Twigg was thumping his walking-stick on the roof, and the coach slowed and came to a stop, so they could all spring down with loaded weapons or swords out. Back behind them, there were bodies staining the gravel and dirt with blood, sprawled like heaps of cast-off clothes. Perkins, the leader of their out-riders, knelt over one man who gasped and twitched his death-throes. To Twigg's tacit query, Perkins heaved a shrug and shook his head; the fellow was gone.
The out-rider Lewrie had seen gallop into the woods returned to the road as well, all smiles, and with his sabre blade bloodied right to the hilt.
"Got 'em all, sir!" Perkins yelled. "Half a dozen, all told… and all dead," he confirmed as all his men returned whole.
"Fetch 'em all out, Sergeant Perkins," Twigg sourly ordered as he sheathed his un-used small-sword. "And search their bodies for any letters or large sums of money that might point to the one who paid them. Usual drill, hmm? Damn! I'd have wished for one witness for a magistrate to attest to!"
A few minutes later, and six dead men were laid out in a line together, pockets turned out and belongings being sorted through for clues. Pipes, plugs of tobacco, pocket knives, hanks of twine, tokens from taverns for free drinks or doxies… which, in coin-starved England in time of war could almost be passed as easily as Crown coinage!… and, what seemed a rather suspicious amount of the new, much-hated paper currency; too much for the hobble-de-hoy griminess and cast-off finery that their late assailants sported.
"Too much 'chink' for needy highwaymen," Burgess Chiswick said as he counted the loose, crumpled stack of bills. "If they'd stolen this much earlier, I'd think they'd be off celebrating… spending it like water… not staging another robbery. Somebody paid them to do a job, certain," he firmly decided.
"It would appear so, sir," Mr. Twigg agreed, pacing among those rumpled bodies and poking them with his walking-stick as if attempting to make at least one of them "blab" his secret in a death-croak. "But no sign of who, or written-down instructions to explain why ours, and Lewrie's, coach was their specific target. The attack on us might as well have been instigated by some disgruntled Liverpool slave traders, businessmen involved in sugar, rum, and molasses trading. Bah!" Twigg snarled, kicking one of the dead highwaymen in the rib cage.
"So, how did they know who to shoot at?" Lewrie fretted. "Whom," Twigg primly corrected. "At whom t'shoot," said Sir Hugo. "Tsk, tsk." "Bugger" was Lewrie's frustrated comment.
"We must take these curs to the nearest magistrate, no matter," Twigg directed. "The attack upon us points the finger at someone, at any rate, for it most certainly was not random. Nor may I recall all that many highwaymen working in broad daylight, nor in such numbers. I am certain that a magistrate will find this crime unusual, as well… unusual enough to raise dire suspicions… in the right quarters," he said with an enigmatic grin.
"Too bad their leader, there, didn't carry one o' those damned Abolitionist tracts, with Alan's 'saintly' features illustrated," Sir Hugo snickered. "So he'd know his quarry."
"Does anyone happen to have any of them?" Twigg asked. "Pity. I would suppose any that you kept are aboard your ship in Portsmouth, Lewrie?"
"I don't keep 'em," Lewrie groused. "They went right into the quarter-gallery for bum-fodder, long since."
"Sounds a bit sacreligious, that," Burgess japed. "Wiping your fundament with pictures of 'Saint Alan the Liberator.' "
"Only banned in Catholic countries," Lewrie shot back. "Ahem!" Mr. Twigg loudly harrumphed to stifle their low levity. "As I was saying, gentlemen… we must convince the local magistrate that this assault was not a random event, then… tracts, yayss," he drawled. "Reverend Wilberforce and his associates in the anti-slavery crowd can turn this into a positive flood of new tracts, whether the Beaumans were the instigators, or not. The attempted murder of their champion, their Paladin, by person or persons unknown?
"Combine that sensational news with hints of slaver, or sugar, interests, and the merest mention of how the Beaumans' arrival barely a week before coincides so mysteriously, ah? Nothing libellous, to be certain, but…!" "Newspapers," Sir Hugo suggested, though he despised them. "Just so, Sir Hugo," Twigg said, almost twinkling with delight. "The latest editions have featured rumours of Lewrie's impending trial, so news of this will make quite the uproar. Newspaper owners, editors, and newswriters are, in the main, a sad and scurrilous lot of ne'er-do-wells, drunks, whores, and gossip-mongers. Five pounds in the proper ink-stained hand will buy you favourable words in any publication, and, one can skirt libel in a printed letter signed with a pseudonym, such as 'Elia' of the strong opinions, who is really Charles Lamb. For all the London papers to be inundated with a slew of anonymous letters… speaking in Lewrie's favour, and subtly linking this attack to the Beaumans, well… even the most cursory reader might make the hinted connexion, ha ha!"
Good Lord, more press! Lewrie thought with a groan.
"My field," Twigg smugly allowed. "I shall see to it. In the meantime, we'll dis-arm ourselves and our people. I doubt there will be a second ambush awaiting us today. I'll send Perkins and his men on ahead, separately. There will be covert work for them in London, before our arrival. Now, when we wake the nearest dozing magistrate, let us agree that we had no out-riders, and that I, Sir Hugo, Lewrie, and Major Chiswick were the only ones of our party who bore weapons. I see no need to involve Ajit Roy or ex-Havildar Singh, or your sailors, Lewrie. We were suspicious, d'ye see, of the lurking rider who stood watch for us, then armed ourselves, a bare minute before these felons burst from the woods and began firing at us.
"No 'stand and deliver' demand for us to stop and hand over any valuables," Twigg intently schemed, "but, an attempt on all our lives."
"Got it," Sir Hugo said with a quick nod.
"You fellows…," Twigg instructed the coachee and his assistant up on the box. "Hide your weapons, and don't let on that you were armed when it happened, right? Same for you Navy lads. Your Captain Lewrie, his father, Major Chiswick, and I did all the shooting, right?"
"Aye, sor," Cox'n Desmond firmly replied, peering at big Jones Nelson, who grunted his understanding; then at his mate Furfy, who was looking a bit puzzled. "I'll spell it out for ye, Pat. Makes a better tale for th' newspapers, an' helps th' Cap'm."
"Ah, arrah, I git it," Furfy replied with a wide smile.
"We have all the miscreants' horses, Perkins? Capital!" Twigg crowed. "Bind them over their saddles, fetch their weapons into the boot of the coach for evidence, and we'll be on our way."
"At least, Alan," Burgess opined as they stuffed the dead men's small possessions into a draw-string bag, "there's no survivors left, so, no way for the Beaumans to know their ambush failed, and no alert for anyone else hired-on in London. They'll be completely in the dark 'bout where you, or any of us, go."
"And, lads," Sir Hugo added in right good humour as he swung an armful of muskets into the boot, "when word of this gets out among the London bad-mashes that half a dozen o' their stoutest met their Maker, how many'll be willin', t'hire on with the Beaumans after, ha?"
"And, with Mister Twigg's watchers and followers to guard us," Burgess said, taking time to re-load and re-prime one of his pistols in spite of Twigg's assurance that the worst was over, "and, seeking out where the Beaumans have lit, there's a good chance we might know how many more we must watch out for… perhaps spot them by face."