The Captain`s Vengeance

Dammit to hell, neither he nor Balfa owned this lithe schooner, only shares in the 'enterprise'! It wasn't like the old days, back in the last war, when they'd commanded five ships at once, when the names Jerome Lanxade- Le Feroce, for he had been called 'The Ferocious'-and Boudreaux Balfa- L'Affame, or 'The Hungry'-had commanded respect and awe in every Caribbean or Gulf port. Then they could recruit an entire crew overnight at the snap of their fingers and fill every man's pockets with prize money or plunder. Under the old white-and-gold fleur de lis of Royal France, the heraldic red-gold of Spain… even the dreaded Jolly Roger or Black Flag, a time or two… their orders or slightest whims could have made fish bait of callow, capering lubbers like them!

Jerome Lanxade turned to face his employers, hands clasped in the small of his back, a black-visaged glower of warning on his dark-tanned face. Just for a moment, he fantasised, again, of murdering every last one of them, of just taking this splendid little ship for his own and continuing the business for his own profit. Kill all the young men, not the girl, though. Oh no, not for a long time…

He let his face soften and crease into a knowing smile.

'The seas are up, the prize ship's motion,' Lanxade told them with what might have seemed to be infinite patience. 'Nothing goes as quickly or smoothly as you wish aboard ship, messieurs, mademoiselle.'

Poseurs! he silently accused, though the girl was most fetching-even if she was the most bloody-minded of the entire bunch!

His employers dressed the part: jackboots and baggy sailors' slop trousers, colourful shirts under long-tailed and gaudy old-style waist-coats that they wore open; waist sashes crammed with pistols or daggers under the waist-coats; broad satin or velvet baldrics bearing costly short swords or swept-hilt rapiers; wide-brimmed hats adrip with egret plumes… As if they'd tricked themselves out in fanciful garb and beauty spots and face powders for a pre-Revolution costume ball!

'One would wish, though, M'sieur le Capitaine Lanxade, that it goes competently, n'est-ce pas?' the young woman sweet-archly replied with an elegant lift of one brow, a leering smile at one corner of her sweetly kissable mouth, and a mocking salute with her wineglass.

Arrogant, wanton slut! Lanxade thought, unable to keep his eyes from caressing her curves, her slim legs on display for all the world to see in over-snug breeches and silk knee stockings, her decolletage made prominent by a tight and waist-hugging buttoned waist-coat, just long enough to flare over the tops of her hips like a corset. Worst-named cunt in all Creation… Charite… Angelette… de Guilleri!

Mile Charite de Guilleri lowered her lashes and smirked over the rim of her crystal champagne glass, secretly delighted by their hired man's not-so-secret lust, and her heady power to deny.

'I still say we should just shoot them, make them to 'walk the plank,' or something,' her cousin, Jean-Marie Rancour, spat.

'Oui, Jean… dead men tell no tales, after all,' another of their party said. Unlike the rest, he was dark-haired and brown-eyed, was Don Rubio Monaster, while Charite, her brothers Hippolyte and Helio, and their cousin were the typical long-settled Creoles, with chesnut hair and blue eyes. 'Just kill them and be done,' Don Rubio asserted with what he was certain was an aggressive, decisive, and manly lift of his chin… for Charite's benefit and, hopefully, at some future time of bliss with her, his own.

'We've done that,' the eldest brother, Helio de Guillieri, responded in a lazy drawl. 'That Havana slaver's crew, remember, Rubio? We made them walk the plank, Jean.'

'But we haven't done marooning yet,' middle brother Hippolyte snickered. 'Just about the only thing we haven't done.'

'Kill or maroon?' Helio, as 'leader,' posed. 'The old buccaneers practiced egalite and fraternite, they voted on things. Let's vote.'

'Shoot!' Don Rubio Monaster quickly replied, but he was shouted down by those in favour of marooning their captives. Only Jean sided with him, and that not with a whole heart.

