"Thankee," Lewrie numbly said, taking note of the creaminess of the paper, the heaviness and expense of the bond, as he turned it over and over in his hands, fresh, crisp, new-mailed corners still intact, and not a jot of smut from being transferred from pillar to post… except for the clerk's coal-sooted fingers, of course. It was sealed with a large blob of brown wax, which wax topped and cemented two wide bands of black riband together. Grim-lookin', Lewrie shudderingly told himself; grim as a death-notice! And, whoever had sent it didn't trust to mere wax to seal the flapped-over paper's corners to keep the contents private, but had bound it north-south, then east-west, to boot! A seal had been pressed into the wax, but it was one he thankfully didn't recognise. It wasn't Admiralty, and thank God it wasn't from a Crown Court, not even a barrister or solicitor!
To hell with tepid dish-water! Once outside in the cold airs, he sat Proteus's mail sack at his feet and tremulously pried open the seal and ribands, unfolded the flaps, and…
Sir
Upon receipt of this letter, copies of which have been despatched to all major naval seaports where you could be expected to call, you will, AT ONCE, attend me to discuss a matter which may, are you not expeditious, redound to your utter peril and ruin. My address is enclosed, and I shall make my self available to you at any hour you are able to arrive. But, be quick about coming to London!
Z. Twigg
Twigg, Oh Christ! Lewrie quailed with an audible groan; What'd I ever do t'deserve his company, again? Oh, yes… that. But…!
Old Zachariah Twigg, that cold-blooded, murderous, dissembling, smug, and arch old cut-throat, that malevolent Foreign Office spy! Had not James Peel said he'd retired, at last; so what good could Twigg do him? "Matter which may redound to your utter peril…," which meant that some word of his slave-stealing had gotten to England, but no one "official" had taken notice of it… yet! They might not if Twigg still thought it secret, and could do something about it.
Oh, but Lord, he'd thought himself shot of Foreign Office plots and errands: with his last time paying for all; Guillaume Choundas in American chains, his every scheme scotched; the former French colony of Saint-Domingue's new masters, the ex-slave armies, isolated, unarmed, and un-reenforced by Paris, and sure to wither and fall into British hands, sooner or later; those French Creole pirates from Spanish Louisiana slaughtered, a raft of stolen Spanish silver recovered, and simply a grand scheme scouted out for a future invasion of that crown jewel of the Mississippi River, the city of New Orleans, delivered to his superiors at both Admiralty and Foreign Office, and getting shot in the process, to boot!
Wasn't that enough? Lewrie appealled to the heavens.
For, did the hideous old Zachariah Twigg still own the "interest" to get him off, Lewrie would owe the skeletal bastard his soul; nothing got done without incurring a heavy debt in English Society. And, that meant that Lewrie would never be rid of neck-or-nothing schemes!
Worse, yet! Much as he heartily despised that noisome schemer, Twigg, he'd be forced to grovel, lick his boots, buss his blind cheeks, fawn, swallow shite and proclaim it plum duff, and pretend to be…
Nice to him!
CHAPTER FOUR
Away in the "diligence-coach" at dawn, a day after meeting at the Commissioner's; up Portdown Hill inland, thence to Petersfield, a few miles away from wife and home at Anglesgreen, but there was no time for rencontre, just a quick note to Caroline from the posting-house as the horse team was changed. Which note, Lewrie grimly surmised, would be used to light the candles under the chafing dishes to keep her breakfast warm! He didn't know quite why he even bothered.
Onwards to Guildford, once more pretending to nod off, too fretful to accept the usual invitation from sailors travelling with him to "caulk or yarn," passing up the chance, for a rare once, to brag about Proteus's most recent exploits, or share reminiscences about the Caribbean and the West Indies. He "harumphed" himself deep into his cloak, tipped his cocked hat low over his eyes, closed them, and thought about nooses and jeering crowds.
In London, at last, he'd hired a horse at the final post-house, strapped his cylindrical leather portmanteau and soft-sided clasp-bag behind the saddle, and set off Northward, following the instructions in Twigg's demanding letter. He found it vaguely reassuring that his route from the post-house took him very near Whitehall, and the seat of Admiralty, Parliament, and the Army's Horse Guards; if Twigg lived on a road that led directly back to town and that august warren of government buildings, might he still have needful influence?
Up Charing Cross, 'til it became the Tottenham Court Road; then onwards 'til Tottenham Court crossed the New Road and became known as the Hampstead Road, with the dense street traffic and press of houses, stores, and such gradually thinning. Further onwards, and the breweries, metal-working manufacturies, and craft shops predominated, then those began to thin out, replaced by market gardeners' small farms, estates of the middling nature, and roadside establishments, with fields and forests and pastures behind them.
Hampstead, like Islington in the early days, had developed over the years as the seat of weekend "country" get-away cottages, manses, and villas… though, Hampstead catered to a much richer, and select, part-time population than Islington's artisan-tradesman clientele. He could espy, here and there, stone or brick gate-pillars announcing the presence of a grand-ish house up a gravelled and tree-lined lane, set well back, and landscaped into well-ordered semblances of "bucolic" or gloomily "romantic," in that fallen-castle, overgrown-bower, mossy-old-but-still-inhabited style that had grown so Gothically popular, of late, and damn all moody poets and scribblers responsible for it, and what it cost to be created by gimlet-eyed landscapers!
It was not, for a bloody wonder, raining, that mid-day. Lewrie was not soaked to the skin, cocooned in a frousty fug of wet wool and chafing canvas. As it was England, though, it had rained, recently, thus turning the roadway into a gravel-and-mud pudding, and his snow-white uniform breeches might never be the same, and every approaching dray or waggon, and its mud-slinging wheels, was a "shoal" to be avoided like the very Plague!
His fearful errand was so completely off-putting that Capt. Alan Lewrie, never a stranger to the charms of young, nubile, and fetching farm girls, barely gave them a passing glance, and rarely lifted his hat in salute to a shy smile of approbation, in fact; and must here be noted, if only as a clue to his present state of mind.
Here an "humble" cottage, there an "humble" cottage; a Bide-A-We to the left, a Rook's Nook to the right, or so the signboards said to announce the existence of a destination up those lanes leading off the Hampstead Road. Lark's Nest, a Belle Reve, a rather imposing new two-storey Palladian mansion set back in at least ten acres of woodsy parkland named Villa Pauvre… which proved to Lewrie that the rich could afford a sense of irony.