“Aha!” Pollock chortled half aloud, rubbing dry palms together. “Now we’re talking. Now we’re in business at last, gentlemen! For I am familiar with both those worthies. Monsieur Bistineau is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, a right ‘Captain Sharp.’ He’d steal the coins off his dead mother’s eyes, and Maurepas! Monsoor Henri Maurepas, he’s rumoured to have been involved in some shady dealings in the past. The plantations he’s scooped up for a song off people who fell behind with their loans… I imagine either, or both, can provide us valuable information, do I put the thumbscrews to ’em.”
“Ye would, sor?” Jugg asked, surprised. “Fer real, an’ all?”
“Manner of speaking,” Pollock off-handedly quibbled.
“Aww,” Jugg rejoined, sounding hellish disappointed.
“She’s floating high above her waterline,” Lewrie said. “So I s’pose her cargo’s long gone?”
“Ev’ry stick gone, sorry I am t’say, sor,” Jugg told him with a mournful look. “Her holds’re as empty as an orphan’s pantry. Not just her holds, neither, Cap’m, sor. ‘Er second bower an’ least kedge ain’t there no longer, an’ all her spare spars an’ sails’ve been sold away. Cable-tiers are empty, too. Though, I ‘spect ‘at had more t’do with a need t’lash her bow, stern, breast an’ spring-lines t’ th’ shore t’keep her moored agin th’ river currents.”
“Then who do they expect to buy her, I wonder?” Lewrie said with a snort, recalling again his one reading of the prize’s manifest, imagining middling-sized bags of prize money winging away.
“Most-like, that bastard Bistineau would be more than happy to play ship chandler and sell you her own fittings back as spanking new … at a hellish-dear cost,” Mr. Pollock sneered with a matching snort. “Yes… Captain Coffin and Mister Caldecott could tell me more, well… a bit more, and for your sharp eyes and, ahem … sagacity, I thank you, Mister Jugg. I do b’lieve I should look them up at once. After your trip aboard her, Jugg, I do believe we have a lead at last!”
“Thankee kindly, sor,” Jugg replied, doffing his hat from long practice; though peering quizzically at Lewrie for the meaning of the word “sagacity.”
“Good, clever work, Jugg,” Lewrie congratulated.
“Er, ah… thankee, Cap’m, sor,” Jugg said to him, plumbing to the approximate meaning of his praise. “Hoy, ain’t she a handsome wee thing there, sors? ‘At cutter comin’ upriver.”
They all turned to gaze upon a smallish single-masted craft not so far downriver, coming up slowly against the relentless current with all her fat jibs and huge gaff mains’l winged out into a starkly white cloud of canvas against the blue of the river, and twilight. She flew a Spanish flag, and Mr. Pollock cupped his eyes with his hands to peer hard at her, even without the aid of a telescope.
“Spanish Navy cutter,” Pollock announced at last. “An aviso … a despatch boat. From Havana or Veracruz, most-like, making the round with the latest mails. Though they do have a few like her at Mobile and Pensacola for guarda costas.”
“A problem for us, is she?” Lewrie fretted half aloud.
“Oh, I rather doubt it… Mister Willoughby,” Pollock amusedly dismissed. “Had the Dons tumbled to your presence, you’d have been in cells in the calabozo days ago, hah hah… ahem. Had the Spaniards a single clue about our business, they’d have sent a frigate!”
“Well, that’s reassuring,” Lewrie said, scowling at the man.
“Being Spaniards, they won’t land the mails ’til next morning”—Pollock chuckled—”after a good supper and a run ashore. As well known as I am, no one’ll think twice of me wandering over to the Cabildo and asking the latest news in the Place d’Armes. It’s what everyone else does, God knows. Tonight, though… ahem. It might be a good idea if you and your hands, being strange new faces, didn’t do their drinking and carousing near yon cutter’s crewmen, hmm? Make it an early night?”
“Aye, I’ll see to it,” Lewrie vowed. Though, after his carouse with Charité Bonsecours, even an orgy in the Pigeon Coop cabaret would prove anti-climactic, and making it an early night held no charms whatsoever. Twiddle his thumbs in his rooms alone? Polish his boots and bed down by ten? It sounded like a hellish-dull evening.
BOOK FOUR
Prospero: Lie at my mercy all mine enemies. Shortly shall all my labours end, and thou Shalt have the air at freedom. For a little, Follow, and do me service.
