He named that figure to Papin, who frowned over it, shrugged in the Gallic manner, and guessed a lower number, perhaps only 125. "An', M'sieur Law… uhm, ze 'alf compagnie infanterie zey 'ad to guard zem, you 'ave already massacre, an' I see no more come, encore… still. Peut-etre, no more zan eight or nine remain of zem, hein? "
Well, that's encouragin', Lewrie thought, leaning back to take a sip of his cold tea, his "mock rum."
" Un autre, m 'sieur," Papin idly said, sipping deep and scratching his unruly hair at the same time. "Ze ozzer t'ing. Before you massacre, before you bombard… rumour say beaucoup de soldats, beaucoup d'artillerie are to go nord, au Channel coast, but now? Non."
And, that's… int'restin', Lewrie thought. Could their new Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, so fear a British invasion cross the Dover Straits that he was fortifying Artois and Picardy against such? Or, was Bonaparte amassing an invasion army of his own against England? In either case, whatever pin-prick or "flea-bite" launched here off the Gironde could disrupt either of Bonaparte's plans.
"Merci, merci beaucoup, Capitaine Papin, for all your tidings," Lewrie warmly told him.
"T'anks, mon cul!" Papin growled. "Tanks be damn, m 'sieur. I pass you' 'school assign-e-ment,' better ze rum, ze gold, be ze reward, hein? Aussi, non to expect you buy from me ze bon marche … ze cheap, no more, non. Gendarmerie 'ave spies, are now angered, an' are now soupconneux, uhm… ze suspicious? Cannot bring you much, an' risk mus' be repaid, hein? I curse zose fumiers, bad as I mus' curse you, comprendre?"
Two hours later, as Savage made her daily rounds of the estuary, the lookouts espied Jean Brasseur's boat, just as shabby and dowdy as she ever was, but, this time flying a much-faded pale blue long pendant from her mast-tip, the agreed-upon sign that Brasseur had information to sell, along with fish.
"Fetch-to, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie ordered. "We shall let our fisherman come to us. Nine-pounders and swivels to be manned and loaded, just in case. Pass the word for Desmond, and he is to ferry an inspection party over to his boat. Mister Devereux, do you oblige me to send four Marines and a Corporal with my Cox'n."
"Directly, sir," Lt. Devereux crisply replied. "Though I fear they must be de-loused once back aboard. She's a filthy thing."
"Permission to mount the quarterdeck, sir?" Mr. Maurice Durant, their emigre French Surgeon, asked from the foot of the larboard ladder from the waist. "Aye, Mister Durant," the watch officer, Lt. Gamble, allowed. "Ah, Captain," Durant said, once near the binnacle cabinet. "I hear we will fetch-to, out? Might I enquire how long this stillness may last, sir? Able Seaman Brough, 'is teeth are very bad, and I must extract three of zem, all at once, quel dommage. I wish to do this on deck, sir, not in ze cockpit or my sick bay."
And Brough had put off the Surgeon's suggestions that he suffer those teeth to be removed several times, 'til the pain was blinding, and Brough could not even take his daily rum ration without groaning. Lewrie strongly suspected that Brough's mates, and more than a few of the crew who served under the Quarter-Gunner, wished to see him howl.
During her conversion from a French frigate to a British ship, Savage had, at Mr. Durant's urgings, re-made the starboard half of the deck under the foc's'le into a most modern sort of sick bay, near the galley for warmth, but fairly open and airy, which all the authorities deemed healthier than a lower-deck compartment. There just wasn't as much room for spectators as was the frigate's waist! "Very well, Mister Durant," Lewrie decided. "Carry on, sir." "Merci, Captain!"
Brasseur came almost empty-handed this time, apologising over the quality and quantity of his smuggled goods, the indifference of the assorted bottles of wine, the day-old loaves, and the paucity of fresh cheese.
Even the tightly woven straw basket of oysters, clams, mussels, shrimp, and crabs-along with a few gasping and weakly flopping fish, caught that morning-was only half full.
Brasseur took his ease in Lewrie's great-cabins, silently accepting two bottles of rum and one of Spanish brandy from Lewrie's stores, and a glass of a better brandy, a cognac from Normandy smuggled to England by British scoff-laws. The cats, of course, once Brasseur was seated, made their usual great fuss over him… damn 'em.
"You fly your pendant, Capitaine Brasseur," Lewrie said by way of a beginning. "You have news for me?"
"Oui, Capitaine Lewrie," Brasseur replied, rolling his glass in his hands after a couple of sips. "Pardon, but time mus' be short… ze gendarmerie, n'est-ce pas? Zey watch us now, and to spend much time togezzer will be suspect, so…
"Say on, quick as ye must, sir," Lewrie urged.
Barges, yes; more barges were coming down-river from Bordeaux. Artillery was rumoured aboard them, hastily stripped from idle ships of the line along the city piers, and troops were being moved by barge or roads to the Cote Sauvage, and the banks of the Gironde; all of which confirmed what Jules Papin had told Lewrie not an hour earlier.
It was the details that were contradictory… disturbingly so.
Lewrie pretended to nod, grin a bit, and utter "Aha!" here and there during Brasseur's rushed description of French preparations for repelling a British "flea-bite"; he even bothered to make notes of the salient portions of the tale, but…
Jean Brasseur laid out a strong reaction to his ambush and his bombardment, with little mention of how his fellow locals felt, which Lewrie thought odd; but, perhaps because the French people had no say in the matter, and no one was asking their opinion, anyway.
A demi-brigade was rumoured moved to Rochefort and the Cote Sauvage, and a second demi-brigade, gathered from Bordeaux and the provincial capital of Saintes in Saintonge, was to come to Royan and Talmont, to St. Palais sur Mer to erect new fortifications, supposed to be armed with proper 24-pounder and 32-pounder guns. The fort at St. Georges would give up its 12-pounders and 18-pounders for heavier pieces, and those lighter pieces would be sent cross the Gironde to the unfinished battery at Pointe de Grave. With his own eyes, Brasseur swore that he had seen the stone blocks meant to raise the ramparts higher being laid flat for gun platforms, and some blocks of the low walls would be removed to make embrasures for firing.
"I fear, m 'sieur, zat a half-bataillon of soldats will come to my poor village," Brasseur moodily told him, "an' take over 'ouses of our people. Officiers 'ave mark-ed doors wiz chalk. So many soldats of which compagnie to each, an' my 'ouse zey will take, an' we mus' feed zem, hein?" he bemoaned, looking frantic for a second. "Mon Dieu, Capitaine Lewrie, zey stay long, ma famille will starve! An, if zey suspect anyone of disloyalty, of consort wiz enemy… if false accusations are made, ze arrests, ze massacres in ze Vendee, may 'appen all over again. You see why I mus' not be suspect by dealing wiz you?"