A King's Trade (39 page)

“Our peoples is
karasho, Kapitan
Lewrie,” she beamed. “Everythink good, everyone good, but for Poppa's best lion. He is die,
eta tak groozni…pras-teenyah.
Sorry, it is too sad, am meanink to say. Vanya, we are thinkink he eat somethink bad for him at Saint Helena…find head of little dog in cage, then he lose appetite.”

That'd explain the
last
complaint Treghues got from the governor's wife, aye!
Lewrie thought with a wince;
Exit one former lap dog, stage left!

“Find collar in throat, after Vanya die …” Eudoxia explained.

“Choked t'death on a pug and his collar, hmm,” Lewrie opined.

“Vanya is oldest, grown when Poppa get him from old trainer,” Eudoxia sadly continued, “not like Ilya, who is not to be trusted wit' head in mouth… ‘less he is very well-ffeed…fed?
Da,
fed. Even then, Ilya is …how you say, uhm…frisky! Now, Poppa not havink lion to swallow his head!”

Well, ‘twas a forlorn hope, at best,
Lewrie thought, grinning.

“So now, Poppa is goink hunt for
new
lions,” Eudoxia breezily said on, “for is best, raisink from cubs. Mister Vigmore, he is hunt for new beasts, too! Want
real
zebra…maybe feed donkeys to lions, at last. Ostrich, girafffee, even ele…?”

“Elephants?” Lewrie supplied, turning in surprise.

“Da,
ele-funts,
spasiba!”
Eudoxia happily exclaimed. “Thankink you for right word. Mister Vigmore, he say ‘ele-funts,' it soundink so funny…
hell
-ee-finks!” she told him, tossing back her head to give out a rich laugh. “Mister Vigmore beink
Engliski,
like you,
Kapitan
Lewrie, but
God!
He havink such
stranyi
accent!”

“Hallo, miss!” Some of the sailors in Lewrie's party, lolling at their sublime ease in his gear-waggons for a rare once, recognised her from her circus and theatrical performances…and from the kiss she'd planted on their captain, that last night at St. Helena. They waved their tarred straw sailors' hats and gave her a cheer. “Gonna ride t'Simon's Bay wif us, missis?”

“Simon's Bay?” Exdoxia asked.

“Down the Cape, t'other side of it, on another bay, my dear,” Lewrie informed her. “There's a wrecked ship there, where we hope to obtain a new rudder, and timbers, to repair
Proteus.
And what of you? You're rather well-armed, I must say. Doing a spot of hunting as well, are you, Mistress Eudoxia?”

She looked down at the brace of single-barrelled pistols jammed into dragoon holsters either side of her saddle's front, the long and slim firelock in a leather scabbard under her right leg, and the bow case and tube that held at least two-dozen of her arrows. “Oh, pooh, is only to practice. A quiet place in country, where I am practicink not to disturb peoples in town. For wild beast, if one come. For the wild
man,
if one come, too! Corn merchant in town who sellink us feed for beasts say many dangers in Africa, must always be ware.
Rifled,
see,
Kapitan?”
she declared, drawing her musket from its scabbard. “I buyink musket and pistols in Ph…Philadelphia, in tour in America.
Mnoga… much
better even than Poppa's old ones. Lighter, too. See?
Try, Kapitan,”
she said, thrusting the rifled musket into his hands.

He swung it up and sighted down the barrel, hand well clear of the trigger or lock, for he was sure that she'd loaded it before leaving town; that would be mere caution for a young woman out riding all by herself in the wilds of Africa…which, like inland settlements in North America, began about fifty yards past the last truck garden.

It was light, and pointed well, though the comb of the stock was tailored to a slighter form, custom-made by a talented Yankee gunsmith. Glossy burled wood, lots of brass, with brass or silver inlay, about as fine as the Pennsylvania rifles that his ship had captured from an American smuggling brig in the Danish Virgins in the Caribbean, all of them top-grade presentation models sent as gifts or bribes to the rebel ex-slave leader Toussaint L'Ouverture and his senior generals.

