“She was a girl, Mister Pollock… play-acting in men’s togs,” Lewrie quickly assured him. “Made sure o’ that! A full inspection… keel to truck. She said she was from a proper Creole family here in town… out for a stolen night of gambling and fun whilst her folks are in the country. Well-spoken and mannered, obviously educ—”
“Well, I rather doubt that, Mister Willoughby,” Pollock drawled back, once he’d gotten over his utter shock and no longer looked like he’d dive out the window shutters in disgust; now he was condescending and simpering with superior local lore. “Proper young Creole ladies never indulge in such, in such low haunts. Sons, however, are expected to, are even encouraged to sloth, indolence, and vice. Daughters, good’uns, might as well be raised to be nuns. No no, sir! I suspect you were spun a merry tale by a cunning bawd who earns a high ‘socket fee,’ ahem! … for her ah, novelty,” Pollock tuttutted, blushing.
“Didn’t ask for tuppence,” Lewrie rejoined quickly, boasting a bit. “Well, a brace of champagnes, and she did take me for ten pounds at Bouré before we left the cabaret. Intriguin’ game, that, but never a word about being for hire. Oddest, most intriguing girl, too…”
Pollock winced, as if Lewrie would descend to Billingsgate smut to describe his evening, but was saved by the waiter’s arrival. A cup and saucer was placed before Lewrie without asking, and a stout coffee was poured. “The omelettes are quite good here,” Pollock said instead.
“French style… piss-runny and underdone?” Lewrie scoffed.
“A Catalan Spaniard owns the place, so they’re properly done,” Pollock advised. “Quite succulent with their ham or bacon.” To which suggestion Lewrie took heed and placed a hearty four-egg order.
His coffee was stout and strong, the best ever passed his lips, but with an odd, bitter aftertaste, a tang that put Lewrie in mind of the ink-black council brew the Muskogee Indians inaptly termed “White Drink” that caused copious perspiring, pissing, and purifying puking.
“South American or Mexican coffee beans, hereabouts,” Pollock explained, “though I do prefer the Turk or Arabica. The climate and soil in Louisiana is much too damp for coffee, and sometimes subject to frost. With the war on, the locals eke out their imports with the local equivalent, chicory. Tasty, once you develop a palate to it. With sugar and cream. Lots of cream, I’d advise, which makes what the French call a café au lait.”
“Hmmm… better,” Lewrie agreed, after a liberal admixture and a second taste. A smallish platter of little crescent-shaped sugared rolls sat between them, on which Pollock had been snacking before his own breakfast arrived, and Lewrie tasted one… or two or three. A French breakfast, he’d found in his Mediterranean travels, always did lean towards a lot of breads.
“Towards the end, the girl seemed quite taken with me,” Lewrie continued his tale, in a confidential voice.
“Indeed,” Mr. Pollock frostily commented. “Ahem?”
“She mentioned the possibility that ex-Lieutenant Willoughby, RN, might make his fortune as captain of a New Orleans-owned merchant ship, maybe even end up master of an entire fleet of merchantmen, did I play my cards right. All sorts of hints that their new crops of rice and cotton are the coming thing, and that she was on good terms of some sort with a fair number of the rich and powerful who’d fund the ships I’d design, or go survey and buy for ’em. Damme, but these… whatevers are good!”
“She did, did she?” Pollock mused aloud, perking up and giving at least one ear to Lewrie’s tale. “Well, well… oh, but that might have been but wee-hours ‘pillow talk,’” he piffled a moment later as he tore one of those little rolls in two, stared at both bites, as if unable to decide which to swallow first, and mulled all that over.
“Not the sort of offer one hears from a common trull, don’t ye know,” Lewrie pointed out. “Usually, the well-pleased strumpets hint at ‘going under the protection’ of the lout, is he a gentleman of any means… or making him her bully-buck and pimp for a cut of the profits t’ keep her safe on the streets. Lurk near her rooms…”
“Indeed.” Pollock icily glared at him.
“Well… or so I’ve heard,” Lewrie replied, shifty-eyed, making a throat-clearing “Ahem” of his own before furthering his point. “The way she suggested it, her understanding of syndicates and such, and her air of … actual gentility was what convinced me that it might be—”
“Dressed in men’s attire, I b’lieve you said she was?” Pollock interrupted.
