The Scent of Betrayal

by David Donachie

  ‘Slim, your honour,’ Pender replied. ‘Captain Fernandez has set up home in the main cabin. If I’m allowed in there at all, it’s only with him beside me. That’s why I couldn’t get your own pistols out of the desk drawer. He examines everything I take out.’

  ‘You know those sea-chests that you took out of the Gauchos?’ Pender nodded. ‘One of them contains something I need very badly.’

  ‘Well, you’re whistling for a wind, Capt’n, without you can get Fernandez out of the way.’

  ‘The casements are on the same side as the jetty.’

  ‘Only five feet high and ten yards from two sentries sittin’ on a bollard. Now they’re lazy sods an’ no error, but they’re not blind nor deaf.’

  ‘I have to find a way,’ Harry insisted.

  ‘What is it we’re after?’

  ‘Letters.’

  ‘An’ they’re in that chest?’ Harry nodded, as Pender continued. ‘Where?’

  The blank look made Pender frown impatiently. ‘Are they just in the chest, or hidden away?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Harry was suddenly distracted by the sound of Hyacinthe’s laughter. He heard James’s voice too, producing another witticism that would amuse her. Pender tugged his sleeve hard to regain his attention. ‘Then, your honour, we need to find out.’

  ‘What’s the point, if we can’t get to them?’

  ‘There’s always a way, like for instance your notion of the lads getting shirty because they can’t get ashore to join in the dancing. Only thing is the timin’, which is a bit hard to fix. If I could get in there I don’t know whether I’d have five seconds or five minutes.’

  ‘How long do you need?’

  ‘If’n I’m sure of where I’m looking, seconds, even if it ain’t locked. But if I have to search.’ Pender shrugged eloquently. ‘Which would it be?’

  Harry conjured up a picture of McGillivray. He didn’t strike him as a man who would panic, but if he had information to impart, the mere idea that his secrets weren’t yet safe might induce caution. If he heard that the chest had been left unlocked within ten feet of a Spanish army officer, he could easily refuse to trade.

  ‘I don’t think I can ask for an exact location.’

  ‘Then I need time.’

  ‘Would a fight on deck fetch Fernandez out of my cabin for five minutes?’ asked Harry.

  ‘Depends on whether he likes to watch a scrap. Anyway, it’s worth a try.’

  ‘There has to be another, surer way.’

  Hyacinthe laughed again, a pealing delightful sound. Pender turned his head towards it. ‘There is!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘He’s a man, ain’t he?’

  Following Pender’s look, and the sound, it wasn’t difficult to deduce his meaning. ‘I can’t involve her!’

  ‘You don’t have to, your honour. Just ask her to look over the ship. Since she’s soft on you, the idea would likely please her. All she has to do is get the sod out onto the deck for a while and I can do the business.’

  ‘I don’t like it. First, involving her. What happens if anything goes wrong?’

  ‘Then I’m for the high jump,’ said Pender, sharply.

  Harry winced, realising that in his concern for Hyacinthe he’d forgotten the risks his servant was proposing to take.

  ‘Sorry. I’m just not sure that she can distract Fernandez for any length of time.’

  It was Pender’s turn to grin. ‘Why not, Capt’n? She’s managed to do it to you!’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  HYACINTHE, taking an early dinner, listened as Harry delivered his strong and continuous hints. Her lack of interest, or indeed of any response, forced him into ever more desperate enthusiasm, as he described Bucephalas in terms that made the ship sound like a work of art to rival a sculpture by Michelangelo. Finally, having sat with a bland expression on her face, she burst out angrily.

  ‘I am not an idiot. Would it not be better, Harry, to tell me the truth.’

  ‘Truth?’ he replied lamely.

  ‘Yes. You want me to go to your ship for a reason. I saw that gun today. I know you have a plan to escape. Why should I help you to do that?’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to see me trapped here for ever, would you?’

