Remind 'em again, about the Maroons," Lewrie told his officers. "Ail to be back aboard by midnight… with so many ships in port, it's impossible not t'hear the watch-bells chime it. Plain drunks and half-dead get slung below… fightin' drunks'll get the 'cat' and stoppage of rum and tobacco for a month. Remind 'em not t'take too much money ashore, too. That should do it… pray God."
"Aye, sir," the officers, senior mates, and midshipmen chorused as they doffed their hats in dismissal.
It was a hellish risk he was running. Lewrie knew that more men took "leg bail" from ships' companies that were fairly new together, whereas ships longer in commission, and shaken down together, had fewer hands who would end up marked as "Run." After a time, the ship became home, one's closest mates and supporters almost like family. A stake in future pay-outs of prize money could provide a leash, as well, and HMS Proteus still awaited the reward for the Orangespruit frigate. Maybe his luck was in. He uncrossed his fingers.
Lewrie had seen unhappy and happy ships both, and felt that Proteus had shaken down rather well, even after the Nore mutiny and Camper-down. The music, the dancing in the Dog Watches, showed him high spirits; he had a somewhat honest Purser, so the rations were not rotten "junk" and were issued to fair measurements. He had decimated the gunroom and midshipmens' mess of bullies and tyrants, by refusing to take back aboard those budding despots and brutes the crew had wished off during the mass mutiny of the year before. There were very few requests for a change of mess, these days. A constant reshuffling of who could not stand the others in an eight-man dining/sleeping group was a sure sign of unrest and trouble. And, lastly, he had called everyone aft and had spoken to them.
Of trust and honour… of shipmates, future pay, and the prize money; of how Marines and the Army garrison and local militia kept up a full patrol; that Jamaica was an island, after all; that did anyone run inland, there were venomous snakes released long before by plantation owners to frighten their slaves into staying put; that runaways in the hills and back country, the slave "Maroons," were just waiting to butcher lone whites… well, he'd stretched the truth on that one. The Maroons were mostly high up in the Blue Mountains, fortified in the inaccessible places, not on the very edge of Kingston town; but thank God for the naive gullibility of your average tar-they'd eaten it up like plum duff, and had goggled in horror.
"But, most of all, lads… I trust you. I trusted you when we almost lost the ship and her honour at the Nore," he had told them and meant every word of it. "And you proved yourselves worthy. And I will trust you with shore liberty, knowing that you will return to duty… with thick heads and a bruise or two, most-like. Does anyone run, the rest of the crew will lose their chance, 'cause you'll have proved me mistaken in my trust. Don't let your shipmates down. Don't toss away what you've earned. Don't let Proteus down. Prove me right in trusting you. That's all… dismiss. Larboard watch to go ashore."
In an English port, he would never have risked it; once ashore and with access to civilian "long clothing," a fair number would have scampered, no matter how happy the ship, but here…
And when one got right down to it, Lewrie thought that his men had earned something better than putting the ship "Out of Discipline" and hoisting the "Easy" pendant to summon the bum-boatmen and whores aboard. He would be going ashore, after all, as would his midshipmen and officers… and it didn't feel fair, that the men who might still have to die with him, for him and their ship, would be denied what he could enjoy as a captain, as a gentleman.
Damme, I'm become an imbecile in my dotage! he chid himself one more time; bad as a Frog… Republican! A "popularity Dick"? He found that he'd crossed his fingers all over again.
The seat of government on Jamaica was thirteen miles west, over a rough road, at Spanish Town. Kingston was the principal commercial harbour and naval base, so even without the presence of the great or near-great who decided things, it was a lively place.
Lewrie landed just by The Grapes, the cheery red-brick Georgian inn and public house hard by the foot of the landing stage, an inviting establishment mostly frequented by ship captains, naval officers, and chandlers, along with an admixture of importers and exporters looking for a ship to haul their goods.
