The Captain`s Vengeance

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Well before noon the following morning, more than a few events came to pass in the parlours, offices, taverns, lodging houses, and streets of the town of New Orleans.

At the corner of Rue Royale and Rue Toulouse, Jim Hawk Ellison was breaking his fast and taking in the latest informations from his men. Piping-hot cornbread, white hominy, and a rasher of bacon, with a pork cutlet aswim in gravy, and strong rum-spiked and sweetened chicory cafe au lait kept hands and mouth busy, while his watchers' reports occupied his mind.

"Don't see how we'd manage, comin' upriver," one of his men, Silas Bowman, said in a hunch-shouldered low mutter over his plate of eggs and bacon. " Fort Saint Charles and the Rampart batteries're too strong. Got eighteen heavy pieces, twelve- and eighteen-pounder guns, an' set for a wicked crossfire, Jim Hawk."

"Crossin' Pontchartrain don't look too good, either," another man, a disguised U.S. Army sergeant named Davey Lumpkin told him. " Fort Saint John can slaughter anybody tryin' to cross the produce fields. Even with all the swamp-drainin' they've done, it still's too marshy for anything but men afoot, too."

"Guess it'll have t'be done from the inside, then, boys," Jim Hawk Ellison decided as he slathered molasses on a buttered slice of pone. "Come prime trading season, we'll have to float men downriver in flatboats, rafts, and keel-boats, dressed 'country.' The Spaniards won't think a thing of 'em, and everybody comes armed with rifles or muskets, and they're used t'seein' that too. Peyton, what're those Englishmen been up to? Been keepin' a sharp eye on em:

"Hell, Jim Hawk," Peyton Siler, another disguised soldier, said, "yest'a'dy they rode way out east all th' way t'Lake Borgne and ate a meal outten a basket. Never could get all that close, but I could see 'em with my glass. Spent a long time pawin' an' head-cockin' over some map they brought with 'em. Pointed north and east a lot, they did. Up that way, there's Fort Coquilles… hmmm? Knew they warn't straight."

"Well, I do declare!" Ellison chuckled over his laced coffee.

"Tore some kinda paper inta itty-bitty bits 'fore they left," Siler said on, winking. "Oncet they got outta sight, I picked up what I could of it. Whole lotta numbers, was all. Couldn't make no sense of it."

"That's all right, Peyton," Ellison told him. "They were up to some kind o' devilment. And now we know they got something t'hide."

"They stopped 'bout halfway back t'town," Siler continued. "I saw 'em get down an' paw th' ground. It's high an' firm. They looked right pleased with whatever it was they saw there."

Ellison already had a map of the environs engraved in memory. He smiled at that news. "Firm ground? Sounds t'me like they spotted a good place t'place defences an' guns… so maybe the rumours aren't true. Won't come down from Canada, like we thought. They mean t'land somewhere out th' end o' the Chef Menteur road an' strike fast, twelve or fifteen miles away from the town! You see anything out there could stop 'em, Peyton?"

"That'd be th' onliest place that might hold 'em up, Jim Hawk," Siler decided after a long, contemplative rub of his unshaven chin. "If they come so far south o' Fort Coquilles, that is. But it'd be a chore, 'less they had a whole lotta small boats."

Ellison snickered, keeping his own counsel as he sipped coffee. The American Army, even if that bastard General Wilkinson did lead it, could muster 20,000 militia plus regulars and infiltrate around 2,000 into New Orleans. Half the rest would march on Natchez and overwhelm its pitifully small garrison, the other half would sail down from Kentucky or the Wolf River bluffs to pick up the Natchez detachment once they'd won. With Natchez silenced, the Spanish would have no warning until the makeshift "armada" swung round the last bend above the city, which would be the signal for the infiltrators to cause general havoc and pave the way for the main force to land!

"Anyone have any luck talkin' up that crew o' theirs?" Ellison enquired as he set his cup aside.

No one had; the new-come strangers usually made taciturn, early nights of things, and what desultory conversations that Ellison's men had drawn them into, all that could be learned from them was that they came from Ireland or England once and were loyal to their court-martialed former naval officer, who was a fairly good-natured sort, and a terror with the ladies.

"Wide open out there," Ellison muttered, once those reports were done. "East o' town. Wonder why the Spanish haven't fortified it or even planned against a Lake Borgne landing?"

"Too marshy, really, Jim Hawk," Siler said with a shrug. "That road's the only way, and h'it's not much t'speak of."

