A King`s Trade l-13

by Dewey Lambdin

  No J Really? Lewrie thought tongue-in-cheek; Such an out-going and amiable fellow like yourself? Perish the thought!

  "Believe me when I tell you, Lewrie," Mr. Twigg continued, now stern-faced and cold, "that people who've displeased me in the past I have ruined, for the good of the country, and, when naval or military force was involved, for the good of their respective services, in the long view. Had I really felt call to ruin you, whyever had I not had you cashiered years ago, hey?"

  "Well…" Lewrie was forced to realise.

  "Your personal life… such as it is…" Twigg scoffed on, with a leery roll of his eyes, "has no bearing on your public life, or your service to the Navy. Unless you were a drunkard, a rapist, or a brute so heedless and flagrant as to become a public spectacle, and a newspaper sensation. Thankfully, you're rather a mild sort of sinner. You know how to keep your 'itches' scratched with little notice. Sub Rosa, as it were. As an English gentleman should, or he ceases being a gentleman, and then you'd deserve ev'ry bit of your come-uppance."

  Lewrie could have little to say to that. He squirmed a little more on his chair, and blushed like a Cully chastened by a very stern old vicar, ready to swear he'd never do whatever it was, again.

  "Put me in mind of the Scot poet Robert Burns, you do, Lewrie," Twigg said with a thin-lipped smile and a simper. "Know of him, hey?"

  "Aye," Lewrie allowed himself to admit.

  "Burns said of himself that he was, ah… 'a professional fornicator with a genius for paternity,' " Twigg quoted with a chuckle.

  "Ah-hmm," Lewrie said, clearing his throat with a fist against his mouth.

  "Despite that, Burns wrote simply marvellous songs and poems," Twigg allowed, thawing a little. "Despite your shortcomings, you are an invaluable asset to the Navy, and the Crown, Lewrie, and I'll not let you be 'scragged' over this smarmy jape of yours 'gainst the Beauman family. Not 'til this war is done, and we've wrung the last drop of usefulness from you. You're as much a weapon as any broadside of guns ever you, or anyone else, fired."

  "Thank you, sir," Lewrie felt called to reply, with a shiver of relief that someone, no matter how horrid, was on his side. Under the circumstances, perhaps horrid, devious, and brutal aid was just what was needed!

  "Besides…" Twigg simpered again. "Watching you twist about in the wind is devilish-amusing… now and then. Eat up, man! Your food's going cold, and 'tis too tasty to go to waste. More wine? See to him, Ajit Roy jee. Bharnaa opar! Fill him up!"

  Suddenly in a much better mood, Lewrie accepted more piping-hot rice, more yogurt gravy, more slices of meat, and began to eat, about to rave over the exotic, long-missed, flavours, 'til…

  "How to achieve that aim, though… aye, there's the rub," Mr. Twigg mused over new-steepled fingers, with his fierce hatchet face in a daunting scowl. "Stealing those slaves and making sailors out of 'em rather exceeded your usual harum-scarum antics. Left 'em in the shade, as it were."

  "You mentioned that Sir Malcolm Shockley might be of some help, sir?" Lewrie dared to suggest, with curry sauce tingling his lips.

  "Aye, Shockley. He likes you, and he isn't your run-of-the-mill backbencher in the Commons, either. No Vicar of Bray, is he, nor is he the Great Mute, either. Allied with Sir Samuel Whitbread, and those younger 'progressives' who associate with him. Shockley's not a typical 'Country-Put,' like most of our rural, squirearchy, 'John Bull' Members are… damn 'em for the unsophisticate twits they are. There's wit behind his eyes!"

  "Fox, perhaps, sir?" Lewrie chimed in, hopefully

  "The Great Commoner?" Twigg sneered. "Following the Spithead and the Nore naval mutinies, the Prime Minister, Pitt the Younger, and the Tories crushed the man. I fear that the formerly-esteemed Charles James Fox is as powerless as a parish pensioner… and has about as many friends. That will be a real problem for you, for most of those who revile the institution of slavery are the same ones who spoke out so openly in praise of the French Revolution in

  the late '80s… men like Jeremy Bentham, Doctor Joseph Priestley, Wedgwood, the pottery fellow, Boulton and Watt, the steam-engine men, and the light-headed scribblers such as Blake and Coleridge… even Robert Burns, come to think of it. All the so-called Progressives, what? They run with the same pack. Still, that was ten years ago, and memories fade. No one got round to hanging them for uttering such rot, even if the French made them honorary citizens for their vocal public support."

  "But, that was before the Frogs lopped off King Louis's head," Lewrie sourly observed.

