The Baltic Gambit

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Right, she was grateful for her life, her son’s life,” Lewrie said to fill the embarrassing silence. “That, and pleasin’ sport after Lights-Out, well . . . and, fleein’ the Greek Isles for good to come to England a step ahead of the French? Not sure she’d keep the fortune in the currant trade her dead husband’d made, and fear of how his kin would receive her?”

  “She fell in love with you, Lewrie,” Twigg said, “for all those reasons, and your skill at ‘rogering,’ I’d imagine. Then, to discover that she would bear your child . . . and also discover what a rakehell you are, yet still wished to keep you . . . ‘’ He trailed off with a gleeful smirk, to take a sip of his coffee. “Amazing, how women find cads so intriguing, and do anything to delude themselves, and wish to keep their unworthy men. Had she any sense at all, given your history with the ladies . . . soon as she ferreted it out . . . that she didn’t simply write you off as a bad penny. The boy, I expect . . .”

  “As if she needed me t’support him,” Lewrie scoffed. “She’s as rich as the Walpoles . . . richer! And it’s not as if she needed me for the Guinea Stamp. Her husband wasn’t that long dead that she couldn’t explain the boy’s birthing as legitimate.”

  “So many bastards,” Twigg pretended to be shocked. “One of them a Midshipman in the American Navy, of all things! Half yours, t’other half a Cherokee ‘princess’? My word, sir! One could refer to your offspring round this world as the Lewriean Miscellany.”

  “How’d ye know o’ that ’un?” Lewrie asked, much humbled and pale.

  “I have my ways, do I not?” Twigg smugly simpered.

  “Mmm, d’ye mean there’s others ye . . . ?”

  “For me to know.” Twigg almost laughed out loud for a rare once. “And for you to confront in future, Lewrie.”

  “Sure it was Theoni,” Lewrie said; it was not a question, really. One thing he was sure of was that Twigg knew what he was talking about, when he finally got round to it.

  “Watchers on the house, a street urchin for running messages in my employ always at hand to deliver her correspondence,” Twigg said. “She don’t write her own, ye know . . . no, she has a cultured personal maidservant for that, who polishes things up, and owns the fine hand.

  “Evidently,” Twigg said, reaching inside his double-breasted tail-coat to a breast pocket, and withdrawing one of the poisonous billets-doux, “your lack of attentiveness to Mistress Theoni Connor of late, and your public sham of respectability for Society the last two years to satisfy Wilberforce and his crowd, prompted her to take desperate measures.”

  “Something about Eudoxia,” Lewrie quickly determined. “She’s the only young woman I’ve been within sniffin’ distance, lately. Am I right? Damme, Theoni’s little tantrum at Ranelagh Gardens t’other day . . . desperation?”

  “Exactly, Lewrie,” Twigg informed him. “For here is a fresh one addressed to your wife . . . one designed to even further infuriate your good . . . if put-upon . . . Caroline. The good-scribbling maid was caught red-handed with it, on her way to the posting house so the coach could deliver it to your house in Anglesgreen. We have her confession, are you interested.”

  “Theoni knows of this?” Lewrie asked. “Well, no wonder I’ve not run into her the last few days. Thought it was our spat, but . . . ‘’

  “Desperation, indeed, to see her schemes produce so little fruit over the years, and you off at sea, not exactly as diligent as earlier in answering her letters,” Twigg elaborated. “We have a second, meant for Eudoxia Durschenko . . . the usual anonymous ‘dear friend, you must know,’ laying out what an unfaithful cully you are. To deflect her before the girl puts any more stock in you.”

  “Hah! Fat lot o’ good that’d do!” Lewrie said with a wry laugh. “Eudoxia’s known I’m married since Cape Town, as I said, and her papa already hates me worse than cold, boiled mutton! B’sides, did Theoni have it scribbled in proper English, I doubt either one of ’em could make heads or tails of it.”

  “Then why does she seem to run into you so often, Lewrie?” Mr. Twigg sarcastically posed to him. “And, why . . . when she does . . . does she evince such delight to do so, even with her very watchful father at her side . . . hmmm?”

  “Well, er . . . em,” Lewrie stammered, half intrigued by the sudden possibilities, and half appalled with the image of how dead he’d be should he run the risk. “Surely, she must see that it’s daft. Not to be. Better she takes up with the Prince of Wales, he’s int’rested.”