“Magnificent!” Lewrie told her, handing it back. “A match to a rifle I took in
the Caribbean. And, I've a breech-loading Ferguson as well, ever seen one? We should have a shoot, so you may try them… though I'm certain you'd out-shoot me without even trying.”

“I would
like
that,
Kapitan
Lewrie! You thinkink you are good shot?” she teased as she slid the rifle back into the scabbard.

“Uhm…passing fair, I s'pose,” Lewrie said with a grin, and some false modesty. “Potted pirates in the China Seas at two hundred yards with my Ferguson.”

“Wing-shot?”

“Give me a decent fowling piece, and I can fetch home a decent bag,” Lewrie chuckled. “Though, up the Mississippi, I
did
manage to knock down ducks and geese on the wing, with an
air
rifle!”

“Schto?”
Eudoxia gaped, leaning away in her saddle. “Wit'
air
rifle? I am seeink one, in gunshop in Portugal, but never am
shoot!”

“I'd let you,” Lewrie teased back.

“Ooorah!”
she whooped, startling both horses. “Uhm,
skolka vremene,
pardon…how long it take you to be goink to this Simon's Bay?”

“Two days each way,” Lewrie said, unconsciously gritting teeth at the thought that horses would have been much faster. “Perhaps two or three more to fetch what we're after, so…call it almost a week, together. Oh, but you'll be off hunting, by then, I'd expect.”

“Nyet,”
Eudoxia said with a silvery laugh. “No,
Kapitan. Men
go hunt, but sailors and girls stay in Cape Town. We do circus, but soldiers have seen,
Gallandya…
Dutch peoples have seen, and plays in
Engliski
make no sense to them, so…we are finish performances. Mister Vigmore puttink hunt t'gether.
Kapitan
Veed lookink after us ‘til they come back,
ponyemayu?
See? Poppa say huntink lion in wild Africa no place for girl, hah! Say I stay on
ship
wit'
Kapitan
Veed, but
Moinya,
big sweety,” she said, patting her gelding's neck in affection, “mus' not go stale, mus' ride him, every day.
Moinya
is for to say in
Engliski
‘Lightning,' da?”

“And a cracking-fine horse I'm sure he is,” Lewrie praised her, “one worthy of his name. So…when
does
the hunting party leave?”

“Oh, not for week, at least,
Kapitan
Lewrie,” Eudoxia told him, with a mischievious glint in her large amber eyes almost as playful as his own, and prettily lowering her lashes at him. “Vigmore is talk to…Boers, what you call them…
trekboers,
who are knowink country, ev'ry stitch! Havink waggon trains like yours, wit' ox teams, wit' a band of Black drivers, like yours, too! Mister van der Merwe, one is called, he havink
cutest
little Black fellows who drive his oxes! I am thinkink they call them …Hottentots! Like
doll
peoples!”

“Well, we
should
be back, by then,” Lewrie off-handedly said. “Perhaps we could…once my ship is repaired, o' course, ride out to the back-country and have ourselves a shooting contest.”

“Oh, would be
bolshoi!
Would be
grand, Kapitan
Lewrie! And…
may
-be …” Eudoxia posed girlishly, shyly, all but biting her lower lip and drawing out that tentative, suggestive word, “you sho wink me grand
Engliski
frigate,
da? Then,
we have shootinks. Race horses or hunt
little
beasts, not lions! Take picnic basket….”

“Why, what a delightful idea, and thankee for suggestin' that!” Lewrie cried, his baser humours well-stirred, by then.
And, with yer pesky poppa off gettin bit half t'death by flies, too!
he thought in glee;
And, damn my eyes, but, for playacting so doe-eyed innocent, I
swear
there's an eager vixen in her nature!

“We're to ‘break our passage' at an inn that our guide, Mister Goosen, knows, up ahead, Mistress Eudoxia,” Lewrie further suggested. “Care to ride with us and dine with us?”

