Havoc`s Sword

by Dewey Lambdin

  An hour later, after making their private numbers to each other, all four ships were hove-to on a gently heaving and sun-glittered sea, and Hainaut was proudly taking his first salute as the commander of a warship being welcomed aboard another man o' war. Despite the Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternite the Republic presented to the world, the French Navy put a bit more stock in the old customs than the Directory in Paris would have preferred. Swords swirled like mercury droplets, polished St. Etienne Arsenal muskets were slapped about to Present Arms, and well-blacked Naval Infantry boots stamped on pale sanded decks in creditable precision. Sailors stood facing the entry-port, doffing red-wool-stocking Liberty caps or tarred straw hats with wide brims as Hainaut doffed his egret-plumed, gilt-laced bicorne hat to them and stepped aboard the starboard gangway, to the surprise of a fair number of the watch officers and midshipmen of Le Gascon.

  "You've come up in the world, Lieutenant Hainaut," Capt. Griot the senior officer of the pair of corvettes, glumly commented. "With a ship of your own, so soon? How delightful for you, I am sure. And you have come South from Guadeloupe, why, exactly?" the older Breton asked, sucking on his teeth for the last bits of his interrupted meal.

  "Capitaine Choundas sent me in search of you, m'sieur" Hainaut archly replied, knowing just where he stood in the doughty Griot's estimation. "He has desperate need of you both, as quickly as you can be off Basse-Terre. I am charged to inform you that…"

  Griot silenced him with a subtle finger upon his lips, then he pointed overside at Capt. MacPherson's gig, which was just coming near the entry-port. "We will speak of this later. Below," Griot said in a faint mutter from the side of his mouth.

  "A disaster," the expatriate Scot MacPherson grunted a few minutes later in the privacy of Capt. Griot's great-cabins. "All the officers and men of both raiders gone? Poor, poor Pelletier, and Digne! There has been no word of their fates from the British, or the Americans who took them?"

  "None came before I sailed, m'sieur" Hainaut sadly told him as he savoured a grudgingly given glass of wine, his eyes surreptitiously evaluating Griot's taste in furnishings and estimating the depths of his purse. "La Vigilante sank very quickly, after a single broadside, so… we can only hope, m'sieur le Capitaine."

  "Worse, though," Capt. Griot quickly got to the larger point of things, "we very well may be in a declared war with the Americans, and they, so you report, Lieutenant Hainaut, openly sail allied with the 'Bloodies.' In spite of that, Hainaut, Le Hi- The Capitaine means to press on with the convoy to Saint Domingue?"

  "Worse than disaster, Capitaine MacPherson," Hainaut said, with his nose in the air, "it was betrayal, treason. A ring of spies which Capitaine Choundas even now is rooting out. That was how the 'Bloodies' knew when Le Bouclier would be at her weakest, how the first munitions ship was lost the same day, and a guard schooner was lost. How one of commissaire Hugue's rich merchant vessels was intercepted mere hours after her sailing, and… so Capitaine Choundas believes, the 'Bloodies' and the 'Amis' certainly knew to intercept our prizes and raiders."

  "Hugues, too?" Griot barked, jadedly amused. "Serves the greedy salaud right. Maybe teach him to stop acting like a pirate."

  "Their prime source of information was Etienne de Gougne," Lt. Hainaut spat, then sat back to relish how they took that. "Our master has arrested him. There is a new official from France, who will likely arrest commissaire Hugues, too, once they get a look at his books."

  "Bon/" Griot quite joyfully snarled. "Couldn't happen to a better person."

  "With the spy ring broken, our master is certain that a convoy can make it to Saint Domingue… to Jacmel," Hainaut loftily further informed them, more than happy to be the font of all intelligence. "A letter came from General Hedouville. He's made his choice, and he now will back the Mulatto Rigaud. British agents have been on the island, courting both factions, so the convoy is urgent. Before the 'Bloodies' can put one together, with more and better bribes, messieurs."

  "That diable Lewrie isn't the only British ship at sea," Griot grumbled, "no matter that our efficient superior lops off the heads of spies and traitors by the tumbril-load, there are other watchers, more warships that keep a distant blockade than that, that… Proteus!"

