The Captain's Vengeance

by Dewey Lambdin

  “… manned by a crew drawn from the Marina Real.”

  The Spanish didn’t dare send one of their few valuable warships to sea, afraid of drawing too much attention, fearful of losing it, and neither Tampico nor Veracruz were good harbours for ships of worth. New Spain—Mexico—lay far to the west, down at the bottom of the Caribbean’s and the Gulf’s prevailing winds, Henri Maurepas knew. Though he had never been a sailor, he knew that much. A square-rigged ship could spend weeks beating windward to the mouths of the Mississippi. A brigantine, barkentine, or schooner would be more weatherly. Hmmm…

  Maurepas pondered whether he should tell the de Guilleris about this. This punishing war could last for years and years, and Spanish colonies would continue to suffer as Spain grew even weaker, less able to defend her American possessions. What guarantee was there that all the local trade would not be American in five years?

  The United States and the British had designs on Louisiana already. Could his bank survive an invasion by either? Even if by some miracle a French fleet and French army fought its way through the British blockade, sailed upriver, and reclaimed them, what surety could he have that the radical Directory in Paris and all their Jacobin rabble-rousing sentiments would be amenable to money, to rich men like him?

  Now, if he had all six million secretly cached at his plantation, and only tapped now and again for working capital, he could easily explain its partial presence as better-than-average fortune, due to his conservative and sagacious business sense. And he already knew all there was to know how to make things look legitimate on paper!

  Well, not all of it. If he told the de Guilleris and those oafs Lanxade and Balfa, and they actually succeeded in taking it, he’d have to go shares, would not realise more than the fifth that the Spaniards originally intended his bank to have. But that would be 1,200,000 dollars more than any of his competitors, and all of it free and clear of pledged assets and sureties! Such a windfall was certainly nothing to sneer at.

  And finally, could such a sudden shower of money actually create a real rebellion, result in a real reunion with beloved France, Henri Maurepas shudderingly, hopefully wondered?

  “Laclos, venez ici, s’il vous plaît,” he called out.

  “Oui, m’sieur?” his reliable longtime aide asked from the door.

  “These letters from the Captain-Generals, how did they come?”

  “The usual post clerk brought them, m’sieur, with all the rest.”

  “The same as any letter, Laclos?” Maurepas pretended to gasp.

  “Well… oui, m’sieur? Why?”

  “We’ll see about that!” Maurepas answered with a deep scowl. He shot to his feet, shouting for his liveried slave. “Those hapless idiots! I shall be at the Cabildo, Laclos … giving them a piece of my mind at how slipshod they are!”

  What a wonderful pretence that would be, Maurepas thought as his liveried slave handed him his hat, gloves, and cane. He would hand the letters over as instructed but would fume that they’d lain on someone’s desk overnight, able to be read by just about anyone. If not his, then what of the letters sent to his competitors, hah? If anything happened to their precious consignment of silver, it would be all their fault!

  Meanwhile, back at the pension …

  Capt. Alan Lewrie, RN, sensed a slight buzzing noise round his head and idly swept one free hand to shoo the pesky flying… thingy. Which herculean effort woke him just long enough to take note that it was a good hour past dawn, and a slit of honest sunshine blazed in the gap in the nearest window draperies; that he could, for once, sleep in like the idlest civilian ever born; and that his lips were dry yet his bottom pillow was damp with drool and stuffily warm.

  He rolled over, cramming the cooler top pillow under his head, with his face towards a dark corner, not that demanding daylight, and, for good measure, both smacked his lips and essayed breaking a bit of wind. Mildly eased, and with grit-heavy eyelids, the bold adventurer drifted off once more to what he deemed a damned well-earned rest.

  At the grander, much more spacious de Guilleri city residence, Charité finished packing her rakish seagoing piratical men’s clothes in a single heavy sailcloth bag and drew the rope strings taut, knotting it to keep it shut. A second change of clothing, to be worn on the trip down Bayou Barataria, was already laid out on the bed; this one consisting of a rough, écru shirt and a nondescript skirt of dark blue cotonnade, a short, decorated carmagnole vest, and a garde-soleil … a sun bonnet. Cotton knee stockings and her well-polished boots stood by the foot of her bed. Though she might go in disguise as a backcountry woman riding in a pirogue, Charité would be damned if she would squish and slop through bayou and swamp muck barefooted. At Capt. Balfa’s vacherie, she could change into her pirate’s rig, damn what the backward local women thought of it!

