A King`s Trade

possessions,' he said, indicating another well-tanned man in his thirties in a 'ditto' suit of such starkly unrelieved black that Lewrie had taken him for a 'dominee.' 'I heard he only came off, of late, with thirty thousand, mostly in looted pagan baubles, tsk tsk.' Lewrie wasn't sure whether Mr. Giles was sad that Maj. Baird hadn't piled up loot by the keg, or had had a bad run of luck at plundering the poorer rajahs. 'Invalided out of East India Company's army, sad t'say for him, poor fellow, but before he departed, I'm told he donated enough to hire a C. of E. chaplain to minister to the needs of the native soldiers in his regiment. He and his Colonel held Sunday Church Parade, rain or shine, and succeeded in converting a fair number of heathens to the Lord, before coming Home. In the market for a wife is Major Baird, at present, and I'm certain that the Good Lord will reward his efforts a thousand-fold, by steering his steps to a most suitable and companionable match, of a like mind.'

Giles leaned closer to whisper, 'Baird's dead-set against novels, don't ye know, any wastrel reading matter that does not uplift or serve the greatest good. Thinking of forming a society of his own, I believe, to which I do believe I may donate an hundred guineas, ha!'

'A creditable endeavour, sir,' Lewrie said, fighting a stricken expression from showing; in his rooms he had four new novels he'd found in the Strand, all of a lubricious or lascivious nature. Lewrie thought of hiding them away, before one of the ugly chambermaids found them and denounced him to Maj. Baird, fearing that the Evangelical Society might just drag him about the city in chains, for an example of how 'rogues were ground honest'! At the Madeira Club, reading about sex was about as close to the genuine article as one could get! In strict privacy.

'One may try to be a good, Christian Englishman,' Giles stated, all but wringing his hands, 'one may attend Divine Services, hold deep and abiding faith, and strive to shun the lures of the world, Captain Lewrie, but, without Good Works, one is not a complete Christian, and is but a drone in Society. One must strive to be and do, not just to seem, hey what?'

'Now, where have I heard that before?' Lewrie asked, his tongue firmly in his cheek by then. 'Did Doctor Priestley say it, or…?'

'Bless me, but I can't recall,' the wine-fuddled Mr. Giles said with a vague shake of his goodly head. 'So, what is it that you do to make your mark on a sinful world, Captain Lewrie? Where do your interests lie when it comes to improving and uplifting?'

'I exterminate godless Frogs and heathen Dons, thus making our world safe for moral Englishmen, sir,' Lewrie declared, pretending as if it was his true calling, though ready to snicker aloud.

'Ha ha! Capital, capital, ha ha!' Giles exclaimed, bellowing his delight and slapping the chair arm, again. 'A glass with ye, sir, a brimming bumper!'

'Well… if you insist, Mister Giles,' Lewrie replied, fraudulently trying to demur. 'Though 'wine's a mocker,' and I've not much of a head for deep drinking. Not my nature, d'ye see, and… I really did intend to read at least another chapter of the Good Book tonight, before retiring… clear-headed, but… hang it. A glass it is!'

Soon after that convivial 'slosh,' he made his excuses, further pretending to yawn in a prodigious, jaw-locking manner, and made his goodnights to one and all.

Once out of the Common Rooms, though, he headed for the bar for a pint flask of decanted (also smuggled) French brandy, which he hid in his breast pocket. He almost made it to the stairs, but for the noble Maj. Baird, who managed to impede his progress long enough to hold a whispered conversation, enquiring just where an 'inquisitive' fellow could 'covertly witness and gather damning evidence upon' the immoral doings of the city, the cock hen clubs, the dissolute dens of iniquity where wagers were laid, and where 'women of the town' plied their trade… 'to document in eye-opening tracts,' of course.

'Ask the barman for a copy of the New Atlantis,' Lewrie winked back, 'that guide's your boy to all the dissolute. Slip him sixpence. Failing that, just wander down Charing Cross, this very night.'

He left the upright Maj. Baird to sort Sin out for himself.

