Dewey Lambdin
The Baltic Gambit
(Lewrie – 15)
This one is for one of my greatest fans,
my mother,
EDDA ALVADA ELLISON LAMBDIN
August 22, 1916-May 24, 2007
She might've fudged a couple of years off her birth
year, though-most of the Ellison sisters did.
Bold Knaves thrive without one grain of Sense,
But good Men starve for want of Impudence.
– JOHN DRYDEN
PROLOGUE
Perge, Ira, perge et magna meditantem opprime, congredere manibus ipsa dilacera tuis;
Then on, my wrath, on, and crush this plotter of big things; close with him, thyself rend him in pieces with thine own hands.
– LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA,
HERCULES FURENS, 75-76
CHAPTER ONE
A bloody awful day for 't,' Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby commented as the hired coach-and-four clattered and swayed to a stop on the cobblestones before the steps leading up to the Old Bailey. With a wince and a sniff, he sampled the weather, sticking his head out of the right-hand side door window into the cold.
'Arr,' his son, Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, idly replied. Lewrie, it must here be pointed out, was a tad hung over, after a sleepless night in his rooms at the Madeira Club, a sedate lodging for gentlemen not too far away from the Old Bailey, at the corner of Duke Street and Wigmore Street. His father, the old reprobate, leaned back to gather his walking stick and cloak, allowing Lewrie a view of the building. 'Oh, Lord,' Lewrie whispered.
Epiphany Sunday of the new year of 1801 had been on the fifth of January, and Hilary Term for King's Bench trials had, therefore, waited to open on Monday the sixth, with all the pomp, majesty, and circumstance of which England was capable, designed over the centuries to impress upon all Crown subjects, the innocent and the guilty alike, the terribleis gucir and implacable inevitability of Justice and Law.
Lewrie (whom no one could ever call innocent, exactly, but who had yet to learn if he was to be declared guilty) was definitely one of the impressed. Daunted, in point of fact. Shuddering in dread.
And did we mention hung over?
Lewrie looked beyond the horde of gawkers and spectators who spilled off the sidewalks onto the cobbled street, who had yet no inkling of whom the coach contained… up the wide steps that were clogged with even more spectators, from nobility to pick-pockets, prostitutes and the 'flash' lads, the middling sort, and the idle poor, to the grim faзade of the building. Up beyond the roof to the sky that was grey and gloomy, half coal smoke and half wintry overcast that boded even more snow later in the day, up beyond to the flagpole…
'Oh, Lord,' Lewrie reiterated, squeezing his eyes shut to squint for a second, before taking a second peek at the flag. 'Eyes must be going, I think,' he muttered.
On January 1, the Act of Union 'twixt England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland had come into force, with twenty- eight new Lords Temporal and four Lords Spiritual seated in Parliament, along with even more Members seated in the House of Commons. The old Union Flag had gotten updated with a so-called St. Patrick's Cross superimposed upon the old St. Andrew's Cross of the new Union Flag, which made it, to Lewrie at any rate, look rather… squiffy and un-focussed.
Maybe it's just me, Lewrie thought as a coachee opened the door and folded down the metal steps; ev'rything else seems clear. Though he had to shake his head and go 'Brr!' before returning his eyes to the spectators.
'There 'e is! 'At's 'im! Huzzah!' several voices cried almost together as Lewrie alit on the street cobbles, and tried to shrug into the deep folds of his heavy wool boat-cloak, and clapped on his cocked hat. 'Saint Alan, the Liberator, 'imself!'
Christ, I wish they'd lose that'un! Lewrie thought, wincing as his father jostled him as he got out behind him.
'Black Alan!' was hooted from others. 'Three cheers, huzzah!'
Hell's Bells, that'un's not a whit better! he thought.
'Smile, damn ye,' his father cautioned in a harsh whisper right near his ear. 'Confidence, hmmm? Show for the damned Mob, what? As yer barrister said?' Sir Hugo prompted.
Lewrie forced himself to smile, took off his hat, and transferred it to his left hand, to leave his right one free… to fend off the pick-pockets, if for nothing else. The last time he'd appeared before King's Bench the summer before, one particularly skilled young lady of 'the lifting lay,' as his notorious old school friend Clotworthy Chute called it, had made off with his watch and fob and leather coin purse right as he'd threaded his way through throngs of well-wishers after his case had been held over for review! So it was understandable he kept his 'top-lights' skinned for the charming 'Three-Handed Jenny'!
Thursday the eighth of January, and bloody damned early in the morning to boot, was a hellish cold day for London. Had Lewrie his druthers, he'd have worn two boat-cloaks and a carriage blanket round his knees, but… his impending trial had become a Nine-Day Wonder, no thanks to the many tracts, cartoon prints, and 'bought' newspaper articles put out by the Reverend William Wilberforce's Society for the Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire the last year, entire, so Lewrie could hardly disguise himself any longer, nor could he swaddle himself against the weather, either. Reluctantly, he flung back the boat-cloak to reveal his gilt-laced uniform coat, and the hundred-guinea presentation sword given him by the East India Company after a sea fight against a French frigate in the South Atlantic that saved a small convoy of 'John Company' ships returning from India, in 1799.
And, despite his wariness of pick-pockets (and eyes darting for signs of 'Three-Handed Jenny'), Lewrie was thronged by gentlemen and ladies wishing to take hands with him, by people fluttering portrait prints of the artist de Koster's charcoal life sketch (now available from Mr. Brydon's shop in Charing Cross) for him to sign with pencil in the margins.
Ye'd think I'm Nelson, fresh from the Battle of the Nile, not a slave-crimper! Lewrie ruefully told himself, and
