A Fine Retribution

by Dewey Lambdin

  “My Lord!” Jessica said at the end, her jaw agape in sheer awe. “When I said you’d lived a most adventurous life, I spoke too soon, for we did not know a tenth, an hundredth, of it. Red Indians, liberating slaves from their chains … you must tell us all, Sir Alan! Why, you must publish your memoirs!”

  “Aye, sir!” her brother heartily agreed. “The … Muskogees, you called them? What was it like, to live in an Indian village?”

  “Should I call for some tea whilst I do?” Lewrie offered, thinking that this portrait session was done for the morning.

  Aye, give a dog like me a chance t’boast! he smugly thought, and told them of chickees and hutis, animal and bird calls from outlying scouts on the march, the long palavers with tribal elders and the perils of the “black drink”, why Spanish Moss was a most un-trustworthy bedding, unless one liked being infested with wee red “chiggers”; how foul skunks reeked, and why one must take care not to waken “Water Cougar” in any stream, and what bathing in a lake full of alligators was like.

  “And, long before I wed my late wife, Caroline, I was married in Florida, most un-officially,” Lewrie related. “I had to, else their war chief, Man Killer, did me in. She was a slave one of their hunting expeditions had taken from the Cherokees, name of Soft Rabbit, a sweet girl, really,” and went on to tell them how their “marriage” most-like had been dissolved at the next Green Corn ceremony in the Spring.

  “After I got stabbed in the left thigh by a Spanish bayonet on the beach right before we departed,” Lewrie said, “she put a poultice of some kind on the wound, and damn … uh, it was amazing that it healed me up better than anything! Better than a blue-mould bread poultice would should one apply it to a horse’s leg. Once back aboard Shrike, our Surgeon’s Mate ripped it off in disgust, but even he had to admit that it worked, and I should remain a biped, ha ha!”

  The fact that he and Soft Rabbit had wed because he had gotten her pregnant, and that there was a by-blow, now a member of a prominent Charleston, South Carolina, Indian-trading family, was better left un-said!

  By then, what tea was left in the pot had gone cold, and both of the dogs were making wee whines of distress, so Lewrie suggested a trip to the back garden before his carpets were piddled on. Down to the basement they went, out to the area, and up the stone steps to the garden proper, with the dogs scampering in haste for relief.

  “It’s quite spacious, Sir Alan,” Jessica said in delight as she took it all in. “Over-grown, of course, but a lot could be made of it.”

  “Well, I did have some workers in to scythe the grass, rake, and tidy up,” Lewrie said with a shrug, “but, if I hear from Admiralty anytime soon, that’d be best left to the next tenants.”

  “Hmm, a trellis at the top of the steps, where flowering vines could thrive,” Jessica said, walking about the garden. “These bushes do need more watering than London’s usual rain, and some trimming, but in time they would bloom out and make a most attractive display.”

  “You have a green thumb, do you, Miss Jessica?” Lewrie asked. “My late wife did, though I couldn’t tell one type of flower from the next. Some red, some yellow, some blue, and the ‘what-ye-call- ’ems’ come up in April, haw!”

  “Oh, I do my poor best with our own garden, small as it is,” she replied, looking rueful for a second. “I more admire what our kin have done with theirs, since my brothers’ parish manses are out in the country … and all their wives, and my sister, do wonders with their gardens, Sir Alan. Even my uncle Milton, at Oxford.”

  “Allow me,” Lewrie said, pulling out a handkerchief to offer her, “but you have some chalk on your forehead.”

  “Oh! Do I? How clumsy of me!” she said, reddening slightly, and dabbing the smudge. “All gone?”

  “Think you got it,” Lewrie told her.

  Their fingers brushed as she handed the handkerchief back, and she reddened once more, looking shyly away, turning her face up to the sky. “Ah, well. It must be past Ten, and the clouds are rolling in. I fear we’ve lost the light.”

  “My fault,” Lewrie assured her. “Me and my … tales.”

  “But tales of a most fascinating nature, Sir Alan!” she declared.

  “Oh, well,” Lewrie said with a shrug, as if her compliment was welcome, but he was not worthy of it. “I fear you’ve taken on a task that might take up the rest of the summer, do I yarn on as I have.”

