The Baltic Gambit l-15

by Dewey Lambdin

  "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 higg

  "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.

  "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 naпvetй 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…!

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Think nothing of it, Captain Lewrie," Mr. Leaver, the rotund, ink-smudged proprietor of the printing business told him with a laugh. "You did us proud, this past year, with all the tracts and chapbooks ordered. Though, 'tis rare for the subject of our firm to come calling with appreciation, ha ha! More like, with an injunction, d'ye see."

  "Reverend Wilberforce and his compatriots did us all proud, as I see it, Mister Leaver," Lewrie replied, "with all the financial support. And the well-written articles placed in the newspapers."

  "Well, the texts were not our doing," Leaver told him as he poured them both companionable cups of warming tea. In the back half of the firm, past a high railing, printing presses creaked and clacked, like to drown out normal conversation, and everyone but Mr. Leaver seemed to be deeply stained and splattered black; the proprietor was nigh-immaculate by comparison.

  "The same person who provided the, uhm… copy to you wrote the newspaper items, as well, I s'pose?" Lewrie idly wondered aloud; trying for idle, anyway. "I did notice a certain… similarity in tone."

  God help me, does he ask for specifics, Lewrie thought, wishing he could cross fingers for luck against that eventuality.‹

  "Not exactly sure, Captain Lewrie," Mr. Leaver allowed, ruminating with a faint frown. "I usually never met the writers. The text was delivered by someone with the Abolitionist Society, and where they got it was anyone's guess. Now, there was Missuz Denby, who writes for the papers, who also came in with anti-slavery articles about you. She'll write for anybody. Sometimes the most scandalous flummery, ah-hmm."

  "Gossip and such, like in The Morning Post?" Lewrie asked, with rising hope, and striving to not look hopeful.

  "Hmpfh!" was Mr. Leaver's opinion of such. "Missuz Denby styles herself the doyenne of the 'Quality's' doings… though she writes under the pseudonym of 'Tattler.' Poor thing. 'Twas her late husband, God rest him, was a printer like me, and a tract writer, and not a bad hand when it came to turning a phrase, I'll give him that, but… once he'd passed on, Missuz Denby lost the business, and has had to live by her wits, since. Hardly a business for a woman, hey? At least she gained enough from the sale of the presses and such to keep body and soul together. Would have gone under in a year, had she not. Women simply do not have the proper head for business."

  "I wonder how she manages to gather her information. I've seen her articles under 'Tattler,' and she seems remarkably well informed," Lewrie said, even if he'd never clapped "top-lights" on that by-line before in his life.

  "Attends everything," Mr. Leaver said with a shake of his head. "Brags that she's on cater-cousin terms with half the maids and footmen in London, and that rich and titled ladies slip her gossip all the time."

  "Why, if she attends everything, I must have run across her," Lewrie pretended to gape in astonishment.

  "Can't miss her, with all that red hair. Why, speak of the Devil, if that's not her heading into Chester's shop, just cross the street this very minute," Leaver declared.

  Lewrie turned to espy a very chick-a-biddy dumpling of a woman, quite short, but done up in the latest fashionable colours of lavender and puce, and sporting one of those pillow-like "Pizarro" bonnets atop a towering old-fashioned mountain of vividly red hair.

  "Good Christ!" Lewrie muttered.

  "See what I mean?" Mr. Leaver said, chuckling.

  "Well, thanks again for all your good services, sir, and I will take my leave," Lewrie announced, slurping up the last of his tea and doffing his hat on his way out the door with undisguised haste. He had a gossip-monger to deal with, and time was of the essence.

  "Your pardons, Ma'am, but might you be Mistress Denby?" Lewrie enquired with his hat to his breast, and bestowing upon her a gallant bow as he did so; to which the startled-looking woman replied with a quick, dropped curtsy. "The one who writes under the name of…?"