He strolled over to the chandleries and shops, at first with an eye for novelty, of being on solid ground and presented with the many rich goods displayed, nigh as varied and of as good a quality as could be found in England. There were his wine-cabinet and lazarette stores to be replenished, more paper, ink, and quills to be purchased, a book or two to read-great, whacking thick ones to be rationed out at a chapter per day. He was low on mustard, coffee, and tea, and eager for local-made preserves, the mango chutneys, the exotic dry-rub spices he remembered from his early days that could enliven grilled shoe leather, and, like Hindoo curry, make even rotten salt-beef or salt-pork worth eating. More dried meat-"jerky"-for Toulon, and a fresh keg of low-tide beach sand for his box in the quarter-gallery.
And, on the spur of the moment, cotton canvas uniforms! He sought out a tailor's that he remembered, got measured, and ordered a brace of dark blue undress breeches, another pair in white, and coats for undress, at-sea, days.
"Bleed all over your shirts and waistcoats, sir, the first time in a squall," the tailor cluck-clucked, just as he had back when Lewrie had needed a new midshipman's uniform in '81.
"Well, wash the cloth a time or two first, then run 'em up. No shrinkage then, either, right?" Lewrie countered.
"Cost extra, it would, sir," the old fellow contemplated.
"Hang the cost. Better a shilling or two than suffocate in a wool coat, with summer coming."
"Be ready in two days, sir."
"And, do we sail before then, I'm assured my ship will be back in harbour quite often. You could hold them for me, if I put half the sum down now?"
"Quite acceptable, sir. Unlike some, d'ye see. Why… here! I recall you, Captain Lewrie. Long before, oh years and years, but…"
"I do not owe you from then, do I, sir?" Lewrie teased.
"Not as I recall, sir. And I've a long mem'ry for debtors. In this line, such is ruin or salvation, don't ye know."
The tiny bell over the front door tinkled, and an Army officer entered, mopping his face with a handkerchief and fanning his hat.
"Ah, Colonel… all's ready for you, as promised!" the tailor chirped. A largeish order, or another who paid his reckoning on the nail, Lewrie gathered.
"Well, stab me!" the officer said, with a goggle.
"Damn my eyes!" Lewrie rejoined quite happily. "Cashman!"
"Young Lewrie! Made 'post'! Hell's Bell 's, who'd have dreamt you'd rise so high!"
They advanced on each other and clasped hands with warmth, all but pounding each other on the back and shoulders.
"And you, a Colonel," Lewrie marvelled.
"Well, Lieutenant-Colonel," Christopher Cashman allowed with a becoming modesty in one Lewrie remembered as so brash.
"But with your own regiment, I take it?"
"Aye, the Fifteenth West Indies, just raised last year. A one-battalion, wartime-only regiment, but all mine. Local volunteers, and funded by rich planters. We do have a Colonel of the regiment, but for the most part, he's too busy making money. The odd mess-night boredom, when he shows up to bask, d'ye see."
"So you may run things as you see fit, at long last!" Alan said.
"Mostly, and thank God for it!" Cashman said with a merry laugh.
"You must tell me all about it."
"We'll dine you in, and you can see 'em," Cashman vowed. "And you've a ship, I s'pose. What is she?"
"HMS Proteus, a Fifth Rate thirty-two gunner. Damn' near new!" "And been busy, I see," Cashman said, eyeing Lewrie's medals. "Tell you all about it over dinner. Is Baltasar's still open?" "The old Frog's fancy restaurant?" Cashman asked. "He died of Yellow Jack, ages ago. A Free Black feller dared buy it, and kept the name. Frankly, the food's much better and his prices ain't so high."
"Let's make it my treat, then," Lewrie offered. "Feelin' a tad peckish? Have time for it?"
"Yes, and yes. Let me collect my new articles, and we're off!"
Baltasar's was much as Lewrie recalled it. There was a curtain-wall with a wrought iron gate in front, with a small brass plaque the only sign that it was a commercial establishment and not a residence. Within, there was a cool and shaded courtyard, with a small fountain that plashed and gurgled beneath a pergola, between trellises hanging heavy with fragrant tropical flowering vines. A second curtain-wall split the entry into two clean white gravel or oyster shell paths, by jardiniers filled with even ' more flowers.
