“Hope Ledyard’s been shriven,” Lewrie said, instead, twisting on a wry, lop-sided grin. “Whatever it is the vicars do for the half-dead.”
Cashman, enveloped by a silk-lined cape, merely nodded, though there was a hint of amusement to the set of his mouth.
The coach body rocked on its thick leather suspension straps, and the horses blew and shook their heads as Andrews and the old Black man-servant that Cashman had brought along sprang down to open the door for them. Lewrie went out first, the two boxes of pistols awkward under his left arm, the expensive wood cases chafing on the hilt of his hanger. He donned his hat, took a deep breath, and looked about their killing ground.
There was very little wind, just the mildest little zephyrs off the sea, the last afterthought of the steady night-winds; not enough to stir the thin mists in the forest above the beach and the coast road, the tendrils of fog that slunk stealthily through the lower scrub of the beach, the manchineel trees and sea-grapes, the withering saplings and wire grasses, the low runners that snaked across the sands. Down the beach, a little to the East’rd, stood a pair of coach-and-fours, a table set up closer to the proper sea-washed beach sands, and a party of caped men who stood waiting for him. Some smoked clay pipes or the Spanish-style cigarillos that were coming into vogue, and he could see the faint gleam of coin-silver flasks as they were tipped up for a sip, the sheen of larger silver or crystal wineglasses as men drank to kill boredom, dread, impatience, or terror. As Lewrie began to plod towards them through the deep, dry-sucking coarser sand of the beach above the high-tide line and the over-wash barrow behind it, the men in the other party left their coaches and strode out toward that table, so he short-tacked to intercept them, the heels of his Hessian boots sinking in, his ankles quickly beginning to ache from the unnatural, enforced gait where toes stayed elevated and rarely had any purchase, where even rough-seasoned soles clumsily skidded and slipped.
There were two coaches, and at least three saddle horses, back of the beach, making Lewrie frown a little as he turned his head for a cursory look; one ornate and its doors emblazoned with a fanciful escutcheon the Beaumans didn’t exactly merit. The second coach was plainer, well worn and a touch seedy, its team of four mis-matched and the typical runtish, slab-shanked beasts found in the Colonies. Lewrie deemed that one the surgeon’s. The saddle horses, though…there was an agreed-upon limit to how many gentlemen were allowed as witnesses, participants, and seconds. Were they cheating? He would not put it past them, and looked more closely at the trees, where some sharpshooter might be lurking.
“Ah, Captain Lewrie!” the older gentleman, a Mr. Hendricks, and a well-respected squire, planter, and magistrate, called out of a sudden, as if to draw his attention to the immediate field, which made Lewrie even more suspicious. As his second, Lewrie literally held Cashman’s honour and safety in his hands, not merely the pettifogging details of well-established custom, usage, and punctilio.
“Mister Hendricks, good morning, sir,” Lewrie replied, halting short of the inviting table—tables, he took note. There were four, in all, three in one row, well separated from one another, with the one in the centre draped in white cloth and agleam with a surgeon’s field kit of instruments, the vials, powders, and such with which to save the life of the loser. The farthest table bore two cases of pistols, two pairs of long-barreled death. Their table—so far—was bare.
“You know Mister Trollope, the surgeon.”
“Sir,” Lewrie intoned, doffing his hat.
“Captain Sellers, of course, Colonel Beauman’s second.”
“Captain Sellers.”
“Captain Lewrie,” that weedy worthy answered with the merest tilt of his head and a hand that just approached his own cocked hat in a returning salute, his tone icy and top-lofty, looking down his nose.
Kin o’ the dead man, o’ course, Lewrie told himself; ’spose he has cause t’look gloomy, knowin’ his cousin’s about t’get knackered.
“Geratt, the surgeon’s assistant.” Hendricks went on, waving an arm in the general direction of a mousy little fuss-budget with his hands held rodent-like in the middle of his chest. “And Mister Hugh Beauman.”
“Sir,” Lewrie solemnly said in greeting, with a faint bow and another doff of his hat. He was surprised that the elder brother gave him a doff and bow of equal courtesy…since he looked as if he had breakfasted on glass splinters and was trying to pass them without a roar of agony. His grimace was worthy of a hanged spaniel.
