“Wisht Georgie’d spent ‘at long soakin’ in wawter,” another of his buckskinned companions hooted.
“Whyever did you kill it, if it took so long and smelt so bad?” Lewrie further enquired.
“H’it piss me awf!” Georgie said with an affronted snort. “Got inna m’chicken coop, a’stealin’ ay’ggs, an’ ‘en hayud th’ gall t’spray at me. Huh! ‘At’s th’ las’ thayng he ever done.”
Lewrie couldn’t tell which reek was worse, the skunk-fur cap or Georgie in general. Both shared a sour-corpse musk, mixed with wood smoke, crudely brain-tanned leather, old sweat and wet tobacco, sour-wet wool and felt, mud-soiled feet and toes, and scrofulous crotch and armpits. Taken altogether, the frontiersman was a positive mélange of aromas and could have kept his cats, Toulon and Chalky, sniffing in sheer ecstacy for hours, their little jaws as agape as miniature lions to savour the subtlest effluvia!
“Stout fellow!” Lewrie exclaimed to further disarm him, holding out his unopened flask of whisky. “Capital work!”
Georgie stared at him, glareful, as if wondering if he was being twitted, then at the offered flask, eyes aswim as if having trouble in focussing on anything that close. Georgie finally took the flask, bit down on the cork, pulled it with his brown teeth (those remaining, that is) and spat it to the deck. He shifted a quid of “chaw-baccy” to the other side of his mouth, tipped the flask up, and drained it in two or three long gulps.
“I don’t s’pose there’s a market for skunk-fur caps,” Lewrie wondered aloud to the better-dresed fellow who seemed to be their leader. “During the Revolution, Benjamin Franklin’s coonskins were all the rage in Paris. The Frogs were mad for ’em.”
“No, I doubt they is.” The man chuckled as the tension evaporated. Georgie ripped off a stentorian belch, then beamed at Lewrie with a dank, quid-dribbly smile. “You’re a tradin’ fellah, are you, Mister ah…”
“Alan Willoughby,” Lewrie said, extending his hand; and pleased that despite Peel’s cynical sneer, he had no trouble recalling it.
“Jim Hawk Ellison,” the other said, shaking hands. “We’re down from Tennessee. Say ‘thankee’ for the whisky, Georgie.”
“Thankee, mister,” Georgie said, almost bobbing now.
“So, what line o’ goods ya handle, then, Mister Willoughby?”
“Oh, this and that, what sells best upriver or on the eastern bank.” Lewrie shrugged off. “We’re asking about first, before we buy any goods, Jugg and I… This is Toby Jugg, one of my men. Say hello to Mister Ellison, Jugg,” he smirkily suggested, getting a bit of his own back after Jugg had twigged him.
“Mister Jugg,” Ellison offered. “How do?”
“Mister Ellison, sor?” Jugg said, knuckling the wide brim of his hat first, then hesitantly taking Ellison’s hand, as if that congenial social convention was only for gentlemen, outside his experience.
“British, and Irish, ya sound, sirs,” Ellison decided, his face tweaked up into a wry expression. “A long way from home, are you?”
“Well, weren’t you British before the Revolution, as well, sir?” Lewrie posed, about ready to hock up another lung in dread that they’d been found out not an hour after setting off on their own. “In a manner of speaking, that is?”
“Hah!” Mr. Jim Hawk Ellison hooted with mirth, flinging his head back for a second. “I s’pose we were, at that. And some of our rich folk from the coasts… the first states… sometime act as if they still were, at times.”
“From Tennessee,” Lewrie speculated, “that makes you a long way from home, yourself, Mister Ellison. What, uh… line do you follow?”
“Land speculatin’,” Ellison replied, as if it was of no matter. “On the eastern banks,” he added, as if to mystify, with a shrug and a wink.
“Oh, you’re with the Yazoo Company, then?” Lewrie asked.
“No, they’re too big a fish for me.” Ellison chuckled. “Call it a private venture. Some friends and associates of mine in Nashborough… that’s our new state capital, ya know … thought to put a company of their own t’gether. The Robertsons, Donelsons, and Overtons got the real power, but they’re lookin’ west to the Mississippi, t’other side o’ the Tennessee River, now they got the middle of the state sewed up. I come from North Carolina first off, right after the war ended. I read for the law in Salisbury, but sorta followed our militia over-mountain t’East Tennessee, liked it better, an’ never left. Had a hand in startin’ the state o’ Franklin, with John Sevier and them, ’til Virginia an’ both Carolinas run it under. Drifted on over t’Nashborough just before Tennessee got statehood, an’ ya know what, Mister Willougby? Not a bit o’ credit, nor profit, ever come from any of it.”
