The custom of the house was to elbow up along the counter, rest a foot on a wood rail, and drink standing up. Were one sitting, then one was mostly gambling; Lewrie only saw a few seated patrons risking the house cuisine. At some tables, mostly far in back, Lewrie could espy people hunched over their glasses and muttering conspiratorily with each other. To his mind it looked as if they were conspiring… greasy leers, rubbed "money" fingers, Gallic shrugs, and stony glares.
Christ, they all look like well-paid pirates! Lewrie goggled.
At some tables, though, it was men and women draped upon each other in the dim candlelight. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the gloom, Lewrie took note of scantily clad young women in morning gowns and sheer dressing robes traipsing up the stairs to the upper storey on the arms of jaunty, eager men, whilst others clumped downwards almost alone, trailed by jaded and spent patrons who barely held hands with them, the women's hard eyes already prowling for the next client.
It took Lewrie a long minute or so to unmoor his gaze from the whores; it had been rather a long while since he'd had a free moment for "doing the needful," and some of them were more than handsome. He all but shook himself from the idea; there was work to do! He scanned the vast, dim room's expanse, recalling his crewmen's-and Mr. Pollock's-descriptions of Lanxade or Balfa. But after ten minutes he had to admit to himself that those cut-throats weren't present. He looked the room over again to see if there was a single soul he knew. But none of his hands were in the Pigeon Coop, nor could he spot sailors off Pollock's ship; obviously, this cabaret was too high-toned for the common tars.
He did think he saw one of the Azucena del Oeste's mates trotting up the stairs past the music gallery on a whore's arm, but he wasn't so sure he'd wager on it.
A fetchin' whore, he has, Lewrie decided to himself, noting that his glass was empty, of a sudden, and turning belly-first to the bar to whistle up the serving man for a refill. In the private screen of his coat-tails, he felt a tightening in his groin, a pinching from the fork of his tight trousers' crutch as his lubricious nature awakened.
Glass topped up, Lewrie turned back to face the room just as a nigh nakedly "dressed" Mulatto demimonde came slithering by, her arm brushing men's fundaments or thighs, "all quite by accident." He gawped, gulped, looking at the size and springy rounded shape of her "poonts," exchanged a brief, red-faced smile… before a patron down the counter looped an arm round her waist, drew her to him, and gnawed at her bare neck like a long-lost lover. Off they went up the stairs.
"Lubricious Nature" began to whisper, which awoke his old companion, "Amatory Fever," who began to gibber, leer, and cajole…
Damme, I'm tryin' t' 'spy here! Lewrie pointed out to his groin.
It was a forlorn hope, though, any continued "spying." On both sides of him, it was all elbows and shoulders, troops of foreigners in full cry in alien tongues, and the local French patois was so nasally "hawn-hawn" and rapid he could barely make out one word in four, those mostly harmless and plebeian. He was being jostled at the bar, just a whisker short of intentional insult for an English gentleman, who held a larger personal space than most. Even the music played by a string trio from the old-style gallery irritated him, a jiggery-pokery of gay but jangly airs… when not some mournful dirges, half-Spanish, half-Moorishly minor keyed.
He thought of crying off and heading home to bed, but surely! His first night ashore in untold months, out of uniform and anonymous, in a port town as sinful as Old Port Royal on Jamaica. How dull it'd be to wash out his stockings and underdrawers alone, yet…
The press at the counter got to him. He scooped up his change, wafer-thin foreign "tin," felt to see if he still had his coin-purse, then began to wander the main room.
"Mon Dieu, Jean!" Hippolyte whispered maliciously. "Where did he get such a tawdry ensemble? That fellow there in the wide hat?"
"Why is he walking so oddly… all hunched over?" Helio asked.
"An Americain clown," Jean-Marie Rancour dismissed. "Back to what we are discussing… We know M'sieur Bistineau cheats us. Why does he get five percent off the top, when I've heard that criminals who deal in stolen goods pay the thieves first to get them. Lanxade said it's his normal cost of doing business," Jean insisted in a hot mutter, both elbows on the table round a wineglass, "And how do we know we can trust Henri Maurepas, either, if he misreports on-"
"Papa trusts him implicitly, Jean," Helio declared. "Not once has he ever doubted him. He manages all our affairs. Papa knows…"
"Papa knows how to spend, cher brother," Charite impatiently countered. "He has no real head for the intricacies of business. It is beneath true gentlemen. Of course, M'sieur Bistineau is cheating us, and there is little we, or old Henri Maurepas, can do about it… so long as Bistineau is the only trader who'll accept our goods, dare to have them in his store. Later on, well…"
"Later on, perhaps we'll confront Monsieur Bistineau with steel," Helio, as the eldest, announced. "His son Claude will inherit. Isn't Claude one of us, the one who presented the scheme to his father, out of patriotism? Perhaps we should talk to Claude…"
"He is the only outlet," Hippolyte grumbled, turning his glass round and round. "If not the Bistineaus, I can't think of another of French blood who'd be bold enough. All the rest who could handle our goods are Americans these days, anyway," he glumly stated.
"Mori Dieu, business, business, business!" Charite exasperatedly complained. "We are here to celebrate, n'est-ce pas? Our cause gains cash, it advances… We have hurt and frightened our Spanish masters. And… we have money to spend… like sailors." She twinkled to buck them up. "Like buccaneers of the grand old days. A votre same!" she gaily proposed, raising her champagne glass.
Charite de Guilleri had enjoyed the freedom of movement that a buccaneering costume had given her on their first raiding cruise, and even before that she'd found it extremely droll to go out at night in the company of her brothers, or other sporting young males of her set, disguised as a man who could witness the games, pleasures, and amusing places that men could enjoy, whilst "proper" young ladies were forced to sit at home… to hear the curses and uproariously funny and lewd stories and jests that a staid husband would never bring home to a genteelly sheltered wife after a night out with his contemporaries.
Tonight, Charite wore a silk shirt with a stylish broad cravat, a snugly
tailored waist-coat over that, and a man's wide-lapeled, nip-waisted coat, unbuttoned and loose enough to disguise her breasts. A pair of fawn-coloured trousers, snug as a second skin, and riding boots, covered her legs. Her long chestnut hair was pinned up high and concealed beneath a tapered-crown tall hat that was forced to ride far back on her forehead, as if cocked in a saucy, devil-may-care manner. And, like her brothers, or any New Orleans "gentleman," Charite bore a small pocket pistol in her coat, a pencil-thin dagger in a hidden sheath up her left sleeve, and a gilt-handled sword-cane behind her chair.
To help her disguise along, she had fashioned a narrow mustachio from gauze and her own hair clippings, attached to her upper lip by paste. Admittedly, it required a lot of fiddling to assure her that it wasn't coming loose, and it didn't take well to wine or brandy, but the surprise she elicited with it had been amusing.