"Yes, hmm," Nicely grumbled, sounding guarded.
"If our presence, scouting and sounding their water approaches didn't give the game away, of course, sir," Lewrie added. "For later."
"Perhaps a covert approach," Nicely posed, "in a civilian ship flying, oh… an American flag might suit. Sound and scout this way to the city… perhaps even sail up the Mississippi right up to the town! Take a look at their garrisons, their river forts, ah… just in case we are forced to use blunt force, and risk the English Turn once more, hmm?"
"Whilst I'm looking for pirates, sir?" Lewrie asked, grinning widely at how eager (yet cagy) Capt. Nicely looked to have an active part in whatever it was that Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, the general in charge of their Canadian possessions, and far-off London might have in mind. "Of course. My frigate could back you up should you get into trouble. Just so long as you're near the coast, not actually upriver beyond that… what did you call it?… the Head of the Passes?"
Poor fellow, bored to tears! Lewrie thought sympathetically.
"Do you personally wish to scout the city, though, sir, posing as an American," Lewrie japed the so pleasant and good-humoured Captain Nicely, "I'd strongly advise you to learn how to chew a quid of tobacco and how to spit. 'Tis hardly a skill one quickly learns. And, I'm told that neatness counts, sir, hah hah!"
"Ah ha!" Nicely rejoined, though not looking quite so amused by his joshing as Lewrie would have imagined. "Lewrie's first command was a captured French corvette, I'm told, Mister Pollock," he added as he turned to face that worthy. "Admiral Hood renamed her HMS Jester. Given Captain Lewrie's wit, one does not wonder why, hmm? He's such a droll' young wag." Nicely's smile was feral, an I'11-get-you-for-that.
Why ain 't he laughin '? Lewrie had to wonder; Did I put him in a pet? Fact is, he couldn 't pass for American in India!
"Excuse me, sir," Nicely's longtime Cox'n, now the majordomo of his unwelcome shore establishment, interrupted as he slid back the pocket doors to the parlour. "Your other visitor, a Mister Peel, is arrived, sir."
Peel.' Lewrie gasped to himself, feeling his supper and two bowls of "chocolate pudding pie" turn to liquid in his bowels; Shit, and God help me! Is he apart o' this, whatever it is?
And whatever it was that Capt. Nicely was so sphinx-faced about Lewrie feared that it would not be a duty quite so straightforward as hunting down pirates.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A pleasure to see you once again, Captain Lewrie," Peel said, once the introductions were done.
"I just wish I could say the same, Jemmy," Lewrie rejoined with a tart grimace. "Not when you wear your 'official' spy phyz, though."
"Who says that I wear it now, Lewrie?" the darkly handsome and well-knit Foreign Office agent said with a smirk.
"You're here, damn my eyes," Lewrie spat back. "That's proof enough for me."
"Oh, ye of little faith," Mr. Peel-James Peel-mocked with a mournful "tsk-tsk" and a shake of his head.
"Oh, I of scars aplenty," Lewrie said right back, scowling.
"You know each other, sirs?" Pollock dared ask.
"Yes," "No!" Peel and Lewrie said in the same instant.
' 'Tis good to see you again, Mister Pollock," Peel said. "Your business thrives?"
"Indeed it does, Mister Peel," Pollock allowed. "Well-met, sir."
"Oh, Christ," Lewrie whispered, passing a hand over his brow as he realised that Pollock and Peel might have worked together before, and what that signified!
"Thank you for coming, Mister Peel," Capt. Nicely bade him. "I s'pose you've already eat, but…"
"Aye, I did, sir, but thankee," Peel pooh-poohed.
"Perhaps coffee and a dessert would not go amiss, hey?"
"Your chocolate concoction, Captain Nicely?" Peel brightened. "That would be capital, indeed!"
"We were just discussing where Captain Lewrie could best search for our murderous pirates, Mister Peel," Nicely said, inviting all of them to sit. "And some details of that, ah, other matter," Nicely concluded with a wink towards Peel. "Have you learned anything as to the identity of who some of the bastards might be, sir?"
"I did, sir," Peel rejoined, turning to Lewrie. "Pardon me for taking the liberty, Lewrie, but I spoke with your surviving crewmen at the hospital… "
"Was Toby Jugg, or whatever his real name is, involved?" Lewrie demanded.
"No, I don't think he was," Peel stated. "Not that he isn't a shifty fellow, at bottom. But he's innocent of your prize's taking. Wrong place, wrong time, that sort of thing. I'm convinced of it."