“Your principal, Colonel Cashman, is come, sir?” Mr. Hendricks softly enquired, sounding the opening bars of the “dance of honour.”
“He has, sir,” Lewrie formally intoned, casting his eyes to the slim fop, Captain Sellers. “And yours, Captain Sellers?” Lewrie asked (rather politely, he thought!), but Sellers, still clad in his full regimentals, despite the fact that the 15th West Indies had been mustered out a month before, took umbrage and looked even farther down his nose.
“Damn you, he has, sir!” Sellers shot back. “The Colonel is more than ready!”
“Tut, now, Captain Sellers,” Hendricks mournfully chid him with a grimace of distaste. “Decorum, hmm?”
“Aye,” Lewrie could not help tacking on to nettle the little bantam cock, his eyes gone wintry steel-grey despite the feral grin on his face. “Someone’s about t’die, the next few minutes. ’Twas ’blaze ’til death or severe wounding,’ d’ye recall, sir? And…do you prefer the pretence of still holding active commission, mind that I out-rank you…and tread wary…sir.”
“Now see here…!” Sellers spluttered, one hand upon the hilt of his smallsword—his left, Lewrie took note with a smirk of derision, not the right, with which to draw it and do anything.
“Gentlemen, please—!” Mr. Hendricks objected, meekly scandalised by their behaviour.
“Damn yer eyes, Lewrie!” Hugh Beauman barked in a husky basso. “Impertinent…swaggerin’, damme-boy…tcha!”
It must have been born in the blood, that all the Beauman men chopped their thoughts into the pithiest shards of sentences that stood in the stead of another man’s entire full minute of prosing!
“Mister Beauman, please,” Hendricks insisted, recalling his own dignities in Jamaican Society. “The both of you, sirs…for shame!”
“My pardons, sir, but Captain Sellers rowed me beyond all temperance,” Lewrie was first to apologise, doffing his hat again. “I do not yet feel need to demand his apology…or satisfaction for such a slight upon the field on honour. You have my abject apology, sir.”
Think that’un over, toady! Lewrie smugly thought, bestowing his best beatific smile on Hendricks, his Number One “shit-eatin’ grin” on Sellers. You wish it, we’ll make this like a double weddin’! Two for the price of one!
Hendricks rounded slowly on Capt. Sellers, who could do nothing but flummox, redden, fidget, and bob his head as he mumbled like sentiments over his error.
“The occasion for two gentlemen to meet upon the field of honour is a sad, regrettable, yet solemn, uhm, occasion,” Mr. Hendricks gloomily intoned. “And there is no place for…”
Christ on a crutch, he makes it sound like a wedding preamble! Lewrie thought, lowering his head and biting the lining of his cheeks to keep from snickering, despite all solemnity. ‘Does anyone object t’these two lunaticks blowin’ their guts out, speak now, or forever hold yer peace?’ Gawd!
“I charge you now, sirs, is there not another course of action by which the parties may obtain satisfaction without the useless effusion of blood?” Hendricks almost chanted, sounding more like a judge or priest than a referee. “Even at this last moment, can we not walk away after shaking hands, and forgive all enmities? Captain Lewrie?”
“I regret that there is not, Mister Hendricks,” Lewrie replied. “My principal is adamant that both public, and private, slurs against his character and military prowess, his pride and his honour, have no other recourse. The hurt inflicted is too grievous.”
“Captain Sellers? Mister Be
auman, as his brother—”
“The Colonel stands by his account of his actions on Saint Domingue, sir, and is in no wise responsible for the characterisations in the papers, nor the rumours in Society, but holds steadfast to his opinion of his former subordinate’s behaviour as the truth of the matter. Therefore, he cannot, and will not, retreat from his position without a grievous loss of his own honour and credence,” Capt. Sellers recited, his speech all but written on his coat cuff, Lewrie suspected, and rehearsed all the previous day and in the coach on the way here.
Well, somebody’s doomed, then, Lewrie glumly thought. Neither man could demur without suffering the ultimate penalties. The label of Coward or Poltroon would be the worst, with Liar and Weasel coming in strong seconds. Did Ledyard Beauman withdraw, he’d not only become a pariah in Jamaica and the entire Caribbean, but in England as well, did he scurry there to hide his shame. His supposedly “accurate” account of the 15th’s role outside Port-au-Prince would be exposed as the total fabrication it was, and the entire Beauman clan would become a laughingstock.
