"If only our superiors would have heeded your suggestions, mon Capitaine" Desplan of Le Bouclier sympathised, toadying up agreeably, as was his wont since they had first set foot on his decks.
"One devoutly wishes that you could be appointed to the Ministry, Capitaine Choundas," the dark-visaged, hawk-nosed Griot suggested. "Scourge out the useless place-keepers, and put real sailors in charge."
They were so obsequious that Hainaut had to stifle a groan of derision. Toadying was pointless for Griot. He was a Breton, one of Le Maitre's fabled Celts, descended from the bold seafarers of Brittany, of the same blood as Choundas, scions of the ancient Veneti. To hear Choundas tell it (and endlessly re-tell it!) the Veneti had been deep-water sailors in their stout oak ships, as daring as the Phoenicians, and might have crossed the trackless oceans to discover the New World long before Columbus; who had almost out-fought Julius Caesar's fleet of eggshell-thin, coast-hugging, oared triremes during the Gallic Wars.
No, Griot had no need to lick Le Maitre'?, arse; his heritage was his pass to promotion and favour.
Desplan, too. Before the Revolution, Desplan had been a mere midshipman, a commoner who could not expect to rise much higher than Lieutenant de Vaisseau in royal service without money, connections, or the rare chance to shine with a spectacular feat of derring-do gaining him notice at the royal court. Desplan, however, was from Quimper, a fluent speaker of the ancient Breton tongue that King Louis's officials had fought to suppress. He and Capt. Choundas had slanged whole afternoons away on-passage, Desplan even daring to compose heroic poems set in the glorious old days-then read them… aloud), first in Breton, then in French for the unenlightened.
Capitaine MacPherson, though… hmmm, Hainaut considered, giving him a perusal under his lashes as he took a long sip of vin ordinaire. The man was tall, lean, and raw-boned, as gingery-blond as Choundas, but more weathered, his skin more amenable to harsh sunlight. Scottish; ergo, some sort of Celt. But most unfortunately and overtly Catholic, of the most egregiously self-effacing and devout kind.
Not the best thing to be, or practice so openly, these days in a nation, under a regime, that had closed great cathedrals and tiny chapels, confiscated the great wealth and lands of Holy Mother Church, and turned them all into Temples of Reason, where the genius of Man was celebrated.
His corvette, La Resolue, was a smartly-run ship, though, kept in perfect trim, her crew intensely drilled and disciplined with a gruff fairness. Their stormy passage had proved MacPherson to be a tarry, hoary-handed "tarpaulin man" as the British, the "Bloodies," said. It was possible that MacPherson would prosper under Choundas's command… but never shine.
"… what Admiral de Brueys will accomplish with the Mediterranean fleet, well," Choundas was raspingly continuing. He stopped in mid-carp, pressed his napkin to his lips to stifle a belch, and bent at the waist as if in pain. "Mon Dieu, take this merde away!"
He shoved his plate halfway to the fruit compote on the glossy wood surface, and flung his all-in-one utensil after it in a sudden fit of rage. "Damned negres! All fire and peppers!" he gravelled, glaring at Hainaut as if it were his fault; making Hainaut cringe to think that his plate and the "loaded" one meant for de Gougne had been confused!
"She'll not do it again, m'sieur! Hainaut hotly vowed, rising. "I'll fetch you a blank-manger, at once, to ease you."
Le Maitre had been suffering stomach troubles ever since he had gotten his orders to sail for the Caribbean. Was his mentor ailing… was it something serious enough to threaten Hainaut's comfortable and lucrative billet? He dashed off towards the cooking shed.
"Oui, go!" Choundas snapped, stifling another painful burning and eructation. "And give that salope a whack or two as warning! Pardons, messieurs. Foreign service has ruined my trips as sure as grape-shot. I could almost savour Chinese cooking. Mandarin was best, subtle and elegant both in taste and presentation. Hoisin, from the far north, or Cantonese, though… all devil's piss, garlic and fire, bah! Does that negre cow's-hide mean to poison me?"
"It has been known to happen, m'sieur le Capitaine," Lt. Recamier spoke up for the first time in half an hour, still diffident. "Though it means the slaughter of the entire house-slave staff… if they are caught at it. Many an overly cruel master or mistress has died, under mysterious circumstances, in the islands. Sometimes, the 'witch' worked by Voudoun poisons are so subtle, even the ablest physicians can't say the cause was not natural. Les noirs have a thousand ways to get back at Europeans. Scorches on new clothing, pets gone missing, lost spoons… anything. Drip at a time, never anything worthy of a beating. I think your chinois would call it 'the death of a thousand cuts', n'est-ce pas? A drip-at-a-time water torture?"
"Indeed," Guillaume Choundas archly drawled back, though with a glint of sudden wariness in his good eye.
"Here you are, m'sieur" Hainaut said, returning with a dish of whipped and sweetened wheat flour. He retrieved the utensil, wiped it on his waist-coat, and handed it to Choundas.
After a few moments, and a few spoonfuls, Le Maitre seemed much eased, and the wary, uncomfortable silence ended. Hainaut returned to his own supper, enjoying its taste, even if it had cooled while he was away on his urgent errand.
"De Brueys," Choundas dyspeptically snapped, picking up where he had left off. "A cautious old fellow. Perhaps more suited to a shore or port command than a fighting fleet, hein? Too set in his ways, the old idle aristo ways. Needs everything just so, a set-piece that advances in understandable steps. We must thank our lucky stars, messieurs, that we are not part of his folly. That little tuft-hunter whose army he carries, General Bonaparte, is sure to overreach, and lead a great part of our navy into trouble. Better we take Malta as planned, land and conquer the Kingdom of Naples second, then cross and conquer Sicily, cutting the Mediterranean in two, before any farther efforts. Give the bifteck Admiral Jervis a real headache and run him back to Lisbon, again. Then, properly shaken down and trained in seamanship, the Adriatic, the Aegean Sea, and the Ottoman Turk lands could be ours by simply opening our hands to pluck them. Oui. Dearly as we would wish to partake in honour and glory for La Belle France, and the Revolution's expansion to all of Europe, we must be thankful that we are out here, where adventures just as grand await us."
Like proper little sychophants appreciative of their superior's acuity and bold strategic thinking, the diners almost stood to clap.
Hainaut didn't quite remember it that way. When orders had come from the five demi-gods who comprised the Directory in Paris, in point of fact, his master had raged and cursed, throwing things to the four winds, howling about Betrayal, Exile, and scourging the "New Men," the slimy-slick attorney-poseurs who'd supplanted the bold firebrands of the Revolution, shuffling those who'd worked the hardest off stage to be forgotten and dismissed without reward! A brace of prisoners in for minor offences had been half-dead before Le Maitre had spent his rage!
It was, though, the story of his master's embittered life, to be used as a cat's-paw to the rich and titled wastrels, even in the days when he was slim, stalwart, and handsome in his own fashion. Now it was exile to the Sugar Islands, where ugly, crippled embarassments could succumb to a myriad of plagues and fevers, un-looked-for and unloved!
Hainaut grimaced a tad, recalling Choundas's slim successes in the Mediterranean, his next thankless assignment to outfit General Humbert's expedition to Ireland in a squadron of frigates. It hadn't been his fault that Lord Cornwallis's army had cornered the small army of Humbert's, forcing its semi-honourable surrender, and a slaughter of its ill-armed, ill-trained Irish rebel auxiliaries…