“Under your command, not Hugues’s,” Hainaut crowed, marvelling at his master’s deviousness. “Magnifique, m’sieur. Masterfully done.”
“Desfourneaux will clean up the piratical corruption Hugues has fostered, Perhaps he even has orders to place Hugues under arrest as a witless fool, who has driven the Americans into league with the ‘Bloodies.’ That piece of news you bring me will spur Desfourneaux into even quicker action to remove Hugues,” Choundas slyly boasted.
“With Hugues, his staff, and his corrupt circle suspect as well,” Hainaut congratulated with a sage snicker, “who, one wonders, might be left to become the new commissaire civil of Guadeloupe, m’sieur? With care, and a becoming outward disdain for greed, the vacant post could still prove extremely profitable…and pleasureable…for the one who proves himself capable, n’est-ce pas?”
“You see, dear Jules, all my efforts to educate you in the ways of the wider world have borne fruit, after all,” Choundas agreed, with an evil little laugh. “I truly never expected such an opportunity to fall into my lap, but now that it seems possible…ah! And the last nail in Hugues’s coffin will be his apparent failure to apprehend the spies who pass information to the British, because he let himself be distracted by the lure of riches. Or perhaps the suggestion that he deliberately left some untouched, were sufficiently lucrative bribes paid, hmm? Not that he was in British pay, himself, no. That would be reaching too far to be plausible, but…as soon as Desfourneaux gets his hands on Hugues’s ledgers, he is doomed, and I will be seen as instrumental to his exposure.
“Whether I become governor or not, or become the senior naval officer in the Caribbean, worthy of admiral’s rank at long last, and second-in-command of the island next to the new governor, either way I gain, and advance,” Choundas cleverly concluded. “You are sure you would leave my employ, Hainaut, now that my, and your, prospects for gaining riches, power…and with that power, the access to undreamed pleasures, are so close to having? To discover the spies, I will need the assistance of men I trust, experienced with delving into traitors’ hearts and minds, experienced with my techniques of…interrogation. Now, could a small, insignificant ship of war, with all the privations of seafaring, be more tempting than that?”
Jules Hainaut let his mouth fall open slightly as he cocked his head to one side in furious contemplation. Choundas knew him down to his boots, knew what motivated him, to what he eventually aspired, no matter how seemingly unattainable for a half-Austrian former farm-hand and simple sailor. Tempting as the prospects were, though…
“If you need me so badly you must order it, m’sieur, of course,” he temporised, “but…I still desire command of a warship. I am not so improved as you think. I came from before the mast, and the sea is what I know. I do aspire to advancement, but…”
“So be it,” Choundas growled, as if disappointed. “This schooner you brought in, Jules, the one you claim would be a suitable replacement…you desire her?”
“I do, m’sieur, more than anything!” Hainaut vowed, though with his fingers crossed for luck, for he’d seen his master raise the hopes of others, only to delight in betraying them a moment later, breaking the spirit and heart of his victims—along with the bones.
“Then she is yours, Jules,” Choundas baldly told him, so firmly that Hainaut had no fears it was a cruel ploy. “You will leave with a new commission into her. Your orders will be to arm her with the guns off both prizes, empty them and turn the cargoes over to the Prize Court officials at Basse-Terre, and assemble the crews off both ships into her. I will send what midshipmen, petty officers, and sailors I can spare, though after our most recent disaster, experienced officers I cannot offer.”
“I will make do, m’sieur,” Hainaut confidently swore.
“Good, for I have quick need of you,” Choundas said, business-like, picking up the folded letter he had toyed with earlier. “I have received a letter from General Hédouville, on Saint Domingue, at last. He intends to throw his support to that pompous Mulatto, General André Rigaud, and has urgent need for the munition ships to sail as soon as possible. With La Résolue and Le Gascon away, though, I cannot despatch the arms convoy and hope that it gets through. I can not entrust their safety to even the worthiest of our privateers as an escort, either. As soon as you are ready for sea in all respects, you must dash back down South and recall Griot and MacPherson from raiding the Americans. We must do all this before the British can act.”
“I will do so, m’sieur!” Hainaut vowed with mounting joy.
