"No, no," Peel carped, as if dealing with a toddler's questions. "Choundas… on Guadeloupe. Yankee merchants… meet up at Dominica. Sumter convoyed dozens of 'em here. Hired stores ship, too, left her there… Prince Rupert Bay. Here, there… maybe up as far as Saint Croix. Goods for Rigaud or L'Ouverture start from Guadeloupe, do you see? Catch 'em… first leg o' their passage. Jamaica Squadron gets the ones headin' for Port-au-Prince or Jacmel… last leg, what?"
"Stop that," Lewrie growled. "God's sake, write it all down." "Write it… now?" Peel gawped. "Can't even spell ink, in…" "Now, aye," Lewrie owlishly insisted. "So one of us remembers it in the mornin'."
"But… dash it, Lewrie! I say…!"
"Else we'll have t'ask the Yankees all over again. Whisky an' all, Mister Peel."
"Oh. Oh!" Peel gasped. "Point… taken. Indeed!" "Well, I'm for bed… can I find it," Lewrie announced, trying to rise of his own volition. "Lots t'do in the morrow. Re-paint all the masts and spars British-fashion… else the forts'll take fright an' shoot us to kindling. Stores t'lade. Naps t'take… oh, thankee, Andrews. Touch t'larboard, is it? Hung from the overhead, now that's cunning. Sways a good deal, I'd imagine. Ah! Aspinall? Do get Mister Peel ink, quill, and paper, will you?" he called out while his Cox'n took his dressing gown and "poured" him into his bed-cot. "And to all a good night."
Peel's muttered grumbles were simply music to his ears as he got comfortable. The windows in the coach-top overhead were open, with a tiny trysail set as a wind-scoop. Lewrie fanned his sheet then let it drop to his waist, savouring the rare nighttime coolness. After a bit of relative silence, marred only by Peel's faint curses and the shit! of his quill nib, Toulon at last decided that peace had been restored, and slunk out of hiding in the starboard quarter-gallery storage, and leaped up to join him, slinging his bulk into the crook of Lewrie's arm and kneading for "pets"… beginning to purr right lustily as his master's hand stroked and wriggled upon his neck and head.
In vino, and whisky, Veritas, Lewrie drunkenly thought on the verge of whirling unconsciousness; and what'd I let slip this ev'nin'? Kindest, if the lad never knows he's my bastard. Half-Indian, Life's already hard enough for 'im. And Caroline never learns it, either! I want ?'reconcile, he'd be the last straw. Damme, but I must've strewed by-blows like dust in a high wind! My "git"! A likely lookin' lad he is, though…
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Shattered! Shattered in knee timbers and futtocks, from upper first futtock to fourth, amidships, along with her ribs! Her graceful stem- choke piece, knee of the head, stemson timbers and apron-including her fore rib pieces and futtocks were shattered.
Once they had stripped Le Bouclier down to a gant-line with only her lower masts standing, with all her ballast, stores, and guns removed, and careened her on the shingly lee-side beach near Basse-Terre, the surveyors from the dockyard had discovered just how grievous and extensive her damage was. The surveyors and the few skilled shipwrights still left on the island of Guadeloupe, after the purging and execution of the Royalists and the suspect, held little hope that the magnificent frigate could be sufficiently rebuilt. Oh, in France, certainement, they said with high shrugs! In the Caribbean, though, there were no stout oak trees, nor were there great, curving timbers of the proper arcs or thickness, nor the right seasoning, and just to replace her outer and inner planking, and lighter damage to carline posts, bulwarks, and rails would exhaust their scant supply of imported oak.
The shipwrights were most apologetic, but there was little they could do for Le Bouclier. Oh, could a ship bear a surveyor and a team of shipwrights to Cuba, or some other Spanish possession, local mahogany might serve for permanent repair materials… but selecting the right-shaped trees, felling them, sawing them, and transporting them back to Basse-Terre would take months. Even then the mahogany would still require months more for proper seasoning and drying.
"Heart-breaking, m'sieur le Capitaine" the master shipwright, and the commissaire of the dockyard, both had said. Then had fled his presence before the expected storm broke.
Heart-breaking, indeed, Capt. Guillaume Choundas thought. What a wondrous frigate Le Bouclier had been, the equal, if not the better, of any "Bloody" warship in the Caribbean-now a useless, lifeless hulk. And damn that salaud Lewrie to the deepest level of Hades.
