A King's Trade (4 page)

It was only once the tablecloth had been whisked away, the sweet biscuits and mixed nuts, and the port bottle, had been set out, that a nigh-broody Capt. Nicely had appeared to wince, or steel himself for a secret discussion, requesting that Aspinall make himself scarce.

Secret doings?
Lewrie had wondered;
Or… look out, here comes another of his brain storms, with me up t'my neck in the quag, again.

“So…what is it to be, sir?” Lewrie had prompted, scooting up closer to the table, expecting to hear Capt. Nicely whisper revelations about secret sailing times, sealed orders for
rendezvous
out at sea, so the French, who still had informers on Jamaica despite efforts to root them out, would hear nothing of the squadron's destination, or its formation, ‘til it was much too late.

That, or another miserable spell of dirty-work for Lewrie.

“These…walnuts?” Nicely had grumpily asked, instead, with his face screwed up like a hanged spaniel as he nibbled on one.

“Uh…no, sir,” Lewrie said, topping off his glass of port and passing it down-table. “American pecans,” he informed Nicely, saying it the way he'd heard it from Capt. Randolph of the USS
Oglethorpe
from whom he'd obtained them. “Pee-cans…Georgia pee-cans.”

“Hmmpf,” Nicely had muttered, clearing his palate with the port, and pouring himself another rather quickly, too, tossing that one back uncharacteristically quickly. He poured himself a third, but let that one sit ‘twixt his hoary hands, and gave it a long glare before looking at his host.

“Uhm… bad news, I fear, Lewrie,” Nicely had begun, at last. “A matter's arisen which, ah…may preclude your participation in my squadron's mission, d'ye see.”

“Some other duty, then, sir?” Lewrie had asked, feeling, in the following order: disappointment to miss a straightforward adventure; some relief that he'd
not
be handy, did Nicely get a wild hair up his nose, and need some derring-do done; who the Devil had requested him for something else, and how much worse might
that
be?

“Not, ah… quite,” Nicely had struggled on, obviously loath to bear bad news, but…”I shall be…
we
shall be, sorry to lose your
inestimable
services on the West Indies Station.”

“I'm t'go somewhere
else,
sir?” Suspicious, indeed, that.

“Far and fast, I fear,” Nicely had gloomed. He wriggled as if the crutch of his breeches had suddenly pinched a testicle. “There's the matter of all those damned Samboes of yours, Lewrie. Your Cuffy sailors. More to the point, where and when you got ‘em, d'ye see.”

“Ah? Hmm, hey?” Lewrie flummoxed, like to cough up half of a lung suddenly. That was
not
the ugly shoe he'd
expected
to be dropped!

“I
did
note, and wonder, where ye'd found so many free Black volunteers, the weeks I was aboard, whilst you were away, but …” his squadron commander had said, doing some fidgetting of his own.

They're going to
hang
me!
the irrational part of Lewrie's brain screeched at him. The rational half was too stunned to put forth any opinion.
I'm caught, red-handed! Christ, shit on a… !

” ‘Tis the Beauman family, d'ye see,” Nicely had carped. “A dozen of their slaves ran off one night. Nothing
too
odd about it, at first glance. One of the risks of slave-holding, with all the tales of the Maroons who've fled into the Cockpit Country, or the Blue Mountains…where the Beaumans
thought
they'd run, even was that plantation right on the sea, on the South coast, and rather far from Maroon territory.”

“Ah…
gerk!”
had been Lewrie's sagacious reply, and his heart banging
away like Billy-Oh, about two inches below his tonsils, it felt like. “Bother ye for the port, if you're…?” he asked, trying damned hard not to stammer. “Then, so, sir?” he managed to state.

“Organised as the Maroons are,” Nicely had gone on, “it wasn't beyond credence to think that they couldn't arrange an escape for any number of slaves determined enough to join them. And, God knows word can pass secret ‘twixt house and field slaves, and runaways, quicker than their masters could manage. No, Lewrie… ‘twas only after the Beaumans managed to find witnesses who said that a darkened
ship
was in Portland Bight that very night that they began to suspect that the runaways might have had some help, and the ex-slave Maroons are not in
possession
of many boats, none larger than canoes and such, so…”

“Perhaps a French, or Spanish, privateer, that …” Lewrie tried to say, with a puzzled shrug.