  “With ‘Florizel’?” Twigg scoffed. “Now there’s a slender reed. Poor fellow . . . all he wishes is to be liked, to be loved by one and all. Or, merely appreciated. Good a King as he is, George the Third has been saddled with a sorry set of offspring. Oh, there may be some gewgaws and presents from the Heir, but they’d come with social ruin.”

  “For actresses and circus performers, that might be good publicity,” Lewrie cynically said, draining the last of his cool coffee and going to the sideboard for fresh.

  “You should warn her off, no matter,” Twigg told him, snapping his fingers and pointing to his own empty cup.

  “Me? Why me?” Lewrie asked. Talk to Eudoxia, or pour ye bloody coffee, either one! he thought.

  “For the good of the Crown, Lewrie,” Twigg told him, impatient to have to explain things to Lewrie, and for more coffee. “I cannot, for doing so would make it an official matter. The people’s love for the Royal Family is paramount to continuing the war effort, and another bloody scandal involving ‘Prinnie,’ as some are wont to call him, would harm that. Frankly, I serve on sufferance as a partially retired consultant, and to interfere in the Heir’s doings would be the ruin of me.”

  “But since I’m already ruined, there’s no loss?” Lewrie snapped.

  “That is pretty much it, yayss,” Twigg drawled, smiling cruelly.

  “Mine arse on a band-box,” Lewrie said with a resigned, defeated sigh. He poured Twigg his desired cup, too.

  “Hash things out with Theoni . . . stop her business,” Lewrie said as he sat back down, idly stirring sugar and cream into his own coffee. “Coach home and confront Caroline with the truth, too? God o’ Mercy!”

  “Well, it is not as if you have much of anything else better to do, Lewrie,” Twigg purred, “what with how things stand with you at Admiralty, at present.”

  “Oh, thank you just so bloody much!” Lewrie barked.

  “Do you want to be reconciled with your wife, Lewrie?” Mr. Twigg asked with a piercing, probing stare.

  “Well, o’ course I do!” Lewrie shot back.

  Hold on, do I really? he had to wonder, though; Aye, for our children, if nothing else. It’s not as if I’ve any other women in my life . . . that I could dally with openly, anyway. Nelson can get away with his affair with Emma Hamilton, but . . .

  “Even if we don’t,” Lewrie told Twigg, “after all the tears that Theoni put her through . . . I put her through! . . . I owe Caroline a semblance of a marriage.”

  “She would never believe a word that crossed your lips,” Twigg said, matter-of-factly for a change, with none of his usual top-lofty acid. “Leave that to me. After all, ’twas I who sicced you on Claudia Mastandrea in Genoa, for the good of the Crown. That still leaves your Corsican mistress, Phoebe Aretino, and Theoni Connor to deal with, but . . . one could be explained by long separation, and the other by wounds and laudanum, in the beginning. And the machinations of a scandalous and crafty, spiteful, and possessive home-wrecking bitch.”

  “You would do that?” Lewrie asked with his head cocked over; it just wasn’t like Twigg to be charitable, or very much care about people who were (sometimes) useful to him.

  “You’ve done me excellent service over the years, Lewrie,” Twigg told him. “Perhaps I feel as if I owe it to you. I will coach to your home town with the evidence, including the maid’s confessions, and the last letter . . . to Caroline, at any rate. No need to include the one written to Eudoxia directly, hmm?”

  “Caroline will still think
I’m trying to put the leg over her,” Lewrie glumly confessed.

  “Then amaze her, and . . . for a rare once . . . don’t,” Mr. Twigg shot back with a brief bark of amusement. “Her father would feed your chopped-up carcass to his lions, if you did, ye know.”

  “Of that I’m quite aware!” Lewrie replied in sour humour.

  “Well, that should conclude our business,” Twigg said, quickly finishing his coffee and tossing his napkin onto the table. “I must be off. Too damned many Danes, Swedes, and Russians in England, with the sudden urge to correspond with people in their home countries . . . especially those who reside, or trade, in our naval ports. Codes to be decyphered, whole letters to be lost, or . . . enhanced with false information,” Twigg simpered.

  “Throats to be slit,” Lewrie posed, tongue-in-cheek as he rose.

  “Well, only do we must,” Twigg said with a vague wave of his hand and an evil little grin.

