“Ah, cleverness,” Lewrie warily commented, heavy-eyed.
“As draconian as the French police-state is, with the guillotine the reward for espionage and treason against the Emperor Napoleon, there are few who’d dare keep us informed,” Peel continued, sounding like a chapman trying to flog a dubious product. “So we must do all we can to maintain contact with them, and at the same time do all we can to protect them from exposure. What they do for us is incredibly brave, and rashly dangerous, should they be discovered. Those brave few are rather admirable.”
“I doubt the Frogs’d think so,” Lewrie said, cracking a smile; a damned wee’un. “Depends on one’s point of view.”
“You are familiar with one of them,” Peel hinted, all a’twinkle again.
“I rather doubt it’s Guillaume Choundas,” Lewrie scoffed. “I think I put paid t’that ugly bastard.”
“No, not him!” Peel informed him, laughing. “Do you ever fight a duel, let me know when and where, so I can get a good seat, and see how accurately you shoot. The fall from that cliff would have killed him anyway, but that shot of yours, with a smooth-bore musket from a heaving boat at nigh an hundred yards, was spot-on, right in the fiend’s heart. We have that as Gospel… from a witness,” Peel hinted again.
“There were only two people I knew who were there when… No!” Lewrie gasped. “That murderin’ bitch?”
“Let us say that Mademoiselle Charite Angelette de Guilleri has lost her faith in the Revolution, in Bonaparte, and her raison d’etre, hey?” Peel said, smirking. “When Bonaparte sold New Orleans and all of Louisiana to the United States, he cut the very heart out of her, making the deaths of her brothers and her cousin, and their romantic but damn-fool revolt against the Spanish, and their piracy that funded it, meaningless.”
That had been Lewrie’s doing, requiring him to go up the Mississippi to New Orleans in mufti with a commercial trader/informant and sometime Secret Branch “asset” to “smoak them out,” then escape and use his Proteus frigate to smash the pirate encampment on Grand Terre, in Barataria Bay, slaying the lot and burning their vessels.
“The bitch shot me!” Lewrie exclaimed in heat. “With a Girandoni air-rifle like that’un yonder,” he said, jerking an arm towards his personal weapons rack. “Would’ve killed me, too, if the flask’d had enough compressed air in it!”
“For which the Crown, Mister Twigg, and I are grateful that she did not,” Peel said, sounding earnest.
“Broke her wee, black heart, did Bonaparte?” Lewrie sneered in baby-talk. “Bloody good! I hope she suffers! Dammit, Peel, she had a hand in killin’ my wife on that beach!”
“I know, Lewrie… Alan,” Jemmy Peel sombrely said. “And for her forlorn loss, her gallant stab at fomenting a French Creole revolution in New Orleans, Charite de Guilleri won the admiration of the finest salon society in Paris… admiration, pity, and entre, what? Lewrie, she rubs shoulders with French generals, admirals, the head of Bonaparte’s National Police, that brute Fouche. The Foreign Minister, Talleyrand, has tucked his arse under her sheets, and she has been to tea with anyone who’s anyone in French government… with Empress Josephine and Bonaparte himself!”
“Bloody good for her,” Lewrie sneered again.
“She’s the highest, and closest placed source, we ever could hope to have,” Peel pressed on. “She quite cleverly found a fellow in our… employ… and used him to get a letter out to us, offering to supply us with information.”
“Unless Fouche’s caught your ‘fellow,’ and is usin’ her access as bait,” Lewrie countered with scorn. “Use both t’feed you useless twaddle that’ll have ye runnin’ in circles.”
Like all the people who specialised in skullduggery for King and Country whom Lewrie had encountered, James Peel all but goggled at him, as if Toulon and Chalky had begun to sing “God Save The King” in perfect two-part harmony. No one ever thought Lewrie clever!
“We considered that, quite seriously, for a goodly time,” Peel confessed, after a long moment’s contemplation, “but decided that it would be too convoluted a scheme. Fouche, or his associate, M’sieur Real, are rather direct sorts. Do they find a spy, their usual course of action is round him up, his family too, torture them ’til they sing like larks, then behead them publicly as a warning. It’s not as if we have threesomes or larger groups of agents organised over yonder, for all of the exiled royalists’ schemes and gold. Bonaparte’s nailed the borders shut so tightly that sending funds to support espionage is out of the question… too damned heavy, for one.