  "And the fastest, most direct passage to Jacmel is simply stiff with British ships," MacPherson cagily muttered, stroking his six days' growth of beard. "American ships reported at the North end of Dominica on our way… Antigua, Nevis, and Saint Kitts, Barbuda… the British Virgins, and frigates from their Jamaica Squadron. This late in storm season, their ships of the line return from Halifax, freeing lesser ships from close patrolling, to range out far afield."

  "And every one delighted to be so freed, and starving for prize money, and action, aussi" Capt. Griot chimed in, his voice "chiming" as glum as funeral bells. "Without more ships as escort…"

  "Well, there is my Mohican" Hainaut gently pointed out to them, "and, now that our master is temporarily in charge of the privateers that commissaire Hugues directed…"

  Hainaut's face stung as both of those tarry captains laughed in derisive glee at his expense for being so callow. Where was all their vaunted elan, their esprit? he wondered as he was forced to sit and take it. They, the hand-picked master captains, carefully chosen from among the hundreds whom Choundas could have requested, doubted that such a thing could be done, even if the British no longer knew when a convoy departed. Why, they even sounded dis-loyal to Le Maitre, who'd made them, promoted them, gotten them to sea when those hundreds he had not chosen still languished ashore without ships, or swung idle in home ports for fear of blockading British fleets and squadrons!

  "Privateers are cowardly… trash," Capt. MacPherson scoffed. "Overly cautious mercenaries at best… drunken pirates at worst. Why, most of ours aren't even French! The gutter sweepings of the Americas!"

  "There is another large schooner, the equal of mine, which was taken by La Vigilante and Lieutenant Pelletier, messieurs" Lt. Hainaut told them, smugly proud of the success of his short raiding cruise in comparison to theirs, "La Chippewa could be commissioned quickly, given additional guns, and added to the escort. She's ready for sea."

  "And manned by whom?" Capt. Griot snapped, not even attempting to hide the sneer he shared with Capt. MacPherson. "Desplan's sailors were lost with Houdon and Pelletier. We have run out of officers, we're short of seasoned midshipmen to make acting officers, and those few left are cripples, sick, or incompetent. To man your own schooner, Lieutenant Hainaut, didn't Capitaine Choundas scrape the bottom of the barrel? Do you not carry privateersmen aboard, bribed by extra pay to sign Navy articles, just for a few months, not unlimited ser-vice?

  "There are a few, mostly able seamen and a gunner or two," Hainaut had to admit, reddening, and crossing his legs defensively.

  "As I suspected," Griot grunted.

  "To crew another escort ship means weakening ours," MacPherson added, "using our men to brace up shirkers, incompetents, and inexperienced fools. How long would they have to work up together, two days? It takes months to season a crew to competency. No, no, your suggested armed schooner would be no help, perhaps even a hindrance. Our strength would be diluted, making our corvettes less capable, and we'd all be in the soup."

  "Messieurs …" Hainaut spluttered, ready to glower and sneer at those well-salted but faint-hearted captains, before remembering he no longer could swagger or speak in his old master, Le Hideux's, stead.

  "Surely there is something that we may do to get the convoy through?" he wheedled.

  "Pray for a gale of wind and a spell of bad weather in which a convoy may hide," Capt. MacPherson piously intoned, almost making the sign of the cross on his breast. "The British would not expect that."

  "And keep them in port, or more concerned with their own survival," Griot contributed. "Something we can do, well… oui, our ships will crack on for Basse-Terre, quick as we can. You, Lieutenant, will take charge of guarding our slower prize ship, and make for habour as quick as you can. She's rich
ly and deeply laden, gosse. You lose her or cost us a sou of her value, and God help you, hein?"

  "I understand, m'sieur," Hainaut crisply responded, as a junior should; though seething to be called "gosse"-a youngster! Hainaut promised himself to remember that slight, and somehow, someday, find a way to make that shit-arsed Breton oaf pay for it.