  “I don’t s’ppose you still have any influence with Admiralty, do you, Mister Twigg?” Lewrie said of a sudden. “Mean t’say, there’s war in the offing, and . . . ‘’

  “Not all that much, no, Lewrie,” Twigg had to admit, grudgingly, as they left the alcove dining room and crossed the main hall towards the coat cheque. “Not, at least, with the current administration over there, though there are rumours . . . ‘’

  “Hey?”

  “Pitt is quite unhappy,” Twigg told him as a manservant took their tickets and went to fetch their hats and greatcoats. “He managed the Act of Union with Ireland, and convinced the King to ennoble all those new Irish peers, yet . . . Pitt hinged his entire legislation on a promise of Catholic Emancipation, allowing Papists to serve in the Army, Navy, and hold public office . . . perhaps stand for seats in the Commons, as well. King George, however, as Defender of the Faith, as his full title tells us, was adamantly against that. Does Pitt step down . . . d’ye see my meaning?”

  “A new Prime Minister, a new First Lord, aye!” Lewrie enthused for a brief moment, then deflated. “But probably someone who’s heard of me, and despises me as much as Lord Spencer already does. Damn!”

  “Nelson has already hoisted his flag in the San Josef over at Torbay, in Plymouth, Lewrie,” Twigg further informed him as the servant returned with his hat, greatcoat, and long walking-stick, and another club servant came to help him dress. “You’ve served under him I believe. Perhaps he could intercede for you. And you did Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker good service, and fattened his bank accounts, with your seizure of all that lovely Spanish silver a few years ago. You could write him and ask for employment.”

  “Sir Hyde? What’s he to do with this?” Lewrie asked, puzzled.

  “Why, Sir Hyde Parker is to command the whole Baltic expedition, Lewrie!” Twigg told him. “Don’t you read the papers? Nelson is to be his second-in-command. Do all the preparatory work for him, I’d think, since Sir Hyde is, for the moment, deeply involved with his wedding.”

  “God Almighty, Parker?” Lewrie was forced to gawp.

  “To wed, again?” Twigg snickered, completely missing the point of Lewrie’s sudden discomforture. “And why not? Though his bride-to-be is the daughter of Admiral Sir Richard Onslow . . . Frances, I believe her name to be . . . and is barely eighteen.”

  “Christ, Mister Twigg . . . Sir Hyde’s sixty, if he’s a day!”

  “Lucky devil,” Twigg simpered as he drew on his gloves. “Sir Richard Onslow, to get a son-in-law so rich in prize-money. The girl to land such a secure future, and Sir Hyde the, ah . . . fresh dew of her youth.”

  “Mister Twigg,” Lewrie muttered, stepping closer to impart his knowledge of that worthy, “surely they must know that Sir Hyde’s not possessed of an urgent bone in his body! ’Twas his frigates that did his work for him, and specially commissioned lesser tenders. The Frogs and the Dons didn’t have anything in the West Indies with which to challenge us, so Sir Hyde spent all his time sittin’ on his . . . officiatin’ from his shore office, and his flagship anchored ’til the Apocalypse. He might’ve cruised Barfleur over to Saint Domingue to talk with some of his junior officers now and again, but he hasn’t sniffed gunpowder since the American Revolution!”

  “Indeed,” Twigg asked down his long nose, with a worried look on his skeletonously lean face. “Now that is rather discomfiting news to me, when speed is of the essence, anent the melting of the ice over yonder in the Baltic naval ports. Ah, but he does have Nelson, don’t he, Lewrie? And with Nelson involved . . . a most impatient and urgent fellow, he . . . we cannot go very wrong. Well, I am off, Lewrie. I do hope my informations have lightened your burden somewhat.”

  “You have my eternal gratitude, sir, for all you’ve done,” he had to respond, with a hand upon his breast, and a sketch of a bow.

  “I’ll hold you to that, Lewrie,” Twigg said with an ominous look as he clapped his rather unfashionable old hat on his head. “One never knows when your, ah . . . inestimable talent for mayhem may prove useful again.”

  That promise-in-parting turned the excellent meal in Lewrie’s innards to cold lead, for he already knew what neck-or-nothing, harum scarum use Twigg could put a fellow to!

  And, there was yet another cause for his dyspepsia . . . now he knew that it had been Theoni writing those letters all these years . . . what was he to do about her?

  And how best to go about crushing the spiteful bitch!

