The King's Coat

by Dewey Lambdin

  “The vicar came up with a most interesting suggestion, Pilchard. And a perfect excuse for Alan not to be present when this matter comes to its fruition.”

  “And that is, Sir Hugo, if I may inquire?”

  “Naval service, Pilchard, naval service!” Sir Hugo boomed it with a hearty chuckle. “The boy is not come to his majority, and is overseas, preferably far overseas, on the King’s business, when we enter the court. Write it up so that I am his guardian or whatever, so that his signature, which you assure me of, gives me total control over everything he is due, in the first instance, and hang the rest of what you had planned.”

  “But if he survives to return to England, Sir Hugo, he is then heir, and can take you to court for all of it. I believe he should sign away all claims, as we initially laid out.”

  “Now what are the odds of a midshipman returning?” Sir Hugo stood to refill his glass. “Off to the Americas, the Fever Islands, or the East Indies among all those pagan Hindoos?”

  “Not good, sir, but not certain, I’m afraid.”

  “But no problem until the war is over, at any rate. He knows nothing now, and can learn nothing thousands of miles away. It strengthens our appearance, does it not, safeguarding the interests of my … son, as he fights for England, his King? Oh, shout Harroo for England and St. George! And should he survive and return, it will be much too late to do anything.”

  “He is a clever little devil, Sir Hugo. God help me, but I think he may tumble to it … eventually, that is.”

  “Then the second part, the part you first suggested to me, shall be a secret agreement between him and me, obtainable for reasons you make clear, and only the first part of the document, concerning guardianship, shall be presented in court. Surely that shall suffice.”

  “I believe that would suit, Sir Hugo. Though I still worry that asking him to put his name to so many documents will bring his suspicions up—”

  “To the devil with his suspicions! The means of removal has to come up from Portsmouth, so we shall let that little damme-boy stew in his own skin for a few days. By that time I am sure he shall be most agreeable.”

  There was a soft knock on the door, and Belinda entered the room, now dressed in high fashion and bearing a cloak, hat and muff for an evening out. She crossed to her father and planted a gentle kiss on his cheek. He put an arm around her.

  “Off, are you?”

  “Lady Margaret is giving a drum,” Belinda said calmly. “Now I shall be fashionably late for it. Did I do well, Father?”

  “Excellently well, my girl. And you shall share in my gratitude and munificence once this is behind us.”

  “I never doubted it, Father.” She beamed, then bade them both goodnight, leaving Sir Hugo humming to himself, and Pilchard fidgeting as he thought upon his new document’s form and content.

  * * *

  “Where’s the chamber pot, then?” Alan demanded as he was shoved into a dark and cheerless garret servant’s room at the back of the house.

  “Criminals don’t deserve none.” Morton smirked.

  “I’m sure you know about criminals, Morton, you were born one! Candles, too, and a bed.”

  “An’ why not a bottle an’ some bird, an’ a servant girl while you’re askin’, young sir,” Morton jibed back. “Scandalous goin’s on, I swear to heaven. Rapin’ your own sister!”

  “And you the innocent babe just down from the country. Goddamn you, fetch me light and some sort of bedding—”

  “I’ll fetch ya a ticket to your own hangin’, and that’s all, you little bastard,” Morton said, shoving him back into the dark room with a horny fist and slamming the door. “Ye’r not the high an’ mighty little buck o’ the first head now, are you, young sir?” he crowed through the wood, then laughed his way down to the landing and out of hearing.

  There was a thin slit of light under the door, which did little to banish the gloom of that tiny garret cell, and Alan sat down next to it, arranging his coat over his knees and chest as a makeshift blanket.

  Now what the hell is this all about? he pondered again, now a bit more levelheaded than when the posse had broken in on him. Why should they all show up at the same time, as if it were arranged…?