  Clump-swish-tick-clump-swish-tick. Guillaume Choundas took a deep breath of clean air on the ramparts of Fort Fleur d'Epee, after the long, exhausting climb from its cells, far below ground next to its magazines and powder rooms. Even with Victor Hugues suspended from his office, Choundas could not order things to suit him. Hugues was gaoled in relative comfort in his own quarters, under honourable arrest. His loyal staff, smug in their graft and greed, continued much as they had before, expecting Hugues to be exonerated and freed after the new man, Desfourneaux, had received the proper "emolument," so an office for Choundas was still impossible; and prisoners were never put in chambers with easy access, which amounted to easy egress or contact with co-conspirators, so there would be no chance to whip up matching stories, or let those already caught escape. Besides, the noises that those under rigourous interrogation made disturbed the digestion, and a Frenchman could never risk such harm to Le digestif!

  Choundas had barely gotten his wind back, and ached like sin in his over-worked good leg and bad, braced, one, when his weary leaning on the parapet was interrupted by the brisk arrival of that officious, pompous prig Desfourneaux, who came clattering up the stone stairs in his colourful waist sash, costly sword, and belt, and that ridiculous hat of his, bound with another heavily tasseled Tricolore sash for a band, and red-white-blue plumes jutting upward to mark him as one of the Directory's own.

  "Your work goes slowly, Capitaine?" Desfourneaux asked him with a faint whinny.

  "Slowly, yes, Citizen. And yours?" Choundas asked in return.

  "Oh, we'll have him in the end," Desfourneaux idly vowed, waving a hand as if shooing the ever-present island flies. "Paris has enough reason to recall Citizen Hugues already. But to profit so massively from the execution of one's proper duties…! The Directory is most upset that the infernal man took our reasonable edicts regarding the control and identity of neutral merchant shippers who might aid those invidious British so literally. His overzealous prosecution at regulation of that trade, he turned into a vicious guerre du course, and an unfortunate, uhm… diplomatic incident. Now it looks as if the Americans have rewarded our gracious aid to their Revolution with typical Anglo-Saxon churlishness and become British allies in open war… if your young officer's report may be credited. One would expect formal declaration of war sent here by a truce ship, first, but those rustics may not understand how nations are supposed to deal with each other. I fear Hugues's greed, and zeal, caused another war. One which our hard-pressed Republic cannot afford."

  "Then he should lose his head," Choundas decided aloud, feeling uncharitable to both Hugues and Desfourneaux, and averse to pleasantly idle palaver. "And my suggestions, Citizen? What of them?"

  "Withdrawing Letters of Marque and Reprisal from all but French owners and masters, yes, at once," Desfourneaux said, nodding, as if a committee decision was instantly enforceable law in every port in the Caribbean, no matter how far-flung; as if those just shy of piratical endeavours would cease their depredations when they heard the news! A snarl at Desfourneaux's idiocy escaped Choundas's lips.

  "Conscripting the rest into the Navy, though, arming and training a whole squadron of small ships under your command," good Citizen Desfourneaux maundered on, making a moue, "might be too expensive, for now… marvelously effective though they might prove, under your well-famed and experienced leadership, m'sieur Capitaine, ha ha!

  "Not all, then, merely the best dozen or so," Choundas pressed, though he'd be damned if he would plead or bargain.

  "Well, perhaps two or three more, for now," Desfourneaux said as he shrugged. "Paris sent me to curtail Hugues's war on commerce, fearing his excesses would lead to war with the Americans."

  "The privateers will then be idle, in need of employment! If I can offer the best, the largest and best-armed naval commissions…" Choundas insisted, "it will keep them from real piracy…"

  "Which requires naval pay, which France cannot afford, m'sieur!" Desfourneaux quickly told him. "I will, of course, write Paris to ask for a proper squadron be sent to these waters, a real fleet, capable of facing the British… possibly the Americans, too, to guard Guadeloupe and Saint Domingue against invasion. Then, there will be a place for a man such as yourself as… Commodore of the small ship flotilla. Such a position could make you an Admiral, hein?

  "As long as nothing, ah… unfortunate occured in the meantime," Desfourneaux slyly added. "As long as you executed your present duties so well until their arrival that I could recommend you?"

  Choundas bristled with resentment. Was the bastard hinting at a bribe, or was he about to propose another onerous, thankless chore for him to perform, just like the aristos had trotted him about the world like the donkey forever chasing the dangled carrot? Though Desfourneaux wore his neck-stock and shirt collars loose and open like a good Republican, or the revolutionaries of the Bastille's storming, what was he but a canting shop-keeper, a jumped-up… attorney mimicking a real zealot, sent to salvage the mess made by governmental idiocy!

