A King's Trade (8 page)

“Honoria, pray allow me to name to you one of my young acquaintances from the Far East, and the Mediterranean, Captain Alan Lewrie of the
Proteus
frigate…. Captain Lewrie, my daughter, Mistress Honoria Staples. I'd introduce you to my grandchildren, Thomas and Susannah, but I fear they're having too much fun with their new ponies, ha ha! A stout fellow, full of pluck and daring, is Captain Lewrie, my dear, an energetic and clever champion of our fair land, and a perfect terror to Britain's foes, from our first encounter to the present!”

“Your servant, ma'am,” Lewrie managed to respond, at last, with a gulp and bob of his head as he doffed his hat to her and gave her a jerky bow, feeling so deliriously put-off that he nearly blushed to be so gawkish and clumsy, like a farm labourer introduced to a princess, all but shuffling muddy shoes and tugging his forelock.

Clever, daring…plucky?
Lewrie felt like goggling to hear an introduction such as that from Twigg, of all people;
God above …me?

“A comrade of old, of course,” Mrs. Staples replied, bowing her head gracefully, and beaming in seeming understanding. “Your servant, Captain Lewrie, and delighted to make your acquaintance. And…you have old times to take stock of, I'm bound, Father? The children and I should be going, then…may I get them
off
their new ponies,” she stated with a merry twinkle, “though you and Johnathon…my husband, Captain Lewrie…a man as fond of springing surprises on people as Father …spent
far
too much on them.”

“You'll not dine here, my pet?” Twigg cooed, looking devilish-disappointed that they would not. Damn his blood, but he was almost…
wheedling!
Or doing a damn' good sham of it.

“I told cook we'd be back by one, and there's just time for us to get home before everything goes cold,” his daughter chuckled, holding up a lace-gloved hand to her children as they completed their lap of the grounds. “Rein in, children, and alight! You've shewn Grandfather your presents, and we must go. I mean it! No, you mayn't ride them back; they're too fractious, yet. It will rest them to be led at the coach's boot, unsaddled.”

“Brush and curry, then stable them proper, once you're home, as well, my dears,” Zachariah Twigg fondly cautioned. “See to your beasts first. You look after them, and they'll look after you. Remember, you are English, not cruel Dons or Frenchmen.”

“Yes, Grandfather,” the children chorused, though unhappy about leaving, or dismounting. Quick as a wink, the team of roans was back in harness and the handsome closed coach led out into the drive, ready for departure.

“See you all on Sunday, my dears,” Twigg promised as he hoisted the children in, then handed in his daughter, giving her a peck on the cheek like the doting-est “granther” in all Creation. “Church, dinner, then we'll all go for a long ride together, after.”

Twigg, in church, hmm
… Lewrie silently pondered, wondering if even the most enthusiastic missionaries, desperate for congregants, in the worst stews of Wapping or Seven Dials, would dare have him.

“Delighted to meet you, ma'am,” Lewrie offered, again.

“And you, sir,” she replied, though distracted by keeping both her rambunctious, chatter-box offspring in check. Then, off the coach clattered at a sedate pace, with the ponies trotting in-trail.

“Well,
that
was…s'prisin',” Lewrie said with a droll leer, once the coach was out of earshot.

“Think I spent
all
my life lurking in the world's dark corners, ‘thout a private life outside of service to King and Country?” Twigg snapped.

“Frankly…yes,” Lewrie baldly stated, lifting one eyebrow.

“But not a patch on
yours,
Lewrie,” Twigg shot back, purring in his old, supercilious fashion, looking down his long nose. “You have spread your ‘presence' so widely, and indiscriminately, about the earth, ‘tis a wonder you had time for a
public
life, haw haw.”

All Lewrie could do was remind himself that he'd come to beg at his superior's table and beggars had to suffer abuse in silence; that, and grind his teeth.

“Well now, you are come, at last,” Twigg said, seeming to relent. “Let us go into the house, where we may discover what may save you from a well-deserved hanging.”

