Havoc`s Sword

by Dewey Lambdin

  Havoc`s Sword

  Dewey Lambdin

  It's 1798, and Lewrie and his crew of the Proteus frigate have their work cut out for them. First, he has rashly vowed to uphold a friend's honour in a duel to the death. Second, he faces the horridly unwelcome arrival of HM Government's Foreign Office agents (out to use him as their cat's-paw in impossibly vaunting schemes against the French). And last, he must engineer the showdown with his arch foe and nemesis, the hideous ogre of the French Revolution's Terror, that clever fiend Guillaume Choundas!We know Lewrie can fight, but can he be a diplomat, too? He must deal with the newly reborn United States Navy, that uneasy, unofficial "ally", and the stunning, life-altering surprise they bring. For good or ill, Lewrie's in the "quag" up to his neck, this time. Can sword, pistol, and broadsides avail, or will words, low cunning, and Lewrie's irrepressible wit be the key to his victory and survival, as even the seas cry "Havoc"?

  Dewey Lambdin

  Havoc`s Sword

  This one is for…

  Sam and Salvador, at my favourite "watering hole," Darfon's. And for all their lovely "beer-slingers," Stephanie, Rachel, Charlsi, Dezerae, Boo, Courtney and "Skank"-none of whom are waiting on a record deal on Music Row, if that's possible in Nashville!

  Thanks for all the bottles of "Loudmouth Lite," and may none of you ever experience a personal life as tumultuous as that of that rogue Alan Lewrie.

  "All pity chok'd with custom of fell deeds;

  And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,

  With Ate by his side come hot from Hell,

  Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice

  Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war…"

  Julius Caesar, Act III, Sc. 1 269-273

  William Shakespeare

  PROLOGUE

  Gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum;

  exsilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant

  atque alio patrium quaerunt sub sole iacentem

  Gleefully they steep themselves in their brothers' blood;

  for exile they change their sweet homes and hearths

  and seek a country that lies beneath an alien sun.

  – Georgics, Book II, 510-512

  Publius Vergilius Maro

  Clerk Etienne de Gougne heaved a fretful sigh after surveying the large salon, just off the equally seedy entrance hall of the commandeered mansion. With grips still in hand, and rolled up charts still crammed under his arm-pits, he squinted his eyes in dread of the tirade to come once Le Capitaine saw the place. He wished that just once he had had the tiniest dash of courage; else, his master's transfer to Guadeloupe, and this foetid clime, could have been his excuse to enter the service of some other official, perhaps even in his own beloved and exhilarating Paris, instead of letting himself be meekly dragged, ever demeaned and terrified, from one arse-end of the world to another.

  Etienne de Gougne could smirk, though, in his mousy little way, that the bulk of Le Capitaine'?, wrath would fall upon the person who'd chosen this abandoned mansion so blithely and carelessly, the despised Lieutenant de Vaisseau Jules Hainaut, for once, the swaggering poseur, that jumped-up lout, that…!

  "God's Noodle, what a pig-sty!" Lt. Hainaut said from the doorway, making the little clerk "Eep" in sudden dread, drop his precious charts in a hollow, "bonking" jumble, his grips thudding to the floor, and making him spin about.

  "Oh! Lieutenant, don't do that, I beg you," de Gougne said as he bent to gather his things; though secretly pleased to see the look of consternation on the handsome young sprig's face as he realised his error.

  "Good Christ," Lt. Jules Hainaut breathed, taking in just how shabby the interior was; when it had looked so promising and grand in his too-brief visit the day before, when he'd stood on the veranda and had merely peeked in through the smutted window panes, assuming…!

  "This won't do," Hainaut stated, shaking his head, "no, not at all. You'd better get our gang of noirs to muck all this out before Le Capitaine arrives, little mouse."

  Ordering the timid clerk about always made Hainaut feel better. He stalked into the salon, elegant and expensive new boots drumming on the loose wood-parquet floor, savouring the creak-squeak of excellently made leather. His left hand grasped the hilt of his ornately chased smallsword, his right hand fisted to his hip, the arm akimbo, his mind scheming quickly on how to recover from this disaster.

