Authors: Dewey Lambdin
“Arrêt!”
the man snapped, his voice a deep, menacing
basso;
it was unclear whether he referred to his own boat or Lewrie’s.
“Close enough, I think,” Lewrie muttered to his Cox’n.
“Easy all, lads!” Desmond ordered. “Toss yer oars!”
The cutter’s sail was quickly lowered, its tiller put over, and it swung as if to lay its beam open for a ramming amidships. Desmond heaved on his own tiller to parallel the rebel boat.
“Bon matin, m’sieur!”
Lewrie called out, smiling.
“Comment allez-vous?”
He introduced himself, then waited for a response. “Ehm … any of you speak English?
Parle l’Anglais
?”
“Va te faire foutre, vous blanc fumier!”
the big man snarled.
“A physical impossibility,
m’sieur … quel appellez-vous
?”
“I speak,
en peu, Capitaine,
” the young fellow at the tiller hesitantly, almost fearfully, said, his gaze flitting ’twixt Lewrie and his superior, as if expecting a blow for making the offer. There was a quick, rumbling palaver between them before the bigger man shoved the other, as if prodding him to speak for him.
“Colonel Coup-Jarret, ’e ask … what ees you’ business ’ere,”
Colonel … “Cut-Throat”? Damme!
Lewrie thought, appalled.
“We have come to see if all the French have fled your country, sir,” Lewrie replied, as calmly as he could. “Or, if there are still some French we can kill. They are our enemies, as well, don’t ye know.”
The young fellow relayed that to Colonel “Cut-Throat,” who gave Lewrie a most distrustful glower, and spat overside before replying in a growl, more slave
patois
than French. Garble-garble-garble, as far as Lewrie could make out.
“Ze Rochambeau, ’e flee Le Cap … uhm … yesterday?” the young fellow informed them. “Noailles, ’e ’ave, uhm …
demi-douzaine
?
Demi-douzaine
…” The fellow looked terrified that he didn’t know what that was in English, as if his superior would beat him for
not
knowing.
“A half-dozen,
oui
?” Lewrie offered.
“Mais oui, demi-douzaine petit navires … ships! Small
ships! Noailles, ’e go to Havana. ’As depart-ed!” the scared young man said in a rush.
“Port de Paix?” Lewrie prompted.
“No
Française, aucun
… none. Umph!” as the bigger man gave him a thump on the shoulder. “Colonel, ’e say you go away, now! No more
blanc diables
mus’ come to Haiti,
ever
! You go, now!” he said, taking on his superior’s urgency and ferocity. “Ze whe …
white
devils ’oo come, z’ey will all
die
’ere! Colonel Coup-Jarret, ’e swears z’is!” To punctuate the last, the Colonel pulled out a long
poignard,
or dagger, pointedly licked down the length of its blade, and grinned so evilly that Lewrie felt his blood chill.
“Well, ehm … thankee for the information,
m’sieur,
and we’ll be going back to our ship,” Lewrie replied, performing a slight bow from the waist and doffing his cocked hat. “Enjoy your new country. Ta ta!’
Au voir,
rather.”
Desmond got the gig under way and pointed out seaward, the oarsmen bending the ash looms perhaps a
touch
more strenuously than usual, which suited Lewrie right down to his toes.
* * *
“Noailles had already fled? Well, dash it, I say,” Blanding said with a sigh as Lewrie and Stroud delivered their reports to him aboard
Modeste,
now the squadron was re-united and striding Sou’-Sou’west for Cape Dame Marie, and Jérémie.
“From what I gathered, sir,” Stroud contributed, not wanting to stand about like a useless fart-in-a-trance, “Port de Paix’s garrison were forced into Cap François long ago … and the rebels indeed have invested the Isle of Tortuga, as well. To keep the French from taking shelter there, where their small boats could not get at them with any hope of … well, vengeance, I’d suppose.”
