A King`s Trade

Night in the wilds, he fervidly imagined; one of those bomas du Toit mentioned, ring the camp with thornbush to keep lions out of the… what was it? Kraal, that's it! Kraal! Just me and her? He almost had to shake himself to stay focussed. Well, some natives t 'hew an' tote, but off in their own little… kraal, once the sun goes down, and…

'My word! Lewrie! It is you!' a sharp voice intruded.

'Uhm? Hah?' Lewrie gawped, whipping his head about to find a source, irked that his urgent attention on the doings with his rudder, and his fantasies, were so rudely interrupted at possibly the most inopportune instant. He espied a quartet of people just attaining a firm footing on the pier from the wooden stairs that led from the floating landing stage on the south side of the pier. There was an older Reverend in the all-black 'ditto' and white bands that were Church 'uniform' the world over, a stout woman of equal age in dark and drab grey silk, sporting a grim little bonnet atop her tautly drawn-back hair under a parasol worthy of a rainy funeral, a young lady gowned much the same who bore a fair sort of resemblance to the older people, though quite pretty, in a. prim way, and a sun-darkened man in the red and scarlet of an officer of the East India Company army, right down to the bright silver chain-mail epaulets on each shoulder, aiding the girl.

'Burgess Chiswick?' Lewrie yelped in glad surprise. 'Damn my eyes, Burgess. Caroline just wrote me you were on yer way home! Give ye joy, lad! Give ye joy!' he whooped, forgetting everything else for a moment to step forward and offer his hand. 'Ye'll pardon me, but I have a wee situation here, Burgess. M'new rudder. The Frogs shot the old'un off, a couple of weeks ago, just out yonder,' he added, waving a hand seaward.

'Mother hasn't…?' Burgess uneasily asked him as he not only shook hands with him, but threw his arms about him, too.

'Caroline wrote that Mother Charlotte's poorly, but as of four months ago, was still with us, though as for autumn…' Lewrie told him, pounding him on the back. The diffident lad that Lewrie had met during the siege of Yorktown so long ago, who had seemed so ill-suited and sometimes naive for a soldier's life in the harshness of India, had turned into a well-weathered man, and a confident and seasoned veteran of nearly fourteen years of command in the field.

'Hellish-good t'see you, Burge!' Lewrie loudly told him.

'Ah, hum…' Burgess cautioned, with a subdued cough to remind Lewrie that he wasn't on his quarterdeck, that a churchman was nearby.

'Yer pardons,' Lewrie said, blushing. 'Oops! I'll see to the last of our lowering away, then…'

'Vast, the God-damned larboard snub-lines, ye idle duck-fuckers!' Lt. Catterall bellowed, all unknowing, fully into his task, and in ripe Catterall form. 'Belay ev'ry inch of that shite!'

Eudoxia found that outburst hilarious, even if such Billingsgate language made her blush. She laughed right out loud, obliviously, and repeated the 'duck-fucker' part to herself several times, savouring it in wicked glee. Lewrie could practically hear scandalised heads snapping from him, to the unseen Catterall below the edge of the pier, and to Eudoxia, could hear stiff faces crackling into scowls!

'Uhm, hah…' Lewrie mumbled, going to the edge of the pier to stand by the shear-legs. 'Rev'rend on deck, Mister Catterall!' he said in warning.

'Arr, fook th' preacher!' Ordinary Seaman Slocombe growled back in a voice just loud enough to be heard.

'I've a'ready done that, 'usband,' Landsman Sugden cackled in a female falsetto, providing the end of the old jape about the habits of some circuit-riding ministers, and their doings. 'Now, 'e warnts ye t' kill 'im a chicken!'

Can it get any worse? Lewrie sadly asked himself.

'God Almighty!' he yelled down to the barge without thinking, in his quarterdeck voice. 'Belay that language, or there'll be people at the gratings, come morning!'

