all that.' (* achchhaa raat, sonaa t'heek=good night, sleep well)
'Thankee, again, sir,' Lewrie replied, loath as he was to give Twigg thanks for much of anything, for he still had his lingering suspicions of the man's motives.
'We breakfast at seven in this house' was Twigg's parting comment as he betook himself to his first-floor study with a lit candle, with no acknowledgement of Lewrie's gratitude, sincere or not.
If Twigg's country estate, Spyglass Bungalow, was Hindi-exotic, a museum and treasure trove of priceless Far East relicts, his London house was the epitome of subtly understated Palladian grandeur, a home furnished and decorated by a rich, but modest, English gentleman, from the crown of his head to the tip of his toes. Albeit with rather more firepower available than most. No bejeweled tulwars or valuable Asian matchlock or flintlock jenails, but, here a gun-cabinet, there a gun-cabinet; a brace of rifled duelling pistols in a glass case in the salon, a brace of rare Ferguson rifled breechloading muskets standing in the library, and double-barreled fowling pieces secreted behind almost every open door! Twigg obviously was a fellow who'd spent too long in the field to sleep well without something bang- worthy near to hand. In Lewrie's own spacious, but darkly panelled, bedchamber, his own double-barreled Mantons were set out on the wine-table, much like a house servant might spread out his 'housewife' shaving kit ready for the morning. There was a shotgun (presumably loaded and primed for any emergencies) 'twixt the wall corner and the armoire, and a brace of infantry hangers crossed on the wall near the door!
Sleep well, mine arse! Lewrie thought as he undressed; Court in the mornin', gaol right after dinner, and the noose after breakfast o' th' next day? Shit!
He did give sleep a try, sans the silk ankle-length night shirt so thoughtfully laid out for him, for even the mild warmth of a London summer was a tad too hot. The wee decanter of brandy left on the night-stand didn't help much, either; nor did the rumble of wheels, the clops of hooves, or the squeal of axles from the street outside, even if the road had been strewn with straw to dampen the din. Window open and the noise was maddening; window closed, and it was too stuffy to breathe.
He sponged off and dressed in slippers, breeches, and shirt and padded back down to the first floor with a candle in his hand to find a book to read… or another decanter of brandy. At the library room's door, though, he heard a suspicious noise. There was a skritching and rustling, sounding as if someone had snuck into the house despite all of Twigg's security, and was rifling through his files. There was also a gurgling, bubbling sound. Someone's throat had been cut, and was now in his final gasps for air? The office door was open, and there was a light inside, so he went on tiptoes to investigate.
But no, it was only Mr. Twigg, sitting cross-legged on a pile of large and garish tasseled pillows with a portable writing desk in his lap, and quill pen in hand… now more comfortably dressed in equally garish pyjammy trousers and robe, with a long night cap on his head, now and again sucking on the mouthpiece of a 'hubble-bubble' pipe, and blowing smoke rings 'tween scribbled thoughts.
'Oh, 'tis you,' Twigg snippishly said. 'Can't sleep, hey? Oh, come in, then, if you must.'
'I thought t'find a book, or…,' Lewrie said, excusing his odd-hour ramble. 'Was it Doctor Samuel Johnson who said that 'the idea of being hanged concentrates the mind most wondrously'?'
'Some scribbler, yayss,' Twigg drawled. 'Or, it very well might have been Boswell, to make the old grump sound more lively.'
'You're up late,' Lewrie commented as he found a more conventional seat in a wing-back chair. Looking about for a bottle of something.
'I find that as I age, the need for sleep is less,' Twigg said, finishing off whatever he was writing with grand nourish, and a smug sniff of pleasure, before sanding it and setting the paper aside. 'Of course, when younger and more active in the Crown's service overseas, I perhaps developed a habit of sleeping with one eye open, in short bouts, and have never really lost it. You, I should expect, usually have no difficulty sleeping deep, long, and well.'
Insult me more, why don't you? Lewrie silently groused.
'Something about all this has disturbed my sleep, for the last year or better,' Lewrie said.
'And, what is that, Lewrie?' Twigg asked, looking nettled to be interrupted in his thought processes as he prepared a fresh sheet of paper and dipped his quill into the ink-pot.
'Why you, of all people, all of a sudden, are so solicitous for me,' Lewrie said. 'Half the time, I imagine you're saving me for future work upon your behalf, the other half the time I think I'm being used in some scheme you've dreamt up, but for the life o' me, I can't find what advantage there is in it. I can halfway believe that you are as opposed to slavery as Wilberforce and his crowd, but… knowing you and your ways by now, I'm always haunted by knowing that nothing with you is ever that clear… that you always have an ulterior motive, or a whole set o' motives. Am I to hang as your martyr to further some grand scheme o' yours, or…?'
Twigg took a pull on his hookah pipe, smiling mysteriously.
'All those damned tracts an' such. Was it you, or the Abolitionists who ran 'em up? Hired Cruikshank t'do the art-work?' Lewrie pressed. 'They can't afford all that, surely.'
'Perhaps I merely wish to watch you wiggle,' Twigg snickered, ' 'twixt honesty and morality, and… whatever feels necessary at the time, and plea-sureable to you. Following your career can be very entertaining, ye know. Well… it seems a night for home truths, so I will, this once, mind, explain my motives to you.
'Slavery,' Twigg harrumphed, almost rolling his eyes. 'As long as there are Hindu ryots and Irish day-labourers, England has no need of slavery, Lewrie. It is a despicable, abhorrent practice, one which all civilised gentlemen must deplore. I, personally, despise slavery, but that is of no matter, any more than your own detestation of it preceded your liberation of those dozen Beauman slaves, or is a sudden… 'conversion by indictment.' '
He just has t'goad me, even when he's serious! Lewrie thought. 'But, where does slavery principally thrive, Lewrie? Here, in England? In France or the Germanies, in Sweden? No. Europe and the civilised parts of the world have done away with it, the French abolished slavery even in their West Indies colonies… all that Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite nonsense taken to the ultimate extreme. For that giddiness, I might almost admire them. The rest of the world… ha! What heathen, pagan, backward cultures may do in their benighted lands, of no consequence to Britain or anyone else, bothers me not a fig!'
Lewrie cocked his head over that seeming hypocrisy, which only made Zachariah Twigg snigger in smug amusement.
'Slavery thrives in Spanish and Portuguese dominions, Lewrie,' Twigg continued, after a satisfying puff at his hubble-bubble. 'One a continual foe, one a doubtful neutral. Their colonial economies, and the wealth that flows to Spain and Portugal from them, could not survive without slave labour in mines and fields. Consider also the United States of America, whose constitution may claim that all men are created equal, but restricts full rights to European descendants. A quarter of the inhabitants cross the Atlantic were slaves before their Revolution, and their numbers yearly increase through the further importation of slaves, the fecundity of the Negro race, and the lascivious doings of their masters, who indulge in a sordid practice which, so I am told, is termed 'going through the cabins'; to wit, the rape and impregnation of comely Negresses as a matter-of-fact rightl
'Now just when, d'ye think, Lewrie,' Twigg archly posed, 'might the enchained and oppressed in the Americas take the uprising of Saint Domingue, or Haiti, or whatever they call it these days, to heart, and fight to free themselves? And… what happens to those nations which thrive and grow rich and more powerful on the backs of their slaves?'
'Chaos… civil war… slaughter and massacre!' Lewrie gasped. 'Generations of it, bad as Saint Domingue for certain.'
'And, how important, in the scheme of things, will Toussaint L'Ouverture's free and independent Haiti ever be, Lewrie?' Twigg asked in triumph. 'Too embroiled inside of themselves to ever
