It was the details that were contradictory . . . disturbingly so.
Lewrie pretended to nod, grin a bit, and utter "Aha!" here and there during Brasseur's rushed description of French preparations for repelling a British "flea-bite"; he even bothered to make notes of the salient portions of the tale, but. . .
Jean Brasseur laid out a strong reaction to his ambush and his bombardment, with little mention of how his fellow locals felt, which Lewrie thought odd; but, perhaps because the French people had no say in the matter, and no one was asking their opinion, anyway.
A demi-brigade was rumoured moved to Rochefort and the Cote Sauvage, and a second demi-brigade, gathered from Bordeaux and the provincial capital of Saintes in Saintonge, was to come to Royan and Talmont, to St. Palais sur Mer to erect new fortifications, supposed to be armed with proper 24-pounder and 32-pounder guns. The fort at St. Georges would give up its 12-pounders and 18-pounders for heavier pieces, and those lighter pieces would be sent cross the Gironde to the unfinished battery at Pointe de Grave. With his own eyes, Brasseur swore that he had seen the stone blocks meant to raise the ramparts higher being laid flat for gun platforms, and some blocks of the low walls would be removed to make embrasures for firing.
"I fear, m 'sieur, zat a half-bataillon of soldats will come to my poor village," Brasseur moodily told him, "an' take over 'ouses of our people. Officiers 'ave mark-ed doors wiz chalk. So many soldats of which compagnie to each, an' my 'ouse zey will take, an' we mus' feed zem, hein?" he bemoaned, looking frantic for a second. "Mon Dieu, Capitaine Lewrie, zey stay long, ma famille will starve! An, if zey suspect anyone of disloyalty, of consort wiz enemy . . . if false accusations are made, ze arrests, ze massacres in ze Vendee, may 'appen all over again. You see why I mus' not be suspect by dealing wiz you?"
"Might you wish to be taken aboard and taken elsewhere, sir?" Lewrie asked; he didn't want the fellow "scragged"! "If you are in danger, an escape for you and your family can be arranged."
"Mon Dieu, Capitaine Lewrie," Brasseur said as he set his cognac aside and wrung his hands. "Leave La Belle France? We mus' be curs-ed, our famille. Long ago Anglais outcasts, now, toujours outcast from new country. But . . . it may be zat, or face ze guillotine. Merci, m'sieur, merci beaucoup! Per'aps I mus' ask you for zis."
"Well, then," Lewrie said, reaching for his coin purse to shake out three guineas. "I'll not keep you so long that your police become suspicious, Capitaine Brasseur. Daunting as the information you bring is, putting yourself to further risk will not be necessary."
"No 'flea-bite,' Capitaine Lewrie?" Brasseur asked. "A pity. But wiz ze re-enforcements 'oo come. . . . ?" He heaved a deep, negative shrug.
"Don't see how we could accomplish anything, now," Lewrie found himself saying. Disgruntlement, perhaps, or a faint, peevish suspicion of his own, but he added, "Nice idea, but no future in it. Not anywhere near where you live, m'sieur. There are better places . . . no matter." He cryptically cut himself off, still wondering which to take as Gospel. . . Papin's version, or Brasseur's.
"Ah, j'ai oublie!" Brasseur cried, all but slapping his head. "Forgetful of me. I 'ave ze newspapers you ask for." He traded coins for a wad of papers kept in the chest pocket of his fisherman's smock. "Zey mention ze raids on Cote Sauvage, an' ze re-enforcements . . . to assure our citoyens . . . ze local people."
"At last! Thankee kindly, sir," Lewrie enthused, even though he knew that most French papers lied like a rug—as the Frogs said, "Lied like a bulletin from Paris"—and he would need help from Devereux and Durant and Lt. Urquhart to get a proper translation.
Brasseur gulped down the last of his cognac, stated a sum for his goods, and pocketed his money. Lewrie walked him back to the deck, then up the larboard ladderway to the gangway and entry-port.
Both men stopped, though, for a large crowd of sailors were now gathered round Mr. Durant and his patient, Quarter-Gunner Brough, who sat atop a sea-chest just aft of the main-mast trunk.
"This'll be good," Lewrie told the Frenchman.
Durant, now in rolled-up shirtsleeves and stained leather apron, was reaching into Brough's gaping mouth with pliers. He twisted, and even Lewrie could hear the sickly crunch of rotten roots. Mr. Durant jerked hard, and the sailors whooped, clapped, and shouted "Fire One!" as Durant held up the tooth like a conjurer who'd just pulled a dove from someone's nostril. It was a large molar, worthy of a dray horse, stained brown with a lifetime of "chaw-baccy," and black with corruption. Brough put a hand to his jaw, spat blood, but made no sound.
