’Tween the wars in the Far East, in the 1780s, a handsome and whole Guillaume Choundas had armed and organised native Philippine and Borneo pirates, won them over as French allies should another war come against the British, as it had in ’93, and ravaged British trade in the Malay and China Seas, both “country ships” and those of the East India Company. To counter their losses, the British had sent out a disguised warship to counter Choundas’s own, and suppress piracy. Despite all of his Jesuit-trained cleverness, his Breton-pirate native guile, and his lust to succeed and advance in the old aristocratic French Navy despite his commoner birth as a fisherman’s son, he’d been bested, his allies slaughtered, and their proas sunk or burned. Lastly, he and his Lanun Rover pirates had been surprised on Balabac Island in the Philippines, and, on a beach, Choundas had made his last stand against the Anglais, and that ignorant bastard Lewrie had fought him face-to-face.
Outclassed, on his back in the surf and one cut or thrust from death, Lewrie had somehow risen, his hanger slashing upwards, silvery and trailing glittering seawater—for Choundas’s blind eye could still see it—and laying Choundas’s face open to the bone, cutting clean across one eyeball, laying him in the acid-burning salt surf to scream, writhe, and shriek!
An angry, petulant kick to Lewrie’s shins had drawn another cut in response, and Guillaume was not only mutilated but ham-strung, and left a limping cripple for life!
They’d met again in the Mediterranean in 1795. Choundas, amply rewarded by the Ministry of Marine and the Directory in Paris for his zeal at rooting out Royalists, reactionaries, spies, and traitors to the Revolution during the Terror, was placed in charge of all coasting convoys, and their protection, from Marseilles and Toulon into the Ligurian Sea and the Gulf of Genoa, to support and supply Napoleon’s First Italian Campaign.
And, dammit, but Lewrie and his Sloop of War Jester had been a leader in ravaging his coasters, his lesser gunboats, had sailed right into protected harbours to take, sink, or burn, making Choundas appear incompetent! His greatest feat—taking a British packet full of silver meant to prop up their allies, the Austrians, and pay their own sailors—should have won him laurels. Choundas had snuck it into Genoa to pay volunteers to join the French Army, but . . . to escape and return home in glory, he’d had to sail a civilian lateen-rigged tub back west, and there Jester had been. Choundas had been rowed ashore to a friendly port village, but Lewrie had taken the lateener, sailed it right onto the rocky shore, and pursued him with a small party.
On horseback, miles inland, ’til Choundas had reached the safety of Napoleon’s army, a cavalry squadron sure to gallop down and sweep his foe away. Yet . . . even as he’d sneered, Lewrie had dis-mounted an impossible two hundred yards or better away, had taken aim with his rifled musket. Surely the ancient Celtic gods had been with him and against Choundas that day, for the ominous raven had flown on Choundas’s right—a dire portent—and Lewrie had shot him, spilled him from the saddle in fresh agony and rage, and the army surgeons had had to take his arm off! Better he had died then!
Lastly, in the West Indies in ’98 and ’99, at the height of the slave rebellion on French St. Domingue, Capitaine Guillaume Choundas commanded a fine frigate and coordinated the privateers and smuggling ships from Guadeloupe: raiding British commerce, arming the factions on St. Domingue, then dealing with the ungrateful Americans, who’d all but declared war on their saviour during the American Revolution owing to the French policy of stopping and inspecting Yankee cargo ships that traded with France’s enemies, and making prize of the offenders. The Quasi-War, it had been termed.
Perhaps it had been the tropic heat, the touchy, dyspeptic state of his digestion, and his infirmities, but Choundas, once he’d learned Lewrie was there in HMS Proteus, could think of nothing else but his revenge; especially after Lewrie had sailed Proteus right into Basse-Terre harbour and had caught Choundas and his frigate at anchor, had bow-raked her mercilessly and crippled her timbers as surely as he’d crippled Choundas! Without European replacement oak knees, futtocks, beams, stem-post, and timbers, she might as well have been burned to salvage her metal fittings!
Then Lewrie had been there, in concert with the Americans, at the moment Choundas’s last escorted convoy to St. Domingue had been brought to battle. It had been a monstrous American frigate which had taken him, but Lewrie had come aboard to taunt and demand custody of him and thank God for those chivalrous fools, the Yankees, who would not give him up, but took him on his parole to Baltimore.