THE TEMPEST, ACT IV, SCENE 1
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Well before noon the following morning, more than a few events came to pass in the parlours, offices, taverns, lodging houses, and streets of the town of New Orleans.
At the corner of Rue Royale and Rue Toulouse, Jim Hawk Ellison was breaking his fast and taking in the latest informations from his men. Piping-hot cornbread, white hominy, and a rasher of bacon, with a pork cutlet aswim in gravy, and strong rum-spiked and sweetened chicory café au lait kept hands and mouth busy, while his watchers’ reports occupied his mind.
“Don’t see how we’d manage, comin’ upriver,” one of his men, Silas Bowman, said in a hunch-shouldered low mutter over his plate of eggs and bacon. “Fort Saint Charles and the Rampart batteries’re too strong. Got eighteen heavy pieces, twelve-and eighteen-pounder guns, an’ set for a wicked crossfire, Jim Hawk.”
“Crossin’ Pontchartrain don’t look too good, either,” another man, a disguised U.S. Army sergeant named Davey Lumpkin told him. “Fort Saint John can slaughter anybody tryin’ to cross the produce fields. Even with all the swamp-drainin’ they’ve done, it still’s too marshy for anything but men afoot, too.”
“Guess it’ll have t’be done from the inside, then, boys,” Jim Hawk Ellison decided as he slathered molasses on a buttered slice of pone. “Come prime trading season, we’ll have to float men downriver in flatboats, rafts, and keel-boats, dressed ‘country.’ The Spaniards won’t think a thing of ’em, and everybody comes armed with rifles or muskets, and they’re used t’seein’ that too. Peyton, what’re those Englishmen been up to? Been keepin’ a sharp eye on ’em?”
“Hell, Jim Hawk,” Peyton Siler, another disguised soldier, said, “yest’a’dy they rode way out east all th’ way t’Lake Borgne and ate a meal outten a basket. Never could get all that close, but I could see ’em with my glass. Spent a long time pawin’ an’ head-cockin’ over some map they brought with ’em. Pointed north and east a lot, they did. Up that way, there’s Fort Coquilles… hmmm? Knew they warn’t straight.”
“Well, I do declare!” Ellison chuckled over his laced coffee.
“Tore some kinda paper inta itty-bitty bits ‘fore they left,” Siler said on, winking. “Oncet they got outta sight, I picked up what I could of it. Whole lotta numbers, was all. Couldn’t make no sense of it.”
“That’s all right, Peyton,” Ellison told him. “They were up to some kind o’ devilment. And now we know they got something t’hide.”
“They stopped ‘bout halfway back t’town,” Siler continued. “I saw ’em get down an’ paw th’ ground. It’s high an’ firm. They looked right pleased with whatever it was they saw there.”
Ellison already had a map of the environs engraved in memory. He smiled at that news. “Firm ground? Sounds t’me like they spotted a good place t’place defences an’ guns… so maybe the rumours aren’t true. Won’t come down from Canada, like we thought. They mean t’land somewhere out th’ end o’ the Chef Menteur road an’ strike fast, twelve or fifteen miles away from the town! You see anything out there could stop ’em, Peyton?”
“That’d be th’ onliest place that might hold ’em up, Jim Hawk,” Siler decided after a long, contemplative rub of his unshaven chin. “If they come so far south o’ Fort Coquilles, that is. But it’d be a chore, ‘less they had a whole lotta small boats.”
Ellison snickered, keeping his own counsel as he sipped coffee. The American Army, even if that bastard General Wilkinson did lead it, could muster 20,000 militia plus regulars and infiltra
te around 2,000 into New Orleans. Half the rest would march on Natchez and overwhelm its pitifully small garrison, the other half would sail down from Kentucky or the Wolf River bluffs to pick up the Natchez detachment once they’d won. With Natchez silenced, the Spanish would have no warning until the makeshift “armada” swung round the last bend above the city, which would be the signal for the infiltrators to cause general havoc and pave the way for the main force to land!
“Anyone have any luck talkin’ up that crew o’ theirs?” Ellison enquired as he set his cup aside.
No one had; the new-come strangers usually made taciturn, early nights of things, and what desultory conversations that Ellison’s men had drawn them into, all that could be learned from them was that they came from Ireland or England once and were loyal to their court-martialed former naval officer, who was a fairly good-natured sort, and a terror with the ladies.
“Wide open out there,” Ellison muttered, once those reports were done. “East o’ town. Wonder why the Spanish haven’t fortified it or even planned against a Lake Borgne landing?”
