Troubled Waters

pit-ponies put to work as rides, the jingle-jangle of belled harnesses and reins from the one-horse sleighs, and a happy humm-umm from the thousands of shoppers and celebrants, the precarious dancers who dared some sawdusted places; all celebrating a delightful London tradition, time out of mind.

'Which would you prefer, Mister Sadler?' Lewrie asked the weedy little scribbler, 'a chop-house feast, or a stroll through the Frost Fair, perhaps a sleigh ride, and something meat-ish on a skewer, like as not burned to charcoal?'

'No thankee,' Burgess demurred, laughing. 'Been to In'ja, as I said, and eaten more than my share of dubious.'

Frost Fair, spread out wide before his eyes, was a carnival, a circus, a series of epic snowball fights and impromptu football matches, even one criquet game in which the players spent more time on the flat of their backs than upright, and the ball could skitter half a mile or more on a good pitch, and Lewrie's eyes lit up with youthful joy as he considered spending the rest of the day down there, for he'd had little reason for holiday cheer, so far.

His appearance before King's Bench was firmly set in the first week of Hilary Term, just after Epiphany Sunday, and, with the date at last known, Admiralty had decided that a well-found Fifth Rate frigate such as Savage could not sit idle in port awaiting his return to her, if things went his way, which Admiralty obviously doubted, so… they had sent orders down to Portsmouth that he was to be relieved of command, and another Post-Captain sent into her.

So Lewrie was, for the first time since 1793, 'beached,' and on half-pay, and odds were, even were he most honourably acquitted, there would most likely not be a welcome return to HMS Savage and the circle of officers, warrants, petty officers, and hands he'd come to know so well. His solid support was now trimmed to Aspinall, his cook and manservant, Cox'n Liam Desmond and his mate Patrick Furfy, and the cats.

Once 'beached,' Lewrie feared there might not ever be another sea-going command; it would be easy enough for Admiralty to look past him, let him slowly climb in seniority on the Post-Captains' List, pay him the portion of half-pay, and allow his 'taint' slowly evaporate as a bad memory, like a fool or cripple who'd been 'Yellow Squadroned.'

Oh, when he'd delivered all his accounts to Admiralty, people there had been polite and civil, not even brusque with him at all… though there had been a few cooling their heels in the Waiting Room who had glared at him. Most officers and civil servants, once they'd either recognised him, or learned his name, had gone shy and cutty-eyed as if they really wished to cry 'My God, you're tkat'unl' or turned so bland and distracted by other things that they might as well have given him the 'cut direct.' Some had seemed genuinely sympathetic, those who approved of his slave stealing, but some made cow-eyes to his face, and troweled it on much too thick, 'pissing down his back' 'til out of his sight so they might snigger over his predicament, and Lewrie could not decide which half galled him the most. He felt a raging need to hop down the nearest landing stairs and go do something innocent, silly, and mindless, go cut capers on the ice and plaster people with snowballs, chat up just anyone, even toothless harridans from Wapping or Billingsgate!

'Circus… cross the river, there,' Burgess said at his elbow, in a soft voice. 'Wigmore's Peripatetic Extravaganza. They've set up their winter quarters in Southwark, near Vauxhall Gardens.'

'Peripatetic?' Lewrie scoffed. 'He's found a dictionary. Was 'Travelling' no longer good enough?'

'Doing a grand business, I'm told,' Burgess said, shrugging his shoulders; most-like to warm himself than anything else.

'Gentlemen, my feet are freezing,' Mr. MacDougall griped, shivering, and punctuating his statement with an actual Brrr. 'We need to thaw out in front of a roaring fireplace, at the chop-house.'

'No chance we'll run into the Beaumans there, is there?' Lewrie asked as he reluctantly turned away from the river, after a final peek cross the Thames to see if he could espy anything exotic or circus-y. If he couldn't make a fool of himself at the Frost Fair, then dinner in a warm place would have to do, so long as the said warm place came with lashings of drink, and yes, at the moment, images of hot punch or mugs of mulled wine, laced with spices, and half-aboil from the insertion of a red-hot fire poker, would suit, as would hot chocolate heavily laden with sugar and rum.

