intercepting those sailboats full of ex-slave soldiers, who almost blew you out of the water with suicidal gallantry… the survivor who slit the throat of one of your sailors as his last act of defiance, and you were touched… to your very soul,' Twigg spun out, and Lewrie could see it was all a cynical sham that Twigg was creating, merely an interpretation of what really happened. Ordinary Seaman Inman's throat had been slit out of savage hatred of
'I'll do most of the exposition, Lewrie,' Twigg ordered, leaning back against his facing coach bench. 'You just sit there and be stoic, stern, and honourable. Refuse wine, but accept tea or coffee. The sun isn't 'below the yardarm'… all that. Try not to fidget or squirm on your chair. Sound resolute. Boast only when describing what fine tars your dozen Black hands are. You
Like a boxer getting last-moment cautions on his opponent, there was not time enough for Mr. Twigg to impart all of his last suggestions. Before Lewrie knew it, their coach pulled to a stop before an imposing row house's stoop (where, exactly, a preoccupied and benumbed Lewrie in later years couldn't say, and couldn't find with both hands and a whole battalion of flaming link-boys) and their coachman's son, serving as a footman, was folding down the metal steps and opening the door.
Lewrie stepped out onto a fresh-swept sidewalk, looked up at the gloomy, coal-sooted sky, and drew what felt like his last free breath, his left hand fretting on the hilt of his hanger, and his right hanging limp by his side, loath to take a single more step forward, or climb up the steps to the row house's door.
For London, with all its stinks, the air he drew in was rather fresh; it wasn't raining, for a bloody wonder, and as he looked up, as he would to read the set of the sails and the wind's direction, Lewrie could actually make out shape and form in the clouds, even espy several patches of open, wispy blue, here and there. Then, as if the wicks of theatrical lanthorns had been turned up, the sun peeked out briefly, to stab bright shafts down on the city through those wispy cloud-gaps, and brightened the street they stood in.
'Marvellous,' Mr. Twigg smirked as he shot his cuffs and tugged down his fashionable waist-coat. 'Why, Lewrie, I do declare the sacrificial birds' entrails are found flawless, the auguries are auspicious, and the old gods smile upon us, haw!'
'Bugger the old gods,' was Lewrie's muttered reply to that. 'If we must, we must. Let's get it done.'
CHAPTER EIGHT
A balding old major-domo in sombre black livery took their hats, cloaks, and Lewrie's sword, then ushered them abovestairs without more than a begrudging word or two. Once up, he opened a glossy wooden set of double doors and bowed them into a parlour-cum-library done in much the same You-Will-Be-Impressed decor, but for the massive walls of bookcases from floor to ceiling on two sides; more new-ish, bright Turkey carpets on glossy wood floors, a world globe on a stand in one corner about a yard across, a heavy and ornate old desk before the windows and surprisingly bright and cheery (though heavy) draperies; a desk stout enough for Cromwell and an entire squad of fully-armoured Roundheads to have fought upon, if they'd felt like it. There were several wing chairs and settees, done in brighter chintzes, on which sat some
'Sir,' Mr. Twigg intoned with suitable gravity, and a head bow.
'Ah ha,' a slim older man seated behind the desk replied, as he rose to his feet. His coat was a sombre black, too, though enlivened with satin facings and lapels, a fawn or buff-coloured waist-coat, and new-fangled ankle- length trousers instead of formal breeches, slim-cut, and light grey. 'Ladies and gentlemen, may I name to you Mister Zachariah Twigg, late of the Foreign Office, and his protege, Captain Alan Lewrie…'
'… man of the hour, and sponsor of human freedom,' he heard the fellow conclude.
'Hurrah! Oh,
'Though there are troubling aspects, indeed, to your feat, sir,' the fellow behind the desk said as the song (mercifully) ended and he came to where Lewrie stood, 'it is an exploit which I, and many others, wish to become commonplace, in future. Allow me to shake you by your hand, Captain Lewrie.' Which he did, so energetically that his long, wavy hair nigh-bobbed as he took Lewrie's paw in his and gave it a two-handed pumping. 'William Wilberforce, sir… and it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.'
'Erm… well, thankee, sir,' Lewrie managed to say. Wilberforce wasn't
'Some of your admirers, Captain Lewrie, and the leading lights in the movement to eliminate the scurrilous institution of slavery in every British possession, not merely in the British
The faces and names went by in a mind-muddling rush, too many at once for Lewrie, though Mistress Hannah More was another surprise to him… she might look him up and down like taking measure of a rogue, with her lips as pursed as Twigg's, but she was, in the main, a rather handsome woman, not half the infamous and forbidding 'Kill- Joy' he'd imagined, either. Though granite and ice
'… host, Mister Robert Trencher,' Wilberforce said, passing Lewrie on to a stout but handsome man in his late fourties, another of those who espoused the latest London fashions, in brighter suiting than one might expect from a run-of-the-mill 'New Puritan.'
'Your servant, sir,' Lewrie said, taking the offered hand.
'Nay, Captain Lewrie, 'tis I who hold that I am
Time to make another 'leg' as Mrs. Trencher, a fetching older woman in shimmery grey satin, curtsied her greetings in proper fashion, and state that he was her servant, as well.
'… Captain Alan Lewrie, my daughter, Theodora. My dear…'