The young woman inclined her head, preening-pleased to be named "Madame Pollock" whether it was a thin fiction or not. She offered her hand French-style, which Lewrie dashingly took, sketching a kiss on the back of it. Mr. Pollock actually growled as she dropped him a curtsy.
"Er, um, yess," Pollock hissed. "My dear, this is men's…"
"We 'ave found the girl who meets with Monsieur… Willoughby!" Colette Pollock gushed, all but bouncing on her toes with excitement. "Maman … pardon, my maid, messieurs… finds she is a de Guilleri. I and Scipio, our man, find where she live, oui? A Bayou Saint John boy on 'is produce cart show us. And as we watch, you never guess, Gideon!"
"We know, dear, so… " Pollock patronisingly tried to say.
"The de Guilleris, they decamp!" Colette protested. "A washerwoman who work for the D'Ablemonts in the downstairs, she say Charite come home after dusk, dress-ed tres fine. Then, full dark come, both her brothers come home, tres rapidement. That, Scipio and I are there to see! They have hide guns under their cloaks, and we have heard the shooting noises somewhere in town while we wait, before-
Christ shit on a biscuit! Lewrie thought, his innards chilling as the implications of that struck him; She?… No, it couldn't be!
"Soon, come two more young gentilshommes, with guns aussi, with a country coach," Colette breathlessly imparted, almost gulping at her own daring. "Dress-ed mos' rough, comme des Acadiens? Like Acadians I mean, the huntsmen, comprenez I ask Scipio to go talk with coachman, apres young men enter, oui? And I see them in the upstairs windows, Gideon! Et, coachman tell Scipio they hire him to take ferry over river to the Bois Gervais road, only pay for short trip, n'est-ce pas? Tell him, they will take boat down bayous there. Ensuite … pardon, then, few minute later, all come down, and enter the coach, and la jeune fille, Mademoiselle Charite I am thinking, is dress-ed a la rustique, Acadian, aussi! Carmagnole, bonnet, skirted, avec the boots? All 'ave long and heavy canvas bag, same as sailors? The coachman whip away tres rapidement, comme un fou … like the mad!"
"Ho-ly… God!" Lewrie slowly breathed, realising the guilty import of all that Pollock's "wife" had seen. "Damme, I've been…"
"It would, ah… so appear, sir," Mr. Pollock sadly commiserated, sounding so earnestly sympathetic Lewrie could have gut-shot him on the spot if he didn't have a pack of witnesses!
My God, I've been had! Lewrie scathed himself, just about ready to reel off his feet and plunk himself down in a chair; How big a fool have I been? She was in on it all along. She was laughing up her damn sleeve, they all were, playing me like a piccolo from the-
"You are pale, m'sieur Willoughby?" Colette Pollock solicitously enquired of his pallor, his febrile, anxious look; his silent lip-mumbles and scowl, too, it must here be noted.
"Bloody wonderful!" Lewrie distractedly grunted.
The tiny bell hung over the office door gave off a gay tinkle, and in breezed Toby Jugg, with Mr. Pollock's weedy head clerk in tow.
"One would s'pose this may be 'gilding the lily,' in a manner of speaking, ahem, " Pollock began, "but, about our consignment of air-rifles, Mister Dollarhyde… how many have actually been sold, and to whom, might you be able to recall?"
"Locking the barn after the horses have… shit!" some present almost heard Capt. Alan Lewrie disgustedly whisper.
"I b'lieve only a dozen, so far, Mister Pollock, sir," the clerk fussily replied, referring to his own ledger book after being told by Jugg, most likely, why he was being summoned cross the river in such a hurry, and at that hour. "One to Mister Willoughby here…"
Sold, mine arse, it was s posed t'be a gift! Lewrie thought.
"… four taken on by Mister Whiting for his trading post up at Natchez, one to a m'sieur Columbe… said the local rodents eat up his garden something sinful, and… the other six to a party of city men."
"And, might you have their names available, Mister Dollarhyde?" Pollock impatiently prompted.
"Most odd, that, Mister Pollock," Dollarhyde simpered. "I did a brief demonstration, and they placed down payment on four, yet not an hour later, returned with the money for six, and paid in full."
"Names? Ahem?" Pollock harumphed.
"A Monsieur Monaster… Don Rubio Monaster, actually. He was most insistent on that point, really," Dollarhyde recited, looking up from his book for a second, "one to a Monsieur Rancour, J… and the rest to a Monsieur de… Gool… de Gweel… Damn all Frog names."