  “Which only makes my work on your portrait all the more enjoyable, Sir Alan,” she was quick to assure him.

  “And, after so many months in nought but male company, being in yours is enjoyable to me, as well, Miss Jessica,” Lewrie said in truth, though trying hard not to leer.

  The dogs had finished their business, with many swipes of their hind paws, before dashing back to their people, to frisk about for attention, coos, and “wubbies”, before setting off on another round of boisterous play.

  “At one end of the garden, hmm, round here,” Jessica said with her hands out as if to frame it in her mind, “a gazebo of some kind, or a bricked, or stone-flagged area for taking tea in the open air would be nice. Somewhere to sit in good weather, and contemplate the serenity of your garden.”

  “At Canton, in China, there was an island pleasure garden just cross the river,” Lewrie recalled. “They had these open-sided shelters a bit off the ground, where they’d take tea, and bring baskets of food. Willow trees swayin’ in the breezes, flowers everywhere you’d look.”

  “You’ve been to China?” she exclaimed in delight. “You must tell me all about that, Sir Alan! Charley, Sir Alan’s been to China!”

  “Well, they didn’t allow ‘round-eyed foreign devils’ to see much of the city, or the countryside, but aye, I did see Canton, Macau, and what lay along the banks of the Pearl River, and the foreign trading strip at Jack Ass Point,” Lewrie told them. “Couldn’t go beyond the walls, lest we pollute their people. Arrogant, the Chinese officials are, as if their Celestial Kingdom is the only empire on Earth, and everyone else is barbarian, only alive to pay tribute to ’em.”

  “You must tell all to us, next time we come, Sir Alan,” she gaily insisted. “Yours will be the most delightful, and amusing, commission I’ve ever undertaken, and I look forward to our next session!”

  “As do I, Miss Jessica,” Lewrie told her. “Hmm, I’d imagine my dog needs the exercise. Might I escort you home, Miss Chenery?”

  “That would be wonderful, Sir Alan, yes,” she assured him.

  “Here, Bisquit!” Lewrie called to his dog. “Want to go get some ‘walkies’?”

  *   *   *

  Back in the parlour, leashing Bisquit and gathering up their hats and such, Lewrie recalled what he’d thought of when he’d looked forward to Jessica’s letters far away off the coast of North Spain; he’d wondered whether he’d been besotted.

  Am I? he asked himself as they stepped out into Dover Street; Yes, I do believe that I am!

  BOOK TWO

  I say therefore to the unmarried and widows,

  “It is good for them if they abide” even as I.

  But if they cannot contain, let them marry;

  for it is better to marry than to burn.

  —SAINT PAUL, 1 CORINTHIANS, VERSE 7:7 8–9

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “One must be meticulous, sir,” Jessica said more than once to Lewrie’s queries as to when the portrait might be done, partially teasing with a puckish grin on her face, or partially aloof and authoritative, with a brush held aloft like like a teacher’s cane, in threat. Each query resulted in a laugh. “Perfection, for which I strive, can’t be achieved in an hour, don’t you know!”

  A whole morning was spent just on the scar on his cheek, and if it should be too prominent, or merely hinted at. The tone and colour of his skin, would he prefer a ruddier hue representative of exposure to far-off tropic sunlight, or how he now appeared after months in the airs of London? The gilt buttons of his dress uniform coat she wished to sketch so she could get the deta
ils right, later; the enamelled star of the Order of the Bath, which she had never seen, Jessica wished to limn as well, perhaps with a one-haired brush to get it absolutely correct to the tiniest detail.

  All of which, Lewrie didn’t really mind, for all her fussiness prolonged their sessions together. Of course, she, her brother, or Madame Berenice Pellatan were full of questions about his career and adventures, which slowed her work to a crawl, but that was welcome, too. And, when pleading that he should shut himself up and pose, for God’s sake, Lewrie would get Jessica to talk, about her family, about herself, or merely the latest news in the morning’s papers, and after a couple of hours of that, a pot of coffee or tea would be necessary, replete with sweet bisquits or one of Yeovill’s dainty treats, over which Lewrie was delighted to learn that Jessica Chenery had a merry, tongue-in-cheek and wry wit, along with a most intelligent grasp of what went on in the world, and had firm opinions of her own, a fact which Lewrie suspected would have appalled her father, the Reverend Chenery, a most staid fellow, who most-like firmly believed that women should keep to their sewing and such.