Mr. Peel steepled his fingers under his nose, an unconscious imitation of his old mentor, that master spy of Lewrie's past acqaintance, the now-retired Mr. Zachariah Twigg.
"However," Peel alluringly added, "that's not to say that Jugg didn't know at least one or two of the leaders. The one who declared himself when he marooned them, who called himself Boudreaux Balfa for one. Mister Pollock," Peel said, swivelling about, "you're much more familiar with Louisiana and New Orleans. That name ring a bell?"
"I've heard him mentioned, yes, Mister Peel," Pollock intoned. "Ahem… (twitch-whinny) he made a name for himself during the Revolution as a privateer. An exiled Acadian, from old French Canada, he is. I think he lives somewhere down Bayou Barataria now. Used his profits to buy land and retired from seafaring, so I've been told. A widower, I think I also heard? Went by the sobriquet of L'Affame, 'the Hungry,' at sea."
"Your Toby Jugg sailed with him years ago, Lewrie," Peel said, with a sly delight to impart that fact. "Your Jugg admitted to me he didn't want to be recognised. Something about cheating this Balfa of a share of old booty. And, in the years since, he's thickened, aged, and wears that thick beard, so, thankfully, Balfa didn't tumble to his presence. Else he might've lost his ears, Jugg told me."
"Put him to the Question like the Spanish Inquisition, did you?" Lewrie cynically supposed.
"Hardly that extreme!" Peel laughed heartily. "Though I did get him in quite a sweat when I interrogated him alone."
"Good!" was Lewrie's sour comment to that news.
"The long, lanky one who impersonated him in your Bosun's Mate's clothes," Peel prosed on, "your Jugg might have known, as well. Got it garbled, o' course, the other sailors. Another name to conjure with, Mister Pollock," Peel said, turning about, again. "Lanxade?"
"Oh, him!" Pollock exclaimed in instant recognition. "He has a fair amount of fame in New Orleans, too, ahem (twitch-whinny). He and Balfa must have ended up with four or five privateers at sea, towards the end of the last war! Jerome Lanxade. Made umpteen thousands from privateering… some say from piracy, too, 'fore the war, and perhaps for a time after. Spent it like water, though, gambled deep, and lost most of it. Or, spent it on the, ah… ahem!… the faster ladies."
Pollock actually looked as if he would blush!
"What is he doing now, and where could he be found?" Peel asked.
"In any b-b-bordello in New Orleans, actually," Pollock admitted. "He's infamous for it. High-born French Creole lady or tavern drabs, no matter, and 'tis said no husband, father, or beau sleeps sound if Jerome Lanxade's on the town."
"We have a good physical description of Balfa from Lewrie's men. What does Lanxade look like? You've seen him yourself, Mister Pollock?" Peel casually pressed, his eyes alight as the game took foot.
"Each time I return to New Orleans, yes," Pollock supplied them. "Hmm… very tall and lean. Very long and spiky waxed mustachios in the Spanish style… uncommon vain, he is. Still tries to twinkle in style, but, oh… he'd be in his fifties, by now, I think, so his appeal of old is fading. Dresses in the highest fashion… garish, loud colours, but very fine material," Pollock told them, head cocked most parrot-like in forced recollection. 'I'm told that he employs dye to keep his hair and mustachios dark, and… rapier-thin though he still is, good living put a gotch-gut on his middle, so there's some say he wears a canvas and whale-bone corset to maintain his manly figure!"
"And his activities, of late?" Peel as
ked.
"Oh, I do believe he only sails the Mississippi, now," Pollock responded, snickering a little at any man who'd held such a fortune and squandered it, now reduced to the Prodigal Son's beggary. "Works for some trading company, captaining shalopes up to Natchez, Manchac, Baton Rouge, and the west bank settlements like Saint Louis. Jerome Lanxade…" Pollock pondered with a long sigh, ruminating. "Him, I can see returning to a life of piracy and looting. From what little I know of Balfa, though, I'd have thought he'd have more sense."
"And Lanxade was known, in his privateering days, as 'the Ferocious'… Le Feroce?" Peel almost happily concluded.
"That was the name connected to his repute, yes, Mister Peel." Pollock assured him. "Once gained, how hard it must be to dim…"
"There's your principals, Captain Nicely, Captain Lewrie," Mr. Peel told them, beaming, turning away from Pollock as if he had wrung him dry of all that was necessary.