"Ge' on wi' ith!" he shouted, to show his "bottom."
"Oil of cloves, Brough?" Durant offered, but Brough had surely been dosed with a double tot of rum, already; to which offer the poor fellow shook his head side to side . . . tentatively, it must be said. "No fankee, thir!" Brough insisted, glowering at the Surgeon as fiercely as he thought he could get away with, this side of insubordination; the thought that his pay would be docked for his treatment, paying for his own agony, might have had something to do with it.
"Care t'make a wager, sir?" Lewrie asked Brasseur. "Two to go, and the odds favour him squeakin' by the third." Fears of lingering too long aboard an enemy warship or no, Brasseur looked bloodthirstily intrigued, with that "better you than me, mate" smirk on his face.
"Go fer t'other'uns!" Willy Toffett urged. "Sure'z Christmas comin', he'll squeal like a shoat. Got money on't, hey, lads?"
Out came the second tooth, as rotten as the first, and with it a spurt of greyish blood and yellow pus which Brough spat into a wood pail, demanding again that Durant get it over with. "Yer borin me, Mister Durant, sir!" he made himself cackle, to the gloomier, quieting crowd of onlookers, some of whom were now regretting their wagers.
Out came the last, and after swigging his mouth clean with sea water, Brough leaped to his feet, arms aloft, and dancing like a successful boxer fresh enough to gloat over his win.
"Huzzah, Mister Durant!" Lewrie called down. "Most neatly done, I vow! And, Brough . . .'nother tot o' rum and light duties for a day, for ye stood it manful!"
"Merci, Captain," Durant called back, bowing at the waist after his pair of loblolly boys had taken charge of his pliers, pail, and apron. "Ah he, m 'sieur. .. vous êtes Capitaine Brasseur, oui?" Durant all but skipped up the ladderway to the gangway, and began a palaver in rapid Frog. His chances to speak his native-born tongue were lacking aboard Savage, but for the hour a day he tutored the Midshipmen and a few of the Master's Mates who might aspire to Commission, someday; the rest of his waking, on-duty hours were conducted in English, at which Durant had become more than proficient, but.. . when a chance arose he would gladly seize it, if only for a few minutes with another Frenchman, no matter his class or station, and "slang" away. Brasseur on his part seemed to enoy it, too, after making a torturous way with Lewrie and a nearly total lack of a common language between them.
"I offer him my medical services, for him or his crew, sir," Durant said with chuckle. "For some reason, Capitaine Brasseur refuses my kind offer, you see."
"He should not be delayed too long, Mister Durant," Lewrie told the Surgeon. "Gendarmes, spies, and the guillotine, hmm?"
"Oh, mais oui!" Durant replied, wincing. Au revoirs were said in haste, fakes attention said for Brasseur to take care, and even more merci beaucoups, along with bonne chance and good luck before the fellow went down the man-ropes and boarding battens to a waiting boat.
Lewrie stood by the open entry-port, his cocked hat held high in salute, with a smile plastered on his phyz, though fuming that both his informants had given him diametrically opposed observations, and he still couldn't fathom which to believe. Bastards! he snarled; vous menteurs fumiers . . . lyin' shits! Or, is it fu-miers menteurs? Tow an adjective . . . le waggon green, by God.
"Anything of note aboard his boat, Mister Devereux?" he asked the Marine officer.
"The usual trash, and nothing more, according to Corporal Skipwith, sir," Devereux said with a faint smirk. "Hardly any catch this mo
rning, either, he told me."
"Mister Urquhart? Soon as Desmond secures the launch, pray do get us under way," Lewrie instructed. "We shall continue our little jog down towards Point Grave, and see if there are any changes to the battery there. Might take a pot-shot at it, do I feel surly. And I do."
Lt. Urquhart acknowledged his orders, touched his hat, and went to the quarterdeck. Lewrie thought a stroll to the forecastle and a turn down the starboard side might settle breakfast, but. . .
"Your pardons, Captain," Mr. Durant said, a quizzical look upon his face. "There is something I must mention. I do not know if it is important, but. . .," he said with one of his deep, Gallic shrugs.
"Walk with me, sir," Lewrie offered, and they set off forrud.
"That fellow, sir . . . Jean Brasseur," Durant began, raising an eyebrow in query. "He sells us more than fish and wine?"