“The vile ‘Bloodies’ sent an agent to Saint Domingue, to try to bribe L’Ouverture and Riguad,” Choundas sneered, “a total ass. It was quite droll, was it not, Etienne?”
“Oh? Indeed, m’sieur,” clerk de Gougne chirped back, jerked to wakefulness at the mention of his name. He had been nodding off, now that it seemed his bitterest abuser had gotten away with a whole skin, and a grand reward…again!
“That salopard Twigg does not direct every insidious scheme the British work against us, Jules,” Choundas snickered. “Even he is compartmented to deal specifically with me, while others woo the ignorant noirs. Their latest agent was so clumsily disguised he might as well have gone ashore with a regimental band! He even hired a boat to take him to Ile de la Gonave, then Jacmel, that had been at Kingston to spy for us, if you can believe it…the silly shit!”
“No! He didn’t!” Hainaut hooted with open glee. “What an ass!”
“Americans, from Okracoke Island, on the Outer Banks near Cape Hatteras,” Choundas cackled. “Long a pirates’ and buccaneers’ haven, where they make their prime living salvaging the many shipwrecks that come onshore. Perhaps luring some when times are lean. Who can say? A most practical and realistic lot, with a distinct English accent. They told this idiot that Okracoke was a smallish cay off the Abacos, in the Bahamas, and the ignorant fumier bought it! Naturally, they betrayed him for extra money, as soon as they put into both ports, being rewarded by L’Ouverture, then Rigaud, then by Hédouville!”
Choundas had to pause to let his harsh laughter subside.
“Before they left Jacmel, an aide to General Hédouville handed them his letter…this letter, and brought it and that twit straight to Antigua at the same time, then hared off here to Guadeloupe on the very next tide!” Choundas all but tittered, wiping his good eye with a handkerchief. “And he never knew a thing about it! They even taught him sea-chanties, and to dance a horn-pipe in his sailor’s costume!”
“Mon Dieu, what a hopeless…” Hainaut wheezed, himself. “Well, I will get a few hours’ sleep, then get back to Mohican as quickly as I can, to ready her…”
“No real rush, Hainaut,” Choundas countered, so easily turning grim and business-like after savouring his little coup. “Your orders will take time to write, extra crew to assemble…The British agent promised much more than he can possibly deliver at short notice. It will be weeks before his blandishments are assembled and loaded, while ours just wait for the arrival of our ships to escort them. A midnight repast, a good night’s sleep, face-down if you must, and a hearty breakfast before you depart will be allowed.”
“Very good, m’sieur,” Hainaut gratefully agreed.
“Time enough for me to discover the spy network, so this time I do not tip my hand, or the day or hour of departure to Lewrie and his spy-master,” Choundas mused, looking rather weary and ill no matter if he should have been chortling over his clever master-stroke. “I have two small, additional things for you to do for me, dear Jules, if you do not mind.”
“But of course, m’sieur,” Hainaut replied, anxious to seem full of eager cooperation, now that all his dreams had been launched.
“First of all, uhm…” Choundas grunted, arthritically twisting in his chair, no matter how comfortably padded, and with his eyes carefully averted. “Before the arrival of Hédouville’s letter and the news you brought, I was beginning to despair. Oui, even me, Hainaut! Time lingers heavily when plans are set in motion, and one cann
ot see or know how they progress, n’est-ce pas? Go to my bed-chamber and…you will understand. A slight, amusing diversion,” he said crankily. “She’s very young and pretty, so you might even take joy of her, too, do you find her pleasing. If not, dispose of her. Discretely.”
Hainaut chilled with foreboding as he rose and crossed to the double doors that led to his master’s ground-story chambers. Hainaut gently pulled them back and stepped inside, fearing what he’d find.
A single candle burned on a night-table, a small bottle of good brandy lay on its side on the carpet, empty, along with two abandoned glasses. And a girl lay tangled in the bed-linens, her nearly White café au lait complexion a tawny contrast to the white of the sheets. Her hair was raven-dark and curly, now undone and bedraggled, down to the small of her back, and spilled like dried blood over the pillows.
