King, Ship, and Sword

sketchiest warning of 'Garde а l'eau!' Even the Seine, a very pretty river, even in the bucolic stretches, was filled with foul… somethings, yet, to Lewrie's amazement, people actually fished it, and seemed happy with their catches!

Secondly, there were the Frogs themselves. Oh, perhaps some of the better sort might bathe weekly, and might even be so dainty as to launder their underclothes and wear fresh… on Sunday, at least, then not change 'til the next Saturday.

Admittedly, there were quite a few English who were 'high'; the common folk, and his sailors, held that a fellow needed only three complete baths, with soap included, in their lives: at their birthing, the morning of their wedding, and bathed by others before their bodies were put in winding sheets and the grave! Yet… the French! Whew! Soap might be rare, but colognes, Hungary waters, and perfumes covered the lack… among the better sorts. Common Frenchmen, and Frenchwomen, could reek so badly that Lewrie was put in mind of a corpse's armpit.

'It is said, m'sieur,' Jean-Joseph gaily imparted with a snicker 'that when Bonaparte sailed from Egypt, he sent his wife, Josephine, letters by several ships, saying… 'I arrive. Do not bathe,' hawn hawn!'

'You know a good perfumery?' Lewrie asked him.

'La parfumerie, m'sieur, mais oui!' Jean-Joseph exclaimed. 'You wish the finest scents and sachets in all the world, Madame Lewrie, I know the very place. But, per'aps m'sieur would find such shopping a tedium, non?'

'And a milliner's, a dressmaker's, a shoemaker's,' Caroline happily ticked off on her lace-gloved fingers, 'and perhaps a dry goods, a… uhm, les йtoffes, Jean? For fabrics before the dressmaker's?'

'But, of course, madame!' Jean-Joseph heartily agreed, 'the very best of fashion artistes, the most impressive fabrics, from people whom I know are most skilled, and…,' he intimated with a wink, 'the final works can be had bon marchй… that is to say, inexpensively?'

Now, why do I get the feelin' we've fallen into the clutches of a French version of Clotworthy Chute? Lewrie had to ask himself; we've not seen 'inexpensive' since we left Amiens!

'And it would not go amiss did you have a suit of clothes run up for yourself, Alan,' Caroline suggested. 'France sets the style for the entire world, after all. And, what you brought along їs a bit long in tooth by now,' she said, giving him a chary looking-over.

'Uhm, perhaps,' Lewrie allowed. In his teens, before his father had press-ganged him into the Navy (there'd been an inheritance from his mother's side, and Sir Hugo'd needed the money perishin' bad!), Lewrie's clothing tastes had run to the extreme 'Macaroni' styles. But after better than half his life spent in uniform, what fashion sense he'd had had dulled to more sobre convention.

'Perhaps your maid, Marianne, and I can escort you to the shops, madame,' Jean- Joseph spritely babbled on, 'and for m'sieur, perhaps he can be guided by Jules, to whom I will impart the location of the most stylish tailor in all Paris, n'est-ce pas?'

'Uhm, that'd suit,' Lewrie said with a shrug. 'Suit? Ha?'

'M'sieur is so droll,' Jean-Joseph all but simpered.

'Isn't he?' Caroline agreed with a roll of her eyes. 'And on your separate jaunt, Alan, you might see about your swords.'

'Aye. Call on our embassy, too,' Lewrie said, with rising enthusiasm. To be frank about it, Lewrie by then had had his fill of museums, grand cathedrals, and art galleries, monuments to the Revolution and its brutalities, and, in point of fact, their unctuous guide, Jean-Joseph, as well. And he'd always despised being dragged along on feminine shopping trips. A full day on his own would be very welcome.

'M'sieur wishes a sword-smith?' Jean-Joseph enquired, a golden glint in his eyes at the thought of more spending with his recommended artisans.

'The British Embassy,' Lewrie told him. 'We do have one here, do we not? Now we're at peace?'

'There is, m'sieur,' Jean-Joseph replied, looking a bit mystified. 'I can instruct Jules to direct you there, as well.'

'Very good, then,' Lewrie decided. 'Today or tomorrow, dear?'

'Tomorrow,' Caroline said, 'so I may spend the whole day at it.'

'Per'aps, then… madame and m'sieur desire dinner? Quite by coincidence, there is an excellent restaurant nearby, and their food… magnifique!' Jean-Joseph enthused, kissing his fingers in the air.

'Lead on, then,' Lewrie told him. 'Lead on.'

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

0ne hopes that readers will be patient with a slight digression from Lewrie's foreign adventure, but a few people also in Paris must be introduced before the tale may continue.

As Lewrie discovered in London the winter before, when between seagoing commissions, even the greatest, most populated city in the civilised world can seem too small when, out of the blue (or overcast grey, in London's case) all the embarrassing people who should never be in the same place at the same time, or ever actually meet, do show up and share greetings. In London, it was an innocent trip into the Strand to purchase ink, stationery, and sealing wax, and a chance meeting on the sidewalks with his old school chums (they'd all three been expelled from Harrow for arson and riotous behaviour at the same time) Lord Peter Rushton, Viscount Draywick, and that clever scoundrel Clotworthy Chute. Which rencontre had been interrupted, in distressing happenstance, by the arrival of the lovely, delectable (and hot after Lewrie) Eudoxia Durschenko, better known as the 'Scythian Princess' (but really a Cossack) who performed bareback (and damn near nude!) with Daniel Wigmore's Peripatetic Extravaganza as a crack shot with the recurved horn bow, seconding as the ingenue in Wigmore's theatrical troupe… along with her papa, Arslan Artimovich Durschenko, the one-eyed knife-thrower and lion tamer, a man who was determined to see his daughter buried a virgin, and who hated Capt. Alan Lewrie much like Satan hated Holy Water.

Despite that, they'd ended together in the same tea shop, at the same table, with sticky buns and jam; Lord Peter drooling over Eudoxia, Eudoxia batting lashes at Lewrie, Clotworthy finagling how much money he might screw from the Russians, and Eudoxia's father whispering low curses near Lewrie's ear, whilst Lewrie strove for 'innocent.'

As if it could've gotten any worse (oh yes, it could!) in had swept the former actress Emma Batson, now the Mother Abbess of the finest brothel in the city, with two of her girls… one named Tess, whom Lewrie, deprived of his wife's affections for several years, was regularly rogering. Oh, it had been so jolly!

But we do digress.

As for Paris, now… Lewrie would think it very slim odds that he would know anyone among its hundreds of thousands of residents, except for the new First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, and it was even slimmer odds that he and Bonaparte would ever come face-to-face.

Bonaparte's guns had sunk Lewrie's commandeered mortar ship off the eastern side of Toulon during the brief capture of the port during the First Coalition (blown it, and him, sky-high in point of fact) and temporarily made Lewrie a soggy prisoner on the beach before Spanish cavalry had galloped to the rescue.

Dame Fortune, however, has always found a way to 'put the boot in' where Alan Lewrie is concerned, when he is at his smuggest and most content.

In the heart of the city, down both sides of the Seine, lay the government buildings and former royal palaces. Napoleon Bonaparte was living in the Tuileries Palace, now the Palais National, in the eight-room appartement formerly occupied by Louis XVI. The Lewries, quite by chance (or was it?),