And who’d prefer lumber, ice, and barrel staves to sugar, coffee, and cocoa? Lewrie thought, scorning American exports and the products of their limited industries. Well, they do ship rum, and decent beer!
“Onliest place they can take ’em is Guadeloupe!” Captain Grant spluttered, breaking the stunned, sad silence following Lewrie’s revelation. “Bless my soul, can’t ya blockade ’em, can ya not dash back an’…try to…”
“Intercept ’em, ayup,” one of the Crowninshields supplied.
“Aye, intercept ’em,” Grant gravelled. “Catch ’em before they fetch ’em into Basse-Terre or Pointe-à-Pitre. Get word t’your other warships, Cap’m Lewrie. Ya can’t be th’ only frigate in these parts!”
“Three days, into the teeth of the Trades to Antigua, and then what, sirs?” Lewrie demanded, spreading his hands at the futility. “I am heartily sorry for your losses, gentlemen, but do I haunt either or both harbours in hopes of re-capturing your ships, any Americans taken as prizes, I’m not fulfilling my proper duty. Better I…”
“Damn my eyes, Lewrie!” Grant exploded. “And here I thought ya were a fire-eatin’ scrapper!”
“Better I take Proteus South, sir,” Lewrie reiterated with his teeth on edge, “for do I lurk close inshore of Guadeloupe for weeks, what’s happening to a dozen, two dozen other American merchantmen down South? How many ships will make it here to form a convoy, if the damn’ French are free to run riot? Nossirs…I’m away down the Windwards, this very evening, as far as Caracas if I must.”
“Sumter’ll clear port, as well, sir,” Capt. McGilliveray vowed. “Randolph, you want to take charge here, and wait for the promised frigate t’come in? Or would ya prefer t’sail in company with me and find a proper fight for a change?”
“Let our consul keep an eye on things here, Cap’m McGilliveray,” Capt. Randolph cried, leaping to his feet (though careful not to knock his head on the overhead beams or planking), “for sure as there’s God in his Heaven, my sword, my right arm, and my ship are yours! I’d be that eager t’show those swaggerin’ Monsoors what it’s like to tangle with a pack o’ Georgia wildcats! Bring ’em on…yee-hah!” he ended with a shout, a Red Indian warrior’s feral battle-scream, that made Lewrie’s hackles and nape hairs stand on end.
Aboard Sumter, that howl caused her crew, and Capt. Randolph’s boat-crew laying alongside, to raise a screeching wolf’s chorus of their own, as they suspected that they would no longer swing idle round the moorings to await the plodding drudgery of convoying, but would be going out to look for a proper stand-up fight, at long last.
“Uhm…given this sudden, and un-looked-for, turn of events,” Lewrie carefully began to say, once he had recovered his aplomb, using caution before the unwitting civilians not privy to their government’s, or his and McGilliveray’s covert arrangement, “and since it is British as well as American merchantmen at peril…and, notwithstanding the lack of a formal pact ’twixt your President and the Crown, perhaps we could, ah…aid each other in our respective searches for the French privateers, Captain McGilliveray?”
“An excellent suggestion, Captain Lewrie,” McGilliveray replied, shamming the utmost surprise at such a generous offer. Then, amid the enthusiastic “Huzzahs!” from Randolph and the merchant masters, he gave Lewrie an enigmatic smile, and the tiniest incline of his head as a reward. “I, and my government, stand forever in your debt for your open-handed and cooperative spirit!”
Lost in the cheering and toasting, however, was the fact that no British ships, or very few at most, were in danger; they didn’t trade on the Spanish Main or with the Dutch isles, with both nations allies to France!
A toast was raised to Lewrie’s alacrity and support, and while it was being drunk, and he posed all disparagingly “Aw, Pshaw” modest, his mind was mildly ascheme.
No matter what Pelham wanted, what his London masters wanted, it made eminent sense, and to the Devil with Saint Domingue and who owned it! America and Great Britain, he marvelled; sworn enemies not fifteen years past. Despite the lingering grievances and distrust created during their Revolution, their burgeoning commercial competition, and rivalry, they were going to war as temporary allies, on the same side for a blessed once! Could this lead to better things, he speculated?
And what allies they’d make, too! Even if they were so ruled by their enthusiasms, so…un-English in revealing their feelings, such as their screams, howls, and cheers at present.
Well, so was he, when you came right down to it. Wearing a public mask of blasé boredom definitely did not become him. In fact, he rather liked the freedom to howl, and wished he possessed it!