Hainaut stepped to the side of the high bed-stead and swept her hair back from her face. She was beginning to purple with bruises his master had inflicted in his “passion,” her lips split and caked with a colour darker than paste. Dried tears streaked her artful makeup, but she was indeed very pretty. Not over thirteen or fourteen, as most of Choundas’s bed-mates always turned out to be, slight, slim, and petite. Child-women, with spring buds for breasts.
Hainaut put a hand under her nose and half-opened mouth to feel for breath, touched the side of her neck to see if life still throbbed in her. Yes, she was still alive. Hainaut knelt and sniffed the neck of the empty brandy bottle, and detected the aroma of laudanum, which Le Hideux had used to drug her into deliciously sweet helplessness, if not complaisance. Into furtive, whimpering silence, instead of wails or screams that could draw unwelcome attention from neighbours. Snuck in the back way, as always, long after full dark, muffled in anonymous cloaks or blankets. Carried out, before dawn, and still insensible.
Hainaut heaved a disgusted sigh before pulling the sheet up over the girl’s bare shoulders and stepping out of the room, quietly closing the doors on her fate.
“Allow to me ask, m’sieur,” Hainaut said, almost tip-toeing, and his voice a whisper, in some form of deference for that pitiful chit, “but what degree of disposal did you have in mind?”
“Scruples, dear Jules?” Choundas mocked. “This late in our association? My, my. Nothing drastic. She’s a pretty little whore, but a whore nonetheless. Return her to her master at the bordel where she is employed, with a second purse beyond her rental. To compensate the bordel owner for his loss of earnings ’til she’s presentable once more. The whoremonger has been warned what could happen to him if he makes a fuss. Have her out before the town wakes,” Choundas grumpily ordered, reaching for his walking-stick leaned against his costly desk, and painfully getting to his feet at last, swaying with weariness and wincing at the pain of an old, old man. The low candlelight limned him as an ancient, grizzled dragon.
“The last matter I mentioned may be done at the same time you return our wee putain. That chore is official, public, and provides a mask for the first.”
“Very well, m’sieur?” Hainaut assented, perplexed again.
“Please be so good as to step out on the porch and summon the front entrance sentries,” Capt. Choundas grimly ordered.
“M’sieur?” Hainaut gawped in sudden, renewed dread that all he had been offered, told, had been but a cruel charade, that all along Choundas had been toying with him like a sly cat would torment a fear-frozen mouse, teasing it this way and that with soft, claw-sheathed paws.
“That spy, John Gunn or James Peel, whatever he calls himself, boasted a little too much to our Capitaine Fleury, Jules,” Guillaume Choundas continued in a more-familiar growl, rage back in his face and voice, “accidentally revealing to him that the ‘Bloodies’ have a spy so close to me that the British might as well be sitting in this room this very moment. Now who could it be, Jules? Who could it be? Does it not make you wonder?” Choundas threatened, taking a clumsy pace or two towards him, stick, boot, and brace ominously going clump-shuffle-tick!
“He is here now, m’sieur?” Hainaut stuttered in surprise, and near-terror, did Choundas still suspect him, though he’d said…He turned his head to look down at Etienne de Gougne, for he knew it was not him. Besides, he’d never laid eyes on this anonymous Fleury, and could not recall snubbing or insulting anyone by that name. If this Fleury person had laid a charge against him to cover the inept loss of his precious ship, but how…!
“He is here,” Choundas forebodingly confirmed, and slowly swept his own gaze away and down, to peer at de Gougne as well. The little clerk began to rise, but Choundas drove him back into the chair with a shove of his left hand.
“The mouse? Surely…!” Hainaut scoffed, never so relieved in his life.
“All these years you reported behind my back to the Directory, and their spy-master, Citizen Pouzin,” Choundas gravelled. “You think I would not learn of it, Etienne, when Pouzin seemed to know too much, and so quickly, on the Genoese coast, and ever since? Don’t dare deny it! Did you think he would rescue you, should you ever become a liability to me? Where is Citizen Pouzin now, and where are we, hein?”
