BOOK I
Dick Butcher: The first thing we do, let's kill
all the lawyers.
William Shakespeare,
The Second Part of King Henry VI
Act IV, Scene II
CHAPTER FIVE
It had been extremely crowded in the diligence coach up from Portsmouth to London; "arseholes to elbows" as Lewrie grumbled at the coaching inn at Petersfield, where the horse teams had been changed. A few passengers got off there, but a horde of new'uns had gotten on, and Lewrie had been crammed into a tiny corner by a window, with the bench seat normally fit for three abreast jam-packed with four, and nary a one of them seemed to have bathed, the last week entire!
He had taken lodgings at an inn suggested by Mr. Sadler, who had made a bad travelling companion. The man simply could not silence his cheery babbling; towards Lewrie, who grunted back, lost in his own brown study and ready to throttle the wee bastard; with each and every passenger-male, female, child or toddler, wizened, droop-eyed, and wheezing dodderers, simpering matron-hags, adult men, new mothers with "drool fountains" on their laps-anyone was fare for him, from rich to poor, and generally goggling out the windows at every passing sight like a simpleton who'd found himself on an aristocrat's Grand Tour of the Continent by mistake!
Well, perhaps Mr. Sadler had never been outside London before, Lewrie could speculate, and he was on a Grand Tour. And, slaving away over special pleadings, all ink and rustling paper, from dawn to dusk as a law clerk just might be a stiflingly drab life, in a sober-sided profession. Sadler was like a boy just up from school!
He ate like one, too, for Lewrie had been given to understand that the "honorarium" already paid to his employer, Andrew MacDougall, Esq., did not cover travel expenses, meals and lodging, etc., and etc., so it was Lewrie's not-bottomless purse that had gotten Sadler back to shore and into decent lodgings after they had completed their business aboard Savage, had repaid his downward fare to Portsmouth, and their coach fares to London, Sadler's hearty breakfast, their mid-day meal at Petersfield, and a basket of treats to take the edge off any wants the rest of the way up to London, as well as a pint of ale here, then a bottle of porter aboard the coach (to keep Sadler's touchy throat condition wet), Lewrie's rooms in London, and another hearty evening meal taken together at a rather fashionable new chop-house near Somerset House in the Strand… a chop-house that seemed dedicated to settling the National Debt off the price of its victuals, and one Lewrie was mortal-certain had never been one of Sadler's haunts, without one of his employer's clients to pay for all… the damned fool! He'd even shown up at Lewrie's lodgings for a "pre-consultation" breakfast, by God!
"Mister MacDougall will be out shortly, Captain Lewrie," Sadler said with a simper as he hung up his hat and greatcoat on a hall-tree in the outer "office," and saw to Lewrie's as well. They had coached the short distance from Lewrie's inn. Well, Sadler had coached in rare style from whatever miserable garret he occupied to the inn, then had the cabman wait (for an extra fee) 'til they had eat, and for a small fellow, Sadler could put it away like a modern-day Sir John Falstaff, then taken the coach up the Strand to Fleet Street, then into narrower Whitefriars Street, where MacDougall had his "digs."
It was not quite the "offices" where Lewrie had expected to find himself; the first room he entered was more a parlour or sitting room than anything else, all prim and clean, with an Axminster carpet on the floor, a marble fireplace, and fresh-looking and brightly upholstered settees and wing-back chairs set about, with two large windows facing the street, and God only knew how much MacDougall paid in Window Tax for such a lot of light, and a good view.
Sadler parted a set of double doors in the back wall, stepped through, then closed them, leaving Lewrie to pace about the parlour, peer into the bookcases, and fret with his shirt collar and neck-stock. A moment later, Sadler was back, leaving the doors open this time and saying most formally, "If you will step this way, sir?"
Hmmph… got his work-a-day face back on, I s pose, Lewrie had to think; thank God there 'II be no more blathering.
He followed Sadler into a room of equal size to the parlour, one featuring a dining area, a wee butler's pantry, and a large sideboard. Past that'un into a third, a bedroom with an old-style curtained four-poster, then through a final set of double doors to yet another large room furnished as a proper office, a book-lined study with a fireplace and yet another pair of windows looking west onto Bou-verie Street. Damme, how much is his fee? Lewrie wondered, and felt thankful that Reverend William Wilberforce and his charitable, and fervent, anti-slavery followers had so far footed the bill!
"Aha, Captain Lewrie, do you come in, sir!" his barrister gayly exclaimed, broadly gesturing him to a wing-back chair before his desk, which was piled high with stacks of legal octavos and folders of that pudding-crust "law calf" leather. "Your servant, sir, and I am Andrew MacDougall. Will you take coffee or tea, Captain Lewrie? Take a pew, sir, and be comfortable whilst we begin about it, ha ha!"
And'he's the one t'save mine arse?Lewrie gawped to himself as he took in Mr. Andrew MacDougall, Esquire, for MacDougall looked more like a puckish public school boy than what Lewrie expected an attorney to be. MacDougall looked no older than his middle-twenties, his face round, with dimpled cheeks and chin, under a head of curly dark blond hair that spilled over his forehead in an unkempt mop-one that he swiped back at least twice before Lewrie could seat himself-and was so curly that Lewrie could conjure that he really wore a peruke-styled court wig of unconventional colour, were it not for the fact that his lawyer's formal black court robe and peruke already rested on a stand in one corner, a stand formed much like a mast with one crossed yardarm. Lewrie found it oddly disconcerting, that mute display; more of a legal scare-crow with "arms" spread wide to net the unfortunate, and the peruke with its three tight side-curls, short queue bound with a black ribbon resting on a pad atop the stand, a faceless intimation of future horror. It was so ghoulish that Lewrie felt a tiny shiver.
Scare-crow, or the Grim Reaper? Lewrie thought with a gulp.
"Well now, isn't this delightful?" MacDougall most happily said as Sadler hovered over Lewrie's right shoulder. "Coffee or tea, sir?"
"Umm… coffee'd suit," Lewrie decided. "Delightful, sir?"
"Why, to meet one of Britain 's heroic sea-dogs, Captain Lewrie!" MacDougall exclaimed again, making Lewrie even uneasier with the dread that his new attorney did rather a lot of exclaiming, and had less of the requisite gravitas than God had promised a March Hare!
"A sea-dog now under a sentence of death, sir," Lewrie replied with a squirm of impatience to get past the politenesses to the meat of the matter.
"Oh, that!" MacDougall said with a wave of his hand as he took hold of a matching wing-back chair and dragged it round the desk quite near Lewrie's,
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plumped himself down in it, and crossed his legs "club-man" fashion, with one ankle resting on a knee. "Stuff and nonsense!"