Oh, Lord, he thought, Peel’s sure t’go off like a bomb!
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Ah, Captain Lewrie,” Peel said after he had gotten back aboard Proteus, and had made it below to his great-cabins. Peel was sitting in the dining-coach, in the middle of writing a letter, to his master Mr. Pelham Lewrie supposed as he tore open his neck-stock, unbuckled his sword belt, and removed his coat. “You’re back, at last. I have been meaning to discuss your idea with you…that’un you proposed on deck, yesterday, concerning the, uhm…” Peel enigmatically said with a vague wave of his hand in Aspinall’s direction.
“Oh, yes?” Lewrie responded, feigning idle interest, and making his face a placid Englishman’s mask again. “I’d relish a ginger beer, Aspinall, there’s a good fellow. The Americans served cold tea when I was aboard Sumter just now.”
“The decoction in which I indulge, sir,” Mr. Peel told him, all chirpy and pleasant, as if yesterday’s bitter argument hadn’t happened.
Lewrie answered, “With ice, sir. The Yankees still had a small supply of their Massachusetts ice aboard. Worth its weight in gold with the Dons, one of their merchant masters informed me.” He took a seat at the table, across from Peel.
“I am suddenly jealous, sir!” Peel said with a groan of envy at the prospect, and made a moue of faint distaste at his mug of tea. “I suppose we shall not see the like ’til the first American traders call at Kingston next spring, alas.”
“Yer beer, sir,” Aspinall said, fetching Lewrie a foaming mug.
“Thankee, Aspinall, that’ll be all for a bit,” Lewrie said with a brief smile. “Do you take a turn on deck and get some air. Cabins are stuffy, God knows, even with the canvas chutes rigged.”
“Aye, sir, and I will,” his man-servant replied, departing with a long hank of spun-yarn he quickly fetched from what was left of his tiny day-pantry, so he could continue his sennet-work.
“So, you’ve considered the idea, have you, Mister Peel?” Lewrie said once they were alone. He could not show as much keen interest in what Peel decided, for, frankly, the developments aboard Sumter had made the quickly spun scheme quite fly his head. He could sham renewed interest, though…and trust that fear of rejection would explain a lack of greater enthusiasm in his demeanour.
“I have, sir,” Peel stated. “Once I had, uhm…cooled off a bit, d’ye see?” He made another moue, tossed off a shrug, and chuckled softly. “And I’ve come to the conclusion that encouraging Choundas in imagining that he’s a traitor in his vicinity is actually a rather neat piece of mis-direction…one which I am sure that Mister Pelham would approve, were he here. One, frankly, which he might have dreamt up himself, was he privy to the intelligence we just discovered.”
“Excellent!” Lewrie crowed, slapping the dining table with his open palm. “Capital! And I am certain that you’ve concocted a scheme for getting our prisoners back to Guadeloupe, and blabbing what you wish to Choundas. It’ll be a clever bit, knowing you, Mister Peel. More subtle than any I could have come up with on short notice. Mean t’say,” Lewrie gushed, then paused, thinking that he was laying on the praise a bit too thick for Peel to credit, so soon after their howling snit. He had a very large and heavy “shoe” which he was about to drop on the long-suffering bastard’s head, after all, and it would be nice to agree on something, anything!, before dropping it.
“Well, sir,” Peel continued, though he did pause a bit, himself, to give Lewrie the tiniest chary look. “Captain Haljewin was the one sprung the idea of a spy on Choundas, from what I gathered whilst interrogating the man. Haljewin had bags of unguarded time since his capture to converse with the French captain and his mates, as separate interrogations with them revealed. They are all now convinced that someone on Guadeloupe betrayed them to us last night, and I was careful to leave them with the impression that they weren’t far wrong…without actually confirming the existence of a spy, or spies. But neither did I go out of my way to deny it, d’ye see, Captain Lewrie!”
Let him have joy of it, Lewrie thought; preen gladsome, for now.
“During my interrogations, I also discovered that Choundas has a rather small, but trusted, staff,” Peel went on almost happily, in his element, privy to things Lewrie didn’t know, and glad to impart them. “There’s a Captain Griot, commanding a corvette name of Le Gascon. A Breton, and you know what stock Choundas puts in his ancient Celts and Veneti warriors…men of the ancient blood, and all.”
“God, yes,” Lewrie agreed. “Mad for ’em.”
