Dewey Lambdin - Sea of Grey

"Maybe L'Ouverture would have gone right on and fought us, Kit. Drivin' out a white, British army's one thing, but slaughterin' them to the last man on the beaches is another. His message to the world."

"Us leavin' with our tails t'wixt our legs ain't enough of a message?" Cashman waved this off, leaning back in his chair and tossing down his fresh glass of champagne. "Shit, Alan. That's shit, and ya know it. L'Ouverture ain't through fightin', there's still the Spaniards in the east h *ants t'take on, there's still that half-caste General Rigaud down in South Province against him. There's probably some of his very own generals just slaverin' like hounds for a shot at power, too. No, L'Ouverture wants t'stay alive, and in charge, liberate the entire island of Hispaniola -hell, the whole damn' West Indies, he needed t'husband the army he had! He's too smart t'throw it away on gestures and messages to the world. S'truth."

"So, what'll you do?" Lewrie asked, stretching to refill his own glass. "Resign, or wait to be retired?"

"Ask for a court," Cashman told him, brightening a touch. "Get my record cleared… make sure everyone knows for certain it was that fool Ledyard who lost it for us. See, Alan… Maitland and his staff are lookin' for scapegoats, and damned if I'll play 'goat.' Maitland holds a court-martial and blames Beauman for losin' him the battle that cost him the entire campaign, why, he can go back to England smellin' like a bed o' spring roses! The regular Army'll love it, 'cause what can ya expect from Yeomanry, militia volunteers, and amateur officers? Pile up a big, smelly heap o' shit over here, then you hardly notice the reek from over yonder, d'ye see. Then, no one'll take Maitland to task for 'conspirin' with the enemy.' That's what you can deem secret letters with the foe. You could almost call it treason, and that's a hangin' offence, no matter what your rank or titles."

"He'll never allow it," Lewrie said after a long moment to mull it over. "Ya don't think Ledyard Beauman doesn't know about Maitland and L'Ouverture negotiating already? Better for Ledyard, his lawyer will know of it, and how to use it. The Royal Navy's just as eager to cover its arse when someone's mucked it, I know, I've seen it close at hand, Kit. Better for Maitland to explain to Horse Guards that he was grossly outnumbered and swamped by bloody waves of fanatics, then only opened negotiations when he saw he had no chance to win. He saved his army, he saved the civilians on Saint Domingue by wangling a promise that L'Ouverture wouldn't take reprisal on 'em. Remember, Kit, I was at Yorktown, and-"

"Oh, that tale again." Cashman waved it off.

"Lord Cornwallis had had his arse kicked from the Cape Fear to Yorktown, then got himself stuck like a bung in a barrel, countin' on the Fleet t'save him. Did Graves, Hood, or Denby pay for failing him? Christ no, they didn't. Did Cornwallis pay for losin' the last army we'd be able to raise, losin' the war, for losin' the Colonies at one stroke? Hell no to that, too! They still love him. This latest rebellion in Ireland we've heard about, that French landing under General Humbert, they're sending Cornwallis t'sort it out."

"So Maitland won't pay, either?" Cashman said as he squinted at his old friend; rather "squiffily," by then.

"End of his active career, most-like, Kit, and no honours, but he'll flap away as free as a dove, with not a harsh word said to him, you just watch and see," Lewrie prophecied, "and everyone'll say, "What a pity, when just one more regiment, one more battery, just a wee bit more luck and we'd have conquered the place, and we're better off out of there, anyway,' d'ye see? He'll write his memoirs and prove it wasn't a bit of his doing, and nothing'll get in the way of that. So, before you pile up your stink, he'll shed you and Ledyard, disband yer regiment, and then it's 'least said, soonest mended' for everyone."

"Not for me, damn yer eyes," Cashman thundered, "it's my honour, my good name that's dragged in the mud! Without a court it'll always be me who funked it, t'will be me who's whispered about, laughed about! I'll not have it, Alan, if I have to challenge Maitland, too, once I'm a civilian!"

"Oh, don't talk rot, Kit," Lewrie scoffed, half worried now.

"The Beaumans have already begun white-washin' his odour," Kit snapped, repouring from the bottle, which was already deeply drained. "Their newspaper friends, those papers sent to England on the packets. Two, three months more, and I'll be all over the London rags as the one who cut and ran. People in town, already… I'm bein' snubbed. Goin' to the other side of the street when I walk by, gazin' skyward with a 'cut sublime'… out at our camp. Wives and children, widows, come to find what happened to their menfolk, and I…"

In the privacy of Lewrie's great-cabins, the indomitable Christopher Cashman began to snuffle and swipe at his eyes with his shirt sleeves, making Lewrie wince in pain for him, yet avert his eyes so as not to stare too directly and shame him. To see someone unmanned…

"Private soldiers know the truth, they try t'tell their folks, but the way; they still glare at me, Alan, it's so…!" Cashman wept.

