A Jester’s Fortune - Dewey Lambdin

"And you're… profiting, Clotworthy?" Lewrie just had to ask.

"Profitin', aye." Chute most beatifically beamed at him. "You've heard the tales, 'bout how some mincin' foreign mountebank art dealers skinned some jingle-brains from home? So what's finer than meetin' up with a fellow Englishman… a refined and educated fellow, known among the best circles in London," Clotworthy boasted, shooting his cuffs as he preened and laid a hand on his heart, "able t'drop a dozen names in a single breath, and back it up with inside information, mind! Man who knows his Cellini chalice from a wood piggin? Knows his way round, one who can steer 'em from bad shops to good, from the forgers to the honest? And know the old and genuine from the run-up last week. Or discover what they want most and have the connexions to get it run-up and aged, after wearin' 'em to a frazzle lookin' at hum-drum."

"Decent profit in that?" Lewrie queried, intrigued in spite of his cautions. Clotworthy still owed him that money for "tatties and gravy"!

"Finder s fee from the buyers… long with some excellent food and guzzle," Chute expounded as they strolled, "yer modest five percent or so, whate'er their gratitude can be stoked to. Five percent from the shop-owners, for haulin' em in. But ten percent do we foist off fake, from my, uhm… less honourable compatriots in the… reproduction lay."

"I wonder, then, what your aid might be cost me… old son." Lewrie scowled. "After all…"

"Lewrie, old fettow!" Clotworthy balked, leaning away with his hand on his heart once more, pretending to still be capable of feeling insulted. "What a scurrilous notion. To think that I, an old Harrow man… a schoolmate!… would play you false? Were I 'skint,' well…! That's a possibility, hmm? But! As I said, I'm flush with 'chink,' so never you fear. My expertise is yours, sir… gratis," he added with a deep flourish of his hat, and an only semi-graceful formal bow.

"Well, in that case…"

"Might you feel so abashed, after making such a base allegation," Clotworthy resumed, rising and clapping his feathered hat on, "and might wish to tender some amends, I will allow you to treat me to supper. And a brace o' wine per diner, mind. Old fellow, I forgive you. Totally!"

Lewrie could but stand and laugh out loud at his audacity.

"Like Dante's Inferno," Clotworthy promised, "I'll be your ghost of Virgil. I'll tour you through the Nine Circles of Hades, and fetch ye out without a single smudge o' soot. Gad, see what a proper public-school education benefits a man? E'en did they flog it into us?"

The glass-shop held spectacular bargains, for the shopkeeper really was as old as Methuselah, with one foot in the grave, Lewrie had to think, for he wheezed and coughed the entire time. Lewrie bought some pale pink-and-white dinnerware, a service for eight, for their morning room when they dined en famille, replete with bowls, cups, salad plates and servers. Then a complete stemware set of glasses for everyday use in that same semi-translucent pale pink, with more ornate clear-glass for stems between bases and glasses. All was most carefully wrapped, with heavy paper, wadded with old newspapers, then crated in straw and dry seaweed before the crates were nailed shut. And all for only Ј20!

Next, they hit a furniture store, though Lewrie wasn't exactly taken with the cast-off Baroque pieces, nor with the painted-on floral busyness of most of the lacquered pieces in the Rococo style. He did rather admire a pair of small commodes, though, which he thought might look cunning on either side of their main staircase, once inside their entry hall. They were Chinee-red, four-footed, gently bell-shaped and bulging toward the top, rich with gold leaf and decorated with painted scenes of Venetian doings.

"Lacca povera," Clotworthy whispered softly, shaking his head in sadness. "Scenes're printed on paper first, then lacquered on. Don't even think of it, Alan, old son. You'll note the bastard s askin' over three hundred pounds for the pair, same as he is for yon genuine pair… which are hand-painted. Thought the bugger wasn't entirely straight!"

"Couldn't afford either," Lewrie confessed.

"Well, do you not mind they might be a tad, uhm… warm to the touch? In a manner o' speakin'," Clotworthy wheezed. "I think I know where the genuine article can be had. In a day'r two, mind. A week at the outside." Chute tut-tutted.

"Stolen, you mean."

"Shhh! Not a word t'bandy about, now, is it?" Chute hissed, with a finger on his lips. "Not right out loud, thankee."

"Don't know as I care for… warm, Clotworthy," Alan whispered. "Even were they a guinea the pair. Caroline likes to get things which remind her where I've served. She'd like these, but… perhaps just a copy of a good painting… something like that? Wait a minute, that's torn it! I've just blabbed what you want to know. Like your grateful buyers, hey?" "You have, indeed, and I'll keep my eye out for something." His corpulent old school chum winked. "Something special. And reasonable." "Not pinched?"

