Troubled Waters l-14

by Dewey Lambdin

  "And, with Mister Twigg's watchers and followers to guard us," Burgess said, taking time to re-load and re-prime one of his pistols in spite of Twigg's assurance that the worst was over, "and, seeking out where the Beaumans have lit, there's a good chance we might know how many more we must watch out for… perhaps spot them by face."

  "The Beaumans, ah!" Sir Hugo said, inspired to "set the scene" even further by drawing his small-sword and bloodying it with the gore of a dead highwayman now slung head-down cross a saddle, then wiping the blade clean on a pocket handkerchief. "Evidence," he snickered as he did so. "A couple of 'em got hacked t'bits, so some of us must own blooded swords, d'ye see? You, Burgess… you, son."

  "You were sayin' 'bout the Beaumans?" Lewrie asked as he obeyed his father's suggestion.

  "With Twigg's men t'smoak out their lodgings, and with a little money t'in-spire the local 'Captain Tom o' the Mob' in their parish, the Beaumans might not get a single night o' rest anywhere in London! Hue and cry, rocks an' cobblestones through the right windows… dung an' mud slung at 'em when they dare go out by a… properly outraged Mob o' Londoners, hmm?"

  "A capital idea, old friend," Twigg applauded as he rejoined them at the coach door. "The blooded swords and the harassment, both. Let an anonymous letter or two get into the papers, suggesting that a pack of cruel and arrogant slave-holders have no place in a civilised England, in London, and they'll rue the day they took ship! I believe I may be able to arrange that, as well!

  "Come, then," Twigg ordered, turning grimmer. "Let us be away. The quicker we're done with the magistrate, the sooner we shall be in London, where we will dine on roast lamb and tandoori chicken. Then, our plans may be set afoot!"

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A nd, it was a true Far Eastern, Hindi feast, the sort of thing that Lewrie ravenously remembered from his time in Calcutta. All four of them at-table in Twigg's Baker Street house that evening were veterans of India, and each new course was cheered much like the arrival of the Christmas pudding. Genteel and witty conversation, expected of diners at refined English tables, had given way to lip-smacking, slurping, and only occasional sallies in finding new adjectives and adverbs to congratulate Twigg on his chef and his creations.

  But, instead of lingering over nuts, sweet biscuits, and port (and entertaining each other with the aforesaid witty conversations to the wee hours), their small party broke up just before ten of the clock, Sir Hugo and Trilochan Singh taking the short walk to his private town-house, and Burgess Chiswick, yawning heavily, off to the Madeira Club, where Sir Hugo had arranged a room, and temporary membership.

  "You are surely exhausted by our arduous adventure, today, sir," Twigg imperiously announced, as if the matter was settled, "and by the early hour at which you, and we, were forced to arise for our journey. Ajit Roy will light you up to a spare bedroom for the night. You are sure you brought along your best uniform, your medals, and such? Good. Such a brave show, your barrister assures me, will go a long way with the Lord Justice who will conduct your evidentiary hearing tomorrow. Good night, bonne nuit… achchhaa raat, sonaa t'keek* … all that." (* achchhaa raat, sonaa t'heek=good night, sleep well)

  "Thankee, again, sir," Lewrie replied, loath as he was to give Twigg thanks for much of anything, for he still had his lingering suspicions of the man's motives.

  "We breakfast at seven in this house" was Twigg's parting comment as he betook himself to his first-floor study with a lit candle, with no acknowledgement of Lewrie's gratitude, sincere or not.

  If Twigg's country estate, Spyglass Bungalow, was Hindi-exotic, a museum and treasure trove of priceless Far East relicts, his London house was the epitome of subtly understated Palladian grandeur, a home furnished and decorated by a rich, but modest, English gentleman, from the crown of his head to the tip of his toes. Albeit with rather more firepower available than most. No bejeweled tulwars or valuable Asian matchlock or flintlock jenails, but, here a gun-cabinet, there a gun-cabinet; a brace of rifled duelling pistols in a glass case in the salon, a brace of rare Ferguson rifled breechloading muskets standing in the library, and double-barreled fowling pieces secreted behind almost every open door! Twigg obviously was a fellow who'd spent too long in the field to sleep well without something bang-worthy near to hand. In Lewrie's own spacious, but darkly panelled, bedchamber, his own double-barreled Mantons were set out on the wine-table, much like a house servant might spread out his "housewife" shaving kit ready for the morning. There was a shotgun (presumably loaded and primed for any emergencies) 'twixt the wall corner and the armoire, and a brace of infantry hangers crossed on the wall near the door!

