His noir servants; damn Hugues for freeing them! Damn Hugues, too, for charging him rente on the use of them by the week! Damn them for drawing the line on what they would or would not do for their new master and his coterie, as if some things were below their dignity…as if they had any sense of dignity to upset!
They dared lay complaints of ill-usage with Victor Hugues’s sous commissaires civils, they insolently dared to quit his house (when they didn’t just run off!), and implored the commissaires for employment with any other house, even at lower wages, if they had to.
The commissaires had sent letters chiding him for harshness; he was to pay more for the services of those who remained.
There were fewer servants in his retinue doing the same amount of labour, and, illiterate or not, those remaining noirs seemed as if they knew those letters by heart. Cleaning, laundry, and yardwork was now done in lacklustre fashion; dishes and glassware appeared at meals spotted and stained, and had to be sent back over and over ’til he was satisfied. The cuisine, already upsetting, was now slovenly over-done or under-done, some days too spicy to be stood, and on others so bland as to be nearly tasteless, and the new male cook and his assistant had a rare knack for finding the toughest, oldest, and scrawniest victuals, whether fish, fowl, or meat. Lank, wilted, half-shriveled vegetables, half-washed salad greens almost brown or black on the leaf edges…!
And their mute, dog-eyed, blank-faced portrayals of dumb innocence, their shambling-slow, head-scratching shows of utter ignorance! They behaved much as that Lt. Récamier had cautioned. Spoons and utensils went missing, saucers and cups inexplicably got broken or chipped, costly bed-linens brought from France got torn, permanently stained, or so poorly repaired that the caterpillar-sized seams made them useless for sleeping.
Despite constant warnings about open windows and doors, birds, lizards, and shoals of cafards, the huge evil-smelling cockroaches endemic to the tropics invaded, infested the house (and their bedding!) every night and each dawn, resulting in a stampede of noirs who went tittering and yelping to chase them down and expel them—resulting in something fragile and valuable being broken each time.
Merde alors, every bottle of wine that was opened tasted as if it had been watered, no matter that he inspected the corks and leaden seals closely, no matter that his clerk Etienne practically stood guard over his cellar, with all the crates placed in de Gougne’s cramped office and bed-chamber; with a Marine Infantry sentry in the foyer right outside the doors!
And not a blessed one of them would fan him!
Screeching tirades made no more impression than if Choundas had howled at the tide like King Canute ordering it to go out, not in. And he could not beat them, whip them, kick them, or slap them, as one could casually do Hindoos, Chinese, or Filipinos, and it was galling to him. One letter had suggested spending more of his pay to purchase a better cuisine for all, including servants, of garbing them in better clothing, of supplying shoes and stockings, but he would be damned if he would. The cost of that notwithstanding, there was no way Choundas would stoop to “bribing” noirs to treat him better, or be mocked for a “soft” touch. It would be a token of total surrender, and even if he dismissed them all and started with a fresh crew of servants, word of his ineffectiveness—his de-fanging!—would be all over the island by the next sunset, making him the laughingstock of noirs, Creoles, and French-born alike.
He fanned himself some more, and swabbed his face and neck with a small towel that had once been coldly moist, but now reeked of sweat, mildew, and arm-pits. He painfully drew his chair up to his massive, and elegant, desk to study his manning problems.
Lt. Houdon could command the brig, the larger prize vessel now being armed and converted for a commerce raider; Lt. Mercier would be his second officer; and Capt. Griot would have to surrender one of his junior lieutenants to make the necessary third, bien.
Capitaine MacPherson, for all his drawbacks, was a masterful seaman, able to command La Résolue without his first officer; and his first lieutenant would be seasoned and made of the same mould as he by now. That officer would get the large schooner’s command, aussi bien. Junior lieutenants would move up in seniority, aspirants would become acting-lieutenants aboard the corvettes…
No, the schooner needed two more officers, and the brig needed a fourth, perhaps, to serve as prize-master when she took a suitably big or valuable merchantman…the schooner, too? Damn this heat!
