Dewey Lambdin - The Baltic Gambit

August 22, 1916-May 24, 2007

Then on, my wrath, on, and crush this plotter of big things; close with him, thyself rend him in pieces with thine own hands.

– LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA,

HERCULES FURENS, 75-76

A bloody awful day for 't," Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby commented as the hired coach-and-four clattered and swayed to a stop on the cobblestones before the steps leading up to the Old Bailey. With a wince and a sniff, he sampled the weather, sticking his head out of the right-hand side door window into the cold.

"Arr," his son, Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, idly replied. Lewrie, it must here be pointed out, was a tad hung over, after a sleepless night in his rooms at the Madeira Club, a sedate lodging for gentlemen not too far away from the Old Bailey, at the corner of Duke Street and Wigmore Street. His father, the old reprobate, leaned back to gather his walking stick and cloak, allowing Lewrie a view of the building. "Oh, Lord," Lewrie whispered.

Epiphany Sunday of the new year of 1801 had been on the fifth of January, and Hilary Term for King's Bench trials had, therefore, waited to open on Monday the sixth, with all the pomp, majesty, and circumstance of which England was capable, designed over the centuries to impress upon all Crown subjects, the innocent and the guilty alike, the terribleis gucir and implacable inevitability of Justice and Law.

Lewrie (whom no one could ever call innocent, exactly, but who had yet to learn if he was to be declared guilty) was definitely one of the impressed. Daunted, in point of fact. Shuddering in dread.

And did we mention hung over?

Lewrie looked beyond the horde of gawkers and spectators who spilled off the sidewalks onto the cobbled street, who had yet no inkling of whom the coach contained… up the wide steps that were clogged with even more spectators, from nobility to pick-pockets, prostitutes and the "flash" lads, the middling sort, and the idle poor, to the grim faзade of the building. Up beyond the roof to the sky that was grey and gloomy, half coal smoke and half wintry overcast that boded even more snow later in the day, up beyond to the flagpole…

"Oh, Lord," Lewrie reiterated, squeezing his eyes shut to squint for a second, before taking a second peek at the flag. "Eyes must be going, I think," he muttered.

On January 1, the Act of Union 'twixt England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland had come into force, with twenty-eight new Lords Temporal and four Lords Spiritual seated in Parliament, along with even more Members seated in the House of Commons. The old Union Flag had gotten updated with a so-called St. Patrick's Cross superimposed upon the old St. Andrew's Cross of the new Union Flag, which made it, to Lewrie at any rate, look rather… squiffy and un-focussed.

Maybe it's just me, Lewrie thought as a coachee opened the door and folded down the metal steps; ev'rything else seems clear. Though he had to shake his head and go "Brr!" before returning his eyes to the spectators.

"There 'e is! 'At's 'im! Huzzah!" several voices cried almost together as Lewrie alit on the street cobbles, and tried to shrug into the deep folds of his heavy wool boat-cloak, and clapped on his cocked hat. "Saint Alan, the Liberator, 'imself!"

Christ, I wish they'd lose that'un! Lewrie thought, wincing as his father jostled him as he got out behind him.

"Black Alan!" was hooted from others. "Three cheers, huzzah!"

Hell's Bells, that'un's not a whit better! he thought.

"Smile, damn ye," his father cautioned in a harsh whisper right near his ear. "Confidence, hmmm? Show for the damned Mob, what? As yer barrister said?" Sir Hugo prompted.

Lewrie forced himself to smile, took off his hat, and transferred it to his left hand, to leave his right one free… to fend off the pick-pockets, if for nothing else. The last time he'd appeared before King's Bench the summer before, one particularly skilled young lady of "the lifting lay," as his notorious old school friend Clotworthy Chute called it, had made off with his watch and fob and leather coin purse right as he'd threaded his way through throngs of well-wishers after his case had been held over for review! So it was understandable he kept his "top-lights" skinned for the charming "Three-Handed Jenny"!

Thursday the eighth of January, and bloody damned early in the morning to boot, was a hellish cold day for London. Had Lewrie his druthers, he'd have worn two boat-cloaks and a carriage blanket round his knees, but… his impending trial had become a Nine-Day Wonder, no thanks to the many tracts, cartoon prints, and "bought" newspaper articles put out by the Reverend William Wilberforce's Society for the Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire the last year, entire, so Lewrie could hardly disguise himself any longer, nor could he swaddle himself against the weather, either. Reluctantly, he flung back the boat-cloak to reveal his gilt-laced uniform coat, and the hundred-guinea presentation sword given him by the East India Company after a sea fight against a French frigate in the South Atlantic that saved a small convoy of "John Company" ships returning from India, in 1799.

And, despite his wariness of pick-pockets (and eyes darting for signs of "Three-Handed Jenny"), Lewrie was thronged by gentlemen and ladies wishing to take hands with him, by people fluttering portrait prints of the artist de Koster's charcoal life sketch (now available from Mr. Brydon's shop in Charing Cross) for him to sign with pencil in the margins.

Ye'd think I'm Nelson, fresh from the Battle of the Nile, not a slave-crimper! Lewrie ruefully told himself, and wondering if he'd attract the same sort of acclaim should he be found guilty and carted off to the gallows, a few days hence. And would he have to put on the same confident and affable show, to "Go Game" as a convicted highwayman?

"God bless you, sir! Good on yer! Might you do me the honour of inscribing…? Best of luck t'ye this day, sir! Me son served wi' ye in th' old Jester sloop, Cap 'm, un'… The Devil take those horrid Beaumans, and God uphold the right, I say, Captain Lewrie!" came from dozens as he slowly made his way up the broad steps to the welcoming doors, now standing wide open despite the cold, and visibly blasting waves of warmth from the interior. Calls for "Abolition of slavery, throughout the British Empire, now!" were followed by " 'Ere, oo's 'at git?" with the faint cry of "Thief, thief!" from the edge of the crowd, out by piles of shovelled-away snow, now gone grey from coal smoke grit and frozen half to ice. Thankfully, it was not directed at Lewrie, but at some clumsy pick-pocket, who was sprinting away as fast as his legs could carry him, with or without the object of his craft, pursued by a clutch of men.

Oh, there were some stout and prosperous-looking men, heavily and expensively overcoated against the chill, who stood far back at the edges of the crowd, round to either side of the top of the steps, who glowered at him; men engaged in the sugar trade, which utterly depended on slave labour for their crops… men in the tobacco, rice, rum, and cotton imports, and men in the West Indies and American shipping businesses, which maintained the infamous Triangle Trade of British gewgaws to Africa, slaves in exchange to the Americas and West Indies, then raw goods back to Great Britain. Any threat to slave economies would mean utter ruin to their fortunes. Sadly, among those silently jeering men were several senior officers of his own service; most-like muttering "that bloody bastard, Lewrie"-there were more than a few who'd formed that opinion of him during his twenty-year naval career!