Inside was a cool, open room with plaster walls and heavy wood beams, wainscotted to chair-height with gleaming local mahoghany, and the tables covered with clean white cloths. At the rear, there was a slightly raised dining area facing a back wall pierced by large windows and glazed double doors that led out to a back garden overlooking the harbour, where even more wrought iron tables sat under sailcloth awnings for shade, to dine alfresco. The decor was much simpler than what Lewrie remembered, more Caribbean than imitation Versailles or Tuilleries Palace ornate. Most tables were taken, and the intriguing aromas coming from the separate cooking shed told him why.
A fetching Creole or Mulatto wench came to take their orders, a young woman with whom Cashman joshed as though he was a more than regular diner… or an after-hours lover? Like Lewrie's Cox'n Andrews, she was light-skinned and her features were finer and handsomer, than brutish.
"A mere touch o' the tar-brush," Cashman explained once she had headed for the kitchen shed and had spoken to the barman.
"Fair handsome," Lewrie amiably agreed. "A particular friend?"
"Almost pass for white, a fair number of 'em," Cashman told him, ignoring the query, "but what may one expect, with so many sailors and soldiers runnin' off and takin' up with the first decent-lookin' wench they see? Planters and overseers, married or no, who can't resist the Cuffie housemaid's charms? Some free girls who turn to whorin' and out pops a mulatto git. And their dialect, did ya hear it? Damn' near an Irish brogue, or a Cockney twang that takes ya back to Bow Bells, with a Creole lilt. Jamaica could be a fine country."
"Same as India, or Canton in China, anywhere Europeans go," Alan said, as their wine arrived, taking Cashman's evasion as confirmation.
"Same as Saint Domingue," Cashman pointed out with a frown. "If you think Jamaica 's a hodgepodge, wait'll you get ashore, over there."
"Wasn't plannin' on it, Christopher," Lewrie scoffed after tasting the hock. "From all I've heard, a mile or two safe offshore'll do me fine. Do they ice this, by God? Marvelous!"
" Massachusetts ice, packed in straw and wood chips, down in the storm cellars," Cashman informed him, beaming. "Americans can even turn shite t'money, s'truth! Whole shiploads of dried manure to dung thin island soils. Saint Domingue, though… you know the French. Put the leg over a monkey did someone shave the face first. Saint Domingue's a bloody pot-mess when it comes t'race. Dozens of terms for how black or white a person is… mulatto, quadron, octoroon, griffe, dependin' on whether the father or mother was black or white, and what shade, if the mother was slave or free, house-servant or field hand, how rich or important the sire. Most confusin' bloody war ever ya did see, and I doubt if the Blacks over there can sort it out. They're comin' to call it the 'War of The Skin.' Everybody's terrified of the real dark Blacks, the half-castes with nothing side with this fella L'Ouverture, the half-castes with anything t'lose side with Rigaud, or the whites."
"The petits blancs side with the grande blancs.. ." Lewrie added.
"Someone fill you in, then?"
"Written advisories," Lewrie told him, scowling. "But you must know how little those're worth, and how out of date by now."
"We're going there, soon," Cashman said. "General Maitland has been run pretty-much ragged, whenever he sends battalions out into the countryside. Lucky he hasn't been butchered and hung up by his heels, suffered total massacres, so far. Like the Frogs. Poor bastards."
"So what is this, the Last Supper?" Lewrie asked. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die?"
"Been there, before. Call it a preventive dose of civilisation, so I don't go mad quite as quickly," Cashman snickered.
"How did you get your own regiment?" Lewrie enquired. "Last we saw of each other back in '83, you were a brevet-captain in a fusilier regiment."
"Ah, well… long story," Christopher said, winking.
"We'll take a long dinner," Lewrie assured him.
"Well, once the Revolution ended, what was left of us were sent back to England. Recall, I told you how much I despise cold climates? Damn-all raw and rainy, and damn-all dreary, too… peacetime soldiering. I had picked up a little loot, here and there. Lots of officers in the regiment were selling up their commissions, but I still couldn't afford t'be more than a lieutenant, with a fifteen-year-old over me as captain, damn his eyes! Cost of a commission always goes up in peacetime, in regiments that won't get sent overseas for a long spell. But I found a daddy, needed a place for his slack-jawed young imbecile, so I sold up and resigned. Then turned round and bought a captaincy in a kutch-pultan* (*kutch-pultan=a poor, undistinguished regiment.) with the bad luck t'be ordered to India. Could've bought it for the price of coach fare, with so many young fools worried about their thin, pale skins, of a sudden! And I'd been there before, as ye knew, and it hadn't killed me yet, so…"
Cashman sketched a neck-or-nothing career of heat and flies, of bad water and food, nigh-poisonous native "guzzle," surely poisonous serpents, spiders, and scorpions for bed companions, the sun murderous.
