To the Creole doctor’s chagrin, whisky was poured right in the raw wound, more poured over his needle and thread before they’d let him stitch the lips of the wounds together. As he finished his work, with generous batts of absorbent cotton and linen wrappings, Ellison sat up on the settee, half reclined on one padded arm. He had a long whispered conversation with Lewrie’s captor, then crooked a finger to summon Lewrie to him.
“You got shot at, too, didjya, Willoughby?” Ellison muttered.
“With a Girandoni air-rifle, the same as you, it appears, sir,” Lewrie said, pointing to the ball in the man’s hand. “By the Spanish, most-like. Why they didn’t just arrest us, I’ve no idea, but they’ve apparently tumbled to our… doings.”
“And you’re a Captain in the British Navy, are ye?” Mr. Ellison snidely smirked, though wincing against his pain.
“Right enough,” Lewrie breezily admitted. “And you are a serving officer under American colours, or … in a civilian capacity?”
“The Army of the United States of America, sir,” Ellison admitted. “Temporarily, ah… detached. And were ye happy with yer beach, out t’Lake Borgne, Captain Willoughby?”
“It’ll serve main-well, Mister Ellison,” Lewrie confessed, once he got over his surprise. “And your improvised river fleet?” he asked, taking a stab in the dark. “Much shorter distance to go, I’m bound.”
Hah! Got it in one! Lewrie hooted to himself to see Ellison’s chagrined expression. In his shoes, that’s how I’d pull it off!
“I don’t think ye had a hand in my shootin’, sir,” Ellison told him. “But the Spanish sink their teeth inta things, they’ll not care fer either o’ us bein’ here. My man says ye told him ye come to hunt pirates that stole yer prize ship, well… that won’t wash any better than spyin’ out how t’invade. Ever hear folks say, ‘once bitten, twice shy’? Uh-huh, good. Me an’ th’ boys’d take a dim view of ye, if you an’ your people were still in New Orleans, come mornin’. Ye are, then it’s ‘Katy, bar the door.’”
“That translates much like your hairy fellow’s ‘ki’ ye,’ does it, Mister Ellison?” Lewrie japed, playing up game even if exposed.
“Why, I do b’lieve it do, Captain Willoughby,” Ellison managed to snicker. “Somebody drew my blood… an’ no man tries t’kill me an’ lives. If ye get my meanin’.”
“Neither I nor my men were responsible, sir, ‘pon my word of honour. And my name is Alan Lewrie, not Willoughby, so you’ll know who to damn, do I prove false,” Lewrie declared. “I sincerely regret your wounding, sir, and wish you a speedy recovery,” he added, offering his hand, which Ellison took and shook gingerly. “Though I must caution you, sir, that you and your men might find it expedient to, ah—what is that picturesque American word?—skedaddle? … before the Spanish find they’ve failed.”
“That’s my lookout,” Ellison said, retrieving his hand. “Yours is th’ Spanish, and us. Luck to ye, Captain Lewrie, fer you’re quite a plucky bastard, but… don’t let yer string o’ luck run out. Good-bye, sir. Skedaddle, yer own self, and adieu!”
Lewrie took that for as good an exit line as any and turned to shoulder his way through the anxious throng of hostile Americans for the door, thence to the far side of Rue Toulouse, was just about to leave the vicinity by heading for Rue Chartres when a Spanish patrol finally made its appearance. He casually turned on his heel, leaned on his cane, and got on tiptoe to see over the crowd of onlookers as if he was just another curious ogler.
“Kentuckians,” Lewrie sneered to no one as the hastily dressed soldiers shoved their way through the back of the crowd. “Tennessee trash! Ought to run ’em all back to their kennels!”
Deal with that hint, do! Lewrie fervently thought at the back of the Spanish officer as he got to the door of the tavern. And take that, Mister Jim Hawk Ellison, of the United States Army! Now, if I can only get back to the docks before the Dons try t’kill me again, I’ll be a damned happy man!
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Lew … Willoughby!” Mr. Pollock barked as soon as he’d entered the dockside warehouse offices. “Where the Devil have you been? We’ve been beating the bounds for you, the last two—”
“I’ve been out getting shot at, act’lly,” Lewrie drawled, as if such happened daily, “me and that Yankee Ellison both, and nigh the same instant. Two ambushes… though Ellison got the worst of his. Anything to drink?” he asked, tossing his hat on a table, drawing his spent pistols from underneath his coat, and peering about for fresh powder, ball, wadding, and wine. Liam Desmond fetched him a glass of vin ordinaire, which Lewrie tossed down in three gulps.
