Sea of Grey

Want t'end up hanged? Then where's your honour, or your good name, hey?'

Lewrie tossed back his own glass of champagne, then took assay of the bottle on the desk. Talking fools out of idiocy was dry work; he bent down to extract a second bottle from the wood case and ripped away the lead foil, gave the cork a twist, and opened a replenishment, topping them both up. And tossed Toulon a new 'play- pretty.'

'Duelin' him's better, remember duelin'?' Lewrie asked once he had taken another deep sip. 'What you talked about on Saint Domingue, not two weeks ago? I'll stand as your second, God help me. Let 'em retire the both of you, there's no King's Regulations preventing two former officers from fightin'. You blow great holes in him or slice him to pork chops, there's your revenge. But he'll cry off, I'd bet, and that'll prove he's the liar, and a coward to boot. Then you're able t'sell up, justified. Might not get full price even so, but the buyers'll be gettin' a fair bargain, and not robbin' ya blind.'

'He can't deny me, Alan, his brother'll make him, so…'

'So you kill him all legal-like, and take shilling to a pound,' Lewrie snapped, nigh exasperated with trying to make sense to a drunk. 'A twentieth or tenth of yer worth beats poverty all hollow, old son.'

'And the bastard'll be dead,' Cashman said, half to himself, as if the end result had just occurred to him; beginning to beam as if he had just discovered the joy of it.

'That's the point… ain't it,' Lewrie maliciously grinned.

'Don't know,' Cashman said, sighing and reaching for the ^cresh bottle for a refill, shaking his head like a disappointed tot, denied a 'surprise' from town by a thoughtless daddy. 'Doesn't seem enough, somehow. Not by half, it don't.'

'Well, you could have him raped by a cart horse, first,' Lewrie suggested, throwing his hands aloft and sinking back in his chair. 'My God, Kit, what is enough? Besides your honour, your good name, reasonable profit from your properties, and public acquittal, that is?'

'I dunno,' Christopher said with a semi-drunk shrug. 'Pillage his lands, burn his house down… poison his wells and livestock? An end to the whole Beauman line… his sister Lucy, excepted.'

'Aye, spare the whores and the simple,' Lewrie sneered. 'They, at least, have their uses.'

'Run his slaves off to the Maroons in the mountains?' Cashman fantasised, blood and thunder and gore a'bubble behind his eyes.

'Spare me a half-dozen strong'uns when you do, Kit. I'm sorely in need of hands,' Lewrie suggested. 'Hell's Bells, even if they're nought but simple-minded soldiers, I'd gladly take some of your wharf rats when your regiment gets broken up. Need fresh Marines, too…'

'They'll parcel 'em out to t'other under-strength units-oh,' Cash-man said, perking up like a wakened cat, and sitting more upright, almost managing, to resemble 'sober.' His phyz became suffused by a grin, one of the sly sort, filled with impish mischief, slowly, like a high-latitude sunrise.- He peered at Lewrie, then winked!

'What?' Lewrie demanded, perked to the edge of his own chair.

'How many Marines did you say you were short, Alan?' Cashman enquired, with a soft, smugly satisfied chuckle.

'We could use five,' Lewrie told him, delighted at the offer he thought was coming. Not that he'd relish gaining hands from a friend's misfortune, but neither was he loath to refuse soon-to-be unemployed volunteers. Not when he'd considered stopping American merchant ships once back at sea, and press-ganging anyone who had even a slight English accent or the slightest error in his citizenship certificate; and God knew three-quarters of those were bogus, or given (or sold!) by an American consul like so many cough lozenges.

'I'll have a word with the best men I have,' Cashman promised.

'Hallelujah!'

'There's still some have a taste for soldierin',' Cashman said, tittering with impending glee, 'or so calf-headed I can talk 'em into it. But, Alan… but!'

'But, mine arse,' Lewrie quipped. 'What? Tell me, you sot!'

'You don't mind Black sailors, do you, Alan?'

'Not a bit. Already have some. Think I always have had, every ship I've ever served. They're good hands, too, so… no, it don't signify if they were Eskimos,' Lewrie assured him. 'Your slaves?'

'How many d'ye think you'd need, then?' Cashman asked, avoiding the query, though hugging his sides in a tittering fit.

'A round dozen'd suit,' Lewrie allowed. 'Make landsmen of 'em, for pulley-hauley chores. Some young'uns might make topmen, sooner or later. And damme,' Lewrie began to enthuse, 'I'd kill for just one older one who knows how to cook decent for an hundred or so. Would it be too much to ask, for one of 'em t'be a cook?'

'Oh, I think we can arrange that,' Cashman promised, becoming even more mystifying.

'You're not askin' me to buy your slaves, are you, Kit?' Lewrie asked, growing wary of a sudden. 'Damme if I'm that keen on slavery, after all you told me, and damned if I can afford 'em, not even at a shilling to the pound, so…'

'Not mine, Alan old son. And free… scot-free.'

'Whose, then?' Lewrie said with a chary scowl.

'Ledyard Beauman's,' Cashman hooted, slapping the desktop.

'Mine arse on a band-box!' Lewrie exclaimed in wonder.

'It'd be sweet, wouldn't it?' Cashman managed to say, just about wheezing with mirth by then. 'Sweet revenge, for one. You sail out to Portland Bight, soon some dark night, and abscond with some of his slaves. Young'uns, like you said, so they haven't been branded or had their backs whip-scarred yet, so who's t'say whose they are, once on your ship? I know some Black freedmen who can get to 'em and promise 'em they'll be free, if they ship with you. What d'ye say?'

Lewrie fell back into his chair, astounded by the idea, giving the proposition a hard think, beginning to chew a thumbnail. Taking slaves, liberating slaves, was just about the worst crime in the West Indies, right up there with horse theft, and a hanging offence.

Damme, but I do need 'em hellish-bad, he thought.

But the risk of getting caught, and the ramifications, would be equally hellish-bad. He'd be stripped of his command, court-martialed, cashiered, and sent home in disgrace at the very least-sent home to face a termagant wife, disaffected kiddies, and another scandal as bad as this one, with Theoni and his bastard! The Navy was all that he knew, and without a civilian career, he'd be in debtors' prison before a year was out, he just knew it.

Before that, though, there'd be the civil courts here on Jamaica that would most-like 'scrag' him by the neck, so why worry about infamy in England?

'Sooner or later, someone'd talk, Kit,' Lewrie schemed. 'Sass from a slave who didn't get to go… damme, don't ya think they'd miss 'em? Raise the hue and cry, remember there was a frigate offshore the night they scarpered, and put two and two together?'

'Ledyard, none of the Beaumans, would know one of their slaves by sight 'less they were house servants,' Cashman said dismissively of his qualms. 'No brands, no worries. First off, they'd hunt 'em northward, if they thought they'd run off to join the Maroons. And you can depend on me t'plant that rumour… even offer t'lead the hunt!'

'But later…'

'I'll be sellin' up anyway,' Cashman went on, 'puttin' my own slaves on the block, so who's t'say I didn't sell you some o' mine… with a certified bill of sale t'prove it? Or manumitted 'em before ya lured 'em aboard? We can forge some papers, give 'em other names…'

Like father, like son, Lewrie thought, recalling Sir Hugo's doings back when he'd 'press-ganged' him into the Navy, so he could get his paws on the supposed inheritance from Granny Lewrie way off in Devon- because he'd needed the money 'hellish-bad' to clear his debts before he lost his St. James's Square house and got slung into prison himself! His father had ended up running to Oporto in Portugal after his scheme had gone 'belly-up.'

Lisbon's nice and cheap, Lewrie speculated; if