“Oh, what a pity,” Lewrie commiserated, though it was disconcerting to be the recipient of such a tale of woe right off. English gentlemen would never blurt out the details of their lives so early in a passing acquaintanceship, nor nigh-brag upon their failures in life to anyone, English or not, close kin or not. Though he could recall a unique Colonial American trait in the Loyalists he’d met when serving with them during the Revolution; ask what day it was, and he’d get a full hour’s discourse. He put it down to Yankees springing from a much smaller circle of society, their rusticity and isolation resulting in a belief that everyone they met was almost kin. Besides, he could sneer, when you came down to it, Americans had no other diverting amusements!
“So, you’ve come south in Hopes of better?” Lewrie asked.
“And ya know what they say… ‘hope springs eternal,’” Ellison almost gaily admitted. “Oh, I had a land grant, from servin’ with the Army for a spell. Sixty-four hundred acres, the Continental Congress and the state o’ North Carolina said I was t’have. But by the time they got through squabblin’ over who could issue my grant—Congress an’ three states!—and all of it in Franklin, I hadta sell up for ten cent an acre. Not much t’show for four years o’ fightin’, the Cow Pens and King’s Mountain, Camden and—”
“You whipped Banastre Tarleton?” Lewrie exclaimed. “And King’s Mountain… I still own one of Major Patrick Ferguson’s breech-loader rifles, that—” He clapped his mouth shut, but a sorrowful second too late. Trying to be congenial and sociable, he was betrayed by his dislike for Tarleton and his enthusiasm for fine firearms.
“Do tell,” Ellison cagily said, almost peeking from beneath the brim of his hat. “Thought we’d captured ’em all at King’s Mountain.”
“Well, some few’d been bought before …” Lewrie flummoxed. He could almost feel Jugg’s eyes rolling behind his back, perhaps hear a sotto voce “Christ, you’re hopeless!” movement of his lips!
“So you were a Loyalist, then?” Ellison enquired. “A Tory?”
“Royal Navy,” Lewrie confessed with a grunting sound. “Got it from some Cape Fear Loyalists before they went north with Cornwallis to Yorktown. They put it up on a bad wager when we put into Wilmington. And thankee for whipping Tarleton, too. Met him there briefly… when he was stabling his cavalry mounts in the pew boxes of Saint James’s Church, the haughty bastard. And I ran into him in England, too. At Bath, it was, in the Long Rooms one night,” Lewrie continued, and most of it true, whilst he’d been at sixes and sevens on half-pay, after paying off his first temporary command, the Shrike brig. “He and Benedict Arnold both, the same night, in point of fact. Still wearin’ their uniforms, as if they’d ever be employed again!”
Lewrie felt that some un-English loquaciousness was called for, so he prosed on. “Tarleton was the same top-lofty, arrogant shit, but Arnold, well… I s’pose it was because his wife, Peggy, was with him at the time, but he was almost pleasant. Skint and miserly with his poor stack o’ coin, but pleasant. When he wasn’t frettin’ over what he had lost at the tables, and doin’ sums in his head t’see could they afford another bottle o’ wine, that is.”
“And how’d a British Navy officer and his man get into Spanish New Orleans? Don’t ya know they’d throw ya under the calabozo if they learn you’re he
re?” Ellison asked with a cynical snort.
“Ah, but I’m not British any longer, d’ye see!” Lewrie rejoined with a sudden burst of inspiration. “And Jugg, well… what Irishman would claim that, if America’s open to one and all looking for a fresh start, I ask you?”
“Amen t’that, sor,” Jugg seconded with enthusiasm. “An’ after wot Admiralty did to ya, an’ all, arrah.”
“Jugg, for God’s sake,” Lewrie spat, spinning to blow Jugg’s ears off, but stopping a rant at the sight of the man’s sly look. “It is not a subject I bandy about to just …” he spluttered. Admittedly, he didn’t know where Jugg was going with it, nor did he have a single clue what else he should say to reestablish his manufactured identity.
Knew I’d muck this up! he scathed himself, the very details of his false background a sweat-soaked, confusing muddle in his own head.
