She heaved another heavy, fetching sigh, nigh a hiccough.
"Forgive me, Capitaine Lanxade, but my lack is patience."
"I quite understand, Mademoiselle Charite," Lanxade cooed with a comforting, avuncular warmth to his voice. Had they been alone, without her brothers or calf-headed cousin or that prinking "dago" Don Rubio with his sheep's eyes, he would have put a supportive male arm about her, offered a broad shoulder on which she could incline her weak head! "We all share your impatience, my dear."
Lanxade did lean closer, like a parish priest taking confession in the open countryside on his rustic circuit.
Charite de Guilleri bestowed upon him a grateful, wide-eyed grin for his support. Then slithered to her feet in a rustle of satins and crossed to the sideboard for the glass of wine that Helio offered.
Bitch! Lanxade thought, seething; She did it to me again! The minx, the mort, the… Lanxade knew he was being played like a flute, but there'd come a time, someday, when he'd take what he wanted if-
"There is another matter, Capitaine," Charite said, once she had taken a sip or two of an excellent and effervescent white wine. "That odious British trade ship from Panton, Leslie Company has docked, and has more people aboard than usual. Helio has heard rumours that Panton, Leslie has close ties to the British government. Do you think they might be trouble, Capitaine Lanxade?"
"Oh, in the American War, they might have had a contract to the British Army in Florida," Lanxade airily dismissed with a soft chuckle. "They still profit off the Indian trade, with the Cabildo's connivance… the American trade up the Great River, too. But I myself have met many of them, sailed upriver or down, and camped with them many times, and there is nothing mysterious about them. If they have extra people aboard, perhaps it is to guard the mule trains or learn the trade."
"Half a dozen hard, well-armed men," Helio contributed, frowning in concern, "led by a man with fighting experience. I sent a slave to look the ship over, and he heard this man respectfully called capitaine. He has a scar on his left cheek, so he's certain to have been a soldier, but he walks like a sailor… They all do. What need has Panton, Leslie of sailors to guard their trade by land?"
"Might the Anglais send a pack of cut-throats or spies to look for their missing ship and the ones who took her?" Jean-Marie cried, leaping nervously to his feet.
"A lone prize, taken so far from here?" Lanxade scoffed. "Not even the British are that vengeful! They're fighting a war with both France and Spain. Their hands are already full."
"Nonetheless, it is… disturbing," Don Rubio said, slinking near Charite as if to offer needful male comfort to allay any fears. Which offer almost made Capt. Lanxade curl his upper lip, twirl at his mustachios, and sneer at the hapless, lusting fool. Or turn gruff at the importunings of a possible rival!
"Shouldn't we look into it?" Hippolyte suggested fearfully, as if Jean-Marie's dread was catching.
"Well, if you must," Lanxade replied with a shrug. "This fellow and his bully boys will be easy enough to locate in a town as small as New Orleans, and if they are British sailors… sailors of any nation… they must come off their ship to get drunk and pleasured, must they not, hein? Watchers to track them, even talk to them once they're in their cups? You can manage that, I expect."
All five of them stared at him, as if silently demanding more.
"I can ask around as well," Lanxade allowed them, shrugging as if it was a bootless chore, but one he'd do despite how futile such a task would surely turn out to be. He got to his feet at last, since it didn't look as if his employers and fellow conspirators would offer him a glass of that white wine. "You should worry more about a crowd of Americans who just sailed down from Tennessee. Backwoods rustics in stinking skins, but they are led by a man who also has the bearing of a soldier. And he was asking about the procurement of large quantities of arms, powder, and shot. Another pack of would-be filibustero freebooters, by the look of them."
"Let them have a slice of the east bank," Helio sneered. "The damned Spaniards have all but given it away already! The Lower Muskogees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws will make short work of them."
"They might be useful, though," Lanxade tossed off as he gathered up his hat and cane from the commode table by the apartment's door.
"Americans?" Helio and Hippolyte scoffed. "Hah!"