Mon Dieu, what a pack of… Capt. Lanxade thought. 'Marooned men tell no tales. No one ever comes here. They give these isles a wide berth for fear of shoals and reefs. Only piles of bleached bones will be found… if ever,' he gruffly told them.

'I cannot shoot even one?' Don Rubio plaintively asked.

'Rubio, don't be greedy,' Mile Charite coaxed, sashaying to his side to drape an arm round his shoulders and lay her head next to his, as if cajoling her papa for a new gown. 'We have seen how well you shoot. Those runaway slaves…pim-pim-pim, and all your doing, n'est-ce pas? If we run across another prize on the way home, we will leave things to you… won't we, Helio… Hippolyte?'

The other stalwart young fellows had no problem with that.

'If not, quel dommage,' Charite continued, 'and you must quell your eagerness 'til the next voyage. Remember, Rubio, hastening the day of rejoining La Belle France, and throwing off the Spanish tyrrany, comes first, last, and always. Before our petty amusements.'

She blew teasingly at his ear, swept off his overly ornate hat, and tousled his romantically long, dark locks, then gave the embarrassed young fellow a quick and 'sisterly' peck on the cheek… with a tiny flick of her tongue tip to tantalise before almost skipping away from him. 'Ah, regardez… the boat, at last!'

Don Rubio Monaster bashfully grinned, though following her every movement with downcast but lustful eyes; unsure, again, whether he'd been gulled by her… or slyly encouraged.

But for their mutual scheme, Don Rubio might have been shunned by her family. His father had been a grandee Spaniard sent to administrate the territory. Though a true Castilian of noble hidalgo blood never tainted by Moor or Marrano, whose sires had held titles since the Reconquista in the 1400s, his father had been so impoverished that a wilderness post's salary had been welcomed. Spanish overlord or not, his father had managed to wed a proud and exalted French Creole lady, heir to vast acreages upriver from the city, and had seen to it that the old French deeds of her family, the Bergrands, had become legitimate Spanish land grants.

Not so smart, though, to avoid taking the field against a Chickasaw uprising up near Natchez, where his noble father had been slain. Since then, the Bergrands had moulded him into more of a Creole than a Don, more a Jacobin than a Royalist after the French Revolution, too.

Spain was old, tired, and bankrupt, with nothing to offer but a corrupt and neglectful governance. The new United States encroaching on their borders were even worse, just too common, venal, grasping, and backwoods crude! Without a powerful protector, they would be swamped in buckskin, awash in the vile juices of 'chaw-baccy'! Non, only a rising of their own- and a remonstrance of their fait accompli to the Republican Directory in Paris could save them. Everyone was so sure of that, but so few really ever did anything about it, other than talk and talk in the cabarets! Only Hippolyte and Helio seemed capable of action, and he'd gladly become a part of their scheme. For the future, for…!

Bewitching Charite's costly Parisian scent lingered on Rubio's shirt collar, and he took a cautious sniff, even as he stood to watch the launch from the prize ship finally be rowed over to the schooner; feet wide-spread to balance, spring-kneed to ride the pitching of the deck as masterfully as he rode the most spirited stallion, with hands in the small of his back in unconscious imitation of their hired man, the daunting, dashing Capt. Lanxade. Chin up and alert, firm-jawed in spite of the swooping jerks and snubs, he would be dizzy and sick if he let himself. He would not be sick… he would be dashing.

Though Maman was delighted that her son had entree with a family as distinguished and rich as the de Guilleris, one even richer and of longer habitation than her own, though he was coyly urged to lay suit to one of the older sisters, Iphegenie or Marguerite… though he was sure that either would be a pleasingly suitable and presentable match, and either would be amenable, yet… there was Charite, that coquette!

Oh, if only he could tell her what agony, and what ecstacy, her too-brief caress and kiss could cause him! How like the Golden Fleece he thought her long chestnut hair, how lambent he deemed her turquoise eyes, how generous her lips and mouth, how bountiful her breasts!