Troubled Waters

CHAPTER THIRTY

Zut alors, Capitaine La… m sieur, but you mak ze grand emmerdement" Jules Papin chortled over his first tall glass of rum, "mon cul eef you do, hawn hawn! Officiers de I'Armee, you give la chiasse, 'ow you say, ze 'runs'? All Medoc, all Saintonge, is be like ze 'eadless chicken, an' soldats be march de long en large, uhm… ze backward an' forwards?"

Papin gleefully related that a demi-brigade, perhaps two thousand men, was rumoured to be on the way to re-enforce Rochefort, Marennes, and La Trem-blade. More troops, about three or four companies, had come up from Bordeaux by barge, at least as far as Meschers sur Gironde, and heavy guns with them, at least six pieces that he'd seen himself, and judged to be 12-pounders. They had all gone down the coast, afoot or upon extemporised gun-carriages, though, for he'd seen them on the coast road, a bit west of St. Palais sur Mer when he'd run a trawl near the shore; perhaps, Papin speculated idly, to set up their guns by the site of his murderous ambush, and his humiliatingly sprung trap.

There was some anger and sadness among the locals over the death of so many soldiers, no matter they weren't local boys themselves, he related; too much a reminder of what had happened, could happen to their own husbands, fathers, sons, and kinsfolk conscripted into the Army, and now very far away.

"More barges, Capitaine? Mais oui," Papin went on, eying that fresh rum bottle jealously. "Nord bank of river, to Pointe de Grave not so much, hein? Some say guns for zere are… detourner. Diverted? An' beaucoup de travailleurs… many workers ze Arme'e hire to make fort on ze point, I see go in boats do Le Verdon to Royan. I do wot go to Le Verdon, moi, for people 'oo live zere are tous les fumiers, an' ze regime des hautains salauds degueulasses!"

All of them were shits, and a bunch of stuck-up, disgusting bastards, Papin meant; Lewrie's time off the Gironde was doing wonders for his command of colloquial French, if not the drawing-room variety!

"And, what about Fort Saint Georges, M'sieur Papin?" Lewrie said as he poured the man's glass full with his own hand.

"Is open at rear, as I say before," Papin said with a sly look. "Wiz I'arsenal hid-ed in woods, an' zere is a furnace for heat ze shot in centre. T'ree wall, t'ree eighteen-pounder. Two each ze twelves on each wall, aussi… make six twelve-pounder. Six of ze six-pounder down in beach battery at foot, n 'est-cepas?"

Seven… let's say nine gunners per 12-pounder, Lewrie hurriedly speculated to himself, all but counting on his fingers for a bit; eleven for each 18-pounder, and eighteen French equivalents for powder-monkeys runnin' cartridge from their magazine. Five men on each 6-pounder, another dozen boys… say, four Lieutenants, two Captains, and a Major, and that's, uh… 'bout 150, all told.

He named that figure to Papin, who frowned over it, shrugged in the Gallic manner, and guessed a lower number, perhaps only 125. "An', M'sieur Law… uhm, ze 'alf compagnie infanterie zey 'ad to guard zem, you 'ave already massacre, an' I see no more come, encore… still. Peut-etre, no more zan eight or nine remain of zem, hein? "

Well, that's encouragin', Lewrie thought, leaning back to take a sip of his cold tea, his "mock rum."

" Un autre, m 'sieur," Papin idly said, sipping deep and scratching his unruly hair at the same time. "Ze ozzer t'ing. Before you massacre, before you bombard… rumour say beaucoup de soldats, beaucoup d'artillerie are to go nord, au Channel coast, but now? Non."

And, that's… int'restin', Lewrie thought. Could their new Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, so fear a British invasion cross the Dover Straits that he was fortifying Artois and Picardy against such? Or, was Bonaparte amassing an invasion army of his own against England? In either case, whatever pin-prick or "flea-bite" launched here off the Gironde could disrupt either of Bonaparte's plans.

