Havoc's Sword

by Dewey Lambdin

  That old bastard Twigg knows me too well! Lewrie thought with a wince.

  “Mister Twigg, despite his vast wisdom, and his unbroken string of successes,” Pelham drawled, fingers steepled once more to feign the sagacity that a man in his position should possess, “was, believe it or not, always more sanguine, more…easy-going than I. More accepting of those who would frustrate his efforts, or gainsay his directives. I believe you will find me to be a fairly tolerant and forgiving fellow, Captain Lewrie…but only up to a point, and no further.”

  Threaten me, would you? Lewrie heatedly thought, utterly nettled by then; you damn’ puppy! It was like being chided by one of his sons.

  “Perhaps because he had more experience dealing with people, not things, Mister Pelham,” Lewrie pointedly drawled back, crossing his own legs at the knee and pretending to flick lint from his breeches. “Nor did he, no matter his necessity or impatience, ever confuse the two.”

  Good God! Lewrie thought, wincing again; did I actually compliment the old cut-throat? Mine arse on a band-box!

  “Now that we know where we stand…” Mr. Peel tried to mollify.

  “Quite, Mister Peel,” Lewrie quickly said, accepting his offer to move along before he reached over and slapped the wee fool silly. “You’re here, I’m your cat’s-paw, you’ve press-ganged me, and there it is, then. You might as well tell it me.”

  “Ahem,” Peel said, seizing the initiative so his superior could sit silent and gather his aplomb before speaking too rashly. “As you may assume, Mister Pelham and I are not to be revealed as Crown agents, Captain Lewrie. The Governor-General, his excellency the Earl of Balcarres…Admiral Sir Hyde Parker and some few of his senior officers, are aware of our true identities. To the general population, we’re to be known as speculators, out from London to make our fortunes. Mister Pelham will pose as the younger son of a wealthy, landed family, seeking acreage, and I will make myself known as the family’s advisor from Coutts’ Bank…a junior partner sent to determine the practicality of the enterprise.”

  “Junior to old Mister Simon Silberberg, hmm?” Lewrie chuckled in knowing understanding, recalling one of Mr. Twigg’s old aliases.

  “Just so, sir,” Peel replied, nodding and tipping him a wink.

  “And since I also bank with Coutts, my being seen with you is perfectly innocent, I take it, Mister Peel?” Lewrie said, grinning.

  “Exactly, sir,” Peel agreed. “My presence is also, uhm…to be a voice of reason and temperance upon the impetuous Mister Pelham. Serving a second role as a factotum to his family’s legitimate worry.”

  “His governess, aye,” Lewrie could not help suggesting with a leer. “Such a frenetic, easily aroused young fellow.”

  “Ahem,” Pelham objected to be so characterised, despite a role of a light-headed young wastrel as his agreed alias.

  “My, how believable,” Lewrie went on, cooing. “It has such a…versimilitude.”

  “Quite,” Peel agreed, hiding a smile; which made Lewrie wonder what an experienced agent such as Peel, himself once a protégé under Twigg’s tutelage, thought of being supplanted as the senior man on the mission by a less-experienced “comer” with better connexions, interest, and patronage.

  “So, what’s the plan, then?” Lewrie asked, deciding they might as well get down to it. “What part of Choundas d’ye want me to lop off this time?”

  Dammit, though—there was another of those guarded looks back and forth ’twixt Pelham and Peel.

  “This does concern Choundas, doesn’t it?” Lewrie pressed.

  “Well, it is, and it does,” Pelham answered with an inscrutable smile. “Though not completely,” he maddeningly hinted.

  “There’s bigger fish to fry than him?” Lewrie asked, puzzled.

  “Indeed, Captain Lewrie,” Pelham told him with a condescending little chuckle. “There still remains the larger matter of winning the French colony of Saint Domingue for the Crown.”

  “We just lost it,” Lewrie all but yelped in surprise. “Or had you not heard? Our army beaten…evacuated, root and branch?”

  “Nothing is ever completely lost, Captain Lewrie,” Pelham said, looking down his long, aristocratic nose, and still wearing a superior grin. “So long as we remain at war with France, the game’s not ended. Oh, I’ll allow that the French, with this Toussaint L’Ouverture and his tag-rag-and-bobtail slave rabble as their instrument, have out-scored us, the last few innings. But barring a sudden declaration of peace, the game is still afoot…and it is now our turn before the stumps.”

