The Captain`s Vengeance

CHAPTER TEN

Silks, satins, cambrics, and lace; cards of steel sewing needles and pins from Sheffield; bolts of cloth, from sheerest cotton or linen to winter-weight, hard-finished broadcloth and kerseymere wools. Dolls so lifelike one expected them to move or speak, dressed in miniature to exhibit the latest styles from Paris, for one of which Lewrie greedily spoke up, as a gift for his daughter, Charlotte. There were stacks of gentlemen's hats in every style, gloves for gentlemen and ladies, from canvas duck or deerskin work gloves to the thinnest, snuggest kidskin.

There were cases of elegant shoes and boots, ready-made, ready-to-wear, that went swaying up on a yardarm from Azucena del Oeste to the stout landing stage, thence by ramp or yardarm into the emporium hulk. Wooden casks and straw-packed crates bearing gin, sherry, fine clarets, ports, Madeiras, and aged brandies emerged, followed by bales of ready-made shirts, boxes of neck-stocks, boxes of spooled ribbons and flouncings. Ornate penknives, workaday jackknives, needle-thin smallswords and scabbards, slim hunting hangers, old-style swept hilt rapiers and matching daggers… pocket watches, fobs, and chains; ormulu clocks, mantel clocks, and hallway clocks. Duelling pistols cased, dragoon pistols by the dozen to the box, pocket pistols, rifled German Jaegers and Pennsylvania hunters, fowling pieces, blunderbusses, coach-guns… flints, powder flasks, bullet moulds and lead nippers and vent picks. Spices, sealing waxes, tallow and beeswax candles for entertaining, thick votives, and short, stubby prayer candles!

And coffee beans, sugar cones, and licorice whips, cinnamon sticks, bitter blocks of chocolate, teas and tea caddies, mote spoons; everyday tableware, sterling silver compotes and candelabras, coffee and tea services, complete sets of silverware… and the trading brig was only half unloaded!

"The rest will be landed on the quays, the rougher goods," Mr. Pollock announced as they took a break for supper aboard. "Ready-made slop clothing, cruder shoes and such for the planters' slaves, rough muskets and Indian trade goods. The sort of junk our agents will fob off among the Yankee settlers, too. Another day, and we'll empty her of the quality goods, then slant over to the docks to unload the rest."

"Then what do I do?" Lewrie asked as they shared a succulent supper aboard ship. "Do I just loaf about, go ashore and prowl, or… "

"Don the guise that your Mister Peel chose for you, Mister… Willoughby," Pollock said, winking craftily as he reached for a bottle of hock. Being back on his home turf had cheered up the little fellow most disgustingly wondrous, Lewrie thought. "Stand with a tally as the cargo is broken from the hold. You are ostensibly in charge of my new-hired protective force, ahem. Temporarily employed in support of our dowdy commercial doings. Such a dangerous-lookin' chap, really…"

Pollock stroked a finger down his left cheek to sketch Lewrie's teen-years duelling scar on his own face. Lewrie knew he was being twitted, paid back for all the bloodthirsty teasing he'd used upon the unsettled Pollock on the voyage.

"I still don't know as I care much for-" Lewrie objected.

" Willoughby 's a common name, after all," Pollock breezily said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "You might even claim to be American, it's so common on both sides of the Atlantic. And your accent isn't so Oxonion or top-lofty that you could not play the part of a new-come American, to the Spanish and Creoles at least. An emigre from old England to the New World, as are so many. And it is your sire's name, so… "

"Well," Lewrie replied, sulkily accepting a glass. "For a bit, I thought Peel was having too much fun building me a persona, without a thought as to whether it'd be plausible."

"In a private moment, ahem!… Mister Peel might have said to me that Willoughby was a name you'd not forget, were you ever flustered," Pollock twinkled, barely concealing a grin. Aye, Pollock was enjoying himself at last, and that, right maliciously, too!

"In my cups? A 'melting' moment?" Lewrie gravelled. "Were I stuck for an answer to 'hello'? Damn that smarmy bastard!"

