, and urgency in the fulfillment of that duty, might have given you the impression that you’re little more than an occasionally borrowed gun-dog of doubtful lineage,” Twigg said on, dabbing at his mouth with his napkin. “I have gathered that I sometimes do act more brusquely with others than they might’ve preferred, but…to use a military simile, it little matters to me do the officers’ mess dine me in as a ‘jolly good fellow,’ just so long as they perform as required to attain success ‘gainst our foes.”

  No! Really? Lewrie thought tongue-in-cheek; Such an out-going and amiable fellow like yourself? Perish the thought!

  “Believe me when I tell you, Lewrie,” Mr. Twigg continued, now stern-faced and cold, “that people who’ve displeased me in the past I have ruined, for the good of the country, and, when naval or military force was involved, for the good of their respective services, in the long view. Had I really felt call to ruin you, whyever had I not had you cashiered years ago, hey?”

  “Well …” Lewrie was forced to realise.

  “Your personal life…such as it is …” Twigg scoffed on, with a leery roll of his eyes, “has no bearing on your public life, or your service to the Navy. Unless you were a drunkard, a rapist, or a brute so heedless and flagrant as to become a public spectacle, and a newspaper sensation. Thankfully, you’re rather a mild sort of sinner. You know how to keep your ‘itches’ scratched with little notice. Sub rosa, as it were. As an English gentleman should, or he ceases being a gentleman, and then you’d deserve ev’ry bit of your come-uppance.”

  Lewrie could have little to say to that. He squirmed a little more on his chair, and blushed like a Cully chastened by a very stern old vicar, ready to swear he’d never do whatever it was, again.

  “Put me in mind of the Scot poet Robert Burns, you do, Lewrie,” Twigg said with a thin-lipped smile and a simper. “Know of him, hey?”

  “Aye,” Lewrie allowed himself to admit.

  “Burns said of himself that he was, ah… ‘a professional fornicator with a genius for paternity,’” Twigg quoted with a chuckle.

  “Ah-hmm,” Lewrie said, clearing his throat with a fist against his mouth.

  “Despite that, Burns wrote simply marvellous songs and poems,” Twigg allowed, thawing a little. “Despite your shortcomings, you are an invaluable asset to the Navy, and the Crown, Lewrie, and I’ll not let you be ‘scragged’ over this smarmy jape of yours ‘gainst the Beauman family. Not ‘til this war is done, and we’ve wrung the last drop of usefulness from you. You’re as much a weapon as any broadside of guns ever you, or anyone else, fired.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Lewrie felt called to reply, with a shiver of relief that someone, no matter how horrid, was on his side. Under the circumstances, perhaps horrid, devious, and brutal aid was just what was needed!

  “Besides …” Twigg simpered again. “Watching you twist about in the wind is devilish-amusing…now and then. Eat up, man! Your food’s going cold, and ‘tis too tasty to go to waste. More wine? See to him, Ajit Roy jee. Bharnaa opar! Fill him up!”

  Suddenly in a much better mood, Lewrie accepted more piping-hot rice, more yogurt gravy, more slices of meat, and began to eat, about to rave over the exotic, long-missed, flavours, ‘til…

  “How to achieve that aim, though…aye, there’s the rub,” Mr. Twigg mused over new-steepled fingers, with his fierce hatchet face in a daunting scowl. “Stealing those slaves a
nd making sailors out of ‘em rather exceeded your usual harum-scarum antics. Left ‘em in the shade, as it were.”

  “You mentioned that Sir Malcolm Shockley might be of some help, sir?” Lewrie dared to suggest, with curry sauce tingling his lips.

  “Aye, Shockley. He likes you, and he isn’t your run-of-the-mill backbencher in the Commons, either. No Vicar of Bray, is he, nor is he the Great Mute, either. Allied with Sir Samuel Whitbread, and those younger ‘progressives’ who associate with him. Shockley’s not a typical ‘Country-Put,’ like most of our rural, squirearchy, ‘John Bull’ Members are… damn ‘em for the unsophisticate twits they are. There’s wit behind his eyes!”

  “Fox, perhaps, sir?” Lewrie chimed in, hopefully.