"Wish we had a navy, big as the British do," Ellison said with a scowl. "Oh well, maybe someday. But there's twenty thousand fightin' men in Kentucky an' Tennessee, just rarin' t'go. Does President Adams and Congress ever get done wranglin' and jabberin', give us the signal t'go ahead, well…"

"Hey, what 'bout 'at 'ere girly feller, Jim Hawk?" Silas Bowman asked with an eye-rolling leer. "Er wuz he'un really a she'un after all?"

"Oh, I was pretty sure she was a she, soon as she came outta th' lodgin' house, Silas," Ellison whispered back. "Took off her hat and shook her hair out 'fore she got to her door. Right before those two bastards come boilin' out an' tried t'slit my gizzards. I still don't know who she is, and for damn' sure can't stick my nose anywhere round her street, after that. Silas, maybe you could sniff around there… ask a slave who owns that house, or who-all lives there, so I can narrow it down. Gotta admit, I'm damn curious 'bout that little gal and what her connexion might be t'that mysterious Willoughby fellah."

"Ah'll do 'er, Jim Hawk," Bowman assured him with a deep nod.

"Well… maybe ya shouldn't get that close to her, Silas," Jim Hawk teased with a leer, creating a bit more mirth at his crowded table. "Rest o' you boys… today it might not hurt t'sneakify round all the forts an' such. Get a count o' th' garrison an' whether they live in barracks or sleep out. Then…"

Meanwhile, back at the pension at Bourbon St. and Rue Ste. Anne, Capt. Alan Lewrie (or Willoughby, take your pick) heard the rumbles of a dray waggon in the brick and cobbled streets, and all but levitated off the mattress as he flung himself from his left side to his right. He crammed a fluffy, cool goose-down pillow over his head to shut out the creaky-screechy-rumbly din, then fell back asleep.

Aboard the Panton, Leslie Company emporium hulk, Hippolyte and Helio de Guilleri, along with their weedier cousin from Saint Domingue, Jean-Marie Rancour, and the elegant Don Rubio Monaster, bought some few things with their illegal gains that they thought might come in handy on their impending new piratical foray. Fresh, and reliable, British gunpowder- pistol and musket priming powder most especially-was paramount in their purchases. Jean-Marie bought himself a new long-barrelled pistol, one with rich and glossy walnut stocks and grips, and a glossy blued finish intricately chased with hair-thin silver inlays, with a bright brass powder flask, replacement lock spring, and a bullet mould and sprew-snip, all in a velvet-lined walnut case. Jean-Marie already owned four pistols, but a man could never have too many. Besides, he'd been awed by a woodcut print of the infamous buccaneer Blackbeard, of the last century. Blackbeard was depicted bearing an awesome number of pistols on his person: in his waistband, the pockets of his coat, in his hands, and even more holstered in a long and wide canvas rig that hung down on either side of his chest, like a priest's scapular. Blackbeard had also been shown with burning slow-match fuses in his wild hair and beard. That might be a touch outre, Jean thought, but the firepower he would have at his fingertips!

His new weapon matched the calibre of three others in his collection and had a narrow steel shank on one side so it could hang from his waistband, just like the real, old-time pirates! He would gladly have bought its twin, so he'd have six, but he'd lost at Boure and the Pharoah tables two nights running, so his funds were very tight.

"So dear, though, Jean, mon cher ami," Rubio Monaster said with a sniff after they left the below-decks stuffiness for the fresh air on the covered former quarterdeck, and shared a round of ginger beer.

"But long-barrelled and rifled, Rubio," Jean-Marie enthusiastically answered. "With my grandfather's duellers I inherited, now I own three rifled pistols. I would trade my two smoothbores if I could for this English pistol's mate. In a boarding, firepower is ev-"

"Shhh, Jean," Helio cautioned with a growl. "With the Spanish Navy cutter here, the less talk of such things, the better. Everyone in the Place

d'Armes was talking about the missing Havana guarda costa. For now they think a British warship or privateer took her, but…"

"Indeed, Jean," Don Rubio said with a languid smile, "we must be as bland as a blanc-manger 'til they are gone. And slip away down south as quiet as mice. Though it would be pleasing for our fellow Creoles to know that someone struck a blow against our oppressors. Think of the wonder that would cause!"

"Perhaps it might light a fire under the many who sleep through Spanish occupation," Helio gruffly commented. "Perhaps all the bluster and bold talk of freedom would not be so damnably idle."

"Well, we could start a rumor that bold local Creoles did the deed," Jean-Marie suggested in a much softer, conspiratorial voice.

"An anonymous letter dropped at the doorway of the newspaper?" Hippolyte posed.

"But would they dare print it?" Helio countered. "The Spanish would shut them down in a heartbeat."

"Bastards!" Don Rubio fulminated under his breath.