  "Well, that changed everything… but for the true hen-headed, of course." Twigg smirked most evilly. "No, knowing those worthies as I do, the vehemence with which they revile slavery will naturally make them raise up a too public hue and cry, a veritable crusade, with you the heart of their righteous blather. Make a martyr of you…"

  "And don't most martyrs end up dyin', Mister Twigg?"

  "Well, of course they do, Lewrie! Can't have martyrs without a good bonfire, and shrieks of agony!" Twigg chortled. "What we need is the subtile back-gate approach, else the pro-slavery colonial and shipping interests in Parliament demand your cashiering, and hanging… to spite the do-gooders, if for no better reason. No, we must go to cleverer men, who can see the longer view. Wilberforce, perhaps. Aye, Wilberforce would be your man!"

  God save me! Lewrie thought, shrinking at the mention of that name. William Wilberforce and his coven of familiars had been a bane on English Society for years, marching on age-old morals (or the lack of them!) like a vengeful army of pitchfork-armed Puritans through the "Progressive" wing of the Church of England, evinced by the so-called Clapham Sect; on another front via the House of Commons since so many Members were of like minds; and through Philanthropy in the public arena, a third front led by rich and influential women like Mrs. Hannah More and Elizabeth Fry… by Jeremy Bentham, himself, with his Vice Society and his damnable concept of Utilitarianism. If things didn't meet his strict and narrow key-holes of the most benefit for the most people, then damn it to Hell and do away with it… whatever it was. Lt. Langlie had gotten a copy of Bentham's Panopticon, his view of an ideal England, and had been aghast, as had Lewrie, that it called for total surveillance of everyone's waking actions by a "morality police" as an infernal machine to "grind rogues honest"!

  Over the years, maypoles and dancing about them had been banned, village football and Sunday cricket had all but disappeared; good old Church Ales were completely gone. Fairs, bear-baiting, dog- and cock-fighting, throwing at cocks, greased-goose pulls, beating the bounds (and springtime beating of boys to keep them honest!), pig-racing, and all sorts of light-hearted amusements had been done away with, which had reputedly led Mrs. Hannah More to declare that sooner or later, all that would be left would be the new-fangled Sunday schools, and that the people of England "would have nothing else to look at but ourselves"!

  Why, by now, the reformers might've even done away with fox-hunting and steeplechasing! Damn 'em. Newly-rich arrivistes, Non-Conforming Anglicans, Dissenters, and Methodists barred from Public Office, Service, or Honours; jumped-up tradesmen become wealthy, grand landowners; even that ex-slaver John Newton (who'd written Mr. Winwood's poem and hymn and had been Saved)… oh, but it was a devious conspiracy of do-gooding that opposed almost all that Lewrie thought he fought to preserve! Why, give them a few more years, and topping goose-girls, milk-maids, and serving wenches would be right out, too!

  "Such flam," Lewrie muttered. "Bentham, Fry, those sort. That writer, Macauley, and Wilberforce and the Evangelical Society, they're all of a piece, Mister Twigg. Are you sure we need their…?"

  "Sarah Trimmer, don't forget," Twigg added. "She who thinks our old fairy tales too indecent for today's children. 'Dick Whittington's Cat' leads the poor to aspire above their proper stations, for instance. 'Cinderella,' which my granddaughter adores, by the way, is too harsh on step-mothers and step-sisters. To Trimmer's lights, we need tales more uplifting, instructional, and useful. Gad, though, just try reading some of her al
ternatives. Horrid, simpering, blathering pap!

  "It's the war, I suppose," Twigg continued, after a moment of gloom. "You were in England during the naval mutinies, which, for a time, looked to become a nationwide Levellers' rebellion that might've overthrown Crown, Parliament, and the Established Church, to boot! In dread of the French revolutionary Terror being replicated here, perhaps the Mob needs taming, and our upstarts quashed.

  "Thankfully, however," Twigg said with a sardonically amused leer, "our earnest reformers wish to do their chiefest work among our semi-savage poor, not the well-to-do. So far, that is. More wine?"

  "Uhm, aye… but!" Lewrie replied, impatient with the niceties. "Let that lot get their hooks in me, and I'm done for, Mister Twigg!"

  "You are surely 'done for' do they not, Lewrie," Twigg sombrely pointed out. "Where else could you find aid?"

  "Well…" Lewrie said after a deep breath, shrugging without a single clue. "Damn my eyes."

  "Exactly," Twigg said with a sage simper. "How was the ride up from

  London?"

