Troubled Waters l-14

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Huzzah! Th' circus is a'comin'!" a young stableyard hand yelled in glee when they stopped at Guildford, and that brought out a mob of gawkers, who, though disappointed that their party wasn't the circus, at least took joy from such an outre batch of travellers.

  "Crikey, ye ain't th' King isself, is ye?" the publican at the last stage stop wondered aloud as their coach rolled to a halt at his tavern and posting-house on the outskirts of Kingston, near the south bank of the Thames. His customers and help tumbled out to witness the arrival, ready to curtsy, doff their hats, or tug their forelocks, 'til Twigg and Sir Hugo alit, not looking all that royal, and slunk back to their labours or their drinks.

  Lewrie stretched his legs, rolled his shoulders, and eased his aching fundament in the shade of a large oak just outside the doors to the tavern, sitting on a wooden bench with his legs at last stretched out instead of awkwardly pinched up crabwise. Desmond and Lewrie's two other hands got down from the coach-top seats, and stood licking their lips in expectation.

  "The team need changing, d'ye think?" Lewrie asked his father, who was, with Twigg, seeing to the horses' watering, and stroking them over. It wasn't that much further to London proper; from where he sat Lewrie could espy the city's taller steeples already.

  "They seem sound enough to make it to the Elephant and Castle," Sir Hugo told him, and Twigg shrugged, then nodded his agreement.

  "Half-pints, then, Desmond," Lewrie said, digging for his coin purse and handing his Cox'n a crown piece. "One for me, too."

  "Aye, sor!" A half-pint sounded good to Desmond, though Furfy rolled his eyes and heaved a sad sigh of disappointment that they had no time for a full'un. So many stops had taken a toll upon Lewrie's purse; beer with hard-boiled eggs to tide them over at Petersfield; beer, roast beef, and currant duff at the posting-house in Guildford… at the paying passengers' rate, not the price of a two-penny ordinary; and one stop midway 'twixt Guildford and here for cheese, apples, and more beer…!

  His sailors came out of the tavern with their half-pints, and a rather pretty serving girl fetched Lewrie his, returning his change as she gave him a fair curtsy and smile, and Lewrie returned it, allowing her the last few pence for a tip, which earned him a second smile and bob. He took a sip, appreciating the brew, probably unknown to other towns beyond a long walk, and laid up in the tavern's cellar.

  What a dead bust! Lewrie thought; all this way, and I could've ridden it alone, for all the danger we 've seen.

  He wasn't exactly sure just how long the Beaumans had been here in England, but began to doubt that they could have enlisted thugs for out-of-court revenge this quickly. Wouldn't know their way about, nor know whom to approach…

  "Hoy, there," one of the out-riders called. All four of them had come to the watering troughs to freshen their mounts at the same time; all were now dismounted, but one of them-the taciturn leader-had kept his wits about him. Twigg and Sir Hugo snapped their heads about in the direction he was chin-pointing.

  Up the London road near a thick stand of trees and shrubbery, a lone man stood by the head of his horse, stroking its nostrils to keep it silent, and half-hidden waist-deep in the bushes. Lewrie got an impresion, a quick'un, of dark clothing, a wide-brimmed and flat black farmer's hat. About an hundred yards or so away, Lewrie estimated, as the fellow, now aware that he was being stared at, sprang up onto his saddle, urgently sawed his horse's reins, and spurred away before any of their out-riders could even think to saddle up. Within moments the strange rider was out of sight round a bend, leaving small dust-puffs of dry dirt road that hung like a tan mist where shafts of sun dapples filtered through the trees!

  "Uh-oh" was his father's sour comment. "Trouble at last, ha! Skirmishers, out. You concur, Zachariah? Your men… your call."

  "Scout for an ambush, Perkins, there's a good fellow," Twigg said with a harsh snap. "Damme! Just, damme!"

  "Might've been a highwayman," Lewrie supposed aloud, finishing his beer, setting the mug on the bench, and walking to the head of the horse team for a better look, as their unofficial cavalry vedette hastily mounted and cantered away in pursuit. "Make a try for a rich coach but thought we looked too daunting, so he…"

  "Not a bit of it, sir!" Twigg countered, slashing the air with his walking-stick like a cutlass. He peered at Lewrie with a pitying expression, as if he were the most naive fool in the world, or as blind as a bat. "No one innocent spurs off in such fashion. A highwayman… perhaps, but… in whose/pay, Lewrie, and the leader, or sentinel, of how large a band? I thought our luck had been a tad too good. But it does make eminent sense to wait and watch nearer London than try their hand closer to Portsmouth. Where you must go, after all, hmm?" Twigg said with an arch leer. "Too many roads to watch, else, but…"

  "Trouble, sor?" Cox'n Desmond asked his captain.