"A description of their schooner, and the names and descriptions of the leaders," Lewrie said, pleased as well. "So I'll know who to whack when I cross hawses with 'em. Excellent work, Mister Peel!"
"Well, there is the matter of where a penniless Jerome Lanxade got the wherewithal to outfit a ship and hire on a crew," Peel said in caution. "What he promised this Boudreaux Balfa to come out of retirement. Your sailors also spoke of some others aboard the schooner, the morning they were put ashore on the Dry Tortugas…"
"The young 'uns, d'ye mean," Lewrie said, recalling what he had heard in the hospital ward. "The titterin' crudest ones?"
"It is also quite intriguing to me," Peel continued, "that our pirates, but for the seizure of your prize ship, Lewrie, seem to take great pleasure in only attacking Spanish vessels."
"Hmmm…" Capt. Nicely sagely stuck in as Peel's coffee and pie at last appeared, silencing them until they'd been set by Peel's chair on a round wine-table, and the servant had withdrawn.
"Who backed them, and why, you wonder," Nicely supposed, once they were alone again. "Where the seed money came from?"
"Most-like, they both fell on hard times, as Mister Pollock suggests," Lewrie dismissed, "they're bored, and piracy's the only trade they know that pays. Reliving their wild and misspent youth! Began with a cutting-out raid in a brace o' rowboats and moved up from that. The schooner might be their best, and latest, capture, is all."
"Mister Pollock," Peel said, turning to that worthy again, after a pitiable grin at Lewrie's supposition. "What's the mood among the old French Creoles with whom you deal? Have you heard any expression of dis-satisfaction with Spanish rule, of late?"
"Of course, Mister Peel!" Pollock quickly assured him. "They barely tolerate 'em in the best of times. They'd despise anyone other than their fellow Frenchmen ruling them. No one else in the world is, ahem!… cultured enough to even rub shoulders with 'em. There's a long-simmering revulsion, ever since old King Louis sold Louisiana to the Spanish."
"Anything beyond a grudge, of late, though, Mister Pollock?" Peel further enquired. "The talk in parlours and streets, your store, any more fervid? Any rumours of revolt?"
"My dear sir, there has always been, ahem!" Pollock told him with an amused chuckle and a twitch-whinny "Creoles, though, are an excitable lot. As are most folk from Catholic lands, who speak their Romance languages. Talk is all they're capable of. To hear the rants in the cabarets, one'd think they were on the edge of armed rebellion, but… perhaps it's something in the climate that enervates them, or something, but they are quite incapable of ever really doing anything, in the end. The food and wine's too good, heh heh!"
"But what if it was different this time?" Peel posed. "What if a small group of malcontents… young, excitable, and endowed with the will to take whatever act is needful… very like the cruel ones your sailors experienced, Lewrie… was of a mind to rise up against the Spanish. Do recall what your men told me of their schooner: she had two names, Le Revenant, or the Ghost, and La Reunion. Reunion with whom? With the new, Republican France? Hmm?"
"And you want to go sound 'em out?" Lewrie scoffed. "Feed 'em money for their little revolution, then spring a British invasion on 'em? Well, good luck to you."
"Exciting as that sounds," Peel seemed to demur, "as valuable to Crown interests as that may turn out to be… assuming that such a cabal exists, and would be more amenable to British possession than Spanish… or American, eventually!… I fear I have more pressing items to pursue. Mister Pollock is our eyes and ears in New Orleans. He can smoak out any hint of actual rebellion… which His Majesty's Government would be more than happy to abet and encourage, and, exploit.
"If this suspected cabal indeed is violently anti-Spanish, with the wherewithal to succeed," Peel grimly added. "Unless it turns out to be a forlorn and pointless geste, only a piratical cabal arranged merely for profit… In that case, naturally, it must be Scotched."
"You're saying I can't whack 'em 'til Mister Pollock tells me I can?" Lewrie snickered between sips of brandy. "You have an uncanny way of making simple things hellish complicated, James."
"Mister Peel is correct, though, Captain Lewrie," Nicely praised with his eyes alight with what Lewrie deemed a Crusader's fire. "This must be explored. Should orders come to proceed against the Spanish, we must scout out New Orleans 's defences, determine the best route for invasion for Admiral Parker's part of the expedition, and, put paid to these pirates, all in one. You spoke to Sir Hyde, Mister Peel? Lord Balcarres, the royal governor, as well?"
