The Baltic Gambit

by Dewey Lambdin

  “And did you save hers?” Twigg pressed, scowling.

  “Not a bit of it!” Lewrie told him. “Gone t’cat litter long ago.”

  “Well, that’s something, I suppose,” Twigg said, leaning back in his chair and swirling his wine glass idly. “One could not expect you to be that huge a calf-headed cully, no matter how desirable the lady. Or how eminently bed-able.”

  “Should I take that as a back-handed compliment?” Lewrie asked.

  “I’d not,” Twigg replied.

  “Hmm,” Lewrie gravelled at the back-handed insult. “Oh, by the by . . . last night I ran across something interesting you might wish to look into. About some daft, drunken Russian here in London.”

  “A Russian, d’ye say. Hmm,” Twigg mused between bites.

  “Some ‘nabob’ who calls himself a count. Anatoli, or something like that,” Lewrie breezed on, between bites of his own squab and rice. “Damned fool took a strong liking to a whore at ‘Mother’ Batson’s house and broke in past her pugs t’get to her. Must’ve run out of ‘tin’ for the ‘socket-fee.’ Beastly sort, I heard. Just won’t do it regular . . . goes for the ‘windward passage,’ un-armoured, too, can he get away with it. Got himself and his manservant thrashed to blood puddings, by the sound of it. Mean t’say . . . what’s a mad Russian count doin’, runnin’ free in London, and us about to send a fleet t’smash ’em?”

  “So you heard,” Twigg said, putting down his knife and fork and looking down that long nose of his most skeptically. “By word of mouth or by ear at the scene?”

  “Well . . .” Lewrie flummoxed.

  “You simply can’t keep your breeches buttoned, can you, Lewrie?” Twigg resignedly asked.

  “It’s a damned good house,” Lewrie pointed out. “Even my prosecuting attorney was there . . . the top-lofty bastard. And an M.P. close to the Progressives and the abolitionists, to boot. I’d gotten there early enough, I might’ve run cross a bishop in their parlour! Or the Prince of Wales.”

  “Oh, I am certain it comes highly recommended,” Twigg sneered. He did, though, reach into a breast pocket for a slip of paper and a pencil, and scribbled something down.

  “ ‘Mother’ Batson’s . . . or Anatoli?” Lewrie dared to jape. “As for recommendations, might I give you the girl’s name, too?”

  “You are too amusing, Lewrie,” Twigg retorted with a faint snarl.

  “I do my humble best,” Lewrie said, lifting his wine glass in a mock toast. “Damme, but this is good. My barrister and I dined here before Christmas . . . so long as I footed the bill . . . and their food is excellent.”

  “Ahem,” Twigg grumped, as if to shush him; or stop his gob long enough to get a word in. “Did you see this Anatoli? Could you describe him, or point him out later?”

  “No, I only heard him battlin’ his way up the stairs, him and his man . . . Sasha, or Pasha, or something like that,” Lewrie told him. “I was on the third floor, and they only got to the second before ‘Mother’ Batson’s bully-bucks stopped ’em. He’s a young fellow, though. He was attending Oxford, as late as the last term, ’til he came down to London and never went back. He’s lucky he didn’t end up a naked corpse found floatin’ in the Thames. Bad cess on the house, I s’pose . . . murderin’ a titled shit . . . even a Russian titled shit . . . and havin’ it traced back to you.”

  “Thrashed rather badly, was he?” Twigg asked after a long period of brooding silence, his brows knit together.

  “I’d expect,” Lewrie said with another shrug and another sip of his wine.

  “And where is this house of ill repute?” Twigg asked him, with his paper and pencil out, again.

  “In Panton Street . . . where all the foreign emissaries live, and keep their mistresses,” Lewrie informed him with a sly wink. “I’d have thought you’d have the whole street full of informers.”

  “Perhaps not as scrupulously as we might,” Twigg said in a softer, more conspiratorial voice. “Usually, one watcher, at least, would have noted the disturbance in Panton Street and would have reported it. Though . . . did it occur past midnight, perhaps his report has not yet been read.

  “Sure this fellow was a Russian, Lewrie?” Twigg asked, his head cocked over like a robin listening for a worm . . . and looking dubious, as he usually did when Lewrie was involved.

