Lewrie whooped in glee and got to his feet, his music forgotten.
"Captain, sir," unfortunate Mr. Burns said, doffing his hat as he came to the quarterdeck, "but there's a drunk soldier alongside, is asking for you, and…" He gulped a time or two, fretfully.
"Tell him I'm fucking a zebra," Lewrie said with a chuckle.
"I can't tell him… that, sir!" Burns said, so embarrassed that his face paled, making his acne stand out like bubonic buboes.
"Make it 'carnal knowledge of-never mind, I'll tell him," Lewrie said, gladly trotting to the entry-port to lean over and wave.
"Permission t'scamper up that wee ladder thing, sir!" Cashman cried, standing unsteadily in the gently rocking rowboat. "I've come t'get you drunk, Admiral Lewrie, and I'll not be denied, dammit all!"
"The zebra I was stuffin' was a virgin, you reprobate, so this had better be good!" Lewrie called down, to the great amusement of his crew.
"Half dozen o Jean-Pierre's best bubbly, Admiral Noah!" Cashman promised, displaying a bottle from a straw-packed case at his feet in the
rowboat's bilges.
"Aye, then… scamper on up that ladder thing, General Cashman!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
So this is the infamous Toulon," Cashman said, stripping away his scarlet tunic, neck-stock, and waistcoat as a seaman fetched in the crate of bottles. He tossed his uniform at the starboard-side settee, then plunked into an upholstered chair, reaching out to the desk where the cat sat, hunkered down over his front paws, uncertain of this newcomer's antecedents. "Meow, puss. Killed any rats lately?" he asked as he offered fingers under Toulon 's nose. A moment later and Toulon was on his side, tail lashing, and head writhing in bliss to be petted.
"Fickle bastard," Lewrie grumbled. "Ah, Aspinall, kindly take the tompion from the muzzle of one of those bottles, and run it out in battery for us, will you? There's a good lad."
"What is that smell?" Cashman asked, wrinkling his nose.
"Tar, citron oil, and sulfur," Lewrie chuckled. "Our Surgeon's Mates are still tinkerin' with the formula, but it's cut the number of men who come down sick, and run off the flies and mosquitoes."
"Like Satan breakin' wind under clean sheets." Cashman hooted.
"Takes our minds off the bilges and the pea-soup farts," Lewrie told him as Aspinall produced a loud Thwockl and a flying cork, which made Toulon scramble to his paws and fly off the desk to intercept it. Good flutes were filled, the bottle stood on the desk, then Aspinall faded back into his tiny pantry. "Damn' fine, even warm. Aahhh, damn fine," Lewrie said after a first tentative sip.
"We'll not see its like this side of Paris any longer," Cashman mourned. "Jean-Pierre and Maman escaped Port-Au-Prince, and took all their wine cellars with 'em… their cooks, their families, and their best girls. Hired a schooner, emptied their house o' furnishings and plate, chests and chests o' money, and all, and headed for Charleston."
"Mighty tempting target, all that pelf," Lewrie speculated with a frown. "Who's t'say the crew won't turn pirate for an hour or two, and have 'em over the side?"
"Took a half dozen o' their bully-bucks armed to the teeth, and their girls and kin, as well," Cashman snickered, topping them up once more. "Doubt they'd have any trouble on that score. By the by, your darlin' Henriette sends her love. When in Charleston, look her up, she says." "That'll be the day," Lewrie scoffed.
"Must've made a hellish impression on her, old son. But then, you have that effect on all the willin' little biddies, don't ya, hey?"
"Hah!" Lewrie replied, even while wondering if even Cashman had heard rumours from Home, by now. "So, what's the occasion?"
"Alan, my boy, we're havin' a wake, a proper old Irish wake, in honour of someone… somethin ' that just died," Cashman grimly stated. "You came to the wrong place to celebrate death, Kit. I've lost fourteen so far, with five or six more lookin' peaky," Lewrie objected.