  "What did you have in mind, Citizen?" Choundas gravelled.

  "To fulfill General Hedouville's demand for the convoy to Saint Domingue, Capitaine" Desfourneaux smoothly replied. "Quickly."

  "The munition ships are ready to sail, and my corvettes will be here, perhaps within days," Choundas promised. "Storm season is nearly over, and the cooler winds of winter will speed them along, once they depart. I am more than ready to fulfill the general's demand, so…"

  "Your spy… who flourished undetected for so long, almost in your very pocket, Capitaine" Desfourneaux interrupted, with a snarky little shark's grin, shedding his airy unconcern and amiability. "He has confessed? He has named others? Your probes yield results?"

  "Not yet," Choundas said with a frustrated grunt through gritted teeth. "The little traitor's resistance is surprising, coming from a meek worm such as he. I am unable to employ my usual techniques, you see," Choundas said, raising his remaining good hand, "and people in Hugues's employ are so oafish that de Gougne would perish under their clumsy brutality before he could begin to break. I have arrested all the servants, as many suspicious coastal dwellers and fishermen as we could, but, with so little help, it may be weeks before I get round to 'putting the question' to them all, you see…"

  "What do the 'Bloodies' say," Desfourneaux smirked, "that 'it's a poor workman who blames his tools'? Your clerk had but a few hours at best, between your opening General Hedouville's letter and his arrest, no? You've thrown in gaol half the poor fishermen and regular visiting tradesmen to your mansion, all your house servants. Patrols prowl the shores and the docks. Odds are, you caught those who'd pass messages. Odds are, your de Gougne never had a chance to pass on his discovery… assuming he's a spy in the first place, hmm?" Desfourneaux slyly suggested. "De Gougne, well… a rather large black mark to be expunged from your records, Capitaine. If he truly is employed by the British. You agree with my assessment, then?"

  "Most of what you say is true, Citizen," Choundas was forced to admit, "though the letter from Fleury, the British agent's slip…"

  "You are sanguine, then, that the convoy may sail without risk of betrayal?" Desfourneaux pressed. "Come, come, give me odds that the munitions will reach Saint Domingue," he prissily requested.

  "Uhm… nine or ten to one, against interception," Choundas grudgingly had to say, after a long, irate fuming. "With three ships to escort two…"

  "And since you yourself admit that the back of the spy ring is at least severely hampered, if not broken," Desfourneaux said with an expansive grin, "there is no reason why you could not take command of the enterprise and personally see it through… before completing any investiga
tions here on Guadeloupe. After your triumphant return."

  "But, of course, Citizen, I…!" Choundas blustered, insulted and angered, and mightily taken aback, both.

  "Such a coup would go a long way to excuse your harbouring of a possible spy… and in expunging what so far has been a long, and sad, string of failures that your seeming lack of attention concerning your own staff allowed, hein?' Desfourneaux said with a leer. "Such an act of personal responsibility, and daring, might even allay the niggling suspicion that your clerk was not the only person on your staff covertly corresponding with the British or their local informers.

  "Moi?" Choundas thundered. "You suspect me after all I've done… all I've suffered from the God-damned British? Is this the way I am to be repaid for my loyalty to the Revolution, to the Republic, and to France? How dare you, you tawdry, tarted-up little slug! You wish me to command the convoy? Good, I will, and bedamned to you!

  "Run the same risk as your followers, my dear Choundas. Prove by your being there that it will get through," Desfourneaux answered, lazing at sublime ease against the parapet stones, as if Choundas was no threat to him; his howling rage just a passing gust of wind. "That is all I ask. Though we will have a little talk about your insulting manners… when you return, hein? Too many years of operating on a roving commission, with too free a hand in the disordered early years of our Revolution, has made you incapable of proper subordination, n'est-ce pas? Perhaps a few weeks at sea will give you time for much-needed introspection."

  "Bah!" Choundas snarled, raising his walking-stick. "You…!"

  Hard as it was for him to do, he swallowed his ire and lowered his hand, knowing that Desfourneaux was more dangerous than he seemed, that Hugues could have company on his way home in irons!

  "You see, dear Capitaine, you begin to learn circumspection and manners already!" Desfourneaux gleefully pointed out, departing.