“Aye, and with a false mustachio pasted on her upper lip, too,” Lewrie sulkily insisted.
“Well, surely… ahem!” Pollock brightened, bestowing upon his breakfast partner an almost pitiable look, “a girl out on the town who dresses so… perhaps well-raised once, as you described, I grant you… might delight in spinning phantasms about herself, about what she could do for you. Telling you everything or anything she thought you wished to hear once she’d sounded you out. Either for your monetary support and, uh… protection later on, or … scalping you for ten pounds, or fourty Spanish dollars, was her night’s earnings. Anything she dreamt up afterward was moonbeams, and you her, ah… pleasurable, but unwitting, baa-lamb, Lew… Willoughby.”
“Well, now really!” Lewrie objected, though not too strongly. There was a sordid possibility that he’d been gulled. God knows, it wouldn’t have been the first time! He crossed his arms and grumped.
“And was this after you fed her your, ah… alias?”
“Aye,” Lewrie replied, tight-lipped.
“And did she supply one of her own?” Pollock asked, nigh leering.
“Charité Bonsecours, she said she was,” Lewrie told him. “And in the course of our card game, she introduced me to a pair of brothers by name of Darbone, who sat in with us.”
“Oh, sir,” Pollock commiserated with a world-weary shake of his head. “She was their handmaiden most-like! An attractive lure to get you bedazzled, off your guard, and skinned by a pair of sharps!”
“They barely won five silver dollars each off me, ten at most,” Lewrie countered, “and they each bought a fresh bottle of champagne to keep the game going, ‘cause… well, I got the impression as we were intent on leaving for my rooms that… they seemed more jealous than disappointed. And, sir! If she was their man-trap, why wasn’t she in a revealing, gauzy gown, with her poonts hangin’ out? Why suited, booted, and damn-near spurred?”
“I know of the Darbones, though I cannot recall…” Mr. Pollock deeply frowned, almost chewed on a thumbnail. “I know most of the established Creole families, if just in passing. What were their names?”
“One was Baltasar, t’other, ah… Claude,” Lewrie dredged up at last. “They were all fair-haired, chestnut-ey, I’d say, and blue eyed. In fact, they all three bore a striking resemblance to each other.”
“Oh, half the Creoles in Louisiana fit that description,” Mr. Pollock pooh-poohed. “They all marry their distinguished cousins.”
“So one of the Darbone brothers said, about the resemblance… nothing about the cross-eyed cousins part,” Lewrie replied. “She was a very fetching girl, most…”
“Hmmm… pity you were not intrigued enough to follow her home and get to the bottom of the matter,” Pollock grumpily commented.
“By cock-crow, ’twas all I could do to hand her down the stairs to the door!” Lewrie countered with a smug look. “Had an old captain, said whenever he made a grand night of it ashore, by the time he’d come back aboard, he hadn’t had a wink, and one more passionate kiss, or a cold breakfast, would’ve killed him!”
“And one had hopes you wouldn’t boast, ahem,” Pollock despaired with a heavy sigh. “Still… Charité Bonsecours, didje say? Hmmm, how old? Under twenty, or about twenty, ah-ha. I can’t say that I am able to place her, though French Creole families don’t trot their females out, in the main. Not quite as bad as Hindoo purdah, but…”
“Well, perhaps your wife, being a local lady, might know ’em,” Lewrie offhandedly suggested, slyly watching P
ollock’s reaction.
“My wife!” Pollock instantly bristled. “How did you—”
“My concierge, your former landlady, told me she took the young lady you boarded with as your épouse,” Lewrie said, intrigued, and wondering what it was he’d said to nettle the man.
“Yes, well… ahem,” Pollock said, strangling, purpling, and tugging at his neck-stock. “My wife, of course.”
“Once we’ve eat, shouldn’t we call on her to ask what she knows about the Bonsecours and the Darbones?” Lewrie coyly hinted, his mien as seemingly guileless as the densest, most uninterested cully.
“I doubt there’s need of that, Mister Willoughby,” he snipped back, as if scandalised by the suggestion. “Colette is, ah… ahem! indisposed.”
She that ugly? Lewrie maliciously thought; Is he ashamed about her, ‘cause she’s not lily-white or he’s proper-married somewhere? I just have t’clap eyes on her ‘fore we leave New Orleans!