"Many of them war veterans promised land instead of pensions, but have neither," Lanxade drolly pointed out. "Shuffling from one hard patch of ground to the next, when the land plays out… or the rich and powerful snap it up, messieurs, mademoiselle? Such motherless ne'er-do-wells will do anything merely for the promise of better. And if part of Lousiana was promised to them… far north of here, of course… what sort of army would they make to oust the Spanish?"
"They're heathen Protestants!" Don Rubio exclaimed with all the disgust that both his hidalgo-Catholic-Spanish father and the French Creole Catholic Bergrands had drummed into him with his mother's milk. "They're Anglo-Saxons, and they have no Spanish, much less knowledge of our beautiful French."
"We Creoles would be drowned in a flood of heretics," Helio de Guilleri quickly added.
"Our glorious language, our genteel way of life, our people./" Jean-Marie Rancour piped up, turning even paler. "They'd sweep us from the face of the world! They're hideous, they're-"
"Ambitious, and powerful in their numbers," Lanxade interjected. "Draw a border far to the north, along the Arkansas River, let us say. The Yankees are not at war with France, not a real war, and are mostly of two minds about the French, or Creoles. Without us, they would not be free of the British, and for that they are thankful still. Their priests direct their anger at Spain and its Inquisition. Mon Dieu, Americans are so English, they still despise the Spanish for the Armada! The United States may end up with every last stick of Florida east of Pensacola, but with American settler-veterans fighting to carve out their own little empire in our service, in the northern half of Louisiana, all the way to Lake Michigan… hmm?"
"But, we're so few, and those bumpkins breed like rabbits. They would swarm us under in a generation, Lanxade!" Don Rubio objected.
"Ah, but what if an entirely new country… Louisiana… came to be. For that, do you not think that the Directory in Paris might not suspend their wasteful war against the British… to recover just as much 'empire' as we lost in '63? Steal it from the haughty Anglais and the grasping United States?
"The chance of such a coup would assure our reunion with France… that we all hold dear," Lanxade dangled before them, almost playfully. "Hmm? Oh well, it's just a thought… adieu, messieurs and mademoiselle. I will do what I can to sniff out those newly arrived and mysterious anglais for you, before Balfa and I take the silver down to pay our impatient sailors. I will send you a report before we go. Once more, adieu"
"What an odious idea!" middle brother Hippolyte declared with a grimace once Lanxade was gone. "Even temporarily associated with those… brutish animals, pah!"
"The Americans press us so closely, even now, though, Hippolyte. The time may be shorter than we think before they march into Florida. The time we have in which to raise a rebellion," Charite glumly considered, pacing the parlour with a silent, graceful gliding motion that her town clothes enforced upon her, the artful attainments drilled into her by her parents, tutors, and dancing-masters.
"If that happens, Louisiana, and our city, are doomed," cousin Jean-Marie brokenly muttered, as if contemplating being driven from a second refuge. "And we think it's bad enough under the Spanish!"
"Good for business, though," said Helio, the most levelheaded among them, the eldest de Guilleri who would inherit the bulk of their lands and the resulting responsibilities. " New Orleans is already the most thriving port on the Gulf. With Yankee industriousness…"
"Shame on you!" Charite stormed, so outraged that she stamped a dainty foot on the floor. "Does the struggle to become French again mean so little to you, after all we've done? After all our hopes and plans? Saint Domingue, Mar
tinique, and Guadeloupe are bursting with thousands of good Frenchmen who would flee here and join us. Swedish and Danish ships come here to trade as thick as mosquitoes. How many stout Republican soldiers and settlers could be smuggled here in those neutral ships, once Paris is aware of our movement? We must send another letter, many of them. Each of us writes two, claiming to be, ah… Maurepas, Bistineau! Bergrands and Bois-blancs… LeMoynes and D'Ablemonts, the leading citizens! Urging them to come to our aid, on the sly/"
"Sister, cherie," Helio had to point out. "The Spanish are the only allies the Directory has in the world. Even if they meant to betray the Spaniards, how would they sneak an army here, with the Anglais stopping and inspecting every ship they come across?"
