“Hidden far up Barataria Bay, she’d be safe enough, as safe as Le Revenant has been,” Charité hotly pointed out. “Cher Capitaine Balfa to command her, with two ships to prey on the Spanish cochons.”
“I quittin’, me,” Balfa baldly told her.
“What?” Charité spat, aghast at that news. “But, you cannot! “
“Losin’ dis ship, de Spaniards git too stirred up,” Balfa laid out in a calm voice. “My share be more’n enough t’get by a long time. Got a bad feelin’, mademoiselle. A longtime sailor’s ‘sight,’” he added with a shiver.
“But!” Charité spluttered for a moment, then turned icy cold. “Très bien, m’sieur,” she said, distancing her demeanour. “If you have a… foreboding, then… we could promote a promising mate for command of this schooner. And honour you for your contributions.”
“We cannot keep her, chérie,” Helio gravely told her. “It is a risk we cannot take.”
“But we do need a second ship, yes?” Charité snapped, rounding on him as if he’d let her down, too. “If not at once, we could make a third cruise with Le Revenant and take a suitable merchant ship, then add to her armament with this ship’s guns, yes? With news of this success, recruit more eager volunteers to man her, yes?”
“Well, of course, but…” Helio quickly agreed with a shrug of his shoulders, mostly to cool her ardour.
“Then I have a promising man in mind who seems more than eager for adventure,” Charité schemed. “That mercenary former Anglais Navy man, Willoughby.” She blushed as she raised that possibility to them, the mention of his name and nation. “He is nearly penniless, dismissed his service, and will do anything for riches. A very useful man who can be… lured.” She blushed, too, to describe her lover in such a harsh fashion when the thrilling memory of his hands, his lips, his thrusting body was still fresh in her mind. “He would do anything for me, n’est-ce pas?” she intimated with a cruel grin forced to her lips.
“Not if he’s run off in terror!” cousin Jean-Marie Rancour hooted with dismissive scorn and glee.
“Jean!” Rubio cautioned, but it was too late, and Jean-Marie waded in deeper despite the elbow aimed at his mid-ribs.
“We did for both of those uppity poseurs, didn’t we, Rubio? The Anglais and that nosey Américain Ellison who followed you, Charité… that night you bearded the Anglais?”
“What… did… you… do?” she angrily demanded, breathing slowly but hard enough to flare and collapse her delicate nostrils.
“Shot both of them,” Rubio gruffly confessed, nose-high for his motives, his actions, to be questioned. “Just before we gathered at your house to leave. They were not gentlemen!” he haughtily declared.
“Oh, you arrogant… stupid…” Charité raged, surprising all of them by leaping at Rubio to hammer her fists on his chest, driving him towards the starboard bulwarks; surprising them, too, by loosing a sudden flood of tears amid her ire.
“Rubio didn’t kill him, the Anglais I mean, Charité!” Jean-Marie cried, trying to seize one of her arms as Helio went for another. “He put a scare on him, was all. He ducked too quick for a clean shot, he got off three shots at us, and got away! Helio and Hippolyte did for that El-isson. He and his men were dirty Américain spies, and I wager your Anglais pig is one, too, so…”
“Pompous, idiot. Vain and jealous!” Charité shrieked just as they peeled her off the startled Don Rubio, squirming and kicking at his shins in vain. Don Rubio Monaster went as pale as a winding-sheet, slack-jawed in astonishment at her reaction. In that instant, he realized he’d never possess her, that all that had passed between them had been “kissing cousin” teasing. Another, a despicable other, held her heart, and Rubio suddenly despised her, hating that Anglais with an equal revulsion—could have shot her as gladly as he’d shot at the Englishman. A new weapon, the man’s agility and return shots; to get that close yet fail because he didn’t use his old Jaeger rifle, hadn’t been familiar with the Girandoni! His own righteous action had slain his hopes and dreams… and someone would have to pay!
Charité calmed, much too suddenly for any of them to credit, as if the eye of a Gulf storm claimed her rage. Her arms went out at her sides to fend off those who held her, nodding in grim understanding… brought her hands prayerfully together under the tip of her nose, to think… to bide.
“Très bien,” she finally muttered. “Very well. You enrage the Américains to find who shot their leader. You enrage the British merchant company, and they will try to avenge Alain,” she bleakly sketched for them, clearing her too-tight throat several times.
“We can deal with any—” her brother Hippolyte disparaged.