Choundas found it hard to think. He took a deep breath of hot, still, and musty air, squirmed about so his sweat-sodden shirt became cooler by exposure, and pored over the names in the copied musters. He ticked off a few names, chose a couple, then leaned back in frustration against the damp leather chairback, chewing absently on the end of his expensive pen’s rosewood stylus. It was one of the new steel-nibbed pens, just coming into vogue and common use, instead of goose quills, and (he proudly thought for a moment) another example of his nation’s inventiveness, like the lead-core pencil.
Récamier? No. Jules Hainaut? Hmmm. What was he to do with young Jules? he wondered.
The lad had shown well, the day that Le Bouclier had…died. Hainaut was tarry-handed, when he put his mind to it, and was overdue for reward for his services to him, as well as his recent pluckiness, but yet…what that idiotic Dutch captain Haljewin had said stuck in Choundas’s suspicious mind, and kept resurfacing.
Someone who had known the Dutch ship’s cargo and day of her departure, someone who knew his plans must have betrayed her, had betrayed poor Capt. Desplan and Le Bouclier to the British!
How else to explain how Lewrie and his frigate had arrived just at the perfect moment? Lewrie was a swaggering dumb beast, a weapon to be wielded by his betters, nothing more, Choundas disparagingly sneered.
In the Far East, Lewrie had been under the thumb of a much slyer man, that murderous cut-throat, the spare and hatchet-faced anglais spy Zachariah Twigg. Together, they had ruined his plans a second time in the Mediterranean, in ’94, despite being forewarned by Citizen Pouzin, his enigmatic civilian counterpart sent down from Paris. Posing as a mere banking clerk, a Juif from Coutts’ Bank named Simon Silberberg of Lewrie’s acquaintance, Twigg had. Hah!
Old, Twigg would be now, but Choundas did not think he could go far wrong to suspect that he still spun his webs this far from London, using a younger protégé who would find that beastly ignoramus, Lewrie, once again a useful cat’s-paw. A younger spy who had already obtained his secret navy signals books!
And…had not old Twigg or Silberberg, or whatever he called himself—and Lewrie!—taken one of his coasting vessels full of arms to encourage the Piedmontese and Savoyards into French service?
Another delicate mission most effectively stopped, and Jules…Hainaut had been aboard her, had he not? Taken prisoner, and held for a mere six weeks before being exchanged for a British midshipman, then returned to his side. He’d thought, then, that it had been a suspiciously short imprisonment, but…
Had Twigg “turned” Hainaut back on him as a secret informer, as Lewrie had somehow “turned” that Claudia Mastandrea slut who had been sent to milk him dry of information, then poison him, as he and Citizen Pouzin had arranged? All his schemes had turned to dust, after Hainaut had come back to him…hadn’t they?
How did les anglais know of his coming to Guadeloupe, learn of Haljewin’s sailing day, know his decision to shift Le Bouclier over to Basse-Terre, and when? From a nest of traitors and spies already here on the island…or from one he had unwittingly brought with him?
Choundas had always known that Jules Hainaut’s eager deference was cynical play-acting. The lad was out for his pleasures, promotion, a fat purse, and his prick. He had taken him on anyway, knowing what good use he could make of a shrewd and pragmatic rogue. The Revolution badly needed men who would not flinch from ruthlessness, and Jules had proved that he could ignore false sentiments and perform what he was ordered to do. Choundas had worked round his sham, and had even found the lad amusing at tim
es. He had groomed him, tutored him, to improve his effectiveness in the future. He didn’t wish to think the worst of the lad. There could be a spy placed, or bought off, long ago; there could be someone whom he had yet to suspect. And it would be galling for Choundas to admit he had nurtured a viper in his breast all this time.
He would give Hainaut the benefit of the doubt…for now. At sea, he would no longer be privy to the plans he would improvise, now that Choundas knew that his old ones might be compromised. If Jules was the spy, he would have no way to communicate with the British.
Did Lewrie and the British continue to plague him with more inexplicable coincidences, Choundas would know that Hainaut was innocent.
But, did the fortunes of his small squadron and his new raiders improve beyond all hopes, and the deep investigation he would begin the very next morning fail to turn up another suspected traitor…!