  “The girl swore he was, and I definitely heard Russian,” Lewrie told him. “Pamajeetyeh . . . that’s ‘help,’ and, uhm . . . viy mojetyeh mnyeh pamoch? That’s ‘can I get some help?’ ” Lewrie carefully pronounced, syllable by syllable. “Along with the usual pryaznis and gryaznis and yob tvoyemats . . . the usual insults,” he said with a tight grin of possibly knowing something that Mr. Twigg didn’t. “ ‘Fuck your mother,’ ‘you dirty this, you filthy that,’ and ‘peasant.’ ”

  “Ah, but your association with Mistress Eudoxia Durschenko, and her equally charming father, have broadened your linguistic skills,” Twigg simpered back, with an evil little grin to match his. It didn’t last, of course, and vanished in an eyeblink. Twigg took a sip of his wine and turned his attention to his plate.

  “So . . . what are you to do, now that Admiral the Earl Saint Vincent will take over Admiralty?” Twigg asked, changing from calculating to cheerful in another eyeblink, his eyes glued to his knife and fork.

  Hallo, what’s this? Lewrie was forced to wonder; I know him too damned well. Since when’s he ever played the “Merry Andrew” with me? Not without an ulterior motive, he ain’t!

  “Assumin’ he’ll accept,” Lewrie said pessimistically.

  “I assure you he will,” Twigg said, and to foozle Lewrie even further, he actually tipped him a “chummy” wink!

  There’s a dead Roosky in the near future, Lewrie determined; or I’m a Turk in a turban. Did I stumble on a foreign spy for him? Soon t’be found with his throat slit in Saint Giles?

  “He’s been at sea so long, he wants a shore position? Is that your thinking?” Lewrie asked, playing along.

  “That, and the lure of enough power over the Navy to weed out all the graft and corruption in the victualling, arming, and upkeep of the Fleet . . . its sailors most importantly,” Twigg breezily said, with knife and fork poised at mid-chest. “Jervis has fumed about it for years. Given a chance to shake the Navy’s administration like a rag rug, from top to bottom . . . and, ashore as you said, in relative comfort for the first time in years, well . . . consider it a done thing.”

  Twigg bestowed upon Lewrie a very chummy smile, the sort that made his skin crawl, and foreign opponents shiver in sudden dread.

  “Thank God for that, then,” Lewrie said with a glad sigh. One thing about Twigg; when he gave you a promise, you could bank on it. And as Lewrie felt some sense of assurance regarding his career’s revival, he also felt a swell of relief that Twigg had nothing more to do with his chances with Lord St. Vincent . . . and that he wouldn’t end up working for the skeletal old murderer.

  “You said you know him well, Lewrie?” Twigg casually enquired.

  “We’ve met a time or two,” Lewrie had to admit. “Not as close as cater-cousins, no, but I think I’m still in good odour with him.”

  “A word of advice, then, sir,” Twigg said, resuming that lofty and smugly superior air of a man so well connected that his very word was Gospel to the less well informed . . . like Lewrie. “Saint Vincent is a very early riser, I am told, with great disdain for the slug-a-beds and layabouts. Were I you, once he’s officially installed at Admiralty, I’d be knocking at the doors at the crack of dawn . . . scrubbed up and shiny as a bright new penny. A sober new penny.”

  “Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” Lewrie added, and took delight to see Twigg puzzled. “A Colonial North Carolina expression. American.”

  “However you wish to phrase, it, yayss,” Twigg drawled, leaning back in only mild scorn for the abusing of the King’s English. “Now I have smoaked out your tormentor, and you have exposed Mistress Theoni Kavares Connor to the complete scorn of London Society . . . have y
ou informed your good wife, of yet?”

  “Well, it only happened last night, and . . .”

  “And you were celebrating with a fetching young wench, yayss,” Twigg scoffed. “No matter . . . as I promised, news of this, welcome though it may be, would best be delivered by me first. I shall coach to Anglesgreen before the week is out, and, once returned, inform you as to how my revelation was received. Time enough after that to write her,” Twigg lifted his wine glass in Lewrie’s direction, delivering yet another of those cheerful smiles.

  “My thanks again to you, Mister Twigg,” Lewrie said, bowing from the waist in his chair and lifting his own glass; prompted to share a glass no matter his reservations. “A glass with you, sir!”

  “I am certain there shall come a time, in future, when you may find a way to repay me for my, ah . . . humble services, sir,” Mr. Twigg slyly told him. “Let us not be niggardly . . . top us up a brimming measure, and I shall be delighted to have a glass with you!”