  There had, though, never been much sense in the household, from the way Sir Hugo ran his own affairs to the way he allowed Belinda and Gerald to run riot with their own pleasures and interests. Sir Hugo had never shown much discipline toward them, or much affection, either, too far gone in his own cares ever to notice his children. Alan had come into the house a three-year-old waif in rags, to a paradise of food and good clothing and the life of a moneyed scion of a great man, or so it seemed. Quite a change from the parish poorhouse he had known since birth and the death of his mother (at least they’d told him she’d been poor and was dead). He had been prepared to be grateful and loving, but there had been a vast gulf that he could never bridge, made of his father’s icy indifference. By the time he was breeched and off to the first in a long succession of schools he had stopped trying to bridge the gulf and only took advantage of the man’s largesse. He had wanted for nothing, had been allowed to run riot like the son of a titled lord with few warnings to correct his behavior. And now, suddenly, this…?

  “What in hell did I do?” he asked the darkness. “Hopped onto my half sister. Well, that’s almost fashionable these days, isn’t it? All the good families do it, and without witnesses, too. Now I’m on my way out because of it. Why?”

  He tried to think that he had crossed Sir Hugo’s interests in some way but could not think of any woman he had had that Sir Hugo wanted. He wasn’t exactly champion wasteful with money; in fact, he had a fair amount of his allowance hidden away, since he had gotten his fingers burned gambling the year before and had lost his taste for the tables. He had not purchased anything extravagant, or at least nothing so extravagant that would make his father bite furniture over it.

  God’s Balls, he thought suddenly; the old fart’s gone smash over some investment and I’m now expendable. He can’t afford to keep all of us and I’m only half a son, not like Gerald. If I’m not careful I’ll end up some drudging clerk. Maybe someplace brutal and nasty, like Liverpool. But why not just call me in and tell me I’m chucked…?

  He shivered with the cold, and with his misery, clamping his knees together to control his aching bladder, and waited for the dawn, soon too foxed by wine to keep his eyes open, dreaming of revenge and triumph.

  * * *

  It was four days before Alan was freed from his cold and gloomy garret prison to be brought down to the study. He did not make a very pretty picture by then. His light brown hair was lank about his face and his queue was loose. He wore no neckstock, and his fashionable white silk waistcoat all sprigged with red and blue flowers was crumpled from service as a pillow. His silk stockings had ladders in them, and his tightly cut grey blue satin suit looked more like a stained and bedraggled bad bargain from a ragpicker’s barrow.

  On the way down he had seen Gerald entertaining a strange man in the parlor by the fire, the man swathed in a voluminous dark blue cape held open for warmth from the grate.

  Court official? Alan wondered. Or one of Gerald’s lovers getting his equipment to room temperature? But there’s no sign of the Charlies about. No one seeming to be a member of the watch, usually spavined oldsters with cudgels, was in evidence, and he considered that a reason for cheer. God knew he needed some badly at that point. He had fretted and pondered feverishly all the time of his confinement as to what last straw he had broken, if any, and what was to be his fate.

  He was led to face his father, who glowered at him from the study fireplace. Pilchard stood behind the writing desk with his most serious legal face on.

  “You know Mister Pilchard,” Sir Hugo began. “He has paid you out of trouble often enough in the past for you two to be good friends by now, hasn’t he? Well, hasn’t he?”

  “I suppose so, sir,” Alan meekly responded.

  “What coul
d have possessed you?” Sir Hugo demanded. “You realize this isn’t some country girl to be fobbed off with twenty pounds. This is your own sister you tried to rape. You are finished, boy.”

  “What rape?” Alan shot back, but shuddering cold inside. “Not until that Bible Thumper stuck his beak in, it wasn’t rape.”

  “You’re facing a hanging offense,” Sir Hugo intoned.

  “But it wasn’t rape! She was the one that wanted to do it and I went along with it. You know her nature, surely—”

  “What’s worse, I know yours,” Sir Hugo shot back.

  “Then you know I wouldn’t have to depend on rape. The town’s full of quim to be had, without a bit of struggle.”

  “That nature of yours could get you hanged, Alan,” Sir Hugo said. “You were caught in the act, and we have witnesses.”

  “And I can provide a platoon of witnesses for myself, and for my dear sister’s character as well, if it comes to that.”