“No, the ‘fellow,’ as you put it, is with the Treasury,” Peel revealed, “and Charite de Guilleri is with… everybody. But, before she begins to produce for the Crown, she wishes to hear from you.”
“What? Lure me t’the back o’ some deep inlet for a reunion?” Lewrie sneered. “No, thankee.”
“Nothing face-to-face, no,” Peel quickly countered. “That would be much too dangerous for the both of you. She wishes you to reply to her letter. She asks for your forgiveness,” he softly added.
“Forgiveness?” Lewrie exclaimed. “Not this side of Hell I won’t! There’s some things un-forgiveable.”
“Quite a lot hangs on it,” Peel pointed out.
“I know very well what you, and Twigg, and his ‘Irregulars’ can do… forgeries and such,” Lewrie gravelled. “If she ever saw a note in my handwritin’, it was seven years ago, and after what I did to her, her kin, and their scheme, I doubt she saved one out o’ sentiment! Why can’t your people cobble up a reply? She wouldn’t know the diff’rence.”
“Forging or altering documents or agents’ reports on military matters are one thing, Alan,” Peel gently objected. “They’re much too dry, concise, and impersonal, whereas personal thoughts and feelings are very hard to reproduce.”
“Surely ye forge credible love letters t’trip up traitors, and expose ’em,” Lewrie scoffed. “Or embarrass people who need t’be given a public ‘come-down.’ ”
“Yes, we do,” Peel cheerfully admitted, “but in those cases, we have samples from both parties, and can imitate their repartee. With you, we have nothing to work with. Oh, we could cobble up something… hire on a poor, unknown romance scribbler, and send her a letter full of high-flown tragedy worthy of Drury Lane dramas, but… after a third or fourth reading, it wouldn’t sound like you, it would not ring true, and she would know… mind, I told you she’s clever?… that it was a fraud. No, Alan, it must not only be in your hand, but from your mind… your soul.”
“I s’pose she wrote it in French,” Lewrie stated.
“Well… yes,” Peel said, his head cocked over. “Seeing as how she is French.”
“Peel… d’ye imagine, on your rosiest days, that I’m anywhere near fluent in French?” Lewrie wryly pointed out. “Christ, I was damn’ lucky t’get through Latin and Greek at school, and most o’ that was on paper, not spoken! I read French even worse than I speak it, and if ye wish Charite t’make heads or tails of it, I’d need a translatin’ dictionary and a bilingual tutor… first t’read hers, then t’write mine!”
Peel frowned heavily, and puffed out his cheeks in a long exhale of frustration; this was an emmerdement he had not pre-considered.
“Ehm… she knew of your lack when you spied on her in New Orleans?” Peel hesitantly asked, as if crossing his fingers.
“We spoke in English,” Lewrie told him. “With so many British or Yankee Doodles tradin’ in New Orleans, settlin’ up-river in the pine woods round Baton Rouge, she and her kin couldn’t avoid learnin’, but she despised them, and English. Fluent, though. Even in bed,” Lewrie added, with a faint smile of pleasant reverie.
James Peel smiled back and raised an eyebrow in congratulatons.
“So… you would write her if you could,” Peel said. “Perhaps a reply in English, which she understands, would be more believable to her than any attempt on your part in French. Hmmm… too many grammatical errors and mis-spellings in your poor French might make
you look weak and clownish. After all, she’s the one pleading with you for forgiveness. Hard to accept, from an illiterate fool.”
“Now, I didn’t exactly say I’d-!” Lewrie quickly objected.
“And, does she receive a letter in English, and if it is ever found on her person, in her effects, it would be a death sentence,” Peel cleverly pointed out, then pretended to think better of it. “No, we’d hate to lose her access just after we get it. Better we-”
“Alright,” Lewrie suddenly declared, liking the sound of “death sentence” and unable to think of anyone who could deserve it more.
“You will?” Peel asked, surprised.
“If it’s intercepted, and they lop off her head, that’d be fine with me,” Lewrie said in a level tone, though Mr. Peel, who had known him long enough to see the danger signs, noted that Lewrie’s clear and merry grey-blue eyes had gone as steely-grey as Arctic ice. “Damn the wishes of the Crown, or Secret Branch.”