  Sleep well, mine arse! Lewrie thought as he undressed; Court in the mornin', gaol right after dinner, and the noose after breakfast o' th' next day? Shit!

  He did give sleep a try, sans the silk ankle-length night shirt so thoughtfully laid out for him, for even the mild warmth of a London summer was a tad too hot. The wee decanter of brandy left on the night-stand didn't help much, either; nor did the rumble of wheels, the clops of hooves, or the squeal of axles from the street outside, even if the road had been strewn with straw to dampen the din. Window open and the noise was maddening; window closed, and it was too stuffy to breathe.

  He sponged off and dressed in slippers, breeches, and shirt and padded back down to the first floor with a candle in his hand to find a book to read… or another decanter of brandy. At the library room's door, though, he heard a suspicious noise. There was a skritching and rustling, sounding as if someone had snuck into the house despite all of Twigg's security, and was rifling through his files. There was also a gurgling, bubbling sound. Someone's throat had been cut, and was now in his final gasps for air? The office door was open, and there was a light inside, so he went on tiptoes to investigate.

  But no, it was only Mr. Twigg, sitting cross-legged on a pile of large and garish tasseled pillows with a portable writing desk in his lap, and quill pen in hand… now more comfortably dressed in equally garish pyjammy trousers and robe, with a long night cap on his head, now and again sucking on the mouthpiece of a "hubble-bubble" pipe, and blowing smoke rings 'tween scribbled thoughts.

  "Oh, 'tis you," Twigg snippishly said. "Can't sleep, hey? Oh, come in, then, if you must."

  "I thought t'find a book, or…," Lewrie said, excusing his odd-hour ramble. "Was it Doctor Samuel Johnson who said that 'the idea of being hanged concentrates the mind most wondrously'?"

  "Some scribbler, yayss," Twigg drawled. "Or, it very well might have been Boswell, to make the old grump sound more lively."

  "You're up late," Lewrie commented as he found a more conventional seat in a wing-back chair. Looking about for a bottle of something.

  "I find that as I age, the need for sleep is less," Twigg said, finishing off whatever he was writing with grand nourish, and a smug sniff of pleasure, before sanding it and setting the paper aside. "Of course, when younger and more active in the Crown's service overseas, I perhaps developed a habit of sleeping with one eye open, in short bouts, and have never really lost it. You, I should expect, usually have no difficulty sleeping deep, long, and well."

  Insult me more, why don't you? Lewrie silently groused.

  "Something about all this has disturbed my sleep, for the last year or better," Lewrie said.

  "And, what is that, Lewrie?" Twigg asked, looking nettled to be interrupted in his thought processes as he prepared a fresh sheet of paper and dipped his quill into the ink-pot.

  "Why you, of all people, all of a sudden, are so solicitous for me," Lewrie said. "Half the time, I imagine you're saving me for future work upon your behalf, the other half the time I think I'm being used in some scheme you've dreamt up, but for the life o' me, I can't find what advantage there is in it. I can halfway believe that you are as opposed to slavery as Wilberforce and his crowd, but… knowing you and your ways by now, I'm always haunted by knowing that nothing with you is ever that clear… that you always have an ulterior motive, or a whole set o' motives
. Am I to hang as your martyr to further some grand scheme o' yours, or…?"

  Twigg took a pull on his hookah pipe, smiling mysteriously.

  "All those damned tracts an' such. Was it you, or the Abolitionists who ran 'em up? Hired Cruikshank t'do the art-work?" Lewrie pressed. "They can't afford all that, surely."

  "Perhaps I merely wish to watch you wiggle," Twigg snickered, " 'twixt honesty and morality, and… whatever feels necessary at the time, and plea-sureable to you. Following your career can be very entertaining, ye know. Well… it seems a night for home truths, so I will, this once, mind, explain my motives to you.

