“You prick him like a dog, but don’t chase him?” Lord Mohun gasped, out of breath as he ambled drunkenly up like a seaman just setting foot ashore after months at sea. “But you’re a quick one, sir! Almost as quick as I am! Come, you must join us at the whores. We’ll roust Lord Deigle and his whore, too, and make your fortune while we’re at it.”
“My thanks to you, Lord Mohun. I won’t forget this,” replied Edward, annoyed even more that he would be in the debt now of not one but two men he neither liked nor trusted.
“Come, then, the night is young and you can’t leave before the morrow! Tell me, do you prefer this hollow blade you wear tonight? I’ve heard you usually carry a colichemarde with a Spanish blade, four or six sided. Mine is a diamond blade, which some say is too heavy at the foible, as they would say of your usual Spanish blade, though I don’t find it so. Here, sir, my handkerchief, you must wipe your blade so it doesn’t rust in the scabbard.”
And off they went, retracing their steps, Mohun singing an obscene chanson á boire, Edward angry and feeling like a prisoner, yet suddenly and perversely, and due entirely to the excitement of the fight, almost enjoying the anticipation of the revelry and debauchery to come.
They staggered down the streets, or at least Mohun did. It amazed Edward how attentively on his guard the rakehell was. Variously Mohun used his walking stick to fence with posts, shrubs, and passersby, shouting “Tierce parade and riposte, so ho!” and “Carte, damn you, and a hole in your belly!” and “Here’s a ‘sacoon’ for thee, sa ha!”
They were accosted only once, by two night constables just as they arrived at the door to the whorehouse.
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen! You’re making a noise!” said the elder, known as such by his long gray hair. His coat was deep red, his breeches blue, and in his right hand he held his staff of office.
“So, damn you, we are,” replied Mohun smugly.
Edward generally had no issue with constables, using the reasonable method of being polite while maintaining an air of sobriety, martial self-assuredness, and implied rank. It was best not to argue with them, as the worst of their sort, contradicted even once, would commit even the sober for drunkenness.
“Now I’m sure you’re drunk,” the constable said, shaking his head. “A night’s lodging in the compter will do you all good, and spare the neighborhood your bawdy tunes. And we’ve reports of swordplay on the Ham—might that have been you?”
“Who the hell are you, damn you, sir?” Mohun replied, his brandy- and wine-laced breath clearly offending the constable. “Can’t you tell by our dress and deportment who we are?”
“I’m Constable John Wood,” the law officer said, stamping his staff of office sharply on the ground. “Who the hell are you?”
“Charles, Lord Mohun.”
It was several moments before the constable spoke, and then only to quickly apologize and take his leave. Edward, hating to see a man simply doing his duty be intimidated out of it by mere nobility, and not wanting to seem associated with Mohun, called out to the constable.
“Thank you kindly, sir, for your civility. Your servant, sir, and a good night to you.”
The constable, wondering if he were being mocked, glared at him, then at his companion constable, shrugged his shoulders, and went on his way. Edward was ashamed at the deliberate condescension of nobility over the constable, and wondered if he himself might at some point be able to do England, or at least some several of her subjects, good service and take Mohun’s life in a duel. He doubted Mohun could stand against him, at least if Fortune stood aside.
But no, he thought: in fair fight or affray I lose if I kill this man whom constables fear to arrest. A man who can be acquitted of a notorious murder on account of his renown, and not that of the facts or his lawyers, is too great a man to be killed in the street at the hand of a Scotch privateer who doesn’t want to be hanged. Fortune will whelp her bitches and bastards as she pleases.
“Come, you sullen Scotsman!” Mohun shouted.
To the whorehouse they returned, ringing a bell until the bawd lighted them up the dark stairs, a rope nailed to the wall in place of a rail. The stairwell opened into a small coffee room in which were served only its namesake Turkish brew, cock ale, and an aqua mirabilis guaranteed to get male patrons up and keep them up. Pasted on the wall were a few pornographic postures from Aretino’s sonnets, along with broadsides variously advertising pills to cure gonorrhea, white wash for the face, and a surgeon’s services. Most of the windows were pasted over with brown paper. Three of the five waiting patrons, by their short hair, modest dress, and lack of swords, appeared to be merchants’ sons. The other two were older gentlemen, a merchant factor and a doctor, perhaps. Only a monkey and a parrot lent the coffee room anything resembling an exotic air.