'Well, you look presentable,' Mr. Twigg said as Lewrie entered his hired coach, thank God a closed one, and not another damn' chariot, this time. 'You're well-practiced in your responses?'

'As well as may be,' Lewrie told him in a fretful tone as he sat across from him on the cold and damp-feeling leather bench facing Twigg. Twigg had decreed that Lewrie's new uniform would be best, complete with his sword and both the Cape St. Vincent and Camperdown medals hung low on Lewrie's mid-chest from their coloured ribbons.

'Sir Malcolm Shockley and some others have put in good words for you,' Twigg informed him, sounding almost breezily unconcerned. 'Your old school chum, Peter Rushton in Lords, sent a letter, as well. With his reputation for vice, God knows what use it'll be… though I must declare it was well-written. Clerk gave it a polishing, I expect.'

Lewrie gave that a short, jerking nod of agreement; at Harrow (in the short time in attendance before his expulsion) trying to read a sniggery, surreptitious note from Peter Rushton had been all but indecypherable, like getting a scouting report on the defences of Biblical Canaan from one of Moses's spies, and hastily scribbled in Aramaic at that! 'Meet us behind the coach-house and share a bottle of brandy' in Peter's idea of a 'copper-plate' hand could have very well meant 'We've hid five dead mouse and they're randy,' which of course had earned them both a caning, even if the instructor or proctor couldn't make heads or tails of it, either.

'We're to speak to William Wilberforce, himself, Lewrie,' Twigg informed him. 'You followed my directives? Had a last bathe, a good night's sleep… alone… and you're not 'headed' by spirits?' 'Sober as a hangman,' Lewrie answered.

'How apt,' Twigg said with a sniff. 'Here's the line you're to take… 'twas your old compatriot, Colonel Cashman, late of the King's Service in a West Indies regiment, and local planter-'

'And un-findable for corroboration in the United States,' Lewrie stuck in. '-whose utter revulsion over the institution of slavery, even was he a participant and slave-owner for a time,' Twigg drilled onwards, 'that led you to despise slavery, yourself. Very John Newton-ish, you see. It will strike a chord with Wilberforce and what possible entourage of the like-minded who might be present, for it slightly coincides with Newton's own experience of being a slaver, then shipwrecked, and enslaved by the very people he sought to capture and sell. That poem of his, describing his enlightenment and salvation…'

' 'Amazing Grace,' aye,' Lewrie said with a grunt and a new nod.

'You actually know of it,' Twigg nigh-gasped with surprise that Lewrie, of all people, had been exposed to it. 'Well, damme. Wonders never cease! No matter… when asked, you will clew to this point as if your life depended on it… which it does, by the by,' Twigg said, with another sniff of faint amusement, 'that it was Cashman who thought it all up.'

'Damme, sir!' Lewrie said, recoiling. 'Even if it's half-true, he's a good friend, and it's not… quite honourable to shift the-'

'He did think it up, you said so, yourself!' Twigg archly objected. 'As a cruel jape on the Beaumans. In my version, however, the former Colonel Cash-man, disgusted with slavery and his own part in it, manumitted all his own chattel, then, grieved by the unremitting, and inhuman, beastly cruelty with which the Beaumans kept their slaves, he schemed to free as many of them as he could… encouraging them to go into the mountains and join the free Maroons, the young men and boys to 'steal themselves' and join your crew as free men.'

'But…' Lewrie tried to say, loath to put the onus on 'Kit' Cashman, no matter that he was far out of reach of British justice.

'They… stole… themselves, Lewrie!' Twigg insisted. 'You did not steal them, d'ye understand the significance of that? It's a lawyerly niggle, but, under current statutes, you only aided and abetted, but did not instigate, or commit, hah! And, you did it in a fine cause. Think of yourself as the noble hero from a free land, England!, where slavery has already been banished. Suddenly exposed in the Caribbean Sugar Isles to the utter barbarity of slavery's realities. And it sore-grieved you. Consider also your experiences on Saint-Domingue, where you witnessed the, ah… desperate courage of self-freed Blacks trading their lives by the thousands, so their children could be free. I still have friends at Admiralty… I've read your reports of