The Captain`s Vengeance

home, are you?'

'Well, weren't you British before the Revolution, as well, sir?' Lewrie posed, about ready to hock up another lung in dread that they'd been found out not an hour after setting off on their own. 'In a manner of speaking, that is?'

'Hah!' Mr. Jim Hawk Ellison hooted with mirth, flinging his head back for a second. 'I s'pose we were, at that. And some of our rich folk from the coasts… the first states… sometime act as if they still were, at times.'

'From Tennessee,' Lewrie speculated, 'that makes you a long way from home, yourself, Mister Ellison. What, uh… line do you follow?'

'Land speculatin',' Ellison replied, as if it was of no matter. 'On the eastern banks,' he added, as if to mystify, with a shrug and a wink.

'Oh, you're with the Yazoo Company, then?' Lewrie asked.

'No, they're too big a fish for me.' Ellison chuckled. 'Call it a private venture. Some friends and associates of mine in Nashborough… that's our new state capital, ya know… thought to put a company of their own t'gether. The Robertsons, Donelsons, and Overtons got the real power, but they're lookin' west to the Mississippi, t'other side o' the Tennessee River, now they got the middle of the state sewed up. I come from North Carolina first off, right after the war ended. I read for the law in Salisbury, but sorta followed our militia over-mountain t'East Tennessee, liked it better, an' never left. Had a hand in startin' the state o' Franklin, with John Sevier and them, 'til Virginia an' both Carolinas run it under. Drifted on over t'Nash-borough just before Tennessee got statehood, an' ya know what, Mister Willougby? Not a bit o' credit, nor profit, ever come from any of it.'

'Oh, what a pity,' Lewrie commiserated, though it was disconcerting to be the recipient of such a tale of woe right off. English gentlemen would never blurt out the details of their lives so early in a passing acquaintanceship, nor nigh-brag upon their failures in life to anyone, English or not, close kin or not. Though he could recall a unique Colonial American trait in the Loyalists he'd met when serving with them during the Revolution; ask what day it was, and he'd get a full hour's discourse. He put it down to Yankees springing from a much smaller circle of society, their rusticity and isolation resulting in a belief that everyone they met was almost kin. Besides, he could sneer, when you came down to it, Americans had no other diverting amusements!

'So, you've come south in Hopes of better?' Lewrie asked.

'And ya know what they say… 'hope springs eternal,' ' Ellison almost gaily admitted. 'Oh, I had a land grant, from servin' with the Army for a spell. Sixty-four hundred acres, the Continental Congress and the state o' North Carolina said I was t'have. But by the time they got through squabblin' over who could issue my grant-Congress an' three states!-and all of it in Franklin, I hadta sell up for ten cent an acre. Not much t'show for four years o' fightin', the Cow Pens and King's Mountain, Camden and-'

'You whipped Banastre Tarleton?' Lewrie exclaimed. 'And King's Mountain… I still own one of Major Patrick Ferguson's breech-loader rifles, that-' He clapped his mouth shut, but a sorrowful second too late. Trying to be congenial and sociable, he was betrayed by his dislike for Tarleton and his enthusiasm for fine firearms.

'Do tell,' Ellison cagily said, almost peeking from beneath the brim of his hat. 'Thought we'd captured 'em all at King's Mountain.'

'Well, some few'd been bought before…' Lewrie flummoxed. He could almost feel Jugg's eyes rolling behind his back, perhaps hear a sotto voce 'Christ, you're hopeless!' movement of his lips!

'So you were a Loyalist, then?' Ellison enquired. 'A Tory?'

'Royal Navy,' Lewrie confessed with a grunting sound. 'Got it from some Cape Fear Loyalists before they went north with Cornwallis to York-town. They put it up on a bad wager when we put into Wilmington. And thankee for whipping Tarleton, too. Met him there briefly… when he was stabling his cavalry mounts in the pew boxes of Saint James's Church, the haughty bastard. And I ran into him in England, too. At Bath, it was, in the Long Rooms one night,' Lewrie continued, and most of it true, whilst he'd been at sixes and sevens on half-pay, after paying off his first temporary command, the Shrike brig. 'He and Benedict Arnold both, the same night, in point of fact. Still wearin' their uniforms, as if they'd ever be employed again!