“Well, I was going to plead that the intelligence she could give us would bring this war to a victorious end, bring down the French Empire, and put Napoleon Bonaparte before a firing squad, but… if you are amenable, I’ll not question your reasons,” Peel most-happily said, with a broad grin and an air of relief. “Uhm, when could I expect it?”
“Don’t press,” Lewrie sternly told him. “Findin’ forgiveness for what she did’ll take some time, and, as you say, it’ll have t’ring true. It wouldn’t, if it’s rushed. If my reply’s too quick, and smuggled to her a week or two later, she’d know I’m lyin’, and then where would ye be?
“I’ll think on it, tomorrow,” Lewrie said. “Once back at sea, I have more than enough time t’ponder it.”
“My dear Alan, I didn’t expect to coach back to London tomorrow with it in my hand,” Peel said with a laugh. “I, my compatriots, and the Crown will be deeply in your debt, though.”
There was a bustle at the forward door as Yeovill entered the great-cabins with a large covered metal barge. “Evening, sir! Supper is ready to be served.”
“Capital!” Lewrie declared before he tossed off the last dregs of his ale and rose to go to the table in the dining-coach. “I trust you’ve a hearty appetite, Mister Peel. Come take a seat.”
* * *
The rest of the evening passed in a much cheerier manner, with Peel regaling Lewrie with the latest London doings, and Lewrie describing the details of the raid on Boulogne, complete with all the bravery of his officers and Mids, and what a partially amusing folly it had turned out to be. In turn, Peel related a recent visit to Mr. Zachariah Twigg’s retirement estate at Hampstead, where Lewrie’s own father, Sir Hugo, had been visiting at the same time. Bitter enemies at logger-heads long before in the Far East in the late 1780s, they’d become the best of friends, as thick as thieves, in their later ages; Twigg, the old cut-throat Crown agent, and Sir Hugo, the rake-hellish, were mad for three-horse chariots, though they were both old enough to know better, and raced each other daily like the idlest, hen-headed young blades who thought themselves immortal, terrorising the county thereabouts. And all accompanied by shrimp remoulade, a drippy-bacon salad, a guinea hen apiece, and a slab of beefsteak each, slathered with a bearnaise sauce that Yeovill had whipped up; washed down, of course, by several bottles of wine.
* * *
Peel departed a little before Lights Out, at One Bell of the Evening Watch, at 8:30 P.M., in fine fettle and halfway “foxed.” Lewrie took a last glass of brandy back to his desk in the day-cabin and sat, staring off at nothing while Pettus and Jessop finished cleaning up and stowing away, and readying his bed-cot for sleep. He brooded, shaking his head now and again in amazement that Peel would even think to ask him to write Charite de Guilleri; in even more amazement that he’d even thought to agree, much less to promise that he would.
Chalky gave out a preparatory “here I come” murf before leaping atop the desk, and butted under Lewrie’s free hand for pets. Toulon sat by Lewrie’s right boot, whining for a little co-operation, so Lewrie turned to offer his thigh for a stepping-stone. A second later, his heavier black-and-white ram-cat was in his lap, kneading the front of his waist-coat, purring lustily.
Lewrie gave up brooding to stroke them both, smiling, and glad to have their company and affection, and the chance to turn all of his attention to them and nothing else, for a long moment.
“Don’t chew on that, Chalky,” he chid the younger cat, which had flopped onto one side and begun to claw at his letter to Lydia, drawing a corner to his sharp-fanged mouth for a nibble: Chalky adored any balled-up sheet of paper, for footballs and chew-toys.
Lewrie took it away from him and held it at mid-chest to re-read what he had penned so far. He’d meant to finish it and send it ashore before Peel’s arrival.
… completed Victualling and taking aboard fresh stocks of shot and powder. Now that is done, I am promised by the Port Admiral that I can place the ship Out of Discipline for at least two days, giving the People a well-deserved and much-needed Carouse.
Most happily, the Weather remains bad and the Winds remain foul, “dead muzzlers” precluding sailing, so do come down, soonest, and I imagine that we will be in port even longer…
That was where he had been forced to break off when Peel arrived.
