The early afternoon was overcast and cold, requiring Lewrie to button the lapels of his uniform coat doubled over to trap what little warmth he had, and huddle inside the folds of his voluminous and heavy boat cloak, with the collar turned up to the base of his cocked hat so the light, but cutting, wind along the Strand didn’t freeze his ears off as he, along with his barrister Mr. Andrew MacDougall, his clerk Sadler, and his brother-in-law Burgess Chiswick, paused in their stroll from Whitefriars Street to a chop-house in Savoy Street, near the Thames.
Normally, the walk was not all that difficult, but for the fact that it was two days before Christmas, and the Strand, the finest shopping district in the civilised world, was infested with hordes of people out to obtain their turkey, their ham or goose, new suitings and gowns ordered weeks before in which to preen at routs, drums, balls, holiday “at-homes,” and Divine Services. Children by the thousands, noses and gloved fingertips pressed to large bay windows of stores to drool over the toys displayed, were underfoot as thick as roaches round a butter-tub, hopping, skipping, shrieking, and tittering in boundless expectations, and, when their parents weren’t looking, practicing ice-sliding on the sidewalks where old snow had melted, then frozen overnight to a delightful slickness. Some imps without parental supervision, the usual street urchins, also practiced their aim with snowballs at the odd passerby, and all their parties’ coats bore white smudges from successful hits . . . though Lewrie, MacDougall, Burgess, and Sadler had given as well they got.
Rich, titled, working class, the working or idle poor, criminal and honest, all were out looking for presents, alighting from coaches, embarking into coaches, walking afoot as densely crowded as corn rows, and could not help but jostle each other, now and then . . . which was just topping-fine for the pick-pockets and snatchers.
“Aha, there they are, sirs!” Sadler cried, clapping his mittened hands together as they paused before Somerset House, where crowds briefly gathered—children, mostly—to gawp at the “Erato Guns.” Parents stood by impatiently, for the most part, allowing their offspring a brief “edifying and patriotic experience,” before dragging them off so they could be about their errands and gift-buying. There was a temporary wooden plaque, a brace of soldiers to guard the cannon, but that didn’t stop young lads from crawling all over them, so thoroughly that not a speck of new snow remained atop the barrels or truck-carriages, as they peeked down the un-tompioned muzzles, pretended that they were loading and firing them, and competing in which lad could go Boom! Bang! or Pow! the loudest, while impatient governesses or dads tapped their toes.
“Let us see them,” Sadler pled his employer, dashing across the street to paw them over and marvel for a moment or two.
“Seen ‘em,” Lewrie laconically said.
“Seen odder in In’ja,” Burgess said, chuckling.
“Just clapped-out old naval pieces, sure t’burst with a proper charge down the bores,” Lewrie added, feeling hungry.
“An outstanding feat of arms, e’en so, Captain Lewrie, thanks to you,” Mr. MacDougall congratulated, his own eyes alight though he would not lower his dignity to go cross the street and gawk. “Though you do not receive your proper credit for their taking. Were I an officer in the Navy, I’d sue.”
Commodore Ayscough had been right; their victory in the Gironde, minor though it was, had been blown all out of proportion in the papers. The Marine Chronicle, the Times, the Gaiette had printed the official report released by the Admiralty, writ large on their front pages, as if it was as grand a triumph as the Glorious First of June, the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, Camperdown, or the Nile. And, Ayscough’s canny prediction of how such news could enthuse the populace had proven true, as well. After seven years of unending war, new and higher taxes on a whole host of new items, the scandal of paper fiat money, soaring costs for just about everything, a couple of lean crops, and a dearth of good news from overseas, Britain needed cheering news, and the bulk of them had pounced upon it as eagerly as they would their Christmas gifts.
Unfortunately for Lewrie, though, who needed a deed to bolster his own odour with potential jurors, the papers had taken Lord Boxham’s account as the senior-most officer involved, and Lewrie’s name was mentioned in that report just once, in connexion with delivering Marines and armed sailors from Lord Boxham’s ships, under command of his officers, to take the battery, with the brief assistance of cannon fire: “HMS Savage, 36, Capt. A. Lewrie, provided brisk fire upon the battery until our parties were ashore and well engaged.”
“A career ender, that, Mister MacDougall,” Lewrie said with a wry laugh. “Doesn’t matter, really. Other senior officers sent their reports to Admiralty, so they know who authored the plan. Besides, if such a suit were possible, I doubt I could afford it, and, do I call a titled Rear-Admiral a liar in public, it’d be more a cause to duel than go to court.”
