The Captain`s Vengeance

housekeeper, or… '

'We only wish the best for you, cherie,' Maman insincerely and over-sweetly assured her, ready to tear up over her youngest girl's departure, her potentially lifelong absence.

Marry a village dullard? A cobbler? Charite bleakly thought, cringing with revulsion; Be a housemaid, a matron's… servant? Burp her infants and empty night-jars? Ugh!

'I beg you, Maman,' Charite pleaded. 'Must I really end…'

'It is settled,' Papa snapped. 'It is the only solution,' he concluded, once again badly mistaking her dread of dullity for dread of parting, her grimace of disgust at paid servitude or worse for the loss of her family's love!

Who are these people? Charite had to ask herself; Did I really ever know them? Paris, though!

Once in France, did she dissemble well and play up humble, she could make her way to Paris, get her well- meaning relatives to show her the famous sights where the Revolution had taken place! Once there, she could ditch them long enough to seek out men in the Assembly or the Senate, even an august member of the powerful Directory! Press for Louisiana 's liberation, tell them what she'd done, had suffered, in the cause of Revolution and its worldwide spread. Some powerful man would sponsor her, surely, free her from the threat of commitment and the certain dullness of her rustic relatives! Who knew better than a Creole girl how to cajole, flirt, and beguile, after all? Choose well, and she might end up touted as a heroine of France herself, her story a cause celebre, invited to the best salons!

She would obey her parents… for a time. She would mind her behaviour aboard ship, and convince her docteur-minder that she was as sane as he, cruelly and unjustly exiled. She would convince her relations of it, too, force herself to be helpful, meekly obedient to their strictures, and sunnily sweet; once her grief had waned of course. Or would a lingering wan-ness suit better? No matter!

She would win her freedom and get to Paris, where anything was possible; win support for her cause, for her upkeep. Even marry, if a powerful and clever man wished it. She would still give anything for Louisiana… and for France!

Mrs. Tobias Hosier, Mrs. Toby Jugg, toiled her stony sugarcane field in the hot Barbadan sun, despairing that their poor plot seemed to produce more stones and weeds than cane stalks this season.

Her hips and lower back ached from her hoeing and chopping, and perspiration soaked her entire body, her shabby work-gown. So it was with weary relief, as well as curiosity, that she observed the arrival of a rider at her tumbledown gate. He called her name and waved a letter in the air.

She shambled back to the house and the yard-gate, fetching Tess from watching the baby on the shabby quilt, swabbing her face and arms on her apron as she accepted the rare letter with a surge of hope that Toby might have included a quarterly draught on his Navy pay, for they might not be able to settle their rent and store bills by Quarter Day, and the next Assizes.

She dipped the post-rider a grateful curtsy, then went back to the porch gallery, out of the unmerciful sun, to sit down and read it.

'Lord above, wot've ye done this time, lad?' she whispered as she saw that it was addressed from 'Patrick Warder,' from someplace in Spanish Louisiana!

De er est Bess

I hev run from the Navy pet not intire my idee I sware. I run with much Monie tho hev got us 1,200 akers in Lueeziana up the Missippi river neer Batton Rooj with plentie left for fine house slaves stock seed itt is rich fine land will gro anything ha ha.

Itt is wild cuntry beginning but ful of Promiss We will hev vary few Spanyerds butt manie Americans for neybors English-spekers tho few good Catholics. We all start with nuthing but will be grand as lords landed gentry sumday, sware it.

Bess sell all keep little wot you traysure take Yankee ship too New Orlins I will mete you dres you fine as a title ladie. Ask of me call self Mrst. Patrick Warder. Kiss the babes for me say we will see eech other soon be happy evermore in Americay. A kiss from me to you git here soon. P.S. Be shur to fetch along my gud luck Toby Jug. Your luving husbund, ritten at Warderlands Plantayshun.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Ow!' Capt. Alan Lewrie carped as Surgeon's Mate Maurice Durant cinched his bindings tighter. 'So snug I can't draw a decent breath!'

'So they will be, Captain,' his French-born former physician told him with a sad chuckle as Aspinall helped Lewrie don a new shirt. 'Ze bruised ribs and breast-bone knit slowly, so you must expect pain, and think yourself fragile for at least anozzer month before I may say wiz confidence zat you are completely healed, n'est-ce pas, sir?'

'Mean t'say I'm to dodder like a Greenwich Pensioner, on light duties like one of our herniated brace- tenders?'

'I fear zat is the apt comparison, sir,' Durant said with a sly twinkle in his eyes as he closed up his portable kit-box.

'Not serious enough to put a replacement captain aboard, is it?' Lewrie fretted as he gazed at Admiralty House on the Palisades of Kingston Harbour. After being battered about by higher authorities in the last few months, he was 'oft-bitten, damned shy!' of meddlers, or those who'd reward their favourites with a posting into a frigate, the finest sort of command the Royal Navy could offer an aspiring young officer.

'Oh no, Captain, no fear of zat,' Durant assured him. 'You mus' be lazy for a time, but zat is not cause for displacing you.'

'Oh, good,' Lewrie chearly said, perked up considerably. 'Lazy I b'lieve I can manage main-well, thankee!'

'Much's you done for 'em, sir,' Aspinall commented as he shoved

Lewrie into his waist-coat, 'I'd expect 'em t'keep you an' Proteus as one forever. Much's you earned 'em, sir.'

They'd sailed back to Jamaica with their pirate schooner flying British colours atop its French Tricolour trailing astern of them and had created quite the stir of excitement once their reports, Lewrie's and Nicely's, had been read, and the amount of coined silver aboard her had been tallied. The Admiralty Court had leapt to condemn the prize, Admiral Parker had bought her in as a fast armed tender for ?4,000, to be seconded to a larger, slower cruising ship so he could garner even more loot at sea. And, for his signal service in their recent expedition, Lt. Darling, Capt. Nicely's protege, had been appointed into her as commanding officer.

Capt. Nicely had finally struck his broad-pendant and departed for a new command of his own, since Admiral Parker realised that he would be much more useful at sea, leading a real squadron, than ever he was as Staff Captain.

'Damme, Lewrie, but you've saved me!' Nicely had grandly stated at his departure ceremony, pumping Lewrie's hand so happily. 'Got me a proper broad-pendant at last, and made me rich into the bargain!'

They had only salvaged eight hundred kegs of coined dollars off the prize, the rest of the rumoured six million in silver was scattered over a mile of bay-bottom mud or swampy forest when the Spanish prize exploded. Or, as their few surviving prisoners suggested, there never had been that much, and the rest might have made it to New Orleans on another ship. Pollock could bear them the facts when he returned.