A King`s Commander

enough to load the artillery. To load the artillery, do you hear, Citizen Pouzin? The gun-captain's guns were unloaded! Were they even loaded for the voyage, you idle fool?'

'We drew the charges, once we tied up. Accidents, new allies…'

'Convenient,' Pouzin whispered, coming close enough from those harsh shadows at last, so Becquet could see him. A square-cut, hefty man, quite handsome in a rough-and-ready way, with a blunt chin and a square head. All business. 'Perhaps, Capitaine, too much so.'

'All you had thought for was a bottle or two, a good supper, and a plump whore, wasn't it, Becquet?' Le Hideux snapped. 'Crew let go for the night, so they could have a good, easy time of it with you, so they would like you? Perhaps a bit too much libertй, йgalitй, fraternitй, hein?'

Citizen Pouzin lifted a bushy brow at that statement. A French officer was supposed to be no better than the commonest man beneath him, due no more dignity. There was supposed to be brotherhood among them, a true comradeship in the service of The Cause.

'Time enough for that when the voyage is over, when you had completed your mission,' Le Hideux added in a softer voice. Pouzin was in charge of intelligence, and had as many connections in Paris as did Le Hideux; as many ears into which he could pour poison against him. 'Then, and only then,' he continued, glaring at Pouzin to show how heartfelt were his sentiments. And how innocent. 'May you let your guard down. Had you lost your ship in battle, I'd be kissing you on both cheeks, Becquet. Had you hurt the 'Bloodies,' gotten the cargo ashore, it would have been bad luck, bad timing, their arrival, but…'

'But it seems such a total lack of diligence, and caution, we might be able to think of it as treachery,' Pouzin challenged in his gruff, maddeningly calm voice. 'How else may we explain the suddenly foolish actions of a man so well regarded, just weeks ago. With such a diligent, able, and unblemished record in the Republican Navy?'

'M'sieur, oh God, I…!'

'Citizen,' Pouzin corrected, with a warning hiss.

'Now your Savoian hands have run away, and will never come back, hein?' Le Hideux summed up, goading Becquet with a cruel leer. 'The Savoians delayed training and arms. When they seemed so eager to join us. A brave French garrison turned to blood soup, a valuable company of experienced, battle-hardened officers and men who would have trained them, lost. How much enthusiasm for military service do you think the Savoians have now, hein? There is no doubt word has spread deep into the mountains. Of how inept French warships, of how ludicrous the French Army, look. And, it's all… your.,. fault'

'Dear God, sir…!' Becquet whimpered, almost pissing himself.

'But you will atone for this, mon pauvre petit Gun Captain,' Le Hideux promised in a caressing whisper, that whisper more threatening than his loudest rants. 'Oh, indeed you will. On your head be it.'

'Sir…!'

'By the authority given me by the Committee of Public Safety,' Le Hideux intoned, stumping away to lean on his desk to rest his leg. 'I order you be held in irons until the time of your trial by court-martial, where you will answer charges of grave dereliction of duty… cowardice in the face of the enemy… the loss of your command without a shot being fired… the loss of your convoy and their cargo…'

'And treason against the Republic,' Pouzin tacked on, heaving a huge shrug. 'Trafficking with the enemy and conspiring to…'

There was a thud as Becquet's wits left him, and he swooned to the deck, a spreading wet stain on his trousers.

'At five, this afternoon,' Le Hideux grunted. 'Guards! Take this cowardly scum away!'