'Vaht is meanink 'to kill him a chicken,' pajalsta?' a giggly Eudoxia just had to enquire, stalking up to Lewrie's side. It didn't help matters that today she sported a new pair of buff breeches as snug as a second skin, her knee-length moccasins with all the fringes, a tan linen shirt unbuttoned halfway to her navel, a bright yellow sash tied about her waist, and that damned hat with the long egret feather plume, to boot, and most-like looked about as outlandish and savage to the Reverend and his family as a Muskogee war chief.

'I'll explain later,' Lewrie muttered from the side of his mouth, and trying to shush her with a hidden gesture.

'Alan, you knowink this fine soldier, da?' she blithely asked.

He couldn't snub her, could he? Well, he considered giving her a shove off the pier into the water, or the barge, but by then, every eye, every brow lifted in prim expectation, was on him, and her, just ready to pounce, and Lewrie had to follow through.

'Burgess, allow me to name to you Mistress Eudoxia Durschenko,' Lewrie managed to get out, just knowing it would all turn to shit, no matter what he did. 'Mistress Eudoxia, this is Major Burgess Chiswick of the East India Company Army, an old comrade of mine from the American Revolution, and my… brother-in-law.'

'Mistress Eudoxia,' Burgess smoothly replied, as if such things happened every day; perhaps he'd seen odder in India. He doffed his hat to her and made a presentable 'leg.' Eudoxia stuck out a hand, at first, before remembering the finer customs, and dipped him a shallow curtsy, which, in boots and breeches, looked perfectly scandalous, as she murmured, 'Your servant, Major Cheese… sir!

'You are, ah… of local Cape Dutch extraction, Miss Eudoxia?' Burgess brightly enquired, in hopes of explaining her outre clothing to his travelling companions, perhaps to himself, as well.

'Nyet, Major Cheese… Week,' Eudoxia proudly stated. 'I am Russki! Russian. Vith Vigmore's Travellink Extravagazaa. I do bareback ridink, expert archery 'turn,' and some acting in comedies, and dramas! Is pity we finish our run of shows before you arrive. Now, Vigmore and Papa, who is beink lion tamer, are away on hunt for new beasts, but I learn African elephant is not good for performink. But, you come from India }' she gushed, all agog and feckless. 'Land of tiger and ridink elephant? You see them? Hunt them? Oh, you must tell me all, Major Ch… sir! Your friends? Family?' Eudoxia asked, pointing to the churchman and his brood, unaware of how gauche it was. 'They see elephant and tiger, too? You introduce me, da?'

'Uhm, ah…' Burgess dithered, caught in Lewrie's trap, after all. From the instant Eudoxia had opened her mouth, there had come a series of prim gasps; circus person! Bareback anything! And, horror of horrors, actress! If she'd said she rode a broomstick, boiled up potions to cast spells, ate children, and stuck hat-pins through all her cheeks whilst bussing Satan's fundament, she couldn't have given them a worse case of the 'fantods'!

'Reverend Brothers, allow me to name to you Mistress Eudoxia… uhm, Durschenko. Mistress Eudoxia, may I name to you the Reverend Brothers… his wife, Mistress Brothers, and their daughter, Mistress Alicia Brothers. My fellow passengers on the Lord Stormont.'

I don't know which of us is worse-fucked! Lewrie grimly thought as he watched the Brotherses' reaction to that! Him, or me, 'tis about equal shares!

I could trot out knowing Wilberforce, Clarkson, and old Hannah More, but I doubt it'd cosset 'em. No, they'd never believe it!

'Your servant, sir… madam… miss,' Eudoxia said, smiling in anticipation of tales of India, her curtsies to each deeper, and more graceful, as if she was finally catching on. Then…

'Oh, but you are so pretty, Mistress Alicia!' she exclaimed, all but clapping her hands. 'You comink from India, too? Did you ever ride elephant? Hunt tiger vith noble rajahs}'

'Why, thank you, but…!' the young lady stammered.

'Certainly not!' and 'Never!' her parents huffed.