“Noailles didn’t sail away all
that
long ago, sir,” Lewrie pointed out, with a brow up. “It would seem that Commodore Loring did not maintain a constant blockade over any port but Cap François … where all the
valuable
prizes were.”
If ye get my
meanin’, he thought, and waited for the shoe to drop with Blanding. “Noailles, so I gather, had half a dozen vessels, all schooners, luggers, or such, with barely the capacity t’take off what little was left of his troops. God knows if he had room for women and children, too. I did not get ashore to see if the rebels had white prisoners … they met me by the breakwaters, and most like would’ve cut all our throats had we tried. Sorry.”
“They say ‘discretion’s the better part of valour,’ Captain Lewrie. No fault of yours,” Blanding said, harumphing a bit, even so, at the disappointment of missing the French. “Havana, did they tell you?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Well, da … blast my eyes,” Blanding said. “And Kerverseau and Ferrand were allowed to sail away, as well … for want of watching? Can’t put
that
in my report to Admiralty … dear as I wish to. Wasn’t
our
fault the work was but half-done … and poorly, at that, by Jove!”
“Well, there’s still Guadeloupe, Martinique, a few other isles still in French possession, sir,” Lewrie tried to cheer him up. “The French colony of Surinam, down below Barbados? I just missed the expedition t’take it, back in ’98. Is our Commodore, or Admiral Sir John Duckworth, still aspiring, and … acquisitive … perhaps we will be part of the next venture.”
“We’ll be blockading empty ports, Lewrie,” Captain Blanding re-joined with some heat. “Consigned to vague,
far-distant
… bloody!… uselessness! Out of sight, out of mind, and don’t come back ’til our rum’s run out, and the water’s brown with corruption. God … mean to say,
Heavens
above, but this is what success brings, if you ain’t a well-known favourite! Spite-and-jealousy.
Spite-and-jealousy!
Pah!”
“Well, sir … the bald facts of our reconnoiters, the escape of the French whilst Cap François was blockaded…?” Lewrie hinted. “Do we state … all of us … that, per orders, we discovered that the foe had managed to escape, with no blame laid on anyone…? It might take Admiralty a year or two t’mull it over, but … such reports’d raise a
large
question, wouldn’t they?”
“Bedad, Lewrie, but you’re a sly one!” Blanding exclaimed, come over all beam-ish of a sudden as he grasped the eventual result.
Bedad?
Lewrie thought, almost grimacing to stifle a smile;
He will end up with a whole new slate o’ odd curses, ’fore his commission is done!
“And…,” Captain Stroud sagely reminded them, “we’ve our prize-money from the Chandeleurs,
and
our share of the Commodore’s prizes, to boot. Plus the greater glory.”
“Stout fellow, Stroud! Dam …
stap
me if you ain’t!” Blanding congratulated.
BOOK I
The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.
~“IS THERE FOR HONEST POVERTY”
ROBERT BURNS (1759–1796)
CHAPTER EIGHT
Walking the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, or hiring a prad for a bracing ride in the near countryside, was a lot safer for Captain Alan Lewrie since the Beauman clan had dissolved. With Hugh Beauman’s icily beautiful young widow now residing in Portugal, having inherited all, and sold up every last stick of the family’s Jamaican plantations—and all their slaves—there was no one to hire bully-bucks to cut his throat in a dark alley, as they’d once threatened soon after Lewrie and his old friend, former Lieutenant Colonel Christopher “Kit” Cashman, had participated in that scandalous duel with former Colonel Ledyard Beauman, and his cousin Captain George Sellers, over who had been at fault for the shameful showing of their island-raised regiment near Port-Au-Prince, when the British Army was still trying to conquer Saint Domingue. Ledyard and his cousin had cheated; Cashman, Lewrie, and the duel judges had shot them down; and Hugh Beauman had been after Lewrie’s heart’s blood ever since. As a further insult, those slaves that he had … “appropriated”… had come from one of the Beauman plantations on Portland Bight.
