A King's Trade

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Jack Ass Point, and the foreign factors’ compound at Canton, sir,” Lewrie said, “I have been there. No risk of desertion, there, since the Chinese lop the heads off ‘red-haired foreign devils’ when they get into their part of the city—”

  “I was not aware you took merchant service, Lewrie,” Treghues interrupted, sounding as if involvement with “trade,” or its nautical assistance in a civilian capacity, was rather sordid.

  “Wasn’t merchant service, sir,” Lewrie responded with a smile. “Some secret work for the Foreign Office aboard a false trader, armed and crewed by the Navy. Bombay, too, sir. Well, my experience was in Calcutta, up the Hooghly, but…there’s nowhere for English tars to run among the Hindoos, either. Not for long, if they don’t speak a word of the language, sir. Ports in India might not be walled off from the local population like Canton is, but they might as well be, for all the good they’d do potential deserters. And, as I recall it, every ship that put in was allowed shore liberty…liberal liberty, sir. If our hands’ll be allowed liberty at Bombay and Canton, what’s the harm in allowing liberty here, where they have no hope of jumping ship, sir?”

  “For the very good reason, sir, that they will run amok, as the barbarians of the Malay Peninsula say!” Treghues snapped, now rapidly losing his patient, all-knowing-father air.

  “On what, may I ask, Sir Tobias?” Capt. Graves gravelled, near the end of his seeming serenity, too. “The very few public houses of James’s Valley? Upon the veritable regiment of bawds, now a-tip-toe on the strand, awaiting their arrival with open arms?”

  “Sir!” Capt. Treghues barked, slamming a palm on his desk for punctuation. “You exceed proper bounds, Captain Graves! Aye, there’s very few public houses or taverns hereabouts, and should we allow our people ashore, they’d be swamped by so many sailors all at once!”

  “Exactly what the publicans and tavern keepers look forward to, I’d expect, sir,” Capt. Philpott blandly suggested. “How’d they make their livings, else? The garrison and the locals can’t be much of a livelihood, sir.”

  “And, there’s Wigmore’s Travelling Extravaganza, too,” Lewrie quickly seconded. “They’ve a decent band, and do musicals, comedies, and dramas, in addition to their circus performances, sir. All quite innocent, no more harmful than letting discharged sailors free in Covent Garden or Drury Lane, sir. It’d go hard for our people, to know that they’re performing for the garrison, but they’re not allowed to go ashore and attend, sir. Might make ‘em… surly.”

  “You’re entirely right, Sir Tobias,” Capt. Graves was quick to exclaim, scooting forward to the edge of his chair in his eagerness to make his point, “a taut hand and consistent discipline’s the very thing to make an efficient ship, but it can become too much of a good thing, d’ye see, do you not give them a bit of slack, now and then. If my hands must sit aboard, close enough to see soldiers, civilians, and ‘John Company’ sailors going ashore to take in the shows, it will make them surly, as our good Captain Lewrie suggests, sir.”

  “Even more eager t’be aboard an Indiaman, perhaps, sir?” Capt. Philpott tacked on, sounding breezy, and trying hard not to smirk at his impious suggestion. “Never can tell.”

  Lewrie wasn’t sure which comment made Treghues bristle up, go puce-faced, and bluster more…Graves’s hint that strictness might prompt rebelliousness, Philpott’s heretical idea, or Graves calling Lewrie “good”!

  “Aye, that circus,” Treghues seethed. “Whacking good time you had ashore, did you, Captain Lewrie? At that circus, hmm?”

  Damme, what does he know, and how did he learn it? Lewrie had to take pause to ask himself, crossing his legs the other way round to guard his “wedding tackle.”

  “An amusing, and innocent, distraction, Sir Tobias,” he replied. “Half the audiences at Recife were children and their parents, and the local authorities seemed satisfied that nothing prurient or bawdy had insulted their rather austere sense of morality, sir.”

  “I enjoyed it, too, sir,” Capt. Graves chimed in, as did Capt. Philpott a second later: “Aye, it was innocent and amusing. And, I suspect, Sir Tobias, that were our sailors seated in their audiences, that’d be hours they’d not be spending in taverns or brothels. Half a day’s liberty, watch and watch, say…Noon to Midnight. A fresh dinner, time enough for at least a mild drunk, then a bought supper and a ticket to a show, and…by the time the final curtain comes down, ‘tis time to return aboard their ships, hmm?”

