Jonathan sighed. “You must realize that your reputation precedes you. God’s wounds, you’ve been refused so many times already, no one wants to risk on a man others decline to back. A buccaneer, after all. An accused pirate, too. And amidst a pack of frightened merchants who recall that not long ago a Bristol ship, the Charles the Second, sailing to the Spanish Indies, turned pirate last year near the Groyne, sailed instead to the Red Sea, and took one of the Mogul’s ships, causing one hell of an uproar. Man named Every, or something like that. So you can’t blame them; they wonder if you would do the same. Indeed, perhaps some fear that a man who could change sides so quickly from James to William might offer his ship up to James as a Jacobite privateer—”
Edward’s cold stare cut him short.
“I didn’t it mean it that way, Edward. No one questions your loyalty. Damn it, I’m a Jacobite at heart, if not in head. And anyway, your Jacobite past has surely inclined some of our Bristol investors toward you, fond as they were of King James.”
“And apparently turned others, like the Lords Osborne, against me, in spite of my recent service to the crown,” Edward said.
“The Duke of Leeds is an ungrateful wretch. Nothing comes from his ass but stinking corruption. He’s a damned assassin, too, or so I hear, or was, back during the Popish plot and Godfrey’s murder and all that. You’d be left with nothing but hands full of shit if he were your patron and partner.”
Edward laughed out loud.
“And now you laugh at me—may I continue without fearing for my life?” asked Jonathan.
Edward laughed again. “You may,” he answered lightly, then more seriously, and over two more cups of wine apiece, he described his Irish intrigues in detail, including the letters and what he intended with them, to which Jonathan replied with his usual wise counsel.
“Tomorrow, then,” Jonathan said, encouraged by the opportunity of the letters. “Some polite ass-caressing words to Deigle and we can make a clear ship for engaging, so to speak, and soon be away to sea. By the way, that backstabber Lynch has disappeared from Bristol, gone to London I hear, but I swear I saw him in Bath not long ago. And he’s got a new nickname: Double Bung! Damn, that reminds me! You’d best watch out for that Upcott wench. While you were gone I saw her two or three times at affairs Deigle was lording over; she was trying to catch his eye. Not sure she ever did, there were entire flocks of gentle whores trying to alight upon his cock. Heed your advice and mine, lad, and beware of her!”
Chapter 19
How is this! A picaroon is going to board my frigate! Here’s one chase-gun for you.
—Aphra Behn, The Rover, 1677
The next morning, Edward and Jonathan were greeted by the sounds of splashing water, children playfully screaming, and young women laughing. They caught whiffs of sulfur as they climbed the stairs to the gallery overlooking King’s Bath and smaller Queen’s Bath beside.
Edward glanced down at the ancient green-water pools filled with bathers of all ages. The men wore breeches, the women yellow garments whose sleeves and skirts ballooned around them, and the children were naked. Here and there, tied to a woman’s arm with a ribbon, was a floating lacquered dish, on which were perfume, a nosegay, and a few small patches to serve as beauty marks. A few children dove into the baths from the galleries before the sergeant, whose duty it was to keep order, could prevent them. Spectators—gentlemen gamesters, merry widows, chaperoned young women, penniless suitors, rakes and Hectors—lined the galleries and watched as the bathers floated, swam, and flirted.
At the center of King’s Bath was the pump house with crutches hung from its supports and roof by those whom the waters had cured. Edward, however, had a theory that exercise had been the cure, not the waters. The exercise of both body and mind was a better cure than a physician’s nostrums, he believed, a notion curiously similar to that of a Puritan preacher he had once met in New England, although in all other ways the two men differed entirely.
And it’s time to exercise my brain more and my lust and sword less, Edward thought, for now I enter again a world I despise, of patronage and pandering, of begging and bribery.
The two Scotsmen paused before they approached Lord Deigle, whom they spotted standing with two other noblemen by the gallery rail, with his secretary and servants in attendance.
