A King's Trade (49 page)

A shadow loomed over them.

“Is hurt, him?”

Lewrie looked up and almost gasped to see Eudoxia astride of her white gelding, her face a mixture of disdain for Lewrie but, beneath that stiffness, a
concern for Rodney's injuries. There was a sadness in the cast of her large, hazel eyes, too, Lewrie thought.

“Lion mauled him,” Lewrie answered her. “You know that tavern by the piers…the one with the red shutters?”

“Da,
knowink,” a very subdued Eudoxia replied.

“Ride there for me, if you please,” Lewrie bade her. “Ask for Coxswain Andrews. That's where my boat crew was eating, waiting for me to go back to the ship. Tell Andrews to come quick. Rodney here needs to see our Surgeon.”

“Is
many
needink surgeon,” Eudoxia said, her face working into a grimace. “Is some circus men
dead,
Papa tell me. Antonio, best clown and mime, who tended camels and donkeys…”

Oh,
Lewrie thought sarcastically and impatiently; hellish
loss, a mime!

“Will you?” Lewrie pressed. “Please, Eudoxia?”

“Da,
I go,” she promised, already sawing at her reins. “I ask for C… Coxs… sailor Andrews.” And she did, putting her gelding into a lope for the harbour.

“Fetch me some water, will you, Burgess?” Lewrie asked, kneeling at Rodney's side. “Better yet, a watered brandy.”

“Right-ho,” Burgess agreed, springing back over the rail of the veranda and calling for their waiter.

“You're a God-damned fool, Rodney,” Lewrie sternly told him.

“Amen t'dot, suh,” Rodney said with a grimace of pain.

Within minutes, Andrews and the gig's crew were back in a sweaty trot. Burgess had organised the gathering of long poles and canvas off the stalled waggon with which to fashion a stretcher, with the help of some lingering Boers who had stayed to gawk over the drama, once the comedy and the circus parade was done.

“Back to the ship and Mister Hodson with him, Andrews,” Lewrie ordered. “I'll be along later, soon as I'm able, in a hired boat. No need t'make a long row for me.”

“Aye, sah,” Andrews replied as the boat crew picked up the ends of the poles, with Rodney stretched out atop the canvas.

“Be easy with him, deserter or no,” Lewrie told him. “He's one hellacious tale t'tell, I'd expect. We lost Groome…out yonder.”

“See ‘im safe aboard, sah,” Cox'n Andrews vowed. “Heave ‘im up, an' haul away, lads. Easy, now….”

“Well,” Chiswick said as the sailors and their burden began to head down
the street to the piers. “Don't we have a lobster course to come…before all the excitement, happened, that is?”

“Aye, we did,” Lewrie brightened, though still plagued by what in the Hell he would do with Rodney. “Let's finish our dinner. Since you're payin' so generously for it, as I remember?”

Using the steps this time, they went through the inn, then out onto the veranda to their table the usual way. Under the big, square covered outdoor veranda though, there was another intrusion, Daniel Wigmore, to the life, still swabbing sweat and trail muck from his brow with a handkerchief. Two empty steins sat before him, soon to be joined by a third, the way he was chugging his fresh one down.

“Cap'm Lewrie, ‘ow do,” Wigmore said with a shame-faced grin.

“We need t
‘talk,
Mister Wigmore,” Lewrie sternly replied, “‘bout you luring two of my sailors to desert, maiming one, and killing the other,” he said, turning a chair back-side-round to sit down at Daniel Wigmore's table, lean close over the chair back, and glower at him.

“Ah, them laddies woz
mad
fer joinin' me circus, Cap'm Lewrie!” Wigmore blustered, eyes widened and his smile broader. “Nivver knew a thing
h'about
h'it ‘til we woz
‘ours
down th' trail, and I
couldn't've
turned ‘em back t'town, ‘thout a gun or ‘orse, wif night comin' on, an' all
sortsa
beasts lookin' fer supper? Cruel, that'da been, sir!
Cruel!
An' ‘oo's this fine gennelman wif ye, Cap'm Lewrie?”

“My brother-in-law, Major Burgess Chiswick, of the Nineteenth Native Infantry, in India…Mister Daniel Wigmore, owner of Wigmore's Travelling Extravaganza,” Lewrie sarcastically did the honours, “one of England's
notable
liars and ‘sharps.' Admit it…you really tempted something horrid, promised ‘em the Moon if they'd make your shows more exotic. Told Groome he could play
Othello
in your dramas, hey?”

