Dewey Lambdin - A King`s Trade

All Lewrie could do was remind himself that he'd come to beg at his superior's table and beggars had to suffer abuse in silence; that, and grind his teeth. "Well now, you are come, at last," Twigg said, seeming to relent. "Let us go into the house, where we may discover what may save you from a well-deserved hanging."

T he interior of Zachariah Twigg's "humble" abode was just about as disconcertingly out-of-character to the man he'd known as the stucco outer facade. Once they were past the requisite tiling of the entry hall, done in red-veined Italian marble, the floors of the central passageway were shiny contrasting parquetry, laid out in a complex geometric pattern.

"Teak and holly," Twigg tersely allowed, "the teak brought from India."

"Indeed," Lewrie said, as a servant came for his cloak, hat, and sword. The servant was a Hindoo, a short, wizened little fellow, with a bristling grey-white mustachio that stuck out almost to his ears, as stiff as a ship's anchor-bearing cat-heads, above a thick, round white beard. He wore a tan silk turban above a European's white shirt and neck-stock, a glossy yellow silk waist-coat, and a voluminous pair of native pyjammy breeches, his suiting completed by thick white cotton stockings, in deference to the weather perhaps, but with stout leather elephant or bullock hide sandals on his feet.

"Namaste, El-Looy sahib, " he said, with a faint attempt at a smile.

"Aha!" Lewrie barked back in further surprise. "Ajit Roy, is it you? Namaste t'you, too," he said, placing his hands together before his chin and sketching out a brief bow. "Haven't heard myself called that in fifteen years!"

"Yayss," Twigg drawled in his superior, amused manner of old. "There's a thousand other things you've been called, since, hmm?"

"Now, damme…" Lewrie began to bristle, before recalling what peril he was in, and why he'd come. Grovel; fawn! He warned himself.

"The kutch bohjan kamraa, Ajit," Twigg ordered. "No need to use the formal dining room… 'mongst old companions," he could not help adding with a faintly amused sneer. "Laanaa hamen sherry, first, Ajit."

"Je haan, sahib, "Twigg's old servant replied, bowing and smiling. "This way, Lewrie," Twigg commanded, stalking off on his long legs, hands tucked under the tails of his coat, and leaving Lewrie no choice but to follow.

The well-plastered walls were tawny yellow, set off nicely with heavy crown mouldings, wainscottings, and baseboards, false-columned at intervals, with lighter mouldings to frame gilt-framed portraits, and exotic foreign scenes. Clive of India still led his small army versus native rajahs' hordes, and grimly-smug relatives peered down with familial asperity. All the floors were teak planking, though strewn with wool or goat-hair carpets, all light, subtle Chinee or colourful Hindi, with not an Axminster or Turkey carpet in sight.

Far East shawls, saris, or vivid princes' surcoats did service as wall hangings, next to tapestries painted by native artists of parades, tiger hunts, leopard hunts, or court scenes, with gayly-decorated elephants bearing lords and ladies in howdahs. Some walls bore gaudy, silk mandarins' coats, stiff-armed with a dowel through the arm-holes, next to the little pillbox hats Lewrie had seen at Canton, with the pheasant tail-feathers and coral buttons on the top that denoted rank and importance.

It would seem that at one time Twigg had been a mighty hunter, himself, for there were boars' heads, leopards' heads, even a bear, its lips still curved back in his final fury. On a jungle-green wood platform there was a huge stuffed Bengali tiger-looking a little worse for wear, though, where someone's grandchildren had used it as a hobby-horse.

And, there were weapons galore: cirles of wavy-bladed krees daggers and knives about a crossed pair of parangs; assorted Hindoo edged weapons about a brace of bejewelled tulwars; lance-heads, javelins and pike-heads, billhooks, and other pole-arm "nasties" that were favoured East of Cape Good Hope.

Behind locked glass cabinets were racks of firearms, from clumsy match-lock muskets and hand-cannon to long, slim, and elegantly-chased and intricately-engraved Indian or Malay jazzails, some so bejewelled that they'd fetch thousands; even humble flint-lock Tower muskets, St. Etienne or Charleville French muskets given or sold to native princes' troops had been turned into priceless works of art by Hindoo artisans. There were even wheel-lock pieces, musketoons, and pairs of pistols as long as Lewrie's forearms that the Czar of All the Russias might covet.

Armour? Take your pick: fanciful cuirasses, back-and-breasts and helmets, gilt or silver chain-mail suits, brass fish-scale armour over thick ox-hide; Tatar, Chinese, Mongol, Bengali, Moghul…

"Nippon, there," Twigg commented, pointing to a stand that held a wide-skirted, glossily-lacquered set, seemingly made of bamboo, tied together with bright orange and red wool cords; there was a horned helmet with neck pieces and side flanges so wide and deep that the wearer could shelter from a hard rain under it, with a fierce, wild-eyed, and mustachioed face-mask bound to it. "Them, too," Twigg further stated, indicating a horizontal stand that held a long dagger, a short sword, and a very long sword, all of a piece, bright-corded, and their scabbards so ornately carved they resembled the jade or ivory "boats" with incredibly tiny figures of oarsmen and passengers, all whittled from a single tusk or block of soft stone.

" Nippon?" Lewrie gawped. "You mean Japan?"

"No White man has gone there, and returned to tell the tale, in three hundred years, Lewrie," Twigg proudly said. "Though, some of the hereditary warriors, the samurai, now and then lose their feudal lord, or… blot their copy-books," Twigg added with a taunting leer at his guest, "and become outcasts… ronin, I recall, is the term… some of whom leave their forbidden isles, entire, and take service overseas. Portuguese Macao is a port where bands of them may be hired on. Quite fierce; quite honourable if you pay 'em regular. This fellow, here… well, let us say he proved a disappointment, and committed ritual suicide to atone. Willed me his armour and swords."

"Did you ever manage to land in Nippon?" Lewrie just had to ask.

"Of course not, sir!" Twigg hooted. "I was bold in my younger days, but never that rash. Unlike some I know, hmmm?"

Swallow it, swallow it! Lewrie chid himself.

Another great room to pace through, this one filled with porcelain, niello brass, gilt and silver pieces, the most delicate ceramics, ginger jars, wine jars, tea sets, and eggshell-thin vases, from every ancient dynasty from Bombay to fabled Peking.

"Didn't know you'd always wanted t'open a museum," Lewrie said. As they attained a smaller, plainer dining room that overlooked a back garden, barns, coops and pens, and a block of servants' quarters. It was where the house's owners would break their fast en famille, in casual surroundings and casual clothes, before they had to don their public duds and public faces to deal with the rest of their day.

"As the French say, souvenirs," Twigg scoffed, though his eyes did glow with pleasure over his vast collection, worthy of a man who'd come back from India a full nabob, with an emperor's riches stowed on the orlop. Smugness of owning such grand things, perhaps with happy remembrance of how he'd acquired them. Or, the blood and mayhem required to do so!

"I can see why your grandchildren were loath to leave," Lewrie wryly commented. "My own children'd screech in bloody wonder to play amongst such a pirate's trove."