  Her smallsword, sash dagger, and pistols were cleaned and oiled, the pair of smaller pocket pistols already loaded but not primed, with tompions in the muzzles to keep out the damp. Her slim poignard that she’d strap to her left forearm she had honed to razor sharpness.

  For the rest of her last day in New Orleans, though, more feminine things awaited her; a high-waisted gown of the brightest cornflower blue that almost matched her eyes, one that fell straight without the aid of confining corsets, one with an only slightly daring scooped neckline, puffy shoulder flounces, and tight sleeves. With it was a wide straw bonnet adorned with gay ribbons and flowers, and the tiny matching silk parasol with which to flirt. White silk stockings and cunning little slippers dyed dark blue; even if heeled, common shoes were better suited to the perpetual slime of New Orleans streets.

  She had finished her toilette seated in front of her dressing table, had lotioned, powdered, and pampered her face, neck, and shoulders before carefully daubing on the minimum of makeup allowed the genteel daughters. She crimped and brushed her lashes, though, to nigh the bold look of the demimonde, for she was not yet a matron and, frankly, did not think that she could ever submit to such a stolid and boring child-ridden propriety, not ’til their grand design had borne fruit.

  Charité stood before her cheval mirror and unlaced the ties of her sheer dressing gown, then tossed it towards her bed. She slid her palms down her sides to her waist, over a tight-laced bustier atop a thinly woven chemise, turning slightly to either side to appreciate her slim and youthful body, lifting her hands under her breasts, as if to press them together for a deeper cleavage.

  She smiled and blew herself a teasing kiss as she shifted both feet a bit more apart, lowering her rapt gaze to her slim and shapely thighs, revelling in recalling how she’d wrapped those fine legs about that coquin—that rascal—Alan Willoughby. Looking up into her own eyes again, she tried out a sultry, smouldering pout.

  “Non non,” she whispered, giggling, discarding that passionate look for a wide-eyed, innocent come-hither, all but biting her lip in trepidatious desire. “Better, oh là.” She chuckled before making a cross-eyed face and sticking her tongue out at herself.

  “Hunh!” was her Black “maman’s” sour comment.

  “You hush,” Charité told her, rewarding her maidservant’s sauce with another cross-eyed tongue-shot, “and don’t tell me they’ll stay crossed if I keep that up. Push me into my gown.”

  She stood patiently to be gowned, shod, tucked, laced, and adjusted, to be adorned with earrings and matching necklace, swaying from one foot to another and crooning to herself, sleepy-eyed but her head cocked in wonder at her own beauty as she was rigged out for the day, became an adorable, desirable perfection before her very own eyes one more time. A little shopping, a delicious dinner, and a few glasses of wine… some coy flirtations with her lashes, parasol, and laced fan with the town swains of her acquaintance, perhaps a former lover or two; punctuated with the pouty tale of being summoned upcountry for a family gathering on one of their plantations, to explain her, and her brothers’, absence. It would be more a necessary chore than her usual pleasurable stroll and sampling of her beloved city’s
treasures. They would depart after full dark, taking a closed coach to the nearest boat landing on Bayou Barataria, and then it might be weeks of enforced solitude aft in a well-guarded cabin aboard Le Revenant—the celibacy of an Ursuline nun or Capuchin monk!—surrounded by swaggeringly masculine sailors. Hmmm…

  “Fetch me pen, paper, and ink, maman,” Charité ordered suddenly, impishly inspired. “I must write someone a note.”

  She consulted her tiny, cunningly wrought timepiece. It was not yet nine in the morning; would Alan Willoughby still be slug-a-bed, or was he the sort to be out and doing at the crack of dawn? she wondered. A note to his pension, or would it better serve to be sent to Panton, Leslie’s shore establishment? Hah! Both, just to make sure!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  An’ th’ top o’ th’ mornin’ to ye, Cap’m, sor,” Toby Jugg said with a jovial tone to his voice and a sham tug of his forelock, as if making salaam to an Asian potentate… or a poor Irish crofter to his landlord. “An’ wot a foin mornin’ h’it be, at ‘all an’ at ‘all.”

  “Oh, pack it in, Mister Jugg!” Lewrie replied with a groan and a weary scowl. “’Tis too ‘foin’ a morning for your ‘Jack Sauce.’ Have you seen Mister Pollock yet?”