Suddenly, he smashed a fist on the desktop, so hard he made the glasses, the bottle, inkwell, and correspondence box jump.

"Damn Beauman! Damn him and his kin, damn all those rich, stuck-up bastards and bitches t'Hell and gone! They'll ruin me to save that useless, Goddamned pinch o' pig shit, take all I have! Take my honour and all I've done before, run me outta Jamaica like an 'untouchable' Hindoo, too low caste t'swamp out a toilet… make me sell up for a pence to the pound and lose ev'ry farthing I've invested here… well, I'll not have it. I'll find a way t'get my own back, if it means that I murder Ledyard, or murder 'em all!"

"Now you're really talking rot, Kit!" Lewrie spat back. "Think with your head, not your pride, for God's sake. Want t'end up hanged? Then where's your honour, or your good name, hey?"

Lewrie tossed back his own glass of champagne, then took assay of the bottle on the desk. Talking fools out of idiocy was dry work; he bent down to extract a second bottle from the wood case and ripped away the lead foil, gave the cork a twist, and opened a replenishment, topping them both up. And tossed Toulon a new "play-pretty."

"Duelin' him's better, remember duelin'?" Lewrie asked once he had taken another deep sip. "What you talked about on Saint Domingue, not two weeks ago? I'll stand as your second, God help me. Let 'em retire the both of you, there's no King's Regulations preventing two former officers from fightin'. You blow great holes in him or slice him to pork chops, there's your revenge. But he'll cry off, I'd bet, and that'll prove he's the liar, and a coward to boot. Then you're able t'sell up, justified. Might not get full price even so, but the buyers'll be gettin' a fair bargain, and not robbin' ya blind."

"He can't deny me, Alan, his brother'll make him, so…"

"So you kill him all legal-like, and take shilling to a pound," Lewrie snapped, nigh exasperated with trying to make sense to a drunk. "A twentieth or tenth of yer worth beats poverty all hollow, old son."

"And the bastard'll be dead," Cashman said, half to himself, as if the end result had just occurred to him; beginning to beam as if he had just discovered the joy of it.

"That's the point… ain't it," Lewrie maliciously grinned.

"Don't know," Cashman said, sighing and reaching for the cresh bottle for a refill, shaking his head like a disappointed tot, denied a "surprise" from town by a thoughtless daddy. "Doesn't seem enough, somehow. Not by half, it don't."

"Well, you could have him raped by a cart horse, first," Lewrie suggested, throwing his hands aloft and sinking back in his chair. "My God, Kit, what is enough? Besides your honour, your good name, reasonable profit from your properties, and public acquittal, that is?"

"I dunno," Christopher said with a semi-drunk shrug. "Pillage his lands, burn his house down… poison his wells and livestock? An end to the whole Beauman line… his sister Lucy, excepted."

"Aye, spare the whores and the simple," Lewrie sneered. "They, at least, have their uses."

"Run his slaves off to the Maroons in the mountains?" Cashman fantasised, blood and thunder and gore a'bubble behind his eyes.

"Spare me a half-dozen strong'uns when you do, Kit. I'm sorely in need of hands," Lewrie suggested. "Hell's Bells, even if they're nought but simple-minded soldiers, I'd gladly take some of your wharf rats when your regiment gets broken up. Need fresh Marines, too…"

"They'll parcel 'em out to t'other under-strength units-oh," Cash-man said, perking up like a wakened cat, and sitting more upright, almost managing, to resemble "sober." His phyz became suffused by a grin, one of the sly sort, filled with impish mischief, slowly, like a high-latitude sunrise.- He peered at Lewrie, then winked!

"What?" Lewrie demanded, perked to the edge of his own chair.

"How many Marines did you say you were short, Alan?" Cashman enquired, with a soft, smugly satisfied chuckle.

"We could use five," Lewrie told him, delighted at the offer he thought was coming. Not that he'd relish gaining hands from a friend's misfortune, but neither was he loath to refuse soon-to-be unemployed volunteers. Not when he'd considered stopping American merchant ships once back at sea, and press-ganging anyone who had even a slight English accent or the slightest error in his citizenship certificate; and God knew three-quarters of those were bogus, or given (or sold!) by an American consul like so many cough lozenges.

"I'll have a word with the best men I have," Cashman promised.

"Hallelujah!"

"There's still some have a taste for soldierin'," Cashman said, tittering with impending glee, "or so calf-headed I can talk 'em into it. But, Alan… but!"