When Choundas came home to France after that final humiliation, griped in his guts, lamer, and older, his old compatriots from the early days of the Revolution were no longer there, driven from office and the public view . . . replaced by ambitious younger men who’d serve a king if it meant employment, promotion, and wealth, the bourgeois time-servers! The Directory of Five were dead or displaced, the later Consulate taken over by this upstart Corsican salaud, Bonaparte, and Guillaume Choundas was now a pensioner living hand-to-mouth, unloved and unhonoured for his grand contributions to the Revolution. He was poor, one step away from begging, reduced to the cheapest stale loaves, rancid cheese, and sour vin ordinare, which victuals he found hard to chew with inflamed gums and loose teeth. When he was whole and unmarked, any whore would accept his coins, any very young and virginal native girl could be forced into his bed. When he was powerful, albeit mutilated, prisoners’ wives, girlfriends, and daughters (Oh, the daughters!) were his. On Guadeloupe he had had the power, and the money, to savage any whore and hush it up, but now . . . He might as well have become a monk.
And it was all Lewrie’s fault!
Without allies, without friends and accomplices, though, what could he do about it, to take his revenge at last? To kill Lewrie . . . no! Seize him first; butcher him near death, then ravage that woman on his arm, whom Choundas suspected was his wife, right before Lewrie’s eyes . . . before cutting her throat, blinding Lewrie, ham-stringing him as he had Choundas, and leaving him a worse cripple for the rest of his life! Oh, yes! But . . . how?
Former Capitaine Guillaume Choundas cast a glance over his shoulder towards the Ministry of Marine on the Left Bank of the Seine, wondering if anyone official might be concerned that such a successful and dangerous foe as Lewrie was here in Paris, this moment. Spying, perhaps? Would that make someone sit up and take notice? He looked back, just in time to see Lewrie, the woman, and a third young fellow entering a grand maison converted to appartements. If nothing else, Choundas knew where Lewrie resided . . . where he could be found when the time came for vengeance!
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next morning, it was Caroline’s turn for an encounter with more people from her husband’s past, one of whom was very well known to her, by name at least, as a result of a series of poison-pen letters over several years, and one of whom she would not recognise from Eve.
With her husband off with his manservant, Jules, to shop on his own and call upon their recently re-established embassy, Caroline, along with her maid-servant, Marianne, and the garrulous and charming Jean, began a shopping trip of her own . . . the sort of shopping which unfaithful husbands owe their wives, and long-suffering women deserve.
There was a parfumerie that Jean-Joseph had mentioned, the very best, most exclusive shop in all of Paris, which was to say, the best in all of France, which, also left unsaid the very best in the world.
It was called La Contessa’s, just off the Place Victor, and its scents could be discerned even before the front of the store was reached. A bright red door—set between matching bow-windows filled with arrays of vials, jars, and droppers of scents, with sachets for armoires and dresser drawers, with scented soaps, face powders, and cosmetics—opened to the accompaniment of the gay tinkling of a shop bell hung over the transom.
“Oh, it smells grand, Jean!” Caroline enthused, pausing to inhale and gaze about.
“Madame?” a young clerk enquired, drawn by the bell. It fell to Jean-Joseph to explain that Mrs. Lewri
e’s French was not all that good, and that he would be translating. The young girl lifted her nose and almost sniffed in derision, even while she maintained her smile. Dealing with Anglais travellers was odious enough, and those who could not even attempt to speak French, garbling as bad as hairy-armed Gascons, were even worse.
As Jean-Joseph glibly continued, requesting that La Contessa herself attend his charge, knowing that La Contessa was somewhat fluent in English, a couple entered the shop behind them.
The young fellow was a Major in the dark green, scarlet-collared and - trimmed uniform coat of the Chasseurs, very gay and charming. The young lady with him was stunningly beautiful, with blue-grey eyes and chestnut-coloured hair, done up in ringlets framing her face, Chinois bangs on her forehead, and a chignon behind.
“. . . Madame Lewrie wishes to sample your scents, your colognes, and bath powders, mademoiselle,” Jean-Joseph went on, tipping the girl a wink to let her know that Madame had money and would not know if she was being gulled. “Your very best, n’est-ce pas?”
At the mention of Caroline’s name, the girl with the chestnut hair blanched and seized her companion’s arm for support.