“His other corvette is commanded by a Captain MacPherson, one of those émigré Scots who fled after the Battle of Culloden. He was born in France, but his parents were minor Scots aristocracy. Most-like landed gentry, in the ‘squirearchy’ with but dim and distant relation to a proper ‘laird.’ In France, though, ’til the Revolution, they were awarded the title of Chevalier. Or, bought it. King Louis’s court at Versailles was as corrupt as the Ottoman Turks’. But, Captain MacPherson is Catholic! A breast-beater of the staunchest sort, hmm?”
“A fallen aristo, and a Papist, to boot?” Lewrie said with a chuckle. “That’d make him doubly suspect to the Directory in Paris…all the anti-religion cant they spout. There’s bishops back home now calling France the Anti-Christ, already. He your choice, then?”
“In a pinch, he’d serve main-well, I do confess,” Peel laughed, “though he’s reckoned a superb officer and ship-handler. Rather popular with his officers and men. Well thought of, in general.”
“Oh well, then,” Lewrie said with a shrug, and a sip of beer.
“Should a well-liked and trusted man be labeled a spy and traitor, sir, and were enough proofs manufactured to convince Choundas and Hugues of his guilt,” Peel merrily plotted, “the implications of that strike much wider and deeper than Guadeloupe. Firstly, if a man like MacPherson can’t be trusted, then who can? And secondly, would it not set off a frenzy of Jacobin revulsion ’gainst Catholics in France? Or create a Catholic resistance to the Directory, and the Revolution? Do you see the possibilities, sir? They’re breathtaking!” Peel exulted.
“Oh!” Lewrie gasped. “It’d set off another Terror, worse than the one of Ninety-three! Half their people’d be witch-findin’ among the other half, and everyone’d be suspect. They’d keep their guillotines workin’ round the clock!”
“Decimating their officer corps, purging it all over again, of capable people, and promoting the rabid fools most loyal to the Republic from the rear ranks to the officers’ mess,” Peel chortled in glee as he contemplated the reach of his scheme.
“Turning Ordinary Seamen into Post-Captains,” Lewrie added with an evil snicker.
“Aye, he’d do right-wondrous, this MacPherson fellow. But he may be a bit too straight for our purposes,” Peel went on. “Choundas maintains a very small staff, as I said. There is his aide-de-camp, his flag-lieutenant I suppose you’d say in naval parlance. Jules Hainaut. A Lieutenant de Vaisseau, now. Just a midshipman, an Aspirant, the last time we dealt with Choundas in the Mediterranean. Recall him, do you?” Peel asked, tongue-in-cheek sly.
“No, not really,” Lewrie replied, frowning.
“You should. You captured him,” Peel informed him, enjoying a look of surprise on Lewrie’s phyz. “Thatch-haired lout, looked like a swineherd? Tattered uniform, all out at elbows and knees?”
“Perhaps,” Lewrie had to confess his ignorance. “Can’t really say. Hmmm…wasn’t Dutch or something, was he? My old clerk Mister Mountjoy had to interview him? Hmmm, it’ll come to me.”
“The very fellow,” Peel insisted. “The sort who’d sell his own mother, did she fetch a good knock-down price, Mister Twigg determined. Parrots the right slogans, toadies with the best of ’em, and fawns on Choundas, so he can trade on his fearsome repute, so the Frog prisoners say. A right bastard, in their opinion, one of the charming rogues. For some reason, though, Choundas has sent him away from him, after near-doting on the young sprog all these years. Appointed him aboard that new auxiliary man o’ war schooner, and he’s most-like at sea now.”
“Think Choundas has tumbled to him, at last?” Lewrie enquired. “Or gotten fed up with his ways?”
“It happened after Captain Haljewin first brought up the topic of a spy who’d betrayed his ship, and that frigate we smashed,” Peel hinted, tapping the side of his nose. “If this Hainaut would sell up his mother for pocket-money, perhaps Choundas suspects he’d be open to a shower o’ British guineas, hmm?”
“But he’s at sea, now, like you said,” Lewrie pointed out to him. “How could he have betrayed our prize to us?”
“Unless Hainaut was part of a whole cabal of agents,” Mr. Peel countered, “and the very thought of that’d have Choundas, and Hugues, puttin’ half the island through ‘questions’ worthy of the Spanish Inquisition…torture chambers, and all.”
“Is that what you intend, then, Mister Peel?” Lewrie asked, in awe of his daring, now that Peel was hitting his full devious stride.