“Just got here, did ya, Mister Willoughby?” Ellison probed.
“Ah… two days ago, aye,” Lewrie told him. Dare he say that they’d come on the Panton, Leslie ship Azucena del Oeste? Would its Spanish registry save him from exposing the whole enterprise? Or was it widely known as a spy ship, the company that owned it deep in the Crown’s pocket? “On the Azucena del Oeste,” he cautiously added.
“Yeah, I saw her come in,” Ellison casually said, with no more suspicion than previous to his tone. “Panton, Leslie carries good wares. Have some arms aboard, do they? You’d be amazed how the easterners from the wrong side of the mountains think t’settle without decent arms, nor enough flint, shot, and powder. Like all the Indians just up an’ flew away soon as we became a state.”
“I believe they do,” Lewrie informed him. “Most especially, a quantity of Austrian air-rifles, quiet as anything, but very accurate. Better than a musket, but not as good as a Pennsylvania rifle. Decent price they’re asking, too, I think. You ought to at least take a look at ’em, if for no other reason that they’re a rarity, sir.”
“Hmmm… maybe I will, at that,” Ellison mused aloud, rubbing his chin. “Well, I haveta go catch up with my wild men before they wreck the place,” he added with a wry grin. “They get a snootful, and they’re like the old bull in the china shop, don’t ya know. Maybe we will run into each other again, long as we’re both in New Orleans? I favour the Pigeonnier cabaret, if you’re lookin’ for entertainment on the town. Got hired rooms nearby.”
“Thankee for the suggestion, Mister Ellison,” Lewrie said with a relieved grin, shaking hands with the fellow once more, though he hadn’t the first clue as to what a cabaret was or what sort of amusement might be found in one, especially one called the “Pigeon Coop.”
“Mister Willoughby… Mister Jugg,” Ellison gallantly said as he doffed his hat and sketched a brief, jerking bow in congé, forcing them to lift their own lids and show a “leg.”
Ellison had not taken two steps when he turned about, though.
“By the by, Mister Willoughby, that was quick thinkin’, the way ya handled Georgie,” Ellison told him, greatly amused.
“Er, ah, thankee, Mister Ellison.”
“For a minute there, I thought you’d riled him beyond all temperance. When that happens, he’s a very short fuse. The most warning ya have is him sayin’, ‘Ah’ll kee’ ye,’ then it’s ‘Katie, bar the door.’”
“Ah kee’ ye?” Lewrie parroted, head cocked in query.
“That’s country for ‘kill you,’ sir,” Ellison warned, not half as jovially as he’d been just a moment before, then knuckled the brim of his hat, spun about, and went below to the emporium proper.
“Think I blew it, do you, Jugg?” Lewrie felt need to ask, once they were alone at the starboard rails. “By God, I do!”
“Permission t’git ragin’ drunk, sor,” Jugg replied.
“That bad?”
“F’r when ‘e comes sniffin’ about an’ askin’ me ‘bout ya, sor. An’ gits me three sheets t’th’ wind t’do it, sure,” Jugg added with a wide grin of expectation. “I’ll set him straight, no fear, sor.”
“By God, somebody should,” Lewrie bemoaned, back turned so he could not hear Jugg’s scathing, mouthed “Amen!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The de Guilleris—Helio, Hippolyte, and Charité—with Don Rubio Monaster, and their cousin Jean-Marie, were “at home” to receive guests. To the casual passerby who took note of their guests’ arrival nothing could seem more innocent. First came Monsieur Henri Maurepas, the prim and eminently respectable banker, a man known in New Orleans as the de Guilleris’ parents’ factotum and financial advisor who stood in loco parentis to keep the youngsters reined in whilst their elders, the dashingly handsome Hilaire and the beauteous Marie pursued rounds of country pleasures on their up-country plantations.
Their other two guests—Capitaines Lanxade and Balfa—might have drawn more attention as they arrived; more envy than anthing else for those two old rogues and their tales of derring-do were always welcome in French Creole parlours.
Nothing could seem more innocent—café au lait, sweets, and fresh-baked biscuits, bright laughter and vicarious thrills. Though, inside the grand upper-storey appartement on the Rue Dauphine, everyone sat stiffly upright in expectation, or slumped in boredom as Henri Maurepas droned on through his dry financial summary.