“Not quite the sort of place I’d expect you to frequent, my lord,” Edward noted.
“It’s not the cover, sir, but what’s inside,” Mohun replied, nodding in the direction of the two doors on the far side. From a bawd he ordered two cock ales, but Edward overruled him and asked for coffee for himself instead. Mohun immediately poured brandy from a flask into Edward’s coffee when it came.
Occasional yelps, a howl or two, and the words “More! More!”—all echoed loudly by the red-plumed parrot, with occasional vocal accompaniment by the capuchin monkey—escaped from one of the briefly open doors, revealing a flagellation in progress: a gentleman on all fours leaning over a chair laid on its back, with his breeches down and his wrinkled cheeks bright red, his broad-hipped, small-breasted mistress afoot, her petticoats drawn up to expose herself, with a busy riding crop in her hand.
Other sights were far more mundane and typical: a half-drunk merchant’s son fondling a woman aloft and alow before she took him to one of the rooms, the doctor telling the sad but occasionally merry story of his dull life to a prostitute pretending to care, and a darkly-dressed and quite sober merchant factor smoking a pipe while he told invented tales to which his mistress pretended fascination as she rubbed his groin with a stockinged foot. It was, all in all, the common sort of middling bawdy house.
Mohun’s friend, Sir Robert, joined them eventually. An attractive young woman, her face heavily painted, who made a few adjustments to hair and dress, took a merchant’s son by the hand and disappeared. Lord Mohun ordered more cock ale and forced Edward to accept one, half of which he poured into a vase of dead flowers when his companions were not looking.
A few minutes later, the submissive gentleman of the rod—the ‘flogging cully,’ as his sort were known in the house—departed. Mohun and Sir Robert made jibes—“Spare the rod, spoil the Puritan!” was one—as he was escorted to the front door, the bawd gently chastising them for embarrassing her well-paying customer. The cully’s mistress, riding crop still in hand but skirts dropped and breasts covered, paused by Edward and gently laid the crop on his left shoulder.
“Care for a ride?” she asked with a smirk.
“I’ll ask you to keep that one-tailed kitty to yourself, if you don’t mind,” he said, his smile and tone taking any sting out of his refusal.
“Without the whip, then? A pussy of the usual sort?”
“Not tonight, if it pleases you.”
“No, sir, if it pleases you,” she replied. “If you don’t want a mistress with whip or without, how ‘bout a young and beautiful—swarthy too!—‘buggeranto’ we keep upstairs for gentlemen who prefer something more between the legs of their mistresses?”
“Again, no thank you, my dear darling-with-a-whip,” Edward replied, refusing to rise, so to speak, to the bait and prove by paying for her services that he preferred women. “Lord Mohun,” he said, directing his attention to his undesired comrades, “I must depart, it’s late and I have a long ride tomorrow.”
“You could have one tonight, Captain MacNaughton!” ejaculated Mohun. “Alas, I must be in my cups after all—I thought my quip wittier before I shot it forth.”
“Are you Captain MacNaug
hton, then?” the darling-with-a-whip asked.
“I am. Why do you ask? Would your price be any less?”
“More, not less, for a famous man like you, sir,” she replied, putting him in his place.
“You know me, then?”
“No, sir. But two dirty gentleman were here asking about you earlier, wanted to know where to find you. Said they were looking all over for you, that you owed them money.”
Adrenaline hit the pit of Edward’s stomach hard.
“One tall, one short?”
“Aye, that’s them.”
“They wanted to bugger us, but we buggered them!” Mohun interrupted.
“My lord, shut up, please,” Edward said. Mohun was too drunk to take offense. “Lass, did they say anything else? Do they have any friends?”
“Friends? Them? No, sir, only they do follow that bully Jack Lynch when he’s around.”