“Wouldn’t it be worth it to run this Charité Bonsecours to her lodgings, then?” Lewrie suggested, “to see if she knows what she was boasting about? If I posed ready to bolt your employment and enter theirs, it might lead to the ones who back our pirates. I might even get hired to be a pirate captain myself!”
“I s’pose we could …” Pollock somberly mused. “It might not cause too much harm. Could you dissemble well enough. Ah, breakfast!” he cried, instead, glad for the interruption.
Middling large platters were slid before them, holding omelettes as big as roof shingles, oozing cheese and done to a perfect firm turn, laced with bits of red onion and bell pepper. Each platter bore slabs of ham as large-about as ox hooves, half an inch thick. A woven straw basket of piping-hot croissants arrived, too, a fist-sized ball of soft and sweating fresh, salted butter, and an array of local preserves.
“Tasty,” Pollock enthused over each ravishing bite, “and all for a song, don’t ye know. You’ll not find this in an English four-penny ordinary… which is the equivalent cost, here. I’ve come to love New Orleans… though not its summer climate. Or its current owners,” he muttered from the side of his mouth.
“I expect it’d be much cleaner, were someone other than the Dons in charge,” Lewrie said, snickering. “Put in gutters or something… shovel up the horse dung, hire indigents to sweep the garbage into the river, at least. Town drains… gurgle, gurgle, gurgle!”
“We’ll not talk of that,” Pollock warned in a faint whisper.
“Dung and garbage?” Lewrie twinklingly quipped. “Why not?”
“The, ah… change of ownership, ahem,” Pollock hissed, leaning closer in the act of reaching for the salt cellar.
“Oh,” an only slightly chastened Lewrie replied.
“As for our other matter, sir,” Pollock continued to mutter. “Both Lanxade and Balfa have been seen in New Orleans within the past two days. Done up in new finery… Balfa in shoes and stockings, for a rare once, and shopping like an unexpected heir. You ride well, do you, Mister Willoughby?” Pollock suddenly queried, putting Lewrie off his stride with the question.
“Hmm? Aye, main-well, in point of fact,” Lewrie answered, at a loss. “We plan to gallop out to their secret ‘rondy’ and scrag ’em in broad daylight?”
“Their present whereabouts are unknown to me, their exact location,” Pollock said, shying back again by Lewrie’s aggressive air. “I merely suggest that we go for a long ride today. You’re new here… I, as your putative employer, must show you the sights, orient you to the city,” Pollock explained, buttering a roll. “It may be that whilst gadding about, we either spot them and their lair, or make discrete enquiries of them. I’ll do that part, I’m known, and, ah… harmless, ha! In the course of things, we could also survey Lake Pontchartrain, what the lay of the land looks like to you.”
Well, I wasn’t going to draw sword, yell ‘Yoicks, Tally Ho,’ and charge at the first sight of ’em! Lewrie told himself; I ain’t a total fool. A passin’-fair fool at times, but …
“Are we not successful today, we could ride tomorrow as well, does the weather turn off fair,” Pollock suggested, louder this time, as if nattering with a new employee for real, playing the genial host to a brand-new city. “Out east, there’s still land going begging, if you can believe it. We’ll take a good look at it, shall we?”
We find Lanxade and Balfa, though, we whistle up my sailors for a ‘boarding action’ and leave ’em bleedin’ on the cobbles like steers in a Wapping slaughterhouse, Lewrie grimly decided to himself, steeling himself to action; Aye, let’s be at it. And that other nonsense.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Shameless!” Helio de Guilleri spat, still seething after what she’d done; had been seething since she and that lout, a common sailor, a despicable Englishman, had left the Pigeon Coop hours before.
“Do quit stomping about, cher,” Charité lazily scolded, covering another weary yawn, “or Madame D’Ablemont below us will be angry and send the concierge after you. I told both of you that someone had to sound him out, to see if he was dangerous to us. And I did,” she concluded, with a well-hidden, secretly pleased grin.
“Oh, please!” Helio snapped, angry enough to want to seize her and deliver a good shaking. “You debased yourself!”
Charité paused over her light breakfast of melon, strawberries, and rolls, fixing him with an imperious glare, one elegant brow cocked in vexation. “If my good name, and our family’s, worries you so much, mon frère, why is it only now that you deplore my nighttime prowlings, when you were more than aware of my nature before?”