  This spacious salon on the east side of the house had lost its window panes, and the winds and rains had gotten in, along with a scattering of leaves, palm fronds, and red-brown, wooly furze off the tropical trees. The window shutters hung nearly paintless, scabbed, broken-slatted and crooked. A skift of bright glass shards littered the floor, along with a few dead birds and a skeletal rat, now collapsed upon itself, and swarming with ants. Even as Hainaut fanned himself in the closeness of the airless salon with his gilt-laced fore-and-aft bicorne hat, he saw a lizard of some kind scuttle from the shutters to seize a cockroach nigh as big as his thumb, and he could hear the 'crunch' all the way across the room. To make things even worse, an entire flotilla, a whole shoal of cockroaches, fled at that seizure from beneath a torn and tilt-legged sofa to flood along the baseboard, before swirling beneath it like a spill of dark ale!

  Jules Hainaut knew that he was in trouble; Le Capitaine would have him strangled for such carelessness, for heaping one more demeaning slight upon him, after the several he had suffered from the local officials since they had come ashore on Guadeloupe.

  Working for Le Capitaine was rewarding at times, profitable in monetary matters and the best of confiscated or "commandeered" goods… such as his ornate sword, which formerly had been the property of an elderly junior admiral without the proper zeal and ruthlessness of a true revolutionary. " You wish it? Take it," Le Capitaine had told Hainaut after the court-martial for failure and Royalist sentiments, as it lay on the judge's table after the guilty party had been hauled out- blade exposed and point toward the doomed, signifying a verdict of guilty.

  Rewarding and pleasing for Jules Hainaut, too, was the aura of fear he could create by merely stating whom he worked for, trading on Le Capitaine's dread reputation. His new boots the cobbler had made gratis, pouring heart and soul into the workmanship and materials as if his life had depended on it. His uniforms, if not free, were gotten at a large, shuddery, discount.

  But, his superior didn't suffer fools or slackers gladly, and more than one promising and well-connected young officer had had his head lopped off for less. Now, what to do, what to do? Hainaut dithered, all the while in an outward pose of a man with few cares, but for this mere trifle.

  Jumped-up, foreign farm-hand! Clerk de Gougne silently sneered as he gathered up his traps; can't even speak good French, he circumspectly scoffed with a Parisian's disdain for anything provincial, or anyone born outside La Belle France.

  Jules Hainaut no longer looked it, but he had been born a farmboy, in the Austrian Netherlands, his parents the sketchiest sort of "outlander" French. He'd fled potato-grubbing early, had gone to sea at fourteen, still nigh-illiterate, and had drifted into the old Royal French Navy just before the start of the Revolution.

  Just a lowly matelot with grandiose dreams of being somebody or something, some day, he'd seen quickly how the prevailing winds stood, and had gladly (if not wholeheartedly) embraced Republicanism and the Jacobism of the sans culottes as a way to advance himself. He bought a tricolour revolutionary's cockade and red-wool tassel cap, and had worn them with outward pride, had shouted "Down with the Aristos" the loudest, and had ridden the coat-tails of the Terror, helping to purge the navy of Royalists and aristocrats, earning a share of the loot taken from them, moving up in rank, in "dead men's shoes." For once, his lack of education, his humble beginnings, and his outlandness had worked for
him, for he was held up as a shining example of how the ideals of the Revolution would spread all round the world and conquer the old order.

  Most of the rhetoric was Greek to Hainaut, just loud twaddle to be tolerated-but it paid well to listen and cheer. And the raids and arrests, as a "virtuous" commoner armed to the teeth and given the awesome power of weaponry over the rich, the titled, and their minions and lick-spittle servants, was a heady thing, indeed. And the cheers!

  Escorting accused prisoners through the seaport streets, eyes open for the prettiest women and girls who threw corsages, and now and then themselves, at such a well-knit and stalwart young patriot. Then, when he had been urged to turn informer and spy upon suspect shipmates, surviving officers, and town citizens, and he'd come to court to testify, tricked out in his scrubbed-up, borrowed best, Hainaut had gotten even more favourable attention… from the young female citizens most of all!