"He does, Mister Durant," Lewrie admitted, tight-lipped, hands clasped behind his back. "None good, really."
"And he says he is from one of the seaside villages, yes?"
"From Le Verdon, down yonder, aye," Lewrie said, his attention fixed more on the neatness of the flemished piles of running rigging, how lines were coiled over the pins in the rails, and giving the taut stays a thump with his fist.
"Then that is very odd, Captain," Durant said with a frown on his face, "for in conversing with him, I do not hear the accent of the Medoc, nor the Sain-tonge or Aquitaine, either."
"Hmm?" Lewrie gawped, coming to a full stop to face Mr. Durant. "He's not a local, d'ye say, sir?"
"When I study in Paris to be physician, sir, I meet many young men from many provinces," Durant worriedly explained. "If one cannot speak perfect Parisian, well . . . one is teased, yes? My own accent of Picardy resulted in . . . no matter. Yet, because of this, I may swear that this M'sieur Brasseur has the accent I recall of fellows who come from Provence. This is very odd, n'est-cepas, Captain?"
"Yet he claims his family's lived by the Gironde since the time of Queen Eleanor and one of our King Henrys!" Lewrie exclaimed. "His multiple granther's s'posed to've been an English archer! Damn my eyes, if he's . . . !" Said he'd been in the French Navy during the American Revolution."
And what was in Provence? Lewrie furiously recalled; Marseilles, Toulon, Nice, . . . all of 'em French naval bases! Christ, I've been led round like a prize sheep! He's been lyin' from the start.
"You couldn't be in error, could ye, Mister Durant? All these years since. . . . ?" Lewrie pressed.
"At medical college, sir, I was known as quite the witty mimic," Durant told him, smiling in reverie for a moment, almost preening over his old skill. "We all made poor provincials the butt of our japes . . . for I received my share, as well, you see?" It is not an idle boast on my part to aver that I still possess my . . . ear for accents. He is surely from Provence, sir. Perhaps long-removed, but this Brasseur fellow sprang from there . . . grew up there . . . spent a good part of his life on the Mediterranean coast.
"Another niggle, sir, which just now strikes me," Durant posed before Lewrie could begin to splutter. "Pardons, Captain, but yours is a name which you have surely noted that people you have met, overseas, is difficult for them to pronounce. The closest a Frenchman may come would be something like 'Lu-ray,' yes?"
"Lah . . . Lur . . . Luh, I've heard a slew, aye. Go on, sir."
"Yet, this Capitaine Brasseur says 'Lew-ree' as easily as, what is the English phrase? As easily as 'kiss my hand,' yes? As if this fellow knows about you d'avance, uhm . . . beforehand, sir?"
"Mine arse on a band-boxl" Lewrie spluttered; now that he, had something worth spluttering about. "Damn my eyes, but that foreign son of a bitch's diddled me! Thinks he has, damn 'is blood. But o' course the French sicced Navy officers out here, posing as fishermen, to spy out our doings. Our intentions too, by God!
"Well, Jean 'Crapaud' Brasseur's got another think comin', sir," Lewrie vowed, in some heat. "And, thankee, Mister Durant. I'd not've tumbled to him, were it not for your keen ear, and keener wit."
"It was nothing, sir," Durant preened in false modesty. "Just an odd . . . niggle in my 'noodle,' hawn hawn!"
"Keep nigglin', sir," Lewrie told him, "niggle away! Now we're warned, though . . . we're onl" he crowed, to Mr. Durant's mystification. "Now I know which of 'em to believe, and who'd imagine Jules Papin an honest man? Well, mostly so, no matter. As a friend, no—an acquaintance, for I'll not call him 'friend' this side of Hell—says, 'The game's afoot'!"
Book IV
. . . wherefore with thee, Came not all Hell broke loose?
John Milton (1608-1674),
Paradise Lost, Book IV, 917-918
Chapter Thirty-One
A spate of rough weather had forced several days' delay, after an anxious week more before Rear-Admiral Iredell, Lord Boxham, had made up his mind, and had summoned Lewrie from the close blockade, fetching Commodore - Ayscough in Chesterfield, as well, to thrash the minutiae of the plan to a dubious hash, and a mere semblance of Lewrie's original scheme, then re-assemble its various pieces into a cogent whole. That process had required two councils of war, a fortnight's worth of dithering, carping, and fault-finding, along with some flushed and angry faces, a great deal of swallowed pride, and here and there some gnawing of finger nails, before Lord Boxham had given his grudging approval. . . depending upon the weather, of course, and the veracity of the information, which Lewrie had to vouch for.