"No time, anyway, chers," Helio said, scowling. "We're off to sea in a day or two. Dim and slothful as the Spaniards are, a letter like that, and us suddenly absent, even the fools in the Cabildo could put two and two together. We've other business first. One of the Americans trailed our sister home from Le Pigeonnier yesterday… lurked outside as if he meant her harm. When we rushed downstairs to confront him, he escaped us in the mists, but we know him."

"Salaud! Son of a whore, who is he?" Don Rubio said with a malevolent hiss, bristling up in an instant. "I will kill him myself!"

"He calls himself El-isson," Helio informed him, stepping even closer and lowering his voice to a faint mutter. "The leader of those new-come buckskin barbarians we suspect are here to scout the city for an American invasion, Rubio. Our body slaves have made careful note of all the skulking they do. We know the low-class tavern where El-isson and his band lodge… a filthy, gloomy place."

"He would violate her? He would lurk and hope to seize her and ravish her? Nom d'un chien, I will call him out at once!" Don Rubio hotly vowed.

"No time for the niceties, Rubio… comprendre?" Helio hinted, tipping him a grave wink and nod. "He is no true gentleman, so challenging him to a duel would mean no more to him than gold to a hog. He seems more the sort to cheat, anyway. Besides, duels take such a long time to arrange. And, what sort of insult would it be to your honour, to waste high-born niceties on a jumped-up peasant, who would sic his minions on you in the dark of night, and back-shoot you, hein?"

Helio de Guilleri had known Don Rubio Monaster and his family, the Bergrands, since he donned his first pair of boys' breeches, knew him, and his touchy sense of honour, to a tee… and his sheeplike lust for his sister. All it would take would be one word to launch him at their foe, and Rubio would wade in with all guns blazing, if given the chance to do something impressive to redeem Charite's honour or guard her "delicacy" from the advances of a beastly scoundrel. Even knowing his sister and her little "games," Helio himself would have sprung to her defence-it was what brothers were supposed to do to guard the family's precious honour. But Rubio was such a wonderful weapon!

"A murder, do you mean, not a duel," Don Rubio replied, nodding in grim, but pleased, understanding.

"Exactly," Helio said with an equally grim nod. "Without their leader, the other American wolves will melt away. Run scared back to Kentucky with their tails between their legs."

"The knife in the heart!" Jean-Marie Rancour breathed, eyes alight with evil mischief and expectation.

"No, no, too messy," Hippolyte de Guilleri drolly quipped. "You would stain a good suit of clothes, up that close with all that blood. Remember on that trading brig, when I stabbed that-"

"A pistol is better," Helio suggested, shushing his brother one more time. "In the dark, as he staggers back to his lodgings."

"Oh, better yet, Helio!" Jean-Marie excitedly piped up. "With a rifled musket! One of those Girandoni air-rifles they showed us not five minutes ago. They're so quiet, the clerk said… one little snap or crack, no louder than a twig, and if you miss your first shot, your… game/… can't take alarm and bolt before you get off a second or third. Though Rubio is such a fine marksman, I doubt he would require more than one, isn't that so, Rubio? Twelve shots in half a minute, the fellow assured me! Think of the advantage a man could have in a melee, hein? A decent shot… half a dozen men of passable skill firing ten or twelve shots in half a minute would massacre a ship's crew!"

"Six men could equal the volleys of a whole regiment, oui!" Oh, I wish we had enough money to buy more than one for Rubio to use when he pots that American," Hippolyte exclaimed, catching his cousin's enthusiam and picturing in his mind the crew of a proud royal Spanish frigate being slaughtered like a cloud of passenger pigeons in a boarding action. "If we asked Monsieur Maurepas for an advance, took some of the seed money account… as a material investment, hmm?"

"Four at least, for us," Jean-Marie added. "They aren't that expensive. We could put down payment for four now, then get the rest from old Henri for the balance!" Jean-Marie was almost tail-wriggling and prancing in place, like a tot at first sight of his birthday pony.

"We would be invincible!" Hippolyte gushed.

His elder brother, Helio, thought that over for a second. He was seized by visions of a stalwart battalion of rebel Creole gentlemen marching under bright French Tricolours, with a band playing " La Marseillaise " as they strode bravely near musket range of an entire Spanish brigade, taking aim and strewing them flat as easily as reaping sugarcane stalks.

"We should get six," Helio announced. "For now. With them, we gain more profits from our cruise and can buy more later."

"With six, we could ambush the American upstart and that damned Anglais, too!" Hippolyte softly crowed. "All at once, the same night. Pay him back for what he did with Charite, even if… "

"And what did that dog do to her?" Don Rubio Monaster demanded before Helio could even think to slap his brother's arm to shut him up. Rubio, though, knew the answer to his jealousy even before they could confirm it. Their tight faces, stiff postures, and queasy shrugs said it all.