  After all, it wasn't as if the people he'd testified against were all that innocent, and if he hadn't done it, there were two dozen more eager to make names for themselves standing in line behind him, so what did it matter when "traitors" were trundled to the guillotines in the big tumbrils, to fill the baskets with their heads. They were not family, they weren't friends of his, and most had been unattractive or outright ugly, or simply not clever enough to keep their mouths shut and dissemble the latest revolutionary cant, which could change from month to month as the various factions in the Assembly rose or fell.

  Hainaut had advanced to the rank of Timmonier, the trusty Coxswain to a rising young star of a Lieutenant who had come up from the lower deck, just as he had. He ate better than most, drank very well, and had first pick of the loot, could make a pig of himself every night of the week, and had thought he had risen high… when he had met the man who would change his life.

  He knew he'd met real power when his Lieutenant had nearly shat his culottes in fear of him after one interview. He knew he'd met the consummate unscrupulous cynic, out to use the Revolution to claw back his former honours and position; and, perhaps, Le Capitaine had seen a fellow spirit in Hainaut, despite his outward protestations of adoration for the Revolution.

  That quickly, he'd become an Aspirant entitled to wear steel on his hip, not a crude seaman's cutlass, but a midshipman's dirk of honour, even if his uniform had been a rag-picker's off-day ensemble. Hainaut had thrown himself into pleasing Le Capitaine during the purging of the Bordeaux fleet, and later in the Mediterranean, when they ran the infiltrating spy-boats, the coastal raiding ships, and small convoys to support the army facing the Piedmontese, the Genoese, Neapolitan, and much-vaunted Austrian armies.

  And it hadn't been Hainaut 's fault when his small warship under an idiot captain had been taken by the British, when Le Capitaine had trusted him to supervise the mission, and "wet his feet" as a fighting sailor. A few weeks on parole on Corsica (rather pleasant, that!) and he'd been exchanged for a British midshipman, and warmly welcomed back into Le Capitaine'?, service-though the idiot had gotten "chopped" for failure!

  Now Jules Hainaut was a seasoned Lieutenant de Vaisseau, polished and groomed, tutored and "pampered," and, did he continue pleasing his superior, the aspirations of commanding a small warship, later becoming a Capitaine de Vaisseau in charge of a tall, swift frigate of his own, were not beyond his reach.

  If he survived this little disaster!

  And it certainly looked hopeless.

  Lt. Hainaut damned the Governor-General, Citizen Victor Hugues, for this insult. There were much nicer mansions to be had in the neat little community of Bas Fort, and much closer to the local seat of power, too. He suspected that Governor-General Hugues (a light-skinned Mulatto gens du couleur, but still a noir, Lt. Hainaut accused!) wanted to show how unimpressed he was by the arrival of Le Capitaine, a possible rival for his position, or a spy for the Directory, despite all their fulsome introductory letters from Paris.

  Fanning himself some more, Lt. Hainaut paced about in the foyer, admiring the gloss of his boot-toes, testing the formerly shiny Cuban mahoghany inlaid parquet. With a preparatory sigh of disappointment, Hainaut went to the double doors of the west-side salon, which were barely ajar; pocket doors, which hissed into their recesses barely at a touch, of the finest craftsmanship.

  "Ah! Better!" he cheered. Drapes still hung, the windows were still glazed, chandeliers were still whole, and the furniture was worn but useable; in point of fact, this second salon was jam-packed with a jumble of furniture, as if two or three other mansions had been looted and the contents stored in this one! And behind the salon was a room of equal spaciousness, filled with several sets of dining room furnishings. Hainaut doubted there would be plates, cutlery, or serving pieces in there, but they'd brought their own, enough to serve for a few weeks 'til another "warehouse" of confiscated goods could be "shopped."

  "Garcon chef!" Hainaut barked over his shoulder, to summon the "head boy" of the work-gang they had been loaned. "Ici, vite!"

  "Oui, bas?" he answered when he came.

  "This salon will be my master's private office," Hainaut said, briskly rubbing his hands in relief. "That dining room, there. Clean it out. It will become Le Maitres bed-chamber, comprendre? Office, here… bed-chamber, there, hein?"

  "Oui, bas. Je comprend," the solidly built man responded.

  "Send garcons above-stairs. Surely, there's bed furniture. Find best, and fetch it down, to… there," Hainaut instructed, pointing up, then to the dining room. "Bedding and such… comprendre literies, hein?" he said in pidgin French, since he hadn't heard passable French from the island Blacks since stepping ashore; they uttered a soft, and liquid, Creole patois.