  “With what?” Lewrie petulantly demanded, trying to picture the Saint Domingue soldiery and Pelham on a cricket pitch. “We sending in another army?”

  “What may not be gained by force of arms, sir,” the elegant wee Pelham chuckled, in a conspiratorial whisper, “may yet be won with the application of guile, bribery, and diplomacy.”

  Lewrie had a sudden sinking feeling that this would not be in any way a straightforward proposition—and why he had hoped that it would, he couldn’t imagine. He knew in his bones that this time, he would really be in for a spell of “war on the cheap.”

  Chapter Six

  “Looks hellish-lost t’me!” Lewrie grumbled, wishing that Capt. Charles’s wine was but a tad drinkable. He felt badly in need of some.

  “To all intents and purposes, it does appear so,” Pelham said, “but appearances can deceive, sir. We have our sources in France who tell us that the Directory in Paris, and the Assembly, have their suspicions as to whether Saint Domingue has been won for France, or does L’Ouverture have designs of his own which may result in a loss after all. There are mercantile forces of great influence who demand Saint Domingue return to immediate profitability, both for their own gain, and for the Republic’s. They want their lands, and their money back, even does the trade in cocoa, sugar, cotton, coffee, and tobacco go in American hulls. Once exports are sold in American ports, profit is easily exchanged from United States banks to French banks.”

  “The United States is at war with France,” Lewrie pointed out.

  “Not officially,” Pelham countered, “and American merchantmen, along with Portuguese, Danish, and Swedish traders, enter the colony’s ports daily. As captain of a blockading frigate you surely know how impossible it is to stop supposedly neutral trade, so long as their cargoes are innocent, and no military supplies are discovered.”

  “Granted,” Lewrie moodily agreed.

  “A return to profitability, though, a quick one,” Pelham continued, “would require a return to the status quo ante on the island. That is to say, the presence of a French garrison army, the dismissal of the ex-slave armies, and this L’Ouverture creature being supplanted by a new, French—White—Governor-General. But,” Pelham posed, “What if L’Ouverture doesn’t want supplanting? Hmm? What if he owns to dreams of grandeur? He’s a simple African, a former slave, at best one generation from the customs of some barbaric kingdom, and a crude kingship recalled from his bed-time stories. And what worries France is that, perhaps, Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité cannot extend to all, not if the plantations must be productive, again. That would mean the return to human bondage. You know of Leger Sonthonax, Lewrie?”

  “A horse, showed well at New Market?” Lewrie quipped.

  “The former governor of Saint Domingue,” Pelham exclaimed, not sure if Lewrie was being witty, or sublimely un-informed. “Soon as he kicked our forces off, L’Ouverture finagled to send Sonthonax back to France to represent the colony. Sonthonax is a staunch revolutionary, the bloody sort, who more than decimated the colony’s Whites with his guillotines, worse than the Terror of ’93 in France. He’s a bit of a loose cannon, as you sailors might say…loves the Blacks! Said in public he wished he was Black, more than once. All that ‘noble savage’ rot of Rousseau’s, don’t ye know.”

  “Then who better to send to Paris,” Lewrie assumed aloud.

  “Laveaux, t’other ranking Frenchman in the colony,” Pelham said. “He, at least
, is a cultured, aristocratic holdover from the old days of the ancien régime, and a whole lot cleverer and subtler than Leger Sonthonax, more skilled in faction intrigues. Just as ‘beloved’ with L’Ouverture, we’re told, and leagues more able. The question is, why did L’Ouverture send Sonthonax, instead of Laveaux? Sonthonax is not in good loaf in Paris. Too fractious a man, but deuced lucky in being out of the country when his worst enemies got the chop. As he did in the latest instance, landing in France just as Robespierre went under the guillotine and lost his head,” Pelham snickered.

  “Robespierre, d’ye say!” Lewrie cried, perking up. “The ogre finally got his, hey? Why, that’s marvellous news.”

  Wish we could drink to that! Lewrie dryly thought.