  Did she ride? Alas, Jessica had little exposure to horses in London, and her father’s city manse did not have a glebe, a home farm, where horses could be pastured. She had learned when visiting country parishes as a child, bareback on led ponies, or astride on a borrowed man’s saddle ’til the day that her parents insisted that, should their daughters continue, they should learn the proper ladies’ side-saddle.

  “Oh, Sir Alan, I always felt it so precarious that I should go over the right side and backwards at anything more than a slow walk!” she declared, laughing out loud, to the amusement of all.

  “Well, perhaps we might go riding in Hyde Park,” Lewrie idly suggested, “and we find you a very gentle, old mare.”

  “I would like that, though I’m sure to prove an embarrassment to you, sir,” Jessica hesitantly agreed. “Or, I could borrow a pair of breeches from Charley, and wear them under a loose skirt, and ride more securely.”

  “What a scandalous ideal” her brother barked, and Madame Berenice spluttered that she would make a laughingstock of herself, and “de-sex” herself. “Oh la, non non, ma chérie! It is not ladylike, it it not done!”

  “And why not?” Jessica replied with a daring toss of her head.

  *   *   *

  “A gentle one for the lady,” Lewrie requested of the stabler a day or two later. “Very gentle.”

  An older mare was led out, a patient roan of only thirteen hands, and saddled for Jessica. Lewrie had brought a cloth feed bag full of treats; some cauliflower florets, carrot chunks, sugar lumps, and apple quarters, and by the time Jessica had offered the horse some of the goodies, stroking the rented prad as she did so, she’d made her mount a fond friend. At last she mounted from the lady’s block, rested one leg in the crook with her left foot in the stirrup, looking game but nervous. Lewrie had been befriending himself to a grey gelding, also of an age, and swung up astride after giving his mount the rest of the treats.

  “Shall we?” he asked, clucking and urging his horse forwards.

  “A slow pace, I beg you,” Jessica said after a deep breath to resolve herself. Her horse stepped off in trail of Lewrie’s, though it did look back at her as if wondering where the rest of the apples were. The mare, long used to the bridle path along Rotten Row, came up alongside Lewrie’s gelding as if they had been paired together on a regular basis, or were long-time stable mates as close as cater-cousins, or got along together as well as Bisquit and Rembrandt.

  “I doubt she’ll be bolting on you,” Lewrie commented, noting how stiffly Jessica held herself. “If anything does spook her, I am right here t’grab her reins. Relax, Miss Chenery, and enjoy the day.”

  And a very nice day it was, with rarely seen clear blue skies, for London, just warm enough to be comfortable, and Hyde Park was redolent of decorative beds of late-season flowers, and many blooming bushes. After some time, Jessica did ease her stiffness, began to look about beyond her plodding horse’s head, gathering courage enough to talk with growing ease.

  Lewrie told her about riding over his father’s country estate at Anglesgreen, about his favourite saddle horse, Anson, and what the house looked like, explaining Sir Hugo’s poor jape when naming it Dun Roman, for “Done Roamin’”.

  “I should admire to see it, Sir Alan,” Jessica said with one quizzical brow up. “It’s of only one storey? How odd, though.”

  “Well, there is a partial basement,” Lewrie allowed. “It’s like the houses he saw or lived in in India, with deep, wide galleries out front and back, against the harsh sunshine. At least here in England, he has no need for pankah fans for cool breezes, or half-naked servants stirrin’ ’em all day and night.”

  “India!” Jessica marvelled. “Your entire family is well-travelled, sir! How did he end up there?”

  Lewrie explained how his father had gone “smash”, had spent some time in Portugal free of creditors’ demands, then had wangled an appointment in the East India Company Army, as Colonel of the 19th Native Infantry at Calcutta, and how they had been thrown together years later in a military expedition in the Far East, because the 19th was a low-caste regiment, able to cross the Khali Pani, the “black water”, without breaking their caste. He went on about nefarious French finagling with blood-thirsty native pirates aimed to ruin “John Company” trade should there be another war, fights at Canton, the South China Seas, Borneo, and in the Spanish Philippines, and disguised warships, when he’d been only a Lieutenant.

