A Jester’s Fortune - Dewey Lambdin

"Excuse me, sir," Midshipman Hyde reported, with his companion Midshipman Clarence Spendlove with him. "That's the last of them, sir. All the prisoners ashore now, and Sergeant Bootheby's Marines ready to embark."

"Ah, thankee, Mister Hyde." Lewrie nodded, still staring out to sea, turning to inhale the gardens' sweetnesses before being forced back to Jesters stale and rancid reeks.

"Sir, do you think, since we're allowed twenty-four hours…" "No shore-leave, Mister Hyde. Sorry," Lewrie moodily grunted. "No sorrier than I, sir," Spendlove groaned. "It's a fine town, it appears. Very attractive, indeed."

Lewrie noted that Spendlove's gaze was riveted upon the bevy of local beauties who'd come down to see the excitement of a warship come to call, and the spectacle of the prisoners being landed. Girls whose angelic features stood out in stark contrast to the black or goat-brown gowns they wore.

Gowns, Lewrie took note, that were very low-cut in the bodice and promised a beguiling vista themselves, barely covered with stiff points of the headclothes that lanced down from their hair. As well, they wore white, embroidered aprons, overskirts turned back and tied behind and tiny waistcoats as vestigial as what Greek dancing girls had worn on those ancient jars, more colourful or more ornately embroidered. Some of the girls were clad in loose flax or linen peasant blouses and long satiny skirts, those blouses artfully tied to bare lissome olive-complexioned and inviting shoulders. Only the noblest of the Corfiots, recorded in their Venetian-inspired Golden Book of ancient aristocracy, wore the high hair, the huge hats or the bauto, or the lacier mainland fineries.

Lewrie couldn't help nodding and smiling at one or two, for they were exotically lovely. British sailors, British officers and redcoat Marines were a rare novelty, and these enticing girls seemed intrigued with them. Lewrie saw a half dozen open and approving glances, demure coquetries… or arrant, hip-rolling "come-hithers," within musket-shot.

"No, no shore-leave," Lewrie repeated himself. Partly for his own caution. Lord, lookee… I'm tryin' t'be decent, for a change, see? It was hard, though, to imagine not diving right in and making a swine of himself. "Not a good liberty port, young sirs," he explained. "It's hard enough to get the Venetian authorities to let us stay in port for twenty-four hours. Or land the noncombatant prisoners. And with that Frog merchantman here, too, well… there'd surely be a brawl, do you see? A knifing or a murder 'fore midnight, and we'd never be let in harbour again-Jester or any other ship of the squadron. And the authorities'd…"

He tailed off, sourly irritated, as Marine Sergeant Bootheby put on a short display of close-order drill to march his small Marine contingent down the quay from the town gaol, to the delight of the Corfiots and the sneers of the French sailors off that merchantman.

Whether the Venetian authorities on Corfu disapproved of brawls or not, there would be precious little they could actually do about them, he thought. During his tour of the town, and a rather good midday meal, he had learned several disturbing things about Corfu and the rest of the isles.

Such as the fact that the largest, oldest fort on the eastern point-the Citadel-was pretty much an empty shell after a powder magazine explosion a few years back in '89, which had leveled half the Old Town under its walls.

Such as the fact that the New Fort didn't have a garrison, either. There was a colonel and two captains, their manservants, cook and stable-hands. And that was the entire garrison of Corfu! The colonel and his officers still sent in musters to Venice, though, which showed a battalion, and were billing the Serene Republic for men who'd deserted, died or resigned at the end of their enlistments.

Such as the fact that the few ships of the Venetian Navy were laid up in harbour or drawn up on the strand for storage, and were as rotten as any he'd seen in the famed Arsenal at Venice itself. The sole officer of their navy couldn't put together a harbour-watch for a single galley or small xebec, though he still indented for their pay, ration allocations and funds for upkeep. And a fine living he had of that charade, too!

Even if there had been a military garrison worth the name, when he'd strolled on those land-side walls, Lewrie had found the artillery scattered at the embrasures almost "Will He, Nill He," many of them empty. The guns were so long unused that the carriages were half eaten by termites, as worm-holed as cheese; the guns themselves were gleaming under fresh black paint or soot blacking. But under the disguise they were almost rusted immovably to the stone ramparts!

And even the provveditore's residence had turned out to be quite small-most pointedly not the impressive palazzio down one of the main collonaded streets, which gaped empty and run-down. To save money, or to pocket the difference, Lewrie suspected, the provveditore rented a place just barely suitable. He hadn't even owned his own plates or glassware, but had had to send out to his landlord for extra to feed a foreign visitor! t

How could anyone let himself slip so deep in sloth and graft, and become so corrupt he'd threaten the safety of such a blissful island? Lewrie asked himself with mounting anger. Such a lovely place, so strategic! And he actually spat upon the stones of the quay.