“Oh, so sorry,
Kapitan,”
Eudoxia said with sudden pout, “but, I am promisink Poppa I not ride far, give hour I must return.
Spasiba,
for invitation, but I mus' go. I makink it
up
to you, in a few days?” she hinted with an enticing chuckle, in a throaty,
promising
way.

“Then I will be looking forward to that most eagerly, Mistress!”

“Pooh,
Kapitan.”
Eudoxia pouted some more.
“Mistress
Eudoxia, always Mistress. So stuffy,
da?
Is
Eudoxia,
please? You are
Alan,
not
Kapitan.
Beink
very
good, maybe I sayink
‘tiy,'
not
‘viy.'
How you say… un-formal? Unner-stan'?”

“Completely,” Lewrie told her with glad leer, stunned by that allowance, and half-strangled by the implication.

“Dosvidanya,
Alan,” she cooed, leaning over from her saddle to plant a chaste kiss on his cheek and put a hand in the small of his back. Before he could respond in kind, though, she gave out a whoop and put spurs to her horse. She whipped away, to go cantering down the length of Lewrie's motley caravan to its very head, spin round before the ox team of the first waggon, and come galloping back along the far side of it towards town. “
Sh-chastleevava pooti! Paka!
Have good trip, Alan! See you!”

God in Heaven!
Lewrie thought;
And just how long'll it take for Wigmore and her poppa t'hunt down their lions, elephants, and such?

W
ell, h'it's a
big
bugger… h'ain't it?” one of the sailors commented with a scowl on his face as they contemplated the wreck of the Indiaman.

“Big as a bloody three-decker,” Bosun Pendarves agreed, looking up at her from a few yards away, hands on his hips and goggling at her ruined hull which towered over them. “Bigger'n a Third Rate, anyways.”

The East Indiaman, once named the
Lord Clive,
lay rolled over on her starboard side, with her bows driven into the knee-deep shallows and her forefoot, cutwater, and bluff bows now half-sunken into the soft sand of the beach, while the rest of her extended out into the water of the bay, her stern underwater up to the counter under the stern walks that her best-paying passengers had enjoyed. Local scavengers had salvaged most of her forward hull planks already, those they could reach without a boat, so her ribs, frames, knees, and carline posts showed in the gaps they'd torn, clear from her larboard side to starboard, where crushed frames could be seen, after her grounding on the Whittle Rocks.

Even as Mr. Andries de Witt's caravan was unpacking and setting up camp on the low bluffs above the beach, die-hard local Boers sawed and pried on her forward half, even redoubling their efforts before the new-come “interlopers” could decide to run them off.

“Damned shame,” Lewrie said to the Bosun as he joined him beside the wreck, looking up at her great bulk. “What d'ye make her, Mister Pendarves? One hundred eighty feet on the range of the deck? Perhaps fourty-eight feet abeam?”

“Summat near that, aye, Cap'm,” Pendarves said with a sage nod. “Big as an eighty-gunner, or a Sir William Slade-designed seventy-four o' th' Large Class. Bigger'n th' Common Class for certain, sir.”

“She'll have one hell of a rudder and sternpost, then,” Lewrie surmised. “Might take a deal of cutting and trimming down.”

“Aye, sir, but we'll do ‘er, long as it's in decent condition.”

“Ah, here come our boats, I believe,” Lewrie pointed out, as a group of three rather large cutters came near them, from the docks at Simon's Town. Mr. Goosen stood in the bows of the lead boat, waving.

Talk about your book-ends,
Lewrie thought with a scowl of his own, as he walked down to the hard-packed sand of the lower beach;
Both of
‘
em bad bargains… crooked as a dog's hind leg.
Still, reminding himself that beggars can't be choosers, he waved and smiled in similar enthusiastic fashion to greet Goosen's arrival.

“Ach,
dere be Goosen!” Andries de Witt cried from his left side.

Book-ends, indeed; both were squat, solid, and stout, both florid of face and balding, and both sported beards so thick they looked like a brace of “owls in an ivy bush.” All Lewrie could normally make out of their features were thick and meaty lips—which they licked with sly relish whenever he enquired about costs—and pale blue eyes.