Lewrie! C’est lui? Impossible! she thought, her mind areel; it cannot be!
“Charité, you are unwell, ma chérie?” the young Major enquired.
“The uhm . . . the richness of the aromas overcome me,” she told him, recovering her aplomb and plastering gay coquetry on her face; moving deeper into the store so she could look back, from beneath lowered lashes, at the woman who went by the name of Lewrie.
She is very attractive, Charité Angelette de Guilleri thought; for a woman in her . . . fourties? she sneeringly over-estimated. Is she his widow or another sanglante . . . a “Bloody”?
For here we meet someone else who’d “crossed hawses” with Capt. Alan Lewrie; Charité Angelette de Guilleri had once been the younger daughter of a rich Creole planter family in Louisiana, the belle of any gathering in her beloved New Orleans . . . even if that original French colony had been traded off long before to the grubby Spanish, an odious fact that she, and many other French Creoles, had resented.
Everyone wished to restore Louisiana and New Orleans to France. They debated it, talked about it, emoted over it, yet . . . so few tried to do anything about it, so long as the rice and sugar crops were good, the prices high, the ships came from round the world for their produce, and the moribund, lazy Spanish officials left them alone. As light and as weak as the Spanish yoke was, it was still an onerous occupation, so much so that, at last, Charité and her brothers—oh, her clever and active, handsome brothers, long dead now! . . . Hippolyte and Helio, with their impoverished cousin Jean-Marie Rancour, whose family had fled the slave rebellion and bloody massacres of whites and landowners on St. Domingue with less than a tithe of their former wealth—had sworn to take action, to set a patriotic example for everyone else of like, but timid, mind. The spirit of revolution stalked the Earth, after all . . . first among those barbarous Yankees in the American Colonies, then in the beloved belle France. To rise up, to strike, was their patriotic duty! The civilised world would be re-made!
Two old privateers from the French and Indian War, Boudreaux Balfa and Jérôme Lanxade, had access to schooners and their old crewmen downriver in the bayous and bays, and to raise the funds to start a revolution, to purchase the arms required for the time when the people would rise up, they had engaged in piracy.
Thrilling piracy, against all ships but French, which, admittedly were rare in the Gulf of Mexico in 1798 and 1799, Spanish ships the most preferred, but any nation’s would suit, so long as they had rich cargoes to sell off, and money aboard.
Thrilling, too, was the life of a pirate, a secret sea-rover, an unsuspected rebel, like the bare-breasted heroine of the French Revolution, the emblematic Marianne with the flagstaff of the Tricolour in one hand and a bayonetted musket in the other, in the forefront of the battle line and urging the others on against tyrants and oppressors!
Exciting, too, had been living two lives: she was Charité the demure coquette in the city, but aboard their schooner Le Revenant she donned buccaneer clothes, riding boots and skin-tight breeches, loose flowing shirts and snug vests, with pistols in her sash and a sword on her hip, and she’d been a good shot, too, as much a terror to the crews of the ships they took as the fabled women pirates of an earlier age, Anne Bonny and Mary Read . . . even if they had been Anglais!
But that sanglant, that Anglais salaud Alan Lewrie had come upriver to New Orleans, play-acting a penniless but skilled English adventurer and merchantman mate, in civilian clothes, to spy out a source of their piracy. Unsuspecting ’til it was much too late, Charité had found him amusing, attractive, and eminently satifying at lovemaking.
She blushed as she recalled how she’d almost recruited the bastard into their covert band, considered him as something more permanent than a wicked fling, and, for a brief, naïve time, felt love for him!
To be betrayed at Barataria Bay when Alan Lewrie and his frigate and a schooner had turned up, landing sailors and Marines on the ocean side of Grand Isle, sailing in himself and killing poor old Jérôme Lanxade with a sword, taking his schooner, and ordering his men to kill both her brothers and her cousin in the foulest way!
She and that Laffite boy, and Boudreaux Balfa and his son, had fled in a pirogue. Lewrie had pursued them in a rowing boat, and with tears of rage in her eyes, she’d levelled a Girandoni air-rifle, taken aim square in the middle of Lewrie’s chest, and, despite her tears, was sure she’d killed him! The range had been nearly fourty yards, he had been standing amidships of his boat, and had fallen backwards as if he had been pole-axed, not to arise as long as his boat was in sight.