“Too marshy, really, Jim Hawk,” Siler said with a shrug. “That road’s the only way, and h’it’s not much t’speak of.”
“Wish we had a navy, big as the British do,” Ellison said with a scowl. “Oh well, maybe someday. But there’s twenty thousand fightin’ men in Kentucky an’ Tennessee, just rarin’ t’go. Does President Adams and Congress ever get done wranglin’ and jabberin’, give us the signal t’go ahead, well…”
“Hey, what ‘bout ‘at ‘ere girly feller, Jim Hawk?” Silas Bowman asked with an eye-rolling leer. “Er wuz he’un really a she’un after all?”
“Oh, I was pretty sure she was a she, soon as she came outta th’ lodgin’ house, Silas,” Ellison whispered back. “Took off her hat and shook her hair out ‘fore she got to her door. Right before those two bastards come boilin’ out an’ tried t’slit my gizzards. I still don’t know who she is, and for damn’ sure can’t stick my nose anywhere round her street, after that. Silas, maybe you could sniff around there… ask a slave who owns that house, or who-all lives there, so I can narrow it down. Gotta admit, I’m damn curious ‘bout that little gal and what her connexion might be t’that mysterious Willoughby fellah.”
“Ah’ll do ‘er, Jim Hawk,” Bowman assured him with a deep nod.
“Well… maybe ya shouldn’t get that close to her, Silas,” Jim Hawk teased with a leer, creating a bit more mirth at his crowded table. “Rest o’ you boys… today it might not hurt t’sneakify round all the forts an’ such. Get a count o’ th’ garrison an’ whether they live in barracks or sleep out. Then…”
Meanwhile, back at the pension at Bourbon St. and Rue Ste. Anne, Capt. Alan Lewrie (or Willoughby, take your pick) heard the rumbles of a dray waggon in the brick and cobbled streets, and all but levitated off the mattress as he flung himself from his left side to his right. He crammed a fluffy, cool goose-down pillow over his head to shut out the creaky-screechy-rumbly din, then fell back asleep.
Aboard the Panton, Leslie & Company emporium hulk, Hippolyte and Helio de Guilleri, along with their weedier cousin from Saint Domingue, JeanMarie Rancour, and the elegant Don Rubio Monaster, bought some few things with their illegal gains that they thought might come in handy on their impending new piratical foray. Fresh, and reliable, British gunpowder—pistol and musket priming powder most especially—was paramount in their purchases. Jean-Marie bought himself a new long-barrelled pistol, one with rich and glossy walnut stocks and grips, and a glossy blued finish intricately chased with hair-thin silver inlays, with a bright brass powder flask, replacement lock spring, and a bullet mould and sprew-snip, all in a velvet-lined walnut case. Jean-Marie already owned four pistols, but a man could never have too many. Besides, he’d been awed by a woodcut print of the infamous buccaneer Blackbeard, of the last century. Blackbeard was depicted bearing an awesome number of pistols on his person: in his waistband, the pockets of his coat, in his hands, and even more holstered in a long and wide canvas rig that hung down on either side of his chest, like a priest’s scapular. Blackbeard had also been shown with burning slow-match fuses in his wild hair and beard. That might be a touch outré, Jean thought, but the firepower he would have at his fingertips!
His new weapon matched the calibre of three others in his collection and had a narrow steel shank on one side so it could hang from his waistband, just like the real, old-time pirates! He would gladly have bought its twin, so he’d have six, but he’d lost at Bouré and the Pharoah tables two nights running, so his funds were very tight.
“So dear, though, Jean, mon cher ami,” Rubio Monaster said with a sniff after they left the below-decks stuffiness for the fresh air on the covered former quarterdeck, and shared a round of ginger beer.
“But long-barrelled and rifled, Rubio,” Jean-Marie enthusiastically answered. “With my grandfather’s duellers I inherited, now I own three rifled pistols. I would trade my two smoothbores if I could for this English pistol’s mate. In a boarding, firepower is ev—”
“Shhh, Jean,” Helio cautioned with a growl. “With the Spanish Navy cutter here, the less talk of such things, the better. Everyone in the Place d’Armes was talking about the missing Havana guarda costa. For now they think a British warship or privateer took her, but…”
“Indeed, Jean,” Don Rubio said with a languid smile, “we must be as bland as a blanc-manger ’til they are gone. And slip away down south as quiet as mice. Though it would be pleasing for our fellow Creoles to know that someone struck a blow against our oppressors. Think of the wonder that would cause!”