"You press me sore, Alan, old son." Clotworthy pretended to wince. "Not pinched. Not a flagrant fraud, either. No Canaletto, when it's really some toothless old rogue's drunken copy-work," Alan said.

"Ah, perhaps we should call upon an art gallery which just this very minute springs to mind! They've-"

"Think I'm shopped out, Chute," Lewrie demurred. "Feeling a tad peckish, too. Let's have all this over to the Molo, so I can stow them aboard 'fore sundown. And then I'll buy you that supper." "Well, if you're wearied…"

"Else I'll have to hire a dray-waggon, stead of my cart." Lewrie shrugged. "And have nowhere on the orlop to store it all."

"Aye, let's be off," Clotworthy agreed affably. "I must own to the need for sustenance. Some wine and a plate o' biscotti on the way?"

They left the shop and plodded back toward the waterfront, with their cheerful carter and his boys serenading astern. Lewrie bought some sweetmeats for all-baicoli-and sugar-dusted, ring-shaped bus-solai biscuits to munch on the way. To restore themselves.

Well, restoring Clotworthy's hard-taxed strength, anyway, for he downed more than half of them, in right good cheer.

"My bloody oath!" Clotworthy yelped, stopping stock-still, with one of the cart's handles all but up his arse. He turned away, busying himself at the back of the cart as if he were inspecting the lashings of rope. And dragging Lewrie back there with him.

"God Almighty, Chute, what's the matter?" Lewrie fussed. "Seen a creditor? Someone you 'sharped'?"

"Worse than that, old son," Clotworthy assured him with rare gravity. "Look ye yonder. Ton that balcony, left on the corner by the turnin'."

Lewrie looked, down to the intersection of their already narrow street, to where an even narrower lane crossed it; upwards to the left, to a first-floor balcony above a wine-shop.

"Rented rooms, by the day, the week… the afternoon," he heard Chute whisper in his ear.

"Christ shit on a biscuit!" Lewrie gawped.

He'd gotten an impression of a uniformed man with a lady, still deep in the warm summer shadows of late afternoon, which were almost an ebon-black deepness compared to the brightness of the walls. Until the man stepped forward, into that graze of sunlight which slanted in…!

"Fillebrowne," he growled softly.

"Worse yet," Clotworthy cautioned.

The lady was much shorter, pouter-pigeon plump, with blond hair and bee-stung lips. She was laughing softly, leaning against him, with a bauto ready to be donned, held over and behind her head and hat, like a kerchief. "Lucy? Lucy bloody Beauman?" Lewrie gawped aloud.

He took off his uniform hat and slunk down to peer over the load on the cart, through the juddering knees of the carter's boys. He got a clear shot at the couple, sharing a last passionate good-bye kiss in the elevated privacy of their love-nest. Then they parted, walked into the sty-gian black shadows deeper in the balcony and disappeared.

"Christ, who'd ever thought it?" Clotworthy tittered excitedly. "Lady Lucy and yer sailor-boy. Who'd ever o' suspected, Alan? Rantipolin' the day away. Or do ye have a nautical term for it?"

"Doin' the blanket hornpipe," Lewrie muttered. "With your live-lumber's lawful blanket. God, I knew he had nerve, but this…! I doubt our Captain Charlton would have let him stay anchored off Venice this long, had he known the reason for his remaining. God, I do believe I despise the bastard!"

"Still not sweet on the bitch, are ye? Or, do ye feel beaten to her boudoir?" Clotworthy posed with his usual chary outlook on life.

"Long ago, and far away… long past," Lewrie assured him, with a fierce scowl. "Damme, it just ain't donel Not 'til she's a cast-off 'grass widow,' it ain't."

"Or widow for true," Clotworthy sobered, daunted by Lewrie's glare.

"Thing that rows me most is, I like Sir Malcolm," Lewrie told him. "He strikes me as a solid sort. Quite intelligent, agreeable, so…"

"Oh, so do I, Alan, old son, I assure ye," Chute agreed. "Fair breaks me heart t'see a man that kind-a man that bloody rich!-be cuckolded s'soon. Faithless mort! Knew it straight off, Peter and me. Deserves better, he does. That's my thinkin'. I… Duck!"

Out came Fillebrowne, his hat far down over his brows, with left hand gripped on his sword scabbard to rein it in, with right hand out to plough pedestrians like Moses parting water with his staff, setting a brusque pace towards the waterfront; away from them, thankfully. It wasn't a minute later that Lucy appeared in the doorway, summoning her sedan-chair, to be jog-trotted off to the right down the narrower lane, back to her suite of rooms hard by the Grand Canal.

