Troubled Waters

Where you must go, after all, hmm?' Twigg said with an arch leer. 'Too many roads to watch, else, but…'

'Trouble, sor?' Cox'n Desmond asked his captain.

'Might very well turn out t'be, Desmond, aye,' Lewrie answered. 'Do you have the lads see t'their arms.'

'Rush on,' Sir Hugo suggested. 'Is an ambush laid, better that we gallop through it. Your lads press the bastards hot, they cannot take the time t'choose a second lay-by, if flushed from their first. Doubt they're sharpshooters good enough t'strike swift-movin' targets.'

'Take the initiative, yes,' Twigg said after thinking it over a bit. 'Put them wrong-footed.'

'Worked often enough in India,' Burgess Chiswick seconded. 'Not a tactic they'd expect, even were they ex- soldiers themselves. And I know for a fact that most shooters never get enough practice to hit a blessed thing that isn't standing stock-still, and no more than thirty yards off! Right, Sir Hugo?'

'Mount up and be at 'em, instanter!' Sir Hugo urged. 'Get everyone aboard the coach, and let's get crackin'!'

'And weapons ready on either beam,' Lewrie added as they trotted back to the coach doors. 'Back up top, lads! We're off!'

'Simple robbers, or hired badmashes, no matter,' Sir Hugo, short of breath but full of vinegar, said as their coach quickly clattered to a swaying, rocking pace. 'They try us on, we'll give 'em Hell. Scatter the bastards, if nothin' else, and leave 'em in our dust! Once past 'em I doubt they've the 'nutmegs' for pursuit.'

'The shortest route into London, though, just in case,' Twigg suggested, now with a brace of pistols in his hands, one laid atop his left arm ready to fire from his window. 'On the widest streets, so any others cannot assault us.'

'Right,' Sir Hugo heartily agreed, ' Westminster Bridge, and into Whitehall. Up Charing Cross to Oxford Street, thence to either my own gentlemen's hotel, or your house in Baker Street, Zachariah.'

'My house,' Twigg quickly decided, his full attention out his window. 'More secure even than your Madeira Club. Once there, we may send a runner to Mister MacDougall and let him put his plans afoot for Lewrie's defence and court appearance.'

'We gallop past whoever they are, Mister Twigg,' Burgess piped up, 'and we'll be ahead of them passing word to their other associates. Best they can do is send two or three to skulk behind us, to discover where we're bound.'

'True enough, Major Chiswick. Thankee,' Twigg replied.

'The Beaumans…,' Lewrie said, trying to be helpful. 'Even if this fellow's one of theirs, they don't know a bloody thing about who the rest of you are. An Army general, but who? They don't know about my father, what little time I ever spent with 'em, I never said a thing 'bout him, and we don't have the same last name, so… there is you as well, Mister Twigg. They won't know your connexions, or how dangerous you can be, either! Don't know my connexions, my in-laws, so they'll not recognise, or bother t'watch out for Burgess, here.

'And…,' Lewrie went on, sneering, 'the Beaumans, for all their money back in Jamaica, are a cheap set o' bastards. Thousands for show, but penny-pinchin' at all else. Hugh Beauman, the senior now, is used to slaves, d'y^e see? T'stay covert and innocent- lookin' behind a pack o' bully-bucks, he can't hire a lot of 'em, lest they blab too wide in their cups, and most-like'd weep over the expense of more than a whole dozen. So new to England, to London - he's never been here before!-he wouldn't know his way round Cheapside, Seven Dials, or any of the stews where the real cut-throats can be had. Like Wapping…'

'And, need a city map, a lanthorn, and four hands t'figure his way about, ha!' Sir Hugo chimed in.

Zachariah Twigg turned away from gazing out his window over his pistol barrels so intently, and might have said something in reply to that; his expression seemed almost inspired with some new thought (and a tinge of surprise to hear something sensible coming from Lewrie) but the faint sound of faraway gunshots ended that!

The coachee blew a long, straight horn in the 'tara-tara' octet of notes usually heard when the dogs have flushed a fox, signal for the hunt to be on, and Desmond, Furfy, and Nelson shouted almost as one and in naval parlance, 'Enemy in sight! Two points off th' starboard bow!'