“No! Mon Dieu, you have even wakened the Spanish!” she retorted. “Better you had… but it is much too late for second thoughts or sense, is it, messieurs?” she accused. And, like the gust-front of an ouragan, her icily controlled rage sent a frisson of Arctic chill over the bloodied deck. “Zut, putain! Goddamn your foolishness! You have put everything we’ve worked for at risk. You may have just destroyed our most cherished dream!”
It was too much for her. At last Charité Angelette de Guilleri hitched up a wracking sob, unable to master it, and girlishly dashed at her tears. Damned if she’d weep in front of them, but… she spun on her heels and ran aft for the looted Spanish captain’s quarters for a precious space of privacy.
“Hmmm… well then,” Capitaine Lanxade said, breaking their stricken tableau. He twirled one end of his mustachio, frowning as he listened carefully. It was much too quiet, suddenly. Even the rowdy, brawling, drunken buccaneers had been silenced by her unseemly cries, her attack on that arrogant, half-dago fop, Monaster.
Fierce and merciless as they could be, Le Revenant’s buccaneers were sailors after all. Simple folk for the most part, they carried their emotions close to the skin, could slay a longtime shipmate over trifles in a drunken rage, then weep for days over the deed once they sobered up. Superstitious—even religious when all else failed—they’d been appalled to have a woman aboard ship at first, for that was as dangerous as whistling on deck, which might summon vengeful wind at such disrespect for the old sea gods.
Yet Mlle Charité had proved so entrancingly lovely to behold, so sunnily dispositioned, that she had endeared herself to them, and their string of successes with her aboard had made her almost a talisman, the scrappy mascot that brings good luck.
And didn’t she handle a smallsword or light hanger as well as a man? Wasn’t she a passing-fair shot, also? They could eagerly, and had eagerly, raped and murdered women passengers or slaves aboard some of their prizes, but this young girl of theirs was different! She was sacrosanct, not to be groped, touched, taken, or even spoken of by any hand in a scurrilous manner. What upset her, then, upset them, and if they got angry enough over the sight of their “pet jeune fille” raging in such a brokenhearted way, so contrary to her usual demeanour, then those who caused it stood in peril of being chopped into stew meat!
All Lanxade could hear for several long moments were the creaks and groans of the two lashed-together hulls, the slats and bangs aloft from un-tended yards and booms, and the drum-slapping of freed rigging. Then there came a faint growl and rumble of displeasure from several sailors, and he and his old mate Boudreaux Balfa shared a queasy look. From their long experience of dealing with the fractious and unpredictable sort of men who’d go pirating, they both feared that there would be trouble over this … even before the revelation of the shortage of expected loot.
“Women!” Don Rubio said with a lofty sniff, as if he had never placed much hope in so frail a vessel. “Were she not so foolish, she might eventually come to understand…”
“Shut up!” Lanxade harshly barked at him, taking sides in front of his men so they wouldn’t end up turning him to chutney. “You men! There’s tons of silver to be shifted, oceans of drink to salvage. Get back to work, before a British or Spanish man-o’-war interrupts us!”
“Mais oui!” Balfa quickly seconded.
“Let’s gather our spoils, mes amis. Allez, vite, ah-yee! “
The de Guilleri brothers, with cousin Jean-Marie, wandered off to commiserate with poor old Rubio, closely grouped about him to give their condolences for the vagaries of brainless girls.
Lanxade and Balfa drifted forward towards the prize schooner’s forecastle and belfry, where they could confide in each other, casually stepping over the odd stripped and looted body that hadn’t been tossed overside, as if they were no more than ring-bolts or coils of rigging.
“Un emmerdement, Jérôme,” Balfa said in a raspy voice. “We’ve really tromped through de shit dis time, by Gar.”
“We need to get this ship off the sea and out of sight, vite,” Lanxade muttered from the corner of his mouth, a confident grin plastered on his phyz for the crew’s sake.
“Get de lads drunk an’ stuffed wit’ meat, too, before dey start cuttin’ dose bébés’ t’roats, too. Our crew likes her.”
“Boudreaux,” Lanxade said, leaning on the lee bulwark cap-rails and gazing out to the empty southern horizon, where even more trouble might pop up, all guns and officiousness. “Do you remember what it was we said, back at the Dry Tortugas? About showing these amateurs what real piracy looks like?”
“Hmm, ouais,” Balfa said with a shrug, trying to recall.