  “Only if it comes to trial, boy.”

  “What is this? Just what do you want from me? Since when have you gotten so holy?”

  “Sir Hugo and I … that is, we … have come to what we believe to be a most salutary solution to the contretemps which you brought about by your unnatural act of forcible rape upon your sister,” Pilchard said from behind the desk. “For the sake of your family we—”

  “Oh, don’t prose like a front bencher in Parliament, Pilchard,” Sir Hugo said crossly, going to the sideboard for an early morning brandy. “Get to the meat of it.”

  “You are to be banished,” Pilchard summed up. “You may never more lay claim to the Willoughby name—”

  “I never did, you miserable ass.”

  “Pray allow me to continue, young sir,” Pilchard said, wagging a finger at him. “You must go away, for the family’s best interests. You can no longer reside under this roof, in London or in England. And it would be most inadvisable for you to return, for obvious reasons.”

  “You’re raving—” Alan blanched.

  “If you do not, then we shall summon the watch and have you taken before the magistrate. We have no choice,” Sir Hugo warned, making happy sounds from the brandy decanter with his back to the show.

  “Your sister is the one who wishes to prefer charges,” Pilchard informed him. “While we wish to spare her reputation, and the family reputation, she has decided otherwise. If this does go to court you would throw undying shame on your own family, and it would most likely cost you your life. At best, commitment to Bedlam as an uncontrollable lunatic. Do you understand the seriousness of what you have done?”

  Alan was stunned into silence, beginning to doubt his memories of the incident. Belinda wants to prosecute me? She’s a brainless whore. No, there’s something here that isn’t right.

  The whole thing was astonishing, too astonishing to be credited. Part of the shock to his system, admittedly, was the realization that he would have to give up his whole life, even if he, by acquiesence, saved his mere existence. There went the girls, the money, the parties, his circle of friends and fellow roisterers, all the pleasures of the world’s greatest city. Not to mention the perquisites of the moderate wealth of even a second son.

  “We have here an agreement which Sir Hugo hopes you have the wit to sign, which will spare your family any further loss of reputation.”

  “What reputation did you have in mind? The good name of Sir Hell-Fire Club over there, my sister the open beard, or my brother the butt-fucking Molly?” Alan scoffed.

  Morton must have been in the room behind him all that time, for Alan’s arms were seized at the elbows and forced high behind his back, bringing a yelp of pain and surprise from him as he was forced into a half-crouch to the floor.

  “I hope you’re enjoying this, you butcher’s dog,” Alan managed to get out between clenched teeth.

  “I am, sir,” Morton whispered into his ear. “An’ about time, too, let me tell ya!”

  “Now listen to me, you little bastard,” Sir Hugo said, leaning over the edge of the desk so he could stare into Alan’s face. “What we want from you is for you to be gone. And we don’t want any public trial, so there won’t be one. You’ll have to leave the city and the country, but you’ll be alive. And with some money in hand to spend on your beastly habits.”

  “My beastly habits? What about yours…? Oww!” Alan went to his knees as Morton applied more pressure. “I suppose you want me to admit to a rape I didn’t commit, too.”

  “Not at all,” Pilchard said. “You merely have to sign this and go.”

  I’m as good as knackered right now, he told himself sadly; I haven’t a hope in hell of fighting this, whatever it is.

  “Father,” Alan asked as sweetly as he could under the circumstances, “just why is this necessary? Was I any bigger a sinner than the rest of us? Have I cost you more money than Belinda does? She spends more on the Strand in a day than I do in a month. And half of London knows all about Gerald. Last time he went to Bath he was lucky to escape alive. I’m not going to inherit anyway, so why are you doing this?”

  Let’s put our contrite face on now, laddy, he told himself; maybe I can wheedle free yet.

  “I beg you, Father,” he said with emotion. “Don’t disown me like this. Don’t turn me out. From the moment you pulled me out of that parish orphanage and claimed me as yours, I have been full of gratitude and love for you.”

