Jester's Fortune

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Yayss . . .” Charlton drawled lazily. “Since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1714, they’ve written off any hopes of reclaiming lost territory over there. So why bother to correct one’s charts concerning what one may not have, hmm? Terra incognita. ‘Here be dragons,’ that sort of thing. Out of sight, and out of mind. The Venetians are rather good at that, letting things slip their minds, if nothing can be done about them anyway. Or, rather, if they’re too vexing to think about!”

  “I take it things went well, ashore today, sir?” Lewrie asked.

  “As much as could be expected, Commander Lewrie,” Charlton said with a weary, frazzled air, running a hand over his greying hair. “We will be allowed to enter Venetian ports in the Ionians, their territory in Montenegro, Albania and such—for wood and water, only, d’ye see. And that for no more than twenty-four hours at a time, weather permitting. They’ve sent orders for their local governors and such to admit us as long as we pay scrupulous attention to their neutrality. Do we violate it, however, they’ll deny us entry. With their full force of arms, was how they phrased it to me.”

  “I shiver in my boots, sir,” Lewrie scoffed.

  “How come you by that, sir?” Charlton snapped quickly.

  “Beg pardon, sir, but . . . what force of arms?” Lewrie rejoined. “At the Arsenal this morning, Captain Charlton. Lord, what a pot-mess! They’ve ships laid up in-ordinary, two-a-penny, aye, sir. But they’re rotting at their moorings! Harbour watch and anchor watches set, with warrants and their families living aboard. Bearded with weeds, sir! Forecastles and waists built-over with huts or shacks, like receiving-hulks back home, sir. No seamen to be seen, and damn few naval officers. No ships under construction, sir . . . no ships being fitted out or repaired. Place was full, but idle as Sunday in Scotland. Hundreds of idlers loafing about, pretending to do some chores.”

  “Like our own HM Dockyards, hmm?” Charlton posed.

  “A thousand-fold worse, sir,” Lewrie scoffed. “It’s more like a series of palaces than a dockyard. Dependents of yard workers swarming like drone bees, but damn-all work being done. There are fountains in the Arsenal yards, sir. Wine fountains! Not temporary, for Carnival, but permanent stone fountains. Shift a couple of planks . . . go get yer cup o’ wine. Tally salt-beef barrels . . . wet yer whistle again, sir. Then line up for dinner, sir . . . on the house, and take as much as you like. Then wash it down with more wine. All free, sir. Like a Roman dole. Bless me, Captain Charlton,” Lewrie concluded his accounting, “they couldn’t put a decent squadron together to overmatch ours were we to give ’em ’til Christmas!”

  “Surely a seafaring nation, though, Commander . . .” Charlton said in puzzlement. “Mean t’say, Mistress of the Seas for nigh on a thousand years! The Arsenal must be crammed with stores, just waiting—”

  “Bare-bones, sir,” Lewrie interrupted. “Mast-ponds half-empty, very little timber seasoning . . . the rope-walks were idle, and I didn’t see that much spare ropes or cable coiled up and ready. Mountains of shot piled up, hundreds of guns ashore . . . but more than a little rusty, from what I could see of ’em. I don’t think the Venetians could sail out a force larger than the Austrians at Trieste could, sir.”

  “Yet, after the news this morning . . . ?” Charlton puzzled some more. “Forgive me, sir . . . but I was able to confirm those rumours we heard at the ridotto. The French, under this new general Bonaparte, did beat the Austrians and the Piedmontese and split them apart. Even worse, so the Venetian authorities told me not two hours ago, they were not minor skirmishes, but all-out battles. The Austrians lost over six thousand men, sir, and were damn near routed! And there’s been another battle with the Piedmontese . . . at Mondovi.”

  Charlton gloomed up, took a sip of sekt, and wriggled his lips as if in distress, to be the bearer of even worse tidings.

  “At Mondovi, Commander Lewrie,” Charlton intoned, “may we trust the account, the Pied-montese were also routed. And an entire corps of their army captured. Their General Colli has asked for an armistice . . . and that was several days ago. It may have been signed by now. So you see what that means, sir?”

  “Piedmont’s defeated.” Lewrie gulped. “Out of the war. Out of the Coalition. And all Italy west of the Po River is now held by French troops?”

  “Correct, sir. They may now march east into Lombardy at their leisure, using any route they fancy, from the Riviera to the Alps. I will give you and Fillebrowne more details soon as we are all together this evening. Did you see Commander Fillebrowne ashore during your travels, Lewrie?”