  "Well, damme!" Mrs. Denby yelped. "You're 'Black Alan' Lewrie, to the life! Oh, sir!" she gushed as she dipped him an even deeper, and longer-held, curtsy… even if she had to brace herself with her furled parasol. She rose at last, looking as if she had tears in her eyes behind the hexagonal spectacles perched on the end of her nose. "Noble Captain Lewrie! Courageous Captain Lewrie! Oh, but it is my greatest honour to meet you at last! I could but catch the briefest glimpse of you, 'til your recent trial, o' course. I tried my best to get close enough to you once 'twas over, to receive but a mere press of your hand, in passing. Damme! Might you grant me the favour of an interview? A round dozen papers would bid for it, damme do they not!"

  "I was led to understand you wrote many of the Abolitionist chapbooks and tracts, regarding my case… '' Lewrie began to say.

  "I felt it the greatest privilege of my life, sir!" Mrs. Denby loudly declared. "I still do… write their tracts decrying slavery, d'ye see my meaning, Captain Lewrie," she said with a nervous laugh, all but fanning herself.

  "You did me a magnificent service, Mistress Denby, for which I am eternally grateful," Lewrie told her, clapping his hat back on his head at last. "I just spoke with Mister Leaver, over yonder, to give him my thanks, and enquired of him who wrote such moving things about me, He told me, and then, like a Jack-in-the-Box, up you pop, ha ha!"

  "Fortuitous, indeed, Captain Lewrie," Mrs. Denby gladly replied. "And I am quite honoured… ever the more so!… that you took the time to thank me personally! Oh, might you agree to let me interview you!" she gushed. Had I known your lodging place, I'd have written a note, long before… Even though certain salacious doings in Society have had me quite occupied, of late, I most certainly could make time to probe your innermost thoughts!" She was all but bouncing up and down on her toes.

  Christ, but she can wear ya out, quick! Lewrie thought, wondering if turning his innermost thoughts loose on London was all that good an idea. Wonder if she was Mister Denby's cause o' death! Enthusiasm!

  "I also was led to understand that you write for the papers as the 'Tattler,' " Lewrie said. "Are those the Society doings of which ye speak, Ma'am?"

  "They are, indeed, Captain Lewrie!" Mrs. Denby admitted with a hearty cackle. "As to that… not only did I write in support of Abolition, and in firm support of you, I spoke… among all my contacts in the fashionable set, d'ye see, sir… lauding you to the skies, as enthusiastically as I decried the abhorrent institution of slavery!"

  "You, ehm… have many contacts, I take it, Ma'am?"

  "Oh, Captain Lewrie!" Mrs. Denby coyly confided (though a bit loud) and looking as if she would link arms with him. "Even servants at St. James's
, Marlbourough House, any palace or estate you may name, confide in me… as do their masters and mistresses, when they wish to dish a tasty little rumour about their rivals, ha ha! Why, there isn't a drum, rout, exhibition, or public subscription ball that I do not attend, and… come away with fresh meat for grilling!" Mrs. Denby confided, snickering with wicked glee.

  "Then I might have something right up your alley, Ma'am," he told her.

  "Oh, Captain Lewrie! Call me Georgina, do!" she insisted with an even broader, hungrier grin. This time she did link arms with him. "Is it delicious? Is it scandalous? Filled with intrigues, romance, or betrayal? You have my complete curiosity, sir! And…," she said with a sly look, "there is a lovely little coffee-house, quite near to hand, and there, in all discreet confidence, you must reveal it all to me!"

  "Well, damme!" Georgina Denby said at last, thumping her plump little self back against the high wood divider of their corner booth. "What a trollop! What a… foreign baggage the wench is!" She took time to wipe her hands on a table napkin, for in her large bag she had stowed a steel-nib pen and a screw-top jar of ink. Steel-nibs weren't all that cheap, as Lewrie already knew, so he had to assume that hints and innuendos, and "dirt," paid extremely well. All through her interrogation (for that was what it had felt like once he'd broached the subject) she had been scribbling away in a large accounting ledger, filling several pages quickly, both front and back, with the details of Lewrie's "connexions" to Theoni Kavares Connor, and her damnably anonymous "Dear Friend" letters.

  "Though you do admit that you might very possibly be the father of her bastard," Mrs. Denby added, in a pensive taking for the first time in the better part of an hour. "She has yet to take you to court with a 'belly plea,' so…"

  I wager she'd sing-song a soft whisper, Lewrie told himself.