“Nom d’un chien, Charité!” Helio barked. “The man is a lowly, a common… Anglo-Saxon. An Anglais! A Protestant Anglais!”
“Ah!” Charité responded, as if her brother had announced a revelation. “So… I am only to ‘play’ with dashing and proper Creoles of good family, cher? Is that what you demand? I am always the soul of caution and discretion, and so I was with him. Besides, he believes I am a Bonsecour, so no gossip will touch the de Guilleris.”
She switched from a frostily arch coo of annoyance to a twinkly merriment the next moment. “I had the courage and skill, and the allure of my sex, to beard him when you never could, and I think him harmless to us. Alain Weelooby,” she said, butchering the name, “was a British Navy officer, but he was court-martialed and found guilty of theft, in their Impress Service, now a mere hired hand with Panton, Leslie. He is a widower, an embittered lifelong failure, just scraping by, though he dreams of making a fortune at last in the Americas,” she told them, outlining all she had learned from him in the wee hours. It was almost hilarious to her to see the stricken looks on her brothers’ faces as she laid out his bleak biography.
“He will go north on the river, leading his company’s shalopes, or help guard their pack-trains,” Charité blithely informed them. “He has read all about the ‘Noble Savages,’ the Indians, and is panting to see them! The usual printed lies, and Monsieur Rousseau’s idiocy,” she sneered between sips of café au lait.
“So he says,” younger brother Hippolyte objected, a skeptical frown on his face. “But, what is an Anglais Navy officer doing here, just months after we took one of their prize ships? It doesn’t sound like coincidence to me! Panton, Leslie is said to have ties to the British government, even if the Spanish let them come and go as they please. Everyone knows that. They might have sent a clever spy.”
“Cher Hippolyte,” Charité replied with barely patient scorn in her voice. “What sort of man steals from his own Navy? Is that their idea of a trustworthy spy… a thief stupid enough to be caught out? Would they even trust such a man with expense money for his espionage, lest he drink it up or abscond with it? If the British do send a spy to New Orleans, I think they would choose someone more… upstanding. I believe him,” she stated, dismissing their qualms. “His arrival is coincidence… and he is harmless. And malleable.” She chuckled.
Charité nibbled on a melon slice whilst her male relations sulkily dithered. Men, she had f
ound, were hopelessly easy to manipulate. Her new Alain might be even easier than most … though he was a sweet, gentle, but hungry amour; rather endearing and impressive in his own fashion, she happily recalled. But a man, one too easily distracted by his sensual side, his greed, to ever be a real success at anything; so easily led by his verge wherever she wished.
Yet he did possess nautical knowledge and skills, she thought. Alain was an experienced fighting officer, hard-handed… Oh, but how those hard hands delighted! Could she lead him, one cautious step at a time, into their service, Charité found herself fantasising? He could be just venal enough. With piles of loot, gold, and… her as his reward, which way would he jump?
Charité had planned to go right to bed after a cool bath and a restorative light breakfast, yet here it was well past eight o’clock in the morning, and Helio and Hippolyte were still intent on belabouring her daring, her long, shameful absence.
She’d always thought it so unfair that they were allowed to rut like yowling tomcats, to strut, preen, and stagger, but she had to be cloistered with sewing, music, lessons in grace and wit, and those few books her house would claim? When younger, she’d been the apple of her father’s eye and had been allowed to learn riding, fishing, and sword-play… as Papa’s condescending jape, his amusing girl toy, with never a thought that she might enjoy such things. She was crushed when, on her thirteenth birthday, Maman had demanded she be corseted, straitened, and reined in, and Papa had so easily agreed that “playtime” was over, and she must become just another limp, pretty, useless … young lady!
As for her brothers’ worry about her amours! Despite the pious claims of Society, the bishop and priests, the severe Ursuline nuns, and city fathers, Charité could count the real virgins among her contemporaries on one hand. As for those already showing when led to the altar, pah!
Once inside their family’s city maison, Charité had deftly deflected their sullen anger with a concocted tale of fearing she’d been followed home by some determined skulker, even if she’d had the foggy street to herself. She’d hooted with glee to see them clatter off in high dudgeon, swords and pistols at the ready.
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