  “The Great Commoner?” Twigg sneered. “Following the Spithead and the Nore naval mutinies, the Prime Minister, Pitt the Younger, and the Tories crushed the man. I fear that the formerly-esteemed Charles James Fox is as powerless as a parish pensioner …and has about as many friends. That will be a real problem for you, for most of those who revile the institution of slavery are the same ones who spoke out so openly in praise of the French Revolution in the late ‘80s…men like Jeremy Bentham, Doctor Joseph Priestley, Wedgwood, the pottery fellow, Boulton and Watt, the steam-engine men, and the light-headed scribblers such as Blake and Coleridge…even Robert Burns, come to think of it. All the so-called Progressives, what? They run with the same pack. Still, that was ten years ago, and memories fade. No one got round to hanging them for uttering such rot, even if the French made them honorary citizens for their vocal public support.”

  “But, that was before the Frogs lopped off King Louis’s head,” Lewrie sourly observed.

  “Well, that changed everything…but for the true hen-headed, of course.” Twigg smirked most evilly. “No, knowing those worthies as I do, the vehemence with which they revile slavery will naturally make them raise up a too public hue and cry, a veritable crusade, with you the heart of their righteous blather. Make a martyr of you….”

  “And don’t most martyrs end up dyin’, Mister Twigg?”

  “Well, of course they do, Lewrie! Can’t have martyrs without a good bonfire, and shrieks of agony!” Twigg chortled. “What we need is the subtle backgate approach, else the pro-slavery colonial and shipping interests in Parliament demand your cashiering, and hanging…to spite the do-gooders, if for no better reason. No, we must go to cleverer men, who can see the longer view. Wilberforce, perhaps. Aye, Wilberforce would be your man!”

  God save me! Lewrie thought, shrinking at the mention of that name. William Wilberforce and his coven of familiars had been a bane on English Society for years, marching on age-old morals (or the lack of them!) like a vengeful army of pitchfork-armed Puritans through the “Progressive” wing of the Church of England, evinced by the so-called Clapham Sect; on another front via the House of Commons since so many Members were of like minds; and through Philanthropy in the public arena, a third front led by rich and influential women like Mrs. Hannah More and Elizabeth Fry…by Jeremy Bentham, himself, with his Vice Society and his damnable concept of Utilitarianism. If things didn’t meet his strict and narrow key-holes of the most benefit for the most people, then damn it to Hell and do away with it…whatever it was. Lt. Langlie had gotten a copy of Bentham’s Panopticon, his view of an ideal England, and had been aghast, as had Lewrie, that it called for total surveillance of everyone’s waking actions by a “morality police” as an infernal machine to “grind rogues honest”!

  Over the years, maypoles and dancing about them had been banned, village football and Sunday cricket had all but disappeared; good old Church Ales were completely gone. Fairs, bear-baiting, dog- and cock-fighting, throwing at cocks, greased-goose pulls, beating the bounds (and springtime beating of boys to keep them honest!), pig-racing, and all sorts of light-hearted amusements had been done away with, which had reputedly led Mrs. Hannah More to declare that sooner or later, all that would be left would be the new-fangled Sunday schools, and that the people of England “would have nothing else to look at but ourselves”!

  Why, by now, the reformers might’ve even done away with fox-hunting and steeplechasing! Damn ‘em. Newly-rich arrivistes, Non-Conforming Anglicans, Dissenters, and Methodists barred from Public Office, Service, or Honours; jumped-up tradesmen become wealthy, grand landowners; even that ex-slaver John Newton (who’d written Mr. Winwood’s poem and hymn and had been Saved)…oh, butitwasadeviousconspiracy of do-gooding that opposed almost all that Lewrie thought he fought to preserve! Why, give them a few more years, and topping goose-girls, milk-maids, and serving wenches would be right out, too!

  “Such flam,” Lewrie muttered. “Bentham, Fry, those sort. That writer, Macauley, and Wilberforce and the Evangelical Society, they’re all of a piece, Mister Twigg. Are you sure we need their…?”

  “Sarah Trimmer, don’t forget,” Twigg added. “She who thinks our old fairy tales too indecent for today’s children. ‘Dick Whittington’s Cat’ leads the poor to aspire above their proper stations, for instance. ‘Cinderella,’ which my granddaughter adores, by the way, is too harsh on step-mothers and step-sisters. To Trimmer’s lights, we need tales more uplifting, instructional, and useful. Gad, though, just try reading some of her alternatives. Horrid, simpering, blathering pap!

