The packet voyage had been so short that Caroline had had no time to acclimate, and she had spent most of the trip past the harbour mole by a bucket or the lee rails. Even last night, spent in a squalid Calais travellers’ inn, she could tolerate nothing more strenuous than cups of herbal tea and thin chicken broth.
The ginger pastilles were made in London by Smith & Co., recommended by another couple crossing to France with them, Sir Pulteney “Something Fruitish” and his wife, Lady “Starts with an I,” both of ’em of the most extreme languid and lofty airs, the sort that set English teeth on edge. Worried about Caroline, Lewrie hadn’t paid all that much attention to the social niceties and, once on solid ground at Calais, had been more than happy to decline an invitation to dine with the “Whosits,” on account of Caroline’s tetchy boudins. . . . A further vague suggestion to meet again in Paris, he’d shrugged off, as well.
“Well, we’re off,” Lewrie said to fill a void as their coachee whipped up and set their equipage in motion.
“Once out in open country, and fresh, clean air, I expect that we shall enjoy this much better,” Caroline opined, holding a scented handkerchief to her nose as she looked out the windows. “It will be a fine adventure, I’m bound.”
“Sweeter smellin’ than Calais, at any rate,” Lewrie agreed with her. “Seaports always reek.” Though he suspected that every French city or town would prove as noxious as Dung Wharf or the old Fleet Ditch in London, long ago paved over. And how the Devil did I end up chivvied into this? he asked himself for the hundredth time; guilt most-like. No one back in Anglesgreen had thought much of their jaunt to France. Well, Millicent Chiswick, Caroline’s brother’s wife, had deemed it a very romantic idyll, but she was about the only one.
Weeks of, well . . . not exactly harping and nagging had preceded the actuality. There’d been French maps and atlases turning up mysteriously, then a weedy university lad to tutor the children in French, though he and Caroline had somehow become pupils as well. Not that those lessons had done Lewrie’s linguistic skills all that much good. He had a smattering of Hindi from service in the Far East between the wars in ’84, a dab or two of French from duty in the Mediterranean in the ’90s (and several good public schools from which he had been booted!), and a few words and phrases of Russian from dealings with the delectable Eudoxia Durschenko and her equally appalling papa, and his most-recent service in the Baltic.
Curse words, mostly, foul oaths and the sketchiest, rudimentary necessities such as “I will order the . . . , fetch me . . . , too hot, too cold, hello, good-bye, d’ye have any ale,” and the ever-useful “fetch out yer whores.” Schoolboy Greek was still a mystery, too, though he had done rather well in Latin . . . mostly due to all the battles described, and the lurid and scandalous poems.
Caroline heaved a petulant sigh and knit her brows, creating that vertical furrow that was usually a sign of her anger. Lewrie’d gotten very familiar with that’un over the years, and involuntarily crossed his legs to protect his “wedding tackle.”
“Somethin’ troublin’, Caroline?”
“Oh, the children,” she replied, fretful. “I know I thought our getting away would help, but . . .”
“They’re havin’ a grand time, dear,” Lewrie told her. “Don’t fret about them.”
His father, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, had agreed to spend most of the summer in the country, and would look out for the boys at his Dun Roman, with the help of his exotic “man,” Trilochan Singh, a swarthy, one-eyed Sikh as randy and as dangerous-looking as the worst sort of Calcutta bazaari-badmash who’d cut your throat just to keep in practise. To corrupt Sewallis and Hugh even further, Liam Desmond and Pat Furfy would be near to hand with their seafaring tales, yarns, and Irish myths. And though his uncle Phineas Chiswick and his brother-in-law Governour Chiswick deplored it, Charlotte would be included during the days, though Governour had insisted that she reside with him and his wife . . . accurately thinking that exposing a girl to too much of Sir Hugo’s past repute would quite ruin her. To irk Governour even further, Sir Hugo would take all three of them into town to play with Will Cony’s children, a rambunctious and rowdy set as wild as Red Indians. Now, was Caroline having second thoughts?
“Oh, is that not the grandest chateau, Alan?” Caroline suddenly enthused, shifting over to the other side of the coach to goggle at a substantial manse surrounded by pasture land, vineyards, and manicured green lawns. “And . . . do I detect that our coach is travelling upon a very well-laid road? Perhaps one of Bonaparte’s decrees.”