“M-m-m’sieur,” de Gougne blubbered in fright, barely able to find breath with which to protest his innocence. “Master…”
“That sort of treachery I could abide, Etienne,” Choundas menacingly rumbled, “such pettiness. Was it your sly, meek way to get back at me for using you like the insignificant worm that you are? But to take British gold to slake your wretched, pitiful, mousy shop-clerk’s, ink-sniffing, clock-watching, time-server’s, slippered bourgeois, land-bound peasant spite on me? You will pay, Etienne…you know you will. I will break you into slivers. I will make blood-and-marrow soup with your bones, and make you drink it, before you die, with just enough of you left to ride the tumbril to the guillotine, so everyone can witness the reward for treason, and see justice done.
“But before that, Etienne,” Choundas promised, leaning forward to whisper as sibilantly as a hideous boa constrictor, “you will name for me every traitor on this island you work with or…quel dommage,” he suddenly mused, standing upright, and instantly bemused, as if his ire had gushed away like the hot air from a Montgolfier balloon.
For clerk Etienne de Gougne had pissed himself, had even fouled his trousers, as he fainted dead away, slumped bone-white to the floor.
“Him?” Hainaut gaped, quite unable to believe he had it in him.
“Oui,” Choundas confirmed, jabbing with his walking-stick. “Get this gaoled in Fort Fleur d’Epée. And get that trull out of my house, too, Jules. Now, vite, vite!”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Lewrie had given testimony before the Prize Court, and the American merchant vessels had been released to their captains to complete their homeward journeys. Crews off Sumter, Oglethorpe, and Proteus had been given shore liberty, with sailors of both nations reeling arm-in-arm from one public house to the next, for a whole rousing day and night.
On the second rousing day and night, however, the question arose to whether the Yankee Doodles had needed British aid in fighting a brace of French warships; whether the aforesaid French men o’ war were worthy opponents, or cringingly weak and lightly armed poltroons who’d struck too quickly; whether they’d been daunted by American prowess or the mere sight of a British “bulldog” flying the Union flag.
The resulting brawls, ’twixt Yankee salts and British tars, actively aided and abetted by other bellicose drunks egging them on, with the eager participation in said brawls of stout British islanders and merchant seamen, by Yankee Doodle civilian sailors and gentlemen traders who’d taken manly umbrage, shortly after re-enforced by members of the watch and Admiralty dockworkers, by publicans, whores, and their bully-bucks and crimps, and lastly by the appearance of the heartily despised shore gangs of His Majesty’s Navy’s Impress Service (who came off a rather poor third) had redounded to the detriment of the publicans, their establishments, the whores, pimps, crimps, brothel keepers, and “Mother Abbesses” and
their commercial properties, and the peaceable tradespeople and residents of English Harbour, who had forced the Governor-General to call out a company of the garrison and declare the Riot Act. Bayonets, and fall-down drunken stupors, had ended it.
Which brawl had placed HMS Proteus, her people, her officers, and most especially her captain in extremely bad odour, and Lewrie had had what felt like five pounds of hide taken off his backside by both the Governor-General and Rear-Admiral Harvey.
And to make matters even worse, Grenville Pelham was not only not expired, but able to sit up, take nourishment, and screech like a wet parrot!
Other than working-parties to fetch supplies, the hands off the three ships in question had been banned from further shore liberty. A day later, the Yankee merchantmen had practically been dragooned out to sea at gun-point to carry their cargoes home…and warned to give it a long think before they dared come into English Harbour again, ’less they moderated their people’s behaviour.
The packet-brig, gaily flying her “Post-Boy” flag, had departed bearing Pelham’s boasting reports, Peel’s “yes, but” reports and codicils, and Lewrie’s several hefty sea-letters to his wife Caroline and his father Sir Hugo, to his ward Sophie, separate long missives to his sons, Sewallis and Hugh, by way of his father’s London lodging house, and to his mistress Theoni and his other son, solicitor, and creditors.
Lewrie could pessimistically think that keeping his breeches up and his prick to himself might just be worth it after all. He would save hundreds on ink, paper, and postage on any more bastards; avoiding wrist and finger cramp communicating with additional by-blows would be, he thought, a collateral blessing.
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