  Lewrie filled their glasses; they clinked them together softly, then both tipped them back to drain them off in one go.

  “Are you not equally certain that you will do me a service . . . someday . . . Captain Lewrie?” Twigg chirped, almost mischieviously.

  “Oh, of that I’m mortal-certain, Mister Twigg,” Lewrie replied with a sinking feeling that his indebtedness to the old schemer just kept piling up, to a point that would really put his life on the line, for good and all!

  After departing the chop-house, Lewrie ambled back to his club lodgings, stopping at the Admiral Boscawen for coffee to counteract all the toasts and shared glasses that Twigg had proposed. He was in dire need of another good nap, and a thought for supper on the town . . . somewhere.

  I really shouldn’t, he chid himself; Surely, there’s a whackin’ good book t’read, a new play t’see, or . . . oh Hell, he chid himself.

  He went back to the brothel, of course.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Th’ top o’ th’ mornin’, Captain,” the surly old long-time tiler at Admiralty chirped as Lewrie scurried through the archway passage in the curtain wall, underneath the winged horse statues, and quickly approached the doors. “May I say, ye’re an early sort, right enough.”

  “Morning,” Lewrie said with a nod.

  “Mornin’! More like th’ middle o’ th’ bleedin’ night, sir!” the old fart barked, and wheezed out a laugh. “But, that’s th’ way it is round ’ere these days, an’ God help th’ late sleepers. Th’ Waitin’ Room’s nigh half-full a’ready, but go on in, Captain sir, an’ th’ best o’ luck t’ye,” the tiler said, swinging a heavy oak door open for him, and tipping his hat. “Mind now, sir . . . th’ jakes ain’t been sweetened this early, an’ they’s no tea comin’ ’til close t’nine.”

  Lewrie checked his hat and boat-cloak and mittens with the closet clerk, then shot his cuffs, re-settled his sword belt and waist-coat, and warily entered the infamous Waiting Room, striving for an air of sublime confidence before his contemporaries.

  What a shower o’ no-hopes! he thought as he sought a chair or a space on a hard wooden bench. The weather that morning—ten minutes shy of 7 A.M.—was brisk and wet, with a faint misty rain, and it was still cold, though not as cold as the week before. In England, it might as well be called the first harbinger of Spring, the first robin, or first crocus shoot, in comparison.

  No wonder so many of the officers and Midshipmen were sniffling, hacking, and blowing their noses into handkerchiefs. There was little conversation, for the very good reason that they were all there to win an active commission, and everyone else was competition for full employment. It also seemed that few of them had served together before, either—complete strangers to each other, as they were to Lewrie. There was no one he knew in the Waiting Room.

  The bad’uns are “Yellow Squadroned,” and the good’uns are at sea, he sarcastically thought. A harried civilian clerk came trotting by, and Lewrie snagged his attention just long enough to hand him his note.

  “A few minutes with the First Secretary . . . or the Earl, should he be in this early,” Lewrie said with a false air of cheery hope.

  “Oh, he is, believe me, sir!” the clerk replied with a put-upon and harried expression, before accepting the note and dashing up the stairs.

  Lewrie was, in Colonial parlance, indeed “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.” Sober and clear-eyed, after but a single bottle of wine with supper, and a bedtime brandy; bathed, shaved, buffed, and polished fit to blind the unwary, from the toes of his boots to the gilt lace on his coat collar . . . and with the medals for Cape St. Vincent and Camperdown clinking on his upper chest. He had even eschewed Tess’s companionship for two whole nights running, and had gotten a blissfully restful full night’s sleep.

  He found a seat at the end of a wooden bench, carefully sat down and crossed his legs, giving the dim-looking Midshipman seated at the other end of the bench a cheery nod, and picked up the discarded copy of The Marine Chronicle that lay between them. The Midshipman gulped and nodded back, rather vacantly, and snorted back an impressive dottle of snot that trailed from his larboard nostril. The lad looked to be a born mouth-breather, to Lewrie’s lights.

  By ten, his air of confidence was wearing a little thin. Others came and went; some lucky few were called abovestairs, but the bulk of them were sent on their way with sympathetic whispers from one clerk, or curt and thin-lipped dismissals from another. The tea-vendor’s cart had finally made its appearance in the courtyard, but the “necessary” available for the denizens of the Waiting Room had yet to be emptied, and it stank like a corpse’s armpit; the sort of reek that lingered on anyone who risked it; the sort of foul odour that turned fresh-pressed neck-stocks limp and put famished buzzards off their feed.

