Dewey Lambdin - Troubled Waters

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,

plumped himself down in it, and crossed his legs "club-man" fashion, with one ankle resting on a knee. "Stuff and nonsense!"

"Stuff, and non-?" Lewrie gawped… aloud, this time.

"Slavery was outlawed in the British Isles nigh fifty years ago, Captain Lewrie, and the condition of slavery is no longer recognised under Common Law," MacDougall was quick to assure him, leaning over to tap Lewrie on the knee, and bestowing on him a very wide grin. "Also, there is the fact that the Committee of Privy Council for the Colonies…, disbanded long ago, by the by…, allowed Jamaica, and certain other colonies and plantations, use of their own local Grant Law, but, such law has no standing in English jurisprudence, d'ye see, Captain Lewrie! Oh, for cases concerning commerce, those presented in Courts of Common Pleas, or Chancery Court should such Grant Law cases concern inheritances and disputed wills, jury decisions or local justices' rulings might stand if appealed in England, but certainly not anent your case, which would go to King's Bench for confirmation, most usually. Ah, the coffee! Capital! Thankee, Sadler."

"So… no one's to snatch me up and march me off to Tyburn?" Lewrie asked, suddenly feeling a lot better.

"Newgate, sir," MacDougall corrected him, with another swipe at his unruly locks, and yet another of his disarming smiles. "Tyburn's out, and Newgate Prison, near the Old Bailey, is London 's new site of executions. Closer and more convenient to everyone needful of instruction in the sureness, and majesty, of the law, ha ha! There's nothing finer than a series of hangings to keep our criminal class daunted, ha ha! Well, sometimes in Horsemonger Lane…"

"Beats the theatre all hollow, too, does it?" Lewrie shied away, wondering just what sort of a tom-fool his supporters had engaged.

"Entertainment for some, surely, Captain Lewrie… grim warning to others," MacDougall chummily agreed as he shovelled four spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee and stirred it up. "Ah, just right. Brazilian, and thank God the Portuguese are still neutral in this war."

Lewrie took a sip of his and found it not quite as scalding-hot as he preferred, but it was close, so he dashed two spoonfuls of sugar into his own, stirred it up, and sipped again.

"So…," Lewrie reiterated, "could someone take me up?"

"Oh, there is a remote possibility," MacDougall allowed with a shrug, "very remote, mind. Any fool may lay an 'information' with one of our new-fangled Police Magistrates, but that sort of arrest usually involves petty crimes… or revenge 'twixt thieves who've fallen out. Even were you to be denounced, and the Bow Street Runners come snatch you, you'd be back on the streets, in a trice… or, as my good old granther always said… 'in twa shakes o' th' wee sheep's tail, an' th' feerst ain a'ready been shook,' ha ha!"

"Uhm… why?" Lewrie had to ask, not reassured a whit.

"Fear, sir! Fear!" MacDougall told him with a great chortling laugh. "Now, 'tis a crime the Runners are already pursuing, yes, they would hold you 'til trial… one of those King's Bench 'justice mills' that prosecutes twenty or thirty cases a day. But, you, sir! Ha! We do not treat our well-born, or our heroes, in such a fashion. Most of the criminal class, the lower classes, well… their crimes are evident, as usually is their guilt, God help them. But for a gentleman, a member of the landed gentry and the well-to-do, most of the magistrates start to tremble in their boots! Deference to the 'better sorts,' and members of the nobility, would result in a quick remand to higher authorities, and, with the presence of legal counsel at your side upon such remand, would have you free in an eye-blink.

"Unless you had committed a heinous crime here in England, sir," MacDougall cautioned in a (rare) sober moment, then not a second later guffawed and slapped his knee. "And, of course we both know that you didn't, and any Police Magistrate would drop you like red-hot shot and not care a fig what transpired on Jamaica, unless told to do so."