  “But did L’Ouverture hope that Sonthonax would be eliminated?” Pelham asked the aether, and leaned back in his chair, staring at the old, water-spotted plaster ceiling. “Is Laveaux more bendable to his will, should he declare total independence? Or is Laveaux less powerful to control events…”

  “And, with Sonthonax chopped first, would L’Ouverture despatch Laveaux to face the wrath of the Directory next,” Peel chimed in with a sage expression, “leaving him in sole control?”

  “No matter,” Pelham said with a disappointed sniff. “Sonthonax survived the latest power shift, and is recently returned, with fresh orders from the Directory. But with his power diminished in favour of another…so we are informed,” Pelham simply had to leer, “who’s to decide whether L’Ouverture has outlived his brief usefulness after he expelled our armies. Whether his rival, General Rigaud, might be more amenable to France’s long-term interests. Rigaud has created what he calls a Mulatto Republic in South Province, round Jacmel and Jéremie, with most of the educated Free Blacks and educated Mulattoes rallied to him. He’s betrayed L’Ouverture more than once, changed sides right in the middle of a battle. In the brief period both served under the Spanish, when the Dons had designs on the whole island of Hispaniola, their relations were quite bitter.”

  “But, sir,” Lewrie happily pointed out, if only to scotch the superior, insider’s, smirk on Pelham’s phyz, “once our troops landed, they became tight as ticks. Our General Maitland offered Rigaud just about everything but his virgin daughter to change sides, but Rigaud spurned our every blandishment.”

  “Only so long as we were there,” Mr. Peel calmly dismissed with a study of his fingernails. “We evil White Devils who’d have put ’em back in chains…and slew ’em by battalions, atrocity for atrocity.”

  “I absolutely refuse to countenance any tales of British atrocities,” Pelham retorted. “They’re all a pack of lies dreamt up by the Directory, and stuck in their papers to poison the other powers against us! Rigaud, though…now we’re gone, he has no reason to stay true to L’Ouverture. Both are so ambitious, they’re sure to fall out, then make another bloody ‘War of the Skin’ to determine who rules over what still stands when it’s ended. Does L’Ouverture win, t’will be the illiterate and barbaric ex-slaves oppressing the educated, the half-caste, and the remaining Whites, and reduce Saint Domingue to the backwardness of the Dahomey jungles. No, no, ’twould be better, all round, if Rigaud came out on top, and his more-civilised followers. We could deal with Rigaud, who at least is somewhat sophisticated, an educated man schooled in France, seen the wider world, raised as good as a European by his own White father….”

  “Eats with a knife and fork,” Mr. Peel interjected, feigning an air of wonder, which subtle jape went right past Pelham, but put Lewrie to coughing into his fist.

  “As you say, sir,” Pelham snapped, stiffening. “Rigaud can see the commercial realities of re-establishing trade relations with other powers. A man who realises whose Navy rules the seas. A man who sees that any hope of American trade is futile, given the vulnerability of Yankee merchant ships, and the utter weakness of the new United States Navy. And, God knows, does either L’Ouverture or Rigaud hope that the French restore their trade or naval presence, they’ve another thing coming!”

  “So…you want my help to get to Rigaud,” Lewrie surmised in dread of just up and sailing into Jacmel like a fart in a trance. “We offer him whatever it takes to buy him over, before the French or the Yankees make him a better offer? God above…”

  “We would prefer Rigaud to L’Ouverture, yayss,” Pelham drawled so coolly and casually that it made Lewrie’s nape hairs stand on end.

  “You won’t mind, do I not go ashore with you, when you dine with either or both,” Lewrie scoffed. “Good God, man! L’Ouverture, Rigaud…Christophe or that brute Dessalines, none of the Black generals’d give a tinker’s damn for your offers. They’d torture you for six days runnin’, and put your head on a pole the seventh! Heard their favourite song, have you? Goes, ummm…

  “‘Eh eh, bomba, heu heu! Canga, bafio té! Canga, moune de lé! Canga, do ki la! Canga, li’!” Lewrie grunt-chanted, pounding the time on the arm of his chair and bob-thrusting from the waist.

  “Mmmm,” Mr. Peel chuckled. “Catchy.”