Just as heart-breaking, though more understandable, was what he heard from his superior, the commissaire civil Victor Hugues. He still had his single frigate, now cruising for American prizes off the coast of the Guyanas, far to the southwest. Did she come in in need of repair, Hugues was certain that Choundas would offer bits and pieces from Le Bouclier, to keep one powerful man o' war able to daunt the "biftecks"… and that Choundas would do so in the proper cooperative spirit, in accord with the ideals of the Revolution!
"You still have two rather fine corvettes, Capitaine Choundas," Hugues had said with a vengeful smirk, "which have yet to put to sea to challenge the 'Bloodies.' Let them sail singly, or as a small squadron. Officers and men off your stricken frigate may re-enforce their crews. Or you may transfer those now idled to my command, and I will put them to good use aboard the several enemy merchant ships / took before your arrival. With cannon from Le Bouclier, I could outfit at least three more raiders to pursue le guerre de course."
"I am the senior naval officer on Guadeloupe, m'sieur le commissaire!" Choundas had thundered back, "appointed by the hand of Director Paul Barras, premier of the Directory of Five! They are my cannon, my sailors and officers, and do they sit idle in port for lack of cooperation from the island's commissaire civil, believe me, m'sieur, he will know of it in short order, unless… in the cooperative spirit, according to the ideals of La Revolution, prize vessels suitable to my needs… which also now lie idle for want of cooperation!… are not turned over to me I"
A bitter compromise had been reached. Hugues had not been sure that Choundas's writ might prove to carry more power than his own with the Directory, or that the ogre just might have the ear of Paul Barras after all. Hugues got Le Bouclier for scrap-yard use, and four of her great-guns, with which to form a protective shore battery at Deshaies. Choundas received a mere two prize ships for conversion a small brig and one schooner, to be armed with no more than ten guns apiece, crewed by as many matelots as he wished to employ for boarders and passage crews for any prizes taken. Wounded off Le Bouclier who recovered… they would become Hugues's. Naval Infantry, other than Choundas's personal guard detail, would be landed ashore and put under Hugues's command to re-enforce his skimpy 1,500 man garrison.
Choundas sat and sweated, stripped down to shirt and breeches and fanning himself with a "top silver" plaited palmetto hand fan. Among the princes of the Lanun Rovers or Mindanao pirate fleets, there had been tiny young girls with cool, wetted bundles of palm fronds. Extremely young girls, who would come whenever he had beckoned, would wind out of their colourfully printed batik wraps to service him, or cheerfully, submissively let themselves be pressed down, spread, and taken, as casually as they spat betel juice. Not so casually, the second time he took them, but their fear, then, their weak whines and pleadings, even their looks of revulsion, had been doubly sweet and invigourating. Back when he was a normal-looking man, before that salaud Lewrie lamed and maimed him.
He fanned a little harder, shifting his crippled leg to ease an ever-present dull ache, with perspiration popping anew to trickle down his cheeks and the small of his back-partly from the effort put into fanning for relief from the sullen afternoon's heat; partly from being frustrated to lose the tumescence in his groin that such fond reverie had engendered, and could never be relieved quite so easily as then; and partly from the intrusion of his undying hatred for the Englishman, and the harm he'd done his magnificent frigate!
His noir servants; damn Hugues for freeing them! Damn Hugues, too, for charging him rente on the use of them by the week! Damn them for drawing the line on what they would or would not do for their new master and his coterie, as if some things were below their dignity
… as if they had any sense of dignity to upset!
They dared lay complaints of ill-usage with Victor Hugues's sous commissaires civils, they insolently dared to quit his house (when they didn't just run off!), and implored the commissaires for employment with any other house, even at lower wages, if they had to.
The commissaires had sent letters chiding him for harshness; he was to pay more for the services of those who remained.
There were fewer servants in his retinue doing the same amount of labour, and, illiterate or not, those remaining noirs seemed as if they knew those letters by heart. Cleaning, laundry, and yardwork was now done in lacklustre fashion; dishes and glassware appeared at meals spotted and stained, and had to be sent back over and over 'til he was satisfied. The cuisine, already upsetting, was now slovenly over-done or under-done, some days too spicy to be stood, and on others so bland as to be nearly tasteless, and the new male cook and his assistant had a rare knack for finding the toughest, oldest, and scrawniest victuals, whether fish, fowl, or meat. Lank, wilted, half-shriveled vegetables, half-washed salad greens almost brown or black on the leaf edges…!