"She came out with us to Le Pigeonnier," Hippolyte had to admit, red-faced with embarrassment. "In her usual 'costume'… n'est-ce pas? The Anglais, Willoughby, came in, too, and she dared us to engage him… to see if he might be dangerous to us, and, you know how bold she can be, when we wouldn't go… one thing led to another, Boure, then drinks, then they, ah… left together, round…"

"He spent the night with her?" Rubio gasped with a cold twinge under his heart, even as he darkened with rage. "The salaud, that… English bastard! The cochon, pig… ravisher!" he spluttered.

So dearly did he crave her, it could never be her failing that made her go off with the Englishman… could it? Women-girls!-with heads so easily turned were frail, weak, and biddable, even ones bold and outre, which boldness and unconventionalism in Charite made her even more maddeningly desirable.

No, Charite was so young still, so in love with Life, galloping through it with her head thrown back in a laugh. Once her "enthusiasm" palled, surely she would settle down at last, would consider becoming the wife of a stalwart, bold, and assuringly steady fellow from a lineage as distinguished as hers, would take as a lifelong lover one who had gladly shared all her adventures, had been dashing and brave…

"They are both dead men," Don Rubio Monaster stiffly promised, manfully fighting the tears of disappointment that stung the corners of his eyes for being denied her wholehearted love, though his for her was boundless. He would not un-man himself with tears before his future in-laws; he would disguise his upset with righteous anger. "They are dead men, mes amis. At my hands, both of them, in the same night!" he heatedly vowed.

Mr. Gideon Pollock sat down to a light first breakfast with his "wife," a mere piffle of cafe au lait, half a canteloupe, and only one croissant. He'd take a second, more substantial breakfast with business associates, but Colette would feel neglected if he didn't humour her desires for close, intimate, and talkative domesticity, a semblance of a righteous man and wife's routines.

Colette was little darker than Pollock's heavily creamed coffee, as light-beige as expensive letter paper, with long, straight and lustrous raven-dark hair, now demurely pinned up behind her ears, with deep bangs over her brows and crimped, springy coils depended on either side of her face. Her eyes were hazel, nearly as green as dark emeralds, and almost Asian-almond shaped. The palest yellow morning gown she had on perfectly complemented her hair, eyes, and complexion.

Colette smiled, tweaking up the corners of her generous lips as she poured them both refills of coffee; which smile forced an appraising wry grin on Pollock's face, too, recalling the night before, when her hair had been free of pins and combs and had fallen loose to the top of her sweet, round buttocks, had fanned out across the pillows as she had lain invitingly, her body dusky against the paleness of the bed linens.

Mr. Pollock congratulated himself again for having her, despite his lack of height, imposing physique, or handsome features. Wealth, Mr. Pollock had found, atoned for almost anything, and he was nothing if not very well off after his years of neck-or-nothing adventures and toils. If it hadn't been for a legitimate wife and three children back in Bristol, where he ventured only once every three years, he would have been sorely tempted to avow Colette his only woman, for she was the most pleasing, most passionate and abandoned, yet fine-mannered lover ever he had had.

Five hundred English pounds she had cost to buy from her former owner and keeper, two thousand silver Spanish dollars; even more to set her in this

grand pension and furnish her appartement in a style worthy of her sham status… even more to provide her with a slave cook, handmaiden, housemaid, and an elderly yet wakeful footman. And fees and bribes to the slothful Spanish authorities to start, then expedite, her manumission papers. And the price paid in embarrassment as those authorities leered and nudged each other to see the proud little Inglese twist-face prig turn red to free his paramour, whom he could have kept in bondage as his harem toy at half the cost and trouble… the way they maintained their own.

Loco, utterly besotted… behaving like an old colt's-tooth, a witless cully of a boy over his first milkmaid, he certainly was… and delighted in his folly. Did Panton, Leslie Company allow him, Mr. Pollock would gladly chuck return voyages to England, gladly shed Kingston, and settle for a lesser post as company factotum permanently assigned to New Orleans, for the entrancing town, its burgeoning trade, its future promise, and Colette were equal opportunities to his mind.

He could keep an eye on her faithfulness and escape the damnable, hellish pangs of jealousy and dread he felt whenever he had to sail off and stay apart from her for months and months on end. He knew they could never really marry, even in a city so casual about its licentiousness, so hypocritically, sinfully… Catholic!

Mr. Pollock himself was a rock-ribbed Scot Presbyterian.