“Make way, lads,” Lewrie told the cats as he scooted his chair closer to the desk, opened the ink well, and took up his steel-nibbed pen once more.
These last few months had been a Trial, the details of which I cannot trust to paper, but will gladly speak of, do I have the Pleasure of imparting it all to you, one whom I trust has a sympathetic ear for a poor sailor’s tales-some parts may be deemed Amusing, now they’re past and done.
Most of all, I am in Need of your genial Company, whether my tales are amusing or not. Make all Haste, without risk to your pretty neck of course, I have arranged for shore Lodging for you. Know that I shall Burn with Anticipation ’til your Reply to my offer, and to your Arrival, should you agree to come down to Portsmouth.
Most Passionately and Affectionately,
Alan
Aboard HMS Reliant
Portsmouth Harbour
November 17th, 1804
“Peace now, catlings,” he pled as he sanded and dried the letter, then folded it over. They sat as intent as buzzards over an expiring eland as he fetched sealing wax and his ornate new brass signet stamp from the desk, and melted a wax stick over the candle.
He got a large blob of red wax dripped over the corners of the folds, then pressed his stamp down into it, forming an emblem of shield topped with helmet. His bloody… escutcheon.
“I still think it’s damned foolishness,” he muttered, eying the result, before taking up his pen again to inscribe Lydia’s name and address on the back-side. As he brushed glue from a small pot on the last of his stamps, he thought of sending it ashore by the next passing guard boat, but… no. He would take it ashore himself, in the morning, to be sure that it went into the London mail bags, and not be lost in a Midshipman’s pockets or soaked illegible in the rain.
After stowing glue pot, wax, and stamp in the desk, he mused over the completed letter for a moment, before placing it out of harm’s way, in a drawer, too. He took a sip of his brandy as reward, feeling a stir of delight that he’d soon see Lydia, again. Which stir abruptly vanished, as he thought of that other letter he’d promised to write.
Tell that murderin’ bitch that I forgive her? he gravelled to himself; I never will! But… He recalled a jape that he’d heard about what anxious Mommas told their virgin daughters of how to act on their wedding nights… “lay back and think of England!”
“The things I do for King and Country,” he whispered before he tossed off the last of his drink. “Lay back and think of England, indeed!”
AFTERWORD
Readers may recall in Lewrie’s earlier mis-adventures that the British spent a lot of time, effort, and lives trying to wrest Saint Domingue (Haiti) from the French, because its wealth in su
gar and its other exports were worth as much as all the other British West Indies colonies combined. When the French completed their last evacuations in November of 1803, the general feeling was “sour grapes” and “If we can’t have it, then no other world power will, either-so there!” Henceforth Haiti would belong to its own people, to make of it what they would… which, as we’ve seen, hasn’t amounted to much since.
Yes, there was a Lt. Josiah Willoughby, a young officer whom William Laird Clowes, in The Royal Navy, a History from the Earliest Times to 1900, called “one of the most gallant officers ever to serve under the British flag,” an Acting-Lieutenant at the time, aboard the Hercule, 74. He went aboard the grounded French frigate Chlorinde and worked her off before the Haitians could set her afire with heated shot. Imagine my delight to discover him with the same surname that I chose for Lewrie’s rake-hell father so long ago; imagine Lewrie’s wariness to address the shared relations; imagine Josiah Nisbet Willoughby’s dismay that he is (blessedly distant) kin to two utter rogues!
Before they gave up Saint Domingue as a bad go, the French had conducted a policy of genocide, intending to slaughter every dis-affected Black in the colony and replace them with docile new slaves imported from Africa; quite a change from the heady proclamations of the early Revolution, when Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were the watchwords, and slavery was condemned and intended to be abolished. Early French governors sent to the West Indies before the war began in 1793, some of them part-Black, had declared freedom upon their arrivals. In sad point of fact, though, the chaining together and drowning of several thousand Blacks right there in Cap Francois harbour really happened.
And, after the French were expelled, the victorious ex-slave generals, Dessalines, Christophe, Clairveaux, Petion, and Moise, turned on each other, as revolutionaries do, and in the process, all the petites blancs, the lower-class tradesmen and shopkeeper Whites who had stayed, hoping against hope, were massacred in turn.
The Invasion Year l-17 Page 40