  “Depends on local sunset, full dark,” Lewrie speculated, “when they light their illuminations, I s’pose. Perhaps from Seven Bells o’ the Forenoon ‘til Seven Bells of the Evening Watch’d work better. The usual arrangement of two ‘hostages’ still aboard for each libertyman, their own run ashore dependent on t’other’s behaviour, and return?”

  “Wouldn’t have to expend rations, do they debark before the rum issue, or call to messes,” Capt. Philpott slyly said. He and Graves had turned their attention upon each other to thrash out arrangements, as if the decision had been made in their favour, and Captain Treghues was no longer present. “And wouldn’t our ‘Pussers’ love that, hey?”

  “Masters-At-Arms, Ships’ Corporals, and Provost guards from the garrison to keep a wary eye on ‘em, perhaps?” Lewrie further suggested.

  “Aye, that’d work out well, Captain Lewrie,” Graves exclaimed, turning to include Treghues, at last. “Garrison troops told-off as the Provosts might attend the shows in an official capacity, but…”

  “Could watch ‘em, in essence, for free!” Lewrie hooted.

  “An easy arrangement to make with the garrison commander, I’d think, Sir Tobias,” Philpott chortled, turning to face Treghues with a puppy-eyed, eager child’s expression, waiting upon Treghues’s say-so, as they all did, with a “please, Father, may we please?” expectancy.

  Treghues stared them down, as stonily as the Egyptian Sphinx, lips down-curled, as pruned up as if he’d bitten into a sour citron. His fingers drummed on the desktop, nails chittering as if he wished to hone them for a clawing in the near future. He heaved a great sigh and leaned back in his chair to stare at the overhead and the painted and lacquered deck beams. Perhaps he was consulting the Almighty as to the best course of action, praying a silent apology to Him for being a weakling, imploring the Lord to keep his sinful sailors from too much exuberance ashore, or…calling down all the Pharaoh’s plagues upon his contemporary Moseses, who pleaded to “set their people free.”

  “A third of each ship’s complement, sailors and Marines, each day, sirs,” he glumly, sullenly, announced, at last. “Two-thirds will bide aboard, dependent upon the libertymen’s behaviour, and if those miscreants depart one jot or tittle from decorous comportment, then I will cancel all further liberties, hear me, sirs?”

  “Very good, sir!” they almost managed to say in chorus.

  “I will consult the tables to determine full dark, hereabouts,” he further decreed, “does the circus require full dark for their performances…as good Captain Lewrie is so certain that they require,” Treghues could not help loftily sneering.

  “Makes for a better experience, sir…like a darkened hall in Drury Lane draws the audience into the lit stage,” Lewrie explained to him, off-handedly. “Or, so I am told,” he added, withering under that steely gaze.

  “Do not interrupt, sir,” Treghues gravelled. “As I was saying, perhaps an adjustment from Six Bells of the Forenoon to Six Bells of the Evening Watch…Eleven to Eleven, would suit, depending on what the tables say. I will send you word by dusk. In the meantime, you will see to wood and water for your ships. Liberty is … allowed.”

  From behind the deal partitions and privacy curtains leading to his sleeping space and quarter-galleries came a faint, outraged “Hmmph!” from Lady Treghues, and, for a moment, Lewrie wasn’t sure if he didn’t feel sorry for the poor fellow. It was one thing to be talked out of a firm decision (no matter how rigidly daft) by officers junior to him, but it was quite a rather grim other to have to bea
rd that harridan in her “den,” probably after making assurances to her that he would not allow sailors of his squadron access to Sin!

  They rose and made their parting salutes, and Treghues rather languidly, perhaps even a tad weakly, waved them on their way. They had not quite attained the starboard gangway and entry-port, not even attained their own gigs or cutters, before Grafton’s crew began muttering and buzzing, all at witter with the glad news that they’d be going ashore, even before it could be announced officially. Such was usual aboard ships, though…what was whispered aft in gun-room or great-cabins had a way of spreading “before the masts” by a nautical grapevine older than mythical Jason’s good ship Argo. By the time Lewrie, as the least-senior officer, had settled himself on a stern thwart in his gig, with Cox’n Andrews ready to order “Out Oars” (and didn’t he have a huge grin on his face, too!) Grafton’s people were beginning to cheer!