T
he interior of Zachariah Twigg's “humble” abode was just about as disconcertingly out-of-character to the man he'd known as the stucco outer facade. Once they were past the requisite tiling of the entry hall, done in red-veined Italian marble, the floors of the central passageway were shiny contrasting parquetry, laid out in a complex geometric pattern.

“Teak and holly,” Twigg tersely allowed, “the teak brought from India.”

“Indeed,” Lewrie said, as a servant came for his cloak, hat, and sword. The servant was a Hindoo, a short, wizened little fellow, with a bristling grey-white mustachio that stuck out almost to his ears, as stiff as a ship's anchor-bearing cat-heads, above a thick, round white beard. He wore a tan silk turban above a European's white shirt and neck-stock, a glossy yellow silk waistcoat, and a voluminous pair of native
pyjammy
breeches, his suiting completed by thick white cotton stockings, in deference to the weather perhaps, but with stout leather elephant or bullock hide sandals on his feet.

“Namasté,
El-Looy
sahib,”
he said, with a faint attempt at a smile.

“Aha!” Lewrie barked back in further surprise. “Ajit Roy, is it you?
Namasté
t'you, too,” he said, placing his hands together before his chin and sketching out a brief bow. “Haven't heard myself called that in fifteen years!”

“Yayss,” Twigg drawled in his superior, amused manner of old. “There's a thousand
other
things you've been called, since, hmm?”

“Now, damme …” Lewrie began to bristle, before recalling what peril he was in, and why he'd come.
Grovel; fawn!
he warned himself.

“The
kutch bohjan kamraa,
Ajit,” Twigg ordered. “No need to use the formal dining room… ‘mongst old companions,” he could not help adding with a faintly amused sneer.
“Laanaa hamén
sherry, first, Ajit.”

“Je haan, sahib,”
Twigg's old servant replied, bowing and smiling.

“This way, Lewrie,” Twigg commanded, stalking off on his long legs, hands tucked under the tails of his coat, and leaving Lewrie no choice but to follow.

The well-plastered walls were tawny yellow, set off nicely with heavy crown mouldings, wainscottings, and baseboards, false-columned at intervals, with lighter mouldings to frame gilt-framed portraits, and exotic foreign scenes. Clive of India still led his small army versus native
rajahs'
hordes, and grimly-smug relatives peered down with familial asperity. All the floors were teak planking, though strewn with wool or goat-hair carpets, all light, subtle Chinee or colourful Hindi, with not an Axminster or Turkey carpet in sight.

Far East shawls,
saris,
or vivid princes' surcoats did service as wall hangings, next to tapestries painted by native artists of parades, tiger hunts, leopard hunts, or court scenes, with gayly-decorated elephants bearing lords and ladies in
howdahs.
Some walls bore gaudy, silk
mandarins'
coats, stiff-armed with a dowel through the arm-holes, next to the little pillbox hats Lewrie had seen at Canton, with the pheasant tail-feathers and coral buttons on the top that denoted rank and importance.

It would seem that at one time Twigg had been a mighty hunter, himself, for there were boars' heads, leopards' heads, even a bear, its lips still curved back in his final fury. On a jungle-green wood platform there was a
huge
stuffed Bengali tiger—looking a little worse for wear, though, where
someone's
grandchildren had used it as a hobby-horse.

And, there were weapons galore: circles of wavy-bladed
krees
daggers and knives about a crossed pair of
parangs;
assorted Hindoo edged weapons about a brace of bejewelled
tulwars;
lance-heads, javelins and pike-heads, billhooks, and other pole-arm “nasties” that were favoured East of Cape Good Hope.

Behind locked glass cabinets were racks of firearms, from clumsy match-lock muskets and hand-cannon to long, slim, and elegantly-chased and intricately-engraved Indian or Malay
jezzails,
some so bejewelled that they'd fetch thousands; even humble flint-lock Tower muskets, St. Etienne or Charleville French muskets given or sold to native princes' troops had been turned into priceless works of art by Hindoo artisans. There were even
wheel-lock
pieces, musketoons, and pairs of pistols as long as Lewrie's forearms that the Czar of All the Russias might covet.