"De Guillen, hah!" Pollock barked, uncharacteristically slamming a palm on the top of his desk.
"Rancour," Colette mused aloud, "Gideon, is he not a cousin to the de Guilleris? Oui, I am thinking he is. And Don Rubio, oh la!" She chuckled, looking as if she would fan herself. "His papa was the Spaniard, but his ma-man was the Bergrand, and they raise him, for his poor papa die when he is little… killed by the Indians. He is the tres handsome gentilhomme, mos' dashing? Aussi, he is-'ow you say?-the… crack shoot? All girls adore him, but he only has eyes…"
"Damn!" Pollock spluttered, slamming a fist on the desk this time. Damnn, damn, damn!"
"Gideon, cher … What 'as distress-ed?" Colette asked.
"I must ask you to leave things to us, Colette," Pollock gruffly told her.
'You've taken enough risks tonight, and there's an end to it. Scipio will see you safely home. I fear we will be discussing our, ah… business matters far into the night. They'd only bore you, ahem. I'll be along, soon as I'm able, so why don't you…"
"You have done us a great service tonight, Madame Pollock, for which we all… and I'm sure I speak for Gideon as well…" Lewrie found wit to say, "are extremely grateful. As I'm certain he'll tell you, once he joins you at home. Merci, madame. Merci beaucoup! You were very brave and clever."
If you won't at least give her grudging thanks, then I will, he sourly thought; And why she stays with a clot like you 'tis a wonder! Thoughtless, churlish… and ugly, to boot!
"Wot'd I miss?" Toby Jugg whispered to his compatriots who had been present the whole time. Once clued in, he could not help musing aloud. "Now I think upon it, sor, 'mongst them a'titterin' sprogs on 'at pirate schooner, one of 'em coulda been a girl, i' fact!"
And ye didn 't recall 'til bloody now, ye thick-headed Irish bog trotter? Lewrie silently accused, his anger building, now that he was over his shock, to a sulky, but well-deserved pet; Never thought to even bother mentioning it 'til… damn his blood!
"Gideon, I do not comprendre," Colette gasped, fingers flying to her lips, and paling most fetchingly. "You speak of pirates? But I… I thought you merely wish to discover… ah! So that is why the two capitaines call on the de Guilleris the other day? "
" What captains? " Pollock cried.
"The washerwoman chez les D'Ablemonts we speak to, cher? She say two famous heroes, both Capitaine Jerome Lanxade and the Acadian, Capitaine Boudreaux Balfa, are visitors to the de Guilleri appartement… She say she see them the… several time. Mos' recent, a few day ago, she say! Oh, Gideon, you are in danger, mon coeur?"
"Go home, Colette," Pollock insisted, almost shooing her to the door. Relenting, he finally said, "I am in no danger, my dear, have no fear. There's, ah… underhanded commercial finagling afoot, and those old rogues are involved with some noted families to pull a sly one over on we despised out-sider traders. A coup de commerce? But with your quick wits and sharp eyes, my dear, Mister Willoughby and I are in a fair way to Scotching it before it costs us tuppence, ha ha!"
"You swear?" Colette warily asked, still upset and dubious.
"Cross my heart," Pollock cooed to her, sketching on his chest. Blushing again, even redder than before, he vowed, "Je t'adore, cherie. "
And, blushing herself but immensely pleased by his rare public declaration of love, she pecked him on the cheek, smiled, and departed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
S he isn't aware of your, ah… " Lewrie somberly asked once the door was firmly shut, chiding himself for being infected with Pollock's characteristic mannerism.
"I sometimes wonder, Lewrie," Pollock replied, shaking his head. "Well, then! Ahem! Took the ferry to the south bank, did they? Most odd, indeed." Pollock clapped his hands together as if suddenly convinced of something, then crossed to a tall desk to produce a map, which he spread on the larger, lower desk's surface. "Were they fleeing back to their parents' Saint Gabriel plantings, they would've coached round this way," he pondered, waving a vague hand over the northwestern end of the map. " Could've hired a shalope to sail them up the Mississippi to one of their plantation landings, but they didn't. Why?"
Mr. Pollock frowned at the map, drawing a candle stand closer so he could see the better, and traced an idle finger along the southern bank opposite New Orleans.
"Fleeing down the Mississippi?" Lewrie idly speculated.
"For that, a hired shalope would've served, Captain Lewrie," Mr. Pollock gravely countered. "Had they taken a boat, going with the current, they could already be ten miles downriver by now. Getting away in perfect comfort and laughing up their sleeves," he growled with growing frustration.
