A King's Trade

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Woo-hoo!” Sailors cheered, jeered, and whistled, while her kiss turned from playful to fierce. “That’s our ‘Ram-Cat’ for ye!” a sailor off Proteus loudly hooted, one who knew the sobriquet by which his captain was known in the Royal Navy, and the reason for it, which had nought to do with Lewrie’s choice of pets.

  “Your papa is going to kill me!” Lewrie carped, stunned, pleased, but very worried, as she gracefully rose to her feet and drew him erect with her, draping her slim body against his, her arms about his neck and fingers toying with the short, tied queue atop his coat collar. “Might even take his whip to you, girl! We’d best…!”

  “Then it be good you run away, da?” she teased back, whispering, her lips half an inch from his, and Lewrie could not stop himself from running his hands up and down her back, giving her a firmer squeeze so he could lift Eu-doxia’s toes off the ground, marvelling at how sinewy, how firm, her body was, compared to most women’s, yet how silky-smooth.

  “Running away…now,” he told her. Yet, didn’t. Now eye-to-eye with him, she grinned, and bestowed on him another, more serious, enflaming kiss before leaning her head back and crying, “Hah! Now is good time we both run-nink!” He let her go, thinking it a most sensible suggestion, and she fled with a playful hop and a skip for the right-hand side of the stage platform, farthest from her papa, though she did stop, spin about, and cry, “Was much fun! Dosvidanya, Kapitan Alan Lewrie.”

  He stood staring after her like a Greek hero who’d caught too good a direct look at the Hydra, and been turned to stone. He felt a need to gulp, and did so, a time or two. He also felt a need to grope at his crutch to ease the sudden tightness of his breeches, for surely no human could have a cock-stand the size and hardness of a belaying-pin, but forebore, given the audience about him…and the fear that her father was still watching. He shook himself back to reality, bent down to pick up his hat and stool, and saw the now-drawn stage drapes nigh-churning with a struggle behind them.

  “Tot tarakan!”* he heard, recognising Arslan Artimovich’s raspy shrieks. “Let go, yob tvoyemat! Chort!+ Doh!++ Tot sikkim siyn!”** Or, whatever that meant. In punctuation, a long arm emerged through the curtains’ partings, a hand at the end clutching a dagger, with several other hands struggling to disarm him, and Lewrie determined that, aye, it would be a good time to bolt…in a dignified manner, o’ course, though with some purposeful haste. “Tot gryazni sabaka!”++

  As he headed for the piers and his waiting gig, taking longish strides, he tried to recall what it was the London papers always said of a new play in Drury Lane, or Covent Garden. Right, that was it!

  A most enjoyable time was had by all!

  *“That cockroach!”

  +“Shit [or] Damn!”

  ++“God!”

  **“That son of a bitch!”

  ++“That dirty dog!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  First Off’cer… SAH!” the Marine sentry without the door into the great-cabins cried, thudding the brass-bound butt of his musket on the deck.

  “Enter,” Lewrie bade, interrupting his breakfast in the dining-coach and rising to his feet, almost wincing with dread anticipation of what report Lt. Langlie might make; he had already gotten a letter from HMS Grafton, even before his sailors had finished washing and stoning Proteus’s decks.

  Lt. Anthony Langlie stepped through the door into Lewrie’s forward cabins, ‘twixt the dining-coach to larboard and the chart-space to starboard, cocked hat under one arm, and a rolled-up set of papers in his free hand. Toulon and Chalky, who had been breakfasting on the fresh bacon bought ashore, raised their tails and tricky-trotted over from their dishes to greet him, as was their usual wont, for Langlie was always good for a kind word and a skritch. They were disappointed, though, for Langlie paced right past them, for a rare once, to attend to the grim matter at hand.

  “Coffee, Mister Langlie?” Lewrie offered, dabbing at his mouth with a fresh napkin. “Buttered toast and jam, too, perhaps?”

  “Ehm…the coffee’d be welcome, sir, thankee,” Langlie said, a frown upon his usually-placid and (some said) handsome features.

  “Sit ye down, then, sir. Aspinall? Coffee for the First Officer, and a refill for me,” Lewrie directed. Aspinall fetched a fresh cup and saucer, his battered black pot, and did the honours, before, at his captain’s firm nod, retreating back into his tiny pantry abaft the chart-space. “Well then, Mister Langlie…just how large a pack of sinners are we?” Lewrie finally asked.