  “It’s the war, I suppose,” Twigg continued, after a moment of gloom. “You were in England during the naval mutinies, which, for a time, looked to become a nationwide Levellers’ rebellion that might’ve overthrown Crown, Parliament, and the Established Church, to boot! In dread of the French revolutionary Terror being replicated here, perhaps the Mob needs taming, and our upstarts quashed.

  “Thankfully, however,” Twigg said with a sardonically amused leer, “our earnest reformers wish to do their chiefest work among our semi-savage poor, not the well-to-do. So far, that is. More wine?”

  “Uhm, aye…but!” Lewrie replied, impatient with the niceties. “Let that lot get their hooks in me, and I’m done for, Mister Twigg!”

  “You are surely ‘done for’ do they not, Lewrie,” Twigg sombrely pointed out. “Where else could you find aid?”

  “Well …” Lewrie said after a deep breath, shrugging without a single clue. “Damn my eyes.”

  “Exactly,” Twigg said with a sage simper. “How was the ride up from London?”

  “Just bloody lovely!” Lewrie snapped. “Bucolic, and…”

  “I meant the state of the roads, and the weather, Lewrie!” Mr. Twigg snapped back in exasperation. “’Less there’s a thunderstorm and washed-out roads, there’s daylight enough to get us down to London and lodgings…where I may write to those I believe most-able to give you aid. No time like the present, what? If pouring rain, we’ll take my coach, if not, my chariot. Much faster. Your hired ‘prad’ I’ll stable here and have my groom send down, later. Leading an indifferent horse at the cart’s tail will only slow us down. Eat up, and we’re off.”

  “Do you really think we’ll be able to…?” Lewrie asked in awe of Twigg’s alacrity, and in great relief that, dubious as he was, there was one ally willing to save him from a “hemp neck-stock.”

  “Hope springs eternal… all that,” Twigg responded, roughly shovelling in a last bite or two, taking a last sip or two of wine.

  Damme, but this is going to irk, but…!Lewrie thought; under the circumstances, there was nothing else for it.

  “Then I thank you most humbly and gratefully, sir,” Lewrie was forced to say. “However things fall out, I will be forever in your debt.”

  “Yayss…you will be,” Twigg drawled with a superior expression on his phyz, and his eyes alight in contemplation of future schemes.

  A chariot…Jesus!

  Oh, it had seemed perky enough, at first. Just a rapid jaunt, what? The sporting blades of the aristocracy and the squirearchy were simply daft for speed, and bandied about the names of famous coachmen who made their “diligence-” or “balloon” coaches fly on the highways of the realm. Some
of them would offer substantial sums to take the reins from an indifferent (and bribable) coachee for a single leg of a coach trip. They knew the names of the famous whip-hands, and bragged about a mere handshake from a hero coachee as one would boast about a meeting with a champion jockey or boxer, forever comparing records of how quick Old So-And-So shaved five whole minutes from a run ‘twixt The Olde Blue Rabbit tavern and the Red Spotted Pig posting-house, or some such rapid run of umpteen-ish miles, and the odd casualty bedamned.

  If an urchin or two, one of the cheap fares who rode on the top or clung to the footmen’s seats atop the boot, were bounced off and got turned into imitation cow-pies in the road, then so be it. If the slow and unwary hiker got trampled, well…it only made for a better tale at journey’s end!

  Chariots were even better, for well-to-do young bloods could be, had to be, the drivers, and, but for a hallooing chum or two in the wee open compartment with them, any accident wouldn’t claim any innocents, who just might know a lawyer and sue for damages! Chariots were “all the go” and “all the crack,” meant to be whipped into breathtaking speed, and there was nothing grander!

  Lewrie had, rather inconveniently, forgotten all that.

  And dour old Zachariah Twigg, so precise and Oxonian a fellow of the older generation, surely his chariot and matched team of horses was merely a retired fellow’s affectation…wasn’t it?

  Unfortunately, no. Once aboard, Twigg had revealed a new facet to his character. There was a mischievious glint to his eyes, an evil little chuckle under his breath, and a sly smile on his lips as he took the reins in one hand, a long whip in the other, and turned into a Biblical Jehu.