"Then why'd they dress so rough, Mister Pollock?" Liam Desmond, who had been present for most of their musings, had the temerity to interject; most-like catching Toby Jugg's attitude, Lewrie feared. "Yer missuz said they wore whatcha-call-ems… rusticals, wan'it, sor?"
"Mauvaises," Pollock supplied off-handedly, "Means tattered, or threadbare. A la rustique, they say of the Acadians, who live… To pass without notice 'mongst the Acadian settlers, by God! Balfa! He lives down south."
Mr. Pollock's finger traced a hypothetical route down along one pencilled-in, iffy track, from the ferry landing on the south bank to a true, plotted bayou, tracing further to where the bayou intersected a river, and…
"They're bound down the Ouatchas River," Pollock exclaimed. "I'd stake my life on it!" Pollock declared, now all fervent brusqueness. "The Ouatchas connects with Bayou Barataria, where that rogue Balfa farms. And I'd not be surprised to learn that one of the plantations along the Bois Gervais Road, on the bayous, is conveniently owned by one of our suspected conspirators, aha!"
"They could hide their schooner this far up the bayous?" Lewrie asked, frowning over Pollock's map. "It looks too…"
"God, no!" Pollock snapped. "Even the Ouatchas, or the Bayou Barataria, is too shallow, narrow, and twisting. Backcountry people use pirogues on the creeks and bayous," pronouncing the word as "peer-ohs" and sounding impatient with Lewrie's wits. "You've seen them, not a foot of freeboard, four inches or less actually in the water? They're poled or paddled. Trees overhang so low, they can't be masted. Float on a heavy dew, they do! Right through any swamp, good as a highway."
"Damme, don't snap at me, sir!" Lewrie retorted. "We must have pirogues of our own, go after them…"
"You'd blunder about like a blind man in Vauxhall Gardens ' hedge maze," Pollock scoffed right back. "They'd need a good guide to find their way… which I'm sure they already have, which you don't, sir. And I very much doubt you could buy one with a keg of gold coin, with the best bein Acadian, and them so clannish. Acadians'd never trust an Englishman, not after we expelled them from Canada after the Seven Years War. Secretive, backward-"
"I'll not sit and wring my hands!" Lewrie declared, his chagrin and anger at his gullibility and his attempted murder now bubbling over and directed at the handiest subject. "I'll not allow 'em t'get away, and wail about what a shame it is… sir! All these bayous and such… they lead to the sea, eventually?"
"Ah… to Lake Barataria," a much-chastened Pollock said, now cowed into politeness by Lewrie's outburst. "Thence, into Barataria Bay, which has deepwater passes into the Gulf-"
"Here?" Lewrie almost snarled, stabbing a finger at the mouth of the bay. " Grand Terre Island, right?"
"Beg pardon, sor," Toby Jugg hesitantly spoke up. "I hear tell… tavern talk from th' auld gammers who mighta gone privateerin' in their younger days, d'ye see woz all… Some say Grand Terre Island, and Barataria Bay, woz th' grandest place t'wait fer passin' Spanish treasure ships, sor," he revealed, eyes shifting in old guilt, perhaps?
"Do tell, Jugg." Lewrie said with a knowing smirk. "Say on."
"Good anchorage, sandy holdin' ground, back o' th' island, an' sweet-water springs ashore, sor," Jugg continued in a gruff, off-hand tone. "Twelve'r fifteen foot o' depth, bay an' isle brim-over with a seafood bounty. Some say there's booried treasure on Grand Terre, to this very day, sor, sure! East Pass better'n the' western… I heard."
"Deep enough for their schooner or prizes," Lewrie exclaimed. "Balfa's place conveniently halfway from New Orleans, so far up no one could pursue them… a planter house and barns just over the river to cache stolen goods. Damme! They must be running all the way down to Grand Terre! They're bound to sea! Where my frigate can smash 'em!"
Fearing very overt action, Pollock gave him one of those cringing, mouse-pawed, appalled expressions of his, as if Lewrie had gone madder than a hatter, was about to run as amok as a rogue elephant.
Your safe little world about t'be tipped over? Lewrie silently sneered; Damn' right, it is, and too bloody bad!
He'd been led by the nose since boarding Pollock's trade brig, since Captain Nicely's supper, off his feed and balance; led round by his "member" almost from the moment he'd stepped ashore in New Orleans, too. Now, their pirates' identity had been discovered, and it was his time to re-don the Royal Navy's brutal harness.