"If they could, though," Don Rubio objected, "the Spanish can't spare troops or ships to fight them. And with our schooner, and soon even more vessels, the decrepit Spanish Navy could not move soldiers from Mexico or Cuba as long as that British Navy blockades them! Oui, more letters to Paris, and… what if we did hire on a few bands of Americans?"
"What? But I thought you-" Jean-Marie blanched.
"As backwoods troublemakers," Rubio Monaster expounded with an evil snicker. "To raid Spanish posts, massacre the soldiers, and loot them. We'd let them keep all they take, so we would not have to pay them. We begin a campaign of torching Spanish properties around the city… dressed in buckskins, so American visitors get the blame. I think Yankee patriots dressed as Indians when they dumped the teas in Boston harbour, ha ha!"
"I'd rather try to make a pet of an alligator," Helio objected. "You cannot trust them, no matter how destitute and dog-eyed they look at the moment. Give a Yankee a cubit, and he'll take an arpent! They have no lasting gratitude in their souls. Look how thankful they were after Yorktown, and how they turned on the France that saved them not twenty years later, and now make war on our commerce, did not declare war on the British to help our Revolution in '93, did not give grain to keep the suffering French people from starvation, but sold it!"
"Enough, cher Helio," Charite demanded, pressing fingers to her forehead as if suffering a mal de tete. "Capitaine Lanxade is a fool. Useful in his way, but still a fool. Helio is right. We can never rely on the Americans. They would betray us eventually. But until we can urge the Directory to come to our aid, and quickly, we must do something to rouse our sleeping fellow Creoles. Rubio, your idea has some merit. We must look into that."
Don Rubio Monaster almost wagged his nonexistent tail at such rare praise from her.
"And let's not forget that we must look into both the American backwoodsmen's arrival, and those strangers off the Panton, Leslie trader," Charite announced. "They're men, after all, and men always find themselves a cabaret, a grog shop, or a bordel after the hard journey is done. Who knows, they might even come right to us in our favourite boites? She chuckled. "If either party looks to be a danger to us, then… what better could we do than go to sea to take even more prizes, while they search for us here, n'est-ce pas?"
" Chere Charite, I swear if you are not the heart and soul of all we do, of all we dream," her brother Helio exclaimed with heartfelt admiration for her quick and clever thinking.
Yes, and sometimes it seems I am the only one with any sense at all! Charite Angelette de Guilleri smugly thought as she gave her elder brother a hug for his praise.
"A young woman who would make any fortunate man a most formidable and sensible wife," Don Rubio Monaster dared to say, colouring at once to blurt out his dearest desire.
"Why, thank you, Rubio, aren't you so sweet?" Charite brightly, "sugarly," replied, batting her lashes and acting the guileless Creole coquette for a moment.
A nice boy! she deemed him, though; Good puppy… sit up, beg! But so slavish, mon Dieu! Oh, quel dommage… he has his uses, too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ah, well," Mr. Gideon Pollock said with a heavy sigh of disappointment, once Lewrie had related the results of his hours spent "shopping" and comparing prices. "I suppose I must delve into things myself."
"Sorry, Mister Pollock," Lewrie replied with a whimsical shrug. "But I fear my forte ain't in Commerce. Without making notes, which'd have got me thrown out on my ear, I couldn't keep track of it. Whereas you know to the farthing what's a fair price. No scribblin' necessary with you, d'ye see. It's all up here," he said as he tapped his forehead.
"Um, yayss… ahem," Pollock said with a somewhat dubious expression, and another of his cough-twitch-whinnies; questioning, perhaps, whether Lewrie possessed anything inside his skull.
"At least Jugg and I did meet with that Ellison fellow, him and his reeky gang," Lewrie pointed out. "Seemed quite the 'Captain Sharp' to me. He admitted he was tied up in that state of Franklin affair."
"Well, that would depend on who are his employers," Mr. Pollock grudgingly allowed, fretting round the super-cargo's spacious cabin on the Azucena del Oeste, transferring possessions from his sea chests to a leather valise, "tut-tutting" and "ha-humming" to himself as he sorted out clean shirts, stockings, neck-stocks, underdrawers, and his slim wardrobe of waist-coats and trousers. "I would expect that Ellison most likely is an agent for richer men, as he baldly stated to you. In what capacity, however… ahem. After he left your ken, though, Mister James Hawk Ellison came aboard our emporium hulk."
