It was Signore Marcello di Silvano, that hefty and handsome Italian millionaire, once the most powerful senator in the Genoese Republic, the man the old spymaster Zachariah Twigg had identitied as the prime leader of the Last Romans. Lewrie could not be mistaken; the fellow was wearing the same glaring white figured-satin suit with the royal purple trim, the same heavy gold medallion and chain of office atop an aquamarine moiré-silk sash. It appeared that Silvano had picked up a few more baubles of honour to pin to his coat breast, too, most likely from Napoleon.
On his arm, though, was the woman who’d spied on Lewrie and influenced him, pretending to be a North Italian Lombard, but really French from near the Swiss border . . . ! Claudia Mastandrea, looking almost as young and fetching as ever—she of the large, round, and firm breasts that she’d pressed either side of Lewrie’s face, of the wealth of sandy blond hair, of large brown eyes, nipples, and areolae the size of Maria Theresa silver dollars! The spy Twigg had ordered him to bed, to pass on disinformation, and a good round lie or two, blabbed in the drowsy afterglow of throbbing, thrashing, hair-tossing, “View, Halloo!” sex!
Signore Silvano (now Duke of Genoa under one of Napoleon’s kin) bestowed upon Lewrie a curled-lipped smile and a grave inclination of his head. “Get to you later!” that smile seemed to promise.
From Claudia Mastandrea, Lewrie got one of those momentary gasps and a most-fetching upward heave of her impressive mammaries as she recognised him, as well. Then came a sly, seductive smile, a tilt of her head, a lowering of her chin and lashes.
“Ma’am,” Lewrie managed to mutter as he nodded. Thank God but Silvano was of no mind to wait for an introduction, but strolled past, tucking his long-time paramour a little closer to his elbow.
Lewrie took a cautious look over his left shoulder after they had passed, and . . . Claudia Mastandrea winked at him!
“Someone else you know in Paris . . . my dear?” Caroline asked.
“Ah, hem . . . met that fellow in Genoa, when I had Jester,” he replied, thinking himself quick on his feet for so saying. “A senator at the time . . .’til the French bought him off. Already owned half or more of the damned place. A nasty article, Signore Silvano.”
“Oh, now this is a good show,” Paisley-Templeton excitedly told them, jutting his chin towards the space before the orchestra, where a few younger couples had begun to dance. “Not for them your everyday quadrille or contre-danse, such as we have at home. They’re doing the gavotte, a most intricate dance. Takes years of study and practise to perform properly. I fancy myself as a dab-hand at dancing, yet . . . it is so complicated, the gavotte! I despair of ever learning it.”
You look the sort, Lewrie told himself uncharitably.
“Napoleon, did you know, refuses to dance unless they play the monaco,” Sir Anthony tossed off, intent upon the dancers with glee in his expression, his champagne glass hand gently marking the time, and even essaying a sway and faint shuffle of his feet. “The monaco is simple . . . as is the new dance that comes from Vienna, the waltz. Means ‘walking,’ I suppose, or something near it. One actually embraces one’s partner . . . with a discreet space between, of course,” he said, lifting his left hand in the air, extending his right. “A couple holds hands . . . here, the lady places her hand on her partner’s shoulder, and the gentleman places his hand on his partner’s waist. One dances a box, One step forward for the man, one backwards for the lady . . . one step to the right for both, then back for the man, forward for the lady, and then left back to where one started, before performing a half-turn to the right, and beginning the box again. Swooping . . . elegant. Romantic . . . yet perhaps too racy for English society, more’s the pity.”
“It has been Christmas since we danced,” Caroline said, quite taken with the dancers’ movements. “Perhaps if they do play something familiar to us . . . once we’re done with Napoleon . . .”
“After I’ve had more champagne,” Lewrie said. He’d once been a dab-hand himself in the parlours, at the subscription balls, but it had been years, and stumbling about canted decks on his sea legs was not conducive to elegance or fine style. He was sure he would clump!
As if he’d said “open sesame” a liveried waiter appeared with a tray bearing fresh glasses of champagne. Lewrie gallantly clinked glasses with his wife and turned away to sip deep . . . and spluttered and coughed.
“M’sieur,” Charité Angelette de Guilleri said as she dipped in a graceful curtsy, on the arm of an officer of Chasseurs, who knocked off a faint bow, wondering who the Devil his girl was greeting.