Idling's over, me lad, Lewrie thought, steeling himself to the task at hand; You've eat your last lotus. I'll run 'em… That bitch! That lying little whore! How large a fool must I look to my sailors right now? How much of their respect have I lost by being such a…
And here he'd been, feeling twinging-guilty to "abuse" a sweet young girl's "adoration"! Hah!
"We must be got downriver," Lewrie firmly said. "Soon as dammit… sooner! Proteus is lurking off the Mississippi passes. I must get her underway for Barataria Bay at once!"
"What, d'ye mean tonight, sir?" Mr. Pollock fretfully asked.
"If not by midnight, then no later than dawn, aye," Lewrie said, impatient to get back to doing what he did best, where he did his best… at sea. "How long would it take your brig to gain the Gulf, with the downriver current to speed her along?"
"Well, no more than four or five days downriver, but… ahem!" Pollock whinnied, having himself a twitch-neck crooking fit. "I fear, though, that for my ship, my firm, to be involved so publicly would be quite impossible."
"And why the bloody Hell not?' Lewrie barked, hands clasped in the small of his back, four-square on his feet, as he would stand upon a quarterdeck. A chilly hush fell upon the gathered sailors, knowing by their captain's tone and the eerie change of his eyes from a merry blue to a flinty Arctic grey that Mr. Pollock was "gonna catch it"!
"Panton, Leslie Company is only marginally associated with Crown interests, and, ah… activities," Pollock tried to exposit in a calm, reasonable tone. "We are not, never have been, directly under Foreign Office orders, not like your fellow James Peel, Captain Lewrie. Nor am I, no matter what you might have told or assumed, actively engaged as a Crown agent… nor have I ever been, d'ye see. I observe, I listen, might now and then make harmless and innocent enquiries when in town, but… I fear that either Mister Peel, Admiral Parker, or your Captain Nicely, ah… over-sold how much direct aid to your… expedition, ahem! I might render, so… "
"You did intend to smuggle us away once we'd cut a throat or two?" Lewrie brutally stated. "Left bodies piled in the streets?"
"So long as I or Panton, Leslie were not, ah… exposed to the Spanish, sir, yes," Panton tremulously confessed, "so long as you managed the task covertly, without… I am merely a businessman, sir!"
"If not your brig, then what about one of your shalopes, or a lugger? Lewrie pressed. "One of your river boats stout enough for the open sea? Give us a few extra hands off the brig or your river boats, and we'll manage things on our own! Could you manage that?"
"Well, of course, sir, that wouldn't, ah… "
Pollock said in evident relief that nothing would stick to his shoes if things went badly. "A plausible excuse for your sudden departure would be necessary, I do think, though, so the firm doesn't-"
"Tell 'em you fired us for buggery," Lewrie quickly suggested, prompting a hearty laugh from his hands. "For all I care, let 'em believe we stole the damn' thing, too! Just so we depart soon!"
"Well, I do have have a decent seaboat and send correspondence aboard her to Jamaica," Pollock allowed, perking up a bit as an alibi sprang to mind. "You could claim to carry-"
The door opened and that damnably merry bell tinkled again, freezing everyone in a hostile tableau as Mr. Caldecott, the First Mate off the Azucena del Oeste, wandered in.
"Ev'nin', all," Mr. Caldecott called, tossing off an idle doff of his hat, and obviously cherry-merry in drink. "Heard the rumours in town? Shootin's and harum-scarums, though the Dons've only found one victim, so far. Some buckskinned turd…"
"We heard!" both Pollock and Lewrie snapped at the same time.
"… even more excitement makin' the rounds," Caldecott breezed on, too tipsy to take umbrage. "The whole town's bellied up to the bar counters t'celebrate the treasure ship they heard was coming."
"Treasure ship?" was the chorus of everyone present, making the idling sailors leap to their feet in sudden and intense interest.
"Bless me, sirs. Don't know how much stock t'put in the tale," Caldecott explained, beaming, "what with how excitable Dons and Creoles can get, but… word is that the banking houses got told tons o' money was t'be sent here, fresh from the Mexico City mint. Place d'Armes is so crowded, you'd think it was a saint's day pageant. Fireworks, band, and all, by-"
"And did they say, ah… how much was coming, Mister Caldecott?" Pollock asked, his eyes slit in avaricious calculations.
"Oh, bloody millions, sir!" Caldecott happily replied, pouring himself a glass of wine from the sideboard carafe. "A million pounds in real money. And that was the low guess. The more wine, the higher."
The Captain`s Vengeance l-12 Page 29