Chapter 35: Great Cold Wave (3)
Chapter 35: Great Cold Wave (3)
“All right, milords! We’ve arrived at Toulon Harbor! Hehe, have a good trip!”
When I handed the coachman two gold coins, the corners of his mouth rose all the way to his ears, and he bowed his head repeatedly.
Aside from the fact that my whole body started creaking from being crouched in a carriage for days, it was a much better trip than the first time I traveled from Gehenne to Paris.
Motion sickness medicine is god, and I’m invincible!
Thanks to the miraculous elixir our king-god-general-majestic DuPont made for me, I didn’t have to trade away my fragile semicircular canals for travel.
“W-wow. So this is a harbor! This is the sea!”
And DuPont started exclaiming nonstop the moment he got out of the carriage.
After learning my vacation plan, he insisted that since he had made the motion sickness medicine, he obviously deserved rest too, and followed along.
Compared to massive port cities like Marseille or Nice, Toulon was a mid-sized city you couldn’t really call big—but when it came to the harbor’s scale, Toulon didn’t lose out.
For DuPont, a sheltered scholar who had never once left Paris, it was only natural that everything felt fascinating.
Hah. This is why you can’t leave Paris natives cooped up. Instead of always being stuck in Paris staring at bleak city scenery, you’ve got to broaden your horizons like this.
“…Still, it’s pretty impressive.”
At the harbor, several fairly large sailing ships—big enough to carry over a hundred people with ease—were anchored as they loaded and transported supplies.
Smaller ships, with the calendar having flipped to March but high waves continuing thanks to harsh winter weather, had decided that since things had come to this, they might as well remove the sails from their masts and focus on repairs.
Because of that, dozens of ships were lined up side by side at Toulon’s dry dock and harbor, forming quite a spectacle, and the taverns, inns, and shops near the harbor were packed with sailors, loud and lively.
“Hm… so this might be kind of tough.”
Napoleon looked at the scene and said, tilting his head.
“Huh? Why?”
“The waves are high, so the small boats won’t go out. We’ll probably have to pay extra and ask a bigger ship to take us.”
Our vacation destination—and Napoleon’s hometown—Corsica was about a day away by ship from Toulon.
So for a ship that could push through those high waves and keep going for over a day, it had to be a merchant ship or a warship. And of course, if a merchant ship was going to detour somewhere that wasn’t on its sailing route, you had to pay a lot extra.
Going on leave is really damn hard.
“Then I’ll go look for a ship. You find us a decent place to stay for tonight.”
When I nodded, Napoleon walked toward a cluster of crewmen gathered near the harbor.
While Napoleon searched for a ship, DuPont and I asked around and checked in at the cleanest inn nearby.
The first floor, like other inns, doubled as a tavern and restaurant, but the spacing between floors was fairly large, so the sleeping rooms were less affected by the restaurant noise.
After checking in, we went down to the restaurant, ate something light, then DuPont went to look around the harbor, and I—separately from Napoleon—started talking with the sailors in the restaurant to look for a ship.
“Corsica? Ah, that island backwater? Hmm… We’re headed for South America, so we can’t take you.”
“Our ship’s too small, so we can’t go out in weather like this.”
“Fifty livres per person. I won’t go any lower.”
Getting on a ship is damn hard. Seriously. Isn’t there any way?
Tired, I dropped into a chair at a restaurant table and rubbed my face with my hand.
Just then, a group of men in naval dress uniforms came in, sat at a table, placed an order with the waitress, and started chatting among themselves.
“What did the harbor master say, Major?”
A young-faced second lieutenant asked the middle-aged major who looked like the senior-most, around fifty.
“Hah. If nothing else, I learned one thing for sure—this civilian harbor master’s belly is packed full of greed. One wine cask for a thousand livres? Even if they control the logistics, isn’t that too much of a rip-off? With government funds, we can barely load even one barrel.”
“To sail all the way north to Brest, we have to go around Spain, so it’s a long trip. Without wine, the sailors and even the NCOs are going to have a hard time.”
“I know that. How are seamen supposed to live without alcohol? Damn it, it would’ve been much better to stop at Marseille or Nice. I came because they said this was a naval port, and look at this mess.”
French Royal Navy Major Louis de Latouche-Tréville was annoyed to the top of his head.
A famed commander who had even traded blows with Britain’s Royal Navy during the American War of Independence, he was taking damage not from the enemy British, but from his own country’s civilians.
A horse moves after eating feed, a Swiss moves after eating money, and an American moves if you tell him not to move—likewise, a seaman, regardless of nationality, moves only when you put alcohol in him.
