pretty little whore, but a whore nonetheless. Return her to her master at the bordel where she is employed, with a second purse beyond her rental. To compensate the bordel owner for his loss of earnings 'til she's presentable once more. The whoremonger has been warned what could happen to him if he makes a fuss. Have her out before the town wakes,' Choundas grumpily ordered, reaching for his walking-stick leaned against his costly desk, and painfully getting to his feet at last, swaying with weariness and wincing at the pain of an old, old man. The low candlelight limned him as an ancient, grizzled dragon.
'The last matter I mentioned may be done at the same time you return our wee putain. That chore is official, public, and provides a mask for the first.'
'Very well, m'sieur?' Hainaut assented, perplexed again.
'Please be so good as to step out on the porch and summon the front entrance sentries,' Capt. Choundas grimly ordered.
'M'sieur?' Hainaut gawped in sudden, renewed dread that all he had been offered, told, had been but a cruel charade, that all along Choundas had been toying with him like a sly cat would torment a fear-frozen mouse, teasing it this way and that with soft, claw-sheathed paws.
'That spy, John Gunn or James Peel, whatever he calls himself, boasted a little too much to our Capitaine Fleury, Jules,' Guillaume Choundas continued in a more-familiar growl, rage back in his face and voice, 'accidentally revealing to him that the 'Bloodies' have a spy so close to me that the British might as well be sitting in this room this very moment. Now who could it be, Jules? Who could it be? Does it not make you wonder?' Choundas threatened, taking a clumsy pace or two towards him, stick, boot, and brace ominously going clump-shuffle-tick!
'He is here now, m'sieur?' Hainaut stuttered in surprise, and near-terror, did Choundas still suspect him, though he'd said… He turned his head to look down at Etienne de Gougne, for he knew it was not him. Besides, he'd never laid eyes on this anonymous Fleury, and could not recall snubbing or insulting anyone by that name. If this Fleury person had laid a charge against him to cover the inept loss of his precious ship, but how…!
'He is here,' Choundas forebodingly confirmed, and slowly swept his own gaze away and down, to peer at de Gougne as well. The little clerk began to rise, but Choundas drove him back into the chair with a shove of his left hand.
'The mouse? Surely…!' Hainaut scoffed, never so relieved in his life.
'All these years you reported behind my back to the Directory, and their spy-master, Citizen Pouzin,' Choundas gravelled. 'You think I would not learn of it, Etienne, when Pouzin seemed to know too much and so quickly, on the Genoese coast, and ever since? Don't dare deny it! Did you think he would rescue you, should you ever become a liability to me? Where is Citizen Pouzin now, and where are we hein? '
'M-m-m'sieur,' de Gougne blubbered in fright, barely able to find breath with which to protest his innocence. 'Master…'
' That sort of treachery I could abide, Etienne,' Choundas menacingly rumbled, 'such pettiness. Was it your sly, meek way to get back at me for using you like the insignificant worm that you are? But to take British gold to slake your wretched, pitiful, mousy shop-clerk's, ink-sniffing, clock-watching, time-server's, slippered bourgeois, land-bound peasant spite on me? You will pay, Etienne… you know you will. I will break you into slivers. I will make blood-and-marrow soup with your bones, and make you drink it, before you die, with just enough of you left to ride the tumbril to the guillotine, so everyone can witness the reward for treason, and see justice done.
'But before that, Etienne,' Choundas promised, leaning forward to whisper as sibilantly as a hideous boa constrictor, 'you will name for me every traitor on this island you work with or… quel dommage,' he suddenly mused, standing upright, and instantly bemused, as if his ire had gushed away like the hot air from a Montgolfier balloon.
For clerk Etienne de Gougne had pissed himself, had even fouled his trousers, as he fainted dead away, slumped bone-white to the floor.
'Him?' Hainaut gaped, quite unable to believe he had it in him.
'Oui,' Choundas confirmed, jabbing with his walking-stick. 'Get this gaoled in Fort Fleur d'Epee. And get that trull out of my house, too, Jules. Now, vite, vite!'
Lewrie had given testimony before the Prize Court, and the American merchant vessels had been released to their captains to complete their homeward journeys. Crews off Sumter, Oglethorpe, and Proteus had been given shore liberty, with sailors of both nations reeling arm-in-arm from one public house to the next, for a whole rousing day and night.
On the second rousing day and night, however, the question arose to whether the Yankee Doodles had needed British aid in fighting a brace of French warships; whether the aforesaid French men o' war were worthy opponents, or cringingly weak and lightly armed poltroons who'd struck too quickly; whether they'd been daunted by American prowess or the mere sight of a British 'bulldog' flying the Union flag.
The resulting brawls, 'twixt Yankee salts and British tars, actively aided and abetted by other bellicose drunks egging them on, with the eager participation in said brawls of stout British islanders and merchant seamen, by Yankee Doodle civilian sailors and gentlemen traders who'd taken manly umbrage, shortly after re-enforced by members of the watch and Admiralty dockworkers, by publicans, whores, and their bully-bucks and crimps, and lastly by the appearance of the heartily despised shore gangs of His Majesty's Navy's Impress Service (who came off a rather poor third) had redounded to the detriment of the publicans, their establishments, the whores, pimps, crimps, brothel keepers, and 'Mother Abbesses' and their commercial properties and the peaceable tradespeople and residents of English Harbour, who had forced the Governor-General to call out a company of the garrison and declare the Riot Act. Bayonets, and fall-down drunken stupors had ended it.
Which brawl had placed HMS Proteus, her people, her officers, and most especially her captain in extremely bad odour, and Lewrie had had what felt like five pounds of hide taken off his backside by both the Governor-General and Rear-Admiral Harvey.
And to make matters even worse, Grenville Pelham was not only not expired, but able to sit up, take nourishment, and screech like a wet parrot!
Other than working-parties to fetch supplies, the hands off the three ships in question had been banned from further shore liberty. A day later, the Yankee merchantmen had practically been dragooned out to sea at gun-point to carry their cargoes home… and warned to give it a long think before they dared come into English Harbour again, 'less they moderated their people's behaviour.
The packet-brig, gaily flying her 'Post-Boy' flag, had departed bearing Pelham's boasting reports, Peel's 'yes, but' reports and codicils, and Lewrie's several hefty sea-letters to his wife Caroline and his father Sir Hugo, to his ward Sophie, separate long missives to his sons, Sewallis and Hugh, by way of his father's London lodging house, and to his mistress Theoni and his other son, solicitor, and creditors.
Lewrie could pessimistically think that keeping his breeches up and his prick to himself might just be worth it after all. He would save hundreds on ink, paper, and postage on any more bastards; avoiding wrist and finger cramp communicating with additional by-blows would be, he thought, a collateral