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Another hellish-cold morning in London, though the sun was out, for a rare once, and the sky was fresh-washed and clear blue. Lewrie’s breath steamed as he briskly strolled to the Admiral Boscawen Coffee House, deftly dodging the throngs of other pedestrians, the trotting teams of carriages, goods waggons, and carts, and the impudently rude London drivers and carters, who filled the morning with shouts of “By yer leave!” and “ ’Ave a care, there!” and “Make a way, make a way, ye bloody . . . !” with the choicer curses bitten off.

  Admittedly, it was rather early for Lewrie to be astir, given his bred-in-the-bone penchant for laziness; it was barely a tick after 8 A.M., and even the usually unperturbable servants at the Madeira Club had been forced to goggle their eyes to see him up and dressed so early, and bound out the doors “close-hauled” at a rate of knots.

  Once seated with a cup of coffee before him (closer to the fire than before) he slathered up a finger-thick slice of toast, spread the jam heavy, and chewed as he perused The Morning Post, one of London’s saucier papers, and the one most filled with gossip and anonymous innuendo.

  Sir Hyde Parker’s appointment to a command in the North Sea has converted his honeymoon into a sort of ague; a complaint always attended with a sudden transition from a hot to a cold fit.

  A ragged earlier edition told him, followed by the newest of that morning, the thirty-first of January, to wit:

  Should the gallant Admiral who late entered the Temple of Hymen be sent to sea again, he will leave his sheet anchor behind him.

  Which smirking line made Lewrie wonder if the writers at The Morning Post were referring to Nelson, as well; hadn’t that worthy left Emma Hamilton behind to hoist his flag in the San Josef?

  Wonder who writes this drivel? Lewrie pondered; And how may I get in touch with one of ’em, an’ put a flea in his ear?

  He supposed that somebody, perhaps a great number of somebodys, fed juicy and lurid tidbits of scandal and gossip to the paper, for The Post, and several other of the dailies, seemed to be marvellously well informed, with many of their racier items printed up the morning after the event, not days or weeks later, so they must have an host of tattlers and informers.

  Informers, hmm . . . Lewrie thought. Zachariah Twigg possessed an army of informers, though he dreaded going to that well too often; he was already too “beholden” to that top-lofty old bastard. Lewrie also imagined that a clumsy call upon the offices of The Post would result in gales of laughter, and an item mocking his naïveté printed the very next day. Yet there must be some way to expose Theoni’s scandalous letters
.

  “Where does The Post get all this drivel?” Lewrie said as the waiter poured him a fresh cup of coffee and took his order for fried eggs, a pork chop, and grated potatoes.

  “There’s thousands o’ waggin’ tongues, sir,” the waiter replied with a snicker, “an’ Grub Street’s full o’ scribblers livin’ hand t’ mouth, in need o’ dirt. Don’t work for the papers, direct, d’ye see. Might not eat, do they not git a morsel t’write up an’ flog t’ which ever paper’ll take it. Most of ’em make their livin’s off the tracts an’ such. Hard-fry yer eggs, sir, or do ye prefer ’em softer?”

  Grub Street, hmm . . . Lewrie mused as he stirred sugar and some rather dubious-looking “fresh cream” into his coffee; didn’t they do all those bloody tracts ’bout me for Wilberforce and his crowd? All those anti-slavery things?

  While he was no longer the subject of almost-daily printings, the campaign against slavery in the public mind, and the halls of Parliament, continued, with earnest hawkers on every street corner. All it might take would be for him to accept one of the damned things, see who had run it up, and call upon the printer . . . to offer his gratitude for all his efforts on his, and the Abolitionists’, behalf, ha ha! If one of the scribblers could be named, he could approach him. A bit of hemming and hawing as to how one might expose a woman who had caused a British hero’s wife so much pain . . . carefully leaving out the fact of said woman bearing said hero’s illegitimate child, of course! . . . with an authentic anger, which he figured he could manage to convey.

  Hmm, with a hint of a public scandal to come? Lewrie wondered; something right out in the open, like his scrambling from her sight at Ranelagh Gardens, he imagined with a wince of chagrin, to make it even juicier a story.

  He took a sip of coffee and frowned as he considered how this plan might go awry. Am I devious enough t’pull this off? he thought; Never have been, before! Dim bastard, most people think me. Yet . . . !