“Lynch? He’s been here?”
“No, sir, not lately—but he’ll probably come around soon. Someone stuck a sword in his arse a few months ago in Bristol; it shamed him so much that he won’t go there anymore and only comes around here sometimes.”
“Nothing else?”
“No sir.”
“What’s your usual price?”
“Ah, sir, I knew you’d be wanting something! A guinea for you, sir.”
“A guinea? Who do you think I am?”
“What matters is that I’m a first rate frigate, sir!”
“A fine frigate or a first rate ship of the line,” Edward corrected with a smile. “And I prefer the former.” He drew a guinea from a small purse in his pocket and gave it to her. She took his hand.
“No,” he said, declining. “For information, in case you hear anything else. This should be more than enough to buy your loyal intelligence.”
“You disappoint me, Captain,” she said, playing with his fingers.
“I’m flattered, truly. Another time, perhaps.”
“It’ll cost you another guinea—this one’s for intelligence, remember?”
“I’ll remember.”
“Damn you, sir!” Mohun interrupted. “If you won’t drink with me or lie with her, then I’m not your friend, therefore you insult me, but rather than ask you to measure your sword with mine, I’ll curse you! May you find yourself mounted on the worst jade, an ancient poxed whore seated behind you, in a storm, in the darkest lane, ten miles from nowhere, with not a shilling in your pocket. Sir,” he said, his speech much punctuated by sudden burping.
“Didn’t I read that in that bawdy nonsense, The English Rogue?”
“You accuse me of plagiarism? Well, damn you, I’m guilty. Not all my wit is original. And so what, damn you, it’s still wit! And Richard Head is a genius! Not of Rochester’s ilk, of course, but a damned genius, of the low sort—like you might be, if you’d only indulge yourself as we do.”
Here the young rake suddenly looked perplexed, unable to follow his own logic and unsure if he had just insulted himself. Sir Robert excused himself, took the darling-with-a-whip by hand, and left Edward and Mohun once more to fend for themselves.
“Come sir, I said I’ll reward you and so I shall. Let’s leave this place. Sir Robert is so besotted that he’ll gallop for hours before he’s spent. I have secrets to tell while we walk.”
Edward would have led the way out, but Mohun claimed his rank, pushed his way forward, opened the door, and fell down the stairs to land unhurt at the bottom.
Children, drunks, and fools, thought Edward.
He needed to be rid of Mohun immediately; he needed to return to his apartments to warn Jonathan; he needed to better arm himself against assassination and to get the hell out of Bath as soon as possible. It was impossible that Jacobites could be on to him so soon after his return from Ireland—how could spies in Bristol have already acted on messages from their counterparts in Ireland? Bristol Jacobites would doubtless know by now that he had returned, but how could they have already had the time to make and implement plans to waylay him, even had they been warned to take action?—And yet so it seemed they might have.
“You must beware of Deigle and his whelps,” Mohun advised as they walked. “He can be fair and just if it’s in his purse’s interest, but he bears close watching. This advice is my reward to you. I know you’ve done good service for the Crown, Jacobite though you are. So have I, as you know—we are brothers tonight, greater brothers than we were when as reformados we scorned the French at Brest.”
“I remember it well, my lord.”
“Lord Deigle tells me you have doubly vital information for the King. I’ll arrange for someone to speak to you in London; I’ll send a letter. With my influence and Lord Deigle’s, you will be heard.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Edward replied politely, not giving a damn for any letter from Mohun, given the man’s reputation.
The young lord paused, not as if lost in thought but as if he had lost a thought. In a moment or two he recovered it.
“Yes, Deigle—be careful in your dealings with him, this is what I meant to tell you: there’s not a woman in the world who can’t cozen him, except his wife of course. Ah, here we are! One more reward for you for being my brother tonight!”
Mohun had stopped in front of a rich dwelling. He banged on the door until a servant opened it, then ordered him out of the way and dashed into the house.
“Harry! Your wife, she’s come to Bath!” he shouted while Edward waited discreetly in the background.