“… results in a profit to the Reunion Enterprise of four hundred fifty thousand Spanish dollars,” Maurepas fussily related. Monsieur Maurepas was one of those gotch-gutted minikins, what crude Americans would call “shad-bellied,” though a fine satin waist-coat and a gold watch chain tautly spanned that “appliance.” The balding Maurepas patted his shiny pate and fiddled with his little oval spectacles, awarding them a wee smile as he summed up his report. “The bank has deducted its tenth part, as your agent. A twentieth part goes to Monsieur Bistineau to cover those bribes he paid the Spanish authorities at the Cabildo to land untaxed goods. Another forty-five thousand dollars, I shifted into the Revolutionary Fund, for purchase of weapons, shot, and powder to arm new recruits. Less a further ten percent each due Capitaines Lanxade and Balfa, and shares to reward their sailors, ah… that leaves ten percent to be divided equally between you young people, as the principals, that is to say… nine thousand silver dollars each.” He ended with a short, seated bow to every person present. “Which shares are now deposited in your accounts, to draw upon as you wish.”
If he thought he’d made them happy, then he was wrong. Rubio Monaster went poutily red-faced; penniless Jean-Marie Rancour, whose family had fled bloody Saint-Domingue with nothing, went pale and gaping in disappointment. As for the doughty pirate capitaines …
“You cheese-paring bougre!” Boudreaux Balfa erupted, leaping to his feet. “You an’ dat Bistineau salaud, too, him! He gets dem goods for nothin’, den sells ’em dear, an’ bribin’ de Spanish he done did all de time, by damn! Normal bid ‘ness wit’ Bistineau. Eh, merde!”
“We can’t go back to our crew with promises or bank slips. We need to take them their shares, in coin … now!” Capt. Jérôme Lanxade demanded, rising with his left hand on the hilt of his smallsword and with a wee creak from his own “appliance,” that bone-stayed corset that kept his own boudins from resembling the banker’s. “They will not wait for their money. They signed on for a quick payout, with nothing up front but wine, rum, and rations, and had to provide their own hammocks and sea kits! They’re waiting aboard Le Revenant where we hid her for their money… and I tell you, banker, they will not wait long! They have no trust in lubberly accounts, they want silver and gold!”
“But, Capitaine … that much specie in one batch will weigh so much, my bank does not hold reserves that—!” Maurepas tried to demur.
“Your bank, m’sieur, and you yourself, entered into our scheme with assurances to us that you did so from pure patriotic fervour. Do you now wish to see everything fall apart because you refused to take risks?” Helio de Guilleri accusingly spat, still slumped upon a table edge by one arm. “This is for Louisiana’s freedom. For France!”
“After what the gallant French people did to throw off the despotism of King Louis and the ancien régime,” Charité de Guilleri chid him from her seat at the other side of the table. She sat erect and prim, hands clasped together in her lap as she would at Mass with her family. “After the example even the bumpkinish Americans showed us when they wrote their Declaration of Independence, m’sieur Maurepas … that they ‘pledged their property, their lives, and their sacred honour’ to oust the perfidious Anglais? Freeing Louisiana from Spanish tyranny and declaring ourselves part of Republican France is just as noble a cause. Shame, m’sieur Maurepas, for shame!”
“Mademoiselle, I would do anything for our coming revolution, but a successful revolution must have a sound financial footing, and I cannot assure you that foundation without being somewhat circumspect,” M. Maurepas insisted, dabbing at his face with a handkerchief, ready to polish the lenses of his spectacles of the irritation-fog that his skin had generated. “Money is power, young people… as powerful as massed artillery, for it buys the guns, the shot and powder, it clothes and feeds the brave—”
“Pays their damned wages,” Capitaine Lanxade nastily growled.
“Keep de ship dat make money afloat, an’ ready to fight, money.” Balfa gruffly added. He had sat back down and was now squashed into a hairy hog-pile of muscles, his arms crossed over his chest. “An’ not enough money, by Gar! Forty percent for de men, dat’s only… uh, one hundred eighty t’ousand dollar, only four t’ousand dollar apiece, and dey can drink dat up in a week! Mebbe the bank only take five percent, and dat revolution fund go short dis time, mebbe so, hein?”
“But we agreed upon a—” Maurepas said in a scandalised gasp.
“Two hundred and forty thousand silver dollars to be shared by our hands,” Lanxade proposed, stroking his mustachios and twirling a tip as if the matter was settled. “That’s fairer. That will be over five thousand dollars per sailor,” he loosely guessed.
The Captain's Vengeance Page 14