A King's Trade Page 8

  They were off in a flash, headed downhill for his estate’s gate quicker than a startled lark, making a fair rate of knots even before they passed the gate in the inner wall surrounding Spyglass Bungalow, moist dirt and gravel flying in twin rooster-tails from the madly-spinning wheels. At the highway, Twigg didn’t slow that much, either; they shot out into the road, other traffic bedamned, “heeled” over on one wheel, and slewing about like a wagging cat’s tail!

  “Brisk…ah ha!” Twigg exulted as they thundered along, really beginning to gain speed.

  “Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh!” Lewrie replied, unable to form words, if he cared a whit for his teeth and tongue, as the chariot drummed, banged, and juddered. His portmanteau bag and valise at his feet, between his legs, were bouncing so high that he had to press his knees together if he cared a whit for his “nutmegs,” as well.

  Down the long, slow rise they tore, the chariot’s axle starting to keen about as loud as Lewrie wished he could. He would have been wide-eyed and gape-mouthed in utter terror, if doing so would not end with a mouthful of muddy road, or the loss of an eye from gravel flung up from the team’s rear hooves.

  “On, boys! On!” Twigg cried, cracking his whip over the horse team’s heads. “Marvellous, ah ha!” Followed by a madman’s cackle.

  “You’re a bloody shite-brained…!” Lewrie tried accusing, but the chariot took a jounce or two, wheels above the ground, and it only came out as another series of “duh-duh-duh-duhs!” Twigg was swaddled up in an old, shabby overcoat, an ancient (wind-cutting) tricorne hat jammed low on his brows, with a muffler about his neck and halfway up to his nose; he was getting spattered, but it might not matter. Alan, though…his heavy grogram boat cloak was no use at all, for it flew behind him like a loose-footed lugsail, the gilt chain riding high on his Adam’s apple and damned-near strangling him. What was happening to his pristine white waistcoat, shirt, neck-stock, and his very best uniform coat he didn’t want to even contemplate.

  Lewrie looked ahead of them (with one slitted eye, it here must be told) just in time to screech, “Watch out for that… Oh, Christ!” as Twigg swerved their chariot over almost to the verge of the highway to miss an offending haywaggon drawn by a yoke of plodding oxen, that flashed past in a twinkling, so quickly that all Lewrie could sense of their near-collision was an ox-bellow, a startled cow-fart, and a waggoner’s thin cry of “Yew bloody damn’…!”

  And, by the time they’d slewed back into their proper lane, the light pony trap coming the other way had had time to move right over, and they missed that’un by yards!

  “Aah…ha ha ha!” Twigg exulted, his long whip cracking, and Lewrie shut his eyes and tried to summon up a prayer.

  Twigg, damn him!, drove as if the Devil was at his heels (which in Twigg’s case, Lewrie thought, was an apt description!) chortling and whooping delight like Billy-O; like an ancient Celt warrior, mead-drunk and painted in blue woad, out to smash through a Roman legion, just one more good charge for good, sweet ancient Queen Boadicea; like Pharaoh raced in pursuit of that damned Moses, upon discovering that the wily bastard had decamped for the Promised Land without finishing his mud-brick quota, and had absconded with a dozen of his favourite concubines to boot! All Pharaoh could expect from Dissenter religionists!

  All Lewrie could do was hang on for dear life to the front and the side frame and light screening wood, and try hard not to get thrown clean out of the infernal machine, have his “wedding tackle” knackered by his luggage, or lose his only change of clothing, entire! A time or two, on the flat stretches (without competing traffic, though Lewrie wasn’t going to peek to determine that), it was even hard to breathe at their mad pace. Facing forward, it felt like he was aboard the quickest frigate ever built, going “full and by” into the apparent wind in a half-gale. Of course, the muck flung up from the team made breathing difficult enough.

  Finally…after what seemed an interminable term in Hell, the drumming of horses’ hooves slowed from a Marine drummer’s “Long Roll” to summon a crew to Quarters to rather sedate, and distinctive clops.

  He, at last, dared take a peek ‘twixt the fingers of one hand, the one he used to rake mud-slime from his eyes, and was amazed to see that they were on the Tottenham Court Road, just about to the crossing where it became Charing Cross.