“I only hope that some artist paints them before they’re taken from public view,” Mr. Sadler bemoaned once he rejoined them, feeling very patriotic at the moment. “Even a coloured wood-cut print. Won’t that anger Bonaparte over in Paris, does he see a copy, ha ha! English lads capering all over his precious artillery, huzzah!” Sadler exclaimed enthusiastically, peering at the captured pieces as if he wished to paint them forever in his mind.
“Thumb in his eye, Mister Sadler, thumb in his bloody eye,” Mr. MacDougall cackled in like joy. “Well, shall we go on, sirs? I must own to feeling more than a tad peckish, and the chop-house awaits.”
They continued their walk, reaching the crossing of Bow Street and onwards towards Cecil Street and Fountain Court, nearing Savoy Palace . . . but, even before reaching the chop-house, the aroma of food and cookfires wafted off the Thames, forcing Sadler and Lewrie to hasten their steps towards the river, the piers, and the landing stages.
“Frost Fair, sir!” Mr. Sadler gaily declared. “The ice is not so thick as I recall when I was a lad, but the Frost Fair will likely go on forever. Just like England, is it not, sirs? A delightful tradition of an English Christmas!”
There before them, below the edge of the empty quay, the Thames was frozen over from one bank to the other, thick enough for carriages and sleighs to cross it, avoiding the toll for London Bridge, ruining the Lord Mayor’s Christmas. Pedestrians plodded carefully over thick ice, or practiced their ice-sliding games, too, adults as well as children. Along with the wonderful scents from the many cooking booths or gaily coloured pavilions, the light, cold breeze brought them sounds of music, of cranked hurdy-gurdies, brass bands, of shrieking children and the snorts of 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 that’un!” 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 chophouse’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 body-guards 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 in plain 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 coffee-house, 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, impish smile worthy of a Puck, and rubbing his chilled hands together in joy. “We now possess all the affidavits and depositions necessary for your defence, sir, including a letter from your old friend, former Leftenant-Colonel Cashman, now of Wilmington . . . North or South Carolina, I can never keep which is which straight . . . stating that your Black volunteers intended to run away to sea as true volunteers, along with a dreadful account of how harsh were their lives had they not. Since he was a rueful slave-owner for a time himself, his account is most emotional, and compelling. I in-tend to have it read, just before putting your surviving Black sailors up to testify, so they may expand upon Cashman’s . . .”
“Then you’d better grow wings, or learn t’swim like a seal, if that’s yer in-tent, Mister MacDougall,” Lewrie all but yelped. “I’m no longer in command, and Savage has a new captain. For all I know, she may have already completed re-storing, and sailed for God knows where!”
“Hmm, that’ll never do,” MacDougall fussily prosed on, once he’d gotten his lower jaw back in place from a ghastly-looking gasp. “Good God above! Well, has she departed, we’ll simply have to get her back, that’s all there is to it. I’ll have a word with Admiralty, get Twigg to toddle over there and use his influence. Failing that, the lack of live witnesses could be grounds for a continuance ‘til their return.”
“What?” Lewrie barked, astonished. “Mean t’say, I could wait months . . . ‘til next Hilary Term t’get this settled? Is she ordered halfway round the world, it might be years ‘fore she’s back!”
You silly, bloody, civilian sod! Lewrie silently fumed; I knew ye sounded too good t ‘be true, ye . . . Tom-Noddy! Just trot over and ask Admiralty t ‘whistle up a frigate? I’m good as hung . . . swingin’ and danglin’! Don’tye know there’s a war on, ye ignorant . . . Gawd!
“Alan has allies in Commons, and Lords,” Burgess said with a hopeful sound, somewhat akin to whistling past a graveyard to Lewrie’s ears. “A bit of pressure from politicians might help.”
“Exactly so, sir,” MacDougall rejoined, sounding like a fellow clutching straws, too. “Wilberforce and his people, as well, who are in both Houses of Parliament, may employ their interest and patronage links with the Navy. They must be . . . oh, what is the military term for it, Mister Chiswick?”
“Mustered, sir?” Burgess eagerly supplied.
“Lashed aloft,” Lewrie sourly muttered under his breath, after he had gotten his breath back.
“Mustered. Exactly,” MacDougall perked up, as though this snag was but a minor quibble, soon to be amended. “Ah, our drinks are here! I dare say, though, that, foul as the weather has been, there is a good possibility that Captain Lewrie’s ship . . . former ship, is still tied up in port.”
Civilians! Lewrie fumed some more, aghast at the fellow’s lack of knowledge; and wondering, did the Beaumans prevail, could he have a quiet minute alone with the man, so he could strangle him to death; he must think we don’t go t ‘sea in snowstorms, when it’s too cold, or wet!
