Havoc's Sword

by Dewey Lambdin

“No, Alan, ’tis a corpse in fancy dress,” Cashman growled.

  Chapter Three

  God help him, Ledyard Beauman had never made an imposing figure in his life. Lewrie could recall the whippet-skinny little shit from ’81 or ’82 in his midshipman days, sporting exaggerated Macaroni fashions years after they’d gone out of style back in England, right down to the bright silk or satin shoes with tall red-painted heels, and gilt buckles paved with diamond chips. Now, even in full martial “fig”—minus his hundred-guinea smallsword—he more resembled a pathetic footman masquerading in his master’s clothes as part of the mummers’ crews on Christmas Eve, when times turn topsy-turvy ’twixt servants and masters; but without the innate authority or wit to play the Lord of Misrule.

  Mr. Hendricks summoned principals and seconds to him, just by the last edge of the upper beach.

  “Gentlemen, I feel bound by Christian duty to appeal to you one last time. Are you so determined, so prejudiced against conciliation, that no plea, no logic, might move you from your intent?” the dignified older fellow implored.

  “I am determined, sir,” Christopher Cashman quickly answered, in a cold, brusque manner.

  “I, too, am…ready, sir,” Ledyard Beauman said, though in a voice more fluttery, and fainter. His eyes were red and puffy, as if he had suffered a tormented, sleepless night, and they shimmered and darted, like a mouse seeking a bolt-hole. He did not quite shudder, he did not chatter his teeth in terror; his jaws were clamped much too tight for that, and his hands were hidden behind his back.

  Near miss’d stop his heart, Lewrie speculated; almost feeling a spurt of pity for Ledyard, who was trying to play up game: One ‘Boh’ to a goose’d make him fill his breeches! Surely, he must know how good Kit is! Has he ever blazed?

  “Then it is my sad duty to allow you gentlemen to proceed,” Mr. Hendricks declaimed. “Colonel Beauman, your post is to the north, and Colonel Cashman, yours is to the south. A toe-line has been drawn in the sands. The coin toss has awarded the first pair of pistols to Colonel Cashman. In a moment or so, when both are ready, each will take up a pistol from this case, strictly keeping it un-cocked until commanded. You will take up positions, either side of the toe-line, back-to-back. When I ascertain that you are, in all respects, prepared, I will charge you to cock your locks, and you will hold your pistols vertical. I will say ‘begin your pace’ and start a count, thusly…‘and one, and two, and three,’ until I reach the number seven. That will represent fourteen paces, together, with a pace more between you to be determined at the toe-line, equalling the agreed fifteen paces.

  “At the count of seven, mind, and not a jot before,” Hendricks intoned, “you may turn and fire at your pleasure. I advert to you now, sirs, the man who turns to fire before the count of seven, it will be my, and the innocent party’s second’s, duty to shoot down. Do you understand me plainly in that regard, sirs?”

  “Absolutely, sir,” Cashman replied, breezily, this time, as if impatient to get it over with.

  “I do, sir,” Ledyard agreed, with a bob of his head, gulping as if just now realising how fatal this was going to be. Lewrie caught a faint whiff of brandy on the scant wind, and it wasn’t from the surgeon’s table. On close perusal, Lewrie could espy a wet stain on Ledyard Beauman’s waist-coat. He had obviously partaken of a liberal measure of Dutch Courage back at his coach, poor Devil.

  “Now, does the first to fire miss his aim, sirs, and the second delay his response, the first party must stand and receive,” Hendricks further grimly cautioned, “as is expected of a proper gentleman.”

  “No worries,” Cashman almost chuckled. Rather evilly, in fact.

  Ledyard could but goggle and bob, gulping dry-mouthed.

  “Do both parties miss on the first exchange, you will, upon my command, immediately turn your backs, keeping your fifteen paces separation and wait ’til your seconds fetch you a fresh pistol, which shall be uncocked, from those supplied by Colonel Beauman. Do you understand, Captain Lewrie? Captain Sellers? As soon as both parties are re-armed, I will call ‘Ready’ again, and a new count of three. At three you will be free to cock, turn, and fire once more. After that second exchange, assuming neither gentlemen is struck, a brief pause in the proceedings will be allowed while fresh pistols will be provided, and we shall begin, again, back-to-back at the touch-line, using the initial procedure. Is all that clearly understood by all participants?”

  “Understood,” Christopher coolly said.

  “Ah, yes,” Ledyard managed.