Viscount Deigle leaned against the rail of the gallery above King’s Bath, his legs crossed to display his muscular calves. He stared and smiled at every woman who walked past. His face and figure were superficially imposing, with squinty, deep, narrowly set eyes, Roman nose, permanent smirk, and, in spite of being almost as tall as Edward, a small hitch or heel-bounce in his step when he walked, as if he felt he were not quite tall enough.
Around his party, at a discreet distance, fluttered obsequious humanity who had come to see and be seen, all of them bedecked in lightly powdered and perfumed periwigs, with scented gloves, fur muffs, beribboned canes, gilded and plated smallswords thrust fashionably through coat pockets, and hats in-hand in order not to ‘offend’ their delicately coiffed wigs. Silver and gold snuffboxes clicked endlessly as wits, fops, and sycophants sniffed, dripped, and, figuratively, drooled.
Edward felt like a beggar asking for a handout as he approached Viscount Deigle, but at least he did not entirely look like one. He was dressed in understated martial elegance. His periwig was un-powdered, tied at the back, and of a style almost out of fashion. His smallsword today was a French colichemarde with silver hilt and copper wire grip, quite serviceable as well as à la mode, hanging from a sword belt buckled over a sash over his coat. His cravat was of white point de Venice, casually tied and tucked into a button hole in the French military fashion. His hat was black with a white feathered edge, his coat blue with gold lace, his waistcoat buff-yellow and similarly laced, his breeches and shoes black, his clocked stockings white. For the occasion he even carried an elegant but sturdy walking stick made of a hard tropical wood. Some of the nearby fops might sneer at his dress, but they would do so in private.
Or so he thought.
“Hardly au courant,” he heard one man say to his companion, deliberately loud enough to be overheard. “Such a shade of blue as my whore might wear on Sunday, or a butcher might wear in his trade.”
Perhaps the pair of well-born gentlemen—‘painted, powdered, and patched,’ not to mention ‘simpering, apish, and cringing’ as one scathing wit put it—thought themselves free from retribution, given Edward’s obvious position as supplicant to a Great Man.
“Edward...” Jonathan whispered as his fellow Scotsman strode directly toward the two men, his face. He could not care less that he was too poor to keep up with fashions that changed monthly, nor would he have followed them even if he could. But he could not abide such impudent cowardice. If a man must insult him, let it be to his face.
The fops lost their grins as Edward approached, left hand on his sword, right hand gripping his walking stick like a basket-hilted cudgel.
“We don’t know you, sir,” said one as he fumbled to close his snuff box, his voice rising in pitch.
Like a fart held in too long, Edward thought.
“You lie, sir,” Edward said quietly and coldly. “You know me well enough to comment on my favorite shade of blue, and of the trades it represents. I have indeed been called a butcher, yet unjustly, although I’ve covered myself in plenty of my own blood and that of others as well. I’ve never been called a whore, although I’ve known a fair number of women whom you would so consider; yet I found them of far more gentle breeding than I do you. Please honor me with your presence away from here, so that we might discuss the color of my coat further, not to mention my real occupation.”
“I take not your meaning, sir,” stammered the wit whom Edward’s coat had offended.
“I mean for you to walk with me with your sword. I have one that sets my blue coat off well, and your coat...what is that color, sir, of your coat? Yellow?”
“It is gold-brown, sir, gold-brown.”
“It needs a crimson trim.”
“Sir, sir,.... I have only my walking sword with me, not my fighting. And your leg, sir, well, you limp a bit, sir, it wouldn’t be fair to fight you today.”
“You may consider my slight limp to your advantage then, even though it didn’t stop me from killing a highwayman in Ireland or a French privateer or two at sea,” he said, so calmly that the fop grew even more afraid.
“I am sorry sir, we must wait another day,” the fop answered, trembling. That the man was scared to death was obvious to everyone nearby. Surely no one had ever called him out so publicly and with such obvious martial superiority. Edward knew his sort too well, and he had nothing but contempt for him and his.
“And where is your fighting sword?”
“In London, sir,” stammered the sweating fop. One of his three beauty patches began to slide down his cheek.