“Pray God he’s more interest in roads and canals than armies,” Lewrie replied, though his professional sense was that armies marched faster and farther on good roads than bad.
“And the peasants!” Caroline further enthused as their coach passed a waggon heavily loaded with hay, drawn by a brace of plodding oxen, and goaded and accompanied by several French farmers, their wives, and children. “Are they not picturesque? Native costume, do you think?”
To Lewrie’s eyes, what they wore looked more like a mixture of embroidered vests, straw hats, voluminous skirts, wooden clogs, and . . . rags. Rootless Irish mendicants could be deemed better dressed!
“Catch-as-catch-can, I’d s’pose” was his verdict.
“Why, one would imagine you had no curiosity in your soul!” his wife teasingly accused. “Or . . . is it that you have fought the French for so long, you can’t fake interest?”
“So long as they ain’t tryin’ t’kill me, I’ll allow that they are . . . colourful folk,” he said with a smirk. “Given a choice though, Hindoos win ‘colourful,’ hands down.”
And so it went, all the way to Amiens, where they laid over for the night in a much cleaner travellers’ hotel, where Caroline’s appetite was much restored, and though the chalked menu, and the waiter’s unhelpful explanations, might as well have been Sanskrit, they managed to order both excellent, hearty meals and a couple of bottles of very good wine. As for dessert, French apple pie was as succulent as English apple pie, and the Lewries went to bed in fine fettle just a bit past eight, ready for an early rising and the next leg of their trip to fabled Paris.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Lewries found good lodgings, a spacious appartement on the Rue Honoré, just a short stroll north of the Jardin des Tuileries and the Palais National and Palais de la Révolution. They found themselves a brace of English-speaking servants, a pleasant young fellow named Jules for him, and a dumpling of a girl named Marianne for Caroline. At Jules’s suggestion, they engaged an English-speaking guide, too. Jean-Joseph, a very smooth customer and a veteran of the early Italian campaigns under the fabled Napoleon Bonaparte, led them to the best bank, where Lewrie exchanged a note-of-hand drawn on Coutts’ in London, and his pound notes, for French currency, with a temporary account set up to cover their expected expenses. Then, with a programme of “sights” lined up by Jean-Joseph, they set off to experience Paris and its environs.
The Place de la Bastille, now an open space since the infamous old prison had been razed; the Faubourg du Temple, the Hôtel de Ville, and Notre Dame, of course, along with the Îles de la Cité, and the site of the Revolutionary Court and Palais de Justice. The Vieux Louvre of course, too, filled with artworks looted during many of Napoleon’s famed campaigns. They did the Right Bank, all the grand churches and former palaces, the Champs-Élysées and Champs de Mars.
They did the Left Bank, cross the Pont Neuf; along the broad and impressive Quai d’Orsai and Quai de Voltaire, visited the Pantheon and the Cordeliers Convent, the Abbaye de St.-Germain-des-Prés, the Luxembourg palace, and the massive Maison Nationale des Invalides. And every day-jaunt was interrupted with a fine meal at a restaurant, bistro, or café that Jean-Joseph just happened to know all about, and recommended highly.
There were carriage trips to Versailles, Argenteuil, and the bucolic splendour of St. Denis and Asnières-sur-Seine, which Caroline thought the equal of the willowed, reeded banks of the upper Thames, replete w
ith swans and cruising geese.
It was all so impressive, so romantic, did wonders for Caroline and the complete restoration of her wifely affection, for which Lewrie was more than thankful, that he could almost be glad they’d gone.
But for the stench, of course.
Firstly, there were the open sewers flowing with ordure, and the unidentifiable slop down the centre of some streets. Evidently, Parisians thought nothing of emptying their chamberpots out the nearest window, with but the sketchiest warning of “Garde à l’eau!” Even the Seine, a very pretty river, even in the bucolic stretches, was filled with foul . . . somethings, yet, to Lewrie’s amazement, people actually fished it, and seemed happy with their catches!
Secondly, there were the Frogs themselves. Oh, perhaps some of the better sort might bathe weekly, and might even be so dainty as to launder their underclothes and wear fresh . . . on Sunday, at least, then not change ’til the next Saturday.