“Then, there was all that folderol ‘twixt your friend, Colonel Cashman of that West Indies regiment the Beaumans raised to put down the slave rebellion on Saint-Domingue, and the family,” Capt. Nicely had gravelled reluctantly on, “the duel that followed the accusations slung about after that pot-mess of a battle outside Port-au-Prince, just before the withdrawal of all British forces… cowardice charges by Cashman, ‘gainst the younger Beauman… Ledyard Beauman, was it?”

Lewrie could only vaguely nod; he did not trust himself to speak.

“Incompetence charges in reply, then that
duel!”
Nicely sniffed in gentlemanly outrage at what a shambles
that
had turned out to be…Ledyard Beauman too scared or drunk to obey the niceties, firing at Cashman's back before “Kit” could turn, stand, and receive; Cashman drilling the foppish bastard in the belly; Ledyard's second, a cousin, Captain Sellers from the disbanded regiment, tossing Ledyard a second pistol and drawing his own; and Lewrie, as
Cashman's
second, shooting
him
dead, too, and…

“Your friend sold up and sailed for America, right after?”

“Uhm, aye, he did, sir,” Lewrie answered, sensing a reprieve if Kit Cashman was suspected. “Good Lord, Captain Nicely, ye don't think that
Christopher
had a… ! Well, I'm damned if…!”

“The Beaumans did, at first,” Nicely had intoned, so solemnly that Lewrie felt that faint hope shrink like a deflating pig bladder.

“Spite, sir, pure and simple!” Lewrie managed to declaim.

“Spite, perhaps, on Colonel Cashman's part,” Nicely countered. “A parting jape on the whole detestable Beauman clan,
and
an expensive one. For, wherever your friend Cashman lit in the United States, the dozen fit and young slaves would prove useful in a new farming venture, or a source or ready funds, if not, but…”

Nicely had drawn out that “but,” turning it into a descending
glissando
worthy of a dying diva's final
aria,
nailing the first spike into the coffin lid by adding, “Of late, though, Hugh Beauman, head of their clan, has heard-tell that your crew has
quite
a few more Cuffffy sailors in it than the usual frigate so long on station in the Caribbean.”

“Why, those bastards!” Lewrie spluttered, summoning up every shred he could muster that even
resembled
righteous indignation, and whey-faced innocence. “Cashman slew Ledyard,
I
killed one of Hugh's cousins, so…! Before your time, sir, in my midshipman days during the American Revolution,
Lucy
Beauman and I were, ah…friendly. We even considered a union, should I earn a commission, but the Beaumans would have none of it. Almost had t'duel one of ‘em
then!
Barred the house, Lucy and I cut off …!”

He pointedly
didn't
supply that he'd been rogering a scandalous older “grass-widow” on the side whilst trying to squire
Lucy,
that he had escorted Hugh's married sister, Anne, about town unchaperoned one day, and not
his
fault, that
faux pas
in gentlemanly behaviour.

“So I have learned, Lewrie,” Nicely had sternly muttered. “Just as I'm aware of the Beaumans' threats on your life following the duel, which Mister James Peel of the Foreign Office took seriously enough to discover to me, and get you and
Proteus
safely out to sea, and out of their reach. We are all aware of that.”

“Ah…
we,
sir?” a stalwart Capt. Lewrie had quailed.

“Well, of course,
we,
sir!” Nicely had barked, obviously grown weary with tip-toeing and shilly-shally. “Me…Peel, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, the island governor, Lord Balcarres …” he ticked off on his blunt fingers. “Spiteful, vengeful calumnies laid against you by men who've held grudges against you since the ‘80s may not be deemed
sufficiently
actionable beyond an initial enquiry. But…”

The dying diva warbled again.

Didn't know he
liked
German operas,
Lewrie fearfully thought at the mere mention of “enquiries.” One look aboard by the Beaumans, and he'd meet up with “Captain Swing,” and why the
Hell
had he thought the theft of a dozen slaves, no matter
how
perishing-bad he'd needed hands to man his ship, could escape notice forever? A semi-drunken evening with “Kit” Cashman after the defeat and withdrawal from Saint-Domingue, as Cashman was closing his accounts and preparing to emigrate;
“Kit”
sniggering as they schemed a way to punish the Beaumans, and, indeed, it was
meant
to be an expensive, parting jape against them, hitting them where it would hurt them the worst…in their pocket books! A way for Lewrie to flesh out his under-strength crew, with
Cashman even offering to urge some of his White ex-soldiers from the disbanded regiment to sign aboard as Marines… !