  “Ehm …” Langlie commented with a sigh, unrolling his reports. “A total of twenty-two hands on report, sir. I comfort myself with the fact that Proteus isn’t the greatest offender, but…”

  “To paraphrase those Americans with whom we cooperated in the Caribbean, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie stuck in with a scowl, “‘when the captain ain’t comforted, ain’t nobody comforted,’ hmm? I’ve already had a note from Captain Treghues on the matter. Tell it me.”

  “Aye, sir. Ahh …” Langlie sadly replied. After one sip from his sugared and goat-milked cup of coffee, he referred to his papers. “First off, I suppose, there was the ‘zebra’ race, though that Mister Wigmore’s made no formal complaint about the ah…borrowing of his beasts, or the condition in which they were returned. It did draw an undue amount of attention, though, sir, so…”

  “Could’ve been worse, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie opined. “Might have been camels, not…”

  “The camels put them right off, sir,” Langlie told him. “All that biting, bawling, and spitting green goo. In point of fact, one could hold Wigmore partially at fault for allowing our Black hands to mount them at all.”

  Some of their “liberated” Jamaican Blacks, Landsmen or Ordinary Seamen, had been allowed to view the circus’s menagerie in their pens down by the piers where they’d been kept after the last circus performance, prior to re-loading aboard Festival. God knows why, but they had also been allowed to mount the so-called zebras, and, on a drunk lark, had decided to race them bareback all the way uphill through the town to the last tavern at the head of the valley, the loser to pay for all.

  They had been highly displeased to find that the “zebras” were only tarted-up donkeys, whose “cosmetics” stained their cleanest shoregoing uniforms. Equally displeasing was their discovery that, having been born Black African, they had no more innate “zebramanship” skills than your run-of-the-mill drunken tar. The race had been a shambling, short-tacking disaster, and, once at the distant tavern, they had taken a peevish load of ale aboard themselves, and gotten the donkeys drunk, into the bargain! The garrison’s Provost Guard had fetched them Hood, Howe, Bass, Whitbread, and Groome…and the donkeys…home, giving the men Hell for “cocking a snook” at them and giving the Provosts false, and highly improbable, names!

  “And what’s this about stolen azaleas, roses, and a… tree?” Lewrie asked, referring to Treghues’s note by his plate.

  “Well, that was mostly our Irish hands’ doing, sir,” Langlie informed him with a grunt of obvious distress. “Furfy, Desmond, some of the other lads. Once I got them back from the Provosts, and a bit sobered up, their explanation was that they’d heard sailors off those homebound Indiamen talking about how profitable is the importation of exotic foreign…shrubs, and they thought that it might be a two-way trade. Make a bit on the side, sir?…There was, also, some talk about emulating ‘Breadfruit’ Bligh…the saplings, not the mutinous part. And…they wished to do a bit of… gardening, sir. Spruce Proteus up?”

  “Were they of a mind t’plant ‘em in the water tubs between the damned guns, Mister Langlie?” Lewrie gawped. “Or, would just any-old where suit?”

  “Ehm… I gather they’d have gone either side of both entry-ports, the quarterdeck and foc’s’le ladderways, and…your door, sir. Decorative door-stoop flowers,” Langlie lamely confessed.

  “But, the island governor’s wife’s roses and azaleas, Mister Langlie!” Lewrie exclaimed, referring again to Treghues’s damned note. “The bloody tree fr
om right outside the governor’s courtyard!”

  “Ahern was especially covetous of the roses, sir,” Lt. Langlie morosely commented. He’d been up all night, from the first alert he’d gotten from the garrison’s Officer of the Guard, and was, by now, much the worse for wear. “His old grannie was a herbalist healer, or so he says, and highly recommended rose hips for those feeling poorly. The, ah… argument over which ship got the roses and such never really did get to an outright brawl, though hundreds of sailors were involved, not just our Proteuses, sir! Men off Grafton, Horatius, and Navy tars off the homebound escort ships were actually the greatest offenders… or so I heard from the other First Lieutenants, once we were all summoned to the Mundens Fort at dawn, sir. Once there, we compared notes, held a little ‘guild meeting,’ as it were….”

  “The tree, Mister Langlie?” Lewrie pressed.

  “The tree, aye, sir,” Langlie said with a put-upon sigh. “Furfy clapped eyes on it, and swore it was the very sort of tree that stood just outside his childhood croft back in Ireland, sir, and…”

  “And was it?” Lewrie asked, most dubiously.