Admittedly, there were quite a few English who were “high”; the common folk, and his sailors, held that a fellow needed only three complete baths, with soap included, in their lives: at their birthing, the morning of their wedding, and bathed by others before their bodies were put in winding sheets and the grave! Yet . . . the French! Whew! Soap might be rare, but colognes, Hungary waters, and perfumes covered the lack . . . among the better sorts. Common Frenchmen, and Frenchwomen, could reek so badly that Lawrie was put in mind of a corpse’s armpit.
“It is said, m’sieur,” Jean-Joseph gaily imparted with a snicker “that when Bonaparte sailed from Egypt, he sent his wife, Josephine, letters by several ships, saying . . . ‘I arrive. Do not bathe,’ hawn hawn!”
“You know a good perfumery?” Lewrie asked him.
“La parfumerie, m’sieur, mais oui!” Jean-Joseph exclaimed. “You wish the finest scents and sachets in all the world, Madame Lewrie, I know the very place. But, per’aps m’sieur would find such shopping a tedium, non?”
“And a milliner’s, a dressmaker’s, a shoemaker’s,” Caroline happily ticked off on her lace-gloved fingers, “and perhaps a dry goods, a . . . uhm, les étoff es, Jean? For fabrics before the dressmaker’s?”
“But, of course, madame!” Jean-Joseph heartily agreed, “the very best of fashion artistes, the most impressive fabrics, from people whom I know are most skilled, and . . . ,” he intimated with a wink, “the final works can be had bon marché . . . that is to say, inexpensively?”
Now, why do I get the feelin’ we’ve fallen into the clutches of a French version of Clotworthy Chute? Lewrie had to ask himself; we’ve not seen “inexpensive” since we left Amiens!
“And it would not go amiss did you have a suit of clothes run up for yourself, Alan,” Caroline suggested. “France sets the style for the entire world, after all. And, what you brought along is a bit long in tooth by now,” she said, giving him a chary looking-over.
“Uhm, perhaps,” Lewrie allowed. In his teens, before his father had press-ganged him into the Navy (there’d been an inheritance from his mother’s side, and Sir Hugo’d needed the money perishin’ bad!), Lewrie’s clothing tastes had run to the extreme “Macaroni” styles. But after better than half his life spent in uniform, what fashion sense he’d had had dulled to more sobre convention.
“Perhaps your maid, Marianne, and I can escort you to the shops, madame,” Jean-Joseph spritely babbled on, “and for m’sieur, perhaps he can be guided by Jules, to whom I will impart the location of the most stylish tailor in all Paris, n’est-ce pas?”
“Uhm, that’d suit,” Lewrie said with a shrug. “Suit? Ha?”
“M’sieur is so droll,” Jean-Joseph all but simpered.
“Isn’t he?” Caroline agreed with a roll of her eyes. “And on your separate jaunt, Alan, you might see about your swords.”
“Aye. Call on our embassy, too,” Lewrie said, with rising enthusiasm. To be frank about it, Lewrie by then had had his fill of museums, grand cathedrals, and art galleries, monuments to the Revolution and its brutalities, and, in point of fact, their unctuous guide, Jean-Joseph, as well. And he’d always despised being dragged along on feminine shopping trips. A full day on his own would be very welcome.
“M’sieur wishes a sword-smith?” Jean-Joseph enquired, a golden glint in his eyes at the thought of more spending with his recommended artisans.
“The British Embassy,” Lewrie told him. “We do have one here, do we not? Now we’re at peace?”
“There is, m’sieur,” Jean-Joseph replied, looking a bit mystified. “I can instruct Jules to direct you there, as well.”
“Very good, then,” Lewrie decided. “Today or tomorrow, dear?”
“Tomorrow,” Caroline said, “so I may spend the whole day at it.”
“Per’aps, then . . . madame and m’sieur desire dinner? Quite by coincidence, there is an excellent restaurant nearby, and their food . . . magnifique!” Jean-Joseph enthused, kissing his fingers in the air.
“Lead on, then,” Lewrie told him. “Lead on.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
One hopes that readers will be patient with a slight digression from Lewrie’s foreign adventure, but a few people also in Paris must be introduced before the tale may continue.