“Mister Beauman?” Hendricks pressed in a near-whisper.
“Stands by it,” Hugh Beauman nigh-growled, stone-faced. “’Tis too late now. Duel it is. Be about it, hey?”
Damn my eyes, but the bastard’s good as slain his brother, for his own damn’ pride! Lewrie gawped to himself; ’twas Hugh who made him soldier, knowin’ he’d be hopeless.
“Having failed to reconcile the gentlemen, we must proceed,” Mr. Hendricks ceremoniously announced; like a Romish priest who, the weekly notices over, reverts to Latin for the daily offices of the Mass. “The agreement is for the exchange of fire from pistols at fifteen paces…the principals to continue firing until such time as one, or both, are mortally struck or incapable of continuing. Those are still the conditions, sirs?” he asked Sellers and Lewrie, peering at each in turn.
“It is, sir,” both seconds intoned, almost as one, putting Alan in mind of Divine Services, again—“The Lord be with you” from the vicar, the congregants responding “And also with you.”
“Each party supplies two brace of weapons. I have seen Captain Sellers’s. Captain Lewrie, d’ye have Colonel Cashman’s? Then, please be so good as to place them on yon table and open the boxes so that I and my assistant, and Captain Sellers, may inspect them. After which, you will be free to inspect those brought by Colonel Ledyard Beauman.”
“Very good, sir,” Lewrie replied, walking back to the bare and rickety table indicated, at the south end of the beach. They had chosen this cove and beach for its privacy, as well as the fact that it lay nearly Sou-Sou’west to Nor-Nor’east, so the rising sun would not be in either party’s eyes. He opened the boxes to display the pistols, and their accoutrements; the lidded pocket full of spare flints, the wire ventpricks in their own depression, the brass rammers slotted in velvet, the bright powder flasks in their snugly sculpted holes, and five new-cast lead balls for each weapon in troughs, gleaming prettily, like spare rings in a lady’s jewelry case.
Mr. Hendricks was a good judge of weapons, perhaps from a long experience with the code duello and the arguments of his neighbours. He pricked the vents with the wires to determine that a double-charge was not already loaded, let the rammers drop down the barrels to coax a clean, and empty, “ring” from each pistol, checking closely for any hidden rifling—smoothbores, only, thankee, no cheating!—then watched warily as Lewrie charged all four with powder, added ball and wadding, flipped open the raspy frizzens to prime the pans, then shut them and left them un-cocked, the hammers touched only to adjudge how snugly their flints and leathers were screwed down in the dog’s-jaws.
“Discriminatin’ taste in arms, the both of them,” Mr. Hendricks commented as they repeated the process at Beauman’s table. “The best Mantons or Twiggs, and these Philadelphia-made beauties!” he exulted over a pair of ten-inch barreled, silver-chased, and gold-leafed .54-calibre pistols with glossy burled-walnut furniture. “Though I note that Colonel Cashman favours the heavier Mantons, of sixty-three calibre. Ahem, I think we’re done. Let us now repair to my neutral table…that’un yonder before the others, and complete our preparations, gentlemen. I have the coin.”
He produced a large Spanish silver piece-of-eight, showed them the reverse and obverse, the “head” and the “tail,” and poised it upon the nail of his right thumb.
“First, for the south position. Choose, Captain Sellers.”
“Uhmm…heads,” Sellers blurted after a brief hesitation.
“And tails it is. Captain Lewrie, your principal will be posted on the south end of the beach, and yours, Captain Sellers, will hold the north end of the touch line.”
“Mmmph,” Sellers grunted, not greatly disappointed; at that hour there was no superiority to either position. The sun would not interfere, nor would the land breeze when it sprang up be strong enough to deviate a bullet’s trajectory.
“The first brace of pistols to be used,” Hendricks continued in a solemn drone. “Heads for Colonel Cashman’s, tails will be for Colonel Beauman’s. Captain Lewrie?”
“Heads,” Lewrie decided quickly.
“And heads it is. Please be so good as to fetch the initial pair to this table, Captain Lewrie. Captain Sellers, oblige as well by bringing forth your choice of pistols, should a second exchange be necessary?”