"To a bloody war, or a sickly season," Lewrie proposed, raising his glass with one of the Royal Navy's toasts. "Ah, India, the land of loot and lust! I take it you were fortunate in both, hmm?"
"Brevet-major in six months, as officers keeled over like nine-pins. Some kerfuffles with a native prince or two, and I'd amassed me enough t'buy a permanent majority," Cashman boasted, "and laid enough aside t'come home a chicken-nabob, and then I had me a think. Never in this life would I make lieutenant-colonel, not even in a shoddy battalion such as mine. Home depot in England picks those who suit the Colonel of the Regiment, or Horse Guards, when there's no war, and they've no need of my harum-scarum sort. Things got quiet after a few years, so I sold up and took passage here. Not quite as hot, a tad less dangerous, and a tad less unhealthy. Got into sugar cane, cotton and such, in a small way. Ran up a rather nice house, ran about twenty slaves, my own cane-mill, press and pans. Down southwest of Spanish Town, on Portland Bight. Milled for neighbours who didn't get the wind to run their own mills proper… done main-well raisin' horses and cattle as well. Takes less labour and fewer slaves. Oh, I played ship's husband for a while, backin' cargoes on the Triangle Trade, but after a time or two, I got out of that. A drib here, a drab there, and it all added up, somehow."
"But your regiment," Lewrie pressed as their soup arrived, a hot and spicy pepperpot. "Sounds as if you had a fine retirement or second career. But then, you…?"
"Boredom, Lewrie!" Christopher told him with an outburst of too-bright laughter. "I was bored silly! Like most things, one claws and schemes t'get Life's treasures, but once in hand, they lose lustre, and you find it was the chase that was the real fun."
"I think I see your point," Lewrie replied, thinking of his own tenant farm in Anglesgreen, the mark of a landed gentleman that should have been satisfaction enough, and the mark of success.
"And… there's the slaves," Cashman admitted, turning sombre. "Recall, do ya, we once had a schemin' session on a riverbank in Spanish Florida, when we got sent up the Apalachicola t'deal with the Muskogee Indians? How it'd be a great land for crops like cotton, did I fetch in some Bengalis, 'stead o' the Indians? Grow it, pick it, and card it, wash it, bale it, and ship. Or spin it and loom it on the spot, usin' the river for power. Even build a manufactory, and sell made clothin' all over this part'of the world?"
"Aye, I do recall. How close did you come?" Lewrie smiled.
"You pay a Hindoo ryot for his work, Lewrie," Cashman confessed in a much lower voice, one that would not carry to his contemporaries and fellow planters. "You hire him. Aye, he slacks off and acts lazy and ya thrash him, and he'll take it and shrug it off, then get back to work proper. But the Cuffies, Alan… the Samboes. With them, all we have is the lash. Die off in droves from snake bites, diseases, worked t'death or starved halfway there-have t'buy more of 'em, and start all over again. We've thirty-thousand whites on Jamaica, but there're over three hundred thousand slaves, and barely ten thousand Free Black people. And there might be a total turnover every generation, do you see? And ya can't do anything t'ease the misery. Cosset your slaves, and your neighbours'll think you're weak… a 'Merry Andrew.' Go too harsh, like most of 'em do, and you get rebellion. And start fearin' what yer house slaves serve ya, do they slip poison in your food and drink! That's no way t'live, Lewrie, believe me. I thought I knew what I was gettin' into when I bought land and slaves t'work it. Knew my way round natives, d'ye see… Bengalis, Mahrattas. Muskogee or Cherokee. Hell… Irish?" he added with a grin and a shrug.