"Dined with them, sir," Peel smugly told him, "soon as I ended my interviews with Lewrie's sailors."
"It would appear your mission has grown, Lewrie," Nicely stated. "Sir?" Lewrie nigh squeaked in dread, secretly crossing fingers in his lap. "Here's what we'll do," Nicely declared, up and pacing energetically, all but swinging his arms at full stretch to clap hands. "Sir Hyde has allowed me to, ah… coordinate things, so! Mister Pollock, your ship will sail soon for New Orleans? Good. Your role will be to discover whatever intelligences that Mister Peel requests. Lewrie!"
"Sir?" Lewrie reiterated, even more concerned, of a sudden. "You are to go to New Orleans with Mister Pollock." "Me, sir?" Lewrie managed to splutter, taking a brief moment to glare hatefully in Peel's direction.
"Take your Quartermaster's Mate-Jugg's his name?-with you so he can identify as many people from that schooner as he may," Nicely forcefully ordained. "They didn't recognise their old shipmate the first time, there's good odds they won't, the second. Take some hands along… your real brawlers and scrappers. Pass yourself off as an American, or… "
"Hindu'd be easier, sir," Lewrie spluttered some more, tittery with disbelief. Self-amused, too; sarcastically so, to imagine that he could be taken for anything other than British for longer than ten seconds. Hindee or Chinee might be easier!
"What… ever!" Nicely snapped, pausing in his pacing to bestow a glare at him. "If, as Mister Peel suspects, someone funded the… Lank-diddle and Belfry, whatever their names are, we must learn if they're in it for the money, or for France. If for France, discover as much as you can. If for the money, make sure you stop their business. Blood in the streets, bodies floating in the river, the ships burning at dawn! If you can't get at 'em at sea, carry the fight to their parlours, and let 'em see the reach of the Royal Navy, and His Majesty's Government, when we're aroused!"
"That's not… ahem!… the sort of aid to the Crown my firm usually supplies, Captain Nicely," Pollock objected, leaping afoot in consternation. "Subtlety, d'ye see. To the Dons, I'm a mere trader. A useful trader. If I take Lewrie and a pack of bully-bucks to New Orleans, all my years of, ah… covert good works will end. I, and Panton, Leslie, could be banned, at the best. We could all be arrested… exposed, and publicly strangled, at the worst.
"Besides," Pollock continued, turning to point accusatorily at Lewrie. "What does he know of covert doings? How obvious may he be, I conjure you, sir? Why-!"
"He's damned good, really," Peel interrupted, idly spooning up chocolate pudding pie, trifle, jumble, whate
ver, as if Pollock's thin shrieks of alarm, and Lewrie's red-faced surprise, were a street raree of only fair amusement. "I am?" Lewrie roared. "Last time, you thought me an idiot!"
"My dear Lewrie, it ain't like you haven't done this, before," Peel pointed out. " Apalachicola, in '82. The Far East in '84 or so. Genoa and Leghorn in '94? Actually, Captain Nicely, I rather doubt if you really wish blood in the streets. A thorough sounding-out'd suit our purposes, anent the pirates' financing and organisation. A viable invasion route, well… Lewrie is a most knacky Sea Officer who knows the practicality of transporting troops and guns to the best place for a successful, and quick, victory. And what's needful to support it so it is successful. Really, Alan… that's your main task."
"Sea Officer, Jemmy!" Lewrie fumed. "Wouldn't an Army officer be better for…"
"Gawd, who'd put trust in a soldier!" Nicely guffawed. "Nought but idle fools who bought their rank and haven't worked a day since! Peel's right, Lewrie. You're better suited. Though it would be nice could you eliminate the known leaders of our pirates. Without their expertise, men of less repute might find it hard to keep their crews together. Put an end to 'em."
"Far be it from me to cry 'croakum,' sir," Lewrie tried to say as calmly and reasonably as he could, though he was nigh shuddering with anger to have been… "bamboozled"… again! "But I thought I was to hunt 'em down at sea. Just how did I-how did this-turn into… spying?"
"Your record precedes you, Lewrie," Nicely told him, obviously trying to praise, but failing badly. "Sir Hyde, the Governor-General, the Admiralty… Mister Peel's Foreign Office," he said, waving one hand in Peel's direction, prompting a brief bow from the seated Peel, "all think you can do it. Sir Hyde said you're the very man for the job, no error."
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