A King's Trade (45 page)

“My word! Lewrie! It
is
you!” a sharp voice intruded.

“Uhm? Hah?” Lewrie gawped, whipping his head about to find a source, irked that his urgent attention on the doings with his rudder, and his fantasies, were so rudely interrupted at possibly the most inopportune instant. He espied a quartet of people just attaining a firm footing on the pier from the wooden stairs that led from the floating landing stage on the south side of the pier. There was an older Reverend in the all-black “ditto” and white bands that were Church “uniform” the world over, a stout woman of equal age in dark and drab grey silk, sporting a grim little bonnet atop her tautly drawn-back hair under a parasol worthy of a
rainy
funeral, a young lady gowned much the same who bore a fair sort of resemblance to the older people, though quite pretty, in a
prim
way, and a sun-darkened man in the red and scarlet of an officer of the East India Company army, right down to the bright silver chain-mail epaulets on each shoulder, aiding the girl.

“Burgess Chiswick?” Lewrie yelped in glad surprise. “Damn my eyes, Burgess. Caroline just wrote me you were on yer way home! Give ye joy, lad! Give ye joy!” he whooped, forgetting everything else for a moment to step forward and offer his hand. “Ye'll pardon me, but I have a wee situation here, Burgess. M'new rudder. The Frogs shot the old'un off, a couple of weeks ago, just out yonder,” he added, waving a hand seaward.

“Mother hasn't…?” Burgess uneasily asked him as he not only shook hands with him, but threw his arms about him, too.

“Caroline wrote that Mother Charlotte's poorly, but as of four months ago, was still with us, though as for autumn …” Lewrie told him, pounding him on
the back. The diffident lad that Lewrie had met during the siege of Yorktown so long ago, who had seemed so ill-suited and sometimes naive for a soldier's life in the harshness of India, had turned into a well-weathered man, and a confident and seasoned veteran of nearly fourteen years of command in the field.

“Hellish-good
t'see you, Burge!” Lewrie loudly told him.

“Ah, hum …” Burgess cautioned, with a subdued cough to remind Lewrie that he wasn't on his quarterdeck, that a churchman was nearby.

“Yer pardons,” Lewrie said, blushing. “Oops! I'll see to the last of our lowering away, then…”

“Vast, the God-damned larboard snub-lines, ye idle duck-fuckers!” Lt. Catterall bellowed, all unknowing, fully into his task, and in ripe Catterall form. “Belay ev'ry inch of that shite!”

Eudoxia found that outburst hilarious, even if such Billingsgate language made her blush. She laughed right out loud, obliviously, and repeated the “duck-fucker” part to herself several times, savouring it in wicked glee. Lewrie could practically
hear
scandalised heads snapping from him, to the unseen Catterall below the edge of the pier, and to Eudoxia, could hear stiff faces crackling into scowls!

“Uhm, hah …” Lewrie mumbled, going to the edge of the pier to stand by the shear-legs. “Rev'rend on deck, Mister Catterall!” he said in warning.

“Arr,
fook
th' preacher!” Ordinary Seaman Slocombe growled back in a voice just loud enough to be heard.

“I've a'ready done that, ‘usband,” Landsman Sugden cackled in a female
falsetto,
providing the end of the old jape about the habits of some circuit-riding ministers, and their doings. “Now, ‘e warnts ye t' kill ‘im a chicken!”

Can it get
any
worse?
Lewrie sadly asked himself.

“God Almighty!” he yelled down to the barge without thinking, in his quarterdeck voice. “Belay that language, or there'll be people at the gratings, come morning!”

“Vaht is meanink ‘to kill him a chicken,'
pajalsta?”
a giggly Eudoxia just
had
to enquire, stalking up to Lewrie's side. It didn't help matters that today she sported a new pair of buff breeches as snug as a second skin, her knee-length moccasins with all the fringes, a tan linen shirt unbuttoned halfway to her navel, a bright yellow sash tied about her waist, and that damned hat with the long egret feather plume, to boot, and most-like looked about as outlandish and savage to the Reverend and his family as a Muskogee war chief.