Smarmy bastard! Lewrie fumed, once they could rise to full height once more; an' bloody whore! He thought himself quite lucky for their teenage "cream-pot" love to have gone smash so long ago. What sort of Hades would he have been put through by now, had he wed her in the Caribbean? Even with all her daddy's gold as consolation? He felt a bit sad, too, that the entrancing, fascinating, so-full-of-promise Lucy from his memories had turned out to be so base.

Mean t'say, he thought; you were already a widow, with oceans of money from daddy's an' husbands estates. Could've removed t'London and rogered yourself stone-blind, like so many widows do. And thank God for 'em! he added, recalling flashes of youthful experience. Why marry at all, again… specially a decent man, when there's so many rakehells available? Was Sir Malcolm just too rich t'miss? And did ya plan t'be an "open beard" right off? Bah! He felt like spitting.

Fillebrowne, though… he'd flaunted a relationship with Phoebe Aretino, damn near to Lewrie's face. Whether it was true or not, or if he had tried to nettle him, to prove which of them was the chief crow-cock, well… it didn't signify. Now here he was, topping another of Alan's old flings. Lewrie had a sense of why; 'twould be the most impish deed for a smug rogue to do, a tripled joy. Bull a married woman, and always cock one eye and ear for discovery-a most delicious thrill, he knew. It was such an intriguing game, to keep the story straight, the blankly innocent demeanour in public… before the husband, under his very nose! And the older and richer the husband, the greater the thrill. Second, there was revenge, the thrill of the chase, the victory over another to savour. Seeing what a round-heel Lucy might have been over Lewrie, the coy flirtation she'd bestowed that dinner before. And beating him into the breech-and "Who's the better man, now, hey?" after he'd turned her offer down. Before he could reconsider and move on her himself!

Fillebrowne could make a name for himself in the Fleet. Lewrie squirmed, turning red. The man who stole quim from "Ram-Cat" Lewrie. Men would ever vie, over just about anything, but nothing caught their competitive heat quite as quick as the chance to stick it to a rival's wife, daughter or mistress!

Finally, there was Lucy herself, the prize. Still a fetchin' bit of fluff, short, springy and bouncy, soft and yielding (he suspected) as a feather mattress, now obviously an avid player at "the game," and time restraints would turn two blissful stolen hours with her into that sort of "all-night-in" that'd kill lesser men. For both of them, he told himself; out to top their last record, and make the most of their time.

"Ya know, Alan," Clotworthy sighed, striving to sound somewhat less amused than he obviously was, "were we a devious pair of fellows, I do allow there's a bit o' profit in this. Do ye despise Fillebrowne half'z much'z ye say, then a word in yer Charlton's ear'd put him in a pretty pickle, would it not? And to reveal all… to a certain party, mind, with a promise t'keep mum… for a gratuity, say…"

"You're right, Clotworthy." Lewrie grimly nodded. "There might be. Mine would be proper, though. He's remiss in his duties. I'd be very disappointed in you, Clotworthy, were you to try to exploit this with a certain party. Either party. Stick to what you're good at… bloom where you're planted, hmm?"

"But Alan, m'dear, I merely pointed out…!" Chute cried, in a fair approximation of righteous indignation, but retracting his intent. "Damme, sir. It's so meaty! And a juicy bit o' news like this doesn't come along just any day. There must be somethin' in it for me!"

"Gossip t'gloat over, Chute," Lewrie allowed, grinning slightly. "A zesty tale t'tell, in strict confidence at the wine-table. Does it get spread about, though, sooner or later it gets back to Sir Malcolm, and there's a good man made a laughingstock. And heartbroken."

"And her mint, too, mind," Clotworthy countered. "Given a welcome comeuppance. And well deserved."

Comeuppance, Lewrie mused for a moment; what a gladsome idea! "Clotworthy," he said carefully, "did you know that Commander Fillebrowne is dead-keen on art collecting? His whole damned family is mad for it. Reckons himself a most discernin sort, though. Or so he boasts."

"Is he, by God!" Clotworthy exclaimed, beginning to beam the beatific smile of a delighted child. "Hmm… why, just bless my soul!"

CHAPTER 12

"Hope you enjoyed Venice as much as I did," Benjamin Rodgers sniffed, as they strolled along the shore of the tiny island that was alee of the main isle of Palagruza. "Came nigh t'killin' myself."

"Bit o' this, a bit o' that," Lewrie answered, gazing off into the small undeveloped harbour where Jester and Pylades lay to anchor. "Shopping, mostly, for the family. Go on a high ramble, did you, sir?"