  “We’re here,” Twigg commented with a grunt of satisfaction, and a peek at his pocket watch, as if he’d just beaten his old record for a “jaunt” to town. Indeed, they were; Lewrie’s addled senses re-awoke to the sights, sounds, and smells of bustling London. Twigg had removed his ancient tricorne (now much the worse for wear) and had replaced it with a natty new-styled hat; his grimy muffler now lay at his feet, as did his old overcoat, revealing the “country squire” suitings he’d had on during dinner. He looked clean as a new penny-whistle… damn him!

  With a twitch of his reins, Twigg swung them onto Oxford Street, headed west. “I will drop you at your father’s gentlemen’s hotel and club, Lewrie,” he told him. “You are sure to get lodging there…and at a significant discount, I’d wager, hah? Right round the corner to mine own house in Baker Street. Convenient, that, for our purposes.”

  “Should I dine with you tonight, then, sir?” Lewrie asked, flexing his hands, now that there was no need to cling to the chariot with a death-grip.

  “Not a bit of it!” Twigg barked, back to his old, imperious self. “There’s too much for me to do, tonight, to put your salvation on good, quick footing. Eminent people with whom to dine, and consult over victuals, hmm? Speed’s the thing, before any news from Jamaica makes you a pariah, subject to arrest, hah!”

  “What a pity,” Lewrie said, tongue-in-cheek, now that he could trust using it without the end of it getting snipped off on a deep rut and a bounce. Which statement made Twigg glare down his nose at him.

  “It would be best for you if you kept close to your lodgings, Lewrie,” Twigg instructed. “No gadding about. No drunken sailor’s antics, for a time. And I’ll thank you to keep your breeches buttoned up snug, as long as we’re here, sir. Let us not give your anonymous tormentor any more grist for his, or her, mill. And, the influential men and women whom we wish to espouse your cause are a prim lot. Even the slightest whiff of new scandal or dalliance, and you’ll lose what hope they could offer you, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Lor’, wot a caution ye are, yer honour, damme if ye ain’t, har har!” Lewrie returned in a mock lower-deck accent, fed up with Twigg’s top-lofty scorn. “Nary e’en one saucy wench, nor drap o’ gin, neither, yer honour, sir? Why, wot’s th’ world comin’ t’, I axs ye? Tsk tsk.”

  “And yet you must make a fool of yourself,” Twigg said, sighing in exasperation, his eyes and lips slit; one might have also heard him almost growl in frustration.

  “Sorry, sir. My nature, I ‘spose,” Lewrie said, sobering.

  “Well, keep a taut rein on your…nature,” Twigg snapped back. “I’d keep you caged in a basement or garret, if I could, but I suppose at some point, your potential patrons will have to see you, and speak to you…more’s the pity. Whilst in your lodgings, I suggest that you polish the tale you told me of how your crime occurred, and make it damned short. I’ll send round a list of queries your sponsors are, to my mind, most likely to make to you, and include suggestions as to how best to explain yourself.

  “And, when they see you, Lewrie… should they, that is to say,” Twigg added, his acidic aspersion dripping, “I adjure you to display a proper gravitas suitable to your station, and circumstances. One might even practice righteousness in a mirror…though I doubt you’re that familiar with it. Play-act a ‘tarpaulin sailor,’ perhaps, all blunt, and tarry-handed. Rehearse responses of wide-eyed honesty to the most probable questions they might put to you… a list of which I’ll send round… damned short responses, it goes without saying. Do you give your… saucy nature free play even for a moment, such as your last, witless fillip, and I assure you that you’re truly lost.”

  A short turn north in James
Street, a tack westerly to Wigmore Street, and they were at last arrived at the corner of Duke Street, and Twigg drew them to the kerbings before a splendid converted mansion that now boasted a discreet blass plate by the entry that announced the place as the Madeira Club, Lewrie’s father’s “gentlemen’s hotel.”

  “Hellish-fond of their ports,” Twigg said with a sniff. “Sup in. Do not stray to your usual low haunts,” he brusquely ordered as Lewrie most-thankfully alit on solid, un-moving, ground. The doors opened and a liveried porter came down the steps to help carry his traps. “I will be in touch with you, anon. And for God’s sake, Lewrie! Have yourself a good, long bathe, sponge your uniform, or purchase a new’un. You are as filthy as a Thames-side mud-lark!”

