"Ahem," Peel said, seizing the initiative so his superior could sit silent and gather his aplomb before speaking too rashly. "As you may assume, Mister Pelham and I are not to be revealed as Crown agents,
Captain Lewrie. The Governor-General, his excellency the Earl of Balcarres… Admiral Sir Hyde Parker and some few of his senior officers, are aware of our true identities. To the general population, we're to be known as speculators, out from London to make our fortunes. Mister Pelham will pose as the younger son of a wealthy, landed family, seeking acreage, and I will make myself known as the family's advisor from Coutts' Bank… a junior partner sent to determine the practicality of the enterprise."
"Junior to old Mister Simon Silberberg, hmm?" Lewrie chuckled in knowing understanding, recalling one of Mr. Twigg's old aliases.
"Just so, sir," Peel replied, nodding and tipping him a wink.
"And since I also bank with Coutts, my being seen with you is perfectly innocent, I take it, Mister Peel?" Lewrie said, grinning.
"Exactly, sir," Peel agreed. "My presence is also, uhm… to be a voice of reason and temperance upon the impetuous Mister Pelham. Serving a second role as a factotum to his family's legitimate worry."
"His governess, aye," Lewrie could not help suggesting with a leer. "Such a frenetic, easily aroused young fellow."
"Ahem," Pelham objected to be so characterised, despite a role of a light-headed young wastrel as his agreed alias.
"My, how believable," Lewrie went on, cooing. "It has such a… versimilitude."
"Quite," Peel agreed, hiding a smile; which made Lewrie wonder what an experienced agent such as Peel, himself once a protege under Twigg's tutelage, thought of being supplanted as the senior man on the mission by a less-experienced "comer" with better connexions, interest, and patronage.
"So, what's the plan, then?" Lewrie asked, deciding they might as well get down to it. "What part of Choundas d'ye want me to lop off this time?"
Dammit, though-there was another of those guarded looks back and forth 'twixt Pelham and Peel.
"This does concern Choundas, doesn't it?" Lewrie pressed.
"Well, it is, and it does," Pelham answered with an inscrutable smile. "Though not completely," he maddeningly hinted.
"There's bigger fish to fry than him?" Lewrie asked, puzzled.
"Indeed, Captain Lewrie," Pelham told him with a condescending little chuckle. "There still remains the larger matter of winning the French colony of Saint Domingue for the Crown."
"We just lost it," Lewrie all but yelped in surprise. "Or had you not heard? Our army beaten… evacuated, root and branch?"
"Nothing is ever completely lost, Captain Lewrie," Pelham said looking down his long, aristocratic nose, and still wearing a superior grin. "So long as we remain at war with France, the game's not ended. Oh, I'll allow that the French, with this Toussaint L'Ouverture and his tag-rag-and-bobtail slave rabble as their instrument, have out-scored us, the last few innings. But barring a sudden declaration of peace, the game is still afoot… and it is now our turn before the stumps."
"With what?" Lewrie petulantly demanded, trying to picture the Saint Domingue soldiery and Pelham on a cricket pitch. "We sending in another army?"
"What may not be gained by force of arms, sir," the elegant wee Pelham chuckled, in a conspiratorial whisper, "may yet be won with the application of guile, bribery, and diplomacy."
Lewrie had a sudden sinking feeling that this would not be in any way a straightforward proposition-and why he had hoped that it would, he couldn't imagine. He knew in his bones that this time, he would really be in for a spell of "war on the cheap."
CHAPTER SIX
Looks hellish-lost t'me!" Lewrie grumbled, wishing that Capt. Charles's wine was but a tad drinkable. He felt badly in need of some.
"To all intents and purposes, it does appear so," Pelham said, "but appearances can deceive, sir. We have our sources in France who tell us that the Directory in Paris, and the Assembly, have their suspicions as to whether Saint Domingue has been won for France, or does L'Ouverture have designs of his own which may result in a loss after all. There are mercantile forces of great influence who demand Saint Domingue return to immediate profitability, both for their own gain, and for the Republic's. They want their lands, and their money back, even does the trade in cocoa, sugar, cotton, coffee, and tobacco go in American hulls. Once exports are sold in American ports, profit is easily exchanged from United States banks to French banks."
"The United States is at war with France," Lewrie pointed out.
"Not officially," Pelham countered, "and American merchantmen, along with Portuguese, Danish, and Swedish traders, enter the colony's ports daily. As captain of a blockading frigate you surely know how impossible it is to stop supposedly neutral trade, so long as their cargoes are innocent, and no military supplies are discovered."
"Granted," Lewrie moodily agreed.
"A return to profitability, though, a quick one," Pelham continued, Would require a return to the status quo ante on the island. That is to say, the presence of a French garrison army, the dismissal of the ex-slave armies, and this L'Ouverture creature being supplanted by a new, French-White-Governor-General. But," Pelham posed "What if L'Ouverture doesn't want supplanting? Hmm? What if he owns to dreams of grandeur? He's a simple African, a former slave at best one generation from the customs of some barbaric kingdom and a crude kingship recalled from his bed-time stories. And what worries France is that, perhaps, Liberte, Egalite et Fraternite cannot extend to all, not if the plantations must be productive, again. That would mean the return to human bondage. You know of Leger Sonthonax, Lewrie?"
"A horse, showed well at New Market?" Lewrie quipped.
"The former governor of Saint Domingue," Pelham exclaimed, not sure if Lewrie was being witty, or sublimely un-informed. "Soon as he kicked our forces off, L'Ouverture finagled to send Sonthonax back to France to represent the colony. Sonthonax is a staunch revolutionary, the bloody sort, who more than decimated the colony's Whites with his guillotines, worse than the Terror of '93 in France. He's a bit of a loose cannon, as you sailors might say… loves the Blacks! Said in public he wished he was Black, more than once. All that 'noble savage' rot of Rousseau's, don't ye know."
"Then who better to send to Paris," Lewrie assumed aloud.
"Laveaux, t'other ranking Frenchman in the colony," Pelham said. "He, at least, is a cultured, aristocratic holdover from the old days of the ancien regime, and a whole lot cleverer and subtler than Leger Sonthonax, more skilled in faction intrigues. Just as 'beloved' with L'Ouverture, we're told, and leagues more able. The question is, why did L'Ouverture send Sonthonax, instead of Laveaux? Sonthonax is not in good loaf in Paris. Too fractious a man, but deuced lucky in being out of the country when his worst enemies got the chop. As he did in the latest instance, landing in France just as Robespierre went under the guillotine and lost his head," Pelham snickered.
"Robespierre, d'ye say!" Lewrie cried, perking up. "The ogre finally got his, hey? Why, that's marvellous news."
Wish we could drink to that! Lewrie dryly thought.
"But did L'Ouverture hope that Sonthonax would be eliminated?" Pelham asked the aether, and leaned back in his chair, staring at the old, water-spotted plaster ceiling. "Is Laveaux more bendable to his will, should he declare total independence? Or is Laveaux less powerful to control events…"