But the man serving as Toulon’s civilian harbor master seemed to see His Majesty the King’s loyal navy as a bag of money, and was trying to squeeze them dry on liquor prices.
Even two or three times the market rate would have been understandable, but the harbor master was demanding ten times the market rate.
Grinding his teeth, the major said,
“To have to protect someone this greedy over something as trivial as liquor money—ah, thank you—honestly, it would’ve been more honorable back when I was captured as a prisoner by the British.”
The major spoke as he downed the wine the waitress brought in in one go.
Once the alcohol hit, the major’s mood, which had seemed ready to explode, eased a little.
Seamen really can’t live without alcohol. Damn it… do we really have to spend ten times the price?
So, the guy serving as Toulon’s civilian harbor master is ripping off the navy on wine.
If I play this right, I can get a free ride on a ship and make money too.
Business smile ON!
I stood up, moved closer to the naval officers, and spoke.
“Ahem. Greetings, gentlemen.”
“Hm? Good to meet you, but who are you?”
The major looked at me with confusion.
“I am Guillaume de Toulon, currently enrolled at the Paris Central Military School.”
In this world, the best things are academic ties, regional ties, and blood ties. And solidarity from working in the same field is also pretty strong.
Once they realized I was also military, the officers’ faces relaxed noticeably.
“Hm, is that so? I am Navy Major Louis de Latouche-Tréville. So—what business does the army have with the navy?”
“I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but I heard you seem to be having quite a bit of trouble regarding wine.”
“That’s right. The harbor master here in Toulon is greedy to begin with, but he even bullied the merchants and monopolized the logistics. That’s how it ended up like this.”
The major said that, then made a fed-up expression.
“Hm. That’s truly unfortunate.”
“It is.”
“If I solve that problem for you, could I get on a ship for free?”
At my words, the major’s eyebrows twitched.
“Free, my ass. As long as it’s not going all the way to the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, I’ll take you anywhere!”
Good. Game over.
With a broad smile, I asked the innkeeper to call for the fastest coachman in Toulon.
“…After coming near home for the first time in years, you don’t even stop by, and the first thing you say is ‘send me wine.’ This is…”
Charles de Toulon, lord of Gehenne, was dumbfounded as he read the letter from his son Guillaume.
The letter had crooked handwriting, scribbled in haste, and its contents were as follows:
[Hello, Father. Please send five wine casks to the inn where I am staying as quickly as possible. Payment will be 100 livres per cask, which is a bit more than what you usually sell them for, so that’s fine, right?]
“…What will you do?”
“Guillaume isn’t an idiot, so he must have a use for it. Didn’t he succeed in Paris, where he had nobody? Alain, choose a few and send them.”
If you came near home, you should at least show your family your face before going. Making me run errands instead—he’s really something else as an unfilial son.
For a moment, Charles disliked Guillaume just a little.
The corvette we boarded, Victory, was cutting through the cold winter sea and charging forward.
“I owe you greatly this time, Cadet Guillaume!”
“It’s nothing. I got to make some money and ride a ship for free.”
Major Tréville smiled at my words, nodded, then went into his cabin.
“Hey, Guillaume. How do you keep coming up with ways like this?”
“I don’t know if it’s because you’re good at making friends or just lucky, but anyway, it’s impressive.”
Once the major went inside, Napoleon and DuPont came up to me and spoke.
“Ahem. This is all thanks to Guillaume’s keen eye and profound stratagems—tsk, tsk.”
“You’ve been running a business and you’ve gotten completely shameless.”
Even as he said that, Napoleon snickered.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
“Corsica in sight!”
As the bell rang through the ship and the sailor keeping watch up on the mast shouted, we went to the bow and watched a small dot grow larger and larger.
“Damn, how many years has it been? Hahaha!”
Napoleon laughed out loud.
His hometown, Corsica, was drawing near.
“Don’t you think what you say after meeting again is too dark, Laplace?”
“It’s because I want you to be safe that I’m saying it. Haha!”
At Laplace’s words, Lavoisier smiled faintly.
“My apologies. Lately my income has been rather poor, so my speech has grown a bit rough. I apologize again.”
Recently, Lavoisier’s side work had not been bringing in as much money as before. So, of course, his experiments had stopped as well.
“Civilians starving to death in Saint-Quentin? That’s not an ordinary matter.”
“Yes. So stop your tax-collector work for a while and rest. You know people hate tax collectors. What if some madman attacks you?”
“Hm… very well. I don’t think anything will happen, but as you say, I’ll restrain myself.”
“Good thinking! Safety first! Hahaha!”
Laplace burst into laughter at Lavoisier’s reply.