  “It has been stipulated that this is, unfortunately, a duel to the death or incapacitation by a severe wound,” Mr. Hendricks added. “Should one, or both, of you fall wounded, I, and Surgeon Trollope, will determine whether the injured party is able to rise and continue. This stipulation, demanded by Colonel Cashman, shall not admit of any superficial wounding to fulfill his desire for satisfaction.”

  “Barbaric,” Hugh Beauman sourly sniffed, half to himself.

  “Then why did your principal agree to it, sir?” Mr. Hendricks countered. “Proceedings shall be halted so the injured party may be examined, and queries made to determine whether both principals feel that honour has been satisfied. Should we continue after a wounding, I shall repeat my exposition of the original rules. The seconds…”

  Lewrie perked up, and watched Capt. Sellers stiffen with importance, before turning his full attention to Hendricks’s mournful face.

  “You will each take up one pistol,” Hendricks instructed sternly. “You will each take post to my right and left, apart from your principals, but slightly ahead of me. Your pistols will remain un-cocked until such time as either party commits a shameful act by turning early or attempting to violate the accepted rules of the code duello. Only then will it be your duty to protect your principal, and I assure you that I will fire, should such a heinous deed occur to mar the honour of the field. A second, should he commit such a violation, will also be shot down. Understood?”

  “Perfectly, sir,” Lewrie said, before turning to face Sellers and lift a quizzical, deriding brow at him. Sellers reddened, again, and tossed his head in anger.

  “Are you both determined, then, let us be about it, sirs. Do you take positions, and we shall begin,” Hendricks ended with a sigh.

  Hendricks at the apex of a fatal triangle, slightly above the duellists at the top of the slope of hard sand; Lewrie and Sellers two paces lower than the referees, their places juggled until Hendricks was fussily satisfied. Beauman and Kit either side of that heel-dragged furrow in the sand, back-to-back but not touching, about a pace apart—also fussily placed by the demanding Hendricks.

  Lewrie hoisted his borrowed Manton pistol to the vertical, his right arm pressed against his chest, the fire-lock safely un-cocked, and his body turned so that Hendricks could see his actions, turned to keep an eye on Ledyard Beauman when he paced up the beach; turned, to keep one wary eye on Sellers, too, who would be doing the same upon Cashman, and Lewrie, as well!

  ’Bye, Ledyard, Lewrie snarkily thought, seeing the man’s ashen look toward his elder brother, a silly, lop-sided grin of dread, and farewell; write and tell us what Hell’s like.

  Lewrie swivelled to see what Hugh Beauman made of his brother’s hapless expression, but that worthy was implacable. Hugh Beauman stood far back, hands clasped behind his back, heaving a great, resigned sigh of parting. A brief farewell grin creased his granite features.

  He turned back to the principals, making a quick prayer for his old friend’s success and safety, that he’d shoot straight and true and put a quick end to this, and a mercifully quick end of Ledyard, too. A man so foppish, petulant, and weak couldn’t win! The world would be a boresome place, did Kit fall and leave this Mortal Coil.

  Kit had been gazing out to sea, savouring perhaps his last precious taste of Life, but he did turn briefly, saw Lewrie’s concern, and rewarded him with a quick lift of his chin, a faint grin, and even a wink!

  “Ready, Colonel Beauman?” the doughty Hend
ricks called over the mewing of the gulls. “Ready, Colonel Cashman?” Some seabirds glided down near the duellists, some flapping in place against the faint wind, as if begging for tossed morsels.

  “Ready,” Cashman cried.

  “Er…yes,” Ledyard Beauman managed. “Ready.”

  “Cock your locks! Begin your pace. And one, and two…”

  Kit marched in short parade steps; Ledyard took childish giant strides, as if to turn fifteen paces into a furlong. “And four, and five, and six…!”

  “’Ware!” Lewrie cried as Ledyard lost his nerve and turned too early, boots skidding on the hard sand, and levelling his pistol. The shout made Kit jerk to a stop, flinch, and start to turn about, and…Blam!

  Ledyard had fired at Kit Cashman’s back!

  “Damn you!” Lewrie shouted, cocking his pistol and bringing it up to aim, with a quick plea for permission from Mr. Hendricks.

  “Shit!” Cashman grunted. A pistol ball had struck him ’twixt his neck and the end of his left shoulder, bursting a bloom of scarlet on his white shirt!