  With that to cackle over, Twigg whipped up and away, leaving Capt. Alan Lewrie muttering under his breath, and slowly dribbling road-slime on the sidewalk.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Righteousness came rather easy to hand at the Madeira Club, for most of its lodgers and guests were of the very same sort of “made men” whom Twigg had disparaged over dinner at his Hampstead bungalow, newly rich or at least moderately well-to-do off steam engines, the mills and manufacturies that had sprung up due to the war’s demands, expanding overseas trade despite said war, and clerks and functionaries returned from India or other colonies as “chicken nabobs,” worth £50,000 at the very least, even some “nabobs” and “gora-nabobs” with nouveau riche fortunes of £100,000 or more, even some few who could nearly be called by the new-fangled term “millionaire.” Even with his Spanish silver, Lewrie was a piker compared to most of them. After he let drop that he was a friend of Sir Malcolm Shockley, Baronet, one of the club’s founders and major investors, though, once he declared that his father was Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, the other founder, he was welcome enough there. Serving officers, in the main, holders of King’s Commission, were not expected to be anything but middling-poor, so he was forgiven! And if he wasn’t exactly a paid-up official member, he surely would be, soon.

  God, but they were an earnest lot, though! Early to bed, early to rise, no loud noises after ten in the evening, their wagers on card games in the so-called Long Room never ventured much above a shilling or two, and every meal was preceded with a prayer. Alan Lewrie had to give his father credit, though, when it came to the victuals, and most especially to the contents of the wine cellar. If one had no valet or manservant to assist, a gentleman could trust the staff to fill a role temporarily, and with all the quiet, unobtrusive competence of the best private mansion’s staff.

  The maidservants, of course, were homely, old trullibubs.

  The chariot ride did require Lewrie to purchase a complete new uniform at his old Fleet Street tailor’s; whilst there, he also got a rather drab and sober civilian suit, imagining that if the city’s bailiffs were on the lookout for a Capt. Lewrie, RN, they might not look twice at a natty fellow in mufti, as the East India Company officers put it. And, if he appeared to be sober, grave, and righteous before his potential patrons in unremarkable (but well-cut) clothes, it might go a long way towards furthering his cause. Lewrie didn’t imagine that prim Clapham Sect and Evangelical Society sorts would care very much for “flash” on their own backs …or on their penitents, either. With his fellow lodgers’ attires to go by, Lewrie thought he’d made a wise move.

  “That’s the question, d’ye see, Captain Lewrie,” one member told him as they sat side-by-side in matching leather chairs before a cheery fire one night in the Common Rooms. After a hearty supper, and two bottles of smuggled French cabernet sloshed down, Mr. Giles, who’d made his fortune in the leather-goods trade, had turned nigh-gloomily voluble in his maunderings, to which Lewrie, in his new “sober” guise, was forced to listen, nod, and make the appropriate “ah hums” and “I sees.”

  “What t’do with sudden wealth, sir,” Mr. Giles said with a sigh, as if £250,000 was an intolerably sinful burden. “To spend and get and waste it on mere pleasures and fripperies, as most do, when presented with a windfall, an un-looked-for inheritance? Why did God intend for me to prosper, and not others? Thankee for the port, sir…aahh! If one ponders it a bit, one sees that wealth hidden under the proverbial bushel basket, greedily squirreled away, benefits no one. The Lord may mean for us to make ourselves comfortable, but not showy, then use His rewards for our hard work and diligence to the benefit of others, d’ye see. To be useful, of avail to improve others’ lots….”

  Mr. Giles was a Methodist, and a Utilitarian.

  “Treat the sick,” Lewrie surmised, “feed the poor, all that.”

  “New hospitals, yes sir,” Mr. Giles replied. “Work-houses, and parish poor-houses to relieve the unfortunate, the orphans, the widows. Good works among ‘em, too. Not outright charity, though. Schools for the lower classes, so that they learn honest trades, thrift, sobriety, and obedience to the laws of the realm—”

  “Chastity …” Lewrie stuck in, feigning an agreeable air.

  “Oh my, yes, Captain Lewrie!” Giles heartily agreed. “As well as cleanliness in their persons and habitations, and the way they live their lives. Now, Mister Putney, yonder …” Giles said, indicating a sallow stick of a fellow who looked as if an entire host of tropical diseases had had fun playing with him, “was the Collector of, uhm…some Indian city or province…Sweaty-Pore, or some such like that. Came home with an hundred thousand pounds, and what’s the very first thing he did with it?”

  Found a better physician, was Lewrie’s best guess.

