'I still can't believe that de Gougne, that timid little mouse, could have-' Hainaut dared to say.
'Guillaume Choundas was noted for his nose where spies and reactionaries were concerned,' Desfourneaux interrupted. 'If in little else of late. I am utterly convinced his instincts were correct. Choundas gone… de Gougne and his suspected collaborators gone? The end of a problem… chop! Ha ha!' Desfourneaux tittered.
Hainaut resisted the urge to rub the back of his neck to assure himself that his head was still attached, and would most likely remain where God intended it, for the nonce.
'You and Capitaine Recamier must dine with me tonight, Hainaut,' Desfourneaux happily suggested. 'Shall we say at eight, when the heat of the day is dissipated? I have appropriated Choundas's town mansion, so you know the way. I also sleep in your old bed-chamber. What tales it could tell, hein?' he said with a sly leer.
'Well…' Hainaut smirked, shrugging like a man of the world. 'Executions, ah…' Desfourneaux frowned, lowering his voice to cordial intimacy. 'For some reason they excite me, much as they did the amatory humours of the masses in Paris in the early days. Going at each other in the court balconies, the doorways of Place de Bastille. An affirmation of life in the face of death, perhaps? You are known as one familiar with this island's, ah… pleasures, Hainaut. Maybe you could recommend to me a lady, or ladies, amenable to an evening of dalliance. Clean, mind… no English Pox!' he blushingly quibbled. 'Handsome, it goes without saying. Young and pretty, not too tawdry? Not as tender as those your old master preferred, Mon Dieu, non! You understand.'
'Completely, Citizen,' Hainaut replied, his smirk turning to a knowing leer. 'Just the one as a mistress, or a new one each evening? Two, three at a time? French-born, Creole… part-White, or a swart tigress for a change of pace? On Guadeloupe, everything is for sale, anything is possible. And so willing to please, ah! But of course I can aid your search, Citizen!'
Hainaut had whore-mongered for Choundas when succulent prisoners or their tender daughters were unavailable; pimping for a Voice of the Directory could prove equally favourable to his cause. M. Desfourneaux at least had conventional tastes, he suspected, so the courtesans he'd already sampled would suit admirably.
And as long as he pimped, he might as well profit from it. A pact with madames and bordel owners, the girls themselves, could fill his own purse. He contemplated strumming them first, then escorting them to Desfourneaux 'prepared for battle' so to speak-with what the British termed 'battered buns'?-serving to Desfourneaux his 'fresh-served' seconds might prove to be the drollest kind of geste. Overcharge him for island-made sheep-gut cundums…?
'Would this afternoon prove soon enough, Citizen?' Capitaine de Fregate Jules Hainaut lazily enquired. 'I have in mind a delectably sweet Octoroon, just barely seventeen, but already possessed of skills one could not find in Paris, itself. Petite, playful…'
'As a matter of fact, Hainaut, I think I will go home at once. Take my mid-day meal, so many preparations for our supper, tonight…' Desfourneaux announced, all but fingering his crotch in anticipation. 'Uhm… by three this afternoon, you might… ah?'
'By half past one, Citizen,' Hainaut promised, him. 'And may I wish you… bon appetit?'
Late that evening and far out to sea to windward of Guadeloupe, USS Hancock prowled a moon-drenched sea hungry for prey, like a wraith on All-Hallow's Eve. While Citizen Desfourneaux improved his digestif' with a second courtesan fetched as a house-warming present by his old aide-de-camp, Capitaine Guillaume Choundas sat on the edge of the hard bunk in his tiny deal-partitioned cabin forward of the officers' gun-room, beset by American cuisine. Salt-pork, soup beans, yams, ship's biscuit, and greasy gravy griped his innards like smelting lumps of ore, and bile surged up now and then to sear his throat. As for that corn-whisky they had offered… pah!
Griot, in the insubstantial next-door cabin, snored away, insensible to swinish victuals, defeat, and captivity alike, making Choundas despise his peasant's dullness. His own ears and face burned with the utter shame of loss, of being out-witted, of failing so completely… of being so wrong! His repute and career were utterly lost, his place sure to be awarded to one of the handsome, swaggering charmers, and all he had done would be forgotten, dismissed as ancient history if remembered at all. The Americans might hold him, gallingly inactive; months and months, years of penny-pinching, miserly parole.
And that swaggering pig Lewrie still lived! As if his life was charmed! As if the very Heavens, the fickle ancient gods, conspired to preserve and reward him!
Choundas fantasised that he'd find a way to kill him, slip into England as a crippled emigre beggar and murder his wife and children, if nothing else, but how? All his fortune would be gone, he would be penniless! And Choundas could feel that time for revenge was growing shorter. His marvelous body, his iron constitution, was betraying him. If Lewrie were to die by his hand, it might be with his last breath, as he had always vowed, never suspecting…!
Nonetheless, Guillaume Choundas vowed that he would murder his Nemesis; find a way to delude the simple-minded Americans and escape; destroy Griot for letting him down, for being a dull shop- keeper fraud in bear-skin slippers, not a Venetic conqueror! He would take revenge on faithless Jules Hainaut for abandoning the battle like the cynical coward he really was, he would win back his position and honours…!
But he had to press a grimy towel to his lips to stem a flood of bile and vomit; had to squeeze his buttocks together to prevent an even greater shame before he could stagger aft to the quarter-gallery with the aid of a crude loaned crutch. His bowels screamed in stony rendings, and shuddery looseness, both, while fiery stabbings in his stomach popped cold, woozy sick-sweat that flooded his body like an Arctic dunking. Weak and faint, his sphinctre failed him, and for the first time in his life, Guillaume Choundas succumbed to despair, giving out a faint, bleak whimper as he crammed the end of the towel into his mouth to deny the world the pleasure of hearing his helplessness. Hot, galling tears trickled from his eyes, searing his cheeks, to make his humiliation complete.
'I must not die before he does, please!' Choundas whispered to the groaning oaken darkness, almost in prayer. But to which gods?
The hilltop overlooking the vast encampment was bathed in moonlight as General Toussaint L'Ouverture stood under the fly of a grand pavillion that once had sheltered a French General of Brigade in splendour, looking down at his sleeping army and its guttering cook-fires, and felt his own despair for his long-suffering but hopeful people… for the future of St. Domingue, which some had begun to call Haiti in Creole patois. Its reluctant leader, short, bandy-legged, and unremarkable, plied a cane fan, seeing not a rag-tag army, but an island beset on all sides by a brutal, opportunistic outside world, just as the encampment was girded by forbidding forests and jungle.
The Americans threatened; those bland-faced, smiling slaveowners must be shown that they could never buy or steal part, or all, of Haiti. He must use them, but keep them at arm's-length. Else their merchants would buy, or raid for, slaves close to home, much cheaper than human chattel shipped from West Africa. Sadly, there were 'Haitians' who'd be more than happy to profit in such an evil trade, preying on their darkest and poorest, just like the kings of far-off Dahomey or Guinea.
The aggressive and wily British, who'd sent that perfect fool to barter with him, still lusted for St. Domingue, though they ruled all the other Sugar Isles already. Their 'gifts' and pledges would bring fresh chains for his people, too. And so, must be beguiled and strung along, yet ultimately spurned.
And-heart-breakingly-Mother France plotted to restore the plantation system, to fill her war coffers with gold, and if that new-come General Hedouville's schemes bore fruit, hordes of the grands blancs
would flood back in, with a huge army of occupation, to enforce their will. Vast profitable plantations would re-