  “Aye, sir,” Lewrie grunted. “Dined with him. We were all together at the Shockleys’ lodgings.”

  “So, he should be back aboard Myrmidon soon. Good.” Charlton nodded. “And we may sketch out our operations, now we own such fine charts. Dine you both aboard, say . . . four bells of the First Dog?”

  “Looking forward to it, sir,” Lewrie told him with a pleasant grin, though inwardly less than enthusiastic from all he’d just heard. And what he’d seen and heard earlier.

  In his own shirtsleeves, he pored over his new set of Venetian charts, in the privacy of his great-cabins aboard HMS Jester. Andrews was puttering about, polishing the fittings of his sword’s scabbard to get rid of the smuts of a morning’s handling. A glass of cool Rhenish sat near his hand on the desk. Toulon didn’t care for the scent of any wine, so he left it alone after a tentative sniff. Though he did like the crinkly feel of those new charts! And those corners that didn’t bear any tooth-marks yet . . . !

  “Fine navigator you are,” Lewrie cajoled, shifting the cat off the middle for a third time, exposing a maze of islands off the Balkan shores. In keeping with the times, he supposed, their original Venetian names were now in very small letters, and were mostly labeled with odd Slavic names, which mostly began with otok —followed by a string of consonants that only the very inebriated would even try to pronounce. Like someone had slapped the entire Bahamas or Windward Isles from the West Indies along the shore . . . it looked to be a Paradise for any ship bent on escape. Soundings showed fairly good deep water, right up to the steep coastlines, too, and very few shoals to bar a fleeing French vessel from taking any course she pleased, once inside the isles. He and the rest of the squadron would be haring after them like hounds in a game-park back home, dodging the mature oaks and bramble patches, and their prey—the hare—able to double back, then sit and laugh at it all, as they lost the scent where it had crisscrossed itself time and again.

  Flop went Toulon, crushing the Balkans once more, on his side . . . tail lashing and legs outstretched for a tussle. “Mrrr!” he urged.

  “Catlin’, why . . .” Lewrie sighed, then gave up. He began to play pat-a-cake between Toulon’s front paws, to touch him gently on the belly, before escaping his grasp. Toulon always started with claws sheathed . . . but that didn’t last a minute, once he got excited.

  The Italian shore (the one the cat wasn’t smothering) looked to be more promising, though dangerously shoal and marshy. Lewrie thought that any French ships trading in the Adriatic—or any French warships—would stick to that side, to aid their cause in the north, if nothing else. Or distract Neapolitan, Venetian or Austrian troops to another threat, to further their army’s successes against Piedmont. There was a slim hope that they wouldn’t have to get tangled up in the snares of the Balkan shore and those islands. It was still a backwater to the real war.

  He paused, took a sip of his wine and rose from the desk to go rummaging in the chart-space for other sources of information. Toulon padded after him, leapt to the top of the chart-table, and cried for their game to resume. Lewrie unfolded a map of northern Italy—not a sea-chart, but a true landsman’s map—over Toulon, of course. And that was a special treat for him, to play Blind Man’s Bluff from under cover.

  It was frustrating; half the places Charlton had mentioned, such as Ceva and Montedotte, weren’t shown. But Alessandria was, and Mondovi and that Cherasco, the Po River, Milan, Turin and Pavia. />
  “Damme,” Lewrie breathed.

  Cherasco wasn’t a day’s march from Turin, the capital of Piedmont. If the Austrian commander, Marshal Beaulieu, was falling back on Alessandria, then he’d left the line of the Po unguarded! If that little bastard Bonaparte, or Buonaparte, had marched that fast, over such a distance, from Piedmontese front to Austrian front and back . . . he had a clear shot at Pavia, Alessandria . . . even Milan, the capital of the Austrian archduchy of Milan! He’d struck Lewrie as a knacky little shit back in ’93—active as anything. Oh, but surely not!

  There were fumblings and delighted little purrs from beneath the map as Toulon fought it. A tap or two, and he was whirling and clawing, creating an earthquake under Lombardy.

  “Peek-a-boo, Toulon!” Lewrie whispered with a smile, peeling the map back to fold up. He was answered with a loud purr, and the cat laid out on his back, all four paws in the air and waving for sport.

  Would they be going home, back to Admiral Jervis, after this? Lewrie wondered as he picked up Toulon and carried him back to the desk. With all the excitement for the summer happening far away, it didn’t seem reasonable that their squadron could accomplish much for the good in the Adriatic.