"But it didn't work that way," Lewrie said for him, though yet mystified. It was a given, that slaves and acreage were the marks of colonial gentlemen, of success and prosperity! Yet Cashman sounded as if he'd turned his back on everything except honourable soldiering.
"May've been the worst mistake I ever made, Lewrie, to settle out here," Cashman confessed in a mutter. "I considered America, but even with over-mountain land goin' for ten pence an acre, it requires slaves t'work it, too, 'less you settle far north, among those stiff-necked, hymn-singin' Yankees, with all their 'shalt nots.' And it's a cold damn' place, to boot! Oh, I plunged in with a will at first, and thought things were goin' hellish fine, doin' what everyone else about me did, but… first thing I did was get out of the Triangle Trade."
Lewrie knew about that; sugar and molasses, coffee and cotton, dye-woods and indigo to American ports. Sell cargoes and invest some of the profit into rum, tobacco, hemp ropes, tar, pitch and turpentine, resin and naval stores; ship that to England and make another profit, which was partly invested in cheap trade goods, trinkets and gew-gaws, cast-off muskets and cutlasses, bolts of gaudy cloth and such to sell or trade in West Africa, where the Black chieftains and Arab traders would fetch you thousands of their own people, or those captured from other tribes, then ship "Black Ivory" on the Middle Passage to a Caribbean port to be auctioned off. Three legs of trade, three profits in one, and five hundred pounds could end up fetching four thousand!
"Saw the wretches landed, sold off at the Vendue House," Cashman said so softly that Lewrie had to lean over his soup to hear him. "I felt… sick. Smelt the stink of a 'blackbirder,' have you? Once is enough for a lifetime. Fed me own slaves a touch better after that, I did. Shoes and new slop-clothing more'n once a year. Let 'em have an hour or two more on their vegetable plots, bought more salt meats and such? Felt I was doin' right, no matter what the neighbours thought. Salved my conscience a little, but that was all I was doin'. What my overseers did in my name, though… What's the difference?"
"So you got more into livestock?" Alan asked.
"Yes. Less cane, where the real misery lies, the killin' work."
Lewrie studied Christopher Cashman-the "Kit" of his early derring-do-as he returned to spooning up his pepperpot soup before it got cold. He looked much the same as the old Cashman of his remembrance, but for more crinkles 'round his eyes and mouth, his hair now sprinkled with more salt than pepper. He was still the lean, fit, and hungry-looking rogue from the '80s, and had not battened as most men would, once success and a semblance of riches got within their grasp. His wardrobe had improved, of a certainty; Lewrie could recall shabby uniforms so faded from red to pink that one could conjure that he had bought his regimentals off a ragpicker's barrow. Now he was prosperous, tailored as natty as anything, well shod in popular Hessian boots, his sword of good quality and gleaming, his tunic heavy with real gilt lace and embroidery, his breeches, waistcoat, and shirt snowy-white and well cared for, his hair dressed neatly.
But, Lewrie wondered, where was that "fly," sardonic rogue from those days, the one with the wry, sarcastic, or flippant comment in the face of danger or disaster?
"You know about the Second Maroon War, I take it?" Cashman asked of a sudden, as if all that had passed between them moments before had never occurred.
"Yes. Started in '91, didn't it?"
"Prompted by the slave revolt in Saint Domingue," Cashman said. "Got beaten back, but broke out again in '95. I retook colours then, as a major once more. Nothing near so big or widespread as our Frogs suffer, but bad enough. 'Twas a great slaughter, e'en so. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, and not a jot o' mercy. Ambush for ambush, massacre for massacre. Shut 'em down by '96, but there's still many skulkin' about. Then along comes General Maitland, who asks me to be on his staff at Port-Au-Prince. Spent a year at that, then the people here suggested raisin' another local regiment. Maitland put in a word for me, and I had the support of my neighbours, who put up the money."
"But Kit… whyever agree t'fight rebellious French slaves, if you didn't care for fightin' your own?" Lewrie puzzled aloud.