“Even without Captain Lewrie’s Black sailors, there are the former body-servants of the Beaumans,” MacDougall blathered on after he had taken a sip or two of his hot, brandy-laced cider. “They can tell the court horrific tales of how badly they were treated. Why, with any luck, they might have known some of the volunteers themselves, if they ever visited that particular Beauman plantation on Portland Bight, and may speak for them and their motives in ‘stealing themselves’ and seeking freedom in the Royal Navy.”
“Uhm . . . “Now Burgess was doubtful, and was about to explain the vast gulf ‘twixt house slaves and field slaves, and the prejudices the well-dressed, well-fed, and lightly worked house servants held about their darker, more helpless kind. Burgess matched eyes with Lewrie, a fellow who had also seen real slavery in action. The arrival of a man in a blue apron and the house’s unofficial livery with the slate menu bearing chalked-in specials interrupted him.
“Oh, good!” MacDougall exclaimed chearly. “They have both the venison and the jugged hare today. Capital!”
Lewrie felt like lowering his head to the tabletop and banging away ‘til he knocked himself temporarily senseless; that, or the urge to spend the rest of the day, and the evening, amassing a ragingly good drunk!
“Uhm, perhaps a dab of haste might be, ah . . . ? Lewrie hinted.
“Oh, right. Sorry, Mister Sadler, but I will make it up to you. Do return to the office and write out a special plea for those members of Captain Lewrie’s crew to be kept handy for their appearance before the Lord Justice,” MacDougall instructed, turning very business-like. “We have the names and ranks already, from the depositions and witness list. Copy to Admiralty, copy to Lord Justice Oglethorpe, and a copy to Mister Twigg. Fast horse to Portsmouth with the orders to stay in port as soon as you receive them, mind. Twigg will be grand help in that.”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Sadler said with a resigned sigh, then finished his hot drink, wiped the cocoa froth from his upper lip, and arose to reclaim his hat and great-coat and gloves.
“Even if she sails, ‘twill be the fault of the Admiralty that I cannot present my complete defence,” MacDougall gaily said, “and solid proof will be at hand that the Lord Justice issued an order for her to be held. A continuance will naturally be granted, instanter. Now . . . how does the turtle soup all round sound to you, sirs?”
“ ‘Scuse me, sir,” another waiter intruded as the first began to scribble their desires. “You’d be bein’ a Captain Lewrie, sir? Lady said t’give ye this, sir.”
“A lady?” Lewrie found new cause to gawp aloud as he spun about on his chair and craned his neck to see who the lady in question was. All he could see in the chop-house’s crowded tables, though, were men, and only the rare matron dining with her husband. He took the note and opened it, careful to act nonchalant; and not let either Burgess or his barrister get a peek at it over his shoulder.
The first couple of lines, though, were written in some incomprehensible script that put him in mind of his equally unfathomable lessons in Greek, long ago. For all he knew, it could be a bill from some foreigner’s laundry service where’d he’d left a bundle years before and had never returned to reclaim, or pay for, yet . . .
Poor, darling man, I lern of trile to com, for taken Black felloes to mak them free, and am so angre they trectyoo so bad. Lern too yoo are alone now.
I forgive yoo for break my heart.
Holy shit! he thought, stunned; it was Eudoxia who clobbered me!
I think much of yoo all time since yoo sail away tofite French. Imissyoor company and never we go shooting or hav outside dinner, race horses lik we say we do sum day in Africa. Time I see yoo last I say [something in Cyrillic] in yoor leters is paka snova . . . meaning is see you latter in Rossiya. Circus is winter over river. If yoo com I wood desire see yoo. New dramas and commedys. I hav the truble write in English, but may be yoo teech me beter? I pray for yoo and be in con is trile begin.
Eudoxia
“A lady, hey?” Burgess enquired, trying not to sound too eager to know who it was from; he’d been in the middle of the lather ‘tween Lewrie and his sister Caroline since getting back from India, and any new dalliance would only make things worse. Not that things were anywhere near good, already.
“An admirer who wishes me well in court, Burgess,” Lewrie lied, folding over the note again and slipping it into a coat pocket; not before the final line he’d first missed caught his eye.
I hit with snob all good, yes?
“And did the lady request a reply?” Lewrie asked the waiter who still hovered expectantly.
“Nossir,” the man said. “Jus’ popped in long ‘nough t’point ye out and gimme th’ note.”
“Thankee for deliverin’ it,” Lewrie told him, digging into his breeches pocket for his coin purse, and giving the fellow a crown coin. He turned his full attention, pointedly so, to the other waiter who held the slate menu. “Roast venison and jugged hare, did ye say? That does sound toothsome. Turtle soup for me, as well, t’begin with. Seeing it is Christmastime, I’d admire a bit of your goose with the raspberry jam sauce, somewhere along the way . . . a salad between, of course. Right?”
“Very good, sir.”
