Dewey Lambdin - A King`s Trade

"Well, that changed everything… but for the true hen-headed, of course." Twigg smirked most evilly. "No, knowing those worthies as I do, the vehemence with which they revile slavery will naturally make them raise up a too public hue and cry, a veritable crusade, with you the heart of their righteous blather. Make a martyr of you…"

"And don't most martyrs end up dyin', Mister Twigg?"

"Well, of course they do, Lewrie! Can't have martyrs without a good bonfire, and shrieks of agony!" Twigg chortled. "What we need is the subtile back-gate approach, else the pro-slavery colonial and shipping interests in Parliament demand your cashiering, and hanging… to spite the do-gooders, if for no better reason. No, we must go to cleverer men, who can see the longer view. Wilberforce, perhaps. Aye, Wilberforce would be your man!"

God save me! Lewrie thought, shrinking at the mention of that name. William Wilberforce and his coven of familiars had been a bane on English Society for years, marching on age-old morals (or the lack of them!) like a vengeful army of pitchfork-armed Puritans through the "Progressive" wing of the Church of England, evinced by the so-called Clapham Sect; on another front via the House of Commons since so many Members were of like minds; and through Philanthropy in the public arena, a third front led by rich and influential women like Mrs. Hannah More and Elizabeth Fry… by Jeremy Bentham, himself, with his Vice Society and his damnable concept of Utilitarianism. If things didn't meet his strict and narrow key-holes of the most benefit for the most people, then damn it to Hell and do away with it… whatever it was. Lt. Langlie had gotten a copy of Bentham's Panopticon, his view of an ideal England, and had been aghast, as had Lewrie, that it called for total surveillance of everyone's waking actions by a "morality police" as an infernal machine to "grind rogues honest"!

Over the years, maypoles and dancing about them had been banned, village football and Sunday cricket had all but disappeared; good old Church Ales were completely gone. Fairs, bear-baiting, dog- and cock-fighting, throwing at cocks, greased-goose pulls, beating the bounds (and springtime beating of boys to keep them honest!), pig-racing, and all sorts of light-hearted amusements had been done away with, which had reputedly led Mrs. Hannah More to declare that sooner or later, all that would be left would be the new-fangled Sunday schools, and that the people of England "would have nothing else to look at but ourselves"!

Why, by now, the reformers might've even done away with fox-hunting and steeplechasing! Damn 'em. Newly-rich arrivistes, Non-Conforming Anglicans, Dissenters, and Methodists barred from Public Office, Service, or Honours; jumped-up tradesmen become wealthy, grand landowners; even that ex-slaver John Newton (who'd written Mr. Winwood's poem and hymn and had been Saved)… oh, but it was a devious conspiracy of do-gooding that opposed almost all that Lewrie thought he fought to preserve! Why, give them a few more years, and topping goose-girls, milk-maids, and serving wenches would be right out, too!

"Such flam," Lewrie muttered. "Bentham, Fry, those sort. That writer, Macauley, and Wilberforce and the Evangelical Society, they're all of a piece, Mister Twigg. Are you sure we need their…?"

"Sarah Trimmer, don't forget," Twigg added. "She who thinks our old fairy tales too indecent for today's children. 'Dick Whittington's Cat' leads the poor to aspire above their proper stations, for instance. 'Cinderella,' which my granddaughter adores, by the way, is too harsh on step-mothers and step-sisters. To Trimmer's lights, we need tales more uplifting, instructional, and useful. Gad, though, just try reading some of her alternatives. Horrid, simpering, blathering pap!

"It's the war, I suppose," Twigg continued, after a moment of gloom. "You were in England during the naval mutinies, which, for a time, looked to become a nationwide Levellers' rebellion that might've overthrown Crown, Parliament, and the Established Church, to boot! In dread of the French revolutionary Terror being replicated here, perhaps the Mob needs taming, and our upstarts quashed.

"Thankfully, however," Twigg said with a sardonically amused leer, "our earnest reformers wish to do their chiefest work among our semi-savage poor, not the well-to-do. So far, that is. More wine?"

"Uhm, aye… but!" Lewrie replied, impatient with the niceties. "Let that lot get their hooks in me, and I'm done for, Mister Twigg!"

"You are surely 'done for' do they not, Lewrie," Twigg sombrely pointed out. "Where else could you find aid?"

"Well…" Lewrie said after a deep breath, shrugging without a single clue. "Damn my eyes."

"Exactly," Twigg said with a sage simper. "How was the ride up from

London?"

"Just bloody lovely!" Lewrie snapped. "Bucolic, and…" "I meant the state of the roads, and the weather, Lewrie!" Mr. Twigg snapped back in exasperation. " 'Less there's a thunderstorm and washed-out roads, there's daylight enough to get us down to London and lodgings… where I may write to those I believe most-able to give you aid. No time like the present, what? If pouring rain, we'll take my coach, if not, my chariot. Much faster. Your hired 'prad' I'll stable here and have my groom send down, later. Leading an indifferent horse at the cart's tail will only slow us down. Eat up, and we're off."

"Do you really think we'll be able to…?" Lewrie asked in awe of Twigg's alacrity, and in great relief that, dubious as he was, there was one ally willing to save him from a "hemp neck-stock."

"Hope springs eternal… all that," Twigg responded, roughly shovelling in a last bite or two, taking a last sip or two of wine.

Damme, but this is going to irk, but…! Lewrie thought; under the circumstances, there was nothing else for it.

"Then I thank you most humbly and gratefully, sir," Lewrie was forced to say. "However things fall out, I will be forever in your debt."

"Yayss… you will be," Twigg drawled with a superior expression on his phyz, and his eyes alight in contemplation of future schemes.

A chariot… Jesus!

Oh, it had seemed perky enough, at first. Just a rapid jaunt, what? The sporting blades of the aristocracy and the squirearchy were simply daft for speed, and bandied about the names of famous coachmen who made their "diligence-" or "balloon" coaches fly on the highways of the realm. Some of them would offer substantial sums to take the reins from an indifferent (and bribable) coachee for a single leg of a coach trip. They knew the names of the famous whip-hands, and bragged about a mere handshake from a hero coachee as one would boast about a meeting with a champion jockey or boxer, forever comparing records of how quick Old So-And-So shaved five whole minutes from a run 'twixt The Olde Blue Rabbit tavern and the Red Spotted Pig posting-house, or some such rapid run of umpteen-ish miles, and the odd casualty bedamned.

If an urchin or two, one of the cheap fares who rode on the top or clung to the footmen's seats atop the boot, were bounced off and got turned into imitation cow-pies in the road, then so be it. If the slow and unwary hiker got trampled, well… it only made for a better tale at journey's end!

Chariots were even better, for well-to-do young bloods could be, had to be, the drivers, and, but for a hallooing chum or two in the wee open compartment with them, any accident wouldn't claim any innocents, who just might know a lawyer and sue for damages! Chariots were "all the go" and "all the crack," meant to be whipped into breathtaking speed, and there was nothing grander! Lewrie had, rather inconveniently, forgotten all that.