The scandal had been hushed up, kept from the Spanish authorities, and Charité had been sent packing, declared débile by the murder of her brothers and cousin, allegedly by runaway slaves round Barataria. She was doomed to live a mundane life with distant relatives, the LeMerciers, in the “quaint” town of Rambouillet, outside Paris. She’d quickly fled that, had found a way to inveigle her way into the company of the elite of the late Directory period and the tripartate consulate; into the best salons, where, with her beauty, her outspokenness, her coquetry, and feminine charms, she had gotten close to the Director of National Police, the clever if ugly and bald Fouché, the elegant but lame Foreign Minister, Talleyrand, and, after his seizure of power, the First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte himself!
Her “slaying” of the Anglais Navy Captain, her attempt at revolution in New Orleans and Louisiana, had made her a minor celebrity in her own right, and the loss of her brothers and cousin a tragic figure who pleaded for a restoration of the Louisiana Territory to France.
Now . . . would it all come undone? Did Alan Lewrie live? She had to know. She idly strolled closer to the English woman, sniffing at articles on display, listening closely, though to another person in the shop just another gay coquette, chuckling and teasing her handsome companion, the dashing young Major of Chasseurs.
La Contessa emerged from the rear of the shop, a petite brunette with large brown eyes, a fine, trim figure, and the face of a teenaged angel-minx. Oddly, La Contessa bore a slim and wiry young white-and-tan cat in her arms, a cat with a diamond-studded collar round its neck.
“Ah, Jean-Joseph, mon cher, so ’appy to see you again,” said La Contessa with a grand and languid air usually seen among the “aristos” of the pre-Revolutionary era. She presented her hand to be kissed. “You bring a distinguish’ English lady to my ’umble shop? C’est merveilleux!”
“Allow me to present Madame Caroline Lewrie, a visitor from England to you, madame,” Jean-Joseph smarmily announced. “Madame Lewrie, I present to you Mademoiselle Phoebe Aretino, famed throughout Paris as La Contessa de la Bastia . . . on Corsica, the ‘queen’ of parfumeurs.”
“Phoebe . . . Aretino,” Caroline exclaimed in a stiff tone, each word huffed, with her eyes suddenly a’squint and her brow furrow
ed.
“Madame Lew . . . ?” Sophie Aretino stammered, her mouth agawp in utter shock. “Ahem! You are, ah, ze uhm . . . related to, ah . . . ?”
“Toulon, seventeen ninety-four,” Caroline flatly intoned, “you and my former ward, Vicomtesse Sophie de Maubeuge, escaped aboard my husband’s ship? You’re that . . . Phoebe Aretino?”
“For w’eech I am ze eternally grateful, Madame Lew . . .” Phoebe stammered some more, turning radish-coloured.
“I just bet you were!” Caroline snapped, turning to leave. “We will shop elsewhere, Jean. Never in her place!”
“But, madame, I do not—” Jean-Joseph spluttered.
“I will give my husband your regards,” Caroline archly concluded with a snide smile. “Do not expect them to be returned. Au revoir!”
Give him your . . . ? Zut! Merde alors, he lives! Charité thought in sudden alarm, like to faint at that news.
“Really, ma chérie, you look as if you will swoon,” her Major of Chasseurs worriedly said, more than glad to put an arm about her to support her, for, like most men who met Charité de Guilleri, the dashing young cavalryman, Major Denis Clary, was enamoured. “Perhaps a restorative brandy, or . . . ?”
“Ah!” Charité denied, taking in a deep breath. “No, mon cher, I am fine, truly. Excuse me for one moment? Ah, Mademoiselle Aretino. Who was that horrid creature? Anglaise, was she? They are such a rude people. Pardon me for asking, but . . . why would a stranger insult you so?” she solicitously enquired.
“It is no . . .” the “Contessa of Bastia” began to snap, setting her slim cat down on a glass-topped counter and delicately putting her fingertips to her temples. “Oui, she was rude. Such a shock, to hear her name, and . . .”
To Charité’s amazement, Mlle. Phoebe Aretino’s distress turned to a wistful smile of reverie as she absently began to stroke her cat.
“From so long ago, n’est-ce pas?” Phoebe Aretino said further. “Perhaps not all the Anglais are horrid. Some of their men . . . well.” That, with even more wistfulness, almost a sheepish smile.
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