Armour? Take your pick: fanciful
cuirasses,
back-and-breasts and helmets,
gilt or silver chain-mail suits, brass fish-scale armour over thick ox-hide; Tatar, Chinese, Mongol, Bengali, Moghul…

“Nippon, there,” Twigg commented, pointing to a stand that held a wide-skirted, glossily-lacquered set, seemingly made of bamboo, tied together with bright orange and red wool cords; there was a horned helmet with neck pieces and side flanges so wide and deep that the wearer could shelter from a hard rain under it, with a fierce, wild-eyed, and mustachioed face-mask bound to it. “Them, too,” Twigg further stated, indicating a horizontal stand that held a long dagger, a short sword, and a very long sword, all of a piece, bright-corded, and their scabbards so ornately carved they resembled the jade or ivory “boats” with incredibly tiny figures of oarsmen and passengers, all whittled from a single tusk or block of soft stone.

“Nippon?” Lewrie gawped. “You mean Japan?”

“No White man has gone there, and returned to tell the tale, in three hundred years, Lewrie,” Twigg proudly said. “Though, some of the hereditary warriors, the
samurai,
now and then lose their feudal lord, or …blot their copy-books,” Twigg added with a taunting leer at his guest, “and become outcasts…
ronin,
I recall, is the term…some of whom leave their forbidden isles, entire, and take service overseas. Portuguese Macao is a port where bands of them may be hired on. Quite fierce; quite honourable if you
pay
‘em regular. This fellow, here…well, let us say he proved a disappointment, and committed ritual suicide to atone. Willed me his armour and swords.”

“Did
you
ever manage to land in Nippon?” Lewrie just had to ask.

“Of course not, sir!” Twigg hooted. “I was bold in my younger days, but never
that
rash. Unlike
some
I know, hmmm?”

Swallow it, swallow it!
Lewrie chid himself.

Another great room to pace through, this one filled with porcelain,
niello
brass, gilt and silver pieces, the most delicate ceramics, ginger jars, wine jars, tea sets, and eggshell-thin vases, from every ancient dynasty from Bombay to fabled Peking.

“Didn't know you'd always wanted t'open a museum,” Lewrie said. As they attained a smaller, plainer dining room that overlooked a back garden, barns, coops and pens, and a block of servants' quarters. It was where the house's owners would break their fast
en famille,
in casual surroundings and casual clothes, before they had to don their public duds and public faces to deal with the rest of their day.

“As the French say,
souvenirs,”
Twigg scoffed, though his eyes did glow with pleasure over his vast collection, worthy of a man who'd come back from India a full
nabob,
with an
emperor's
riches stowed on the orlop. Smugness of
owning such grand things, perhaps with happy remembrance of how he'd acquired them. Or, the blood and mayhem required to do so!

“I can see why your grandchildren were loath to leave,” Lewrie wryly commented. “My own children'd screech in bloody wonder to play amongst such a pirate's trove.”

“Mementos of an arduous life,” Twigg scoffed again, perhaps with long-engrained English gentlemanly modesty, “spent mostly in places so dreadful, the baubles were the only attractive things worth a toss. I assume you like goat. Do you not, it doesn't signify, for that's what we're having. Keep a flock to dine on…sheep, as well.”

“But, no pork, nor beefsteaks, either, I'd s'pose,” Lewrie said, with another wry scowl.

“Taboo to Muslims in the first instance, taboo to Hindoos in the second, aye,” Twigg replied, his thin lips clasped together in the sort of aspersion that Lewrie had dreaded in their early days. “Old habits die hard. Well, don't just stand there like a coat-rack, sit ye down,” Twigg snapped, pointing imperiously at a chair at the foot of the six-place table, whilst he strode with his usual impatience to the chair at the other end, and Lewrie almost grinned to see himself seated “below the salt,” no matter there were only the two of them.