  “Well, damme!” Mr. Hendricks barked, his pistol now cocked and ready, but unsure of how to proceed. “Shame, sir! Now, stand and…”

  “Stand and receive, ya bastard!” Cashman roared as he completed his hunching turn and straightened his back.

  “He’s wounded, wait, wait!” Ledyard demanded, dancing from one foot to the other. “Examine him, he has t’stop, mean t’say. Wait!”

  “You must stand and receive, first, sir,” the disgusted umpire Mr. Hendricks ordained, his voice gone disdainfully formal.

  “God above, you said, no!” Ledyard wheedled as Cashman raised his pistol, his body turned sideways-on as if Beauman still held shot in his locker, a practiced, instinctive pose. He grimly took aim…

  Lewrie was dumb-struck, and enrapted. One couldn’t look away from such a shameful cock-up! Ledyard’s terror-dance, the mounting horror in his whitened face, benumbed him. Would Ledyard drop to beg, or simply break and run?

  And Kit was taking slow, careful aim, savouring Ledyard’s fear, his teeth bared in the smile of a snarling wolf, making him suffer, as Ledyard was forced to look down that wide, fateful bore!

  Sellers broke position! His left hand clawed under his uniform coat for a hidden pistol, sprinting toward Ledyard Beauman and tossing him the ready-cocked, silver-chased “barker,” who gawped at it like a drowning man would stare desperately at an offered rope-end.

  Blam!

  The pistol flew toward Ledyard, who stopped shuffling, stretched out to catch it, but his shirt billowed at the waist as a ball punched him backwards, blood sheeting in an instant eruption, driving him down to fall on his rump with his arms still out-stretched for the gun like a stiff porcelain doll, legs and feet splayed heel-down in a vee!

  Captain Sellers switched hands, flung up his right with his illegal pistol cocked, and aimed at Kit Cashman.

  Blam-blam! as Lewrie shot quickly, he and Hendricks firing at nigh the same time, and Ledyard’s cousin jerked and grunted as life was hammered from him, to drop lifeless across the lap of his kin he’d hoped to save!

  “Disgusting,” Mr. Hendricks hissed, outraged. “Despicable!”

  A gruff cry of pain from behind, from Hugh Beauman, to see both slain, then a brief silence, even from the gulls.

  “Oh, Charlie,” they could clearly hear Ledyard Beauman weakly say to his cousin, giving him a shake or two. “Ye fell down.”

  Ledyard noticed his own wound, at last, the gout of blood that stained his breeches and shirt, that trickled from his fingertips as he probed the hole in his belly, just below his waistband, and began to moan, fret, and pluck at the cloth, still numbed.

  “Damn my eyes, sir, but never have I witnessed such a craven, ungentlemanly….!” doughty Hendricks was declaiming as Surgeon Mister Trollope and his assistant rushed to Beauman’s side to drag away Capt. Sellers’s body. Ledyard at last toppled on his right side, his knees drawn up in fetal position, whimpering with realisation.

  Kit! Lewrie dropped his pistol where he stood and sprinted to Cashman’s side as he strode up-beach, himself. He held his pistol in his right hand, that hand pressed to the top of his left shoulder, his left arm dangling rigid at his side.

  “Alan, ol’ son. The bloody idiot winged me, can ye feature it? Look-see how bad it is, will you, there’s a good fellow.” Cashman was grinning; now a stoic rictus of manful self-control…and a bemused puzzlement.

  “Uhm…ragged, but clean through yer meat,” Lewrie announced after a long look under the torn shirt where two plum-coloured holes, front and back, almost made a single bear-bite. “Don’t think he struck bone, but you’d best let that Trollope fella ascertain that. They’re a tad busy at the moment, don’t ye know, but if needs must, I could do a fotherin’ patch over it ’til they’re free.” Lewrie made it a jape, equally manful and dismissive of suffering, to perk him up and “play up game.” He offered his pocket flask of brandy. “I could get your man-servant, or Andrews, do a little obeah witchy-work. Make a poultice…herbs and fish-guts?”

  The very idea made Cashman dry-retch and wobble on his pins, a cold sweat popping out on his face as he staggered.

  “Here, son, yer lookin’ peaky. Sit ye down for a spell and be easy,” Lewrie said, helping him down, taking his pistol. “Here, one of you! Mister…Geratt, is it?” he cried for a saw-bones.

  The assistant surgeon came running, and Mr. Hendricks trundled down to see to him as well. “Your wound is grievous, Colonel Cashman?”

