A King's Trade Read Online Free Page A

squadron’s destination, or its formation, ‘til it was much too late.
    That, or another miserable spell of dirty-work for Lewrie.
    â€œThese…walnuts?” Nicely had grumpily asked, instead, with his face screwed up like a hanged spaniel as he nibbled on one.
    â€œUh…no, sir,” Lewrie said, topping off his glass of port and passing it down-table. “American pecans,” he informed Nicely, saying it the way he’d heard it from Capt. Randolph of the USS
Oglethorpe
from whom he’d obtained them. “Pee-cans…Georgia pee-cans.”
    â€œHmmpf,” Nicely had muttered, clearing his palate with the port, and pouring himself another rather quickly, too, tossing that one back uncharacteristically quickly. He poured himself a third, but let that one sit ‘twixt his hoary hands, and gave it a long glare before looking at his host.
    â€œUhm… bad news, I fear, Lewrie,” Nicely had begun, at last. “A matter’s arisen which, ah…may preclude your participation in my squadron’s mission, d’ye see.”
    â€œSome other duty, then, sir?” Lewrie had asked, feeling, in the following order: disappointment to miss a straightforward adventure; some relief that he’d
not
be handy, did Nicely get a wild hair up his nose, and need some derring-do done; who the Devil had requested him for something else, and how much worse might
that
be?
    â€œNot, ah… quite,” Nicely had struggled on, obviously loath to bear bad news, but…”I shall be…
we
shall be, sorry to lose your
inestimable
services on the West Indies Station.”
    â€œI’m t’go somewhere
else,
sir?” Suspicious, indeed, that.
    â€œFar and fast, I fear,” Nicely had gloomed. He wriggled as if the crutch of his breeches had suddenly pinched a testicle. “There’s the matter of all those damned Samboes of yours, Lewrie. Your Cuffy sailors. More to the point, where and when you got ‘em, d’ye see.”
    â€œAh? Hmm, hey?” Lewrie flummoxed, like to cough up half of a lung suddenly. That was
not
the ugly shoe he’d
expected
to be dropped!
    â€œI
did
note, and wonder, where ye’d found so many free Black volunteers, the weeks I was aboard, whilst you were away, but …” his squadron commander had said, doing some fidgetting of his own.
    They’re going to
hang
me!
the irrational part of Lewrie’s brain screeched at him. The rational half was too stunned to put forth any opinion.
I’m caught, red-handed! Christ, shit on a… !
    â€ ‘Tis the Beauman family, d’ye see,” Nicely had carped. “A dozen of their slaves ran off one night. Nothing
too
odd about it, at first glance. One of the risks of slave-holding, with all the tales of the Maroons who’ve fled into the Cockpit Country, or the Blue Mountains…where the Beaumans
thought
they’d run, even was that plantation right on the sea, on the South coast, and rather far from Maroon territory.”
    â€œAh…
gerk!”
had been Lewrie’s sagacious reply, and his heart bangingaway like Billy-Oh, about two inches below his tonsils, it felt like. “Bother ye for the port, if you’re…?” he asked, trying damned hard not to stammer. “Then, so, sir?” he managed to state.
    â€œOrganised as the Maroons are,” Nicely had gone on, “it wasn’t beyond credence to think that they couldn’t arrange an escape for any number of slaves determined enough to join them. And, God knows word can pass secret ‘twixt house and field slaves, and runaways, quicker than their masters could manage. No, Lewrie… ‘twas only after the Beaumans managed to find witnesses who said that a darkened
ship
was in Portland Bight that very night that they began to suspect that the runaways might have had some help, and the ex-slave Maroons are not in
possession
of many boats, none larger than