“What? “Lewrie all but yelped once he looked up to his partners at the table, who were both eying him rather charily at that point. “A fellow can’t have supporters, and admirers?”
“In your absence, Captain Lewrie,” MacDougall sternly said with several slow negative shakes of his head, “Mister Twigg, your father, Sir Hugo, and Major Chiswick here have adverted to me that your relations with your wife are . . . strained. And, they had confided to me the reasons why, d’ye see, sir. As your legal representative in a serious matter, it is my professional advice to you, Captain Lewrie, that such doings must be kept strictly in check, and the Reverend Wilberforce and other supporters of yours, who are so far true admirers of yours, must not hear of any new escapades, so long as your trial continues. Else, they will withdraw all support . . . publicity tracts, favourable letters to the papers, and monetary aid, placing the financial burden of your defence upon your own purse.”
“Ye mean they haven’t heard already?” Lewrie gawped, finding it hard to believe that his father’s formerly bad repute would not be enough to put them right off, and “the acorn don’t fall far from the oak” and all that nonsense. Surely Twigg must have filled them in, somewhere along the line, he could not help thinking!
“You are, sir, or so I have led them to believe with what little I have had to reveal,” MacDougall most carefully said, “a victim of a jealous termagant.”
“Oh, I say!” Burgess disputed, in defence of his sister.
“A Colonial Loyalist from the Carolinas,” MacDougall prosed on, his voice low, and frowning heavily to show that it wasn’t personal, as if he disagreed with a disagreeable charade. “Three children enough in her mind, and yet jealous in the extreme. And the long separation demanded by your service to King and Country hasn’t helped her suspicions. Those anonymous letters, complete fabrications, have driven her to distraction, and you have been estranged from your wife almost since the war with France began. Primly moral the members of the Abolitionist Society, and the Clapham Sect, may be, but, they are also realists, at bottom, and know, as ministers of the Gospel surely must, the limits of a man’s resistance to temptations of the flesh.
“They also know that such temporary dalliances, ones which don’t result in rival affairs of the heart, and the rending of families, are sometimes unavoidable . . . as evinced by men of the upper class who take mistresses to spare their wives the perils of further childbirth. Deplorable, but sometimes necessary, d’ye see.”
I can fuck, but I better not kiss on the way out the door? Lewrie thought in puzzlement; the ministers tolerate prostitution? Mine arse on a band-box! Missed that wheedle in the Good Book!
“I’m fine as a martyr to the cause of Abolition, ye mean, just shiny enough t’be their Paladin,” Lewrie rephrased it most cynically. “So long as I don’t blot my copy book before the trial.”
“Uhm, that is pretty much it, sir,” MacDougall confessed. “So, it would redound to your vast discredit should you, ah . . . dally with anyone so long as your legal proceedings last.”
“Else they throw me to the lions, wash their hands like Pontius Pilate?” Lewrie pressed. “Hustle me to the gallows, themselves?”
“Rapidly,” MacDougall assured him with all gravity.
“I s’pose I can go out in publick, though, can I not? See some plays . . . dine?” Lewrie asked, trying to sound casual, and innocent as the driven snow outside . . . which, in point of fact, was turning into a grey slush from all the coal smoke and fly ash from the umpteen thousand chimneys in London. “Go see the circus, or . . . ?”
“Oh, a very bad idea, Alan!” Burgess quickly cautioned, wincing, for he knew exactly whom Lewrie might run into; he had met met the lovely, lithe Eudoxia in Cape Town. “Actresses and circus persons would be a real scandal! Better you take in the city’s entertainments with Reverend Wilberforce . . . a pack of eunuchs.”
“D’y e know where t’find some?” Lewrie quipped. “This side of the Ottoman Empire? O r a Venetian castrati choir?”
They peered at him like a brace of buzzards, eyes flinty-hard.
“Well . . . you’re right, both of you,” Lewrie finally answered. “I see the risk, and I thank you for your sound advice.”
Still, he thought, with mental fingers crossed; they didn ‘t ask me to swear an oath. My trial gets carried over . . . a continuance did MacDougall call it? . . . it’ll be a long, boresome winter, and a spring too. Me . . . ashore . . . where I always get in trouble. Idle hands the Devil’s workshop, all that. No wife, no visits home. No seein’ the children ‘til they’re hack at their school. No home-made Christmas pudding! Would there be all that much harm if I saw the circus again, their new shows?
He seriously considered that Eudoxia’s father, Arslan Artimovich, still had his daggers and his spine-cracking whip, and his lion cubs might now have grown so large that they could be sicced on him to drag him down and maul him to death! Yet, she did need help with her spelling . . .
“I worry about you, Alan. I really do,” Burgess told him.
“So do I, Burgess,” Lewrie ruefully rejoined. “So do I.”