  “Donated two thousand to tract societies, to spread word of new morality throughout London and Portsmouth, ha!” Giles boasted, clapping a palm on the wide arm of his leather chair—which act resulted in a waiter fetching them both a fresh bottle of the house’s trademark Madeira, which wasn’t exactly what Mr. Giles had in mind, but was welcome nonetheless.

  “And the poor academies and Sunday schools, I trust, teach them to actually read those tracts?” Lewrie asked, smiling congenially, but bored about to tears and wide yawns. “All improving, and…useful.”

  “Exactly, sir, exactly,” Giles chummily agreed. “Now, our Major Baird is also a ‘graduate’ of our Indian possessions,” he said, indicating another well-tanned man in his thirties in a “ditto” suit of such starkly unrelieved black that Lewrie had taken him for a “dominee.” “I heard he only came off, of late, with thirty thousand, mostly in looted pagan baubles, tsk tsk.” Lewrie wasn’t sure whether Mr. Giles was sad that Maj. Baird hadn’t piled up loot by the keg, or had had a bad run of luck at plundering the poorer rajahs. “Invalided out of East India Company’s army, sad t’say for him, poor fellow, but before he departed, I’m told he donated enough to hire a C. of E. chaplain to minister to the needs of the native soldiers in his regiment. He and his Colonel held Sunday Church Parade, rain or shine, and succeeded in converting a fair number of heathens to the Lord, before coming Home. In the market for a wife is Major Baird, at present, and I’m certain that the Good Lord will reward his efforts a thousand-fold, by steering his steps to a most suitable and companionable match, of a like mind.”

  Giles leaned closer to whisper, “Baird’s dead-set against novels, don’t ye know, any wastrel reading matter that does not uplift or serve the greatest good. Thinking of forming a society of his own, I believe, to which I do believe I may donate an hundred guineas, ha!”

  “A creditable endeavour, sir,” Lewrie said, fighting a stricken expression from showing; in his rooms he had four new novels he’d found in the Strand, all of a lubricious or lascivious nature. Lewrie thought of hiding them away, before one of the ugly chambermaids found them and denounced him to Maj. Baird, fearing that the Evangelical Society might just drag him about the city in chains, for an example of how “rogues were ground honest”! At the Madeira Club, reading about sex was about as close to the genuine article as one could get! In strict privacy.

  “One may try to be a good, Christian Englishman,” Giles stated, all but wringing his hands, “one may attend Divine
Services, hold deep and abiding faith, and strive to shun the lures of the world, Captain Lewrie, but, without Good Works, one is not a complete Christian, and is but a drone in Society. One must strive to be and do, not just to seem, hey what?”

  “Now, where have I heard that before?” Lewrie asked, his tongue firmly in his cheek by then. “Did Doctor Priestley say it, or …?”

  “Bless me, but I can’t recall,” the wine-fuddled Mr. Giles said with a vague shake of his goodly head. “So, what is it that you do to make your mark on a sinful world, Captain Lewrie? Where do your interests lie when it comes to improving and uplifting?”

  “I exterminate godless Frogs and heathen Dons, thus making our world safe for moral Englishmen, sir,” Lewrie declared, pretending as if it was his true calling, though ready to snicker aloud.

  “Ha ha! Capital, capital, ha ha!” Giles exclaimed, bellowing his delight and slapping the chair arm, again. “A glass with ye, sir, a brimming bumper!”

  “Well…if you insist, Mister Giles,” Lewrie replied, fraudulently trying to demur. “Though ‘wine’s a mocker,’ and I’ve not much of a head for deep drinking. Not my nature, d’ye see, and… I really did intend to read at least another chapter of the Good Book tonight, before retiring…clear-headed, but… hang it. A glass it is!”

  Soon after that convivial “slosh,” he made his excuses, further pretending to yawn in a prodigious, jaw-locking manner, and made his goodnights to one and all.

  Once out of the Common Rooms, though, he headed for the bar for a pint flask of decanted (also smuggled) French brandy, which he hid in his breast pocket. He almost made it to the stairs, but for the noble Maj. Baird, who managed to impede his progress long enough to hold a whispered conversation, enquiring just where an “inquisitive” fellow could “covertly witness and gather damning evidence upon” the immoral doings of the city, the cock & hen clubs, the dissolute dens of iniquity where wagers were laid, and where “women of the town” plied their trade… “to document in eye-opening tracts,” of course.