  “Come an’ gone, sor, in a bit of a dither,” Jugg informed him as Lewrie hefted the teapot off the candle-warmer in the Panton, Leslie shore warehouse offices. There seemed enough to make a cup, so Lewrie poured himself a mug-full, hoping for the best.

  “Did he say what’d… dithered him, then?” Lewrie asked, making a face at the bitterness of the tea, despite a liberal admixture of two spoonfuls of sugar and a hefty dollop of cream.

  “Borryed Dempsey an’ Mannix, said he needed eyes t’do some watchin’, an’ loped off, sor,” Jugg said, taking a sniff of the teapot and slinging what was left out onto the cobbled street to start a new one. “Desmond, Furfy an’ t’others are keepin’ their eyes on th’ Americans. An’ th’ Yankee Doodles’re keepin’ an eye on us, too, sor. ‘At lout ‘cross th’ street, sor? Been strollin’ back an’ forth th’ better part of an hour, an’ about wore ‘is eyes out lookin’ in th’ same shop windows, each lap he makes.”

  Lewrie flung his mug of tea into the street, taking the time to peer at the buckskinned, raccoon-capped watcher, who spun suddenly on his heels and took an intense interest in the creaking overhead sign-boards that jutted out from the storefronts.

  “Clumsy buggers they is, sor,” Jugg said with a faint snicker. “Liam said some o’ their lads skulkin’ round th’ town forts was so obvious, they might as well been carryin’ surveyor’s rods.”

  “Well, pray God our lads are better skulkers,” Lewrie breathed, “though I rather doubt it.”

  “Th’ local Cuffies’re best, sor,” Jugg said, spooning tea from the unlocked caddy into the pot, then turning to stoke the fire so he could get a fresh batch of water to a boil. “I ‘spect ye niver took a bit o’ notice that a slave followed ye all th’ way here, Cap’m. Nor did th’ Yankee feller who trailed ye take note o’ him, neither,” Jugg pointed out with a droll wink.

  “They what?” Lewrie responded, with an urge to go “Eep!” or run out into the street and search for his pursuers. “Where?”

  “So many of ’em, they blend in damn’ well, they do, sor,” Jugg almost chortled. “Who’d spot one Cuffy in a crowd, when New Orleans is et up with thousands of ’em, and most as alike as peas in a pod, sor? To th’ likes o’ us, anyways.”

  Lewrie had sauntered down to the streets after shaving, a sponge bath, and a change of clothing, completely oblivious to anyone lurking or following him. He couldn’t recall being stalked on his way to a hearty breakfast. All the way to the warehouse and store, he had idly ambled, savouring the sights, tastes, and smells, and hadn’t suspected a blessed thing! Even if Jugg took him by the hand and led him to his trailers, he doubted if he could remember seeing them mere minutes before, and that shameful lack of awareness gave him cause to shiver with dread. Lewrie could understand the competing Americans tailing him, but… had the Spanish authorities sicced watchers on him and his men? Had they tumbled to his true identity?

  “At least we’re not at war with the Yankees,” Lewrie thought out loud. “They’re up to no good for certain, but it ain’t all directed at us, thank God.” And for Toby Jugg, of all people, to enlighten him… that nettled him, too. “The Cuffy, though. He might be a Spanish spy, and that is a danger!”

  “Amen t’that, Cap’m, sor,” Jugg gloomily agreed. “Though I… beggin’ yer pardon an’ all, Cap’m Lewrie, but it don’t seem t’me a Don would trust a Cuffy t’do his spyin’, not a blue-skin slave Cuffy, even a fancy ‘Bright’ in liv’ry. Such work’s fer freeborn Spaniards, most-like. Clerks an’ soldiers an’ such, sor? ‘Ese Creole Frenchies, they ain’t quite as cruel an’ haughty with th’ Blacks as th’ Dons are, even do they own most o’ th’ slaves here’bouts, so…”

  “You think the Black watchers’ve been sicced on us by the local Frog Creoles for some reason, then, Jugg?” Lewrie speculated with one eye screwed nigh shut in a quizzical expression. “Perhaps our pirates, who got wind of our presence, somehow?”

  “’At’d make th’ most sense, aye, sor,” Jugg cagily answered, in faint amusement. “Could be one o’ Mister Pollock’s competin’ traders done it, but there’s no way o’ tellin’, not without we grab one of ’em an’ make him talk, like.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Lewrie said, perking up at the idea of doing something to forward their endeavour and to atone for his blissful blindness in the streets. “Let’s take a stroll, get one of them to follow us somewhere quiet, then grab the mis’rable bastard and wring it out of him.”