  She lifted his hand gently off the table and placed it on her left breast. ‘Here, yes, Harry. In New Orleans, no.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for? That you have tried to lie to me, or that one day, perhaps soon, you will leave without saying goodbye?’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ he insisted.

  She smiled. ‘You are a man, Harry. That is exactly what you will do. Now tell me why you truly want me to visit your ship so I can make up my mind.’

  ‘I won’t leave without saying goodbye, Hyacinthe. Indeed, I might not want to go without you at all.’

  ‘Then you are a fool,’ she snapped. ‘You are going back to England, yes? What will you do when you land there and meet all those grand, rich people you know? Will you say to them,

  “Meet Hyacinthe Feraud. She was a whore in New Orleans but she is a lady now”?’

  ‘You are not a whore.’

  ‘No, Harry, I am the keeper of a brothel.’

  ‘True. But it’s a very fine brothel.’

  She threw back her head and laughed, leaving Harry to wonder, for the hundredth time in three days, how someone of such beauty and wit could be so self-deprecating.

  ‘You must understand, Hyacinthe, that if I have any grand friends I don’t give a toss for what they think. If you don’t believe me, ask James.’

  ‘Tut, tut, Harry. He is the last person to ask.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I like your brother. He is amusing, droll, and he uses his brushes like a divine saint. Already he has shown me the way he is painting me.’

  ‘He hasn’t shown me.’

  ‘While he dabs, we talk, and certain things I get to know. Perhaps he has more of the sense than you. He likes me. But here, in the Hôtel de la Porte d’Orléans, he would not care to see me even aboard your ship. And he would have a horror to imagine me on your arm, walking around in London.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Hyacinthe. James is an artist, and I might add rather unconventional. He’s not like that, at all.’

  She shook her head slowly, then abruptly changed the subject. ‘Tell me why you want me to visit the ship.’

  Hyacinthe showed her intelligence right away, pointing out to Harry that for her to go aboard Bucephalas alone wouldn’t work: being well known in New Orleans, only a fool would believe she was interested in a ship. Cayetano couldn’t fail to know who was sharing her bed, since he’d more or less ordered it, so her idea was to involve him, let him ask to have a look at her new lover’s floating home, taking her along. Harry wasn’t convinced that de Coburrabias was the romantic soul that Hyacinthe described, and was extremely doubtful, but she was sure that loving all things military he’d oblige. A note was sent off immediately and the soldier, still less than a morning’s ride away at Fort St Jean, agreed with alacrity – that he should be invited, while the senior naval officer was not, amused him. This provided a double bonus, because with El Señor Cayetano de Fajardo de Coburrabias on deck there was no way that Fernandez could stay in his cabin. Indeed he had to be on deck when his superior arrived, with a guard of honour lined up to greet him.

  Pender, apparently on the ship by coincidence, insisted on organising the men to pipe the Spanish commander aboard. He then suggested, by much slow talking and arm waving, that Fernandez could hardly carry off such a visit without providing refreshments; that only he, as Harry’s servant, knew where the best was to be found in the way of delicacies and plate. Thus he found himself alone in the cabin for a good half-hour, with more than enough time to search McGillivray’s chest. He found the letters, in a pouch, in a secret compartment in the bottom, under the silk lining. He also managed to stuff two cutlasses, wrapped in canvas, into
the leather case that contained the portraits they’d found aboard the Gauchos. He lowered it out of the casement while the Spaniards, officers and men, were occupied. Then he left the ship without anyone saying a word.

  ‘It took ten minutes, your honour,’ he said, when he returned. ‘And if you hadn’t said they were there for certain, I might not have found ’em at all.’

  ‘What did Hyacinthe think of the ship?’ asked Harry, swiping at an imaginary enemy with one of the swords.

  ‘I didn’t enquire, Capt’n, but she seemed happy enough.’

  ‘Did the crew take to her?’

  ‘Course they did, like they would to any good-looking woman in her finery.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Harry replied. He picked up and fingered the beaded pouch of letters that Pender had placed on the table.

  ‘Let’s just say, Capt’n, that the idea of a woman aboard when they’re at sea only gets their superstitions twitching.’