Lewrie felt that some un-English loquaciousness was called for, so he prosed on. 'Tarleton was the same top- lofty, arrogant shit, but Arnold, well… I s'pose it was because his wife, Peggy, was with him at the time, but he was almost pleasant. Skint and miserly with his poor stack o' coin, but pleasant. When he wasn't frettin' over what he had lost at the tables, and doin' sums in his head t'see could they afford another bottle o' wine, that is.'

'And how'd a British Navy officer and his man get into Spanish New Orleans? Don't ya know they'd throw ya under the calabozo if they learn you're here?' Ellison asked with a cynical snort.

'Ah, but I'm not British any longer, d'ye see!' Lewrie rejoined with a sudden burst of inspiration. 'And Jugg, well… what Irishman would claim that, if America 's open to one and all looking for a fresh start, I ask you?'

'Amen t'that, sor,' Jugg seconded with enthusiasm. 'An' after wot Admiralty did to ya, an' all, arrah.'

'Jugg, for God's sake,' Lewrie spat, spinning to blow Jugg's ears off, but stopping a rant at the sight of the man's sly look. 'It is not a subject I bandy about to just…' he spluttered. Admittedly, he didn't know where Jugg was going with it, nor did he have a single clue what else he should say to reestablish his manufactured identity.

Knew I'd muck this up! he scathed himself, the very details of his false background a sweat-soaked, confusing muddle in his own head.

'Just got here, did ya, Mister Willoughby?' Ellison probed.

'Ah… two days ago, aye,' Lewrie told him. Dare he say that they'd come on the Panton, Leslie ship Azucena del Oeste? Would its Spanish registry save him from exposing the whole enterprise? Or was it widely known as a spy ship, the company that owned it deep in the Crown's pocket? 'On the Azucena del Oeste,' he cautiously added.

'Yeah, I saw her come in,' Ellison casually said, with no more suspicion than previous to his tone. 'Panton, Leslie carries good wares. Have some arms aboard, do they? You'd be amazed how the easterners from the wrong side of the mountains think t'settle without decent arms, nor enough flint, shot, and powder. Like all the Indians just up an' flew away soon as we became a state.'

'I believe they do,' Lewrie informed him. 'Most especially, a quantity of Austrian air-rifles, quiet as anything, but very accurate. Better than a musket, but not as good as a Pennsylvania rifle. Decent price they're asking, too, I think. You ought to at least take a look at 'em, if for no other reason that they're a rarity, sir.'

'Hmmm… maybe I will, at that,' Ellison mused aloud, rubbing his chin. 'Well, I haveta go catch up with my wild men before they wreck the place,' he added with a wry grin. 'They get a snootful, and they're like the old bull in the china shop, don't ya know. Maybe we will run into each other again, long as we're both in New Orleans? I favour the Pigeonnier cabaret, if you're lookin' for entertainment on the town. Got hired rooms nearby.'

'Thankee for the suggestion, Mister Ellison,' Lewrie said with a relieved grin, shaking hands with the fellow once more, though he hadn't the first clue as to what a cabaret was or what sort of amusement might be found in one, especially one called the 'Pigeon Coop.'

'Mister Willoughby… Mister Jugg,' Ellison gallantly said as he doffed his hat and sketched a brief, jerking bow in conge, forcing them to lift their own lids and show a 'leg.'

Ellison had not taken two steps when he turned about, though.

'By the by, Mister Willoughby, that was quick thinkin', the way ya handled Georgie,' Ellison told him, greatly amused.

'Er, ah, thankee, Mister Ellison.'

'For a minute there, I thought you'd riled him beyond all temperance. When that happens, he's a very short fuse. The most warning ya have is him sayin', 'Ah'll kee' ye,' then it's 'Katie, bar the door.' '

'Ah kee' ye?' Lewrie parroted, head cocked in query.

'That's country for 'kill you,' sir,' Ellison warned, not half as jovially as he'd been just a moment before, then knuckled the brim of his hat, spun about, and went below to the emporium proper.