“Two million dollars won’t go that far with our lads,” Lanxade fretted. “Not with Bistineau, Maurepas, and that goddamned Rebellion Fund of theirs each taking a cut, what is due our very young, stupid… employers, too, n’est-ce pas? How are your shivers, mon vieux? “
“Oh, dere be a whole herd o’ rabbit run up an’ down my spine!” Balfa told him with an uneasy chuckle. “Why?”
“All of a sudden, I feel them, too, cher,” Lanxade confessed to him, turning to smirk. “Your talk of retiring makes me think that it may be a good time for me to ‘swallow the anchor’ as well. Havana or Cartagena… they are both delightful cities, where a well-respected—dare I even say famous!—former privateer could retire ashore,” he said, preening at his mustachios and posing with a hand on the hilt of his smallsword like a grandee. “Well settled, famous, and rich. A well-built house overlooking the bay, perhaps? An honourable and respected and wealthy gentlemen, hein? “
“Oho!” Balfa gleefully grunted. “Some aspirin’ lad of ours will take Le Revenant, sail her away to better pickin’s. We can’t kill dat girl, though,” he speculated, making no real objection to a betrayal as he leaped on the most troublesome matter with his usual blunt acuity. “I stagger back to N’awlins, tell Maurepas an’ dem a tale o’ mutiny when de lads see all dat money, and I got away by de skin o’ my balls. Who know where dey go after dey cut dem bébés’ heads off, haw haw!”
“And I was slain after a gallant and heroic bit of swordplay?” Lanxade airily fantasised, drawing in his corseted stomach to make a more dangerous figure to his own mind. “Fierce as I tried to defend the poor young gentlemen, ah… quel dommage,” he said, simpering.
“Oh, mais oui, you kill a dozen before dyin’.” Balfa snickered.
“But then… what will we do with our little mademoiselle?” Lanxade quibbled with a sober sigh. “She lives, she’ll talk sooner or later, and her parents, the Spanish authorities will run us down. I wish to fuck my way to my dotage, Boudreaux, not get garotted before I’ve had a chance to amuse all the pretty wenches of Cartagena.”
“We come up wit’ somethin’,” Balfa muttered, though what that would be, he hadn’t a clue. He really didn’t want little Charité fed to the ‘gators and crabs, but what other course was there?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Ahoy, the boat!” Midshipman Grace shouted from the entry-port with the aid of a brass speaking-trumpet, though his challenge was by rote, since Proteus’s people had known who it was that approached her for the past quarter hour, in mounting expectation and curiosity.
“Proteus … aye aye!” Quartermaster’s Mate Toby Jugg, senior hand aboard the shalope shouted back, thrusting one hand skyward as if in triumph, with four fingers spread to announce the arrival of a Post-Captain as well.
Gilding the lily, that, Lewrie thought of Jugg’s display, for when coming back aboard, Lewrie was HMS Proteus. Four fingers and “aye, aye” were for unknown Post-Captains arriving, to tell how many sailors should turn out as the side-party. After a long, fretful, civilian, and covert absence, though, the more Navy ritual, the better, for it meant a return to sanity, security… and his own identity.
Lewrie almost squirmed with anticipation, that itchy-innards, leg-jiggling impatience he recalled from his boyhood when his father, Sir Hugo, had gruffly announced that they’d coach to town the next day. The dawn would never come, it seemed, before he got that first orange from the fruiterer’s, that first peek at new toys, first sweet-sticky candy after being good, studious, and quiet for so long!
His eyes flitted hungrily over his magnificent frigate. Proteus in his absence had been maintained in spanking “Bristol Fashion,” with First Officer Mr. Langlie in his stead as acting-captain, aided by Lt. Catterall and Lt. Adair, and that “temporary” Third Officer Lt. Darling, whom Capt. Nicely had fetched him. Lewrie could find nothing to gripe about in her appearance or her readiness.
And there those worthies were by the starboard quarterdeck bulwarks, wide grins plastered on their faces, just about ready to give up Sea Officer “stoic” and whoop like punters at Derby whose horse led the last furlong. His whole crew looked to be gathered on the gangway and glad to see him… happier than he had a right to expect.