"You wish me to ask in the markets about your mysterious young girl, cher?" Colette quite innocently posed. Seemingly innocent.

"Hmm… what?" Pollock flummoxed, with a twitch of his head at the picture of her sauntering and sashaying past hordes of leering and lustful idle Creole "gentlemen," returning the sly grins of a muscular Free Black dandy, even of an impressive slave horseholder! "No, no… "

"Can it be you tire of me, cher Gideon?" Colette gently teased. "And your m'sieur Willoughby 's White Creole girl in male clothes fires your imagination, hmm?"

"Oh, rot!" Pollock replied with a shuddery laugh to realise he was being lovingly twitted, as all older lovers would be by their much younger and more desirable paramours.

"My dearest love," Colette said, turning serious as she put down her coffee cup and folded her hands together on the table. "You allow me to be… decorative, but you never let me be the wife partner that I am to you, cher. Hermione and I," she said, naming her stout and darker older maidservant, "have many sources. She knows the slaves to all the grands blancs families, and they see everything, n'est-ce pas? I… am on casual speaking terms with many of the town's young ladies. The jeunes filles de couleur who are… kept. Their masters and beaus share their gossip when they come home from the cabarets, the pillow talk, the amusing tales? I know you wish to protect me from…"

"No, dearest, I must insist that…" Pollock began to splutter.

As dearly as Colette actually loved her wry little Englishman, there were times that his not-so-hidden jealousy, his fear of losing her, was maddening!

"Allow me to aid you, please, Gideon? Just this once?" she almost begged, reaching across the table to take his hands in hers and squeeze reassuringly, batting her long lashes like a fearful kitten. "I already know… Hermione and I have already learned… that this girl is not a Bonsecour. They have no young, unmarried daughter. And the Darbone brothers you mentioned have not been in New Orleans for at least a month. Their manservant boys were disgusted that they had to leave the city and go up towards Pointe Coupee to the Darbone lands… They despise the crude field slaves and are terrified that anything could happen to them so far away, if old man Darbone or madame takes a dislike to them. Three sass-mouth Darbone house slaves already died of whipping, after the Pointe Coupee rebellion, Gideon. Comprendre?"

"Well…"

"Let me call Hermione in, please, cher Gideon? Let her tell of what she has already heard?" Colette cajoled.

"Hmm, I s'pose… ahem," Pollock grudgingly assented, unable to deny his entrancing mistress anything. Almost anything. He did desire an answer to Lewrie's mystery-just so long as he could keep Colette from laying eyes on the impressive lout!

"Hermione?" Colette said, tinkling a porcelain bell by her place setting. "Ici, s'il te plait. "

"M'amselle wish?" the husky older woman asked, coming in from a mostly unused kitchen, wiping her square hands on a dish-clout, swiping at her garish satin headcloth. "Oh la! Dat girl who go about at night like ze gentilhomme? Mon Dieu."

The gist of her gossip (gleaned from a kitchen maid who was friendly with one of the oyster shuckers owned by the proprietors from the Pigeon Coop cabaret) was that the girl, who was uncommonly pretty, was no Bonsecour at all, but lived in a grand pension on Rue Dauphine and could be seen sneaking home arm in arm with two young men, always the same two. Both a groom and a girl body servant belonging to one of the houses on Rue Dauphine -"No bettah'n dey should be, and mon Dieu, don' get me started on dem, m'sieur Gideon!"-said that they had both seen her, sometimes with the two young men, when all three of them would go into a house together. Sometimes the girl alone, dressed in suitings but with her hair free, would come traipsing in at cock-crow. For sure if Hermione asked a slave who worked a produce plot on Bayou St. John and came into town at dawn with his owner's cart of greens to sell, he'd tell her the same and could show her the right house, even tell Hermione which floor where the candles got lit, after she went up to her appartement/

"Oh, dey say she a high-born Creole gal, m'sieur Gideon… but not de finest sort, hein?" Hermione concluded.

"But we could ask about her for you, cher," Colette perkily assured him, "and I'd lay you any wager you wish that the secret is not a secret at all… That sort of delicious gossip surely is already the common coin in this town! Let us try for you, mon cher!"

"Well… just so long as you don't stray into a neighbourhood where Hermione could not protect you, dearest. Perhaps you had best take Scipio along to chaperone both of you. He may be getting on in years, but he still can appear forbidding, does he put a scowl on… ahem, " Pollock at last conceded.

"You are the dearest man, Gideon," Colette murmured, her eyes locked on his with the promise of a most magnificent night of reward.