Dear Lord, what’ve I started? Lewrie had to ask himself.
“Lastly, there’s Choundas’s long-time clerk,” Peel told him in a less enthusiastic manner, after a calming sip of tea. “He’s known as ‘The Mouse.’ Frightened to death of working for Choundas, but too scared to leave his employ by now, I’d reckon. Knows where too many bodies are buried, all that. Meek as a catch-fart, scorned and abused by one and all. There’s no love lost ’twixt him and Choundas. None lost where Hainaut’s concerned, either. Who better to make a target than Choundas’s sorry little long-suffering clerk, who has access to every secret and every move, and Choundas’s every idle musing, hmm?”
“So,” Lewrie posed, growing tired of Peel’s machinations; there was a surprise to spring, a ship to get under way before dark, and the precious time in which to do both was quickly wasting. “I defer to you as to which you intend to give to Choundas, if you haven’t done so already…let something ‘oh so accidentally’ slip to our prisoners? Or will you require them to stay aboard a while longer before clueing them in?”
“Impatient for them to go, Lewrie?” Peel asked him.
“The longer they’re aboard, the more they might pick up of our doings, is all,” Lewrie countered with a minor lie of dis-interest in them. “You can’t keep secrets for very long aboard a ship, without a hint of it leakin’ forrud, you know that. You’ve seen it. Better if we foist ’em off to the Prize Court ashore, on parole or gaoled, like we would with your run-of-the-mill enemy civilian prisoners. Else, we make ’em wonder why we treated ’em diff’rent, and start thinkin’ about the ‘why’ of it, and there’s your scheme taken with a grain o’ salt as soon as Choundas grills ’em. Mind you, Mister Peel, he’s a suspicious old shit. What’s kept him alive and thrivin’ all this time, hey?”
“You’re absolutely right, Captain Lewrie,” Peel responded, perking up with new determination and energy. “We can’t risk them picking up the slightest thing that might blow the gaff, as you sailormen are wont to say. They must be put ashore at once. But with no unseemly haste, of course.”
“Of course,” Lewrie agreed, much relieved that Peel was amenable to his suggestion.
“With strict instructions that the Prize Court officials repatriate them soonest,” Peel schemed on, rising to his feet to pace. “A week or so, do you think would be the customary usage?”
“W
ell, good luck with that,” Lewrie said, sorry to disabuse him. “The Court officials are the worst pack o’ drunk, slovenly lay-abouts ever I’ve encountered. Might take ’em weeks to recall they have prisoners. Might have t’bribe ’em. They’re venal enough.”
“Damn!” Peel spat, knocking his fists together in frustration. “The scheme must be put in play at once. Well, we’ll try bribery, and see what haste the Court officials can mount then.” Now that he was “aboard” the scheme, indeed its principal author, he could brook no delay in its deployment. “Choundas will be sure to believe Fleury, if not Haljewin, I’m certain of it. Or do their accounts agree with each other—”
“Thought Haljewin fled before Choundas had his arse cheeks for breakfast?” Lewrie asked. “You send him back, he’s most-like dead as mutton, no matter does Choundas eat his tale up like plum duff.”
“B’lieve there’s a French sayin’, Captain Lewrie,” Peel said in a cynical drawl, “’bout how one can’t make an omelette without breaking an egg or two. He dined with the Devil…with a short spoon.”
“Ah,” Lewrie commented to that ultimate cold-bloodedness. “Oh well, then. There goes one egg…Who’s the other? Your target.”
“With MacPherson and Hainaut both at sea, we’re left with just one possibility: Choundas’s clerk. Name of Etienne de Gougne. He’ll do…the covert vengeance of the meekly oppressed, the under-paid and un-appreciated,” Peel sketched out, in a world-weary tone. “A hint of others already in place, who contacted de Gougne once he came ashore. The ones who run the messages out to sea…all that? Vast conspiracy. Secret Royalists and their lackeys, waging their secret war ’gainst the Revolution, and the Republic. Revenge, for those who already died under Hugues’s guillotine when he retook Guadeloupe and lopped off over a thousand heads? With the ghost of Zachariah Twigg and his evil minions the master puppeteers behind it all with gold in plenty? Oh, perfidious Albion!” Peel mockingly cried from the French point of view. “The despicable, grasping, conniving anglais, we…rosbifs…biftecks, we satanic…les sanglants!”
Havoc's Sword Page 27