And their mute, dog-eyed, blank-faced portrayals of dumb innocence, their shambling-slow, head-scratching shows of utter ignorance! They behaved much as that Lt. Recamier had cautioned. Spoons and utensils went missing, saucers and cups inexplicably got broken or chipped, costly bed-linens brought from France got torn, permanently stained, or so poorly repaired that the caterpillar-sized seams made them useless for sleeping.
Despite constant warnings about open windows and doors, birds, lizards, and shoals of cafards, the huge evil-smelling cockroaches endemic to the tropics invaded, infested the house (and their bedding!) every night and each dawn, resulting in a stampede of noirs who went tittering and yelping to chase them down and expel them-resulting in something fragile and valuable being broken each time.
Merde alors, every bottle of wine that was opened tasted as if it had been watered, no matter that he inspected the corks and leaden seals closely, no matter that his clerk Etienne practically stood guard over his cellar, with all the crates placed in de Gougne's cramped office and bed-chamber; with a Marine Infantry sentry in the foyer right outside the doors!
And not a blessed one of them would fan him!
Screeching tirades made no more impression than if Choundas had howled at the tide like King Canute ordering it to go out, not in. And he could not beat them, whip them, kick them, or slap them, as one could casually do Hindoos, Chinese, or Filipinos, and it was galling to him. One letter had suggested spending more of his pay to purchase a better cuisine for all, including servants, of garbing them in better clothing, of supplying shoes and stockings, but he would be damned if he would. The cost of that notwithstanding, there was no way Choundas would stoop to "bribing" noirs to treat him better, or be mocked for a "soft" touch. It would be a token of total surrender, and even if he dismissed them all and started with a fresh crew of servants word of his ineffectiveness-his de-fanging!-would be all over the island by the next sunset, making him the laughingstock of noirs, Creoles, and French-born alike.
He fanned himself some more, and swabbed his face and neck with a small towel that had once been coldly moist, but now reeked of sweat, mildew, and arm-pits. He painfully drew his chair up to his massive, and elegant, desk to study his manning problems.
Lt. Houdon could command the brig, the larger prize vessel now being armed and converted for a commerce raider; Lt. Mercier would be his second officer; and Capt. Griot would have to surrender one of his junior lieutenants to make the necessary third, bien.
Capitaine MacPherson, for all his drawbacks, was a masterful seaman, able to command La Resolue without his first officer; and his first lieutenant would be seasoned and made of the same mould as he by now. That officer would get the large schooner's command, aussi bien. Junior lieutenants would move up in seniority, aspirants would become acting-lieutenants aboard the corvettes…
No, the schooner needed two more officers, and the brig needed a fourth, perhaps, to serve as prize-master when she took a suitably big or valuable merchantman… the schooner, too? Damn this heat!
Choundas found it hard to think. He took a deep breath of hot, still, and musty air, squirmed about so his sweat-sodden shirt became cooler by exposure, and pored over the names in the copied musters. He ticked off a few names, chose a couple, then leaned back in frustration against the damp leather chairback, chewing absently on the end of his expensive pen's rosewood stylus. It was one of the new steel-nibbed pens, just coming into vogue and common use, instead of goose quills, and (he proudly thought for a moment) another example of his nation's inventiveness, like the lead-core pencil.
Recamier? No. Jules Hainaut? Hmmm. What was he to do with young Jules? he wondered.
The lad had shown well, the day that Le Bouclier had… died. Hainaut was tarry-handed, when he put his mind to it, and was overdue for reward for his services to him, as well as his recent pluckiness, but yet… what that idiotic Dutch captain Haljewin had said stuck in Choundas's suspicious mind, and kept resurfacing.
Someone who had known the Dutch ship's cargo and day of her departure, someone who knew his plans must have betrayed her, had betrayed poor Capt. Desplan and Le Bouclier to the British!
How else to explain how Lewrie and his frigate had arrived just at the perfect moment? Lewrie was a swaggering dumb beast, a weapon to be wielded by his betters, nothing more, Choundas disparagingly sneered.