"The mails, m'sieur," Henri Maurepas's personal assistant and clerk announced with his usual unctuous air as the banker entered his inner sanctum. A fashionable thimble-shaped hat, gloves, and cane were taken from him and placed securely in a tall oak armoire that had come all the way from Paris as Maurepas strode to his imposing desk and sat down with a sweep of his coat-tails. Without a word spoken, a slave in formal livery tiptoed in with a tray bearing a coffee service and a candle-warmed silver-plate pot.

"Merci," M. Maurepas said in a distracted and bored grunt, as he almost always did to indicate that he had taken note of the service done him… but they should both now get out and let him get to work.

He sorted through the many letters. There was one pile that was local business; those he shoved aside to concentrate on the few others that had come aboard the naval cutter. To his disappointment, none of his latest correspondence was from France, not even from distant kin. Certainly, there had yet to come a reply from the Directory in Paris to his many letters urging support for a rebellion in Louisiana… though there were some outdated newspapers.

Ah! Two letters directed to the bank, one from Havana, with a date scribbled on it that was much earlier than the second, which came all the way from Ciudad de Mexico.

Both were in Spanish, a language he detested. No matter how flowery and elegantly written, Spanish could not hold a candle to the grace of a cultured man's French.

.., to inform you, Most Esteemed Senor Maurepas, that, given your previous requests directed to His Excellency the Captain-General, combined with the humble pleas of your fellow bankers in the Colony of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans, His Most Catholic Majesty has graciously given assent to the shipment to the Colony of a considerable sum of silver specie, with which to ease the regrettable shortage of coinage which has, of late, caused such a hardship upon his Most Catholic Majesty 's subjects residing in Louisiana, due to the regrettable outflow of specie which the import of diverse American trade goods has caused. The Captain-General of His Majesty's American possessions having received His Majesty's gracious permission, the Captain-General at Havana has ordered the Captain-General of New Spain at Ciudad de Mexico to order the mines at Potosi to refine, mint, and prepare for shipment pieces-of-eight and dollars to the amount of-

"Sacre nom de Dieu!" Henri Maurepas almost screeched in amazement, choking on the smoke from his morning's first cigaro, doubling over and hacking for a good two minutes before he could trust himself to reread the sum, and breathing very carefully 'til he had managed to pour himself a restorative, throat-clearing tot of brandy. It was followed by a second, larger one that he sipped in a celebratory but very thoughtful fashion.

Coined money gushed northward into the coffers of the barbaric Yankees to pay for their flour, wheat, corn, lumber, and such, their whiskies and furs, hides, tobacco, and cotton. With the war, most of the merchant ships that came to trade in New Orleans were American, too. Yankees ending buying Yankee goods passing through the city and very little of the profits stuck to French or Spanish fingers. Hence Louisiana, New Orleans, and Maurepas's bank were forever short of coin; which shortage drove up the price of everything needed or wished, even local goods.

Spain had ignored the problem for years, halfheartedly closing the Mississippi to American traders for several years, which had been a disastrous policy that had fomented mass smuggling and even greater corruption and graft, was such a thing possible.

Now, with the river open again, but Spain locked in a war, even wealthy bankers had to scrimp and scrounge to maintain comfortable cash reserves to loan out, and as to what their borrowers offered as payment, pah! M. Henri Maurepas had to lease several warehouses to hold consignments of molasses, sugar, rice, and cotton 'til it could be sold to someone, someday, before the mice, insects, or the ever-present damp ruined it, and he thought himself fortunate did he make a 2 percent profit!

Shelling out so much silver to Lanxade and Balfa to reward their sailors, paying shares to those foolish youngsters who would foment a rebellion, after the hellish cost of buying artillery, weapons, and the pirate schooner for them to play with, had put him in a worse spot, and if they ever tired of their little "adventure" or failed to take more prizes to sell on the sly, failed to bring in more "free" goods for the scalpers like Bistineau to front, he and his firm could go under!

Now, though…

Six million dollars in hard silver coin could be his salvation. His bank's share was to be a fifth of the total, charged against his "holdings"-lands, future crops, outstanding planters' loans, or warehoused goods-and with that money he would be solvent again… for a few more years at least. His loans could be repaid in coin for a change, he could loan more…

Or! Maurepas quietly mused, taking another sip of brandy and picking up the letters to reread them. He leaned far back in his chair, with his brandy glass resting atop his substantial paunch. All would come aboard a single, undistinguished, fast ship from Veracruz, one not too obvious as a treasure ship, nor one so grand as to draw the attention of any prowling British man of war or privateer; nor the free-roving so-called privateers of other nations. Soldiers would be aboard, of course, a full company drawn from a trustworthy regiment based in New Spain, a Navy crew to be provided, skilled gunners…

Both letters cautioned that the shipment was a matter of strict confidence, that upon receipt and perusal of the letters, they were to be handed back to the Governor-General, and that any idle mention outside his firm could result in harsh punishment, etc.