  "Slavery," Twigg harrumphed, almost rolling his eyes. "As long as there are Hindu ryots and Irish day-labourers, England has no need of slavery, Lewrie. It is a despicable, abhorrent practice, one which all civilised gentlemen must deplore. I, personally, despise slavery, but that is of no matter, any more than your own detestation of it preceded your liberation of those dozen Beauman slaves, or is a sudden… 'conversion by indictment.' "

  He just has t'goad me, even when he's serious! Lewrie thought. "But, where does slavery principally thrive, Lewrie? Here, in England? In France or the Germanies, in Sweden? No. Europe and the civilised parts of the world have done away with it, the French abolished slavery even in their West Indies colonies… all that Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite nonsense taken to the ultimate extreme. For that giddiness, I might almost admire them. The rest of the world… ha! What heathen, pagan, backward cultures may do in their benighted lands, of no consequence to Britain or anyone else, bothers me not a fig!"

  Lewrie cocked his head over that seeming hypocrisy, which only made Zachariah Twigg snigger in smug amusement.

  "Slavery thrives in Spanish and Portuguese dominions, Lewrie," Twigg continued, after a satisfying puff at his hubble-bubble. "One a continual foe, one a doubtful neutral. Their colonial economies, and the wealth that flows to Spain and Portugal from them, could not survive without slave labour in mines and fields. Consider also the United States of America, whose constitution may claim that all men are created equal, but restricts full rights to European descendants. A quarter of the inhabitants cross the Atlantic were slaves before their Revolution, and their numbers yearly increase through the further importation of slaves, the fecundity of the Negro race, and the lascivious doings of their masters, who indulge in a sordid practice which, so I am told, is termed 'going through the cabins'; to wit, the rape and impregnation of comely Negresses as a matter-of-fact rightl

  "Now just when, d'ye think, Lewrie," Twigg archly posed, "might the enchained and oppressed in the Americas take the uprising of Saint Domingue, or Haiti, or whatever they call it these days, to heart, and fight to free themselves? And… what happens to those nations which thrive and grow rich and more powerful on the backs of their slaves?"

  "Chaos… civil war… slaughter and massacre!" Lewrie gasped. "Generations of it, bad as Saint Domingue for certain."

  "And, how important, in the scheme of things, will Toussaint L'Ouverture's free and independent Haiti ever be, Lewrie?" Twigg asked in triumph. "Too embroiled inside of themselves to ever become a foe to Britain, or a substantial ally to other powers opposed to us, their economies so bankrupt that maintaining a navy to face ours would be impossible, effectively isolating them all in their own regions, unable to affect the expansion of the British Empire beyond the range of some yew heavy fortress guns, much less affect Europe.

  "And…," Twigg concluded with great satisfaction, "ripe for the plucking should we ever wish such hapless, ungovernable snake pits."

  "My God, that's… Christ!" Lewrie goggled in awe, thinking of the hundreds of thousands, no… the millions doomed to die in revolts.

  "Should they require arms and powder, well…" Twigg waved off.

  "I don't know whether t'congratulate you, or curse you," Lewrie finally said. "All the Americas up in flames, blood flowin' like rivers…"

  "Take your Eudoxia Durschenko, she of the long, fine limbs, and firm breasts, Lewrie," Twigg continued.

  "Huh… what? What does she have t'do with…?"

  "Ever been to the Russias, Lewrie?" Twigg almost benignly asked. "I have. Serfdom is the Achilles' heel of the Tsars, as bad an 'institution' as slavery. Once outside the grand palaces and salons of their refined, French-speaking aristocracy, Russia is as backward and appalling as a trip back to the Dark Ages, all mud, mire, and shite. A serf is a landless tenant so dependent upon the good will of his land owner that he can be flogged to death with great bull-whips… knouts, they call them… for looking at them cross. Turf a serf and his family off the land for some offence, and they become lepers, pariahs, unwelcome anywhere, and usually starve to death. The Tsar wishes to fight a war, he has to raise troops, and sends word down to the country aristocracy… 'hey ho, each estate must conscript twenty-or-so young men for the army,' and off they go, for twenty years' service… marched very far away from home ground, and barracked among strangers… so, should they be called out to read the equivalent of the Riot Act, and fire on the locals, they have no compunctions whatsoever.

  "Russian peasants are a brutal lot to begin with, so demanding brutal measures from them is an easy matter," Twigg informed him, with a shrug. "Their pretty, unmarried girls are prey for young aristocratic 'blades,' as well, and can be treated as brusquely as one may wish."