“Shot at?” Pollock gawped. “How? When? By whom?”
“Why, with an air-rifle, Mister Pollock,” Lewrie scathingly replied, “halfway to here from my lodgings, not a quarter hour past. With an air-rifle your clerks sold someone. So was that American, Ellison. Saw the ball they cut from him… fifty-one calibre. I told him that we didn’t do it, that it must’ve been the Dons… unless you ordered it, and I lied to him unwittingly. Either way, they’ve tumbled to us and said were we still here come dawn, ‘h’it wuz, Katy bar th’ do-er’ or some such,” Lewrie said in sarcastic imitation. “You didn’t set up an ambush of Ellison and his men, did you, Mister Pollock? Didn’t sell the Americans any Girandonis they might’ve used to pot-shot me? Didn’t sell a few to the Dons, did you?” he cynically demanded.
“No to all of it, sir!” Pollock retorted, as if such nefarious doings were beneath him. “You’re certain it was Girandonis used?”
“Damned certain, Mister Pollock,” Lewrie vowed, crossing to the sideboard for a refill from the wine carafe. As he poured, the hinges of the door squeaked, and Toby Jugg and Seaman Furfy came tumbling in.
“Oh, there ye be, sor,” Jugg said, sounding relieved for a rare moment before turning laconic once more. “’Twas a spate o’ shootin’ a little while ago. Big commotion round th’ tavern where them Yankees lodge…”
“Captain Lewrie tells us someone shot their leader, Mister Jugg,” Pollock gloomily informed him. “Took shots at the captain, too.”
“Who’d want both of us dead, sir?” Lewrie asked. “The Spanish?”
“Some’un shot at th’ Cap’m?” Furfy barked, round-eyed in alarm.
“Hesh yourself an’ listen, lad,” his mate Desmond chid him.
“I can’t see the Spanish…” Pollock fretted, nervously chewing on a thumbnail. “’Tis not their way. They’ve more to gain by arresting us and holding public trials. The old firm and I live or die on their stance towards us, and I haven’t heard the least rumour, felt the faintest stiffness in how they deal with us… not even the slightest sidelong glance! Especially on this trip, given the, ah… ahem.”
“Well, if the Dons didn’t do it and the Yankees swear it wasn’t them,” Lewrie posed with a grim frown, “then who? Our pirates, maybe?”
“More likely than the Spanish, yes!” Pollock agreed. “Something we did or said, our presence revealed somehow to them, put the wind up them!”
“Perhaps they recognised Mister Jugg and put two and two together?” Lewrie wondered, looking at the survivor of the marooning, almost accusingly. “Then why the Devil didn’t they shoot him, ‘stead o’ me, I ask you? He’s the man, could point ’em out! And why shoot Ellison at the same time? Far as we know, he’s not here t’hunt ’em down.”
“We don’t know that,” Pollock countered. “They seem to prefer Spanish victims, but the bulk of the merchantmen that dock are Yankee ships. They carry desirable imports and fat chests of coin that buy New Orleans’s export goods. If the pirates had taken one of theirs …”
“Ellison’s a temporarily seconded American Army officer,” Lewrie told him. “We both, ah… admitted our bonafides. Said he hoped that we liked our dinner t’other day out by Lake Borgne, sir. They’ve kept us under their eyes almost from the first, I’d expect. And he asked did we find the lake shore suitable for our purposes?”
“Ah-ha!” Pollock
responded, like to strangling on that revelation. “Ahem! (large twitch-whinny!) Did he! Though… two may engage in the same game, sir. And accomplish two tasks in one, as we’ve been charged. Perhaps the Americans even intend to use the loss of several of their merchantmen as a legitimate casus belli … the elimination of a pirate’s nest as an excuse to the wider world for their invasion.”
This revelation was news to Lewrie’s hands, who had thought they were merely nabbing pirates who’d harmed their mates. They nudged and poked each other, sharing confused but sly grins. After all, no one had yet laid out whether they were Scotching Yankee invasion plans… or sketching out their own. Either one would suit, so long as it made for a unique adventure.
“Could your firm have unwittingly sold the Girandoni air-rifles to whoever it was used them tonight, sir?” Lewrie asked. “Might your ledgers contain names or your clerks recall faces?”