With Hugh Beauman drowned in a shipwreck in the Tagus river entrances in Portugal, the parents long-before retired to England with all their wealth, the Beaumans’ little empire had collapsed, absorbed by an host of indifferent others, their newspaper defunct, and their shipping business owned by others. Oh, there were still some distant kin on the island, along with forner employees and business partners, but without Hugh Beauman to direct the hatred, Lewrie was
almost
as safe as houses; the Beauman “syndicate” had evaporated, so Lewrie could dare to depart
Reliant
for shopping, and a shore breakfast, as he had this morning in a rare, and brief, respite from blockading duties.
Modeste, Reliant, Cockerel,
and
Pylades
still cruised together as a squadron. There had been a week at anchor following the French surrender at Cap François, then a three-month stint at sea, prowling round the isle of Hispaniola, whilst the ships of the line and frigates of the Jamaica Station stayed busy invading more French island colonies, hoping for an encounter with a relieving French squadron.
Christmas and Boxing Day had come and gone, then New Year’s Day of 1804, then Epiphany, Plough Monday, Hilary Term days for courts and colleges, and Candlemas, and, after all the excitement of the previous year, it was all rather pacific, and deadly-boresome. The newly independent Haitians did not try to export their slave rebellion to the rest of the West Indies, the weak French lodgements in the Spanish half of Hispaniola seemed to have given up on any attempt to flee to France, and the Spanish, the Dons, were behaving like their usual selves; that is to say, moribund. After getting stung rather badly as French allies they had drawn in their horns, and showed no signs of wanting any more to do with war.
With hurricane season over, the weather in the West Indies was delightful; with the heat of Summer dissipated, Fever Season was also gone, for a while, and it was all “claret and cruising” through steady Trade Winds, clear, sunny days, and only now and then a half-gale or afternoon squall. It was so very pleasant that Alan Lewrie was of two moods: either bored nigh to tears, or fretful that Dame Fortune would remember that it was her job to kick him in his arse, now and again … every time he felt smug and satisfied. Or had too much idle time.
During such lulls as this, without the heady spur of adventure and action, Lewrie could become, well … distracted. It was said that “idle hands are the Devil’s workshop,” and well Lewrie knew it! Given a week or so in port for re-victualling, replenishment, and re-arming, with the pleasures of a thriving harbour town a short row off in both ear-shot and eye-shot, and, given how little a frigate captain had to do when said frigate was both at anchor and flying the “Easy” pendant to show that she was Out of Discipline to allow her people to rut with their “temporary wives” or prostitutes … when aboard, able to
see
it and
hear
it as sailors and doxies coupled between the guns on the oak deck planks, danced, cavorted, and sang, well!
It did not help Lewrie’s restless feelings to know that Lieutenant Geoffrey Westcott, his First Officer, had indeed discovered for himself a most lissome
jeune fille
from among the horde of civilian French refugees. Whether she was truly the penniless daughter of one of the most distinguished and wealthiest families of Saint Domingue, as was alleged, a corporal’s widow, or a whore tainted with the one in 128 parts of Negro blood, a
sang mêlé,
and still considered Black in the old regime, she was hellish-handsome. Light brown, almost chestnut hair, enormous brown eyes, a fine brow and a swan-like neck, pouty lips, and a face nigh gamin or elfin in its lovelieness … which put Lewrie dangerously in mind of his former mistress in the Mediterranean, Phoebe Aretino, or that murderous pirate-minx Charité de Guilleri. Phoebe had been a teen prostitute in the port city of Toulon during the British invasion of 1794, but was now “Contessa Phoebe” in Paris, the queen of perfumes. Charité de Guilleri had been a French Creole belle who, with her brothers and cousin, and some old privateers, had turned both pirates and revolutionaries with the purpose of freeing New Orleans and Louisiana from the Spanish; she had shot Lewrie in the chest, once, when he’d run them down and ended their game on Grand Terre Isle, at the mouth of Barataria Bay. Before that, they had been lovers … and damned if both of them had not been
grand
lovers! Which remembrance did Lewrie’s equilibrium no good, at all.