  “Don’t abuse my wit, boy,” Sir Hugo said. “You love your purse and your gut and your prick, but I doubt this sudden affection for me. We cannot keep you around after this, and you know it.”

  Well, it was worth a try. Alan sighed heavily; old bastard knows me too well. I’ve had it.

  “Um, you mentioned money?” Alan asked. At this, Sir Hugo smiled and waved a signal to Morton to relent his hold so Alan could rise to his feet. “Just how much did you have in mind?”

  “Fifty pounds per annum,” Pilchard said.

  That’s four pounds … three shillings a month. Alan quickly figured in his head. This is ludicrous. I spend more than that in a week, and that’s with food and lodging all found! Even in some hog’s-wallow of a village in the North, I’d starve to death. Not to mention being bored absolutely shitless.

  “I want a hundred,” Alan stated, testing the waters.

  “You’re mad … raving!” His father sneered.

  “For whatever reasons you have, you want me gone,” Alan told him, resigned to his fate but anxious to get some of his own back. “If you’re broke and have to sell up, say so, but why go to this ridiculous charade? You don’t want this to go to trial, so there must be some blunt in it for you somewhere. I want some of it, if there’s any to be had. I don’t know anywhere a gentleman can live for less than three hundred pounds a year, so consider this a bargain price.”

  “Gone smash, have I?” Sir Hugo laughed. “Is that what you think?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind.”

  “You’re going because you are despicable, and I’ll not have the Willoughby name tied to anything scandalous.”

  “As if it isn’t already?” Alan muttered.

  “Gentlemen’s vices, discreetly handled, as befits a gentleman. Not like the git of a twopenny tart who shows the dirt of the gutter every time he opens his lips. And you want to go as a gentleman. Damn what you want.”

  “Damned right I do.”

  “Alright, Alan.” His father relented suddenly, turning so mild Alan was immediately put on his guard for some high-handed move. “One hundred pounds a year. On certain conditions.”

  “In that case, make it guineas.” Alan scowled, leery.

  His father tried to stare him down. Alan didn’t back down. Sir Hugo finally nodded his assent.

  Pilchard began to scribble on the document on the desk, muttering to himself as he found room to add the amount, which gave Alan satisfaction. Pilchard presented his amended work to Sir Hugo, who nodded his approval.

  “Now sign the damned thing and get your guine
as.”

  Alan was released from Morton’s grasp to free his arms, and took the excuse of massaging feeling back into his arms to take the time to read the document, looking for traps and pitfalls.

  No more claim to being a Willoughby … that’s no loss, is it? Out on my bare arse with one hundred guineas a year remittance. I still think he’s gone smash! I was down for five hundred per annum, last time I snuck a look at the will. Leave the City, leave England. I wasn’t expecting much more if the old bastard had dropped to hell, anyway. Second sons can’t expect much, and God knows Gerald wouldn’t give me a dilberry off his fundament, much less a rouleau of guineas once the old boy croaked. What? Hull-oh!

  “Here, what’s this bit about mother’s estate?” he asked. “She didn’t have one, did she? She died penniless, you said.”

  “That is a legal form only.” Pilchard said primly.

  “Now I see … you never told me anything about her except she was pretty and dead. Her people have money, do they?”

  “And just what estate do you think a bawd could leave her bastard when she was doing it upright in doorways just before she died?” Sir Hugo sneered, which was something he was right good at. “Explain it to him, Pilchard.”

  “Yes, explain it to me, Mister Pilchard.”

  “Miss Elizabeth’s parents are still alive,” Pilchard began. If Alan had had eyes for his father at that point, he would have been amazed to see eyebrows climb for heaven. “They are desperately poor wretches but still with us. They have, for many years, tried to find someone to take them to court to sue Sir Hugo for support, knowing that he had taken you in. We sent them fifty pounds per annum to keep them satisfied. We do not wish to have them known as part of the family. Or you.” He did not add that Alan could be considered an heir through his mother’s side. “To spare Gerald and Belinda any legal difficulties upon their inheritance, we included this clause. You shall receive your hundred guineas, as they get their money, as long as you live, for much the same reasons.”