  Maybe send Fillebrowne for fresh orders, Lewrie speculated, and good riddance to bad rubbish! Before he . . .

  Granted, Lewrie hadn’t been in a charitable mood after leaving the Arsenal, after seeing how low the mighty Venetian Navy had fallen. He’d been a tad leery, too, of spending any more time with Lucy or her forbidding husband, Sir Malcolm. Or of having Peter Rushton get cherry-merry with drink and gush out things of the past that were best left in the past. Or dealing with that wily criminal, Clotworthy Chute! What could come out, what more social trouble could he tumble into, once they got to gossiping over old times? And his part in them?

  Thankfully, Peter and Clotworthy had been away—off on their own low amusements, he suspected—but, to equal their pestiferous presence, Commander William Fillebrowne had turned up instead!

  Of all gentlemen in the Royal Navy, Lewrie knew smarm when he heard it, having dished out more than his fair share in his time. And Commander Fillebrowne had been most definitely smarmy!

  “Horrid foreign custom, sir,” Fillebrowne had chortled, “the Venetian habit of cicisbeo. A proper Venetian lady must have one, d’ye see—with her family’s approval, of course. Chosen with more care than her mate, I’m told, from only the finest select of Society. One never chooses from a lower ranking than oneself . . . that’d be a mortal shame, d’ye see.”

  “Why, whatever is it, Commander Fillebrowne?” Lucy had goggled, all coy and frippery as a minx.

  “Her guide through life, her amanuensis,” Fillebrowne had sworn in much good humour. Rather a leering humour, Lewrie’d thought. “This cicisbeo holds her muff, her cloak . . . trails along and steers her over her introduction into Society. Part dancing-master, diplomatic representative . . . tea-fetcher, hand-holder, father-confessor . . . some say her lover . . . !”

  “Sir!” Sir Malcolm had barked, damned displeased by such talk.

  “Her catch-fart, d’ye mean, sir?” Lewrie had interjected. “A simpering twit to stroke her ego?”

  “Uhm . . . that too, Commander Lewrie,” Fillebrowne had agreed. “It is said, I believe, that he is her lifelong teacher in all things. A male chaperone, admitted to her dressing chamber with her maids.”

  “Sure you’re pronouncing it right?” Lewrie had scoffed, eager to both skewer Fillebrowne—simply because he’d taken a hot dislike to him—and to reassure Sir Malcolm that he was no danger himself. “We saw them, didn’t we, Sir Malcolm, at the ridotto? Mincing about like so many ‘Mollies’ in men’s clothing? It’s certain to be said more like ‘ sissies- bay-oh.’ Sissy-boys.”

  “Hah!” Sir Malcolm had barked again; this time with amusement.

  “A lifelong triangle . . . wife, husband and cicisbeo,” William Fillebrowne had insisted, sticking to his original pronunciation. “I have it on good authority. Unspeakable people, the Venetians. Every Italian society, for that matter.” He shrugged off, as if he’d meant no more than to be entertaining, and informative. “Horrid custom!”

  “Ah, dinner!” Sir Malcolm had enthused as the food arrived.

  Witty, charming and amusing, had Fillebrowne been. Lewrie had let him have the stage, preferring to deal with Sir Malcolm over mills and weaponry, casting cannon, good swords and such. Yet, round the beef course, there’d come a sly, secretive stroking along the side of his boot beneath the table!

  Better not be Fillebrowne! Alan had frowned to himself. Secret “Molly,” is he? Oh, Christ, no!

  Dining en famille on a spacious balcony overlooking the Grand Canal, seated at the opposite corners of a four-place table, there was no way Fillebrowne could reach him. And it surely wasn’t Sir Malcolm! Lewrie warranted. He was all stocks, money and business talk.

  No, directly across from him was Lucy, smiling so sweetly that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, her huge aquamarine eyes so saintly-wide and cherub-innocent . . . ! Yet, in one covert second, when conversation had lagged and the only sound was the scrape of knives and forks on fine Venetian glass plates—she’d cut her eyes to him, to see, had he noticed! And she had seemed almost amused when he’d drawn his feet away from her soft, slippered caress, or scooted his chair back a wary inch or so more!

  Why, the brainless, pox-riddled trull! he’d snorted in affront. Not wed a year, and she’s makin’ sheep eyes at me again? Me, a man wed and . . . well, maybe what’s in my soul shows, plain as day. But no! Not again. Not with her, certain!