'Lord no, Alan!' Burgess hooted as they resumed their brisk pace into Savoy Street. 'Your father, and Mister Twigg, have seen to that. The last I heard, the Beaumans had been hounded far out past Islington… ran out of London lodgings months ago.'

'Lord, what have they done?' Lewrie wondered aloud. 'There are few hoteliers or lessors who want loud mobs in their streets, day and night. Rocks through the window glass, pamphlets put up 'gainst their doors, damning them as allies of slavers… heaps of horse dung piled on their stoops? People of the Quality barging in at all hours, denouncing them, and running off their other renters? Your father reckons that even the worst lodgings cost them four or five times the going rate, for the annoyance, and to cover damages.'

'Their Black body-servants absconded,' MacDougall added, cackling in glee. 'Members of the Abolitionist Society made known to them that slavery doesn't exist in England, and that the Beaumans hadn't any claim over them. They took 'leg hail' just weeks after your appearance in court, and have found paying employment. Hugh Beauman and his regal young wife are now reduced to the very dregs of servants, who as soon as they're told how rich the Beaumans are, and how beastly, can demand triple wages!'

'And odd it is, Alan,' Burgess gleefully told him as they neared the chop-house's doors, 'how so many of them who will take their wages and abide their brute ways, come from Mister Twigg's people. S'truth! There's more than bodyguards and bully-bucks in Twigg's employ. Servants hear and see everything, don't ye know. Hellish-good thing for the nation; to have ears and eyes working for foreigners who mean our country harm… or keeping an eye on devils in human guise.'

' London became too hot for them,' MacDougall said as he opened the heavy oak door, 'even mplain clothing and disguises, every time they ventured out, here came a shower of shit and garbage. Think of it… no galleries, no shopping, no theatre! Drury Lane, the Haymarket, Covent Garden, a coffeehouse, all denied them. I could almost pity them… almost, mind, that they could not obtain a decent meal. Such as we do now, ha ha! Good afternoon, Mister Sloane, a table by a fire!' he cried to the proprietor.

Just as Lewrie was about to enter, though, a snowball smashed into the back of his cocked hat, knocking it off his head, and he spun about, looking for the culprit, ready to scoop up a slushy handful and retaliate with a well- packed, icy 'stinger' of his own.

'Damn my eyes, that's…!' he gawped. 'No, couldn't be.' He got a glimpse of a young woman in a fur-trimmed green cloak, a hint of raven-coloured hair under the hood, before whoever it was disappeared round the corner of a building into the busy Strand. For just a fleeting second, he wondered if it had been Eudoxia Durschenko.

No, couldn 't be her, he told himself as he entered the doors to hand over his hat, cloak, and sword belt to a servant. Though whoever had hit him had done it square, right in the centre of the up- turned back of his hat, and Eudoxia had been raised to be a crack shot with a firearm, or her recurved Asian bow. Circus cross the Thames, we were talkin' of it, and any impish young miss with dark hair, I'd take for Eudoxia. Coincidence. Besides, hurt as she was in Cape Town when she found I was married, I'd more expect an arrow 'tween my shoulder blades!

MacDougall was an enthusiastic regular once he had discovered a new place to dine, and evidently had given this new chop-house quite a lot of his custom, the last few months or so, and, in his line of work brought people he represented, as well, who most-like became regulars, too… assuming they hadn't been hung or imprisoned. That explained the grand table they were given, right by one of the fireplaces that was stoked and drawing so well that waves of heat could be seen coming from it in airy ripples, and air could be heard whooshing in the flue; it was almost medieval with all the brass and dark, polished oak walls, the overhead beams and stout tables and chairs.

Lewrie unbuttoned his coat lapels before sitting down, away from the waves of heat; some things could be over-done, and he didn't wish to be one of them by the time they had fed.

'Hot drinks all round?' MacDougall heartily suggested. 'Mulled wine or hot cider? Punch, or candled brandy?'

'Mulled wine for me,' Lewrie declared, as did Burgess. Sadler went for chocolate and brandy, obviously a man with a sweet tooth.

'Now, before we order, Captain Lewrie, I must tell you my good news,' MacDougall said with a cherubic,