  "Oui, bas, comprend la literie," the headman assured him, talking as slowly as Hainaut, as if to covertly twit him back. "Pillows, sheets, and mattresses. Send boys for the best. Make house nouveau clean… tout d'abord," he vowed. "Be tres elegant."

  "It had better be," Hainaut said with a miffed sniff, unfamiliar with noirs, but suspecting that he was slyly being japed. "Some men to sickle the grass, prune the bushes, too. Re-hang the shutters, there," he said, pointing again. "Paint walls, if paper is hopeless. Nail the parquet down. Floor? Loose floor pieces, hein? Make smooth?"

  "Ah, oui" the gang leader replied, with a resigned shrug.

  "All done by sundown, comprendre!"' Hainaut gleefully insisted.

  The noir winced and sucked his teeth, but nodded assent.

  "That room, there… be office for the little mouse clerk," Lt. Hainaut slyly instructed. "Small bed-cot, unbroken desk, and chest of drawers. Nothing good, mind. Well, get cracking. Vite, vite!"

  Hainaut turned and trotted up the staircase, without a thought for the herculean task he'd just assigned, and did they not get it all presentable, well… too bad for the garcon chef! That was what whips were good for, Hainaut casually supposed, pour encourager les autres, so they saw the price of failure. Even Hugues, part-Black himself, had kept a form of slavery on Guadeloupe after the noirs had been "freed." Poorly paid, closely supervised labour gangs might not emulate the bloody massacres of former masters that had torn Saint Domingue to shreds. Idle hands were the Devil's workshop!

  "Magnifique! Hainaut whispered on entering the former master's and mistress's chambers on the east side front. It was bigger than the salon below it, fronted by a deep, cool balcony and two sets of double doors, with separate shutter doors on the outside. The imported furnishings were suitable for a rich aristo's Paris maison; settees, chairs and draperies in expensive moire silks, elegantly carved night-tables, card tables, and chairs, lamp stands… with no windows facing the Nor'east Trades, the room had stayed pristine, despite being rifled.

  "Garcon chef up here, vite!" Hainaut barked.

  A younger, scrawnier noir trotted into the chamber, the leader's assistant, the sous-chef d'equipage. "Oui, bas?" he asked.

  "Run tell your chef that all this goes downstairs to my master's bedchamber. Second-best from the other front room, move in here, for me. I'll tak
e this room, comprendre:'"

  "Uhh," this one answered, scratching his pate. "Too fast…"

  "Dammit!" Hainaut snapped impatiently, seizing the man by his arm to lead him to the other bed-chamber, shoving him inside. "Furnishings of here, move to grand chamber. Furnishings in chambre grande you move below, comprendre, hein? Du verdammte dreckig Monstrositat?" he swore, unconsciously falling back on the bastard German of his youth.

  "Exchange, oui, bas?" the Black supposed, in a sullen voice.

  "Oui, damn you… exchange."

  "Ah, mais oui… rapidement!" the slave beamed.

  "Go do it, then… rapidement" Hainaut disgustedly sneered.

  He strode back to the grand bed-chamber to savour his new digs, fanning with his hat some more, walking out on the wide balcony, where tall trees shaded him from the morning sun, where woven cane chaises and side-tables awaited, and a spectacular view presented itself. And he could have sworn that the temperature dropped a quick ten degrees or more, in obedience to the Trade winds.

  He tipped trash from a cane chair and sat down, thinking it was a mortal pity that his grand new bed-chamber could never be used for sport, but his master was… touchy, when it came to seeing his aide taking pleasures under his very nose, while his own tastes were so… outre. Darker recollections made Hainaut shiver. His master taking pleasure was not something he would ever wish to see; things best left in the dark, in prison cellars, with the younger, weaker, and frailer girls, the better. Mon Dieu, merde alors! Hainaut silently quailed, as some of the work gang came up to begin moving things around at his bidding.

  Well, with his naval salary and Le Maitre's now-and-then admiring largesse, he could hire a tiny but elegant pied-a-terre room in one of the better harbour lodgings for sport. And his off-duty, moment-of-arising view would be splendid, at any rate.