  "Just bloody lovely!" Lewrie snapped. "Bucolic, and…" "I meant the state of the roads, and the weather, Lewrie!" Mr. Twigg snapped back in exasperation. " 'Less there's a thunderstorm and washed-out roads, there's daylight enough to get us down to London and lodgings… where I may write to those I believe most-able to give you aid. No time like the present, what? If pouring rain, we'll take my coach, if not, my chariot. Much faster. Your hired 'prad' I'll stable here and have my groom send down, later. Leading an indifferent horse at the cart's tail will only slow us down. Eat up, and we're off."

  "Do you really think we'll be able to…?" Lewrie asked in awe of Twigg's alacrity, and in great relief that, dubious as he was, there was one ally willing to save him from a "hemp neck-stock."

  "Hope springs eternal… all that," Twigg responded, roughly shovelling in a last bite or two, taking a last sip or two of wine.

  Damme, but this is going to irk, but…! Lewrie thought; under the circumstances, there was nothing else for it.

  "Then I thank you most humbly and gratefully, sir," Lewrie was forced to say. "However things fall out, I will be forever in your debt."

  "Yayss… you will be," Twigg drawled with a superior expression on his phyz, and his eyes alight in contemplation of future schemes.

  A chariot… Jesus!

  Oh, it had seemed perky enough, at first. Just a rapid jaunt, what? The sporting blades of the aristocracy and the squirearchy were simply daft for speed, and bandied about the names of famous coachmen who made their "diligence-" or "balloon" coaches fly on the highways of the realm. Some of them would offer substantial sums to take the reins from an indifferent (and bribable) coachee for a single leg of a coach trip. They knew the names of the famous whip-hands, and bragged about a mere handshake from a hero coachee as one would boast about a meeting with a champion jockey or boxer, forever comparing records of how quick Old So-And-So shaved five whole minutes from a run 'twixt The Olde Blue Rabbit tavern and the Red Spotted Pig posting-house, or some such rapid run of umpteen-ish miles, and the odd casualty bedamned.

  If an urchin or two, one of the cheap fares who rode on the top or clung to the footmen's seats atop the boot, were bounced off and got turned into imitation cow-pies in the road, then so be it. If the slow and unwary hiker got trampled, well… it only made for a better tale at journey's end!

  Chariots were even better, for well-to-do young bloods could be, had to be, the drivers, and, but for a hallooing chum or two in the wee open compartment with them, any accident wouldn't claim any innocents, who just might know a lawyer and sue for damages! Chariots were "all the go" and "all the crack," meant to be whipped into breathtaking speed, and there was nothing grander! Lewrie had, rather inconveniently, forgotten all that.

  And dour old Zachariah Twigg, so precise and Oxonian a fellow of the older generation, surely his chariot and matched team of horses was merely a retired fellow's affectation… wasn't it?

  Unfortunately, no. Once aboard, Twigg had revealed a new facet to his character. There was a mischievious glint to his eyes, an evil little chuckle under his breath, and a sly smile on his lips as he took the reins in one hand, a long whip in the other, and turned into a Biblical Jehu.

  They were off in a flash, headed downhill for his estate's gate quicker than a startled lark, making a fair rate of knots even before they passed the gate in the inner wall surrounding Spyglass Bungalow, moist dirt and gravel flying in twin rooster-tails from the madly-spinning wheels. At the highway, Twigg didn't slow that much, either; they shot out into the road, other traffic bedamned, "heeled" over on one wheel, and slewing about like a wagging cat's tail!

  "Brisk… ah ha!" Twigg exulted as they thundered along, really beginning to gain speed.

  "Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh!" Lewrie replied, unable to form words, if he cared a whit for his teeth and tongue, as the chariot drummed, banged, and juddered. His portmanteau bag and valise at his feet, between his legs, were bouncing so high that he had to press his knees together if he cared a whit for his "nutmegs," as well.

  Down the long, slow rise they tore, the chariot's axle starting to keen about as loud as Lewrie wished he could. He would have been wide-eyed and gape-mouthed in utter terror, if doing so would not end with a mouthful of muddy road, or the loss of an eye from gravel flung up from the team's rear hooves.

  "On, boys! On!" Twigg cried, cracking his whip over the horse team's heads. "Marvellous, ah ha!" Followed by a madman's cackle.