"In any society, Alan my old," Cashman said, leaning closer to mutter even softer, with a sardonic gleam in his eyes, "you're either on the side of the angels or you're a pariah dog. You have to sing along with the choir, nod and say 'amen' in the right places. My good name was on the line. And I didn't say I don't like fightin' slaves. They'd slaughter white folk like so many hogs in November, given the chance. They despise us, d'ye see. They despise me\ Act harsh, and they despise you be soft, and they take advantage. Treat 'em well, gift 'em on the holidays, and they'll fawn and slobber on yer boots to yer face, all grateful-like, then roll their eyes and snicker behind yer back, and despise you for your weakness! I'd much rather kill 'em than own 'em… any day."
Lewrie's jaw dropped open in surprise. Is he daft? he queried himself, No, he looks and sounds as sane as… as me!
"Servile, obsequious cringers, liars, and frauds, all of 'em," Cashman rather calmly went on, between sips of his soup and a dabbing at his mouth with a fine linen napkin. "I've an overseer runnin' things for me, for now. Once this war on Saint Domingue's done, I'll sell up, lock, stock, and barrel, and get free of this pestilential place. Sham a lingerin' fever, invent a troublin' wound… grief? Any, excuse to placate my neighbours and peers. I'll have done my bit by then, and there'll be no shame in it. Something that took too much outta me… and d'ye know what I'll do then?"
Lewrie shook his head in the negative.
"I'll sell off my slaves with the greatest of glee," he said, with a nasty smirk, "to the harshest masters I know, and I know most of 'em, believe you me. Those few I think were straight with me, I'll manumit and give 'em a small sum for a fresh start. But the rest.,. I'll see 'em all in a livin' hell. Then I'm shot o' this place, and off to the East Indies again, where a man with 'chink' can live like a rajah, and stuff ev'ry wench in the bibikhana ev'ry night, do I get the itch. And never have t'buy folk, ever again!"
"Surely, you knew, goin' in…" Lewrie countered. "You were out here for years, and saw how a slave society…"
"Ah, but it looks so dev'lish easy, goin' in, Alan," Cashman scoffed. "Sit on your balcony and watch the money grow? Play cards and dance in the parlour, with everything at yer beck and call, with nary a thought for how it's fetched. Damned beguilin' life, from the outside lookin' in, when it's other people's slaves doin' the bowin' and scrapin' to ya. Once in, though… it's a hell on all sides."
At that moment, the pretty young mulatto serving wench arrived with a tray heaped with platters; split crab claws and legs, lobsters split and steaming, with fresh-caught pompano grilled in key-lime rob and crisp with breading; removes of fresh chickpeas and diced scallions; plump boiled carrots topped with brown sugar; and a basket piled high with piping hot yeast rolls made with imported fine wheat flour!
"Ah, Paradise!" Lewrie extolled, after his first taste of every dish, rolling his eyes in ecstacy. "And damn all Navy rations!"
"Another thing, Alan," Cashman said after a bite of fried fish and a sip of their chilled hock, with a blissful smile on his own face. "When the time comes t'sell, a hero's lands go higher than a poltroon who didn't serve… or those of a secret Abolitionist. Ever hear of William Wilburforce or Hannah More?"
"Aye, damn 'em," Lewrie sourly replied.
William Wilburforce was in Parliament, Hannah More was one of those Society Women with more energy than wit; both were determined to "reform" English Society in their own mould, to tame it, gentle it, and "improve" it. And they were Church of England, not Dissenters!
"Church of England, but they talk more like the Wesley brothers and all their leapin' Methodists," Lewrie went on, after a cleansing slosh of wine. "Spendin' all their time, and half their money, along with lots of other fools, 'bout Sunday schools, so please you, so our children don't grow up wild. Or pick up Republican ideas, and rebel like the Fleet did."
"Somethin' t'be said for that, at least," Cashman commented.
"Ending bear-baiting, dogfights, cockfightin', all sorts of country customs. Hell, it'll be fox huntin', next! Bad as Cromwell and his Roundhead Puritans, out t'take all joy from life. Marketin' fairs, gamblin', even morris dancin'… the heart and soul of us!"
"I'll send them a contribution… to their Abolitionist Society," Cash-man secretly whispered. "And damn the neighbours. Now, do you imagine the reception Wilburforce and More would get, did they ever dare come out here to preach, well… they'd be strung up and hung."