Hmmm, Maurepas further mused, a sly grin creasing the corners of his eyes and lips. "Hmmm," again, aloud this time.

A fast ship, was it, and undistinguished? A shallow-draughted one, he thought most likely, so it could ascend the river quickly and cross the bars near Fort Balise without the risk of unloading all, or a part, of the cargo, thus exposing it to greedy prying eyes.

Guarded by a "trustworthy" company of soldiers; well, that was a wry jape! The local garrison was made of weary, jaded place-servers and half-illiterate peasant clods; half the original Spaniards had run off or died, replaced with ne'er-do-wells too lazy to work an honest trade. So what would a regiment in New Spain consist of? A few hidalgo fops as officers, a few grizzled, over-aged sergeants, and the rank-and-file mostly local-born Mestizos, even Indios straight from the bean fields, still jabbering away in Nahuatl or some other savage language. Ill-trained, ill-clothed, poorly led, and indifferently armed, crowded elbow to elbow and at sea for the first time in their lives, perhaps? She'd not be a royal galleon, perhaps not even a fast frigate! What did the letter say, how did it phrase it? Ah!

"… manned by a crew drawn from the Marina Real." The Spanish didn't dare send one of their few valuable warships to sea, afraid of drawing too much attention, fearful of losing it, and neither Tampico nor Veracruz were good harbours for ships of worth. New Spain- Mexico -lay far to the west, down at the bottom of the Caribbean 's and the Gulf's prevailing winds, Henri Maurepas knew. Though he had never been a sailor, he knew that much. A square-rigged ship could spend weeks beating windward to the mouths of the Mississippi. A brigantine, barkentine, or schooner would be more weatherly. Hmmm…

Maurepas pondered whether he should tell the de Guilleris about this. This punishing war could last for years and years, and Spanish colonies would continue to suffer as Spain grew even weaker, less able to defend her American possessions. What guarantee was there that all the local trade would not be American in five years?

The United States and the British had designs on Louisiana already. Could his bank survive an invasion by either? Even if by some miracle a French fleet and French army fought its way through the British blockade, sailed upriver, and reclaimed them, what surety could he have that the radical Directory in Paris and all their Jacobin rabble-rousing sentiments would be amenable to money, to rich men like him?

Now, if he had all six million secretly cached at his plantation, and only tapped now and again for working capital, he could easily explain its partial presence as better-than-average fortune, due to his conservative and sagacious business sense. And he already knew all there was to know how to make things look legitimate on paper!

Well, not all of it. If he told the de Guilleris and those oafs Lanxade and Balfa, and they actually succeeded in taking it, he'd have to go shares, would not realise more than the fifth that the Spaniards originally intended his bank to have. But that would be 1,200,000 dollars more than any of his competitors, and all of it free and clear of pledged assets and sureties! Such a windfall was certainly nothing to sneer at.

And finally, could such a sudden shower of money actually create a real rebellion, result in a real reunion with beloved France, Henri Maurepas shudderingly, hopefully wondered?

"Laclos, venez ici, s'il vous plait, " he called out.

"Oui, m'sieur?" his reliable longtime aide asked from the door.

"These letters from the Captain-Generals, how did they come?"

"The usual post clerk brought them, m'sieur, with all the rest."

"The same as any letter, Laclos?" Maurepas pretended to gasp.

"Well… oui, m'sieur? Why?"

"We'll see about that!" Maurepas answered with a deep scowl. He shot to his feet, shouting for his liveried slave. "Those hapless idiots! I shall be at the Cabildo, Laclos… giving them a piece of my mind at how slipshod they are!"

What a wonderful pretence that would be, Maurepas thought as his liveried slave handed him his hat, gloves, and cane. He would hand the letters over as instructed but would fume that they'd lain on someone's desk overnight, able to be read by just about anyone. If not his, then what of the letters sent to his competitors, hah? If anything happened to their precious consignment of silver, it would be all their fault!

Meanwhile, back at the pension…

Capt. Alan Lewrie, RN, sensed a slight buzzing noise round his head and idly swept one free hand to shoo the pesky flying… thingy. Which herculean effort woke him just long enough to take note that it was a good hour past dawn, and a slit of honest sunshine blazed in the gap in the nearest window draperies; that he could, for once, sleep in like the idlest civilian ever born; and that his lips were dry yet his bottom pillow was damp with drool and stuffily warm.

