Lewrie gave that a short, jerking nod of agreement; at Harrow (in the short time in attendance before his expulsion) trying to read a sniggery, surreptitious note from Peter Rushton had been all but indecypherable, like getting a scouting report on the defences of Biblical Canaan from one of Moses's spies, and hastily scribbled in Aramaic at that! "Meet us behind the coach-house and share a bottle of brandy" in Peter's idea of a "copper-plate" hand could have very well meant "We've hid five dead mouse and they're randy," which of course had earned them both a caning, even if the instructor or proctor couldn't make heads or tails of it, either.
"We're to speak to William Wilberforce, himself, Lewrie," Twigg informed him. "You followed my directives? Had a last bathe, a good night's sleep… alone… and you're not 'headed' by spirits?" "Sober as a hangman," Lewrie answered.
"How apt," Twigg said with a sniff. "Here's the line you're to take… 'twas your old compatriot, Colonel Cashman, late of the King's Service in a West Indies regiment, and local planter-"
"And un-findable for corroboration in the United States," Lewrie stuck in. "-whose utter revulsion over the institution of slavery, even was he a participant and slave-owner for a time," Twigg drilled onwards, "that led you to despise slavery, yourself. Very John Newton-ish, you see. It will strike a chord with Wilberforce and what possible entourage of the like-minded who might be present, for it slightly coincides with Newton's own experience of being a slaver, then shipwrecked, and enslaved by the very people he sought to capture and sell. That poem of his, describing his enlightenment and salvation…"
" 'Amazing Grace,' aye," Lewrie said with a grunt and a new nod.
"You actually know of it," Twigg nigh-gasped with surprise that Lewrie, of all people, had been exposed to it. "Well, damme. Wonders never cease! No matter… when asked, you will clew to this point as if your life depended on it… which it does, by the by," Twigg said, with another sniff of faint amusement, "that it was Cashman who thought it all up."
"Damme, sir!" Lewrie said, recoiling. "Even if it's half-true, he's a good friend, and it's not… quite honourable to shift the-"
"He did think it up, you said so, yourself!" Twigg archly objected. "As a cruel jape on the Beaumans. In my version, however, the former Colonel Cash-man, disgusted with slavery and his own part in it, manumitted all his own chattel, then, grieved by the unremitting, and inhuman, beastly cruelty with which the Beaumans kept their slaves, he schemed to free as many of them as he could… encouraging them to go into the mountains and join the free Maroons, the young men and boys to 'steal themselves' and join your crew as free men."
"But…" Lewrie tried to say, loath to put the onus on "Kit" Cashman, no matter that he was far out of reach of British justice.
"They… stole… themselves, Lewrie!" Twigg insisted. "You did not steal them, d'ye understand the significance of that? It's a lawyerly niggle, but, under current statutes, you only aided and abetted, but did not instigate, or commit, hah! And, you did it in a fine cause. Think of yourself as the noble hero from a free land, England!, where slavery has already been banished. Suddenly exposed in the Caribbean Sugar Isles to the utter barbarity of slavery's realities. And it sore-grieved you. Consider also your experiences on Saint-Domingue, where you witnessed the, ah… desperate courage of self-freed Blacks trading their lives by the thousands, so their children could be free. I still have friends at Admiralty… I've read your reports of intercepting those sailboats full of ex-slave soldiers, who almost blew you out of the water with suicidal gallantry… the survivor who slit the throat of one of your sailors as his last act of defiance, and you were touched… to your very soul," Twigg spun out, and Lewrie could see it was all a cynical sham that Twigg was creating, merely an interpretation of what really happened. Ordinary Seaman Inman's throat had been slit out of savage hatred of any White man, not gallantry, but… it was much of a piece with what a barrister would argue at his trial, and if such an interpretation of evidence and happenstance took place at an informal hearing, not a formal trial (which would preclude a trial for a hanging offence should it succeed in gaining him sponsors, protectors), well… so be it. And he hoped Christopher Cashman would forgive him, should he ever even hear of it.
"I'll do most of the exposition, Lewrie," Twigg ordered, leaning back against his facing coach bench. "You just sit there and be stoic, stern, and honourable. Refuse wine, but accept tea or coffee. The sun isn't 'below the yardarm'… all that. Try not to fidget or squirm on your chair. Sound resolute. Boast only when describing what fine tars your dozen Black hands are. You might allude to any religious instruction they've gotten since signing articles. It'd go down well, hmm?"
Like a boxer getting last-moment cautions on his opponent, there was not time enough for Mr. Twigg to impart all of his last suggestions. Before Lewrie knew it, their coach pulled to a stop before an imposing row house's stoop (where, exactly, a preoccupied and benumbed Lewrie in later years couldn't say, and couldn't find with both hands and a whole battalion of flaming link-boys) and their coachman's son, serving as a footman, was folding down the metal steps and opening the door.
Lewrie stepped out onto a fresh-swept sidewalk, looked up at the gloomy, coal-sooted sky, and drew what felt like his last free breath, his left hand fretting on the hilt of his hanger, and his right hanging limp by his side, loath to take a single more step forward, or climb up the steps to the row house's door.
For London, with all its stinks, the air he drew in was rather fresh; it wasn't raining, for a bloody wonder, and as he looked up, as he would to read the set of the sails and the wind's direction, Lewrie could actually make out shape and form in the clouds, even espy several patches of open, wispy blue, here and there. Then, as if the wicks of theatrical lanthorns had been turned up, the sun peeked out briefly, to stab bright shafts down on the city through those wispy cloud-gaps, and brightened the street they stood in.
"Marvellous," Mr. Twigg smirked as he shot his cuffs and tugged down his fashionable waist-coat. "Why, Lewrie, I do declare the sacrificial birds' entrails are found flawless, the auguries are auspicious, and the old gods smile upon us, haw!"
"Bugger the old gods," was Lewrie's muttered reply to that. "If we must, we must. Let's get it done."
CHAPTER EIGHT
The row house fairly shouted Respectability, though in a muted, subtle way; "shouting" would have been thought too "common" or enthusiastic by its owners, perhaps. The terrace of row houses was a relatively new development outside; once one was in the entry hall, however, it was obvious that materials from older, razed houses had been re-used, for the entry's panelling looked to be authentic Jacobean Fold woodworking, the immense and intricately carved marble staircases had the sheen from many hands and feet over a very long time, too well-crafted to be sent to the scrapyard. The tables and such were of a heavier, past-century style, too, and the framed paintings and mirrors were gilt-framed in a Baroque style. Bright new red, blue, and buff Axminster or Winton carpets covered the usual black-and-white chequered tile floors, and ran up the staircase to cover slick, worn spots on the treads. The house of a serious collector? Lewrie wondered, taking in the statues in the recesses, the noble Greco-Roman busts on plinths; the house of a rich merchant or banker, or someone titled?