"And pray God for it!" Lewrie quickly vowed.
"Same'd happen t'me, Alan. Or get pence to the pound when I sell up," Cashman assured him. "Did they know my true feelings on the matter. I'm not gettin' any younger, and all I have is tied up in my lands and such. I'd never have the time t'pile up the 'blunt' all over again from scratch. I was lookin' for an out, and by God, here came a chance to take colours once more and get away from the problem."
"And so well-timed it felt dropped from Heaven?" Lewrie asked with a chuckle as he split and buttered one of those luscious rolls. "I see… 'turne, quod optanti divum promittere nemo auderet, volvenda dies en attulit ' ultro'... 'ey wot?"
"Why, you pretentious… hound, sir!" Cashman erupted in an outburst of hearty laughter, much his old self once more. "That's about all the Latin that ever got lashed into you, isn't it? I'll lay it is!"
"Sir, I hold commission in the King's Navy," Lewrie replied in a false haughtiness, his nose lifted top-lofty. "I am a Post-Captain, therefore eminently superior to any Redcoat. Now, how else may I make you assume the proper humility, was I not pretentious?"
"One with crumbs on his shirt front," Cashman drolly rejoined. "Aye, by God. What the gods couldn't promise, rollin' time brought, unasked. An apt quote, I'll grant ye. Never saw that side of you up the Apalachicola. Which reminds me… how is your Muskogee 'wife,' Soft Rabbit was her name? And that bastard son she whelped?"
"Ah, uhm!" was Lewrie's witty response.
"I take it you're married by now, bein' a captain and all?" Cashman went on. casually enquiring. "And married well. I trust."
"Aye, with three 'gits,' now."
"Capital! But I wager you haven't said word one to her about your first 'wife,' now have you." Cashman most evilly grinned.
"I like breathin'," Lewrie retorted, a tad sharpish, wondering if word of his troubles had gotten to the islands ahead of him somehow. "And what about you? Did you ever wed, Kit?" he countered.
"The once," Cashman admitted, quickly losing his jaunty, japing air. "Out here, in '91. No children, sorry t'say, before she passed over… back in '95, just about the time the Maroon War began."
Another reason to quit his lands? Lewrie wondered in sympathy. Another reason to take a commission?
"I'm sorry to hear that, Kit, I…"
"Oh, don't be," Cashman brushed off, swirling his wine aloft as if squinting at it for lees. "Prettier than the morning, she was, aye. But meaner than a snake. Raised out here, d'ye see, used to managing slaves from her cradle, and her kinfolk some of the harshest. She ran through three or four riding quirts a year, slashin' and layin' about at any servant who crossed her. Bought 'em by the half dozen, she did! Fascinatin' girl, but a beast at heart. Horse threw her, one morning. Broke her neck… snap!"
"Dear God, but…" Lewrie gawped, appalled.
"Towards the end, I couldn't abide the sight or sound of her," Cash-man admitted with a rueful moue and shrug. "Happened whilst I was off in the Blue Mountains, start of the Maroon War. Took colours just t'be shot o' her, too. Mean as she was, I always suspected one of our stable boys made her horse shy, perhaps some of the field hands. Left her t'die? Snapped her neck themselves, so it looked accidental? Who knows. Did me a great favour, if they did. You get used to lordin' it over slaves, you simply have to turn mean and callous. Her, I mean to say. Perhaps me, as well, but…" Be shrugged off once more, smiling disarmingly.
"I heard such once before, I think," Lewrie said, after wiping his mouth with the napkin following a dollop of lobster and drawn butter. "Out here, come t'think on it, oh… ages ago, when I was fresh-commisioned, here in Kingston. Lady of my acquaintance… sister of a girl I was wooing? God, they were hellish rich! Anne Beauman, do you know of her? Her youngest sister, Lucy, was the one I was after. Anne said that a slave society gets callous and hard on everyone, once you get used to wallopin' the Blacks, so why not wallop every… what?"
"The Beaumans, Alan?" Cashman told him, in answer to the gawpy look on Lewrie's face, once he'd seen the smirk on Christopher's. "Who hold great swaths of land… on Portland Bight, do they?" "They're your neighbours, of course! You do know 'em!" "Hugh Beauman and his wife Anne are my patrons in the regiment," Cashman delighted in informing him. "Made up his mind I was the man for him, and he's used to gettin' his way."