He rolled over, cramming the cooler top pillow under his head, with his face towards a dark corner, not that demanding daylight, and, for good measure, both smacked his lips and essayed breaking a bit of wind. Mildly eased, and with grit-heavy eyelids, the bold adventurer drifted off once more to what he deemed a damned well-earned rest.

At the grander, much more spacious de Guilleri city residence, Charite finished packing her rakish seagoing piratical men's clothes in a single heavy sailcloth bag and drew the rope strings taut, knotting it to keep it shut. A second change of clothing, to be worn on the trip down Bayou Barataria, was already laid out on the bed; this one consisting of a rough, ecru shirt and a nondescript skirt of dark blue cotonnade, a short, decorated carmagnole vest, and a garde-soleil… a sun bonnet. Cotton knee stockings and her well-polished boots stood by the foot of her bed. Though she might go in disguise as a backcountry woman riding in a. pirogue, Charite would be damned if she would squish and slop through bayou and swamp muck barefooted. At Capt. Balfa's vacherie, she could change into her pirate's rig, damn what the backward local women thought of it!

Her smallsword, sash dagger, and pistols were cleaned and oiled, the pair of smaller pocket pistols already loaded but not primed, with tompions in the muzzles to keep out the damp. Her slim poignard that she'd strap to her left forearm she had honed to razor sharpness.

For the rest of her last day in New Orleans, though, more feminine things awaited her; a high-waisted gown of the brightest cornflower blue that almost matched her eyes, one that fell straight without the aid of confining corsets, one with an only slightly daring scooped neckline, puffy shoulder flounces, and tight sleeves. With it was a wide straw bonnet adorned with gay ribbons and flowers, and the tiny matching silk parasol with which to flirt. White silk stockings and cunning little slippers dyed dark blue; even if heeled, common shoes were better suited to the perpetual slime of New Orleans streets.

She had finished her toilette seated in front of her dressing table, had lotioned, powdered, and pampered her face, neck, and shoulders before carefully daubing on the minimum of makeup allowed the genteel daughters. She crimped and brushed her lashes, though, to nigh the bold look of the demimonde, for she was not yet a matron and, frankly, did not think that she could ever submit to such a stolid and boring child-ridden propriety, not 'til their grand design had borne fruit.

Charite stood before her cheval mirror and unlaced the ties of her sheer dressing gown, then tossed it towards her bed. She slid her palms down her sides to her waist, over a tight-laced bustier atop a thinly woven chemise, turning slightly to either side to appreciate her slim and youthful body, lifting her hands under her breasts, as if to press them together for a deeper cleavage.

She smiled and blew herself a teasing kiss as she shifted both feet a bit more apart, lowering her rapt gaze to her slim and shapely thighs, revelling in recalling how she'd wrapped those fine legs about that coquin-that rascal- Alan Willoughby. Looking up into her own eyes again, she tried out a sultry, smouldering pout.

"Non non, " she whispered, giggling, discarding that passionate look for a wide-eyed, innocent come-hither, all but biting her lip in trepidatious desire. "Better, oh la." She chuckled before making a cross-eyed face and sticking her tongue out at herself.

"Hunh!" was her Black "mamans" sour comment.

"You hush," Charite told her, rewarding her maidservant's sauce with another cross-eyed tongue-shot, "and don't tell me they'll stay crossed if I keep that up. Push me into my gown."

She stood patiently to be gowned, shod, tucked, laced, and adjusted, to be adorned with earrings and matching necklace, swaying from one foot to another and crooning to herself, sleepy-eyed but her head cocked in wonder at her own beauty as she was rigged out for the day, became an adorable, desirable perfection before her very own eyes one more time. A little shopping, a delicious dinner, and a few glasses of wine… some coy flirtations with her lashes, parasol, and laced fan with the town swains of her acquaintance, perhaps a former lover or two; punctuated with the pouty tale of being summoned upcountry for a family gathering on one of their plantations, to explain her, and her brothers', absence. It would be more a necessary chore than her usual pleasurable stroll and sampling of her beloved city's treasures. They would depart after full dark, taking a closed coach to the nearest boat landing on Bayou Barataria, and then it might be weeks of enforced solitude aft in a well-guarded cabin aboard Le Revenant-the celibacy of an Ursuline nun or Capuchin monk!-surrounded by swaggeringly masculine sailors. Hmmm…

"Fetch me pen, paper, and ink, maman, " Charite ordered suddenly, impishly inspired. "I must write someone a note."

She consulted her tiny, cunningly wrought timepiece. It was not yet nine in the morning; would Alan Willoughby still be slug-a-bed, or was he the sort to be out and doing at the crack of dawn? she wondered. A note to his pension, or would it better serve to be sent to Panton, Leslie's shore establishment? Hah! Both, just to make sure!