“Damn you, Mohun, I’ve not even had my pleasure yet!” Edward heard Lord Deigle shout.
A moment later he saw someone escaping through a side door.
Lydia almost ran into him. She looked shocked at first, then recovered and smiled broadly.
“Edward! I’m off to London,” she said breathlessly. “Lord Deigle is going to introduce me to the theater there; he has influence with the companies in London! He knows Barry and Bracegirdle, the actresses!” she giggled. “And he wants me, he really wants me, not like you who only sometimes pretended to, but it’s a snake, not a rod, he’s shown me so far, and he wears a sheepskin thing over it, tied with a ribbon to his stones. Can you believe it? And you know how I am, Edward, when someone wants me.”
She stood within inches of him. He tried to ignore her, knew he should take the opportunity to abandon Mohun, but her the scent of her sex was escaping everywhere and he had drunk just enough to lower his inhibitions. In fact, the possibility that she may have hired a man to run him through excited him.
“Don’t you think you’d best return to your new patron if you’re going to use him to make your fortune?” he said, doing his best to suppress his lust.
“I will,” she said, “but not yet!” She threw her arms, then her legs, around him. He staggered backward, his foot in pain, until he banged into Lord Deigle’s handsomely appointed carriage. With a few fumbles of coach door and petticoat and button and jammed sword hilt, they wedged themselves both into the caroche and into each other, Edward’s left hand occasionally over Lydia’s mouth to keep her moans from reaching other ears, her hands everywhere.
The caroche made great pitches on its thoroughbraces and slight rolls on its wheels for more than several minutes.
“Be my Jehu, drive me!” Lydia cried once, then a few moments later, “From behind, mount my caroche, mount it so you can protect me from the highwaymen on the road! Now, at the gallop! Drive away! Now, become my highwayman!”
Caroche and woman squealed in harmony.
“Your sword!” Lydia cried, having first bitten his hand to get him to move it from over her mouth.
“I know!”
“No, your sword.”
“Yes? Oh, sorry,” he whispered back, and pulled the hilt of his sword from her ribs as she kissed his hand then bit deeply into the lace at his cuff to stifle her cries.
The caroche pitched even more. In the back of Edward’s mind he sensed an absurd yet stimulating contrast: he was here, doing this, while mat
ters of State and regicide awaited.
“Oh my God,” Lydia whispered in a sudden moment of post-orgasmic sobriety blowing through the Malaga fog that had clouded her reason, “Lord Deigle! We must hurry—I’ll help you.” And a minute later she whispered, “Did I contain you? I did? Good. Oh, God, it was just a jest, his wife isn’t here? Damn you, Edward! Christ, I must return to Lord Deigle!”
As quickly as she had leaped upon him, Lydia wriggled from beneath, adjusted her clothing, and slipped from the caroche, followed by Edward, just as Deigle, realizing his wife had not truly returned, began to shout for his mistress.
“You shouldn’t have done this to me, Edward!” Lydia said, grinning fiendishly. With short strides, she ran delicately back to the house, her hands holding her skirts a few inches above the ground. She smiled back at him before she slipped through the door.
Edward, reeling from the substitutes for the adventure he was addicted to, tried to put the day in order. The connections were logically obvious, yet absurd, and he would admit to only one conclusion: Fortune had set out to prove his philosophy wrong.
He failed to see the weakness in his argument. He was far too willing to engage the fickle goddess, especially when her agent was an attractive woman. He refused to acknowledge that he lacked the resolve to keep his distance, and thereby demonstrate his philosophy in practice so as to reap its rewards.
“Fortune will damn us all,” he muttered under his breath.
Chapter 21
Hark! I hear the sound of coaches!
The hour of attack approaches!
—John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, 1728
Due to the past night’s revelries and a long war council with Jonathan the next morning, Edward made a late start and rode only twenty-five miles the first day. He spent the night at the Catherine Wheel in Calne and rode hard the next day, through several villages and the town of Marlborough, but the muddy roads delayed him. It was well past dark when he finally banged his fist at the door of the Swan on the outskirts of Newbury.
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