  "Might very well turn out t'be, Desmond, aye," Lewrie answered. "Do you have the lads see t'their arms."

  "Rush on," Sir Hugo suggested. "Is an ambush laid, better that we gallop through it. Your lads press the bastards hot, they cannot take the time t'choose a second lay-by, if flushed from their first. Doubt they're sharpshooters good enough t'strike swift-movin' targets."

  "Take the initiative, yes," Twigg said after thinking it over a bit. "Put them wrong-footed."

  "Worked often enough in India," Burgess Chiswick seconded. "Not a tactic they'd expect, even were they ex-soldiers themselves. And I know for a fact that most shooters never get enough practice to hit a blessed thing that isn't standing stock-still, and no more than thirty yards off! Right, Sir Hugo?"

  "Mount up and be at 'em, instanter!" Sir Hugo urged. "Get everyone aboard the coach, and let's get crackin'!"

  "And weapons ready on either beam," Lewrie added as they trotted back to the coach doors. "Back up top, lads! We're off!"

  "Simple robbers, or hired badmashes, no matter," Sir Hugo, short of breath but full of vinegar, said as their coach quickly clattered to a swaying, rocking pace. "They try us on, we'll give 'em Hell. Scatter the bastards, if nothin' else, and leave 'em in our dust! Once past 'em I doubt they've the 'nutmegs' for pursuit."

  "The shortest route into London, though, just in case," Twigg suggested, now with a brace of pistols in his hands, one laid atop his left arm ready to fire from his window. "On the widest streets, so any others cannot assault us."

  "Right," Sir Hugo heartily agreed, " Westminster Bridge, and into Whitehall. Up Charing Cross to Oxford Street, thence to either my own gentlemen's hotel, or your house in Baker Street, Zachariah."

  "My house," Twigg quickly decided, his full attention out his window. "More secure even than your Madeira Club. Once there, we may send a runner to Mister MacDougall and let him put his plans afoot for Lewrie's defence and court appearance."

  "We gallop past whoever they are, Mister Twigg," Burgess piped up, "and we'll be ahead of them passing word to their other associates. Best they can do is send two or three to skulk behind us, to discover where we're bound."

  "True enough, Major Chiswick. Thankee," Twigg replied.

  "The Beaumans…," Lewrie said, trying to be helpful. "Even if this fellow's one of theirs, they don't know a bloody thing about who the rest of you are. An Army general, but who? They don't know about my father, what little time I ever spent with 'em, I never said a thing 'bout him, and we don't have the same last name, so… there is you as well, Mister Twigg. They won't know your connexions, or how dangerous you can be, either! Don't know my connexions, my in-laws, so they'll not recognise, or bother t'watch out for Burgess, here.

  "And…," Lewrie went on, sneering, "the Beaumans, for all their money back in Jamaica, are a cheap set o' bastards. Thousands for show, but penny-pinchin' at all else. Hugh Beauman, the senior now, is used to slaves, d'ye see? T'stay covert and innocent-lookin' behind a pack o' bully-bucks, he can't hire a lot of 'em, lest they blab too wide in their cups, and most-like'd weep over the expense of more than a whole dozen. So new to England, to London -he's never been here before!-he wouldn't know h
is way round Cheapside, Seven Dials, or any of the stews where the real cut-throats can be had. Like Wapping…"

  "And, need a city map, a lanthorn, and four hands t'figure his way about, ha!" Sir Hugo chimed in.

  Zachariah Twigg turned away from gazing out his window over his pistol barrels so intently, and might have said something in reply to that; his expression seemed almost inspired with some new thought (and a tinge of surprise to hear something sensible coming from Lewrie) but the faint sound of faraway gunshots ended that!

  The coachee blew a long, straight horn in the "tara-tara" octet of notes usually heard when the dogs have flushed a fox, signal for the hunt to be on, and Desmond, Furfy, and Nelson shouted almost as one and in naval parlance, "Enemy in sight! Two points off th' starboard bow!"

