"This has, of course, required us to engage legal representation for you, and, with the aid of your Solicitor, Mister Matthew Mountjoy, and his good advice, succeeded in engaging one Mister Andrew MacDougall, Esquire, one of the finest up-and-coming legal minds in England. He is one of those canny Edinborough Scots, usually thought to be just too clever by half, but, in your Cause, such sharp and clever wit may prove to be vital," Twigg continued. "Do not dread the costs, for I am assured by Reverend Wilberforce, the Trenchers, and others, that a campaign will be launched to gather donations towards your defence, so this Necessity might not touch your purse too dearly."
"Not too dear, for God's sake?" Lewrie bleakly croaked, with a cringe, imagining all his prize-money being shovelled down a rat-hole, of ending penniless, homeless, and on half-pay… and that was if he prevailed. The scandal would be too great, as if it already wasn't!, and the hour after his vindication, the Navy would chuck him out the servants' entrance like a drunk at closing time, and did they feel a keen vindictiveness, a Court-Martial for "Conduct Unbecoming" would make even half-pay moot!
Unless…
For a mad moment, Lewrie contemplated Wigmore's circus. Three of his Black hands were now dead and gone, already, and two more now "run." He wondered what sort of deal he could strike with Wigmore to hire-on the rest, so when he sailed back to England, he could respond with " What stolen slaves? You see any?"
Maybe he could learn to ride horses standing up on their backs, and jump through flaming hoops, juggle, or portray naval characters in dramas. No, comedies would be better. More apt!
There was more to come in Twigg's long letter, and he returned to it, though by now he dreaded what else the man might have arranged.
"Support for our Cause in Parliament is building quite nicely, too, I assure you. No matter the seeming Criminality of your Actions, your chiefest Patron in the Commons, Sir Malcolm Shockley, has spoken most eloquently for you, and has gathered round him not only some of the leading lights from his own growing faction, but many of the up-and-coming Reformist sorts, such as Sir Samuel Whitbread, and many of the Crown's own faction. Given the best face official government has put upon our recent debacle on Saint-Domingue, in which you played a part, and the Publick pronouncements of Congratulations to the former slaves of that colony who rose up and rebelled against the cruel state in which their former French masters kept them-cynical and false though such pronouncements were!-the ruling faction cannot appear the two-faced Janus and condemn one of their Sea Officers who freed a dozen slaves, no matter how ilegally, or be called down as hypocrites. Those voices in Commons condemning you, therefore, are mostly from the Shipping and Sugar interests, whose only god is Mammon, and rest assured that Sir Malcolm and others have made certain that everyone in Great Britain knows their Venality for what it is. A great many who might condemn your actions and call for your immediate return to face charges have muted themselves, else they are tarred the same. Even in Lord's, a body usually much more conservative and hide-bound than the Commons, you have found remarkably supportive Voices speaking to the Justification of your deed, rather than to the cut-and-dried facts of common thievery, among them your old schoolmate, Lord Peter Rushton, of all hen-headed wonders. Your deed has been interpreted as a bold geste, a blow struck for Human Freedom, as you will note when you see the newspaper articles, and the many letters written upholding your actions… I'm told that homilies and sermons have been preached…"
He'd had enough of Twigg for the moment, so he turned to that pile of newspapers and tracts, and, if he thought things were horrid then, he rapidly discovered what "horrid" really was.
The Times, the Gazette, even the Marine Chronicle's latest numbers featured articles about him, not one of which actually got the facts right, or made things up out of whole cloth, though they weren't that condemnatory, and most of the letters to the editors sounded like the bulk of the writers somehow approved. England, after all, didn't much care for slavery; if "Britons never, never, never shall be slaves" then why should anyone else, and only "foreigners," meaning Spaniards and other assorted evil types, did it, didn't they? Slave labour was something that happened far overseas, and even if Englishmen did keep slaves in the Sugar Isles, "our" sort of slavery couldn't be all that bad, could it, compared to Dons, Dagoes, and Frogs?
The lesser papers, though, and the tracts… Good God! Every one of them splashed a copy of a large wood-cut drawing on its front, a fantastic picture of a bare-headed Lewrie in full uniform storming a minor fort of Utter Evil, with a huge sword, much like fabled King Arthur's Excalibur, in one hand, and a knight-crusader shield on his other arm bearing a shining Christian cross and the word "Freedom" on its face! The bloated and knobby-faced villains atop the ramparts were as ogreish as anyone could wish, cringing and tearing at their hair as they directed a legion of skeletons garbed most remarkably like French grenadiers to oppose him as he (the artistic Lewrie!) actually was depicted leading a band of winged angels, for God's sake!
Little ribbons of captions led from the villains' mouths, with " 'Tis only Business, ye Meddlesome Upstart!" and "Curses on him who'd come 'tween us and our Money!" and other statements sure to rile the average reader.
At Lewrie's feet knelt several "grateful" Blacks-those not impaled on the evil minions' bayonets!-expressing the most pitiful expressions of thankfulness for even a few of them being liberated, a selection of phrases that made Lewrie cringe in embarrassment and squirm in his chair!
"God above, they got Cruikshank t'do it!" Lewrie gawped aloud, when he took note of the wee signature beneath the artwork. No wonder the villains resembled the worst aspects of that artist's depictions of his stock-character "John Bull"!
No one had loaned Cruikshank a portrait to copy, though, thank God, so "Saint Alan, the Immaculate" (or so the scribbles on his coat stated) bore an uncanny likeness to Horatio Nelson kicking Bonaparte's fundament… though Lewrie thought that Cruikshank had made him both taller and more manly than that slim little minnikin!
"Must not've paid him all that much!" he muttered. "Damn!" He pushed all that aside, skimmed over the last few sentences of Twigg's letter, which didn't amount to much, and sat back in utter misery. A trip to his wine-cabinet was in order, he decided, badly! Re-armed with a glass of brandy, he returned to his desk to see what else there was to plague him.
Well, there were letters from Sewallis and Hugh. Both of them almost made him feel much better, for they were frankly proud of him, all eager to leave their stultifying school, and go fight the French, and the evil "blackbirders"!
His father, Sir Hugo, was also complimentary, noting that his and their ward Sophie's social invitations had increased since word of what he'd done had first appeared in the newspapers, though the old fart did complain that he'd have to sell off his shares in a Liverpool slave ship on the quiet side, since the price had suddenly sunk so low, and he might not have profitted from it, anyway, and how dare his son associate with such a "wild-eyed and rabid pack of hounds," sure to be exposed in future in secret league with the most Jacobite and Levelling wing of the Foxites and "French-Lovers" who had lost all credence after King Louis and his Queen had been beheaded in '92! Besides, an English gentleman should not appear in the papers unless he did something glorious or noteworthy; else, only his birth, his wedding, and his demise should be grist for common reading by the lower sorts!