  We ‘re going to the circus! Lewrie could not help thinking like a beamish tyke; We’re going to the circus, again, hurrah!

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The circus, yes; Lewrie saw every performance—perhaps hoping for an aerialist to fall and kill a clown, or for Arslan Durschenko’s lion to mistake his head for a chew toy at that climactic high point of his act—definitely to savour Eu-doxia’s archery and horsewomanship. Pigeons to skewer were a bit thin on the ground on St. Helena, but the seagulls used in their stead were equally delightful.

  Lewrie doubted there were more than a corporal’s guard standing watch on the ramparts of the cliffside forts guarding Rupert’s or James’s Valley, or manning the massive 32-pounder guns in the Mundens Fort that dominated the main harbour, for the audiences at every show were filled by red-coated soldiers. Even here on a bleak and remote outpost isle, Mr. Wigmore looked to be in the way of making a “grand killing,” what with the garrison and the locals so eager for anything novel in their isolation, with the addition of the thousands of East India Company or Royal Navy sailors in port—not just the sailors from their convoy, but an additional eight Indiamen which had broken their passage after departing Cape Town, and had been waiting for the arrival of warships to escort them to England, along with the hundreds of passengers and “John Company” officials there gathered.

  Wigmore made the most of it, with the circus scheduled for the late mornings, and taking just long enough to whet appetites and very dry throats by the time performances ended (which pleased the taverns and inns to no end) and the comedies or dramas staged just after the sun went down.

  There wasn’t all that much timber available on St. Helena, so this time there were no tiers of shaky seats. Everyone had to sit on the ground or rocks, catch-as-catch-can, up the beginnings of a slope of a hill that framed the little one-street “company” village, much like the sketches that amateur artists brought back from their Grand Tours of the Continent, and the edifying sights of tumble-down ruins of ancient Roman amphitheatres in the capitals of southern Europe.

  It wasn’t grand theatre, either, not when the lead performers were still smarting from their circus acts of a few hours before, and were mostly as amateurish as a cast of public school boys putting on a springtime “lark” just after their final examinations. When at “meaningful dramas,” they tended to over-emote most portentously, turning Shakespearean classics into shouted declamations, and Lewrie could not recall any performances he’d seen of Othello, The Merchant of Venice, or The Tempest done quite so energetically, as if the entire cast was made up of very frenetic fleas. Or inmates of Bedlam.

  They were much better at comedies and musicals. They did The Beggars’ Opera, of course, since everyone English, high-born or low-, knew the tunes by heart, knew the japes word-for-word, and could sway and sing along in nostalgia, or shout, heckle, cheer, or laugh a bit too early, throwing the performers off their paces so thoroughly that that show had turned into a mugging contest.

  Two Gentlemen of Verona got completely plagiarised, becoming a farce titled A Day At The Forum, with many foot chases and slamming doors, slave girls in skimpy gauze costumes, and lusty, but foolish, Roman lads who didn’t know they were related.

  Then, there was The Sultan’s Hareem, loosely borrowed from the many horrid novels (some running to eight volumes!) written about some plucky English girl kidnapped by Corsairs and sold off to an Ottoman Turk, fending off the old lecher’s advances quite cleverly, if quite implausibly, ‘til rescued by the Royal Navy. That’un featured skimpy costumes, too, perhaps the same ones worn earlier by the Roman slave girls. Both farces were heavy on popular songs incorporated wherever they even slightly fitted into the plots, The Sultan’s Ha-reem ending with “Rule, Brittania!”

  And didn’t Eudoxia look grand in barely-concealing gauze!

  Since no clowns could throw buckets of confetti or water on him at the temporary theatre, nor any mimes drag him out for their victim or laughing-stock, Lewrie sat down front at the dramas and comedies, with the other captains, officers, and East India Company officialdom, and their wives, mistresses, or doxies.

  Where he could get a good view of her charms.