"You can't pose as anything but a former serving officer." Mr. Pollock pretended to commiserate, losing his grin. "You're much too weathered and roguish-looking to play a clerk, after all, sir. Even the way you walk will cry 'Sailor,' soon as you step ashore. To be a cashiered Royal Navy officer, fled to the United States in search of a seafaring post to remake your fortune, is frankly perfect. Ahem."

"And so easy for my dim wits to remember?" Lewrie groused. "I see the sense of it. Aye, I think I know how to play it."

"Assure me, pray do," Pollock entreated.

"I'm an overaged Lieutenant," Lewrie almost sing-songed what Peel had had the gall to write down for him to study on the voyage. "Was, rather. Little patronage or 'interest,' lived mostly on my pay and never had a speck of luck with prize-money… one command, early on. A despatch cutter. Glorious fun, but then I was advanced aboard a Third Rate seventy-four, and that was boresome blockading, with no chance to advance. And no adventure or fun, either."

"Mmm-hmm," Pollock encouraged 'tween sips of pepper-pot soup.

"Competent, but no one's pet," Lewrie impatiently recited his false biography, one slightly borrowed from his own past aboard the 64-gun HMS Ariadne as a Midshipman, the despatch schooner HMS Parrot. "Started in the American Revolution, second or third son of a freehold family, but nothing grand. I'm thirty-six, so I spent a lot of time 'tween the wars on half-pay, knocking about in the merchant service, so I can bore people to death with tales about the Far East, Canton in China, Calcutta… and know what I'm saying. Mate aboard a 'country' ship, not with the East India Company… that'd be too grand for me."

"Quite," Pollock primly simpered over the bowl of his spoon.

"Back in the Navy in '93, when the war broke out," Lewrie went on, by then bored with repeated recitations. "Impress Service, not sea duty, though. Deptford, 'cause my old Captain Lilycrop held that district…"

"As were you, for a time," Pollock pointed out.

"Aye, I did, damn yer eyes. Then," Lewrie muttered, taking time to sample his soup and take a drink of wine. "Um… I learned one could make a 'shower o' tin' crimping merchant sailors even with legitimate protections, farm lads. Fiddled the books, too, over the costs of recruiting, claimed more than I brought in… took bribes from merchant captains t'look the other way, and-"

"And you ended out here, in my employ," Pollock concluded for him, as if laying a permanent claim upon him. "The very sort of tar-handed fellow we need, who knows his way with artillery, good with an assortment of weapons… knows how to lead men. Useful but ruthless, none too squeamish if heads need knocking together? Hmm, though…" Pollock stopped of a sudden and gave Lewrie a skeptical appraising, up and down like a disbelieving London tailor presented with a crude, "Country-Put" ape to garb. "What you now wear will do aboard ship, but…" he speculated for a long moment. "Before I turn you loose on the city to do whatever it is you'll do to seek your pirates, I fancy you should adopt better togs. Now employed, you might be accepted all the more as a flash dandy, now you have the 'chink.' New Orleans is hip-deep in dandies. Think of it as a way of, ah… blending in. Do you own shore-going attire, Mister Willoughby… ahem?"

"Never had need of 'em," Lewrie gruffly replied, wondering what new horror might be foisted upon him. "Ev'ry stitch o' 'long clothes' I own are back in England."

"Then we must come up with something suitable, mustn't we?" Mr. Pollock decided with a lazy, feral smile and a chuckle worthy of a Covent Garden pimp. "Can't have you looking too elegant, but… I think that a bit of the gentleman, with a bit of the 'Captain Sharp' will suit your needs right down to your toes, heh heh."

"Oh, bloody joy," Lewrie warily groaned, sure he'd despise Mr. Pollock's choices, even if he did know his home ground and its tastes to a tee; and half worried that the wretched little man would charge him for new clothing!

"Couldn't I lurk about in what I'm wearing?" Lewrie asked him.

"You'd look like a costumed spy right off," Pollock warned him. "Best to appear as close to the locals' style as you may and be taken for what the town expects to see from a man of your new station. As for lurking …"

"How else do we find the pirates who-"

"Time enough for that," Pollock assured him. "All in good time."