"Merci, merci beaucoup, Capitaine Papin, for all your tidings," Lewrie warmly told him.

"T'anks, mon cul!" Papin growled. "Tanks be damn, m 'sieur. I pass you' 'school assign-e-ment,' better ze rum, ze gold, be ze reward, hein? Aussi, non to expect you buy from me ze bon marche … ze cheap, no more, non. Gendarmerie 'ave spies, are now angered, an' are now soupconneux, uhm… ze suspicious? Cannot bring you much, an' risk mus' be repaid, hein? I curse zose fumiers, bad as I mus' curse you, comprendre?"

Two hours later, as Savage made her daily rounds of the estuary, the lookouts espied Jean Brasseur's boat, just as shabby and dowdy as she ever was, but, this time flying a much-faded pale blue long pendant from her mast-tip, the agreed-upon sign that Brasseur had information to sell, along with fish.

"Fetch-to, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie ordered. "We shall let our fisherman come to us. Nine-pounders and swivels to be manned and loaded, just in case. Pass the word for Desmond, and he is to ferry an inspection party over to his boat. Mister Devereux, do you oblige me to send four Marines and a Corporal with my Cox'n."

"Directly, sir," Lt. Devereux crisply replied. "Though I fear they must be de-loused once back aboard. She's a filthy thing."

"Permission to mount the quarterdeck, sir?" Mr. Maurice Durant, their emigre French Surgeon, asked from the foot of the larboard ladder from the waist. "Aye, Mister Durant," the watch officer, Lt. Gamble, allowed. "Ah, Captain," Durant said, once near the binnacle cabinet. "I hear we will fetch-to, out? Might I enquire how long this stillness may last, sir? Able Seaman Brough, 'is teeth are very bad, and I must extract three of zem, all at once, quel dommage. I wish to do this on deck, sir, not in ze cockpit or my sick bay."

And Brough had put off the Surgeon's suggestions that he suffer those teeth to be removed several times, 'til the pain was blinding, and Brough could not even take his daily rum ration without groaning. Lewrie strongly suspected that Brough's mates, and more than a few of the crew who served under the Quarter-Gunner, wished to see him howl.

During her conversion from a French frigate to a British ship, Savage had, at Mr. Durant's urgings, re-made the starboard half of the deck under the foc's'le into a most modern sort of sick bay, near the galley for warmth, but fairly open and airy, which all the authorities deemed healthier than a lower-deck compartment. There just wasn't as much room for spectators as was the frigate's waist! "Very well, Mister Durant," Lewrie decided. "Carry on, sir." "Merci, Captain!"

Brasseur came almost empty-handed this time, apologising over the quality and quantity of his smuggled goods, the indifference of the assorted bottles of wine, the day-old loaves, and the paucity of fresh cheese.

Even the tightly woven straw basket of oysters, clams, mussels, shrimp, and crabs-along with a few gasping and weakly flopping fish, caught that morning-was only half full.

Brasseur took his ease in Lewrie's great-cabins, silently accepting two bottles of rum and one of Spanish brandy from Lewrie's stores, and a glass of a better brandy, a cognac from Normandy smuggled to England by British scoff-laws. The cats, of course, once Brasseur was seated, made their usual great fuss over him… damn 'em.

"You fly your pendant, Capitaine Brasseur," Lewrie said by way of a beginning. "You have news for me?"

"Oui, Capitaine Lewrie," Brasseur replied, rolling his glass in his hands after a couple of sips. "Pardon, but time mus' be short… ze gendarmerie, n'est-ce pas? Zey watch us now, and to spend much time togezzer will be suspect, so…

"Say on, quick as ye must, sir," Lewrie urged.

Barges, yes; more barges were coming down-river from Bordeaux. Artillery was rumoured aboard them, hastily stripped from idle ships of the line along the city piers, and troops were being moved by barge or roads to the Cote Sauvage, and the banks of the Gironde; all of which confirmed what Jules Papin had told Lewrie not an hour earlier.

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 etes 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 morning, 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'!"