“Such scurrilous charges ‘gainst a Commission Sea Officer, and one so
successful,
and
valuable
to the Crown, well!” Capt. Nicely had sniffed again with prim anger. “Baseless charges, of course…. Well,
we
feel that the repute of the Royal Navy should
not
be tainted with such, so…that is why we thought it best, all round, were you, and
Proteus,
to be sent away on other duties, Lewrie.” As he said that, Capt. Nicely had squirmed on his chair like a Hindoo
fakir
trying for a comfortable spot on his bed of nails.

“Ah, hmm,” Lewrie had responded with an audible gulp of relief. “So, how far d'ye think I…?”

“There's despatches in need of transport to Halifax,” Nicely said with a vague wave of his hand, and a cutty-eyed expression on his face. “Hellishly boresome place, Halifax. Fogs, rocks, and shoals…deuced hot summers for that far north, mosquitoes big as wrens, swarms of them as thick as, well… fogs. Nothing much there, but for their dockyard and store houses. What the town was settled for, to service ships on the North American Station, and a seasonal haven for line-of-battle ships from our station, as well. Excellent yard facilities, I know, though. And, isn't
Proteus
in need of a bottom cleaning, and a re-coppering?”

“Well, there is that, sir,” Lewrie had perked up.

“Of course, with our liners from the Caribbean ready to head up that way, soon, Halifax might be a tad too busy fulfilling
their
needs, so you may end up swinging round the anchor for a considerable bit of time, before they get round to your case.”

Oh, don't say
case! Lewrie had most illogically thought, ready to titter with relief;
Did I say “case”? Silly old me!

“So, I should look to closing my shore accounts, d'ye mean, sir?” Lewrie asked, sure then that his departure would be something quicker than “instanter,” and he didn't need to add dunnings from tailors and chandlers to his troubles.

“May you achieve all that by dawn tomorrow, it'd be best.”

“Dawn! Ah ha,” Lewrie had gloomed, with a benumbed nod.

“Frivolous, detestable, spiteful …” Capt. Nicely had mumbled, intent on nibbling Georgia “pee-cans,” giving them his whole attention, unable to look at Lewrie, or unwilling to do so. And Lewrie wasn't so sure whether Nicely had been griping about the Beaumans, or
him!
He'd also noticed that Nicely hadn't, or couldn't, put Lewrie to a question of whether the Beaumans' suspicions were true. What Nicely didn't know, he could not testify to in a court of law, should it come to it!

“Well, of course
they
are, sir!” Lewrie had spat.

Nicely had squirmed some more, his eyes flicking about as if in search of a basin of water and a towel, like a Roman governor about to remand a felon back to the Court of The Sanhedrin—or so Lewrie's fervid imagination could conjure at that instant.

“Sail under Admiralty Orders,” Nicely had grunted, “fly colours of an ‘independent ship,' all that.”

“Written orders, sir?” Lewrie had had wit enough to press. The last thing he needed was to be charged with stealing his own
frigate!

“Oh, most assuredly, sir,” Capt. Nicely had chirped. Meaning that Vice-Adm. Parker would treat his departure as a trivial matter of a minor refit for a hard-used frigate, which could carry despatches to Halifax at the same time, and could later swear that he'd known not a blessed thing about any legal charges. Nicely's signature would not be on those orders, either; nor would Lord Balcarres's, or Peel's, or anyone else's. “Can't have you just swanning off whenever…
damme!”

Nicely might have said more anent the matter, but was startled by faint brushings of fur against his well-blacked, fashionable boots, as Lewrie's cats, Toulon and Chalky, took that moment to gird up their not very considerable courage to make musky
rencontre
of their former cabin-mate.

Though the cats had made a fuss over Nicely when he'd first gotten aboard to supplant Lewrie, once their master was gone it was another matter, and they'd tormented the man…mostly with piss! Stockings, shoes, linens, sheets, and mattress, dressing robe abandoned on the back of a chair, uniforms laid out near to-hand atop his sea-chests, and the contents of the chests, too, if carelessly left open… all had gotten Toulon's and Chalky's “liquid blessings”! Teeth and wee claws had marked Nicely's boots, sword-belt, and leather scabbard covering, too, and his bright brass or gilt brassards, buttons, or sword fixtures had gone a gangrenous shade of green by the time Lewrie had come back aboard.