In the Far East, Lewrie had been under the thumb of a much slyer man, that murderous cut-throat, the spare and hatchet-faced anglais spy Zachariah Twigg. Together, they had ruined his plans a second time in the Mediterranean, in '94, despite being forewarned by Citizen Pouzin, his enigmatic civilian counterpart sent down from Paris. Posing as a mere banking clerk, a Juif from Coutts' Bank named Simon Silberberg of Lewrie's acquaintance, Twigg had. Hah!
Old, Twigg would be now, but Choundas did not think he could go far wrong to suspect that he still spun his webs this far from London, using a younger protege who would find that beastly ignoramus, Lewrie, once again a useful cat's-paw. A younger spy who had already obtained his secret navy signals books!
And… had not old Twigg or Silberberg, or whatever he called himself-and Lewrie!-taken one of his coasting vessels full of arms to encourage the Piedmontese and Savoyards into French service?
Another delicate mission most effectively stopped, and Jules… Hainaut had been aboard her, had he not? Taken prisoner, and held for a mere six weeks before being exchanged for a British midshipman, then returned to his side. He'd thought, then, that it had been a suspiciously short imprisonment, but…
Had Twigg "turned" Hainaut back on him as a secret informer, as Lewrie had somehow "turned" that Claudia Mastandrea slut who had been sent to milk him dry of information, then poison him, as he and Citizen Pouzin had arranged? All his schemes had turned to dust, after Hainaut had come back to him… hadn't they?
How did les anglais know of his coming to Guadeloupe, learn of Haljewin's sailing day, know his decision to shift Le Bouclier over to Basse-Terre, and when? From a nest of traitors and spies already here °n the island… or from one he had unwittingly brought with him?
Choundas had always known that Jules Hainaut's eager deference was cynical play-acting. The lad was out for his pleasures, promotion a fat purse, and his prick. He had taken him on anyway, knowing what good use he could make of a shrewd and pragmatic rogue. The Revolution badly needed men who would not flinch from ruthlessness and Jules had proved that he could ignore false sentiments and perform what he was ordered to do. Choundas had worked round his sham and had even found the lad amusing at times. He had groomed him tutored him, to improve his effectiveness in the future. He didn't wish to think the worst of the lad. There could be a spy placed, or bought off, long ago; there could be someone whom he had yet to suspect. And it would be galling for Choundas to admit he had nurtured a viper in his breast all this time.
He would give Hainaut the benefit of the doubt… for now. At sea, he would no longer be privy to the plans he would improvise, now that Choundas knew that his old ones might be compromised. If Jules was the spy, he would have no way to communicate with the British.
Did Lewrie and the British continue to plague him with more inexplicable coincidences, Choundas would know that Hainaut was innocent.
But, did the fortunes of his small squadron and his new raiders improve beyond all hopes, and the deep investigation he would begin the very next morning fail to turn up another suspected traitor…!
It would be sad, but for the lack of another explanation Choundas would have no other choice but to denounce and arrest Hainaut, put him to "the question" to sear the truth from him, then turn him over to the gendarmes for trial, and a sure and certain execution under the blade of the merciless Victor Hugues's "Monsieur Guillotine."
And if blameless, well… Hainaut would get his seasoning for future duty to France as a naval officer, his fondest wish. Choundas thought to watch his reactions for carefully hidden upset, or too much joy. No, he'd dissemble, pretend to be glad but not too glad, sham sadness to be leaving Choundas's side, perhaps even pipe his eyes with "loss" at leaving the service of such a fine master… pah!
It would prove nothing, Choundas suspected; he was too "fly."
There were blank lines opposite the positions of the schooner, now renamed La Vigilante. Choundas dipped the steel nib of his pen in the inkwell, paused over the lines. Dieuxieme, or Troisieme, Second or
Third officer?
"A real reward," Choundas whispered, his fiendish face even uglier as he smiled so widely, as he clumsily wrote Hainaut's name on the line for Second Officer. Written with his left hand, the name was almost illegible even to him. But Choundas was sure that his mousy and harassed little clerk Etienne de Gougne would be able to decypher it when he made the fair copies in his copper-plate hand.
Havoc`s Sword Page 21