It would be sad, but for the lack of another explanation Choundas would have no other choice but to denounce and arrest Hainaut, put him to “the question” to sear the truth from him, then turn him over to the gendarmes for trial, and a sure and certain execution under the blade of the merciless Victor Hugues’s “Monsieur Guillotine.”
And if blameless, well…Hainaut would get his seasoning for future duty to France as a naval officer, his fondest wish. Choundas thought to watch his reactions for carefully hidden upset, or too much joy. No, he’d dissemble, pretend to be glad but not too glad, sham sadness to be leaving Choundas’s side, perhaps even pipe his eyes with “loss” at leaving the service of such a fine master…pah!
It would prove nothing, Choundas suspected; he was too “fly.”
There were blank lines opposite the positions of the schooner, now renamed La Vigilante. Choundas dipped the steel nib of his pen in the inkwell, paused over the lines. Dieuxième, or Troisième, Second or Third officer?
“A real reward,” Choundas whispered, his fiendish face even uglier as he smiled so widely, as he clumsily wrote Hainaut’s name on the line for Second Officer. Written with his left hand, the name was almost illegible even to him. But Choundas was sure that his mousy and harassed little clerk Etienne de Gougne would be able to decypher it when he made the fair copies in his copper-plate hand.
And gloat with studiously hidden glee to be rid of his tormentor!
Chapter Eighteen
The two warships sailed together, clawing out their offing from Antigua to the East-Sou’east, and close-hauled to windward on the larboard tack. Though HMS Proteus had been quicker off the mark to seize the windward advantage, smothering the USS Thomas Sumter in her lee by her spread of sail, the American ship had still surged up almost abeam of her by late afternoon as the day’s heat faded, as the airs borne by the Trade wind grew denser.
“Fresher from the careenage, I expect, sir,” Mr. Winwood said as the reason, “with a cleaner bottom.”
“Equal our waterline length, Captain,” Lt. Langlie supposed as well, “so it stands to reason that both hulls perform equally. Perhaps a touch finer in her entry than ours, but…”
“No better handled,” Lt. Catterall said with a dismissive sniff.
“Longer yards, with larger courses, surely,” Lt. Adair dared to comment as they watched the Sumter bowl along, barely half a mile alee, “especially ’pon her t’gallants and royals. Fuller-bellied jibs…”
“Mmhmm,” Lewrie replied to their guesses, telescope to one eye for the last ten minutes, entire, intent upon his study of her.
“Converted from a merchantman, she’s fuller in her beam, too,” Lt. Langlie pondered aloud, “so perhaps she sits more upright than we, just a few degrees stiffer, and sailing on a flatter bottom, with a pronounced shoulder…not as rounded as our chines, sir?”
“Mmhmm,” Lewrie said again, and that only because he sensed the pregnant pause in their musings that required a response on his part.
“Merchantman or no, she’s a swift sailer, I’ll grant them,” Mr. Winwood admitted with a hint of grumbling over any vessel that could rival a British-built, British-masted, and British-rigged ship, one set up to suit his experiences, and his captain’s.
“Aye, swift,” Lewrie mumbled. His arms tiring at last, he let the barrel of the strongest day-glass rest on the lee bulwarks of the quarterdeck for a bit. He peered about to windward, then aloft to the commissioning pendant’s stiff-driven coach-whip, to the clouds on the horizon in search of dirty weather. There was none. The pendant was fully horizontal, its swallow-tail tip fluttering in concert with the lee edges of the jibs and courses. Even with the larboard battery run out and the starboard run in, Proteus was just a pinch slower than the Yankee man o’ war, perhaps by as much as a quarter of a knot, and the cleanliness of her quickwork could not explain it. Americans simply built faster ships, Lewrie decided; just like the French did. Proteus had been based on a British interpretation of a captured French frigate whose lines had been taken off and copied, but…perhaps not copied closely enough.
“Puts me in mind of something from the Beatitudes, hey, Mister Winwood?” Lewrie asked the Sailing Master. “How does it go? That the ‘first shall be last, and the last shall be first’? No matter if they out-foot us or point a degree or two more to windward, really. Proteus was made to dominate, not sprint…stay the course in all weathers, keep the seas, and then hammer the swifter when we finally corner ’em.”