“Then, sir, perhaps you’d prefer a taste of my walking stick instead? No? Then, sir, with your walking sword walk, and do it now, and do not return, ever, while I’m here, or come anywhere else I am, or we’ll see how well my fighting sword will fit up your backside to give you the spine you lack.”
Both men walked quickly away. Edward turned his back on the retreating pair, noting a pair of rather badly dressed gentlemen who had inexplicably escaped commentary on their own appearance. The pair turned quickly away as Edward’s hawk-like gazed raked them.
Jonathan, who had behaved with extraordinary reserve while Edward threatened the fops, tugged at Edward’s elbow and nodded in the direction of Viscount Henry Deigle. The nobleman soon noticed them, but continued his assessment of local pulchritude for several minutes more before addressing them. Edward fumed in silence.
More waiting, he thought, always waiting for some damned fool to pull his fat head out of his ass!
“Graham!” Viscount Deigle said eventually and flatly, “So glad to see you. And Captain MacNaughton; I knew you at once even, though the distance was great and I could not yet make out your face. You see, sir, I can spot a naval man anywhere. And these gentlemen,” he said, directing their attention to the men at his side, “are Charles, Lord Mohun—you may have heard of him—and Sir Robert Wordsworth.”
Edward knew Mohun. The young man, about twenty-one years old, was a notorious duelist and a murderer as well, but had enough influence at Court and in Parliament to protect him. Except for the unmistakable aura of debauchery, he did not look the part of a rake-hell, but rather of a self-indulgent and cunning backstabber, albeit a noble one. His face and lips were fat, his fingers delicate, his eyes weak but intelligent. He looked Edward over with an air both arrogant and tactical, notwithstanding that the two were already acquainted. Edward bowed—really more of an implied bow, something more than a nod and far less than the scraping of fop or courtier, and as much as he gave any man except a king—then ignored him.
“By God!” Deigle exclaimed suddenly, looking down into King’s Bath, “look at that one down there! I had my carriage bring her here from Bristol; she’s been after me almost since we first met some months ago, just before you sailed for Ireland, Captain. I had her the night we met, but not since then. Damn, look at that, almost three feet of cleanly sculpted leg, damn, now it’s gone, you can’t see her fine lines now. I hate the way the damn garments they wear float away from the body and conceal all that lies beneath. But I assure you she’s a fine wench, trim and fast. I wonder how she’ll look spitted on my yard tonight?”
Edward looked down at the woman, looked again, and bit his lip. He was certain she was Lydia Upcott. Alarms began to sound in his head.
“I think she’ll suit my lord well. She’s not married, but her father was a notorious Jacobite and lost all he had.”
“Married or not married, Jacobite or Whig, of what concern is this to me? I don’t care if a husband wears horns, nor do I care what politics or faith a woman has—women don’t rule the world. The only things they can contribute are wealth, sons, and delightful entertainment. Do you dance, Captain? I’m thinking of holding a dance tonight at King’s Mead.”
Edward wondered how well Viscount Deigle would wear horns: probably not well at all. The timing of Lydia’s pursuit of the pompous lord was of more concern to Edward. Still, it might be nothing more than coincidence. He had seen many curious coincidences in his life, and there had been nothing more to them than mere happenstance.
Lord Mohun and Sir Robert excused themselves, Mohun first pausing to whisper in Edward’s ear.
“It has been two years since last we met, sir. Since then, words have come to my ears about you from my friend Tom Wharton. And the wench below, my intelligencers tell me, is yours.”
Edward refused the invitation. “I’ve no claim upon her,” he murmured back.
“Ah, then she’ll not do, sir, not at all. We must meet later, sir, I must have more words with you.”
Mohun walked away, leaving Edward wondering at his cryptic speech. Those nearby whispered to each other, wondering if an affront had been given.
Edward heard Mohun tell his companion loudly, “We were together at Brest, with Lord Carmarthen when he reconnoitered the French defenses,” as the two walked away.
The peripheral whispers ceased.
“Well, Captain,” Viscount Deigle continued when Lord Mohun was gone, “you’ve returned from Ireland with more maritime adventures. It seems you are indeed the great mariner they say you are.”