“Mademoiselle,” Lewrie managed to say, bestowing a “leg” in reply, suddenly feeling the heat of the room in late summer, and its crowded body heat of hundreds of attendees. Breaking out in a funk-sweat would be more to the point!
“Madame,” Charité continued with a maddeningly serene smile on her face, curtsying to Caroline this time. “Enchanté.”
“Mademoiselle . . . ?” Caroline said, responding in kind, confused, feeling a flush of heat herself, and wondering if she was being twitted by an impudent mort who wished to insult a Briton.
It didn’t help that Charité was in an Egyptian-pleated gown of such thin, shimmery pale blue stuff that Lewrie didn’t have to use his imagination to recall every succulent inch of her. Her hair was up in the ringleted style à la Joséphine, a plumed, wide-brimmed hat on her head, a furled parasol in one lace-gloved hand, and a tiny reticule hung from an elbow.
“Pardon, Madame, but I was also in the parfumerie La Contessa the other day,” Charité said with wide-eyed, lash-batting innocence, “and wish to express my regrets you did not find anything satisfactory, for it is the grandest establishment. A thousand pardons for my boldness, but . . . you are English? How marvellous that we are at peace, and you may enjoy the splendours of Paris, the most magnificent city in all Europe, n’est-ce pas? I may make your acquaintance?”
She got a pistol in that reticule? was Lewrie’s prime thought, quickly followed by; Christ, just open a hole in the floor, and let me through it! Who-the-bloody-else is goin’ t’turn up?
He surreptitiously gave Charité a careful looking-over; in New Orleans, she’d had a habit, when carousing in men’s suitings, of keeping a dagger up a sleeve; did she today have it strapped to one of her shapely-slim thighs?
“. . . and Captain Alan Lewrie, of his Britannic Majesty’s Navy, Mademoiselle de Guilleri,” Sir Anthony was happily babbling away, glad to have some Frogs to present. “Captain Lewrie, may I name to you Mademoiselle Charité de Guilleri, and Major Denis Clary.”
“Your servant, Mademoiselle de Guilleri . . . Major Clary, your servant, as well,” Lewrie was forced to respond with another “leg” to both of them, gritting his teeth to appear polite.
“Captain Lewrie will be presented to the First Consul today,” Paisley-Templeton grandly announced. “An exchange of captured swords. General Bonaparte once made Captain Lewrie a prisoner, temporarily, at Toulon, and still has Captain Lewrie’s sword.”
“You refused parole, m’sieur?” Major Clary asked, amazed that a man would not accept the relative comfort of a very loose sort of imprisonment in civilian lodgings, with his pay continuing ’til exchanged for an officer of his own rank.
“I would not abandon my sailors to the hulks, Major,” Lewrie responded. “It would’ve cut a bit rough t’just walk away from them and be . . . comfortable.”
While Major Denis Clary was trying to sort out the phrase cut a bit rough, Charité stuck her own in. She seemed to find his choice honourable—wide-eyed astonishment and all—but, “The Capitaine Lewrie is surely courageous. As ferocious as Denis, here, a hero of Hohenlinden and Marengo, n’est-ce pas?”
She batted her lashes nigh-fit to stir a small breeze, playing the innocent minx, eliciting congratulatory coos from Sir Anthony, and a moue and shrug of false modesty from her companion to be so praised.
“Quel dommage, such choice was not given to my brothers, Helio and Hippolyte,” Charité continue
d, suddenly turning solemn and all but dabbing at one eye with a handkerchief. “Or, my cousin Jean-Marie . . . who perished for the glory of France.” Charité glared directly at the author of their deaths, making Lewrie purse his lips and frown, sure that she’d claw his eyes out, given half a chance. “You will exchange swords with Napoleon, n’est-ce pas? I only hope that some of those swords are not theirs, Capitaine Lewrie. That would be so tragique.”
She’s gotten teeth, Lewrie thought, fighting a wince, recalling those names; Good God A’mighty, can this get even worse?
“I do not recall those names being associated with the swords I brought, mademoiselle,” he told her, glancing at her soldier companion. “These were surrendered by naval officers, at sea . . . well, picked up more than surrendered, since their owners had fallen.”