“Or simply chase ’em off, sir,” Lt. Catterall said with a grunt of agreement. “Make ’em out-run us, in fear.”
“Well said, sir,” Lewrie told him with a brief grin, which drew growls of like sentiment from the rest as he turned back to leeward to raise his telescope once again, bracing the tube on the rat-lines of the mizen stays this time. He sobered quickly, though, dropping back into a brown study usually foreign to his nature, or his officers’ experience with him. His statement had been his first utterance in the past hour, other than a curt directive or two to improve their ship’s handling. And, intent upon Sumter once more, he gave all indications of ignoring anything they said.
Lewrie was not studying Sumter in search of a weakness that he could use to keep Proteus ahead, though. In fact, the idea of sailing her hull-under was the last thing he wished to do, no matter how competitive he would usually act to maintain the honour of the Royal Navy, his ship, or his crew. He was not, in truth, peering so intently upon Sumter as he was keeping an eye on one of her midshipmen…his son.
His bastard son…who was at that moment perched aloft high in the Sumter’s main weather stays, just below her futtock shrouds, with a glass in his hands, too, which he lifted every now and again to caution his captain-uncle to Proteus’s next race strategem. Two other boys of Sumter’s cockpit were perched with him, all three hooting and cheering as the American armed ship gradually gained a few more yards on Proteus. They’d wave their tricorne hats and whoop and halloo, teeth-bared, and mouths open in perfect O’s, like a pantomime’s show against the thunder of the winds. They’d lean far out, with only a finger and a shoe heel gripping the rat-lines and stays, daring each other to greater follies of “tarry” derring-do, and each time Midshipman Desmond McGilliveray matched or bettered their feats, Lewrie sucked in his breath as if to shout and warn them to “belay all that.” He could see a grizzled bosun atop the bulwarks at the base of the stays, fist shaking and mouth open to bawl caution at them, but with boys that age, what he shouted most-like went in one ear and out the other, and Lewrie still felt twinges of worry. A father’s worry.
Desmond lifted his glass, lowered it, then waved wide, beaming, looking directly into the lens of the powerful day-glass, as if he knew he was being watched so closely. He raised his glass again and Lewrie lowered his, knowing he was being eyed, and pantomimed a solid grip on the stays with both hands, and was much relieved to see the lad seem to obey, and loop an arm and a shin inside the rat-lines, round a rigid stay. Lewrie made a large gesture of swabbing a coat sleeve over a “worried” brow. “Don’t do that!” he silently mouthed over the water.
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“Boat ahoy!” Midshipman Larkin had challenged two days following that drunken supper, and the youthful voice shouting in reply had drawn Lewrie to the deck. The turn-out for a foreign midshipman was as thin as charity, so it was Larkin who led Mr. Midshipman McGilliveray to the quarterdeck from the entry-port with his sealed letter for Proteus’s captain…who met them personally.
“Captain McGilliveray’s sincerest respects to you, sir, and I’m charged to deliver to you this message, Captain Lewrie, sir,” the lad had crisply stated, doffing his hat and making a courtly “leg” worthy of an English “mid” reporting to an Admiral—though no English “mid” would ever peer so intently or so openly. And perhaps only a famous man such as Jervis or Nelson would elicit such an awe-struck expression as Midshipman McGilliveray displayed.
“Thank you, Mister McGilliveray,” Lewrie had replied, properly gruff and stoical, his hand out for the letter.
“I was instructed to wait upon your written reply, sir, and…” McGilliveray said, stumbling for the first time. He had shown none of the usual youthful curiosity one might expect of a fellow boarding one of King George’s ships for the first time, not even craning his head about to see how other navies did things, rigged things, but kept his gaze wide-eyed upon Lewrie far more intently than any courtly book of gentlemanly behaviour could advise when dealing with one’s superiors, or elders.
“Oi’ll see ta him, sor, whilst…I shall, rather…?” Larkin offered, eyes almost crossed in concentration on “proper” speech.
“No, that won’t be necessary, Mister Larkin, but thankee. I’ll have Mister McGilliveray below to my quarters,” Lewrie decided, which unexpected offer of hospitality confused one, but delighted the other.
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