  “Aye, we could, couldn’t we, sor?” Jugg mused aloud, scratching his chin whiskers in sly delight. “Might be we’d have need o’ Furfy, one’r two t’other lads t’keep watch fer us, block ‘im in from a’hind.”

  The kettle came to a boil and began to rattle its lid, claiming their immediate attention; they were British, well… English on the one hand, Irish on the other, and a fresh pot of tea could bring even bloody donnybrooks to a temporary halt. Lewrie saw to the teapot as Jugg took up the kettle with a filthy towel to guard his hands, so he could pour boiling water over the fresh leaves.

  The second thing to claim their interest was the arrival of one of those aforementioned Black slaves, this one in a muted livery, with a short, white side-curled wig on his head, and a letter in his hand.

  “I ‘ave ze letter fo’ a Capitaine Weel, uh… Weelo…”

  “That’d be me… Willoughby,” Lewrie announced, and the neatly garbed house servant left off trying to puzzle out the odd name on the outside of the folded letter and handed it over. His hand remained out in silent demand.

  “Oh,” Lewrie said, clawing into a trouser pocket for local coin. Whatever denomination of peseta or peso he produced wasn’t the liveried servant’s going rate, it seemed, for the fellow heaved a weary sigh, all but made an audible sniff of disdain, but closed his palm over it and stalked away. “Can you follow him, Mister Jugg?”

  “I could give it a go, sor, aye… cautious-like.”

  “Good, ‘cause I don’t know him or his livery from Adam, and as for who’d send me a letter, if it ain’t Pollock…” Lewrie muttered as he broke the still-warm wax seal (one without any identifying impression stamped into it of either aristocratic crest or the initial of the sender’s surname) and read it quickly. “Well, damme!”

  “Ain’t Mister Pollock, sor?” Jugg asked, mystified by Lewrie’s sudden elation.

  “Er… no, Jugg,” Lewrie gruffly told him. “From a lady, but a lady whose servant you must follow, all the way home if you’re able.”

  “That’d be th’ one wot dresses like a man, then, sor?” Jugg enquired, slyly bland-faced and innocently hiding his droll simper well.

  “The one who claims she knows rich men who want their own ships, Jugg,” Lewrie sternly retorted, “and most-like aren’t that choosy over
how they get ’em! Her name’s Charité Bonsecours, but I don’t know if that’s quite true, after talking to Mister Pollock. I need to know as much about her as I can, if she does lead us to the people who back our pirates. Pollock’s trying, too, but we can’t trust to him alone.”

  “We leave this place abandoned, then, sor?”

  “I’ll leave Pollock a note,” Lewrie impatiently stated, nettled again by Jugg’s impertinent quibblings. “We’re to dine at a place name of … de Russy’s,” he said, referring to her note, “round one. Plenty of time for Pollock to get here and get caught up. Speaking of … you dawdle much longer, that slave’ll be out of sight, Jugg.”

  “Arrah then, sor, aye aye,” Jugg reluctantly responded, as if he wished to dispute being sent on a fool’s errand but did put knuckles to his brow in salute before sloping off.

  Damn the man! Lewrie fumed to himself; His eye-rollin’ impertinence, too, like I don’t know what I’m about, and he knows best!

  If the Spanish were alerted to their mission, were keeping eyes on him and his people… today he must take a chance and rush things with Charité, press her on her mystifying offer of a ship and get her to introduce him to those rich men she’d boasted of knowing.

  Pollock’ll have a fit, Lewrie decided as he quickly wrote a note to the man on a torn-out ledger page. Press Charité for her address so I can write her whilst I’m gone? Hah! Call on her and her lordly Creole family? Bet that’d make ’em dance a pretty jig!

  He warned Pollock that he suspected that he’d been followed… by whom, well, that was the question, was it not? Despite the risks, he felt it necessary to keep his outwardly “innocent” appointment with the girl, with no one to watch his back.

  Despite the risk of arrest as a British spy, Lewrie found that he was vibrating with excitement, like to jump out of his skin. There was a tiny frisson of dread, of course, but… the girl was the real lure. Maddeningly outlandish and entrancing, so desirable! Would they have another long afternoon bout of “the needful”?