King, Ship, and Sword

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

0ne hopes that readers will be patient with a slight digression from Lewrie's foreign adventure, but a few people also in Paris must be introduced before the tale may continue.

As Lewrie discovered in London the winter before, when between seagoing commissions, even the greatest, most populated city in the civilised world can seem too small when, out of the blue (or overcast grey, in London's case) all the embarrassing people who should never be in the same place at the same time, or ever actually meet, do show up and share greetings. In London, it was an innocent trip into the Strand to purchase ink, stationery, and sealing wax, and a chance meeting on the sidewalks with his old school chums (they'd all three been expelled from Harrow for arson and riotous behaviour at the same time) Lord Peter Rushton, Viscount Draywick, and that clever scoundrel Clotworthy Chute. Which rencontre had been interrupted, in distressing happenstance, by the arrival of the lovely, delectable (and hot after Lewrie) Eudoxia Durschenko, better known as the "Scythian Princess" (but really a Cossack) who performed bareback (and damn near nude!) with Daniel Wigmore's Peripatetic Extravaganza as a crack shot with the recurved horn bow, seconding as the ingenue in Wigmore's theatrical troupe… along with her papa, Arslan Artimovich Durschenko, the one-eyed knife-thrower and lion tamer, a man who was determined to see his daughter buried a virgin, and who hated Capt. Alan Lewrie much like Satan hated Holy Water.

Despite that, they'd ended together in the same tea shop, at the same table, with sticky buns and jam; Lord Peter drooling over Eudoxia, Eudoxia batting lashes at Lewrie, Clotworthy finagling how much money he might screw from the Russians, and Eudoxia's father whispering low curses near Lewrie's ear, whilst Lewrie strove for "innocent."

As if it could've gotten any worse (oh yes, it could!) in had swept the former actress Emma Batson, now the Mother Abbess of the finest brothel in the city, with two of her girls… one named Tess, whom Lewrie, deprived of his wife's affections for several years, was regularly rogering. Oh, it had been so jolly!

But we do digress.

As for Paris, now… Lewrie would think it very slim odds that he would know anyone among its hundreds of thousands of residents, except for the new First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, and it was even slimmer odds that he and Bonaparte would ever come face-to-face.

Bonaparte's guns had sunk Lewrie's commandeered mortar ship off the eastern side of Toulon during the brief capture of the port during the First Coalition (blown it, and him, sky-high in point of fact) and temporarily made Lewrie a soggy prisoner on the beach before Spanish cavalry had galloped to the rescue.

Dame Fortune, however, has always found a way to "put the boot in" where Alan Lewrie is concerned, when he is at his smuggest and most content.

In the heart of the city, down both sides of the Seine, lay the government buildings and former royal palaces. Napoleon Bonaparte was living in the Tuileries Palace, now the Palais National, in the eight-room appartement formerly occupied by Louis XVI. The Lewries, quite by chance (or was it?), were lodging in a maison on the Rue Honorй, the main thoroughfare that leads past the Tuileries and the Constituent Assembly, and dining and shopping and gawking in the same environs where the better sort of French reside and conduct their business, where the most exclusive shops are found… where people seeking favour and government employment gather.

Is it any wonder, then, that at the very moment that Caroline, Alan, and their guide depart a restaurant, pleasingly stuifed with one of the First Consul's favourite dishes, a blend of eggs, crayfish, tomatoes, and chicken called Poulet Marengo in honour of one of Bonaparte's grandest battlefield victories, also pleasantly "foxed" with wine… and out nearly one thousand francs-that someone from Lewrie's past should just happen to be limping away from the Ministry of Marine to his miserly and squalid lodgings in the maze-like ancient quarter round the Hфtel de Ville?

"Salaud!" the limping man hissed in shock, his remaining hand jerking to the sudden twinge of pain in his ravaged and partly masked face, a stabbing memory brought on by the sight of his nemesis. "C'est lui! Putain, c'est lui, espиce de petite vermine. Lewrie. It is Lewrie!"

Other people who shared the sidewalk with him-strollers or the ones in more haste about their business-gave the hideous old cripple a wider berth than they usually would, one or two tapping their heads and telling their companions that the ogre was dйbile… insane, and best avoided.

Perhaps Guillaume Choundas, formerly a Capitaine de Vaisseau of the French Navy, was partly insane by then. And that Anglais bastard Lewrie was the cause of it, and his crippled state.

'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 he found when the time came for vengeance!