'A foregone conclusion.' Pouzin sighed, heading for the cabinet to pour them both glasses of wine. 'A court packed with officers, and men… of sound Republican, Revolutionary spirit…'

'Of a certainty,' Le Hideux agreed, wincing as he sat down, to rest that continual dull ache that had been his burden the past nine years. The bastard who'd cut him with his sword, laying his face open, had also slashed his left calf, after he was down and disarmed, writhing and howling with agony…! 'Pour encourager les autres, Citizen. The grand revolutionary, Thomas Jefferson… he said that the Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots. I water it with the blood of fools and cowards. Of shop clerks! So the others might become true patriots. Even if they come to their patriotism from fear. You see what I contend with, hein, Citizen Pouzin? The idleness, the thoughtlessness I endure? I am surrounded by incompetence, and lackluster pinheads. What I would give for just a few more Bretons here, a few more with the hardy, seafaring courage of the ancient Celts…'

Pouzin rolled his eyes, bored that Le Hideux was harping upon his favorite theory. He'd heard quite enough of it in the full year they'd cooperated together. Most warily cooperated, that is. Neither was superior to the other, running their separate operations in parallel; sometimes at cross-purposes, sometimes hand in glove. And writing to Paris, to their own superiors, and patrons, of a certainty, reporting on each other. They were both in the same business, really, this horrid little deformed ogre Le Hideux, and Pouzin the spy (if Pouzin was indeed his right name), that of seeking out defectors, traitors, failures, and fools, such as Becquet. Of inspiring the others to keep the ardent flame of passion for the Revolution alive in every breast. To weed the unworthy, the lazy, the smugly satisfied, so that France, so threatened from without (and quite possibly within, such as in the Vendee where resistance still sputtered) might survive, then march to the ends of the earth to spread her glorious doctrines. If that took a thousand bad bargains and traitors to the guillotine… et alors?. .. Pouzin thought philosophically.

'And the brutal logic, the innate sense of the Breton peasant.' Le Hideux sighed in longing. 'Not these shortsighted, city-bred…' He took a sip of wine to cool his melancholia. 'I envy you, Pouzin. The zeal and dedication of the people who work for you. Do you ever face…?'

'A different sort of worry, Capitaine.' Pouzin chuckled. 'I worry about who is loyal, who is lying to me. Of which reports can I trust, and which are made up to please me, to earn my gold. Who works for the other side, or both. But, thankfully no, no lack of zeal. It is far too profitable to them. And, for the good ones, too much fun. A good spy thoroughly enjoys his work. Now then… the rest of the bad news, This ship that raided Bordighera… your Hainaut tells us, quite innocently in his letter to the parole commission, that she was named Jester. Even worse, she took one of the ships we… arranged… off San Remo. Aboard were two of my best agents, returning from Leghorn. One is dead, the other a captive.'

'That's bad,' Le Hideux commiserated. 'But, far west of where we expected this embargo to reach, in a backwater. Had your people in Genoa told us this, I would definitely have provided escort within fifty sea miles of the coast. Though my few poor ships are stretched so thin,' he added, to excuse himself. Pouzin could smell a brave but exculpatory report to Paris; his and Le Hideux's.

'I grant you,' Pouzin allowed. 'And I sympathize with your lack of suitable warships. Yet…'he posed, with another Gallic shrug.

'Two ships lost,' Le Hideux rasped, running a hand over a rough and patchy beard and short mustache he'd grown to help disguise his injuries. 'Another taken off Finale? Again, where my vessels dare not go, except in squadron strength.'

'Our principals in Genoa, and Leghorn, are upset, that our mutual arrangement unravels so quickly,' Pouzin gloomed. 'There are so many other ships naturally. But the captains and crews must take even more risk now. And one of our Tuscan principals was temporarily detained. He is not a man of stout courage. It will take more gold, he writes.'

'He is robbing us, and he knows it,' Le Hideux spat. 'A chance encounter off San Remo. An idiot who should have put back into Finale, under the protection of the castle's guns, as soon as he saw a 'Bloody' frigate. Two out of dozens? The vagaries of war. Which they agreed to happily. The bulk of the goods, messages, and money get through.'

'Certainment, Capitaine,' Pouzin quickly agreed. Certainly, Le Hideux was ruthless, a monster in human guise… but he'd been successful enough to keep his command-and his head-this long. Grain from North Africa, coastal convoys that lost ships, also of a certainty, but mostly delivered the goods to support the advance of the Army. And allow Pouzin to maintain his far-flung spiderweb. 'But with the British squadron in Vado Bay, and our army threatened by de Vins… a greater effort is called for. No matter the