“Well, I mighta mentioned a
minor
turn on stage, but…”

“Hah!” Lewrie scoffed.

Burgess quietly came back to the circus owner's table with the rest of their burgundy left on theirs, pouring them both a goodly measure. Lewrie took the offered glass and sipped slowly, his eyes boring into Wigmore, who was now squirming in anxiety that Lewrie, or the Indian Army Major, had the authority to bring him up on charges…or could find someone who could, right quick. Dan Wigmore uncomfortably noted that Lewrie's eyes, usually a merry blue when at the circus, sniffing round Eudoxia, had gone a chilly Arctic grey, and most vulture-like, making him wilt and look away in dread as he chugged down his beer and waved for another.

“Roight, so I
woz
of a mind, not
much
o' one, d'ye see,” Wigmore croaked, “allus on th' lookout fer talent, so …” He shrugged with a weak and sickly defeated grin plastered on his sweaty face.

“What happened to Groome? What happened with Rodney?” Lewrie demanded. His voice was level, his tone almost mild, but there was a steel to it, and Wigmore knew he was a long way from being out of the woods.

“Now, alla that were van der Merwe's doin', ‘at feeble
idjit!”
Wigmore exclaimed, all but wringing his hands. “Lord, Cap'm Lewrie, ye don't know wot a
trial
we been through, worse'n th' wand'rin's o' th' h'Israelites h'in th' Wilder-ness…worse'n me namesake, Daniel, h'in th' Lion's Den, oh yes! ‘Twoz
Biblical,
‘ow we suffered h'out there, I tell ye gennulmen…
Biblical!”

“Do tell,” Lewrie dubiously said. “No, really…
tell.”

Wigmore's litany of woe was long and plaintive. First, one of his shave-pated strongmen who posed as a Hindoo
jetti
had been bitten by a
boomslang
and died within minutes. The second night out, their
kraal
hadn't been properly ringed with enough thornbush, and had been invaded by a pack of warthogs, which had spooked the horses, requiring a whole day to round them up again… minus the one that got pulled into a stream by crocodiles, less one that a pack of lions had eaten!

Then, there were the termite mounds and man-tall ant hills that van der Merwe had led them to, praising the unique oddity of aardvarks and aard-wolves, which they captured… though not without being swarmed by an army of biting ants after they'd used too large a keg of gunpowder to spread the “treats” as bait for the aardvarks and aardwolves, and everyone had dashed off to the nearest waterhole to bathe them off, shedding clothing as they went, not noticing the half-dozen crocodiles lurking in said waterhole, first, who ran them back onto dry ground…rather a long way, and
that
change of clothing was lost to hyenas.

Under van der Merwe's knacky guidance again, they had ringed a tree in which a pair of spotted panthers were sleeping, banging on pots and ox-bells, yelling to daunt the cats as they brought up stout nets. Unfortunately, the panthers
hadn't
felt much like joining the circus, and had leaped down at the worst possible moment and ganged up on the circle of beaters, who just had to
shoot
their way wide of disaster, but had ended up shooting mostly at each other, the tree, and anything inside their circle…excepting the panthers, of course, and they'd lost a Black bearer, which, considering the firepower at hand, and the level of terror and chaos, could have been a lot worse. It resulted in Panthers: 1, Nimrods: 0, though they did manage to take another pair of panther
cubs
they got up another tree, later.

Then, when van der Merwe had suggested that hyenas just
might
be able to be tamed, one night, the dawn had revealed that three more of their native helpers had decamped, and they, thankfully, gave up on
that
idea.

Groome, well… van der Merwe told them that Cape buffalo were immensely strong beasts, never got
rinderpest
like domestic cattle and oxen, so vital to the Boers, did, and wouldn't they be a novelty when trotted into the ring towing circus waggons, once broken to the goad, and the yoke! And, what a boon to Boer mobility!

They had stalked a herd of them, thinking to corral a few with another ring of noisy beaters, and fleet horsemen with rope nooses to capture the ones they wished. The queston had turned out to be who was herding whom, though. The herd
had
milled tight together, flowed round as one for a bit, then whirled into formation and
charged,
with Wigmore likening it to an evolution of a brigade of British dragoons or lancers, perfectly
bristling
with hundreds of
horns,
not sabres or lance-tips! That pretty-much put paid to the circle idea, and everyone had run or galloped for their lives. Groome had run to a flimsy flame tree and scaled it, but hadn't lasted two minutes once the Cape buffs had circled below him and butted the damned thing down.