  "You'd turn all Russia topsy-turvy, too? " Lewrie gawped, really in need of strong drink by then. This was appalling stuff, and more proof of Twigg's coldbloodedness. "Ye think on a grand scale, damme if ye don't, but…"

  "A Russia whose serfs rise up, at long last, the veterans still young enough, the youths not yet conscripted along with them… and, supplied with arms from somewhere," Twigg said with an evil wee smile, "cannot field an army to save itself, much less interfere in the rest of Europe… as they dearly wish to do. You were in the West Indies, and missed our invasion of the Dutch Batavian Republic in '98. Horrid muddle, that, with the Russian Navy and Army as temporary, but prickly, allies. Sent forces from the Black Sea into the Aegean, the Adriatic, and eastern Mediterranean, and dearly wished to remain, in possession of anything they could lay their hands on, 'til the Tsar learned that he would not be given Malta, as the new Commander of the Knights of Saint John, and recalled all their forces. Impossible for us to invade, possessed of millions of military-age men, hence impossible for us to contain, should they put their minds to expanding their empire westward. A rebellion of the serfs could estop that for a long time. Ask your Mistress Eudoxia how her family, barely a cut above serfdom, suffered, should you ever run into her again."

  "But what emerges from the ruins, Mister Twigg?" Lewrie asked. "Most likely, a weak and fractious land wracked by eternal wars 'tween various regions, and warlords," Twigg said with relish. "Could I snap my fingers and turn all France to dust and bones, I would do so, Lewrie. A nation which wishes to survive has no friends, only interests." "And the United States?" Lewrie wondered.

  "Hmmpf! As I recall from the reports sent me by you and Jemmy Peel, that loose federation of sovereign states is already at logger-heads. The southern states distrust the cold natures of the people of New England, the northern states mock the culture, manners, accents, and cuisine of the southern. As early as 1783, northern writers show scorn for southerners, and their institution of slavery, which is dying out in New England… even if it is the New Englanders who own, and make their money from, slave ships and Negro importation. If there is more anti-slavery sentiment in the North, we shall capitalise on that. If the southern states feel oppressed, we shall find some way to provide diplomatic and military aid, therefore widening the break in the unity of the 'United' States. That nation is far too young to have a nation-wide ethos, as of yet. Men's loyalites lie within their particular state's borders much more than the federal entity, which is far-distant and as distrusted by most as Englishmen distrust a large army."

  "And this is Crown policy? Your ultimate ploy?" Lewrie asked. "But what of our own economy, th
e sugar and all from the West Indies?"

  "We ban slavery throughout the British Empire, Lewrie, giving us the moral and ethical 'guinea stamp,' " Twigg schemed, "which will be as valuable as any amount of lost trade. Besides… the southern United States are almost completely agricultural. May we, by diplomatic and moral force, make slavery so shameful an institution in America that the federal government bans it… at least bans the further importation of Africans, they are crippled, in need of imported goods, finance, and… 'friends,' d'ye see? Our shipping interests, sugar interests, will go where the products are, will make just as much money as they did before, and will be just as happy. The Navigation Acts will not be violated, for British exports, in British bottoms, will sail to ports in the South, and return with all the timber, tobacco, naval stores, rum, and molasses as before, in addition to the burgeoning sources of flax and hemp for linen and rope, and the newer southern crops, such as sugar cane and cotton.

  "If the Liverpool slavers in the 'Triangle Trade' are harmed, if the few sugar grandees in the West Indies go out of business, then it is a small price to pay," Twigg happily concluded.

  "First, though, we have to abolish slavery in all British possessions," Lewrie rejoined. "And that involves me. Did I just stumble into this, or…?"

  "You were, Lewrie, once I became aware of your plight, the perfect example with which to deepen the average Englishman's detestation of slavery, to make more people aware of the issue, and, in supporting a successful naval hero guilty of stealing Blacks… an act of liberation, if you will… so Britain will be seen by the entire civilised world doing something about it, leading the way, setting a high-minded example for the rest of the world to emulate. Wilber-force, Priestly, Hannah More, and Clarkson et al., perhaps even the Wesley brothers and their too-exuberant 'Leaping Methodism' which has so taken hold of the common folk, even Bentham and his rot, are reforming Britain from the ground up, fostering a stronger religiosity, and the concurrent moral climate which accompanies such, so that our 'Christian Duty' will be, in future, to right the perceived wrongs of a sinful world, ha ha!"