Lewrie was partial to Mantons, as was Christopher Cashman, so he brought over the box containing the 9-inch barreled Mantons, first, as Sellers returned with a box containing the silver-chased Philadelphia duellers.
“All that remains then, gentlemen, is to announce to your principals that, barring a last-minute reconciliation, the field is ready for their appearances,” Hendricks concluded.
Lewrie bowed himself away and strode back through the deep sand to the waiting coach, all his senses as tautly alert and alive as if it were he who would “blaze,” savouring the dawn as if it were his last.
False dawn had become a grey but promising predawn, the colours of beach, forests, and the sea turning more vibrant. The inshore waters were turning topaz, the deeps beyond shading off to a blue-grey, barely stirring at slack water of the tide, at the death of the night breezes and the Nor’east Trades.
Tan upper beach, littered with desperate growth, the crown and over-wash barrow bearded with tall reeds that faintly swayed to what little breeze sprang up in fitful puffs; the greyed shell-litter near the crowns, sloughing downward to the hard-pan as if smoothed by some titanic sculptor’s hands, to the last, wide taupe and greyed-wet sands where a grown man’s boots could barely leave an impression.
Sand, the wet, the cool but muggy tidal marsh aroma, the crisp tang of crystalled salt, the kelp and iodine and blood-copper odours off the wider, open sea assailed his nose, wakening the memories of a half of his life near, or on, the sea.
Lovely damn’ mornin’! he thought; what a damn-fool time t’die!
He leaned into the open coach door; no Cashman! Had he deloped?
“Kit?” he softly called, walking round the team of horses.
“Ready, are we?” Cashman gravelled, his voice a tad hoarse.
“All’s in order. You’ve the south end, and your own barkers. For the first shots, at least,” Lewrie told him as Cashman cast aside his cloak at last, tossing it to his coachee.
Odd damn’ reek! Lewrie thought, looking at a scuffed-up pile of sand on the far side of the coach: ’Tis puke! he realised. Puke and piss.
“Pen quill down me throat,” Cashman explained. “No trouble in emptying the ol’ bladder, though. Does the hapless bastard get lucky, I’ll not have coffee kill me slowly. Never do battle on a full stomach, don’t ye know. The death o’ many a good man, victuals.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Lewrie somberly told him.
Lewrie looked off to the forests above the beach, chilling, as he realised that he’d been horribly remiss, that all the minutiae had made his suspicions quite fly his head! Two coaches and three horses—Who’d ridden,
who’d coached? And was there someone lurking over yonder with a rifled weapon?
“Er, Andrews, a word, please. The man-servant, too, if you will fetch him along,” Lewrie said, turning from his principal. “Do you keep a keen weather eye peeled on those trees, lad. You see some devilment lurkin’, you sing out, hear me? I don’t trust the Beaumans not to mark their cards…that Sellers bastard, most of all.”
“I’ll do it, sah,” Andrews vowed, scowling intensely, and the black man-servant to Cashman nodded just as assuredly.
Only a tad reassured, Lewrie caught up with Kit, who had gone on by himself, single-mindedly plodding along through the loose sands, head up, clad only in shirt and breeches, his stock gone and collars undone, and his sleaves rolled halfway to his elbows.
“What was that about?” Kit snippishly demanded.
“Keepin’ ’em occupied and neutral, so no one could accuse us of under-handed doings,” Lewrie lied, thinking that the best thing he could do for Kit at that moment was to keep his mind on his foe, without another dread that would keep him looking over his shoulder.
“Ummph!” Cashman said with a snort of understanding.
“Well, there he is,” Lewrie pointed out, cringing to say such an inane thing, after all.
Ledyard Beauman was coming toward them across the deep sands, a tad unsteady to their eyes, even at that distance. He was tricked out in the full regimentals of the old, disbanded, 15th, as was his cousin Captain Sellers; black-and-tan riding boots, buff breeches and waist-coat, a gaudy cocked hat awash in white egret feathers and gilt lace, and the heavily gilded, almost burgundy-red coat with buff, gilt, and crimson facings and buttonholes.
“Dear God, is that a uniform…wearin’ a man?” Lewrie said in a soft, amused whisper.
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