"But, mine arse," Lewrie quipped. "What? Tell me, you sot!"

"You don't mind Black sailors, do you, Alan?"

"Not a bit. Already have some. Think I always have had, every ship I've ever served. They're good hands, too, so… no, it don't signify if they were Eskimos," Lewrie assured him. "Your slaves?"

"How many d'ye think you'd need, then?" Cashman asked, avoiding the query, though hugging his sides in a tittering fit.

"A round dozen'd suit," Lewrie allowed. "Make landsmen of 'em, for pulley-hauley chores. Some young'uns might make topmen, sooner or later. And damme," Lewrie began to enthuse, "I'd kill for just one older one who knows how to cook decent for an hundred or so. Would it be too much to ask, for one of 'em t'be a cook?"

"Oh, I think we can arrange that," Cashman promised, becoming even more mystifying.

"You're not askin' me to buy your slaves, are you, Kit?" Lewrie asked, growing wary of a sudden. "Damme if I'm that keen on slavery, after all you told me, and damned if I can afford 'em, not even at a shilling to the pound, so…"

"Not mine, Alan old son. And free… scot-free."

"Whose, then?" Lewrie said with a chary scowl.

"Ledyard Beauman's," Cashman hooted, slapping the desktop.

"Mine arse on a band-box!" Lewrie exclaimed in wonder.

"It'd be sweet, wouldn't it?" Cashman managed to say, just about wheezing with mirth by then. "Sweet revenge, for one. You sail out to Portland Bight, soon some dark night, and abscond with some of his slaves. Young'uns, like you said, so they haven't been branded or had their backs whip-scarred yet, so who's t'say whose they are, once on your ship? I know some Black freedmen who can get to 'em and promise 'em they'll be free, if they ship with you. What d'ye say?"

Lewrie fell back into his chair, astounded by the idea, giving the proposition a hard think, beginning to chew a thumbnail. Taking slaves, liberating slaves, was just about the worst crime in the West Indies, right up there with horse theft, and a hanging offence.

Damme, but I do need 'em hellish-bad, he thought.

But the risk of getting caught, and the ramifications, would be equally hellish-bad. He'd be stripped of his command, court-martialed, cashiered, and sent home in disgrace at the very least-sent home to face a termagant wife, disaffected kiddies, and another scandal as bad as this one, with Theoni and his bastard! The Navy was all that he knew, and without a civilian career, he'd be in debtors' prison before a year was out, he just knew it.

Before that, though, there'd be the civil courts here on Jamaica that would most-like "scrag" him by the neck, so why worry about infamy in England?

"Sooner or later, someone'd talk, Kit," Lewrie schemed. "Sass from a slave who didn't get to go… damme, don't ya think they'd miss 'em? Raise the hue and cry, remember there was a frigate offshore the night they scarpered, and put two and two together?"

"Ledyard, none of the Beaumans, would know one of their slaves by sight 'less they were house servants," Cashman said dismissively of his qualms. "No brands, no worries. First off, they'd hunt 'em northward, if they thought they'd run off to join the Maroons. And you can depend on me t'plant that rumour… even offer t'lead the hunt!"

"But later…"

"I'll be sellin' up anyway," Cashman went on, "puttin' my own slaves on the block, so who's t'say I didn't sell you some o' mine… with a certified bill of sale t'prove it? Or manumitted 'em before ya lured 'em aboard? We can forge some papers, give 'em other names…"

Like father, like son, Lewrie thought, recalling Sir Hugo's doings back when he'd "press-ganged" him into the Navy, so he could get his paws on the supposed inheritance from Granny Lewrie way off in Devon- because he'd needed the money "hellish-bad" to clear his debts before he lost his St. James's Square house and got slung into prison himself! His father had ended up running to Oporto in Portugal after his scheme had gone "belly-up."

Lisbon's nice and cheap, Lewrie speculated; if all else fails. A rogue on the run could live well, there. Wine's good… hmmm.

"I'll even throw in a cook, from my own stock," Cashman cooed.

"Well, if we sent ship's boats inshore on a moonless night and kept Proteus hull-down…" Lewrie muttered. "Hellish row, though. Like a cutting-out expedition? I'd never be able t'let 'em take shore liberty with the other hands, though."

"Do ye think they'd want t'run the risk any more than you, hey? Those you get, the ones I said I sold, could've been sold to a trader from the Bahamas who took 'em away, so your name never appears in it. What d'ye say, Alan?"

"You know I'd have to sail off to Hell and gone, right after," Lewrie pointed out. "I wouldn't be here to second you when you duel Ledyard. Reprovisioned, I'd be gone for four or five months at the least, do I not run out of hands for prize crews."