  “He came home a full nabob,” Lewrie said, “good looting, I think, cleared his debts, bought his house in Upper Grosvenor, the estate at Anglesgreen, right next to where my late wife and I were renting, near her kinfolk, and has been living well ever since.”

  And in that cheery, conversational way, they spent nearly two hours, that first day, plodding along at a sedate pace, brushed aside by the younger gallants and “sparks” showing off their blooded horses and their equitation skills. At last, they assayed a trot, then an easy canter back to the hired stableyard, as Jessica felt more and more comfortable on a lady’s saddle. She even looked happily triumphant when they at last drew reins and dis-mounted.

  “Thank you for a most enjoyable morning, Sir Alan!” she gushed after he had reached up to take her by her waist to ease her down, and let his hands linger for a moment. “Would it be too much of an imposition to wish that we might do this again? But only if I get the same, sweet horse the next time,” she added, stroking her mount’s neck and muzzle before it was led away.

  “Your wish is my command, Miss Jessica,” Lewrie assured her. “How’s the mare called?” he asked one of the ostlers. “Nancy, is it? Next time, then, the lady must have Nancy to ride. And it’s no imposition at all, my dear. I enjoyed it immensely, too.”

  From then on, they rode togather at least once a week, depending on the weather, sometimes with her brother along.

  *   *   *

  A morning session was going right well, with Jessica humming to herself, so pleased was she with the results, even allowing Lewrie a peek after an hour or so, just at the arrival of the tea service.

  “I do believe that I resemble myself, to the Tee!” Lewrie said, now that his face, the trickiest part, was completed at last. “A hint of a smile, a hint of teeth, hmm. I’m all there, warts and all, as I requested. It’s marvellous.”

  “Quite remarkably realistic,” Madame Berenice judged it. “Most fitting, especially for male subjects, though if Jessica painted for a lady client, a touch of the wispiness, the idealised gauziness, an air of the flattering ephemeral would be required, n’est-ce pas? Women must be flattered, especiallly if they are not blessed with natural beauty. Such did I do recently for the wife of a coal merchant, oh là, the poor dear.”

  “Shall I pour, Sir Alan?” Jessica offered.

  “If ye’d be so kind, Miss Jessica,” Lewrie said, “for I’m fair-parched. No, Bisquit, no, dogs. Wa
it your turn, humans first,” he chid the dogs, who whined, licked their chops, frisked about, or sat with their tails whipping the carpet, eager for their share of ginger snaps. “Oh, here then, have one. You, too, Rembrandt.”

  “I do hope the weather is good, tomorrow, else we shall miss the showing at Ackermann’s,” Madame Berenice said with a put-upon sigh as she bit off part of a snap, then took a sip of tea. She cast a wary glance out the front parlour windows with another theatrical sigh.

  “I thought we’d both attend, right after tomorrow’s morning session,” Jessica said, stirring cream and sugar into her cup. “That would indeed depend upon whether it’s raining, and upon Charley, though if I cannot entice him into chaperoning us, we may have to miss it. He has no patience for gazing at art, unless it’s scandalous caricatures,” she said with a laugh.

  “What’s Ackermann’s?” Lewrie asked over the rim of his tea cup.

  “Ackermann’s Repository of Arts,” Jessica told him, “is a large gallery which displays and sells paintings,” she said, feeding her dog another ginger snap. “There’s to be an exhibition of works submitted to the Royal Academy for this year’s competition, the ones that didn’t make the final rounds’ selections, but might be rather good, anyway.”

  “So you can see what your competition’s up to?” Lewrie teased, making Jessica blush nicely as she grinned back.

  “Quite the coup for Ackermann’s to arrange it,” Madame Berenice said, “given the shop’s prior reputation for dealing in bawdy satirics and outright … pornographie,” she said with a false shudder. “It has improved its repute, but the Good Lord only knows what sort of idle clientele still goes there, looking for prints of a scandalous nature. And, it is not in the best neighbourhood. Number One oh one, in the Strand. Not the safest environ for two ladies, un-escorted,” Madame Pellatan said with another put-on shudder.