  Twigg's private cavalry out-riders had flushed an ambush, forcing four or five armed men out of hiding on the right-hand side of the road, stampeding some of their horses and leaving a few of their armed foes to dart about on foot, out of the bushes onto the verge of the road. Twigg's horsemen were whooping and hollering, sabres in hand after discharging their pieces, and slashing their way through thick foliage.

  "On the right! Take close aim!" Sir Hugo bellowed loud enough for the coachee and his assistant in the box, and Lewrie's sailors on the coach-top to hear. Lewrie tried to find a window on the far side, but Burgess filled one, and his father the other, and Twigg nigh-back-handed Lewrie out of the way as he took post in the door window. Shots rang out, powder smoke filled the coach's interior in an instant, and muffled return shots thunked into the body of the coach and one of their wheel horses, making it scream with shock, surprise, and pain!

  "Got 'im!" Sir Hugo crowed in old battle-lust. "Take that, ye bastard!"

  "One t'larboard! 'Ware, larboard!" Desmond shouted down, and Lewrie

  swivelled awkwardly about to level a pistol in that direction before their coach

  galloped past the threat. He got off one shot but missed by a wide margin, with

  the mad swaying and rocking of the coach. The foeman ducked, turned, and

  darted away into the woods on the far side of the road, abandoning his musket and pistols in his wake so he could run faster… or pop up innocent as anything later on and feign mere curiosity… "Shootin'? Wot shootin', an' where?"

  Lewrie dared stick his head and shoulders out the left-side window just in time to see one of their out-riders dash cross the road and into the woods in pursuit of that escaping highwayman, sabre held ready for a pursuit slash that could remove a fleeing foe's head from his shoulders, or slice his back open from the nape of his neck to his waist. A faint "View, halloo!" and he disappeared into the forest.

  Twigg was thumping his walking-stick on the roof, and the coach slowed and came to a stop, so they could all spring down with loaded weapons or swords out. Back behind them, there were bodies staining the gravel and dirt with blood, sprawled like heaps of cast-off clothes. Perkins, the leader of their out-riders, knelt over one man who gasped and twitched his death-throes. To Twigg's tacit query, Perkins heaved a shrug and shook his head; the fellow was gone.

  The out-rider Lewrie had seen gallop into the woods returned to the road as well, all smiles, and with his sabre blade bloodied right to the hilt.

  "Got 'em all, sir!" Perkins yelled. "Half a dozen, all told… and all dead," he confirmed as all his men returned whole.

  "Fetch 'em all out, Sergeant Perkins," Twigg sourly ordered as he sheathed his un-used small-sword. "And search their bodies for any letters or large sums of money that might point to the one who paid them. Usual drill, hmm? Damn! I'd have wished for one witness for a magistrate to attest to!"

  A few minutes later, and six dead men were laid out in a line together, pockets turned out and belongings being sorted through for clues. Pipes, plugs of tobacco, pocket knives, hanks of twine, tokens from taverns for free drinks or doxies… which, in coin-starved England in time of war could almost be passed as easily as Crown coinage!… and, what seemed a rather suspicious amount of the new, much-hated paper currency; too much for the hobble-de-hoy griminess and cast-off finery that their late assailants sported.

  "Too much 'chink' for needy highwaymen," Burgess Chiswick said as he counted the loose, crumpled stack of bills. "If they'd stolen this much earlier, I'd think they'd be off celebrating… spending it like water… not staging another robbery. Somebody paid them to do a job, certain," he firmly decided.

  "It would appear so, sir," Mr. Twigg agreed, pacing among those rumpled bodies and poking them with his walking-stick as if attempting to make at least one of them "blab" his secret in a death-croak. "But no sign of who, or written-down instructions to explain why ours, and Lewrie's, coach was their specific target. The attack on us might as well have been instigated by some disgruntled Liverpool slave traders, businessmen involved in sugar, rum, and molasses trading. Bah!" Twigg snarled, kicking one of the dead highwaymen in the rib cage.

  "So, how did they know who to shoot at?" Lewrie fretted. "Whom," Twigg primly corrected. "At whom t'shoot," said Sir Hugo. "Tsk, tsk." "Bugger" was Lewrie's frustrated comment.

  "We must take these curs to the nearest magistrate, no matter," Twigg directed. "The attack upon us points the finger at someone, at any rate, for it most certainly was not random. Nor may I recall all that many highwaymen working in broad daylight, nor in such numbers. I am certain that a magistrate will find this crime unusual, as well… unusual enough to raise dire suspicions… in the right quarters," he said with an enigmatic grin.