  Eudoxia, indeed, didn’t get many lines in the dramas, but more than held her own in the comedies. She was a slinky-sultry Egyptian slave girl in one, a star belly-dancer in the other (doing much the same routine in both, actually), and would never be said to possess a fine singing voice, but…who cared? Lewrie certainly didn’t, for her natural, nigh-exotic beauty, her graceful, long-limbed carriage as she made her paces across the extemporised stage, and her innate impishness when delivering comic dialogue, combined with the sombrely serious way she went at her nearly-salacious solo dances, transfixed him into gape-jawed, and highly appreciative, awe.

  And, just as she singled him out with her bow at the end of any circus act, when the dramatis personae took their final bows, lined up just before the footlights, her eyes always found his, her triumphant smile grew brightest, and her last blown kisses and lowerings of her head were to him… despite her father, who always seemed to be just at the edge of the stage curtains, or in the shadows of the circus’s screening drapes, also looking fixedly at Lewrie, and that furiously, too, with his teeth grinding themselves to pea-gravel and dust!

  That was as close as he actually got to her, in point of fact, as close as any hopeful gentleman or lusty tar got to her, either, for just as soon as Eudoxia exited the ring or the stage, Poppa Durschenko was there by her side, now sporting two daggers in his waist sash, and bestowing upon one and all cautionary glares so black and menacing that they might have killed birds on the wing, before taking her by the arm or elbow and hustling her behind the safety of the tents or drapes.

  Until their last night in port.

  Wigmore had staged A Day At The Forum, again, the bawdiest and funniest of his offerings, that seemed to go down so best with sailors and soldiers. Most captains and officers had already seen it, as had the local lights, “squirearch-ish” passengers, and officials, but the audience was still fairly large, most of it garbed in Army red, or in Navy blue, and Lewrie had gotten himself a place in the very front on a low stool he’d fetched off the ship.

  No matter that the crowd that night were repeat attendees, the farce went down even better than before. Knowing that this was their last performance before packing themselves and their scrims, costumes, and props aboard Festival for a long, boring voyage, the actors played up even broader and bawdier, altering dialogue and the ends of jokes to suit their less sophisticated, but more loudly-appreciative, crowd. The music was louder and livelier, even the songs leered or eye-rolled more comically, the pace of the foot chases and door slams even more frenzied, and drawn out ‘til people in the audience were nearly retching or choking, they had laughed so hard, could not even titter a jot more, yet found something new over which to howl.

  Lewrie’s own eyes were squinted, tear-filled, his sides ached, the corners of his mouth nearly hurt, and he had guffawed so forcibly that when he could draw a full breath, his lungs felt as abused as if he�
�d smoked the foulest Spanish cigaro in all Creation.

  At last, both noble families were reconciled, the villains were confounded, the long-lost brothers reunited, and the little blonde who played the first ingenue slave girl, and Eudoxia, who played the sultry Egyptian dancing girl slave, were freed and espoused. The entire cast gathered to sing the last song, linked armin-arm, then took the final bows. Arslan Artimovich Durschenko slunk out to the edge of the thin curtain on one side of the stage, ready to help haul it shut, glaring at everyone, and…

  Eudoxia did her last, deep curtsy, head inclined as grandly as a countess, clad only in a peachy lamé chemise, a very sheer goldish sheet of gauze gathered to resemble a Roman stola, ankle bangles, and white-leather sandals. As before, after she had made acknowledging bows to left-right-and-centre of the audience, blown kisses to the four winds, and waved to those who shouted loudest from far in back, higher up the slope, her almond eyes and widest smile was for Lewrie, making him sit up straighter and squirm in lust, no matter the danger lurking in the wings.

  Then… Eudoxia stepped to the edge of the stage as the rest dropped their linked hands to depart, bounded lithely over the footlights from the low wood stage, onto the stretch of ground separating the stage from the audience, and, with her most playful laugh, landed in Lewrie’s lap, arms about his neck, and one lean, slim leg extended towards the starry sky!

  “Merciful God!” Lewrie gawped, beaming fit to bust, with an arm about her waist. “Well, hallo there!”

  “Zdrasvutyeh, Engliski sailor boy,” Eudoxia said with a laugh. “You comink here off-e-ten?” One hand came up to stroke Lewrie’s cheek to steer his head, then planted a broadly-drawn, loud, and wet kiss on his lips, to his, and the crowd’s, amazement and delight.