  Pender made no attempt to keep the slight note of disapproval hidden, and Harry looked at him with some sadness. ‘You don’t approve, do you?’

  ‘It’s not up to me to do one thing or the other, your honour. I like the lady, if’n that’s what you want to know. But I also reckon that what’s fine when the sun is shining don’t always look so good when it clouds over.’

  ‘Harry,’ said Hyacinthe, bursting in. ‘I love your little ship. Cayetano tells me you have named it after the horse of Alexander. He gave me this for you.’

  She handed Harry a note, which he opened immediately. ‘De Coburrabias has invited me to go hunting, would you believe. Where is the Manchac Post?’

  ‘On the border where the Americans are.’

  Harry laid the note on the table and held up the beaded package to show Hyacinthe. ‘We were successful.’

  ‘Oh, I know that.’ She took Pender’s arm and squeezed it. ‘This rogue here, as he left the cabin, he give me a big thing with the eye.’

  Hyacinthe followed that with a huge wink. Harry laughed, and was pleased to see that his servant, still clutched by Hyacinthe, despite his reservations about her, was prepared to join in the hilarity. She spotted the rolled-up canvas that had been dragged out of the leather case when Harry had removed the sword.

  ‘A couple of portraits we took off the Gauchos,’ Harry said, as his brother walked in. ‘I cannot comprehend what Pollock was talking about, James, when he said you’d do well in America. It seems to me that every living soul has been immortalised on canvas.’

  He threw him the other cutlass and presented himself. James did likewise. Watched by Pender, none of the men noticed that Hyacinthe had opened the inside portrait just enough to see the mantilla-covered head, and the pale wistful face underneath. They didn’t observe the odd colour, almost grey, that tinged her face. Nor, because of the clash of metal, did they hear the small gasp. By the time Harry, sweeping James’s cutlass aside, turned in triumph, the portrait was back on the table, but the effect had not entirely gone. He saw her face and walked over quickly.

  ‘Are you all right, Hyacinthe?’

  She gave him a wan smile. ‘Of course. A little sun perhaps.’

  ‘Do you wish to lie down?’

  ‘Rogue,’ she said, forcing a smile as she dug him in the stomach. ‘I have work to do.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ he insisted.

  Her eyes fixed on his with some intensity. ‘Did you mean what you said yesterday?’

  ‘I said a lot of things yesterday,’ he replied guardedly.

  ‘I know what I’m saying, Harry,’ she whispered, this so that James and Pender couldn’t hear. ‘Will you take me away?’

  Harry barely paused before he answered. ‘Yes. I will.’

  That produced another thin smile. ‘All you need is your money.’

  Harry bent forward to breathe in her ear. ‘This close to you, Hyacinthe, I’m not sure that need is so desperate.’

  ‘I had the luck, Harry. There are girls who came to the hotel at the same time as me who will end up like ragged skeletons shivering outside those leaky tiendas on the edge of the swamp.’

  Harry slid across the bed and ran his hand down her chest, just below her breasts, his fingers picking out each rib, wondering why Hyacinthe seemed depressed.

  ‘I can feel your bones already.’

  He’d meant it as a joke, but her response, even if she knew that, was slightly querulous.

  ‘Can you imagine how many men I have heard make such jokes?’

  ‘Only too well, Hyacinthe, since you made no secret of it.’

  He, in turn tried to sound as though that didn’t matter. But of course it did, even if he knew that it was ridiculous to come into someone’s life and behave as though he had a commitment that preceded the first meeting. Everyone had a past, including himself, that was entirely their own affair, and judgements, moral or otherwise, were futile. She had been quite open about hers, without in any way labouring the point. The luck she spoke of he understood, since her rise to her present position had been seamless. Given her looks and intelligence it was entirely understandable, but he knew from his own experience the fickle nature of good fortune. Yet her background wasn’t something he could ignore under this roof, with at least one of her previous lovers, Thankful Tucker, still hovering about.

