A King`s Commander - Dewey Lambdin

Pouzin was not to know it, but Le Hideux had already discovered his true identity through his own intelligence network of informers and collaborators, minor functionaries of local or naval committees, and a host of officials in the Ministry of Marine. There were skeletons in Pouzin's closet; some Royalist sentiments in the family, a cousin conveniently sent to Boston, and Pouzin's attempt to purchase a title back in 1786 of the old calendar. Someday, Le Hideux was sure he would use that information to damn Pouzin, if he persisted in ogling him like a carnival monster, or sneering behind his back at his mutilation. Not anytime soon, though, Le Hideux sighed. A new guard was taking over, the original patriots being supplanted, deposed, or guillotined after show trials, and the unctuous lawyers and bien йlevй schemers were now in the saddle, no better than the haughty "aristos" they'd helped kill. The professional politicians, Le Hideux sneered; it is ever thus! Men who thought him an ogre, too, a frightening, crippled toad who rose in the patronage of the giants of the Revolution that they'd replaced. A time to lie low, he decided, to escape their notice. And to give them such a military and naval success that his witch-finding activities for the original rebels could be conveniently forgotten. When Genoa became theirs… he could become their scourge, a shabby but useful tool for the sneering arrivistes. And take his chances.

There'd never been a time when he hadn't felt like a tool, an implement to be discarded. Safer, perhaps, to have remained a Breton peasant, in the fisheries with his father. He might have come to own three or four luggers, by now. But still go home each evening to a drab, and limited, village cottage, stinking offish and shiny with their scales. The ambitions his father had, that he had had… He could have become a priest, a pampered sycophant of the "aristos." Even without a cassock, the Jesuits had taught him much, had declared him to be a wondrous pupil. Had they not introduced him to Machiavelli's writings? How apt a preparation the Jesuits and their coldly calculating logic had been to him… to ready him for the time when he was better to be feared, than loved! His acceptance into the old Royal French Navy, the best he had been allowed, since getting into the glorious old aristocratic Armйe was impossible for a fisherman's son. The sneers and jibes there, too, as the smelly fishmonger's boy, the dirty-arsed coastal peasant…!

He'd risen, though, by doing their dirty work, by being better than anyone else. By taking on the tasks the idle "aristos" wouldn't, or couldn't. But, successful though he'd been, until his downfall in the Far East, he'd been their despicable tool, a brute instrument best kept on the orlop until needed. Then cast him aside, with a pittance for a disability pension, as soon as…

He'd made them pay, all those who had sneered at him, derided him, passed him over so some simpering frailty with a weak chin, but a perfect lineage, could advance. Revenge had been so sweet, and their terror so savory, when they'd beheld his new appearance. He'd hunted them down, with the diligence of a starving ferret clawing his way into a henhouse. Found them, denounced them no matter how secure they were in the new order, along with the "aristos" who truly deserved the guillotine, the weak, the foolish, the idle…

No, despite the appalling risk he ran to remain in power, even at the gall of his soul to remain the tool of more powerful men, the power was heady. Tried in the fire, he'd been-by his failure, and all the years he'd suffered the jeers and curses in the streets, the urchins who taunted him and imitated his limp, or ran screaming at the sight of him-for the fun of it!

Now, he knew how to use his hideousness to terrorize, in making handsome men jump when he gave an order. Or shiver like an aspic with a single glare! And the women… the ones who'd turned away, crossed the street, and crossed themselves for luck against him. Even whores who'd laughed him to scorn, or refused his trade, well… he'd hunted down a few of those, too, and their families. And made them pay their comeuppance in his cells, before their trials and beheadings.

Fear was a wonderful aphrodisiac, fear of his physical person, and fear of his power; greater and more coercive than mere political power. More brutal and direct, to get what he wanted. No woman anywhere in France could dare refuse him now.

And those officers' wives and daughters, oh yes, the daughters best! What a thrill it was to have them without the mask, candles lit so they must see him, so he could savor their revulsion, the stomach-churning shame and horror on their faces. All so he might spare their husband, their father, from the guillotine, indictment or denunciation. The perverse duties they'd performed, weeping, to keep them alive. Only the prettiest now, only the slimmest, most graceful… and, youngest! As long as he held on to his power, he could enslave an adolescent for months, keep her father in chains all that time, until he'd tired of her, and his preordained but delayed sentence was…!

Hardly Jesuitical, he thought with a leer, dragging pen and ink to him. There must be a letter to Toulon, no longer begging for ships but demanding-threatening. If he failed for lack of support, they would go down with him, those time-serving, timorous shop clerks! A set of orders to ships of his squadron, to escort the Alassio convoy. A letter to the captain of La Resolve, a corvette only victualing at Nice, to consider himself permanently attached. Bayard, a devilishly handsome rogue, who knew better than to sneer, or gape, but…

Bayard, Le Hideux pondered. What tale had he told him…

"Etienne," he shouted for his clerk.

"Oui, Capitaine?" The careworn little nonentity quavered at the door, leaning in as if scared to be alone with his employer.