Major Clary curled a lip in faint disgust over the fate of fellow French officers, even if he held a low opinion of his nation’s navy, and how little it had accomplished since the war’s start in 1793.
“Yayss, well . . . ,” Paisley-Templeton placated.
“Honour to make your acquaintance, m’sieur,” Major Clary said, eager to end their chat. “Madame, Capitaine?”
“Your servant, sir . . . mademoiselle,” Lewrie replied with one more bow to each, hoping that that was over and done with.
“That little . . . whore!” Caroline muttered as they departed.
Oh shit, she’s plumbed to it! Lewrie gawped to himself; now she knows about Charité, too! Oh yes, it can get worse!
Lewrie tried to bluster his way out of it. “Why call her a—”
“Her!” Caroline snapped, flicking her fan open in the direction of the orchestra, and the dancers. For there, now the orchestra had ended the long gavotte and gone on to a simpler minuet or quadrille air, was Phoebe Aretino, swanning gracefully through the figures, partnered with a tall, mustachioed Colonel of the Guard Infantry . . . and sneaking brief but longing glances at Lewrie, before his wife caught her at it!
Christ, it’ll be Emma Hamilton next! Lewrie miserably told himself; Irish Tess, Lady Cantner . . . even Soft Rabbit’s ghost! Lord, but I need another drink! Now!
“And . . . here he comes now,” Paisley-Templeton said with enthusiasm as the orchestra quickly ended their air, and the tall double-doors at the far end of the long hall opened. People scampered from the centre of the floor to form up on either side as the First Consul made his entrance, hands behind his back and looking as if his boots were pinching his toes. “Now, what does his choice of uniform mean? Oh! Perhaps he expected you in uniform, and means to honour you, sir,” Sir Anthony whispered with a hopeful smile.
It took better than three-quarters of an hour for them to find out what Napoleon’s martial appearance meant, for there were other luminaries for the First Consul to greet; and Sir Anthony was more than happy to point them out and name them for the Lewries. There were generals, of course, the odd French admiral, men high in Bonaparte’s government, along with composers, scientists, philosophers, and academics; civil engineers enrolled to expand the French road and canal systems, as well as actors and actresses, famed singers, and playwrights from the Comédie Française, even a scruffy, artistic poet or three. There was the crafty (some might say duplicitous) Foreign Minister, Charles Maurice Talleyrand-Périgord, a tall and spare former aristo and former powerful bishop with a taste for silly, and impressionable, young women. There were members of distinguished and titled old families of France, mostly those who had somehow escaped the rabid purges during the Reign of Terror, whose sons had atoned for their sins of privilege on the battlefield, and were now held blameless.
Finally, an elegant young fellow from the French Foreign Ministry approached Sir Anthony Paisley-Templeton, whispered in his ear, and indicated that that worthy should herd his presentees to a prominent place in the centre of the hall, before a set of chairs and settees quickly cleared of people, one chair in particular that would serve as a throne ’til the real thing was dusted off and dragged down from the garret.
“Not very big, is he?” Caroline whispered to Lewrie as they were led to the makeshift seat of honour.
Napoleon Bonaparte stood about two and a half inches shy of her husband’s five feet nine. To Lewrie’s memory, Napoleon had put on a few pounds since ’94, but still appeared slim. His hair was now more carefully dressed, no longer a sans culottes page-boy; frankly, Bonaparte’s hair was thinning, and was combed forward over his brow, shorn closer to the ears, with longer sideburns.
Forgot he and I have much the same blue-grey eyes, Lewrie told himself as they approached. From one side of the seating arrangement, a liveried servant came with a long bundle wrapped in dark blue, gilt-edged velvet. From the other, there came another man, bearing a much slimmer package.
Paisley-Templeton, presented first by a simpering Frog diplomat underling, responded in his excellent French with over a minute or two of “gilt and be-shit” diplomatist-speak, with so many subordinate clauses that Lewrie’s head began to reel trying to follow it. At last, he recognised that he and Caroline were being named to Bonaparte, and made a “leg” with his hand over his heart, as Caroline performed a very fine curtsy (she had not imbibed as much champagne as he!) with a fetching incline of her head.
“Your servant, sir,” Lewrie spoke up, in English, in English fashion, and he heard Paisley-Templeton making excuses for their lack of fluency in French.