"Very well, then, young sirs," Lewrie decided, after taking one last, longing look to fix Corfu Town in his memory. "Let's get back aboard Jester. I wish to clear harbour by sundown."

Hyde and Spendlove lagged behind their captain on the way to the waiting boats, taking what brief joy they could of an idle quarter hour ashore after unending months at sea. Even the sight of the Frenchmen who cursed them-the recent captives or the ones off the anchored merchantman or the foreign sailors in France's pay-couldn't dissuade them from sighing with a longing of their own to be let free for a spell of idleness, shore-cooked foods, strange new wines and those alluring girls!

" 'Tain't like him, by God, it ain't," Hyde muttered to his compatriot. "Deuced bloody odd, Clarence. I expected him to sleep ashore this evening. Do you get my meaning?" he drawled suggestively.

"Must be something which comes with middle age, Martin," Mister Spendlove whispered back with a sneaky grin. "After all, he's thirty-three and a bit, now. Past it, d'ye expect?"

"God save us if that's true," Hyde breathed softly, casting such an aching glance at another angelic Corfiot chit in the doorway of some dockside chandlery. "And here we are, with so few years left to us 'fore we suffer the same affliction."

"And so few opportunities," Spendlove agreed with a faint moan. "Why, ever since he saw off that kept mutton o' his, that Aretino creature, he's lived the life of a bloody saint!" Hyde carped. "And so have we! Least, when he still had all his humours-"

" 'Fore he spent 'em… spending with the ladies," the seventeen-year-old Spendlove japed.

"Were he off carousing, then there was a chance we'd be free to, aye." Hyde sighed in the very heat of an eighteen-year-old's frustration; that of a callow, brimful of "vital humours" cully. "Let me tell you, Clarence, 'tis been so long, I've… considered, mind… considered taking up 'Boxing the Jesuit.' Just to ease myself, d'ye see."

"Considered," Spendlove posed, tongue-in-cheek. He had ears.. • he'd heard Hyde's hammock-ropes squeak against the end-rings, late in the evening after Lights Out, as Hyde amused himself. Eased himself; though wasting one's limited and fixed allocation of humours led to lunacy and consumption like laxity of wit, body and spirit, too soon in life. Such as Captain Lewrie's new state. "With real girls…"

"Oh, you vile young seducer, you!" Hyde scoffed. "You scourge of a thousand chambermaids! As it you could advise me, 'bout women!"

"Not for want of experience, sir!" Spendlove shot back, louder. After all, had there not been a willing young tavern girl at San Fiorenzo Bay, at that little waterfront osteria, hard by the boat-landing? And had there not been both a boardinghouse chambermaid, and an actual whore at Leghorn, where even the dead could "put the leg over" a fetching mort for the price of a scone? No, Clarence Spendlove didn't think his few years on this mortal coil had been a complete waste of chances.

"You, Clarence? Little 'hop o' my thumb'?" Hyde went on, louder as well. "You've not a jot on the experiences I've had. Can't serve aboard Jester this long, without. Can't serve under the 'Ram-Cat'-"

"Sshh!" Spendlove cautioned.

"You wish to be just like him… when you grow up, that is," Hyde shot back, a bit more quietly.

"And who wouldn't, I ask you?" Spendlove shot back, ignoring his own warning. "Least, the early years, mind. 'Fore-"

"You gentlemen done skylarking?" their captain snapped from the edge of the dock, ready to enter his gig. "Shake a leg, then."

"Well, erm…" Hyde replied. "Don't we both, rather. Before we get too long in tooth for it."

CHAPTER 5

The squadron lay at rest, once more anchored in the mill-pond-quiet port of Trieste. On this visit, with the coming of summer, it was a much nicer-seeming place, no longer buried under gloomy skies, with all that drizzly, seeping rain and misty fogs. Securely anchored in an allied harbour, behind a breakwater fortified and armed against a raid, and with a walled town that was well patrolled by Austrian soldiers or city watchmen, Captain Charlton had allowed as how the crews could be let ashore, watch by watch, for some precious shore liberty. Those steady warrants and hands, of course. With not one man per ship able to speak German, it would be almost impossible for anyone to change his clothes and desert. And they had cause for celebration, after a month or more on patrol down south.