“Thank you, my lord, but I am a mere adventurer by sea. To call me great is to give me a compliment I don’t deserve. I am an able seaman and navigator, and know how to fight both at sea and ashore,” he said, combining honesty and as much ingratiation as he could stomach.
“I, too, am a man of adventure, but alas, I can’t desert my duties in England—what think you of this pinnace steering her course toward us, Captain? What were we speaking of? Oh, yes, stipulations; if I am to use my influence in your quest for a commission, I trust you will also agree to my stipulations? Indeed, you must. We’ll come to terms first, then I’ll consider whether to support your petition. I must give it thought. Bunion,” he called to his secretary, “have someone bring a bottle of sack or Langon. Oh, my correspondence from Ireland, you do have it, Captain? Yes? I’m sure the letters hold what I think they do. Please give them to Bunion, I’ll read them tonight. I hope they hold great news for me.”
Viscount Deigle watched a young lady—his pinnace—pass shyly by. He was anything but shy about his desire for her.
“Truthfully, my lord—” Edward began.
“My lord,” interrupted Jonathan, “there are but few details to work out, details to put in order as is customary among men who follow the sea. If I might sit down with your lawyer and secretary we can draft the necessary agreements and sign them tomorrow. I have Captain MacNaughton’s confidence.”
“Excellent, sir, excellent: I loathe these matters of lawyers, contracts, and agreements. Your pardon, Captain,” said Viscount Deigle, “but I see my little yellow bird prepares to fly from the pond. I must escort her part-way to her lodging. She has flirted my way all day, excessively, I must say.”
“My lord,” Edward said, stepping in front of Deigle, incurring thereby a glare which clearly conveyed that the lord was unaccustomed to anyone interfering with his intentions, however slight.
“Captain?” he said slowly.
“My lord, a word. I have matters of State to discuss with you privately, matters of grave importance regarding the safety of the King, and thus of England herself; matters beyond those you tasked me in Ireland on your behalf, whose letters you say will not read until tonight. The matters I speak of are even more urgent.”
Deigle turned to watch long-legged Lydia disappear into her close chair and be carried off to her lodging. Edward saw her look up just before she did, and was certain she spotted both men. Deigle seemed to have an itch he must scratch immediately, yet Edward’s words held him back, and in doing so, angered him.
“Captain,
what mean you by this? And among so many common persons!” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Know you not the ways of managing secrets? Later, sir, later!”
“My lord,” Edward persisted, “I have letters from Ireland, taken by accident from rapparees who were surely also Jacobite agents.”
“And why do you have these letters, sir? Why have you not turned them over to the King’s officers in Ireland?”
“Because, my lord, I feared none would act soon enough upon them, and because there is good intelligence that there is a spy among them at the highest level. I feared, my lord, that only a man of your experience, stature, and intelligence would understand their import, and act upon it,” Edward said cunningly.
Deigle’s arrogant intransigence had forced Edward to breech his own rule against flattering a fool. The man was no deep thinker, but he was politically shrewd and in need of capital in the forms of hard currency and political power.
Handsome Harry bit his lip.
Edward continued. “My lord, surely with your standing at Court someone would heed these letters. You might take them yourself to the King or to the Earl of Portland. Or if not, send me with them, under your own hand.”
Edward intended these last words to give Deigle a way out, should Edward’s fears be unfounded, and a way for him to take credit should Edward’s fears be founded.
“I must read the letters,” Deigle said.
“Of course, my lord, immediately. They do not leave my person. Surely there is a private apartment here where you may read them,” Edward said, then thought, By God’s Wounds, the man hesitates. He’s debating whether to lay with Lydia or save his king!
“I do not see it, sir, I do not,” said Deigle a quarter hour later, upon reading the letters. “Further, sir, if there were something here, some plot as you see, wouldn’t Lord Brennan or Sir James have noted this in their letters? Lord Brennan in particular was once well-placed to know of these things; I’m sure he would have mentioned a plot if there were one. Indeed, this is one of the reasons for the letters you carried to him.”
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