“The First Consul says you are welcome, Captain Lewrie. . . . He expresses enchantment with Madame, and finds her beauty, and her gown, delightful,” Paisley-Templeton translated. “He remembers you, he says. Toulon . . . Fort Le Garde exploding . . . firing upon your ship, blowing her up, as well, uhm. . . . You would not accept parole, and he told you then that, ehm . . . ‘you have hair on your arse.’ Had, rather,” their representative said, deeply blushing at the crudity, while the gathered audience tittered and chuckled.
“Tell him that I recall, vividly,” Lewrie said, not even trying to tangle his tongue with his French, not after four glasses of wine. “Say that I am honoured that he would remember such a minor incident, such a minor encounter. Say also that, had I known who he was then, or to what heights he would rise, I would have tried to be more pleasant, even given the soggy circumstances.”
“Of course, sir,” Sir Anthony said, before launching into one more long simpering palaver. Lewrie noted, though, that Bonaparte had his lips curled in a faint expression of dislike for this pantomime. Unconsciously, one finger of Napoleon’s left hand tapped on his thigh.
“He says that you appeared a half-drowned rat, sir,” Paisley-Templeton translated, “with your stockings round your ankles, and your breeches draining water.”
“Aye, I expect I did,” Lewrie agreed with a grin. “Though, as I recall, General Bonaparte looked natty. Does he still have that white horse he rode? A splendid beast.”
The pleasantries went on for another minute or so before Sir Anthony got to the meat of the matter, expressing a well-rehearsed preamble about Lewrie’s wish, now there was a lasting peace between their respective countries, to return the swords he had taken, restoring them to France and to the families of the fallen.
At a nod from Napoleon, the liveried servant with the large bundle came to lay it across Lewrie’s arms, just long enough for him to re-take possession before the draped bundle was formally laid at Napoleon’s feet and spread open to reveal all five scabbarded blades, with paper tags bound to the hilts to indicate who were the former owners.
At another nod, the other servant came forward and gave it to Napoleon. He whipped the cloth covering off and tossed it aside, then held up Lewrie’s old hanger for all to see before stepping forward—Sir Anthony gave Lewrie a slight nudge to make him take a step towards Napoleon to meet him halfway—and Napoleon held it out to him. But, before he actually let it go, he began another long speech, this time with his lips slit to nothing whenever a pause came, and he didn’t look all that happy.
“Oh Lord, sir . . . he
asks what sort of peace is it when England stalls and delays fulfilling its part of the terms. I won’t bore you with all of it,” Paisley-Templeton said with a very good imitation of a placid expression on his stricken phyz, nodding now and again as the First Consul had himself a little rant at Lewrie’s expense. “He hopes you never have cause to use your sword against France again, but . . . does Great Britain continue in its perfidious course, the need to draw it will become more likely, and he . . . he expresses a desire that England sends him a proper ambassador, and accepts his own in London, else . . . before mistakes and confusion engendered by junior diplomatists do irreparable harm to the amity between our nations.”
Napoleon clapped his mouth shut for a moment, his lips pressed closer together, and his expression stormy, whilst the gathered crowd sounded quite pleased with his rant, the generals that Lewrie could see sharing wolfish, eager glances between them.
“He presents you with your old blade, sir,” Paisley-Templeton said at last, looking as if he wished to daub his face with a handkerchief. “From one warrior to another.”
A quick imperative shake of the sword and Lewrie reached out to take it. He had enough wit to bow again and express his utmost thanks along with some of those phrases Sir Anthony had written for him: great honour to be presented; so pleased the exchange could be made; thanks for his excellency’s indulgence; let us pray that peace prevails, and all that tom-foolery.
Lewrie stepped back at last, with a final bow in congé, as Caroline did a parting curtsy, and Sir Anthony led them away from the Presence. “It don’t look like we’ll have tea with Josephine after all,” Lewrie whispered to his wife. “Sorry ’bout that, m’dear.”
“To see her was quite enough,” Caroline told him. “She’s not as fetching as we’ve heard.” An incline of her head led Lewrie’s eyes to a woman in a pale pink and white ensemble, with her hair up in Grecian style, and roses in her hair, who was now joining Napoleon.
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