Pylades and Jester had managed to fetch in four prize-ships, and had been forced to burn three more, swept up farther south of the Ionian Isles; outbound carrying cargoes of timber and naval stores. Lionheart and Myrmidon had had a less productive patrol-they'd only brought in a pair of ships. Over on the Italian side of the straits, or the Adriatic Sea, it had been rare to run into a merchant vessel with improper, Colourable, papers and manifests. They'd encountered far more Neapolitans, Papal State, Venetian, or neutral traffick. They'd stopped thirty or more ships, and, while there had been some they'd suspected of being engaged in smuggling for France, their papers had either been legitimate and unimpeachable-or the very best forgeries they'd ever seen. More cautious than Rodgers and Lewrie, perhaps, they'd been

forced to allow them to proceed on their voyages. Better that than being hauled into an Admiralty Court for unlawful seizure and sued to their eyebrows!

"Uhm…" Lewrie smiled with pleasure. "Sprightly, indeed, sir. And rather spicy, too. Hint of floral, to the nose? What did you say it was, again, sir?"

"A gewurztraminer, Commander Lewrie." Charlton beamed back at him, quite pleased that his officers liked his wine selection. "That is, I am told, German for 'spiced'… getourz. Not too sweet on your palates, gentlemen?"

"Not at all, sir!" Commander Fillebrowne was quick to reassure his superior. "My word, sir, you must tell me the name of the shop you got it from. Have to have a case'r two of this aboard. Tastier than a proper port. Lighter, too," Fillebrowne toadied on.

"Right fine, sir," Rodgers told him. "Kinder on th' tongue than 'Miss Taylor,' nor half as raw. Doesn't pucker ya like a hock or Rhenish. Aye, I'd take a case'r two aboard, as well, sir."

Not all in one sitting, Lewrie thought with a secret grin. Rodgers was born with a hollow leg, holds his guzzle better'n any I ever did see, but Lord… what a packet he can stow away, and give no sign of!

"Perhaps the nicest bit come off from shore, sirs," Charlton said, turning moody and a touch fretful. "Sweeter by far than what I read in your report, Captain Rodgers, of what you and Lewrie learned of the poor state of Venetian defences, for certain. I would never have expected to see them let things get in such a shoddy fix."

" 'Lo, how the mighty are fallen,' sir, aye. Something like that," Commander Fillebrowne cited with a commiserating shrug and head-shake.

"Something very much like that, sir." Captain Thomas Charlton grimaced. "S'pose it'd do no good to alert the Venetian senate to what venal situation obtains on Corfu, do you? Do no good to… tattle?"

"I doubt the Venetians would appreciate it, sir," Lewrie replied when it looked like no one else would rise to it. "There must be hundreds of their nobility profiting from some other corruption already. To alert 'em would cause just enough grief for them to resent us."

"And," Fillebrowne pointed out with a raised finger, "since the provveditore down yonder, and the others, are nobles recorded in their so-called Golden 'Stud' Book, they're untouchable."

"Don't know, sir," Rodgers countered with a sly look. "Venice is known f r cleanin' up scandals quiet-like. Th' odd body dumped in a canal, anonymous stabbin's in the streets by hired bravos… stranglin' th' overgreedy with a silk noose in prison. Beats th' cost of a trial-an' th' public embarrassment-all hollow."

"Onliest thing is, Captain Rodgers"-Charlton brightened, wryly amused-"they've a tradition of killing the messenger who brings 'em the bad tidings, too!"

"Well, there is that, sir," Rodgers allowed with a wry grin.

Charlton set his glass on the dining table and smoothed down his unruly, wiry grey hair-hair, Lewrie noted, that had been more pepper than salt just scant months before they'd sailed for the Adriatic.

"I was ashore, gentlemen," Charlton announced, folding his hands in his lap and working his lips from side to side, as if trying to find a comfortable fit. "There are two items of note. One merely bad-and one utterly appalling. S'pose we should get the worst out of the way first. That old acquaintance of yours, Lewrie, this Bonaparte-"

"Oh, aye, did Latin verbs together, sir," Lewrie sniggered.

Charlton gave him a beetle-browed glare, which shushed him, and his too-quick wit, much like an irate tutor.

"Seems he's given the Austrians more woes, according to what the good Major Simpson told me," Charlton went on, after a last glare, for assurance that Lewrie was properly chastened and would make no more amusing comments. "Crossed the Po River into Lombardy round the beginning of May. Ignored their fortress-city of Pavia and found an unguarded stretch where no one ever would have thought to look for him-at Piacenza. Fillebrowne, you're still our expert on Italian geography. Do you unroll that map for us, sir… there's a good fellow? Ah, just here… far east of Pavia. Marched or flew, I don't know which would be harder to credit, from Turin in bare days." Charlton looked gloomy, a hand waving over the general vicinity, once Fillebrowne had dutifully displayed the map and began to anchor it with glasses.