to advance himself. He bought a tricolour revolutionary's cockade and red-wool tassel cap, and had worn them with outward pride, had shouted 'Down with the Aristos' the loudest, and had ridden the coat-tails of the Terror, helping to purge the navy of Royalists and aristocrats, earning a share of the loot taken from them, moving up in rank, in 'dead men's shoes.' For once, his lack of education, his humble beginnings, and his outlandness had worked for him, for he was held up as a shining example of how the ideals of the Revolution would spread all round the world and conquer the old order.
Most of the rhetoric was Greek to Hainaut, just loud twaddle to be tolerated-but it paid well to listen and cheer. And the raids and arrests, as a 'virtuous' commoner armed to the teeth and given the awesome power of weaponry over the rich, the titled, and their minions and lick-spittle servants, was a heady thing, indeed. And the cheers!
Escorting accused prisoners through the seaport streets, eyes open for the prettiest women and girls who threw corsages, and now and then themselves, at such a well-knit and stalwart young patriot. Then, when he had been urged to turn informer and spy upon suspect shipmates, surviving officers, and town citizens, and he'd come to court to testify, tricked out in his scrubbed-up, borrowed best, Hainaut had gotten even more favourable attention… from the young female citizens most of all!
After all, it wasn't as if the people he'd testified against were all that innocent, and if he hadn't done it, there were two dozen more eager to make names for themselves standing in line behind him, so what did it matter when 'traitors' were trundled to the guillotines in the big tumbrils, to fill the baskets with their heads. They were not family, they weren't friends of his, and most had been unattractive or outright ugly, or simply not clever enough to keep their mouths shut and dissemble the latest revolutionary cant, which could change from month to month as the various factions in the Assembly rose or fell.
Hainaut had advanced to the rank of Timmonier, the trusty Coxswain to a rising young star of a Lieutenant who had come up from the lower deck, just as he had. He ate better than most, drank very well, and had first pick of the loot, could make a pig of himself every night of the week, and had thought he had risen high… when he had met the man who would change his life.
He knew he'd met real power when his Lieutenant had nearly shat his culottes in fear of him after one interview. He knew he'd met the consummate unscrupulous cynic, out to use the Revolution to claw back his former honours and position; and, perhaps, Le Capitaine had seen a fellow spirit in Hainaut, despite his outward protestations of adoration for the Revolution.
That quickly, he'd become an Aspirant entitled to wear steel on his hip, not a crude seaman's cutlass, but a midshipman's dirk of honour, even if his uniform had been a rag-picker's off-day ensemble. Hainaut had thrown himself into pleasing Le Capitaine during the purging of the Bordeaux fleet, and later in the Mediterranean, when they ran the infiltrating spy-boats, the coastal raiding ships, and small convoys to support the army facing the Piedmontese, the Genoese, Neapolitan, and much-vaunted Austrian armies.
And it hadn't been Hainaut 's fault when his small warship under an idiot captain had been taken by the British, when Le Capitaine had trusted him to supervise the mission, and 'wet his feet' as a fighting sailor. A few weeks on parole on Corsica (rather pleasant, that!) and he'd been exchanged for a British midshipman, and warmly welcomed back into Le Capitaine'?, service-though the idiot had gotten 'chopped' for failure!
Now Jules Hainaut was a seasoned Lieutenant de Vaisseau, polished and groomed, tutored and 'pampered,' and, did he continue pleasing his superior, the aspirations of commanding a small warship, later becoming a Capitaine de Vaisseau in charge of a tall, swift frigate of his own, were not beyond his reach.
If he survived this little disaster!
And it certainly looked hopeless.
Lt. Hainaut damned the Governor-General, Citizen Victor Hugues, for this insult. There were much nicer mansions to be had in the neat little community of Bas Fort, and much closer to the local seat of power, too. He suspected that Governor-General Hugues (a light-skinned Mulatto gens du couleur, but still a noir, Lt. Hainaut accused!) wanted to show how unimpressed he was by the arrival of Le Capitaine, a possible rival for his position, or a spy for the Directory, despite all their fulsome introductory letters from Paris.
Fanning himself some more, Lt. Hainaut paced about in the foyer, admiring the gloss of his boot-toes, testing the formerly shiny Cuban mahoghany inlaid parquet. With a preparatory sigh of disappointment, Hainaut went to the double doors of the west-side salon, which were barely ajar; pocket doors, which hissed into their recesses barely at a touch, of the finest craftsmanship.
'Ah! Better!' he cheered. Drapes still hung, the windows were still glazed, chandeliers were still whole, and the furniture was worn but useable; in point of fact, this second salon was jam-packed with a jumble of furniture, as if two or three other mansions had been looted and the contents stored in this one! And behind the salon was a room of equal spaciousness, filled with several sets of dining room furnishings. Hainaut doubted there would be plates, cutlery, or serving pieces in there, but they'd brought their own, enough to serve for a few weeks 'til another 'warehouse' of confiscated goods could be 'shopped.'
'Garcon chef!' Hainaut barked over his shoulder, to summon the 'head boy' of the work-gang they had been loaned. 'Ici, vite!'
'Oui, bas?' he answered when he came.
'This salon will be my master's private office,' Hainaut said, briskly rubbing his hands in relief. 'That dining room, there. Clean it out. It will become Le Maitres bed-chamber, comprendre? Office, here… bed-chamber, there, hein?'
'Oui, bas. Je comprend,' the solidly built man responded.
'Send garcons above-stairs. Surely, there's bed furniture. Find best, and fetch it down, to… there,' Hainaut instructed, pointing up, then to the dining room. 'Bedding and such… comprendre literies, hein?' he said in pidgin French, since he hadn't heard passable French from the island Blacks since stepping ashore; they uttered a soft, and liquid, Creole patois.
'Oui, bas, comprend la literie,' the headman assured him, talking as slowly as Hainaut, as if to covertly twit him back. 'Pillows, sheets, and mattresses. Send boys for the best. Make house nouveau clean… tout d'abord,' he vowed. 'Be tres elegant.'
'It had better be,' Hainaut said with a miffed sniff, unfamiliar with noirs, but suspecting that he was slyly being japed. 'Some men to sickle the grass, prune the bushes, too. Re-hang the shutters, there,' he said, pointing again. 'Paint walls, if paper is hopeless. Nail the parquet down. Floor? Loose floor pieces, hein? Make smooth?'
'Ah, oui' the gang leader replied, with a resigned shrug.
'All done by sundown, comprendre!'' Hainaut gleefully insisted.
The noir winced and sucked his teeth, but nodded assent.
'That room, there… be office for the little mouse clerk,' Lt. Hainaut slyly instructed. 'Small bed-cot, unbroken desk, and chest of drawers. Nothing good, mind. Well, get cracking. Vite, vite!'
Hainaut turned and trotted up the staircase, without a thought for the herculean task he'd just assigned, and did they not get it all presentable, well… too bad for the garcon chef! That was what whips were good for, Hainaut casually supposed, pour encourager les autres, so they saw the price of failure. Even Hugues, part-Black himself, had kept a form of slavery on Guadeloupe after the noirs had been 'freed.' Poorly paid, closely supervised labour gangs might not emulate the bloody massacres of former masters that had torn Saint Domingue to shreds. Idle hands were the Devil's workshop!
'Magnifique! Hainaut whispered on entering the former master's and mistress's chambers on the east side front. It was bigger than the salon below it, fronted by a deep, cool balcony and two sets
