“And you are, sir?” Mr. Cotton archly demanded, screwing up his mouth over the man’s impertinence.
“I name myself,” the cheeky fellow said, smirking. “ Capitaine Georges Mollien, of ze Otarie… a votre service. ” He snatched off a rather small cocked hat, one whose ends had been pulled down nearly to his earlobes, and laid it on his breast as he performed a sweeping grand mock of a bow.
Bloody Frogs! Lewrie furiously thought; Never more top-lofty and arrogant than when ye can’t shoot ’em on the spot!
This Captain Mollien was a short and wiry fellow, two inches shorter than Lewrie, with a pinched, foxy face. On his hip he wore a small-sword, and by the way his dark-blue coat sagged, there might be a brace of pistols in the side pockets. Behind him, grinning just as scornfully, stood two of his mates or crew, both “beef to the heel”.
Lewrie had been the recipient of many a scornful look in his time, delivered by superior officers, gawping nobility, or St. James’s Palace courtiers who’d caught him in “pusser’s slops” or shirt sleeves, so he knew how to deliver one when given the chance. With one brow up in dis-belief, and a wee lift of a corner of his mouth for amusement, he slowly inspected Mollien from the top of his head of loose, lank, and long dark hair to his open shirt collar and neck-stock worn loose like a rag in the style of the sans-culottes revolutionaries, down an ecru linen shirt front to a garish red waist sash, and scanned buff-coloured trousers crammed into a pair of top-boots indifferently buffed and blacked, to Mollien’s scuffed boot toes, and back, again. At the end, he said “How marvellous for you,” in a flat-toned drawl, and turned back to chat with his supper party guests.
“Well, shall we go in and take seats at our table?” Mr. Cotton quickly suggested.
“I weeshed to see ze man ’oo ’as come to mak’ war on me,” the Frenchman said, a little louder as if wishing to attract witnesses to his “bearding” of an enemy officer. “To tak’ ’ees measure.”
“You are impertinent, Captain Mollien,” Lt. Gordon stiffly said.
“A dog in a doublet,” Mr. McGilliveray harumphed.
“Make war upon you?” Lewrie purred, after fighting down an urge to swing about and punch the man in the face. “I certainly will, but not in Charleston Harbour. It’ll come… all in good time, gunn’l to gunn’l,” he promised with a bright smile. “Not in the middle of Broad Street, either… unless you desire a violation of the city’s hospitality, and American neutrality. Is that what you came for, with your bully-bucks to protect you?”
“But I am ze peaceful marchand man, M’sieur le Capitane,” Mollien said, wide eyed and with a hand upon his heart as if basely accused of wrongdoing, shrugging and smiling. “I do not fear one such as you. Ze soft-’anded Anglais aristo?” he added with another smirk.
“You should,” Lewrie told him, stepping a bit closer, “Indeed, you should.”
“’Ow much eet cos’ you to buy your star an’ sash?” Mollien asked him. “ Peut-etre, I can afford eet, too?” He was louder in his mocking, now that he had gathered a half-dozen or so strollers.
“Several… hundred… dead… Frenchmen,” Lewrie gravelled back. “Think ye can afford that?”
Mollien pursed his lips to a slit, and he got a wary look on his face. His little bit of street theatre was not going the way he had thought; the idle fop Anglais he’d expected was turning out to be anything but, and… had the Anglais ’s eyes gone as grey as a sword blade, from an inoffensive, merry blue?
“Oh, well said, Sir Alan!” Mr. Cotton crowed. “Well said, I say!”
“You’ve had your street raree show, Captain Mollien,” McGilliveray gruffly said. “You delay our supper. If you’re quite done…”
“ Un type l’aristo Anglais pedale, ” one of Mollien’s sychophant sailors muttered under his breath, elbowing his mate with a sneer.
He just call me a queer? Lewrie fumed to himself.
“Captain Mollien, the manners of your men, sir!” Lt. Gordon barked, one hand flexing on the hilt of his sword. “Such language in the presence of ladies! Are these the fine manners one usually expects from a Frenchman?”
“Fie!” his wife chimed in with an outraged hiss.
Mollien had rounded on his sailors to shush them, but it was too late to salvage the situation. When he turned back to face Lewrie, his face writhed between hang-dog apology and frustrated anger.
“Indeed, sir. Begone with you!” Mr. McGilliveray snapped, and shifted his grip on his heavy walking stick from elegant cane to hard cudgel.
“A t’ousan’ pardons, M’sieurs, Madames; eet was unforgivable, and I weel be sure to puneesh ’eem as soon as…” Mollien tried to say.
“He can’t help it, Mister McGilliveray… Lieutenant Gordon,” Lewrie drawled again, trying to recall the very words that that blood-thirsty old cut-throat and spy, Zachariah Twigg, had once said to that foul beast, Guillaume Choundas, to goad him at Canton, China, so many years ago. “Captain Mollien was born under a three-penny, ha’penny planet, never to be worth a groat… a swaggerin, ‘gasconading’ Frog who’s but one step away from outright piracy!”
Mollien looked angry enough to draw his sword or one of his pocket pistols, rowed beyond all temperance by Lewrie’s caustic slur. He also looked utterly cowed and defeated. Mollien had not put his wee cocked hat back on his head; he still held it in both hands as if deferring to his betters, gripping it so hard that he was wringing it out of shape… like a desperate beggar.
Can’t find a way t’slink off? Lewrie gloated.
“You weel nevair catch me, Capitaine,” Mollien said, chin up, though looking a tad shaky and unsure as he took a step or two away as if ready to depart.
“Yes, I will,” Lewrie levelly promised him, “before the year is out. Run all ye wish; it don’t signify. Leave port this instant, I and Reliant will find you, sooner or later. If not me, then it’ll be another of our ships. The Royal Navy will be out there, looking for you and the rest of your privateersmen. We will always be there, just over the horizon. Adieu, Captain Mollien.”
Mollien seemed so frustrated that he didn’t even deny that his ship was a privateer. He performed a sketchy bow in conge, realising that his hat was still in his hand, and, pinch-faced with his cheeks aflame, stepped back and spun on his heels, bumping into his sailors. He shoved them back, hissing threats and curses at their unfortunate comment that had cost him his dignity, and had ruined his taunts.
“Ahem!” Lt. Gordon said. “Apologies, Captain Lewrie, for that fellow, but… he isn’t an example of American manners, and I hope you don’t think less of us for his low behaviour.”
“Or, think less of our fair city of Charleston, Sir Alan,” Mrs. McGilliveray said in a sweet Low Country accent. She had pulled her own fan out and was fluttering away at Mollien’s effrontery.
“Short of a street brawl, Mistress McGilliveray, nothing ever could diminish my appreciation of such a lovely city,” Lewrie gallantly responded. “Now that’s over, does anyone feel as peckish as I do?”
“Indeed, let’s go in!” Mr. McGilliveray seconded. “I’m fair famished!”
“Quite the street raree,” Mr. Cotton commented, casting a last look down Broad Saint to assure himself that Mollien and his sailors were indeed gone. “One that redounded to Mollien’s loss, ha ha!”
“At the end of a successful performance, one usually rewards the juggler or singer with tuppence, or five pence,” Lewrie said, in good takings now that the fellow was gone. “Should I have tossed him something?”