A King's Trade (7 page)

To hell with tepid dish-water! Once outside in the cold airs, he sat
Proteus
's mail sack at his feet and tremulously pried open the seal and ribands, unfolded the flaps, and…

Twigg, Oh Christ!
Lewrie quailed with an audible groan;
What'd I ever do t'deserve
his
company, again? Oh, yes… that. But…!

Old Zachariah Twigg, that cold-blooded, murderous, dissembling, smug, and arch old cut-throat, that malevolent Foreign Office spy! Had not James Peel said he'd retired, at last; so what good could Twigg do him? “Matter which may redound to your utter peril…,” which meant that
some
word of his slave-stealing had gotten to England, but no one “official” had taken notice of it… yet! They might not if Twigg still thought it secret, and could do something about it.

Oh, but
Lord,
he'd thought himself shot of Foreign Office plots and errands: with his last time paying for all; Guillaume Choundas in American chains, his every scheme scotched; the former French colony of Saint-Domingue's new masters, the ex-slave armies, isolated, unarmed, and un-reenforced by Paris, and sure to wither and fall into British hands, sooner or later; those French Creole pirates from Spanish Louisiana slaughtered, a
raft
of stolen Spanish silver recovered, and simply a
grand
scheme scouted out for a future invasion of that crown jewel of the Mississippi River, the city of New Orleans, delivered to his superiors at both Admiralty and Foreign Office,
and
getting shot in the process, to boot!

Wasn't that enough?
Lewrie appealled to the heavens.

For, did the hideous old Zachariah Twigg still own the “interest” to get him off, Lewrie would owe the skeletal bastard his
soul;
nothing got done without incurring a heavy debt in English Society. And, that meant that Lewrie would
never
be rid of neck-or-nothing schemes!

Worse, yet! Much as he heartily despised that noisome schemer, Twigg, he'd be forced to
grovel,
lick his boots, buss his blind cheeks, fawn, swallow shite and proclaim it plum duff, and pretend to be…

Nice
to him!

A
way in the “diligence-coach” at dawn, a day after meeting at the Commissioner's; up Portdown Hill inland, thence to Petersfield, a few miles away from wife and home at Anglesgreen, but there was no time for
rencontre,
just a quick note to Caroline from the posting-house as the horse team was changed. Which note, Lewrie grimly surmised, would be used to light the candles under the chafing dishes to keep her breakfast warm! He didn't know quite why he even bothered.

Onwards to Guildford, once more pretending to nod off, too fretful to accept the usual invitation from sailors travelling with him to “caulk or yarn,” passing up the chance, for a rare once, to brag about
Proteus
's most recent exploits, or share reminiscences about the Caribbean and the West Indies. He “harumphed” himself deep into his cloak, tipped his cocked hat low over his eyes, closed them, and thought about nooses and jeering crowds.

In London, at last, he'd hired a horse at the final post-house, strapped his cylindrical leather
portmanteau
and soft-sided clasp-bag behind the saddle, and set off Northward, following the instructions in Twigg's demanding letter. He found it vaguely reassuring that his route from the post-house took him very near Whitehall, and the seat of Admiralty, Parliament, and the Army's Horse Guards; if Twigg lived on a road that led directly back to town and that august warren of government buildings, might he still have needful influence?

Up Charing Cross, ‘til it became the Tottenham Court Road; then onwards ‘til Tottenham Court crossed the New Road and became known as the Hampstead
Road, with the dense street traffic and press of houses, stores, and such gradually thinning. Further onwards, and the breweries, metal-working manufacturies, and craft shops predominated, then those began to thin out, replaced by market gardeners' small farms, estates of the middling nature, and roadside establishments, with fields and forests and pastures behind them.

Hampstead, like Islington in the early days, had developed over the years as the seat of weekend “country” get-away cottages, manses, and villas… though, Hampstead catered to a much richer, and select, part-time population than Islington's artisan-tradesman clientele. He could espy, here and there, stone or brick gate-pillars announcing the presence of a grand-ish house up a gravelled and tree-lined lane, set well back, and landscaped into well-ordered semblances of “bucolic” or gloomily “romantic,” in that fallen-castle, overgrown-bower, mossy-old-but-still-inhabited style that had grown so Gothically popular, of late, and
damn
all moody poets and scribblers responsible for it, and what it cost to be created by gimlet-eyed landscapers!

It was
not,
for a bloody wonder, raining, that mid-day. Lewrie was
not
soaked to the skin, cocooned in a frousty fug of wet wool and chafing canvas. As it was England, though, it
had
rained, recently, thus turning the roadway into a gravel-and-mud pudding, and his snow-white uniform breeches might never be the same, and every approaching dray or waggon, and its mud-slinging wheels, was a “shoal” to be avoided like the very Plague!

His fearful errand was so completely off-putting that Capt. Alan Lewrie, never a stranger to the charms of young, nubile, and fetching farm girls, barely gave them a passing glance, and rarely lifted his hat in salute to a shy smile of approbation, in fact; and must here be noted, if only as a clue to his present state of mind.

Here an “humble” cottage, there an “humble” cottage; a Bide-A-We to the left, a Rook's Nook to the right, or so the signboards said to announce the existence of a destination up those lanes leading off the Hampstead Road. Lark's Nest, a Belle Reve, a rather imposing new two-storey Palladian mansion set back in at least ten acres of woodsy parkland named Villa Pauvre…which proved to Lewrie that the rich could
afford
a sense of irony.

