The Captain`s Vengeance

Helio had showed her how to use the air-rifle, though she didn't consider herself a crack shot. Charite had opened the magazine tube as they'd rowed past Le Revenant, when the La Fittes were still aboard, to count remaining rounds. There were only seven. Helio and Hippolyte had bragged how far it could shoot… She angrily swiped the sleeve of her shirt over her eyes to blot the fresh tears that the thought of them evoked. They were prisoners of the hated Anglais, now, on their way to a British noose, cruelly wounded, or… dead and gone!

Everything was lost! Ships, crew, the silver, and when news got to the Spanish, the surviving de Guilleris would face arrest and trial and the garotte in the Place d'Armes. All they owned would be forfeit, even if her parents and sisters had had no knowledge or part in their planned revolution.

Her own fate was the bitterest of all to savour; she would die not as a martyr for France, but as a fool, an utter failure who'd gotten her brothers killed, a lunatic with a demented dream! And Creoles, even those who might have taken up arms with them, would be cowed into silence and ineffectiveness! Louisiana and New Orleans would stay part of Spain!

Better to die now, Charite bleakly thought, fantasising a tale told of a brave but foolish girl who'd slain her heartless, pursuing Englishmen and died in battle, than to be abased in a court like Joan of Arc, then strangled in the public square.

'Mam'selle?' Balfa prompted.

'I can use it, Capitaine,' Charite grimly promised. 'When the time comes, I will. I'll not be taken, non.'

But oh, it would be hard to die, when she'd only had nineteen sunny years. Couldn't there have been many more, in a Louisiana that was free and French again, her holy duty done?

'Hoy, the boat!' an Anglais shouted from a boat on their starboard quarter. 'Lay on your oars and surrender, in the King's name!'

'Shit on your king!' Boudreaux Balfa hooted back, 'an' kiss my rosy 'Cadien ass!' In a mutter, he added, 'De time be come, mam'selle. Try your eye, an' I'll be ready wit' my pistols for when dey gets real close.'

Charite abandoned the sweep-oar, pulled the air-rifle up off the boat's sole, and cranked the stiff loading lever to chamber a ball, then turned on her thwart to take aim, frightened to death but determined to take at least one despicable Anglais with her before she fell.

'We know who you are, Boudreaux Balfa!' the Anglais bellowed in a quarterdeck voice, shambling half bent over to stand in the bows of his boat. 'Charite de Guilleri! Surrender, and no harm will come to you!'

She started with alarm, chilled that the British knew her by name! Over the sights of her rifle, she peered at the officer in the bows, a 'Bloody' cochon in a gilt-laced coat, face shaded by a large cocked hat, hands cupped to his mouth. He would be her target. She cocked the valve mechanism to the air-chamber.

The officer lowered his hands, took off his hat as his boat got within sixty yards, and a long musket shot… Him?Mon Dieu, Alain?

A spy, a glib liar, an arch foe of all she held dear! Crack!

Her first round was short and to the right, but Alain's oarsmen faltered, and she'd forced him to duck, rocking his boat alarmingly. Cold-bloodedly now, Charite reloaded and recocked her air-rifle, then brought the rifle's stock back to her shoulder, her fluttery fear now departed, her hands and body no longer shivering. Charite de Guilleri was filled by a calmly righteous and vengeful anger.

'Pirogue's gettin' close, aussi, mam'selle,' Balfa cautioned.

As if she was still Papa's little prodigy hunting quail in a cut-over cane field, Charite swivelled to face dead aft and put a well-placed ball square in the pirogue's bows, forcing all three men in it to lay flat and fall back as they abandoned their paddling.

'Give it up, Charite!' Willoughby-whatever the lying bastard called himself-shouted over. 'We won't hurt you… swear it!'

Vous! she thought, utterly revulsed that she'd let him even put his hands

on her, that she'd given him her body, her affection, and her foolish trust, her… love! Her skin crawled at the recollections of how they'd, how he'd…! 'Vous etes fumier!' she cried. 'You have already hurt me to my very soul, you… 'Bloody'!'

Charite dashed her sleeve over her eyes again, blinked her vision clear of tears, took a breath and let it out slowly, found the instant of perfect stillness, and fired.

Phfft-tack!

The ball hit him square in the chest, just under his heart, and the force of it punched the air from his lungs, slugged him backwards to splay over the forward-most thwart with his head on the jolly boat's damp soleboards.

Merciful God! Lewrie frantically thought as agony engulfed him, unable to draw breath, vision darkening; I'm killed!

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Ah-yee!' Fusilier Balfa cheered her accuracy, all but clapping his oar-chafed, bleeding hands. 'Vivat, mam'selle!'

'Hell wit' dat,' his father, Boudreaux, snarled, dragging them to sobriety. 'Dat only slow 'em down for de little while, den dey really be mad wit' us. Gotta get a lead on 'em. Row or die, chers.'

And, for a few minutes, it seemed as if Charite's awesome shot had bought them a lead. The Anglais' rowing boat had come to a stop, the pirogue, going alongside it, and both receded into the lingering bay mists. Balfa bade Charite to bear off Nor'westerly to throw them off, and reach the closest maze of marshes, cypress and mangrove swamp, not Lake Barataria, which lay due North.

Both men were spent, though, the act of rowing a muscle-searing agony. Their breath roared like a forge bellows as they panted for air, and both were hang-dog, drooling with exhaustion.

'Oh, mon Dieu.' Charite gasped as she fearfully looked over her shoulder and spotted the much faster pirogue off their starboard quarter, re-emerging from the haze. 'They have found us, messieurs.' Sure enough, the paddles flashed more quickly, and the pirogue swung about to run parallel with their boat, just out of pistol-shot. The sailor in the middle of the pirogue held a musket at the ready.

'Sorry, cherie, ' Boudreaux Balfa wheezed, letting his oar slide aft. 'Can t

do no more. We tried.' He pulled a pistol from his belt and let it lay in his lap, handing the other to his son.

Charite abandoned her steering oar and test-cocked her weapon; a snap of the trigger only produced a faint hiss. Its unreliable buttstock flask was expended. In spite of that, she levered a ball into the breech and brought it to her shoulder, the pretence of a ready gun more of a final act of defiance. A way to die in battle.

'Hoy!' the paddler and steersman seated in the stern of the pirogue shouted as he set aside his paddle and took up a musket as well. 'Hoy, Boudreaux Balfa… ye auld cut-throat!' he added, sounding nigh cheerful, not threatening. 'Ye auld mud-foot!'

'Who dat?' Balfa warily called back, squinting in confusion.

'An auld shipmate o' your'n!' the man hooted. 'One ye didn't reco'nise when ye marooned 'im on th' Dry