“By God, yes!” Pollock chirped excitedly. “We haven’t sold that many. One had hopes they’d find a market, but the novelty may’ve…”
“Then perhaps we might enquire of your clerks tonight, sir?” Lewrie impatiently said, nigh snarling.
“I’ll send for my head clerk,” Pollock declared, animated now. “Um… Mister Jugg, might I impose upon you to row over to the hulk and fetch the fellow here?”
“Aye, sor,” Jugg replied, heaving himself off a table’s edge in a trice. “Quicker’n two shakes of a wee lamb’s tail, an’ th’ first be a’ready shook,” he took the time to jape, taking Dempsey and Mannix to do the heavy work.
“That slave who brought my note,” Lewrie had to ask before they could get out the door. “Did you…”
“Lost ‘im soon’s he turned west on Dauphine Street, sor, sorry t’say,” Jugg informed him with a hapless shrug, then dashed off.
“The, ah… Bonsecours slave, sir?” Pollock asked. “The note you mentioned in your message to me… from the suited, booted, ahem … young woman?”
“The very same, Mister Pollock,” Lewrie replied, pouring himself another glass of wine by the sideboard. Now that he was safe and alive, surrounded by well-armed men, the usual shaky let-down that came nearly to overwhelming him had appeared, and he needed some “liquid” fortification. “Jugg placed her man in Dauphine Street, but I managed to tail her right to her door, Mister Pollock,” Lewrie explained, feeling rather “sly-boots” and clever. “I’m to write her at the Maison Gayoso, number twenty-six Rue Dauphine… no last name for now. Now, whether she really lodges there or merely uses it as a convenience, I still don’t know, but I saw her enter, and it didn’t look as if there’s a handy back exist. No stable gate. So, Charité…”
He waited for Mr. Pollock, the part-time, “job-lot” British spy to offer him at least grudging congratulations for skulking and observing so skillfully, but…
“A young lady by name of Charité may very well reside, there,” Pollock somberly told him, holding up an objecting hand, “but I must inform you that, according to my own queries, not a single Bonsecours dwells on Rue Dauphine.”
“So… it’s an assumed name,” Lewrie said with a crestfallen shrug, as if it didn’t really signify.
“Indeed, sir, enquiries made by my, ah… domestics,” Pollock flustered, all but tugging at his neck-stock, which Lewrie intuited as nervousness on his part to even come close to admitting that he had a “shore wife,” not a “domestic.”
Domestics! Lewrie silently scoffed; Mine arse on a band-box! Is that what they’re calling kept “mutton” these days? Hah!
“… in point of fact, the Bonsecours family have no daughter, certainly not one named Charité,” prim Mr. Pollock continued, looking a tad red-faced to broach the topic of Lewrie’s mysterious young chit. “Further, Captain Lewrie… they also learned that those young gentlemen who accompanied her your first night at the Pigeon Coop cabaret—I recall you mentioning them as the Darbone brothers? That wouldn’t be possible, since the Darbone family’s sons have been upcountry for at least the last month, entire. My, ah… people, after nosing about the help at the Pigeon Coop, have determined that your girl’s, ah… unconventional masquerade, her true identity beneath it, rather, is an open secret among that cabaret’s habitués. As is the identity of her companions, sir.”
Pollock, like all good spies, full-time or amateur, paused then, bestowing upon Lewrie one of those detestable “I know something that you don’t, and you must beg for it” looks.
“And?” Lewrie archly demanded, after trying to wait him out and not have to beg; a losing proposition he’d found, after years of dealing with old Zachariah Twigg and his compatriot, Mr. Jemmy Peel.
“They are all three de Guilleris,” Pollock almost simpered with a toplofty smugness. “Helio and Hippolyte, and their sister, Charité.”
“So… who are they, when they’re up and dressed?” Lewrie off-handedly queried, pretending closer interest in his wine, wishing to God that this was a private conversation, with none of his seamen present to hear him proved a gullible cully… again.
“Very rich, distinguished, longtime French Creoles who’ve resided in New Orleans fifty years or better,” Mr. Pollock informed him, looking as if he was manfully trying to stifle a look of sympathy for just how easily beguiled and “bamboozled” Capt. Lewrie could be. “Ah!” Pollock exclaimed, snapping his fingers before turning to his ledgers in a bookcase. He leafed through one, mumbling to himself, then “Hah!” escaped his lips.
