A King`s Trade

'Got 'em, sir!' Lt. Catterall hooted from the cutter, where he was overseeing the hoisting. 'Fifty rounds of shot apiece, to boot!'

'Next trip, Mister Catterall, I'll have the formal permission for you to give to the stores ship's captain!' Lewrie shouted back.

'Right-ho, sir!'

A scamper up the boarding battens and man-ropes to the gangway and the ceremony of welcoming a captain back aboard, and Lewrie could beam with pleasure to see that both slide-carriages for his new carronades squatted in the waist, ready to be hauled aft.

'The 'Smashers' will take two more trips, sir,' Lt. Langlie told him, after he had paced to the centre of the hammock netting overlooking the waist. 'A further trip for the shot, with the launch to bear all that Mister Carling requested, and it's done, Captain.'

'Very good, Mister Langlie. Excellent!' Lewrie declared.

'This note came aboard for you, in your absence, sir,' Langlie told him, offering a folded-over sheet of paper.

'Ah, hmm,' Lewrie said, breaking the seal, which did not bear any stamp or signet mark. 'Ah! My brother-in- law, Burgess, is ashore, and asks me to dine with him.'

He dug out his pocket watch and checked the time, frowning as he realised that the hour appointed was fast approaching for dinner at a shore establishment, the very place, in point of fact, where he'd fed those generous Indiaman passengers and captains. There was no time to send a reply; he would just have to show up.

'My compliments, Mister Langlie, but I'm off ashore, at once,' he told the First Officer. 'Here… give Mister Catterall this note from the flag, so the

stores ship captain won't think we bilked him out of anything. Call away my boat crew… no, Cox'n Andrews, but a fresh set of oarsmen, and I'm away.'

'Aye, sir.'

Burgess surely has gotten sour letters about me from Caroline, Lewrie fretfully thought, no matter the casually-pleased face he put on it as he waited for his gig to be readied. Is he t 'give me a good cobbing 'bout my 'sinful' ways, I wonder?

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

So nice of you to invite me,' Lewrie said as they were seated on a deep side veranda at the travellers' inn, where jewel-bright birds in cages flitted and chirped, and a cool breeze blew stirring hanging- baskets of local flowers.

'Well, I saw that your ship was no longer in danger of sinking,' Burgess Chiswick snickered, 'and supposed that you'd be off as soon as the next tide, or something, and meant to see you before you departed.'

'Won't sail 'til you do,' Lewrie told him. 'I gather that we're to escort your ships to Saint Helena, to help that lone sixty-four-gun that brought you in. Perhaps all the way to the Thames.'

'Why, that'd be splendid, Alan!' Burgess cried. 'Then, with any luck at all, you could even coach me all the way to Anglesgreen!'

'Haven't been home myself in quite a while, aye,' Lewrie said.

Hang it, might as well broach the subject myself, he thought.

'Not been exactly welcome round the homeplace, actually,' Alan added. 'Bit of a dither…?'

'Oh, that,' Burgess deprecated with a snort as their first wine arrived. 'Women simply won't understand the realities, Alan, old son,' Burgess scoffed with a worldly-wise air that he'd not had before he'd headed for India. 'Caroline's written me all about it, several times, as has Governour. He's quite wroth with you, though before he wedded Millicent, Governour was quite the Buck-of-The-First- Head when we were back in the Carolinas. Tell me, has he really gotten as stout as they say? Mother was concerned for his health, in her letters.'

'A proper John Bull stoutness,' Lewrie replied, chuckling.

'Comes of good living, and living under Millicent's thumb, I'd expect,' Burgess said with a frown. 'Quite good wine, this. In India, we came to like Cape wines. Their reds don't travel well, but whites keep main-well. Well, Governour… as the eldest, he always did see himself the arbiter of just about everything.'

'Threatened to shoot, or horsewhip, me,' Lewrie admitted.

'What a fatuous arse!' Burgess exclaimed. 'Just 'cause he can't caterwaul or take a mistress, now he's a down on you. Most-like will take me to task, does he ever learn of my bibikhana.'

As a Major in the East India Company Army, Burgess would have lived in a private bungalow, apart from the ensigns, lieutenants, and captains who would share quarters off the collegial mess building for his regiment's officers, nearly as grand as a Colonel. And a man with private quarters had to have his own cook, manservant, butler, cleaning maids, punkah boy to keep the fans or suspended mats swinging for cool air, and no one would think a thing wrong of him did he furnish a women's quarters out back, where he could keep a brace of fetching bibis to ease a man's essential needs, without running the risk of a brothel or street prostitute in such a disease-ridden country.

'Impressive, were they?' Lewrie asked with a grin.

'Only the two, but yes, Alan.' Burgess beamed back with a wink. 'Most delightful. Now, most English ladies who come out to India see that their husbands have needs, and when in the field, are presented with opportunities galore. From what Caroline wrote me, I don't think you ever actually dallied with any wench when you were home}'

'No, I didn't,' Lewrie quickly said, immensely pleased that his brother-in-law was being so sane and reasonable about it. 'Well… I did spend some time at Sheerness with, ah…'

'The Greek widow, yes,' Burgess supplied with another wink and a snicker as the waiter approached their table. 'Other than her…'

' 'Twas all far from home, Burge,' Lewrie swore. 'With bloody years, and thousands of miles, between homecomings.'

'And, you were always careful,' Burgess blithely assumed. 'Ah! Satays and boboties, ye say? Like Hindoo cooking? Splendid. I will essay the 'country captain,' and be sure to set out a pot of chautney.'

'I'll have the Cape salmon,' Lewrie decided, looking over their chalked menu slate. 'Salad, egg-drop soup, and let us share a platter of eland strips in the plum sauce between us, first off. Fresh-sliced, is it, or are they soaked biltong} Fresh is best, thankee, and a glass of your best burgundy each with it.'

'Biltong?'

'What you'd call jerky,' Lewrie explained. 'My cats adore it. I have nigh three hundredweight in stores for 'em.'

'Oh, you and your cats!' Burgess laughed. 'I'll see your eland, and raise you the fresh lobster remoulade, and make it a bottle of the burgundy… my treat, after all, and we might as well make a feast of it whilst we may. Ship victuals are passing-fair, but…! God, your cats. Two of 'em, now? I recall that hulking old ram-cat of yours you left with Caroline when we sailed for India. William Pitt, wasn't it? Didn't take to me, I'll tell you, though he adored Caroline.'

'They're good company at sea,' Lewrie told him as their waiter topped up their glasses before heading off for the kitchens. 'So, you became a 'chicken nabob] Burge? Lashings of a rajah'% loot}'

'Loot,' itself, was a Hindi word.

'I've come away with better than sixty thousand, Alan!' Burgess imparted in a careful, but gleeful, whisper cross the table. 'Note-of-hand drawn on Army agents, some in rouleaus