Twigg's private cavalry out-riders had flushed an ambush, forcing four or five armed men out of hiding on the right-hand side of the road, stampeding some of their horses and leaving a few of their armed foes to dart about on foot, out of the bushes onto the verge of the road. Twigg's horsemen were whooping and hollering, sabres in hand after discharging their pieces, and slashing their way through thick foliage.

'On the right! Take close aim!' Sir Hugo bellowed loud enough for the coachee and his assistant in the box, and Lewrie's sailors on the coach-top to hear. Lewrie tried to find a window on the far side, but Burgess filled one, and his father the other, and Twigg nigh-back-handed Lewrie out of the way as he took post in the door window. Shots rang out, powder smoke filled the coach's interior in an instant, and muffled return shots thunked into the body of the coach and one of their wheel horses, making it scream with shock, surprise, and pain!

'Got 'im!' Sir Hugo crowed in old battle-lust. 'Take that, ye bastard!'

'One t'larboard! 'Ware, larboard!' Desmond shouted down, and Lewrie

swivelled awkwardly about to level a pistol in that direction before their coach

galloped past the threat. He got off one shot but missed by a wide margin, with

the mad swaying and rocking of the coach. The foeman ducked, turned, and

darted away into the woods on the far side of the road, abandoning his musket and pistols in his wake so he could run faster… or pop up innocent as anything later on and feign mere curiosity… 'Shootin'? Wot shootin', an' where?'

Lewrie dared stick his head and shoulders out the left-side window just in time to see one of their out-riders dash cross the road and into the woods in pursuit of that escaping highwayman, sabre held ready for a pursuit slash that could remove a fleeing foe's head from his shoulders, or slice his back open from the nape of his neck to his waist. A faint 'View, halloo!' and he disappeared into the forest.

Twigg was thumping his walking-stick on the roof, and the coach slowed and came to a stop, so they could all spring down with loaded weapons or swords out. Back behind them, there were bodies staining the gravel and dirt with blood, sprawled like heaps of cast-off clothes. Perkins, the leader of their out-riders, knelt over one man who gasped and twitched his death-throes. To Twigg's tacit query, Perkins heaved a shrug and shook his head; the fellow was gone.

The out-rider Lewrie had seen gallop into the woods returned to the road as well, all smiles, and with his sabre blade bloodied right to the hilt.

'Got 'em all, sir!' Perkins yelled. 'Half a dozen, all told… and all dead,' he confirmed as all his men returned whole.

'Fetch 'em all out, Sergeant Perkins,' Twigg sourly ordered as he sheathed his un-used small-sword. 'And search their bodies for any letters or large sums of money that might point to the one who paid them. Usual drill, hmm? Damn! I'd have wished for one witness for a magistrate to attest to!'

A few minutes later, and six dead men were laid out in a line together, pockets turned out and belongings being sorted through for clues. Pipes, plugs of tobacco, pocket knives, hanks of twine, tokens from taverns for free drinks or doxies… which, in coin-starved England in time of war could almost be passed as easily as Crown coinage!… and, what seemed a rather suspicious amount of the new, much-hated paper currency; too much for the hobble-de-hoy griminess and cast-off finery that their late assailants sported.

'Too much 'chink' for needy highwaymen,' Burgess Chiswick said as he counted the loose, crumpled stack of bills. 'If they'd stolen this much earlier, I'd think they'd be off celebrating… spending it like water… not staging another robbery. Somebody paid them to do a job, certain,' he firmly decided.

'It would appear so, sir,' Mr. Twigg agreed, pacing among those rumpled bodies and poking them with his walking-stick as if attempting to make at least one of them 'blab' his secret in a death-croak. 'But no sign of who, or written-down instructions to explain why ours, and Lewrie's, coach was their specific target. The attack on us might as well have been instigated by some disgruntled Liverpool slave traders, businessmen involved in sugar, rum, and molasses trading. Bah!' Twigg snarled, kicking one of the dead highwaymen in the rib cage.