  "You're a bloody shite-brained…!" Lewrie tried accusing, but the chariot took a jounce or two, wheels above the ground, and it only came out as another series of "duh-duh-duh-duhs!" Twigg was swaddled up in an old, shabby over-coat, an ancient (wind-cutting) tricorne hat jammed low on his brows, with a muffler about his neck and halfway up to his nose; he was getting spattered, but it might not matter. Alan, though… his heavy grogram boat cloak was no use at all, for it flew behind him like a loose-footed lugsail, the gilt chain riding high on his Adam's apple and damned-near strangling him. What was happening to his pristine white waist-coat, shirt, neck-stock, and his very best uniform coat he didn't want to even contemplate.

  Lewrie looked ahead of them (with one slitted eye, it here must be told) just in time to screech, "Watch out for that… Oh, Christ!" as Twigg swerved their chariot over almost to the verge of the highway to miss an offending hay-waggon drawn by a yoke of plodding oxen, that flashed past in a twinkling, so quickly that all Lewrie could sense of their near-collision was an ox-bellow, a startled cow-fart, and a waggoner's thin cry of "Yew bloody damn'…!"

  And, by the time they'd slewed back into their proper lane, the light pony trap coming the other way had had time to move right over, and they missed that'un by yards!

  "Aah… ha ha ha!" Twigg exulted, his long whip cracking, and Lewrie shut his eyes and tried to summon up a prayer.

  Twigg, damn him!, drove as if the Devil was at his heels (which in Twigg's case, Lewrie thought, was an apt description!) chortling and whooping delight like Billy-O; like an ancient Celt warrior, mead-drunk and painted in blue woad, out to smash through a Roman legion, just one more good charge for good, sweet ancient Queen Boadicea; like Pharaoh raced in pursuit of that damned Moses, upon discovering that the wily bastard had decamped for the Promised Land without finishing his mud-brick quota, and had absconded with a dozen of his favourite concubines to boot! All Pharaoh could expect from Dissenter religionists!

  All Lewrie could do was hang on for dear life to the front and the side frame and light screening wood, and try hard not to get thrown clean out of the infernal machine, have his "wedding tackle" knackered by his luggage, or lose his only change of clothing, entire! A time or two, on the flat stretches (without competing traffic, though Lewrie wasn't going to peek to determine that), it was even hard to breathe at their mad pace. Facing forward, it felt like he was aboard the quickest frigate ever built, going "full and by" into the apparent wind in a half-gale. Of course, the muck
flung up from the team made breathing difficult enough.

  Finally… after what seemed an interminable term in Hell, the drumming of horses' hooves slowed from a Marine drummer's "Long Roll" to summon a crew to Quarters to rather sedate, and distinctive clops.

  He, at last, dared take a peek 'twixt the ringers of one hand, the one he used to rake mud-slime from his eyes, and was amazed to see that they were on the Tottenham Court Road, just about to the crossing where it became Charing Cross.

  "We're here," Twigg commented with a grunt of satisfaction, and a peek at his pocket watch, as if he'd just beaten his old record for a "jaunt" to town. Indeed, they were; Lewrie's addled senses re-awoke to the sights, sounds, and smells of bustling London. Twigg had removed his ancient tricorne (now much the worse for wear) and had replaced it with a natty new-styled hat; his grimy muffler now lay at his feet, as did his old overcoat, revealing the "country squire" suitings he'd had on during dinner. He looked clean as a new penny-whistle… damn him!

  With a twitch of his reins, Twigg swung them onto Oxford Street, headed west. "I will drop you at your father's gentlemen's hotel and club, Lewrie," he told him. "You are sure to get lodging there… and at a significant discount, I'd wager, hah? Right round the corner to mine own house in Baker Street. Convenient, that, for our purposes."

  "Should I dine with you tonight, then, sir?" Lewrie asked, flexing his hands, now that there was no need to cling to the chariot with a death-grip.

  "Not a bit of it!" Twigg barked, back to his old, imperious self. "There's too much for me to do, tonight, to put your salvation on good, quick footing. Eminent people with whom to dine, and consult over victuals, hmm? Speed's the thing, before any news from Jamaica makes you a pariah, subject to arrest, hah!"

  "What a pity," Lewrie said, tongue-in-cheek, now that he could trust using it without the end of it getting snipped off on a deep rut and a bounce. Which statement made Twigg glare down his nose at him.

  "It would be best for you if you kept close to your lodgings, Lewrie," Twigg instructed. "No gadding about. No drunken sailor's antics, for a time. And I'll thank you to keep your breeches buttoned up snug, as long as we're here, sir. Let us not give your anonymous tormentor any more grist for his, or her, mill. And, the influential men and women whom we wish to espouse your cause are a prim lot. Even the slightest whiff of new scandal or dalliance, and you'll lose what hope they could offer you, n'est-ce pas?"