  “I rather doubt it, sir,” Langlie replied with a brief grin on his phyz. “It was a twenty-foot Chinese magnolia. Furfy said, though, that it’d look grand forrud of the roundhouse. Give shelter and shade for hands at the beakhead rails, and the ‘seats of ease’? It required hundreds of sailors to up-root it, and bear it back to the piers, sir, where they discovered that it wouldn’t go in even the largest cutter without swamping it, so they did return it, and tried to re-plant it…sort of, sir. That’s when the garrison mustered a company of infantry.”

  “Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie attempted to growl, picturing it in his mind’s eye. The only scene he could conjure up was a horde of tars dancing and weaving ribbons ‘round a mobile May Pole. He used his napkin to conceal his snicker.

  “Well, was it returned, and mostly re-planted, it wasn’t rightly stealing, was it, Mister Langlie?” he hopefully asked. Under English Common Law, the theft of anything worth more than a guinea would earn the perpetrator—in this case, perpetrators!—a hanging. There were urchins in London who’d met “Captain Swing” or been transported for life for the theft of a loaf of bread or silk pocket handkerchief!

  The governor-general and his wife might be that wroth, he told himself; Sir Tobias-bloody-Treghues, for certain, if they ‘re not!

  “I gathered Saint Helena’s governor has seen a deal worse, sir,” Langlie told him, “though he may be a long time forgetting this one. I was informed he’d only press for monetary damages, though that may be subject to change. The shrubs suffered no permanent harm, though that magnolia tree may be ruined. ‘Tis a shallow-rooted thing, and, there wasn’t a single blossom or leaf left on it when it was returned. The spoils of war, victory laurels, I suppose the Mob thought, sir. There is also mention of a Chinese lap dog missing, a pug something or other, very dear to the governor’s wife. All ships are to be searched for it.”

  “Not aboard Proteus, thank God,” Lewrie sighed, for a search had already been made. “Now, what about this low brawl?” he asked as both his cats, eager for attention from two such affable people, chose a lap or the table top; Chalky to Langlie’s lap, where he rolled over onto his back and wriggled for “pets” or “play,” all four feet pawing air, and trilling shut-mouthed for amusement. Toulon sniffed about the edge of Lewrie’s breakfast plate, first, then flopped on his side, just out of easy reach, with his thick tail thumping the table, and his own paws “rabbited” against his chest, issuing louder, more insistent “Mmrrs!”

  “Now, that wasn’t our lads’ doing, sir!” Langlie objected in an insulted manner. “Hands off Adamant objected to sailors off any ship drinking in ‘their’ private tavern. One of the homebound two-deckers she is, sir…the greatest offenders, as I earlier said. The tavern in question is the one nearest the piers, and too convenient to be the sole property of one ship, so…the last hours of liberty, our lads popped in for a last pint…or two…the Adamants took exception to not only our lads, but any Navy sailors they didn’t recognise, and especiallyto our Black hands, and fell on our people.

  “Well, sir…the rest of our tars weren’t having any of that, neither were our Marines, sir!” Lt. Langlie further explained. “Just before it got completely out of hand, Mister Neale, the Master-At-Arms, and his party turned up, mustered petty officers off every ship, and broke it up. The publican’s damage claims are rather piddling….”

  “Nineteen pounds, ten shillings, five pence,” Lewrie muttered, “Grossly inflated or not, ‘tis not exactly ‘piddling,’ as you see it, Mister Langlie! Not being in a position to negotiate, it’ll be up to me to make quick restitution, before we sail on tomorrow’s tide, does the wind suit. That’ll be above and beyond the sum for damages asked for the damned tree and shrubbery, and a deep bite out of my purse and ready funds! In recompense for which, I’ll expect the gunroom and the cockpit, and every Man Jack cited in your reports, to whip out ‘chink’! Just imagine what your share o’ that’ll be, Mister Langlie, before you call it ‘piddling.’”

  “Aye, sir. Sorry,” Langlie muttered, hang-dog and meek.

  “For all those reasons, Mister Langlie, Captain Treghues is now utterly convinced of our entire squadron’s irredeemable depravity, in general, and Proteus filled with Satan’s Spawn, in the specific! We have, to quote that worthy, directly,” Lewrie sarcastically said, referring to the note, “‘smutted the good name of the Royal Navy, cast a stain upon the repute of every ship involved, and by your libidinous and drunken conduct besmirched mine own escutcheon with Admiralty’…to wit, Mister Langlie, we’ve shat on his copy-book, and will now have to pay the piper.”