  “It means, ‘We swear to kill all the Whites and take all their possessions,’ Mister Pelham,” Lewrie harshly translated. “‘Let us die if we fail to keep this vow.’ Well, they’ve done for their White owners, and a whole British army, and they’ll do for you if you go there.”

  “Oh, rot!” Pelham countered, as if jadedly amused. “Just like the Terror in France, the bulk of the killing is done with. Laveaux, and Sonthonax, saw to that. Why, L’Ouverture’s offered amnesty to émigrés who came back with our army, amnesty and return of their estates to any White planters who’ll return to the back-country and get ’em running, again. Pay the workers, this time, of course. Those who won’t lose all claim to their former fortunes. Sonthonax and Laveaux have enough influence and control over the ugly little monkey to place experienced White officers over his Black regiments, make him see the sense of appointing clever local-born Whites in civil government positions. Guaranteed the safety of any White, even children, who’ll teach reading, writing, and sums, e’en on the remotest plantations.”

  “All of whom, you hope, will turn on him, once Rigaud announces that he’s the boss-cock,” Lewrie charily speculated; all that was new to him, but it didn’t signify. “’Cause former masters’d never abide a savage ex-slave regime, but they could almost tolerate a moderate, and educated pack o’ half-breeds who can at least speak some sort o’ Frog, dress like them…live like them…”

  “Who can eat with a knife and fork, yes,” Peel reiterated.

  “That is the hope,” Pelham admitted, blithely unworried by any mere quibble. “That, once Rigaud and L’Ouverture fall out, as men do, sooner or later, Rigaud will have the troops, artillery, and support of the prominent, leading elements in the colony, and civil government appointees swinging his way. From what we know of his forces, he has excellent prospects of success. And,” Pelham related, bestowing another of those clever little simpers, “even he cannot, both sides’re locked in a draining war that sooner or later ends in weary stalemate. At which time our trade, protection, and good offices will appear more than welcome…gaining us what we seek whether Rigaud wins, or not.”

  “Slamming the door on American aspirations to extend trade into the colony, thence to dominate the entire Caribbean,” Peel took up the tale, since Pelham’s cleverness had seemed to exhaust him for the moment; “retaining and protecting our own stakes in the Sugar Isles; and getting us access to a colony that was wealthier than all ours put together, before the war began. We must keep a wary eye on the Americans, Captain Lewrie. Else, they’ll swamp us with their skinflint Yankee traders and their wiles, and we’ll gradually lose all we own out here.”

  God, but it was a vaunting scheme, and all back-alley ambushes and under-handed devilment. Lewrie studied Pelham, who was fussing at his neck-stock, now wilted with perspiration, and wondered whether it was his own scheme, one that would make his name and career in government, or was the preening little pop-in-jay some clever fellow’s avid ap
ostle. Must’ve looked just inspired back in London, Lewrie sneered in silence; gentlemens’ club, drawing room, over port? And scads of clean, unwrinkled maps! Gawd…was this old Twigg’s last, glorious riposte? A guarantee of knighthood, even in retirement? It’d be just like him, it has that same fresh-blood smell.

  “Well, it all sounds promising,” Lewrie said, lying damn’ well. “And Choundas is…what? Going to beat you to it?”

  “Ah, Choundas!” Pelham exclaimed, now revived, and rubbing his hands wolfishly. “We have our sources, don’t ye know, Lewrie, even in Paris, the Directory, and the Ministry of Marine.”

  Oh God, here we go, again! Lewrie quietly groaned to himself.

  “He was despatched to Guadeloupe with two missions,” Mr. Pelham enthusiastically told him. “The overt one is to organise, arm, and run privateers and smaller National ships as raiders, working for another Mulatto, Victor Hugues, now promoted to greater responsibility. Amazin’, ain’t it. So many coloureds in French service…” he simpered. “His second mission is to smuggle arms and supplies into Saint Domingue, land agents, and perhaps even speed the export of the money crops,” Pelham said, then turned sly, again. “To give his support and aid to…?” He paused, as if awaiting applause.

  I’ll kill him, he keeps that up! Lewrie promised himself.

  “To one or t’other,” Lewrie finished for him, “L’Ouverture, or Rigaud, whichever looks t’be the winner, so France keeps it, no matter who gets betrayed.”