“Thought the name was familiar! Two years ago, the de Guilleri family placed an order with us for a china service, made in Paris, settings sufficient for twenty guests, ah ha… well, who am I to quibble with legitimate goods first sent to Holland for trans-shipment, hmmm? Delivered to, ahem! number twenty-six Rue Dauphine, ah ha! Devil of a row with Madame de Guilleri, had to unpack it all to assure her none were broken, all were there, um-hmm… They live on the second storey. Does that comport with what you observed, sir?”
“Well, I didn’t act’lly …” Lewrie had to fuddle. “Didn’t get that close. Peekin’ round barrels, corners, and such.”
“Final payment referred to the, aha! … Henri Maurepas bank, damn my eyes!” Pollock chortled, whacking the ledger shut in triumph. “And where have we heard that name, hey, Lewrie? Agent for your prize ship, cross the river? Factor for the de Guilleri plantations up by the Saint Gabriel settlements, and … chief factor for that swindler Bistineau’s store as well! Intriguing, how all these names cluster together,” Mr. Pollock asked with a parrot-like cock of his head and a lop-sided, ghastly smile. “Ain’t it?”
“So she could steer me to the people who back the pirates, as she claimed,” Lewrie further intuited, taking what comfort he could from being “played” like a fiddle. “So I must see her again, after she gets back from her Easter visit to her parents…”
“Leaving town, are they?” Pollock said, wincing in thought.
“For a few weeks, at least. I told her I was going upcountry on your behalf, and we should get together once we’re both returned,” Lewrie explained. “Though, given all you’ve learned for us, we might be able to strike out before…”
“A disturbing information, though, Lewrie,” Pollock said with a “shushing” hand raised once more. “An oyster shucker and a swabber at the Pigeon Coop, spoken to by my… domestics, further told them that the younger de Guilleris, and an impoverished cousin of theirs by name of Rancour—Jean Rancour—seem to have come into some money of late and are spending very freely. More so than they did when on their absentee parents’ allowances at any rate. And that the cousin, who hasn’t had two farthings t’rub together since his family escaped Saint-Domingue, has been gambling very deep and doesn’t seem to mind his losses all that much. Far be it from me to decide for you on this matter, but were I in your position, I might begin to…”
Whatever it was that Pollock wished to impart was interrupted by a soft and hesitant tapping on the glass panes of the office door.
“Come!” Pollock cried, whipping out hi
s pocket watch as if his head clerk had been fetched in record time for a row cross the river’s fierce currents. “Hah!” he cried, though, once the door had opened.
Damme, what a vixen! Lewrie instantly thought, seeing a woman enter, her beauty and the richness of her ensemble half-concealed by a light, hooded cloak against the misty night airs. For a second, he could espy a stout older Black who remained outside, one who held his lanthorn on a pole in one hand, and a cudgel in the other.
Bright…’Fancy,’ an Octoroon or better, Lewrie appraised to himself, nigh to uttering “Woof!” and ruing that he hadn’t “sampled” the town’s more exotic females after all. What a stunner! he further thought as the woman tossed back her hood, put in mind of the half-European, half-Hindoo bints he’d seen in the Far East, with her eyes so almond-shaped and a teaspoon away from Chinese, or something…
“Gideon!” the young woman happily cried out, stepping close to him, her exotically alluring eyes alight with mischief, or a victory; certainly with affection, which made Lewrie think Aha! to discover Mr. Pollock’s close-held secret at last. “Mon cher, you must hear…”
“Colette, ah… ahem! You shouldn’t, ah…” Pollock flummoxed, blushing hot as a farrier’s forge. “Mean t’say…”
“Madame Pollock, I presume?” Lewrie brightly intruded from the other side, stepping forward quickly. “Allow me to name myself to you… Alan Willoughby, one of your husband’s associates. Enchanté, madame!”
The young woman inclined her head, preening-pleased to be named “Madame Pollock” whether it was a thin fiction or not. She offered her hand French-style, which Lewrie dashingly took, sketching a kiss on the back of it. Mr. Pollock actually growled as she dropped him a curtsy.
“Er, um, yess,” Pollock hissed. “My dear, this is men’s…”
“We ‘ave found the girl who meets with Monsieur… Willoughby!” Colette Pollock gushed, all but bouncing on her toes with excitement. “Maman … pardon, my maid, messieurs … finds she is a de Guilleri. I and Scipio, our man, find where she live, oui? A Bayou Saint John boy on ‘is produce cart show us. And as we watch, you never guess, Gideon!”
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