  They’d caught up on family doings. Her father and mother back in England, in the Midlands, along with her foppish brother Ledyard. Floss and her husband, her oldest brother and his wife Anne . . . and a rather sultry and seductive Anne, Lewrie had recalled in spite of his best intentions! . . . still in Jamaica running the plantations and the sugar, rum and molasses trade. There’d been a first husband, but he’d died in ’89. There were children, now old enough to be left in care of governesses, or Eton school. Sir Malcolm’s brood was grown, adult and away on their own pursuits.

  “Heavens, Alan,” Lucy had almost wailed in remembered grief. “After . . . I was disconsolate. Even after two years of mourning. But mother and father insisted I go to Bath to take the waters. And a bit of joy. And suddenly, one night in the Long Rooms . . . !”

  She’d given Sir Malcolm a doting smile at that point, tou-sled a stray lock of his hair over his ear. And the old colt’s-tooth had almost whinnied in shy delight to be so fawned over!

  “Neighbours . . . not twenty miles betwixt us, all that time, but of different parishes . . . !” Lucy had gushed. “Father an investor, in the early days, though Shockley had never come to call upon us.”

  “How fortunate are life’s turnings,” Sir Malcolm had managed, blushing to the roots of his hair, but gazing upon his dazzling younger wife with nigh-on total adoration. “How surprising . . .”

  “Serendipity, sir,” Lewrie had recalled. “From Dr. Johnson’s lexicography. I think. To seek one thing of value, and unexpectedly come upon another of even greater delight, totally unlooked for.”

  “How true, sir!” Sir Malcolm had sworn with heat. “How true!”

  And God help the poor bastard, Lewrie thought, tossing off his Rhenish. She always was a brainless bit o’ baggage. Spooning over the old toad . . . and running her toes over me at the same time! And over Fillebrowne, when I wouldn’t serve, I think.

  Round dessert, Lucy had turned to Fillebrowne for a time, and he’d gotten a strangled look, just after she’d shifted in her chair. Followed by lidded, half-hooded eyes, Alan remembered. And a damned smug air about him, too!

  Damme, is she so bound and determined to put “horns” on Sir Malcolm Shockley, she ain’t particular who tops her, ’long’s it’s done? She’d been just close enough to reach him with her tiny foot; he’d got that sleepy ram-cat look right after. A righteous man, Lewrie suspected
, Sir Malcolm hadn’t noticed. But then, the husband was always the last to suspect, in any event. And well Lewrie knew of that, and prospered from it in his wilder days among the “grass widows.”

  Should he suspect her himself? he wondered. An innocent man’d not. But then, he wasn’t an innocent, was he? An innocent man would never have even caught that play between them. If that was what it was.

  It wouldn’t square up, dammit! What he’d known of Lucy Beauman in the West Indies, with her wide-eyed innocence, her blessed lack of worldly knowledge and weariness, well . . . perhaps people changed over a decade. But not by that much, surely.

  And she’d been so fluttery and charming as she’d seen him out, as he’d departed before Fillebrowne. Just as if any flirtation between her and Fillebrowne had never occurred, and he was still her target! A ploy to let him know she was available? Alan speculated. A way to whet his interest, by using Fille-browne—to make him jealous?

  “Pahh!” He spat softly.

  “Sir?” His cabin-steward asked, leaving off his silent puttering.

  “A top-up, Aspinall,” he told him. “And before I forget again, tell my cook I’ll dine aboard Lionheart this evening.”

  “Aye, sir,” Aspinall replied, headed for the wine-cabinet.

  Not that I didn’t wish to top her long ago, Alan recalled, in his reckless, wild single days. Well, more reckless than he was now, he amended. In his teens, sure the Navy was a short wartime career, he’d been a penniless but handsome midshipman, ’bout the most fetchin’ Mid there was in the entire West Indies, he reckoned smugly to himself. Dashing and rakehell, a born Corinthian, with that damme-boy glint to his eye that made prim maidens’ hearts go all aflutter. The bad’uns always got the interest of the good’uns! And her family had been so rich, whilst he hadn’t a hope of an inheritance, a living of any sort, beyond a poor remittance from his father—whenever Sir Hugo had remembered, or felt like, sending it. There had been hopes for a match, her family had been almost disposed to it, should he make something of himself, earn a commission. Well, he’d blown the gaff to the wide, now, hadn’t he? He’d thought about her, even years after, had fantasies alone in his narrow bed-cot, and months at sea . . .