“I'll explain later,” Lewrie muttered from the side of his mouth, and trying to shush her with a hidden gesture.

“Alan, you knowink this fine soldier, da?” she blithely asked.

He
couldn't
snub her, could he? Well, he
considered
giving her a shove off the
pier into the water,
or
the barge, but by then, every eye, every brow lifted in prim expectation, was on him, and her, just ready to pounce, and Lewrie
had
to follow through.

“Burgess, allow me to name to you Mistress Eudoxia Durschenko,” Lewrie managed to get out, just knowing it would all turn to shit, no matter what he did. “Mistress Eudoxia, this is Major Burgess Chiswick of the East India Company Army, an old comrade of mine from the American Revolution, and my…brother-in-law.”

“Mistress Eudoxia,” Burgess smoothly replied, as if such things happened every day; perhaps he'd seen odder in India. He doffed his hat to her and made a presentable “leg.” Eudoxia stuck out a hand, at first, before remembering the finer customs, and dipped him a shallow curtsy, which, in boots and breeches, looked perfectly scandalous, as she murmured, “Your servant, Major Cheese … sir!”

“You are, ah…of local Cape Dutch extraction, Miss Eudoxia?” Burgess brightly enquired, in hopes of explaining her
outré
clothing to his travelling companions, perhaps to himself, as well.

“Nyet,
Major Cheese…Week,” Eudoxia proudly stated. “I am
Russki!
Russian. Vith Vigmore's Travellink Extravaganaa. I do bareback ridink, expert archery ‘turn,'
and
some acting in comedies, and dramas! Is pity we finish our run of shows before you arrive. Now, Vigmore and Papa, who is beink lion tamer, are away on hunt for new beasts, but I learn African elephant is
not
good for performink. But, you come from
India?”
she gushed, all agog and feckless. “Land of tiger and ridink elephant? You
see
them?
Hunt
them? Oh, you must tell me all, Major Ch…sir! Your friends? Family?” Eudoxia asked,
pointing
to the churchman and his brood, unaware of how gauche it was. “They see elephant and tiger, too? You introduce me,
da?”

“Uhm, ah …” Burgess dithered, caught in Lewrie's trap, after all. From the instant Eudoxia had opened her mouth, there had come a
series
of prim gasps;
circus
person! Bareback
anything!
And, horror of horrors,
actress?
If she'd said she rode a broomstick, boiled up potions to cast spells, ate children, and stuck hat-pins through
all
her cheeks whilst bussing Satan's fundament, she couldn't have given them a worse case of the “fantods”!

“Reverend Brothers, allow me to name to you Mistress Eudoxia… uhm, Durschenko. Mistress Eudoxia, may I name to you the Reverend Brothers… his wife, Mistress Brothers, and their daughter, Mistress Alicia Brothers. My fellow passengers on the
Lord Stormont.”

I don't know which of us is worse-fucked!
Lewrie grimly thought as he watched the Brotherses' reaction to
that! Him, or me,
‘
tis about equal shares!
I
could
trot out knowing Wilberforce, Clarkson, and old Hannah More, but I doubt it'd cosset ‘em. No, they'd never believe it!

“Your servant, sir…madam…miss,” Eudoxia said, smiling in anticipation of tales of India, her curtsies to each deeper, and more graceful, as if she was finally catching on. Then…

“Oh, but you are so
pretty,
Mistress Alicia!” she exclaimed, all but clapping her hands. “You comink from India, too? Did you ever ride elephant? Hunt tiger vith noble
rajahs?”

“Why, thank you, but…!” the young lady stammered.

“Certainly not!” and “Never!” her parents huffed.

“I'd also like to name to you my brother-in-law, sir, ma'am…Miss Alicia,” Burgess interjected, about ready to tug at his shirt collar and suddenly too-tight neck-stock. “Captain Alan Lewrie, of the Royal Navy.”

“Reverend Brothers…Mistress Brothers …Miss Brothers,” Lewrie purred, doffing his cocked hat and dipping a formal “leg.” “Your servant.”