At last, Lewrie topped a long, gradual rise, atop which stood a pair of granite, lion-topped pillars flanked by a long-established and nigh-impenetrable hedge to either side. Here, he drew rein and gawped at the house, which lay about two cables off on the right-hand side of the road, up another gradual rise so that the house sat atop the crown of a slightly taller hill that sloped gently down on all four sides…and the signboard read “Spyglass Bungalow”!

Very apt, for atop the villa was a squat, blocky tower of stone, open to all
four prime compass points, very much like the bell towers seen in a Venetian
campus,
or town square, right down to the wide-arch form of the openings.
Or, a hellish-fancy block-house atop a fortress's gate or corner,
Lewrie decided with a gulp of dread. He gazed about, in search of a further signage that might-well have read “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here,” but couldn't find it. He gazed fearfully at the house… villa… bungalow, whatever, and blinked a time or two in confusion.

For the house was light, airy, and its stuccoed exterior painted the palest cream, set off with white stone, its roof made of those sorts of overlapping red-clay tiles more often seen in the Mediterranean, or Spanish possessions. There was a massy, circular flower bed before the house, encircled by a well-gravelled carriage drive, which led under a wide and deep
portico
over the main entrance. Very much like his father's, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby's, Hindoo-inspired house near Anglesgreen, which stood on the ruins of an ancient Roman watch-tower and villa, that he'd named Dun Roman. Two storeys, and no full basement, but perhaps a hint of a cellar, so the front door and a gallery-porch were sheltered by the over-wide
portico,
only four or five stone risers to the short flight of steps leading from the stoop to the ground. It was altogether such a
pleasant
prospect that Lewrie had to shake his head a time or two, as well as blink a deal more, to realise that this “Spyglass Bungalow” could actually be the residence of a soul-less, calculating, murderous, and callous son of a bitch like Zachariah Twigg!

He clucked his tongue, shook the reins, and heeled his mount to motion, once more, up that welcoming gravelled drive, between the bare-limbed trees that would in summer shade the wide lane with fresh green leaves. There were dozens of abandoned nests in those limbs that told him that a springtime arrival would be greeted by the singing of hundreds of birds.
Nice
birds, who hadn't a clue how dangerous the master of those trees could be, poor things.

Set downhill on all sides round the house (Indian bungalow) was an inner wall of about six feet height, topped with round-cut stone…atop which Lewrie could espy the glint of broken glass!

That's more like it,
he cynically thought;
Aha!

Inside the inner wall (fortification?) lay a lawn, unbroken by any trees or shrubs where an interloper might shelter. Lewrie knew a fort's killing-ground when he saw one, and began to hunt for a hidden ditch or moat, a masking
glacis,
a
redan
or
ravenel
or two where the sharpshooters, or the grapeshot-loaded small cannon, might be placed at time of siege. Off to the left of the villa-bungalow was a coach-house of a matching stucco-and-stone, though with an “humble” thatched roof, that led back into the inner enclosure; up
against the wall, as if the hayloft above the stalls and tack rooms held loopholes for marksmen! It was only in the immediate vicinity of the house that greenery was allowed. Lewrie took note that a handsome coach stood outside the stable doors, a groom or coachee swabbing the road's mud off it, and a servant tending to a team of four matched roans. Getting even closer, Lewrie could make out a large, enclosed equipage, a lighter convertible-topped coach for good weather and short jaunts,
and
a sporty two-horse chariot inside the building, as well.

Come at a bad time?
he asked himself;
Does Twigg have company?

A guest's coach, its team led out for oats and water, gave him a small shiver of new dread, for said equipage
could
belong to an official from a King's Court, and Twigg's imperious letter the excuse for him to be lured into a trap! He wouldn't put such past him, for Twigg had
always
played people false, whether friend or foe!

“Ha ha, go it, girl! Heels down, that's the way!” came a voice from behind the house, and, down the cobbled stableyard from behind the house came the clatter of hooves, the shrill “Yoicks!” and imitations of a foxhorn's “tara-tara!,” as a pair of ponies appeared, both loping (but no faster!) no matter the urgings of their riders … a small lad and a girl child, the boy appearing no more than ten, and the girl not yet a gangly teen. They whooped their way out of the stableyard, onto the gravelled drive, under the
portico
to cross Lewrie's “hawse,” then headed off ‘cross the lawn for another exhilarating circuit of the inner wall, about the house!

Behind them, afoot, came a brace of adults; a rather handsome woman in a dark riding
ensemble,
and a much older, spindlier, man in a drab brown suit of “ditto,” white shirt and stock, and brown-topped black riding boots, and waving a crop over his head. Smiling,
beaming
with enjoyment and pleasure.

Twigg?
Lewrie gawped to himself, gape-jawed for true;
he
never
smiled, not a day in his mis ‘rable life!

But it
was
him, to the life, the spitting image of that coldly calculating “chief spider” behind a myriad of bloody-handed schemes on the King's enemies. And, at that moment, as he shaded his eyes with a hand to his brow—the one holding the
whip,
o' course!—Mr. Zachariah Twigg could be mistaken for the
nicest
sort of genial, and wealthy, country squire who couldn't swat a wasp without regrets.

“Aha!” Zachariah Twigg called out, sounding so welcoming that Lewrie, for an instant, thought himself the victim of a sorry supper and a bilious dream. Or,
wishing
that he was! “Captain Lewrie, you have arrived, ha ha! Alight, and let me look at you, me lad!”

Spur away!
Lewrie warned himself;
Spur away, now, and ride like Blazes!
Though he was so taken aback that he meekly let his horse go onwards at a sedate plod to the cobblings of the stableyard, drew rein, and swung down as a groom came up to accept the reins and tend to his rented horse.