  ‘Do you trust me, Harry?’

  The question, given the nature of his thoughts, caught him completely by surprise, and made his positive reply sound what it was, automatic.

  ‘Some men I have known trusted me more than they did their own wives. They told me things that they should have kept to themselves. Sometimes I think I have heard confessions that they would not even have dared tell their priest.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ he replied, squeezing her flesh in his hands to add a degree of reassurance.

  ‘You are not like that.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ he replied, his voice betraying the fact that he was slightly stung.

  She laughed. ‘You are not the type to confess, Harry, I think. That would be a weakness. You like your secrets too much.’

  He lifted himself on to one elbow, and looked down into her eyes. ‘I can’t think of anyone I’ve been more open with than you. Do you believe me?’

  Hyacinthe put a hand behind his neck and pulled his face towards hers till his head was buried in the crook of her neck. She was thinking about honesty; of the note she’d picked up the day before, crumpled and forgotten, with that disguised writing and the effect of seeing that portrait. Harry had secrets he shared with Pender and James, from which she was excluded. But lovers lied to each other all the time. She, too, had been less than truthful with Harry: when she’d described how she’d come to be at the hotel, leaving out those things which were painful, it had been as much for her benefit as for his. How could she tell him about the degradation she’d been exposed to, as her virginity had been sold a dozen times to slobbering lechers so jaded in their appetites that any girl over the age of twelve was too old to arouse them? Of working the road outside, just as her successors did now, and the luck that had plucked her from that path and set her up here, as the madam of the place, free to choose her partners rather than obliged to accept anyone, drunk, or deformed, who offered enough money? Nor could she say how transient her situation was, that a flick of one man’s fingers could see her back on the streets; nor how she longed for a security she’d never known.

  The lie she told now came much more easily, since she wasn’t obliged to look this enigmatic Englishman in the eye. He would not see the pain his lack of trust inflicted, nor detect the hope that she could somehow make that change.

  ‘Yes, Harry. Of course I believe you.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  HARRY NOTICED the escort well before he reached the junction of the Calle de Bourbon and the Calle San Luis. Two Indians were ahead, one behind, while another was on the opposite side of the street. They didn’t look at the trio of Englishmen once. Instead they s
canned the route to ensure their charges weren’t being followed, even casting a wary eye over the almost endless scaffolding that surrounded those buildings still under construction. Harry, equally cautious, slowed his pace as he approached the black door that opened onto the corner. Able to see the building for the first time, he observed that it was unremarkable. The dun-coloured walls were flat and featureless, the street-level windows shuttered in wood, and decoration was confined to metalwork on the balcony that ran around the first floor. With the same magical air as they’d experienced before, the door opened as they approached. All three walked into the cool, dark hallway to find Alexander McGillivray standing at the end. He gestured to them to follow him, and made his way up the stairs. They entered an upstairs room, a comfortably appointed affair, cooled by a slight breeze coming through the open full-length windows.

  ‘This man is your servant, yes?’ he asked, indicating Pender.

  ‘He is and he isn’t,’ Harry replied, enigmatically.

  ‘Then he should wait out here.’

  ‘No,’ said James.

  ‘You trust him?’

  ‘We both trust him,’ said Harry.

  McGillivray looked Pender up and down. ‘Are you armed?’

  ‘Do we need to be?’ Pender replied.

  ‘No!’ McGillivray smiled, exposing again that even row of gleaming white teeth. Then he opened his black coat to reassure them.

  Pender looked into the room, then, satisfied that it was empty, produced a club from inside his loose breeches. ‘Then you’ll want to see this put somewhere we can all keep our eye on it.’

  ‘On the table will do fine,’ the Creek replied, before looking at Harry. ‘You have my letters.’

  ‘Pender!’

  McGillivray’s eyes followed the pouch as it was passed over. Harry held it up so that he could get a better look. The Creek held out his hand.

  ‘I believe you have something for us.’

  ‘I have information.’

  ‘About de Carondelet’s bullion?’