As Lewrie discovered in London the winter before, when between sea-going commissions, even the greatest, most populated city in the civilised world can seem too small when, out of the blue (or overcast grey, in London’s case) all the embarrassing people who should never be in the same place at the same time, or ever actually meet, do show up and share greetings. In London, it was an innocent trip into the Strand to purchase ink, stationery, and sealing wax, and a chance meeting on the sidewalks with his old school chums (they’d all three been expelled from Harrow for arson and riotous behaviour at the same time) Lord Peter Rushton, Viscount Draywick, and that clever scoundrel Clotworthy Chute. Which rencontre had been interrupted, in distressing happenstance, by the arrival of the lovely, delectable (and hot after Lewrie) Eudoxia Durschenko, better known as the “Scythian Princess” (but really a Cossack) who performed bareback (and damn near nude!) with Daniel Wigmore’s Peripatetic Extravaganza as a crack shot with the recurved horn bow, seconding as the ingénue in Wigmore’s theatrical troupe . . . along with her papa, Arslan Artimovich Durschenko, the one-eyed knife-thrower and lion tamer, a man who was determined to see his daughter buried a virgin, and who hated Capt. Alan Lewrie much like Satan hated Holy Water.
Despite that, they’d ended together in the same tea shop, at the same table, with sticky buns and jam; Lord Peter drooling over Eudoxia, Eudoxia batting lashes at Lewrie, Clotworthy finagling how much money he might screw from the Russians, and Eudoxia’s father whispering low curses near Lewrie’s ear, whilst Lewrie strove for “innocent.”
As if it could’ve gotten any worse (oh yes, it could!) in had swept the former actress Emma Batson, now the Mother Abbess of the finest brothel in the city, with two of her girls . . . one named Tess, whom Lewrie, deprived of his wife’s affections for several years, was regularly rogering. Oh, it had been so jolly!
But we do digress.
As for Paris, now . . . Lewrie would think it very slim odds that he would know anyone among its hundreds of thousands of residents, except for the new First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, and it was even slimmer odds that he and Bonaparte would ever come face-to-face.
Bonaparte’s guns had sunk Lewrie’s commandeered mortar ship off the eastern side of Toulon during the brief capture of the port during the First Coalition (blown it, and him, sky-high in point of fact) and temporarily made Lewrie a soggy prisoner on the beach before Spanish cavalry had galloped to the rescue.
Dame Fortune, however, has always found a way to “put the boot in” where Alan Lewrie is concerned, when he is at his smuggest and most content.
In the heart of the city, down both sides of the Seine, lay the government buildings and former royal palaces. Napoleon Bonaparte was living in the Tuileries Palace, now the Palais National, in the eight-room
appartement formerly occupied by Louis XVI. The Lewries, quite by chance (or was it?), were lodging in a maison on the Rue Honoré, the main thoroughfare that leads past the Tuileries and the Constituent Assembly, and dining and shopping and gawking in the same environs where the better sort of French reside and conduct their business, where the most exclusive shops are found . . . where people seeking favour and government employment gather.
Is it any wonder, then, that at the very moment that Caroline, Alan, and their guide depart a restaurant, pleasingly stuffed with one of the First Consul’s favourite dishes, a blend of eggs, crayfish, tomatoes, and chicken called Poulet Marengo in honour of one of Bonaparte’s grandest battlefield victories, also pleasantly “foxed” with wine . . . and out nearly one thousand francs—that someone from Lewrie’s past should just happen to be limping away from the Ministry of Marine to his miserly and squalid lodgings in the maze-like ancient quarter round the Hôtel de Ville?
“Salaud!” the limping man hissed in shock, his remaining hand jerking to the sudden twinge of pain in his ravaged and partly masked face, a stabbing memory brought on by the sight of his nemesis. “C’est lui! Putain, c’est lui, espèce de petite vermine. Lewrie. It is Lewrie!”
Other people who shared the sidewalk with him—strollers or the ones in more haste about their business—gave the hideous old cripple a wider berth than they usually would, one or two tapping their heads and telling their companions that the ogre was débile . . . insane, and best avoided.
Perhaps Guillaume Choundas, formerly a Capitaine de Vaisseau of the French Navy, was partly insane by then. And that Anglais bastard Lewrie was the cause of it, and his crippled state.
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