  “Not a bit of it, sir,” Cashman shrugged off, seconded at once by Mr. Geratt’s pooh-poohing noises, and the assurance that no bones were broken as he swabbed, probed for cloth and such in the trough of the wound, and snipped away the odd ragged edge or two before binding and bandaging him and rigging a sling to immobilise Cashman’s arm.

  “Must apologise, Mister Hendricks,” Cashman said, making a moue of regret. “Had we known such would occur, I’d have never…!”

  “Not your fault, sirs,” Hendricks quickly disabused him of all blame. “Mister Ledyard Beauman, in the end, was no gentleman, nor was his cousin. This will redound to no good credit, or credence to their cause. Rest assured that a factual account of this morning’s scandalous doin’s will be known far and wide. Uhm…I’ve always been partial t’dark rum, m’self, when revival is needed. You will allow me, Colonel Cashman?” he said, fetching out his own red leather bottle of heady-smelling dark rum, from which Cashman gratefully sucked. Geratt insisted on a tincture of laudanum be mixed with the rum, in a small silver two-dram cup.

  “God, their poor family, though,” Hendricks sadly intoned.

  The rum (rather a lot of it) and the laudanum availed Kit most wondrous. Within minutes he was on his feet again, his pain muted and his colour back. Lewrie, Andrews, and the man-servant packed their paraphernalia and began to assist him towards his waiting carriage, a last gracious adieu said and congé made to the referees and surgeons for their good offices.

  “Well, damme,” Kit sighed, gritting his teeth as they shoved him to a seat on the coach’s rear leather bench. “’Twas such a good shirt, too…the most cunning lace-work, and all. That shit was so cross-eyed ‘foxed,’ I didn’t think he could even hit the ground in one shot, much less…”

  “Your shot was a good’un, though, and he’s done for, so put it down to blind beginner’s luck,” Lewrie said, tucking the rolled cape and other stuff to either side of him to bolster him from sliding back and forth. “Three, four days o’ Hell, he has t’look forward to. You did good work, Kit.”

  Lewrie’s last sight of Ledyard Beauman (a wolfishly satisfied one, thankee!) he was curled up and gasping like a landed fish, agony beginning to course outward from his wound with each pulsing beat of his heart, the raw fire in his belly stoking hotter and hotter as the numbness that follows wounding wore off. Belly wounds were fatal and inflicted the sufferings of the Damned before the victims departed the Mortal Coil. Cashman should have be
en cackling with glee over his long-awaited victory.

  “Won’t be much joy at our breakfast, Alan, sorry,” Cashman said. “Might cry off, just go home and….”

  “You can’t, and you know it,” Lewrie countered, still fussing, with the man-servant’s assistance. “Laudanum, rum, and brandy on your empty stomach? A hearty breakfast’s the best thing for you. And in public, where you put on the proper airs, else folk’ll think that he’s succeeded at something for once in his miserable life.”

  They’d made reservations at a very public tavern in Kingston to show off and crow.

  “You know the drill…modest joy, stern duty done. Sad wonder at his baseness, add that’un,” Lewrie babbled. “The fewer details, the better…‘no questions, please, it was just too egregious.’ Make ’em ask of Hendricks and the surgeons. Hell, make ’em call upon the Beaumans if they wish to swoon o’er the sordid details!”

  “Will you all quit fussing over me?” Cashman carped, squinting at Lewrie, half-amused and half-rankled to be so cosseted. “I am nowhere near a piteous…dodderer!”

  “Just wanted yer great arse wedged in,” Lewrie complained as he suddenly left off and took his own seat, “so yer coachee don’t rattle ye half t’death ’fore we get to the tavern, you fool.”

  “Alan,” Cashman said softly, reaching out to touch him on his knee, “had I come close t’losin’ such a fine friend as you, I’d most like fret a little, too.” He chuckled, laughing off such a frank admission between two English gentlemen.

  “Well, there it is, then,” Lewrie grumped back, immensely glad that he, and the world, still had Kit Cashman to make it a vivid place. “All in?” he called, leaning out the coach window. “Right, then, let’s whip up and go. I must own I’m famished, and….”

  “Wait!” Cashman suddenly demanded, leaning forward, wincing at the effort. “Just for a bit! There…ye hear it?”

  Suspension straps creaking as Andrews and the man-servant took seats by the coachee or at the postillion bench at the rear, the stamp and whuffle of the team, the jingle of bitts and reins.