"Sir?"
"I'd wager a rouleau of gold guineas Charlton would leap at the chance, and be heart-broken to be left out!" Ayscough hooted. "That'd add another fourty Marines and perhaps fifty sailors to the endeavour. And, does your plan seem intriguing to Lord Boxham, I might be able to convince him to close the coast with two or three of his Third Rates, and add his own Marines and tars to the landings. Lewrie, you dog! A man after mine own heart! A glass with you, sir, and success to you in discovering all needful facts."
Cabin stewards refilled their glasses from a bottle of Chateau d'Issan Bordeaux, a splendid little wine from a local seventeenth-century vineyard little known beyond the Medoc region so far, but one that both Ayscough and Lewrie thought a treasure that went well with the mutton.
While it was more than pleasant to have Commodore Ayscough toast him, and declare him an aggressive and active fellow possessed of such uncanny wit and wile, Lewrie thought there was one niggling hitch to such praise… he would now have to deliver.
It was one thing to speculate idly, and quite another to enter into a thorough investigation, which would require long hours questioning French fishermen; cajoling, getting drunk, bribing, and playing a spy's game to determine whether he was being told the truth, the half-truth, or having his leg pulled, and two out of three could prove fatal.
Then, perhaps gulled like one of Clotworthy Chute's newly come heirs, or haying the entire French defensive plan laid before him like Moses' first peek at the Commandments, he would actually have to plan a complicated operation… with his head on the chopping block did it go awry!
Oh, won't this be just bags o 'fun! he sarcastically thought as he clinked glasses with Ayscough; should've kept me bloody gob stopped! What was Ithinkin'? This is more Twigg's game than mine. Sortin' fact from fiction. Christ. Don't know if I'm bright enough for it!
Another realisation struck him, right after that doubt. Well, two realisations, really. The first was that, whenever in his life, be it in his personal life or his naval career, he had felt sly-boots and clever, Dame Fortune usually woke from her nap and came down from Mount Olympus to kick him firmly in the fundament.
The second was that he would have to make nice of a sudden with Capitaine Jules Papin, and that might be just too horrid to contemplate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
D'ye trust any of the fishermen ye run across?" Lewrie asked of Commander Nathaniel Hogue some days later, and finding it remiss of him to have served with the younger man in the Far East, yet never learned his Christian name 'til then. "This Papin fellow, for instance?"
"Oh, him!" Hogue said with a wry chuckle. "Frankly, sir, I am surprised he hasn't crammed a dozen local whores aboard his boat, and pimped them out to us on a day-rate. Papin is a thorough rogue, in my humble opinion. Rogue enough to sell information, at any rate. And… so far, what little he's grudgingly related to me, or the cutters, has proven true. Mind now, Captain Lewrie," Hogue cautioned, "I only speak of shilling revelations, not gold. Lieutenants Bartoe, Shalcross, and Umphries and I hold much the same opinion of M'sieur Papin, and where his loyalties lie… which is in personal profit."
Such a confident young man, Lewrie thought, recalling the last time he'd served with Hogue, when the lad had been a somewhat shy and diffident cully, a tad naive of the ways of the world, and straight as a die. Now, though, after years of service, and "on his own bottom,' Hogue was as chirpy as a magpie, and just about as sure of himself. In those days, when Hogue had contracted the Pox from some Chinese whore, he'd blushed and stammered and skulked in shame like a pregnant nun… Damme, was la bad influence on him, back then? Lewrie asked himself; most-like, aye.
"I've something in mind, sir," Lewrie told him over glasses of cold tea in Savage's great-cabins; late summer in the Bay of Biscay was warm days and muggy seaside nights, just enough so to make the cold tea refreshing. "Do we gather enough information to improve our odds, we might have a chance to reduce the battery on Pointe de Grave, and may even convince Lord Boxham to bring some of his 'liners' inshore to help take the fort cross the river, too. The biggest snag, o' course, will be what forces the French maintain hereabouts, and where; what weight of artillery we really face, and how quickly the local garrison could march to counter us. May not come off, but…"
"Oh, finally, sir!" Hogue crowed, rocking boyishly on his chair with a hand clasping a raised knee. "We've spent weeks and weeks just staring at that new battery as it is being erected, at last being allowed to fire upon it… well, to land, take it, and slight it would just be delightful."
"Just watching it being built?" Lewrie asked, puzzled. "How so?"
"Well, sir…" Hogue reddened slightly, and lost his buoyant airs. "Far be it from me to say anything uncomplimentary, or insubordinately, of a senior officer, but…"
"Don't know why not," Lewrie cynically scoffed, " 'tis usually a hellish-good relief."
"Uhm, in that case, sir, since you put it that way," Hogue said in a soft voice, all but peering squint-a-pipes in the dark corners of Lewrie's quarters to see if there might be a witness to his disloyalty, "Commander Kenyon said our chiefest role was stopping commerce entering or departing the Gironde, sir. That we were not to risk our vessels by entering the possible gun-range of the Saint George fort, or dare to go East of Point Grave. We could stop and search as many fishing boats as we wished, and ask of doings ashore, but that was to convince the French of the impossibility of any imports or exports, and, by not confronting their guns, or giving them any chance to do us harm, foment in French minds a notion of our… invincibility, and inevitability."
"Ahum… I see," Lewrie slowly drawled, a dark frown forming on his face. "Well, such might be decent goals, but… once the battery on the point is finished, such orders and cautions would force us to give it a wide berth, too. Convincing the Frogs that, do they build a set of batteries up the north shore, we could be frightened out beyond Pointe de la Coubre, or three miles to seaward of Soulac sur Mer!"
"Assuming, as we have, sir, that the French possess fourty-two-pounder guns in sufficient number," Hogue pointed out. "The Commander may have decided that the few men we have aboard our ships could make no impression on the Saint George fort, for certain, and could only delay the completion of the one on Point Grave… and, were we repulsed with casualties, fill the French with confidence."
"Defeats tend t'do that," Lewrie mused aloud. "If I thought the Frogs had four or five thousand troops they could whistle up on short notice, I'd be much of the same mind. But, so far we don't know just how dangerous a landing could be. And, we must find out."
"Just like the old days, isn't it, Captain Lewrie?" Hogue asked with a cheerful grin. "Chasing the French and Lanun Rovers from the Malacca Straits to Canton, and back… and but slowly knitting all of the clues together?"