"Something nags at me, Etienne," Le Hideux replied, distracted. "Two things. You have a retentive mind, perhaps you may recall. Early last summer. Reports from Citizen Pouzin regarding the arrival at San Fi-orenzo of a British ship named Jester. All engagements or sightings mentioning identified 'Bloody' ships since the fall of Bastia. Or at least before Calvi surrendered. Search my files and find it. Secondly, Capitaine Bayard told us a tale at dinner from his time with the Brest fleet. Something concerning a British vessel that he witnessed. Do you remember his story?"

"No, sir, sorry," Etienne stammered, ever in fear of failing his master, of paying for it…! "Y… you might do best to ask of Bayard, sir. The other, though… Jester? Something akin to Le Bujfon, or Le Plaisantin? I do recall that, I think. Around the time the convoy to Calvi was… lost?" he dared remind Le Hideux of that debacle.

"Oui, find it, vitel" Le Hideux glared so fiercely that clerk Etienne went quite pale, and fell on his knees before a large chest of documents and reports, hands shaking and palms wet. It took several long minutes for him to produce, all the while aware of the scratching of the senior captain's quill. Then the drumming of his fingers on the desktop after he'd finished his letters and was… waiting!

"Voilа, Capitaine]" Etienne sighed with relief. "In Lieutenant de Mal-leret's report. From La Flиche? The British ship she fought… when Lieutenant Michaud was slain, was Jester. He saw it on her transom."

"Salaud intrigant!" Le Hideux exclaimed with an inward hiss of air. "The meddlesome bastard!"

The ship that had taken his convoy at Bordighera, the British ship that had savaged La Flиche and taken another convoy… killed a promising fellow Malouin, a Breton champion, Lieutenant Michaud… they were the same?

"Oui, Capitaine, quel dommage…"

"Send for Bayard. I must know what his story was about. There was a name he mentioned, but…!" Le Hideux ordered, seething. "This one, this Jester. We must destroy her, Etienne. And her captain, too! This I vow. Whoever he is. I will eat his brains and shit in his skull!"

"Oui, Capitaine." Etienne nodded, mouth agape. He'd never seen this ginger-haired ogre this angry, not even when presiding at a trial of an "aristo"! Trial? he thought. A good excuse to become scarce.

"Ah… I have the charges drawn up for your signature, Capitaine. Becquet's?"

"Oui, give them here, Etienne. Once you've sent to La Resolve for Bayard, finish searching all the files for any further mention of this Jester. I must know her. Him. Pouzin promises, but I cannot wait on him…"

Le Hideux-Brutto Faccia-Die Narbe-he went by an entire host of sobriquets; none of them flattering or reassuring. He dipped his quill and signed Becquet's fate; charges and expected sentence:

Citoyen Guillaume Choundas-Capitaine de Vaisseau.

CHAPTER

8

A best-silk-stockings evening, Lewrie elated, all tricked out in low-cut shoes and breeches, and his best full dress. Feeling the winds though after getting used to slop trousers or his London-made Hessian boots with the gold braid and tassels. His shoes, it must be admitted, as well as his conscience, were pinching him sore.

Letters come from Caroline, and from Phoebe, in the same post, and held aboard Agamemnon for Jester's return to Vado Bay. Fond, and loving devotion from Caroline, now quite recovered, as gay as larks at being able to ride their acres, again, of how glorious was an English country summer, how desperately she missed him, and would never withhold vital information from him again! A note from Sewallis, replete with paw prints from his dogs, a scrawl from Hugh, and…

And from Phoebe, such desperate longing, tearful phrases, words of love and… devotion, too, dammit! Chatty, newsy, delightful, as if a light touch might cajole him into believing their relationship had never suffered a grounding. Time and distance from her had caused him to forget just how delightfully cheery she really was. Her use of English had grown so skillful that he might have imagined (minus news of children, of course!) that the signatures of wife and mistress were interchangeable, that either missive could have come from the other!

"A welcome and diverting amusement," Nelson had promised them, so he had scrubbed up, shaved, and donned his best for a night ashore in Genoa, as welcome guests of a very influential and powerful member of their Senate, one extremely close to the Doge, himself.

Genoa was indeed more distracting, and impressive, than Naples. And Lewrie had been most impressed by Naples. Every other house was a magnificent palace, he could have sworn, each one richer and grander than the last, in a merchant city that had been rich as far back as Julius Caesar's times, and had hoarded and multiplied its vast seaborne wealth ever since. Surely, he thought-a sailor would find warm welcome in Genoa!

Their host's palace was truly magnificent, if a bit overdone. Gilt, coin-silver, solid gold gewgaws, silk wallpaper, silk hangings, crystal chandeliers ablaze with two hundred or more beeswax candles at a time. Precious… everything in sight was precious, rare, priceless, including the clothes of the guests, their jewels and fripperies. Bare-shouldered ladies, bodices half exposed, the heat of candles and too many bodies gusted the confined night air, fanned overly sweet or musky scents of Hungary Water, gentlemen's cologne, or ladies' perfume over him like a Levanter, along with the dry talc aroma of face powder or hair powder, the tang of rouges and pastes. And admittedly a sour reek of past and present perspiration from those expensive suitings or gowns, and the poor toilette or bathing habits of the rich and noble.