  “Em . . . ,” the more pleasant clerk shyly called, making them all shuffle their feet and look up expectantly. The vacant Midshipman at the other end of Lewrie’s bench snorted back his last hour’s cable of mucus and gulped aloud. “Captain Lewrie, sir? Are you present?”

  “Here, my man,” Lewrie announced, springing to his feet; with the fingers of his off-hand crossed for luck.

  “The First Lord will see you, sir, if you’ll come this way.”

  “Thankee kindly,” Lewrie said, absolutely delighted with that glad news; yet . . . wondering what sort of reception awaited him once he’d gotten into the Earl St. Vincent’s presence.

  “My lord,” Lewrie said, with a bow once he’d been shown into a grand private office.

  “Captain Lewrie,” Admiral Jervis said, rising from his chair and waving Lewrie to a chair before his massive desk. Lewrie wondered if Lord St. Vincent would stand throughout the length of the interview, or doff his wig above his head, for he had a most peculiar habit of removing his hat and holding it high in a constant salute, whether he addressed a bosun’s mate or a fellow admiral. “I remember you, sir.”

  The good parts, I bloody hope, Lewrie thought.

  “I am grateful that you recall me, my lord . . . and for taking some wee bit of your precious time to see me,” Lewrie responded as he sat down. Yes, Admiral Jervis would stand. Lewrie began to rise.

  “You and Nelson at Cape Saint Vincent,” the Earl St. Vincent said, shoving a hand in his direction to order him to stay seated. “I think you insisted that your ship was pushed to break away and follow Nelson’s? Even so, it was a bold gesture . . . one which checked the Dons’ course long enough for the fleet to wear about. I hear you are still bold, Captain Lewrie . . . though no longer in need of pushing?”

  Admiral the Earl St. Vincent, K.B., actually cracked a smile!

  He had aged, of course, and gotten stouter. He wore his own hair, now nearly white and receded from a broad brow, still curly and unruly. A broad and long, almost doleful face, with the advancing wattles reflecting his age, and a round little chin, with the characteristic long, almost aquiline nose that seemed to persist among the titled, yet . . . with heavy-lidded eyes with bags under them that, at the moment, g
littered with amusement.

  “On my own bottom, my lord,” Lewrie replied with a modest grin. “I find I’m much like Goodyer’s Pig . . . never well but when in mischief.”

  “Notorious, more-like,” Jervis commented, turning sombre. “An account of your recent trial and acquittal made its way to me. And of course, you are here, like so many others, to seek active commission.”

  “Ehm . . . aye, my lord,” Lewrie sobered. “Though I would think it false modesty to imagine myself as a two-a-penny other.”

  One of “Old Jarvy’s” thick eyebrows went up at that statement.

  Damme, what a foolish thing t’say! Lewrie chid himself; Now he thinks me a braggin’ coxcomb!

  “I do not compare myself to a Troubridge, a Pellew, or Nelson, my lord,” Lewrie quickly amended.

  “Lord spare us another Nelson,” Admiral Jervis growled.

  “But I do believe that my record as a frigate captain speaks for itself,” Lewrie went on. “It has been he . . . deuced hard to read of the preparations against the Baltic powers, and for the first time since the start of the war in seventeen ninety-three, to not have any role to play in the coming battles.”

  And what’s he got against Nelson? Lewrie wondered; His affair with Emma Hamilton? The scandal? Pray God he don’t know the half of me!

  “Old Jarvy” just stared at him, though that brow was lowered to a placid, patient expression. The silence was squirmily painful. So, despite his fear of seeming to beg, Lewrie just had to fill the void.

  “Command of a warship, in time of war, just may be the onliest thing I’m really good at, my lord,” Lewrie confessed. “If there is any place where my services could prove useful in the coming weeks for the good of the Navy, well . . .”

  “What do you think of H.M. Dockyards, Captain Lewrie?” the Earl St. Vincent said of a sudden, resting his thick fingers on the top of his desk.

  “They’re a pack of bloody thieves, my lord,” Lewrie said, “with corruption from biscuit to artillery. Hangin’ every tenth man, like the Romans decimated a cowardly legion, would screw the others honest.”