"As I suggested," Lewrie reminded the man, hoping that his day's work had borne some fruit, "that he look at the air-rifles and-"
"Which he and his fellows did," Pollock said with a crafty grin, interrupting his packing long enough to turn and smile at Lewrie. "And they were all most desirous of arms and ammuniton. Not merely muskets or pistols, but heavier ordnance, as well, hmm! Mister Ellison asked of the availability of brass four-pounders, or old regimental guns… brass six-pounders, or 'grasshopper' guns, Coehorn mortars and such."
"Aha! I knew the man wasn't straight!" Lewrie boasted, since it looked like he might be the only one to do so over his covert delvings. "So, he's the vanguard of a Yankee invasion?"
"His service during the Revolution, which Ellison revealed to me as quickly as he did to you," Pollock smugly said as he carefully folded a pair of white silk stockings, "does worry me a bit. Oh, that he's involved with some sort of filibustering expedition, I have no doubt. I fear, though, that is our Mister Ellison still a serving officer in the American Army, he just might have been sent to New Orleans by an incredibly aspiring man by name of General James Wilkinson, Lewrie. An aspiring man, indeed, ahem."
And damn all spies, Foreign Office, amateur, or otherwise! Lewrie sourly thought; Twigg, Pelham, Peel, this clod, they're all the same… smug when they know something you don't, and damn' near pissin' themselves for you t 'beg 'em t'tell it to you!
"And who is James Wilkinson when he's up and dressed?" he asked finally, in almost a rote monotone, which lack of enthusiasm stopped Pollock dead in his tracks and made him turn, twitch-whinny, and glare.
"Wilkinson is the senior officer in charge of the American Army, which garrisons the states of Tennessee and Kentucky, Lewrie," Pollock archly cooed, "which is rather ironic, since before Kentucky became an established state in the Union in 1792, Wilkinson was scheming to seize the whole damned thing and make it a personal fief! He might have done the same for Tennessee, had he not been opposed by a set of politicians, lawyers, and planters even richer and more influential than he could ever hope to be. General Wilkinson came down to New Orleans himself in 1787, when the former Captain-General of Louisiana recruited him as a secret agent. He's known to the Dons as Agent Thirteen… bad luck for someone, hey? Wilkinson's well thought of by many in the Congress and just may end up the Commanding General of the United States Army in a new administration! He's rumoured to be close to Mister Thomas Jefferson and his faction, and Jefferson 's rumoured to be planning to oppose their current president, John Adams.
"Horrid idea, that," Pollock quibbled, looking disgusted with Democracy's machinations. "Set terms for public office keep bad men in place too long, and depose good'un
s… when our way lets us call a by-election if one of ours proves himself a criminal or a fool."
"They're an odd people, our Yankee Doodles." Lewrie snickered. "The way that fellow Ellison just blurted out his whole life story to me in the first ten minutes… prosed on worse than a jobless Irish poet! You think Ellison and his crew were sent here to spy out things for Wilkinson? If he can't have Kentucky or Tennessee, he still hopes to strike out on his own and take Louisiana… for the United States, or himself?"
"A very good possibility, given his past proclivities, Lewrie." Mr. Pollock sagaciously leered before returning to his packing. "If Ellison reports on how weak the Spanish garrisons are, Wilkinson may invade the Muscle Shoals, Yazoo, or Alabama River country right off. The Spanish have very little control there. Acting on Jefferson 's behest, he would raise his political prospects to the top of the heap with such a land-grab… and eclipse any of his potential opponents."
"If the Americans start a war with Spain, it wouldn't be much of one," Lewrie surmised. "Not with re-enforcements so distant. Not as long as we're at war with 'em, and the Royal Navy in the way. And the American Navy to guard the approaches to the Gulf…"
The Captain`s Vengeance l-12 Page 15