Their shalope, a wretched craft only fifty feet on the range of the deck and never meant for extended seafaring, sidled up to Proteus like a timid trout shyly nuzzling up to a great sea bass. After they left the Mississippi Delta, even Lewrie’s cast-iron constitution had been challenged to seasickness aboard the shalope, so it was with avidity that he took the single easy step from the shalope’s low entry-port to the main-mast channels, man-ropes and boarding battens of the frigate’s starboard entry. A moment later, Lewrie stood on his own decks once more, doffing his much-abused wide-brimmed hat in salute to the side-party, the wail of bosun’s calls, the stamp-slap of boots and hands on muskets from the Marines, and the doffings from both officers and crew.
Once his honours had been rendered, Lewrie gleefully smiled and whooped himself to send his civilian headgear sailing as far off as possible. He skinned off his hideous shiny-green coat and tore at the buttons that bound him into that tight, striped waist-coat.
“Lemme help, sir!” his steward, Aspinall, joyfully offered as he came near. “God A’mighty, sir, but… these’re a tad… garish!”
“Burn ’em if you wish, Aspinall,” Lewrie sniggered.
Then there were his officers to greet, his middies, Bosun Pendarves, and his Mate, Mr. Towpenny, now returned to robust, full-fleshed health after his ordeal on the Dry Tortugas. And there was his Coxswain, Andrews, eyes alight with relief that he’d returned at last.
Where’s that bloody Nicely? Lewrie fretfully wondered, a glance upwards assuring him that Capt. Nicely’s broad pendant still flew aloft; Command of a, hah!… squadron o’ one gone to his head?
As if “witched” up by the very thought, the bulkhead door to the main deck opened below him as he still stood on the starboard gangway. The Marine sentry on that door stamped and presented his musket in salute, and Nicely began to emerge… beaten to it, though, by two balls of fur that streaked so close to Capt. Nicely’s feet that he staggered for a moment like a Scotsman dancing over crossed blades, as his cats, Toulon and Chalky, came flying up the starboard quarterdeck ladder in a full-out, softly thundering, feline gallop.
“And there’s my lads!” Lewrie cried, going down on one knee to welcome their arrival, and he didn’t care who witnessed it, either, so fondly happy to see them again. And oh! but didn’t they twine, mew and trill, stand on their hind legs, and sniff him over, make snorting, open-mouthed sounds as he stroked their heads. They kneaded and gently clawed at h
is trousers, and made a great ado over him.
“Ah, Captain Lewrie… back at last, I see,” Capt. Nicely said once he’d gained the quarterdeck, standing a few feet off, cocking one brow in wary fashion. “The deed’s done, sir? Our pirates’ foul business stopped, I take it?”
“Not quite, sir,” Lewrie told him, looking up, half his attention still fixed on his insistent creatures. “The prize was looted and stripped of anything useful, a dead loss to us. A dead loss for them, too, ‘cause we set her afire on our way out of town. Set alight a Yankee emporium ship, too, but that was accidental, really. Let me get below, back in uniform, and I’ll tell you all, sir. We know where our pirates are bound, d’ye see, sir, and… there’s a chance, just a chance, mind, that when we catch ’em, they might’ve stolen a shipload of silver the Dons were sending from the Mexico City mint, and—”
“Silver?” Nicely goggled. “A whole shipload o’—?”
“Coined silver, sir,” Lewrie said, rising to his feet, despite the protestations of his cats. Chalky, younger and spryer, took hold of his trousers at the left knee and scaled him like a tree trunk. “We… ow! … heard rumours in New Orleans the sum might be at least one or two millions. Spanish dollars to British pounds’d be…”
“Jesus bloody Christ!” Capt. Nicely breathed in awe. “And you think you know where they’re bound, sir?” he further asked, his mouth moving afterwards in a silent mumble of numbers-juggling. “Five hundred thousand bloody pounds?”
“I do, sir,” Lewrie said with a sly smile, with Chalky draped over his unbuttoned waist-coat, and going for his shoulder as agile and intent as a squirrel. “Where they’ll likely be, if they’re not at… ow!, stop that, Chalky, damn ye… if they’re not at sea seekin’ the booty this instant, sir.”
Lewrie looked down as he felt claws on his right leg as Toulon gathered himself for a (clumsy) ascent of his own. Lewrie knelt to let the heavier, older cat have his other shoulder, to spare himself a few more bleeding nicks. Toulon nuzzled, head-butted, and snorted, whilst Chalky went in for more playful love-nips. Needless to say, both were purring as loud and rattly as carriage wheels on street cobbles. “For what I have in mind, sir, we’ll need to retain the shalope. She’s very shallow draught, and can go… ow!”
The Captain's Vengeance Page 32