"Miser," Cashman countered. "I lost nigh half the regiment, by now… shot or butchered on Saint Domingue, or to the fevers. Already mourned them. No, I refer to the regiment itself, and my military career with it."
"They'll disband 'em?" Lewrie gawped, sitting up straighter.
"In the process," Cashman spat. "Called us 'excess to requirements,' now we've no major campaign to… wage. Oh, there's still a deal o' work wantin' down on Grenada and Saint Vincent, takin' on the Black Caribs and the real Caribs, but it's no concern of ours."
"They'll chuck Ledyard Beauman, then," Lewrie surmised. "God, I can understand sheddin' him, but you! General Maitland had you on his staff last year, you told me. Surely, he doesn't mean to tip you out with the bathwater?"
"Double-dealin' sonofabitch," Cashman growled, tossing back his glass so quick that half of it flooded his shirt-front. "He and that L'Ouverture were correspondit all the time, did you know it? Secret negotiations were goin' on, even whilst we were bleedin' and sweatin' in those woods, fightin' like we really meant it! Men died, while he was dancin' to and fro with our enemy. Hell, the last week before the evacuation, we fought L'Ouverture seven times, he beat us seven times… but each time there'd be secret letters flyin' back and forth. 'Well, ya lost here, my dear Maitland, so will ya give in? No? Then how 'bout this'un?' Maitland sayin', 'Didn't we bleed ya enough, still have soldiers and arms for another try, m'dear Toussaint?' 'Oh Dear, now will you pack it in, mon cher Maitland?' Pah! Even did Maitland get down on his hands and knees and beg me to stay with the colours… even throw in fellatio … I'd still spit in his Goddamned face!"
"Well, I never," Lewrie said with a groan, as disgusted as Kit Cash-man. He had lost Sevier and Nicholas, Inman and Shirley, and poor old Lt. Duncan had died, all those lost to malaria and Yellow Jack had died in a sham? As a way to save a general's reputation, before some amateur Black rebel slave out-soldiered him? "The bastard!"
"Won't get him titled," Cashman sarcastically snickered. "No 'thanks of the Crown' for him, when he goes home. If Maitland'd stuck it out, L'Ouverture would've strewed us dead on the beaches, he'd've had another week, so I can see the temptation to sign anything and get out. L'Ouverture, Dessalines, Petion, and Christophe… they're damn' good, Alan. Samboe versions o' Julius Caesar, with more troops under their command than Xerxes brought to Greece. Poor-armed, but even so, they just swamp right over you, pick up the guns from their dead, and keep right on comin'. Fine, they beat us fair and square, and so what. What really irks me, though, old son…"
Cashman leaned forward on his elbows on the desktop, grating deep in his throat, with eyes slit in fury.
"He wrote his letters behind the backs of his own men, damn him! He could've told us, after the first couple o' defeats and he saw how things stood, he could o' told us he was negotiatin', he could o' asked for a truce, and I'll lay you any odds ya wish, old Toussaint L'Ouverture would've granted it… he didn't want any more o' his men killed, either. Hundreds o' men would still be alive, the battle that broke my damn' regiment need never've been bloody fought!"
"Maybe L'Ouverture would have gone right on and fought us, Kit. Drivin' out a white, British army's one thing, but slaughterin' them to the last man on the beaches is another. His message to the world."
"Us leavin' with our tails t'wixt our legs ain't enough of a message?" Cashman waved this off, leaning back in his chair and tossing down his fresh glass of champagne. "Shit, Alan. That's shit, and ya know it. L'Ouverture ain't through fightin', there's still the Spaniards in the east h *ants t'take on, there's still that half-caste General Rigaud down in South Province against him. There's probably some of his very own generals just slaverin' like hounds for a shot at power, too. No, L'Ouverture wants t'stay alive, and in charge, liberate the entire island of Hispaniola -hell, the whole damn' West Indies, he needed t'husband the army he had! He's too smart t'throw it away on gestures and messages to the world. S'truth."