"Aye, just as they were back in '82," Lewrie recalled. "So how is Anne? At the time, she was the most exotic-lookin' woman."
"Ah, well… faded, sorry t'say. Island women mostly do. The climate and the sun, I expect. Shrivel up and go sour and grey much too soon. Do they not perish o' childbed fever, malaria, or the Yellow Jack." "There was another sister, Floss, I think?" "Died," Cashman coolly told him.
"Ah, pity. Poor old thing," Lewrie said. "But Lucy! Now..'." "Mmmmmm!" Cashman agreed most heartily.
"My first real love. On my part, at least," Lewrie confessed. "Ran into her in Venice two years ago. She'd remarried a Sir Malcolm Shockley, baronet. Richer than God. Why, richer than the Beaumans!"
"She was still here when I bought my lands, in her first marriage," Cashman reminisced. "Aye, one of the great beauties of her time." "Unfortunately, dumber than dirt, too," Lewrie pointed out. "My dear Alan," Christopher Cashman leered back at him, "I never asked her to recite!"
"You never!" Lewrie chortled, catching the sly meaning. Always, did have the most Philistine of tastes, she did! Lewrie assured himself, trying to picture Lucy taking up with Cashman.
"Ah, but I did," Cashman slyly boasted. "Along with half the young swains in Jamaica, I suspect. You?"
"Uhm… no, actually," Lewrie had to admit, "but not for want of trying, mind. She was only seventeen, back then, and chaperoned as close as a Spanish convent girl."
"Watched like a hawk, aye," Christopher said with a knowing nod.
" 'Twas after she wed that she took up her own household, with a young husband on the land, and her here in town. Got a ragin' hunger for it, and then no man was safe. And too rich to be scandalised, don't you know. Small world, ain't it."
"Bad as old Mistress Betty Hillwood. My, uhm… replacement," Lewrie said with a sly boast of his own, "for when I couldn't get the leg over Lucy. Used to keep rooms uphill, the fountained court…"
"Oh, my yes!" Cashman said with another knowing purr. "It is a damn' small world. Been there, too, Alan. She died, though, in '86."
"And a hard'un," Lewrie said, sighing, and returned to a crab claw with his name on it.
"Want to guess who the Colonel of the Regiment is, then?"
"Hugh Beauman?" Lewrie supposed aloud.
"Lord, no! Much too rich and involved t'be playing soldier."
"Hold on, there was another brother…" Lewrie said, frowning as he tried to recall a name to place on a braying horse's ass.
"Ledyard Beauman, that's the one," Cashman said with distaste.
"Lord, that fool? That hoorawin' jackanapes?" Lewrie cried in utter surprise. "When I met him, he was still limp-wristed 'Macaroni' fashion, years after the style'd passed. 'Bout as sharp-witted as his sister Lucy, God help us. Couldn't pour pee from his boot without a footman's help!"
"He's lost ground, since," Cashman sombrely assured him.
"Ledyard Beauman, by God! And he's your Colonel? Is he actually capable of anything?"
"He's been… studying, d'ye see. Tactics and such," Cashman grimly said. "Out of books, so please you. Marchin' wee lead troops 'cross his dinin' table, rattlin' on about Cannae, Hadrianopolis, and double envelopments. Caesar in Gaul, Scipio Africanus, and Hannibal? Turnin' into a perfect pest."
"Well, I'd allow he might look crackin' fine on a charger, at a parade," Lewrie snickered some more. "Just so long as he knows his limitations… and his place."
"Well, that's the rub, Alan," Cashman said, sighing a tad more and wriggling uneasily in his chair as if ants were inside his breeches. He unconsciously crossed his legs as if to protect his "nutmegs" from harm.
"Lately, he's of a mind-a fervid mind-t'go over t'Saint Domingue with us, when we sail. Bring us his… insights, or so he says. How best to employ and manouevre troops and such?"
"God help your poor arse, you must be joking!" Lewrie gawped.
But he wasn't, of course.