“Sir!” from the husband. “Hmmph!” from the stodgy wife.

“Brother-in-law?” from Eudoxia, in a hellish-sharp tone.

Oh, shit!
Lewrie miserably thought;
I'm in the quag, now!

“Alan, you not tell me
tiy jenati zamujem!
You are
married?”

“Aah …” was Lewrie's “spiffy” reply.

“Schto?”
Eudoxia snapped, her colour up and her breasts heaving.
“Chort!
Hell-and-damn!
Tiy gryazni sikkim siyn!
Lying… peesa!”
*

And where've I heard
that
before?
Lewrie sadly asked himself as she glowered at him, hands on her hips, and probably wondering where she'd left her horsewhip, or her papa's daggers. A stamp of a boot on the pier, a gesture that involved flicking her thumb off her upper teeth (perfectly white and lovely, he noted!), followed by a last one she must have picked up in her travels, her forearm thrust at him, bent skyward, and a hand slapped into the crook of her elbow.

“Dosvidanya… viy sabaka!”
+
and she stomped off, gathered the reins of her waiting white gelding, and swung up into the saddle with a lithe spring and roll. She sawed the reins to turn “Lightning,” and gave him her heels, drumming him into an instant mad gallop into town.

“Well, hmm,” Burgess commented in the stricken silence that ensued. “Perhaps we'll see each other about town, before we sail, Alan, old fellow. For now, though…”

“Aye, before we sail, of a certainty,” Lewrie gloomily replied. “Rev-erend…ma'am…miss,” he intoned, doffing his hat again. The Brothers family gave him the “cut sublime” in return, suddenly intent on the clouds, the bay, and tidy little Cape Town.

Well… that's torn it.
Lewrie bleakly thought as he watched them toddle off…rather more rapidly than properly languid;
And here I didn't think it could
get
any worse. Fool, me! If Caroline hears o' this…which sure-to-God she will, ‘less I can bribe Burgess t'keep mum!… I'm back sleepin' in the stables. Lord, is that “dominee do-little” in with Wilberforce an' his crowd, I'm in the quag up t'my eyebrows with them, too!

He ambled (an impartial observer might have said stumbled!) over to the pier edge once more, to a stout combination piling and bollard against which he could lean (or slump, depending on your outlook) just by the stern of the ungainly barge.

“All done, sir!” Lt. Catterall proudly shouted up at him. “It is finished!”

“And ain't it, just,” Lewrie wryly commented. “Very well done, Mister Catterall, lads!” he congratulated. “Secure all, ready to get under way. Ready, Mister Goosens? No time like the present.”

And, with a spryness he did not feel, he scuttled down a steep ladderway to the north-side landing stage and into the barge. At the least, he could sail home to “pay the piper” aboard a
sound
ship.

A
nd, what about those eighteen-pounders, Mister Catterall?” he asked, the morning after HMS
Proteus
had completed her repairs, with a sound rudder and sternpost firmly attached, and a short test sail about Table Bay done to assure them that it was a
permanent
repair.

“Guns and carriages fully found, sir,” Catterall gruffly replied. “Though, any eighteen-pounder frigate or older ship of the line calling at Cape Town has already carried off most of the round-shot. I doubt if there are a dozen rounds remaining in stores, and none of the warships on the station at present mount eighteens, sir.”

“And if they did, they'd be extremely loath to share with us,” Lewrie glumly decided. He paced about his newly-pristine quarterdeck, now free of piled cable, shear-legs, heaps of hoisting chain, and the carpentry or metal-working implements needed for last-minute tinkering to make the rudder and sternpost fit properly. “It appears that we'll be forced to sail a brace of guns short, then. Dammit.”

HMS
Proteus
was a 32-gunned frigate of the Fifth Rate, a classification that could be misleading to the uninitiated, who might think that thirty-two guns meant thirty-two heavy guns, sixteen mounted on each beam. She had only mounted twenty-six 12-pounders, and the grand total included six 6-pounders; four on the quarterdeck, and two forward on the forecastle for chase-guns, and carronades didn't
count.