  “How so, sir?” Langlie was forced to enquire, frowning more.

  “The usual practice is to escort ‘John Company’ trades beyond Saint Helena or Cape Town with a pair of seventy-fours, perhaps with a seventy-four and a single frigate, depending on how strong the French squadrons out of Réunion and Mauritius, are reputed to be,” Lewrie said with what might uncharitably be deemed a groan. “Now, though, Captain Treghues is of a mind that only a long, depriving sea voyage, a total ban on even shipboard liberty, and lashings of discipline will restore the ships of this squadron to the paths of the righteous. And, there was no pun intended.”

  Of course, he left out the juicy part wherein Treghues had taken him personally to task for associating with a nigh-naked circus person and actress… a Lilith, a Jezebel, a corrupting Delilah! What was he, a Captain of Less than Three Years’ Seniority even so, a Commission Sea Officer of their King, and supposedly a married man, and the father of three innocent babes, doing in company with such a jade, and cavorting so publicly before common seamen, to boot, to the detriment of sailors’ morals, the dignity of officers, and respect for English gentlemen, and et cetera and et cetera?

  “So, Captain Treghues may deem it seemly for us to sail further than we expected, sir?” Langlie asked, twigging to the meat of the affair at once. “Damme, sir! We knew we stood a good chance of going as far as the Cape of Good Hope, but…”

  “Now, it appears we’re down for Bombay, or all the way to Canton in China, aye,” Lewrie sourly mused, idly fluffing his fingers through Toulon’s belly fur.

  “But, sir… such a long voyage, with no additional break in our passage, and without even shipboard liberty, much less shore liberty, is the very thing that dispirited the crews of the homebound warships,” Lt. Langlie protested. “They’d not have run riot here, had they been given a chance to carouse at Cape Town.”

  “I’ll grant you the point, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie said with a sigh as he shifted in his chair. “Now, assuming Captain Treghues allows us even a whiff of land at the Cape, and it’s all wooding and watering, and no liberty at all, at least Mister Coote, the Purser, and officers will be let ashore. Do we, indeed, sail ‘cross the Indian Ocean, we’d best hunt the settlements over for some handy phrase books in Chinese and Hindoo. Tha
t, or kidnap likely Lascar or Asian translators.”

  “Ehm… don’t you own some Hindoo, sir?” Langlie asked. “And, I believe I heard that you had been to Canton, ‘tween the wars?”

  “My Hindoo is barely good enough to order drinks and supper,” Lewrie sourly admitted. “And as far as Chinee goes, I doubt I knew a half-dozen people who had a handle on it. Was ‘Ding-Dong-Dell’ a real Chinese phrase, it’d mean twelve diff’rent things, depending on which syllable, or syllables, got sung higher than the rest. We may be in need of a translator, a social guide. And, damned if the Navy’s going to re-pay us for his hire.”

  “Well, we’re still a few hands short, sir,” Langlie suggested, almost tongue-in-cheek. “Perhaps we could hire them on as Landsmen, to perform two tasks. In that case, the Navy would pay us for them, much like our, ehmm …” The First Officer bit off the rest, blushing.

  Like our Black sailors, hah? Lewrie thought, silently completing Langlie’s slip of the tongue for him; And wouldn’t that make this ship an “all-nations,” as varied as a dram shop? Kidnap a few, and the rest come easier.

  “Well, we’ll see, once we attain the Cape,” Lewrie said, “which will depend on Captain Treghues’s mood at that moment. Before we sail tomorrow, though, Mister Langlie…you’d best alert the Purser, Bosun, and your fellow officers, warrants, and midshipmen that we may be in for a lean spell. Any needs or comforts they presently lack they had best make good, here.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “I will hold Captain’s Mast, tomorrow’s Forenoon, once we’re at sea,” Lewrie further announced. “My respects to Mister Pendarves, the Bosun, and he’s to make up a round dozen cat-o’-nine-tails and the red baize bags for ‘em.”

  “Aye, sir,” Langlie numbly agreed, though with one brow cocked in surprise at such an order, for Lewrie had never, in his association with him, been much of a flogging Tartar, nor Proteus been known as a “whippin’ ship.”