More natives had realised they'd been hired on by a nit-wit, by then, and, uttering the Bantu equivalent of “Bugger
this
for a game of soldiers!,” had melted away into the bush.

Wigmore's second false
jetti
had followed van der Merwe's sage lore that zebras calm down just sweet as anything if one pulled a jute sack over their heads, and somewhere in the braying stampede,
jetti
#2 had gotten kicked in the head, then trampled to death.

They'd captured Durschenko's trio of lion cubs with yet
another
encirclement of beaters, but had had to shoot the male and three females to part them from the cubs. That's where Rodney had been mauled, when the adults in the pride had bowled through jittery gunners and beaters.

“We found h'elephinks,” Wigmore sorrowfully related. “Sorta ‘ard not to, wot wif s'bloody many of ‘em bellerin' an' trumpetin' so mad, when we camped by th' water'ole they warnted h'at. H'at's where we lost pore ol' h'Antonio.”

“The mime,” Lewrie commented, now nibbling on cold lobster with his fingers, their dinner re-directed to Wigmore's table.

“An' a good'un ‘e were, too, Cap'm Lewrie, an' din't th' lit'l chil'ren love ‘im,” Wigmore wistfully replied, piping at his eyes with his handkerchief. “Ne'er ‘ad th' voice t'be a good h'actor, d'ye see, but that man knew ‘is way wif a pig bladder or a dummy chicken like ‘e was
born
t' th' craft. An' I allus knew
me camels an' such woz in good ‘ands …'less h'Antonio were in drink, or feelin' h'amourous.”

“He… with livestock, d'ye mean t'say?” Burgess gasped.

“Well, now an' h'agin, but ‘e ne'er meant nought by h'it,” Dan Wigmore said with a mournful sigh. “Butt h'ugly'z h'Antonio woz, not a woman h'in th' world woulda…”

“Male, or female?” Burgess asked, lips quivering rather oddly.

“Oh, females h'only, sir!” Wigmore primly declared, tugging at his waistcoat as if insulted. “‘Twoz nought queer ‘bout h'Antonio!”

Burgess shot to his feet as if outraged beyond all countenance, and crossed quickly to the veranda railing facing the street. Wigmore fretted with his coat lapels, shrinking into it as if embarrassed…'til Burgess Chiswick erupted in laughter, great heaves of laughter that sounded something very much like “Bwooharharhar!” along with the odd snort, cackle, and wheeze.

“Well, h'it ‘appen, Cap'm Lewrie,” Wigmore explained. “Now, I'm ‘at sorry we lost one o' yer sailor boys, an' ‘at lit'l Rodney feller like t'got
et
by ‘at mama lion, but ‘e'll
most-like
‘eal up an' serve ye good'z h'ever, oncet…”

“But that isn't the point, is it, Mister Wigmore?” Lewrie said with a wintry crackle to his voice. “You had your way, how many
more
of my hands would you have lured away? By God, sir! I should string you to a hatch-grating and have you flogged ‘til your
backbone
is exposed! A fubsy such as you, the ‘cat' would pare your flesh like it'd cut fresh, soft
cheese!
Mine arse on a
band-box,
I should!”

Wigmore paled, blinking rapidly in dread; unable to look Lewrie in the eye, he turned to heed Burgess Chiswick, who was rattling that veranda railing with his laughs. Wigmore
tried
to smile it away.

“Nivver do h'it h'agin, sir, swear h'it!” Wigmore tumbled out. “Point taken, Cap'm Lewrie. Make h'it up t'ye, h'if I could.
Blood
-money! I could pay… I'm told yer fond o' playful, furry critters, sir. ‘Ow ‘bout a
mongoose!
‘Ey's Hell on rats, an' cute as anythin'!”

To which offer, Lewrie could not help but hide a grin, try to maintain fierceness, but said, his own lips quivering with amusement, “No thankee…
have
one!” He stood, suddenly, scaring the man. “Oh, drink yer damned beer, Wigmore. But, do you come sniffing round any of my sailors, again, I'll come after you myself with a cat-o'-nine-tails!” he warned.

Leaving the man in a speechless, hang-jawed sweat, Lewrie went to join Burgess Chiswick at the railings, about ready to cackle, too.

“Nothin' queer ‘bout Antonio, my Lord!” Burgess was still weakly wheezing to himself. “Oh, Alan, did ye ever hear the like?”