“Perhaps it might light a fire under the many who sleep through Spanish occupation,” Helio gruffly commented. “Perhaps all the bluster and bold talk of freedom would not be so damnably idle.”
“Well, we could start a rumor that bold local Creoles did the deed,” JeanMarie suggested in a much softer, conspiratorial voice.
“An anonymous letter dropped at the doorway of the newspaper?” Hippolyte posed.
“But would they dare print it?” Helio countered. “The Spanish would shut them down in a heartbeat.”
“Bastards!” Don Rubio fulminated under his breath.
“No time, anyway, chers,” Helio said, scowling. “We’re off to sea in a day or two. Dim and slothful as the Spaniards are, a letter like that, and us suddenly absent, even the fools in the Cabildo could put two and two together. We’ve other business first. One of the Americans trailed our sister home from Le Pigeonnier yesterday… lurked outside as if he meant her harm. When we rushed downstairs to confront him, he escaped us in the mists, but we know him.”
“Salaud! Son of a whore, who is he?” Don Rubio said with a malevolent hiss, bristling up in an instant. “I will kill him myself!”
“He calls himself El-isson,” Helio informed him, stepping even closer and lowering his voice to a faint mutter. “The leader of those new-come buckskin barbarians we suspect are here to scout the city for an American invasion, Rubio. Our body slaves have made careful note of all the skulking they do. We know the low-class tavern where El-isson and his band lodge… a filthy, gloomy place.”
“He would violate her? He would lurk and hope to seize her and ravish her? Nom d’un chien, I will call him out at once!” Don Rubio hotly vowed.
“No time for the niceties, Rubio… comprendre?” Helio hinted, tipping him a grave wink and nod. “He is no true gentleman, so challenging him to a duel would mean no more to him than gold to a hog. He seems more the sort to cheat, anyway. Besides, duels take such a long time to arrange. And, what sort of insult would it be to your honour, to waste high-born niceties on a jumped-up peasant, who would sic his minions on you in the dark of night, and back-shoot you, hein?”
Helio de Guilleri had known Don Rubio Monaster and his family, the Bergrands, since he donned his first pair of boys’ breeches, knew him, and his touchy sense of honour, to a tee… and his sheeplike lust for his sister. All it would take would be one wor
d to launch him at their foe, and Rubio would wade in with all guns blazing, if given the chance to do something impressive to redeem Charité’s honour or guard her “delicacy” from the advances of a beastly scoundrel. Even knowing his sister and her little “games,” Helio himself would have sprung to her defence—it was what brothers were supposed to do to guard the family’s precious honour. But Rubio was such a wonderful weapon!
“A murder, do you mean, not a duel,” Don Rubio replied, nodding in grim, but pleased, understanding.
“Exactly,” Helio said with an equally grim nod. “Without their leader, the other American wolves will melt away. Run scared back to Kentucky with their tails between their legs.”
“The knife in the heart!” Jean-Marie Rancour breathed, eyes alight with evil mischief and expectation.
“No, no, too messy,” Hippolyte de Guilleri drolly quipped. “You would stain a good suit of clothes, up that close with all that blood. Remember on that trading brig, when I stabbed that—”
“A pistol is better,” Helio suggested, shushing his brother one more time. “In the dark, as he staggers back to his lodgings.”
“Oh, better yet, Helio!” Jean-Marie excitedly piped up. “With a rifled musket! One of those Girandoni air-rifles they showed us not five minutes ago. They’re so quiet, the clerk said… one little snap or crack, no louder than a twig, and if you miss your first shot, your… game!… can’t take alarm and bolt before you get off a second or third. Though Rubio is such a fine marksman, I doubt he would require more than one, isn’t that so, Rubio? Twelve shots in half a minute, the fellow assured me! Think of the advantage a man could have in a melee, hein? A decent shot… half a dozen men of passable skill firing ten or twelve shots in half a minute would massacre a ship’s crew!”
“Six men could equal the volleys of a whole regiment, oui! Oh, I wish we had enough money to buy more than one for Rubio to use when he pots that American,” Hippolyte exclaimed, catching his cousin’s enthusiam and picturing in his mind the crew of a proud royal Spanish frigate being slaughtered like a cloud of passenger pigeons in a boarding action. “If we asked Monsieur Maurepas for an advance, took some of the seed money account… as a material investment, hmm?”
The Captain's Vengeance Page 24