A King`s Trade

do circus people, actresses, and base, low-born itinerants get a whiff of money to be made off the better sorts we convoy with their sleights of hand, mountebank antics, and… pick-pocketing, they'll swarm every ship in a twinkling. Like a Biblical plague of locusts!' she fumed, shifting her knitting needles from Low Guard to Present-Arms.

Lewrie never could make sense of how 'loving couples' addressed each other. Commoners' wives might refer to 'The Mister,' or cry out their husband's surname to get his attention… perhaps even in the 'melting moments' before orgasm! 'Oh, Smith, oh, Mister, yes, yes!'?

Calls him Treghues, not Tobias, does she!' Lewrie took quiet note; And it's our convoy, our crewmen, too? My 'husband' or 'the captain' says… God spare us! he thought with a shiver.

Capt. Treghues looked as if he'd like to tell her to mind her own business, put a sock in it, or simply bugger off, but… years in harness with her, years of bleakness, might have already daunted what meek remonstrances he'd made… and the wiles she'd used on the poor bastard to make sure he knew just which of them wore the breeches! A quick perusal of the great-cabin's bulkheads and partitions revealed an assortment of 'art,' but nothing personal, no children, no portrait of Lady Treghues in her younger days. Talk of bleak! Lewrie thought.

'Of course, I will issue a directive that there will be none of that, dearest,' Treghues announced, stiffening his back and lifting his chin, as if to make his surrender to her will seem all noble. 'And, it goes without saying that any chicanery or pilferage on the part of the mountebanks will be severely punished, as such crimes would in fact be were they committed on any street in England.'

Good luck with that, Lewrie amusedly thought; bored as the passengers and officers aboard the Indiamen already are, t will be them to swarm Festival. For a peek at the menagerie, o' course. So educational. As improving as Sunday school, ha!

'Hmmph!,' in a somewhat satisfied sniff, was Lady Treghues's conditional comment on that.

'Well, perhaps I should return to Proteus, sir, now that that's out of the way,' Lewrie offered. Speaking of offering, no one had yet offered him a glass of anything, and he rather doubted they'd trot out the good china and sit him down to supper, in their current snit.

'Yayss,' Capt. Treghues drawled, turning his forbidding gaze in Lewrie's direction once more. 'Perhaps you should, Lewrie.'

'Very well, sir.'

'Tomorrow night, though, sir,' Capt. Cowles said as he gathered up his own things preparatory to departing himself. 'Let us say about the end of the First Dog, I would admire did you dine aboard my ship, Canterbury .'

'I should be absolutely delighted, Captain Cowles, thankee very kindly,' Lewrie answered, most pleasantly surprised that someone would dine him in, at last. 'Should I fetch a brace o' bottles along?'

'No bother, Captain Lewrie,' Cowles most agreeably replied. 'We bear a perfectly ample and varied wine cellar aboard, surplus to the passengers' personal stores. I dare say a fresh-butchered roast would go down nicely… with fresh butter and piping-hot rolls baked not a quarter-hour before, hey? Can't beat the victuals of an Indiaman!'

'Before I begin to slaver, sir, let me say that you do me too proud,' Lewrie happily told him. 'Well, it appears we're both off. Good evening, Sir Tobias, Lady Treghues.'

'Last Sunday, Captain Lewrie…' Lady Treghues said, instead. And Capt. Treghues stiffened in wariness for which bee had got in her bonnet, this time. 'We ordered Divine Services, and your frigate was fairly close under our lee. Though, I do not recall Proteus holding a. proper service. You lack a chaplain, sir?'

'Now, dearest…' Treghues began, with much 'ahemming.'

'We do not, Lady Treghues,' Lewrie told her. 'Few ships under the Third Rate ever do. We hold what lay portions of the liturgy as are allowed, without the presumption of a real chaplain's offices. It would be a touch… sacrilegious to do otherwise, milady.'

'Treghues, this coming Sunday, we simply must see that Reverend Proctor is rowed over to them, must we not?' Lady Treghues triumphantly announced.

'Of course, dearest,' he just had to agree.

'Reverend William Wilberforce offered, milady,' Lewrie couldn't help say in parting. 'Sadly, we had to depart Portsmouth before a man of his selection could come down from London and come aboard.'

'The Reverend… Wilberforce!' Lady Treghues goggled. And it wasn't pretty.

'Proteus had just come from the Caribbean, milady,' Lewrie said with his tongue firmly in one cheek. 'He and I, and Mistress Hannah More and some others, had a long discussion about chattel slavery that I witnessed overseas. The Abolitionist Society, d'ye see. It was very kind of him to offer a chaplain, but… Admiralty would brook no delay… even for the Lord.' he concluded, giving 'pious' a good shot.

'I… see!' Lady Treghues intoned, much subdued, and sharing a fretful look with 'the captain' of hers.

'Your offer for your Reverend… Proctor, did ye say?… to conduct a proper service aboard is, may I say, equally kind, milady,' Lewrie told her with a reverent bow in conge, and a thankful smile that only Treghues, a long-time Navy officer, might recognise as one of Lewrie's 'shit-eating' grins. 'I quite look forward to it. 'Til then, I s'pose… adieu, all!'

And what they make of that, the Lord only knows! Lewrie told himself as he stood by the starboard entry-port waiting for a cutter.

'The Abolitionist Society!' Capt. Cowles snickered at his side in the companionable darkness, looking out on the riding lights of the convoy that glittered on a slow-heaving dark ocean. 'My God, Lewrie, but you're a proper caution, hee hee!'

BOOK III

'Fornix tibi et unctu popina

incutiunt urbis desiderum, video, et quod

angulus iste feret piper et tus ocius uva,

nec vicina subest vinum praebere tuberna

quae possit tibi, nec meretrix tibicina, cuius

ad strepitum salias terrae gravis.'

''Tis the brothel, I see, and greasy cookshop

that stir in you a longing for the city, and

the fact that that poky spot will grow pepper

and spice, as soon as grapes, and that there is

no tavern hard by that can supply you with wine

and flute-playing courtesans to whose strains

you can dance and thump the ground.'

Horace, Epistles I, xiv, 21-26

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lanndd… Hhoo!' the lookout on the mainmast cross-trees high aloft shrilled. And this time it wasn't false. Dark cloud-heads that loomed over the horizon could appear solid, and they had been mistaken several times for the tall mountains of St.