Choundas found it hard to think. He took a deep breath of hot, still, and musty air, squirmed about so his sweat-sodden shirt became cooler by exposure, and pored over the names in the copied musters. He ticked off a few names, chose a couple, then leaned back in frustration against the damp leather chairback, chewing absently on the end of his expensive pen's rosewood stylus. It was one of the new steel-nibbed pens, just coming into vogue and common use, instead of goose quills, and (he proudly thought for a moment) another example of his nation's inventiveness, like the lead-core pencil.
Recamier? No. Jules Hainaut? Hmmm. What was he to do with young Jules? he wondered.
The lad had shown well, the day that Le Bouclier had… died. Hainaut was tarry-handed, when he put his mind to it, and was overdue for reward for his services to him, as well as his recent pluckiness, but yet… what that idiotic Dutch captain Haljewin had said stuck in Choundas's suspicious mind, and kept resurfacing.
Someone who had known the Dutch ship's cargo and day of her departure, someone who knew his plans must have betrayed her, had betrayed poor Capt. Desplan and Le Bouclier to the British!
How else to explain how Lewrie and his frigate had arrived just at the perfect moment? Lewrie was a swaggering dumb beast, a weapon to be wielded by his betters, nothing more, Choundas disparagingly sneered.
In the Far East, Lewrie had been under the thumb of a much slyer man, that murderous cut-throat, the spare and hatchet-faced anglais spy Zachariah Twigg. Together, they had ruined his plans a second time in the Mediterranean, in '94, despite being forewarned by Citizen Pouzin, his enigmatic civilian counterpart sent down from Paris. Posing as a mere banking clerk, a Juif from Coutts' Bank named Simon Silberberg of Lewrie's acquaintance, Twigg had. Hah!
Old, Twigg would be now, but Choundas did not think he could go far wrong to suspect that he still spun his webs this far from London, using a younger protege who would find that beastly ignoramus, Lewrie, once again a useful cat's-paw. A younger spy who had already obtained his secret navy signals books!
And… had not old Twigg or Silberberg, or whatever he called himself-and Lewrie!-taken one of his coasting vessels full of arms to encourage the Piedmontese and Savoyards into French service?
Another delicate mission most effectively stopped, and Jules… Hainaut had been aboard her, had he not? Taken prisoner, and held for a mere six weeks before being exchanged for a British midshipman, then returned to his side. He'd thought, then, that it had been a suspiciously short imprisonment, but…
Had Twigg "turned" Hainaut back on him as a secret informer, as Lewrie had somehow "turned" that Claudia Mastandrea slut who had been sent to milk him dry of information, then poison him, as he and Citizen Pouzin had arranged? All his schemes had turned to dust, after Hainaut had come back to him… hadn't they?
How did les anglais know of his coming to Guadeloupe, learn of Haljewin's sailing day, know his decision to shift Le Bouclier over to Basse-Terre, and when? From a nest of traitors and spies already here °n the island… or from one he had unwittingly brought with him?
Choundas had always known that Jules Hainaut's eager deference was cynical play-acting. The lad was out for his pleasures, promotion a fat purse, and his prick. He had taken him on anyway, knowing what good use he could make of a shrewd and pragmatic rogue. The Revolution badly needed men who would not flinch from ruthlessness and Jules had proved that he could ignore false sentiments and perform what he was ordered to do. Choundas had worked round his sham and had even found the lad amusing at times. He had groomed him tutored him, to improve his effectiveness in the future. He didn't wish to think the worst of the lad. There could be a spy placed, or bought off, long ago; there could be someone whom he had yet to suspect. And it would be galling for Choundas to admit he had nurtured a viper in his breast all this time.
He would give Hainaut the benefit of the doubt… for now. At sea, he would no longer be privy to the plans he would improvise, now that Choundas knew that his old ones might be compromised. If Jules was the spy, he would have no way to communicate with the British.
Did Lewrie and the British continue to plague him with more inexplicable coincidences, Choundas would know that Hainaut was innocent.
But, did the fortunes of his small squadron and his new raiders improve beyond all hopes, and the deep investigation he would begin the very next morning fail to turn up another suspected traitor…!
It would be sad, but for the lack of another explanation Choundas would have no other choice but to denounce and arrest Hainaut, put him to "the question" to sear the truth from him, then turn him over to the gendarmes for trial, and a sure and certain execution under the blade of the merciless Victor Hugues's "Monsieur Guillotine."
And if blameless, well… Hainaut would get his seasoning for future duty to France as a naval officer, his fondest wish. Choundas thought to watch his reactions for carefully hidden upset, or too much joy. No, he'd dissemble, pretend to be glad but not too glad, sham sadness to be leaving Choundas's side, perhaps even pipe his eyes with "loss" at leaving the service of such a fine master… pah!
It would prove nothing, Choundas suspected; he was too "fly."
There were blank lines opposite the positions of the schooner, now renamed La Vigilante. Choundas dipped the steel nib of his pen in the inkwell, paused over the lines. Dieuxieme, or Troisieme, Second or
Third officer?
"A real reward," Choundas whispered, his fiendish face even uglier as he smiled so widely, as he clumsily wrote Hainaut's name on the line for Second Officer. Written with his left hand, the name was almost illegible even to him. But Choundas was sure that his mousy and harassed little clerk Etienne de Gougne would be able to decypher it when he made the fair copies in his copper-plate hand.
And gloat with studiously hidden glee to be rid of his tormentor!
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The two warships sailed together, clawing out their offing from Antigua to the East-Sou'east, and close-hauled to windward on the larboard tack. Though HMS Proteus had been quicker off the mark to seize the windward advantage, smothering the USS Thomas Sumter in her lee by her spread of sail, the American ship had still surged up almost abeam of her by late afternoon as the day's heat faded, as the airs borne by the Trade wind grew denser.
"Fresher from the careenage, I expect, sir," Mr. Winwood said as the reason, "with a cleaner bottom."
"Equal our waterline length, Captain," Lt. Langlie supposed as well, "so it stands to reason that both hulls perform equally. Perhaps a touch finer in her entry than ours, but…"
"No better handled," Lt. Catterall said with a dismissive sniff.
"Longer yards, with larger courses, surely," Lt. Adair dared to comment as they watched the Sumter bowl along, barely half a mile alee, "especially 'pon her t'gallants and royals. Fuller-bellied jibs… "
"Mmhmm," Lewrie replied to their guesses, telescope to one eye for the last ten minutes, entire, intent upon his study of her.