  "Too bad their leader, there, didn't carry one o' those damned Abolitionist tracts, with Alan's 'saintly' features illustrated," Sir Hugo snickered. "So he'd know his quarry."

  "Does anyone happen to have any of them?" Twigg asked. "Pity. I would suppose any that you kept are aboard your ship in Portsmouth, Lewrie?"

  "I don't keep 'em," Lewrie groused. "They went right into the quarter-gallery for bum-fodder, long since."

  "Sounds a bit sacreligious, that," Burgess japed. "Wiping your fundament with pictures of 'Saint Alan the Liberator.' "

  "Only banned in Catholic countries," Lewrie shot back. "Ahem!" Mr. Twigg loudly harrumphed to stifle their low levity. "As I was saying, gentlemen… we must convince the local magistrate that this assault was not a random event, then… tracts, yayss," he drawled. "Reverend Wilberforce and his associates in the anti-slavery crowd can turn this into a positive flood of new tracts, whether the Beaumans were the instigators, or not. The attempted murder of their champion, their Paladin, by person or persons unknown?

  "Combine that sensational news with hints of slaver, or sugar, interests, and the merest mention of how the Beaumans' arrival barely a week before coincides so mysteriously, ah? Nothing libellous, to be certain, but…!" "Newspapers," Sir Hugo suggested, though he despised them. "Just so, Sir Hugo," Twigg said, almost twinkling with delight. "The latest editions have featured rumours of Lewrie's impending trial, so news of this will make quite the uproar. Newspaper owners, editors, and newswriters are, in the main, a sad and scurrilous lot of ne'er-do-wells, drunks, whores, and gossip-mongers. Five pounds in the proper ink-stained hand will buy you favourable words in any publication, and, one can skirt libel in a printed letter signed with a pseudonym, such as 'Elia' of the strong opinions, who is really Charles Lamb. For all the London papers to be inundated with a slew of anonymous letters… speaking in Lewrie's favour, and subtly linking this attack to the Beaumans, well… even the most cursory reader might make the hinted connexion, ha ha!"

  Good Lord, more press! Lewrie thought with a groan.

  "My field," Twigg smugly allowed. "I shall see to it. In the meantime, we'll dis-arm ourselves and our people. I doubt there will be a second ambush awaiting us today. I'll send Perkins and his men on ahead, separately. There will be covert work for them in London, before our arrival. Now, when we wake the nearest dozing magistrate, let us agree that we had no out-riders, and that I, Sir Hugo, Lewrie, and Major Chiswick were the only ones of our p
arty who bore weapons. I see no need to involve Ajit Roy or ex-Havildar Singh, or your sailors, Lewrie. We were suspicious, d'ye see, of the lurking rider who stood watch for us, then armed ourselves, a bare minute before these felons burst from the woods and began firing at us.

  "No 'stand and deliver' demand for us to stop and hand over any valuables," Twigg intently schemed, "but, an attempt on all our lives."

  "Got it," Sir Hugo said with a quick nod.

  "You fellows…," Twigg instructed the coachee and his assistant up on the box. "Hide your weapons, and don't let on that you were armed when it happened, right? Same for you Navy lads. Your Captain Lewrie, his father, Major Chiswick, and I did all the shooting, right?"

  "Aye, sor," Cox'n Desmond firmly replied, peering at big Jones Nelson, who grunted his understanding; then at his mate Furfy, who was looking a bit puzzled. "I'll spell it out for ye, Pat. Makes a better tale for th' newspapers, an' helps th' Cap'm."

  "Ah, arrah, I git it," Furfy replied with a wide smile.

  "We have all the miscreants' horses, Perkins? Capital!" Twigg crowed. "Bind them over their saddles, fetch their weapons into the boot of the coach for evidence, and we'll be on our way."

  "At least, Alan," Burgess opined as they stuffed the dead men's small possessions into a draw-string bag, "there's no survivors left, so, no way for the Beaumans to know their ambush failed, and no alert for anyone else hired-on in London. They'll be completely in the dark 'bout where you, or any of us, go."

  "And, lads," Sir Hugo added in right good humour as he swung an armful of muskets into the boot, "when word of this gets out among the London bad-mashes that half a dozen o' their stoutest met their Maker, how many'll be willin', t'hire on with the Beaumans after, ha?"