Then had come another full day far offshore for the Marines and landing parties of armed sailors to be transferred from their own ships to HMS Chesterfield, HMS Lyme, a brace of Third Rate 74s, to HMS Savage . . . from which they would be parcelled out to the brigs and cutters.
Another council of war had to be held aboard Savage to brief the new-comes' officers, Midshipmen, and petty officers, to assign duties to Bartoe, Shalcross, and Umphries, to Kenyon and Hogue. That one was conducted on a day of curling iron grey seas and greenish white spume, and a sullen, cold rain that lashed down from low, grey clouds, making them all think the idea half-daft, with winter gales expected by the end of the month, and a bootless endeavour best left for the Spring of 1801.
The sash windows in the transom of Lewrie's great-cabins had to be left half-open at the tops, the hinged glass-paned windows along the coach-top were propped partially open, yet the air in the cabins was a frowsty, warm, and almost-airless fug, despite the coolness of the day, and stank of foul bilge water unwashed bodies and hair, of hot candles and lamp oil, and damp wool uniforms. So many officers puffed away on clay pipes that a pall of smoke clung to the overhead like the greasy cloud spewed from a Muskogee Indian firepit in a clan's winter hud, and no amount of wind cross the decks could suck it out, as if Lewrie's entire quarters had turned into a badly drawing chimney.
" . . . fetch-to here, just off the tip of Pointe de Grave, as the brig-sloops round the point, and come-to on the up-river side," Lewrie said, using tiny slivers of wood to represent ships, atop the chart he had spread on his dining table. "Savage will land Lieutenant Ford and his Marine complement here . . . whilst Commanders Kenyon and Hogue will put Lieutenant Noble's Marines there, simultaneously, it is t'be hoped," he added with a brief, rueful smile. "All our boats, along with those borrowed from those officers' respective ships of the line, are to be towed astern, ready to go, and speed of landing will be crucial.
"At the same time as we all sail in together, in line-ahead with the brig-sloops leading and my frigate astern of all, and with all the cutters in a short column a bit North of us, Penguin, Banshee, and Argosy shall proceed beyond Point Grave, as we call it," Lewrie further explained, looking round to continue eye contact with all the officers crammed elbow to elbow about the dining table, "look into the shallow bay East of the point, to see what shipping may be anchored there. We have conflicting reports of barge traffick, so there may be some, or there may not be.
"In either case, Lieutenant Bartoe, the senior into Penguin, is to capture or burn whatever he discovers, or conti
nue on another two miles to what we term the 'dragon's muzzle,' just off the Northern arm of the breakwater of the harbour of Le Verdon sur Mer, then wait for support from Commander Kenyon's Erato and Commander Hogue's Mischief."
"Might I ask why that is, sir?" a Lt. Aubrey, whose Marines and sailors would be aboard the cutters, asked. "I would have sixty men of mine own, plus another thirty off the cutters, all told. We could land on the breakwater, and march on the village, taking the French from the rear, as well."
"It's more than a mile from the place you suggest, Lieutenant, and more than two miles' march from the battery on Point Grave. Were the Frogs garrisoned in the village in strength, we could not take the battery and slight it, then march that far quick enough to assist you," Lewrie explained. "Both landing parties would just arrive tired. It's better that you and the cutters wait for Erato and Mischief to get the landing-parties ashore at Point Grave, then sail round to back you up before taking further action. Once they do arrive, though, all ships are free to sail right into the harbour, if the pickings look promising, and take a peek into the cove below the 'dragon's jaws'."
"Unfortunately, sirs," Lt. Devereux wryly commented, "we ain't as spry as our Army brethren, as stout of leg and lung, from marching, trotting, and charging for practice almost weekly, what?"
"And, our main objective is the reduction of the Pointe de Grave battery, and we don't know how long that will require," Lewrie further said, "nor how many kegs of powder must be landed to flatten it, so . . . any attack on Le Verdon must be up to Commander Kenyon's judgement as best he sees it, once he joins the cutters, which, 'til that happens, will be under Lieutenant Bartoe's command. Shipping is primary, if it is there, with assistance from Marine and naval boarding parties, then the village and harbour, if it appears that we are not out-numbered. "Besides, sir," Lewrie said with a shrug and a twinkle, "going ashore on the village docks, if such is practicable, is a much shorter stroll," which slight jape raised a collegial chuckle.
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