Jester's Fortune

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Where he strike blow?” Mlavic demanded, quarrelsome.

  “Don’t know,” Lewrie admitted truthfully, taking a sip of wine to cover his own duplicity. “Not a Venetian port, he assured me. An act against his . . . your enemies, not ours, I gathered. Something that would keep his fleet eager, put heart in all your people, and . . . scare foreign traders, as well.”

  “Kossovo Polje,” Mlavic whispered again, sounding reluctant, as if the Second Coming were real and he were about to be eternally damned as a hopeless sinner. He took a deep draught of wine, then tossed the bottle away like he’d tasted poison. “Time? Time?” he muttered. He got to his feet awkwardly, crossed over to a stone crock sitting on a crate and opened it to take another slug. Plum brandy, by the smell, Lewrie reckoned; more powerful “Dutch Courage.”

  “Too soon, sir,” Kolodzcy whispered softly. “He thinks id ist too soon. A pragmadic man, dhis Mlavic. In dhis for de money, sir, nod glory or holiness. Vhadeffer Petracic does, dhis one vill nod be vit him. He vill sail off, you see.” Kolodzcy sneered, making one of his “poof!” conjuring motions again. “He hess no vish to die for a cause.”

  Lewrie thought that Dragan Mlavic certainly appeared to be a man of two minds at that moment, struggling with his inner demons. Growling and muttering to himself, pacing fretful a step or two right, then left, pondering and sipping, pondering and sipping . . .

  Let Petracic lead the bulk of the fleet to ruin, Alan wondered, then take over the remnants . . . and keep his ambitions small? That was one choice he imagined Mlavic was weighing. Simply toddle off and forget he’d ever heard the orders—ever heard of Ratko Petracic at all—was another. Survive, hole up somewhere safe and anonymous for a time, ’til it was safe to resume his filthy trade? Perhaps Kolodzcy had the right of it; at heart he was a follower of Mammon, a pragmatist or a coward who knew certain death awaited just weeks or months away if he obeyed. Lewrie took a draught of wine, most smugly enjoying Mlavic’s dilemma of how he’d avoid his martyrdom.

  “Hah!” Mlavic cried aloud, in a bellow that could have carried through a full gale, of a sudden. He put both arms on high and dashed out into the centre of his capering sailors, crying at the top of his voice. With a smile of such pure ecstacy it damn-near ripped his face in half, his mouth a gigantic red hole. “Kossovo Polje!” he cried, followed by a flood of Serbian, which stilled that jangly, jumpy music, turned the dancers to stone in an instant. Mlavic was the only one dancing then—seeming to lope in a wide circle amid the leaping flames of the cook-fires, shouting to all, then to individuals, snapping his fingers with urgency. The only other sounds were the crackling fires and the sizzling of meat juices, the soft bubblings of stews or gruels.

  “Perhaps, sir,” Lewrie muttered from the side of his mouth, “he ain’t as pragmatic as you suspect, what?”

  “Perhabs he ist a fatalist.” Kolodzcy shrugged, as if it was no matter. “Eastern folk vill make de besd ohf efen crucifixion.”

  “Like ‘if rape’s unavoidable, relax and enjoy it’?” Lewrie felt like snickering.

  “Zomethink like dhat, ja,” Kolodzcy tittered, finishing his wine. “We heff deliwered de orders, Kommandeur Lewrie. Time to leaf, I am thinkink. Dhey vill get blint-trunk unt vork dhemselfes into frenzy. Unt vhat heppen afder to foreigners . . .”

  “Aye, good thinkin’, sir. Let’s steal away, supper or no.”

  A ferocious din erupted from the Serbs, who were cheering and crying to the first star of the evening. Swords and scimitars were flashing red and amber in the firelight, and they were capering, dancing with glee, and making a wolf-howling noise. A wolf-howling that turned into some sort of hill-singing, or a long, involved battle cry, Lewrie noted as they began to steal away. Pagan, heathen singing, barbaric and blood-curdling, like packs of wolves in a call-and-response chantey, from one mountain peak to the next.

  Just then, though, up trotted Mr. Howse with Midshipman Spendlove, both panting and out of breath. “Sir!” Howse gasped. “Oh, it is ominous, Captain . . . ominous indeed, sir. You must do something, at once, I say!”

  “What’s ominous, Mister Howse?” Lewrie snapped, leading them further away from the singing and cheering.

  “Prisoners, sir!” Howse tried to thunder indignantly. “Won’t let us in the stockade to see to ’em, sir. I’ve a dreadful feeling . . . there’s something horrid happened.” He gulped. “Knew this would turn out badly, right off, sir . . . you must put it right, sir. At once!”

  As if anyone asked yer opinion. Lewrie sighed, still leading them down from the camp toward the beach.

  “Wouldn’t let you in, sir?” he quizzed. “Mr. Spendlove?”

  “Don’t speak any English, sir . . . the guards,” Spendlove said, also out of breath, and sounding genuinely shocked.

  “But we’ve seen the prisoners before, sir, no trouble before,” Howse insisted. “This time, though—”

  “Waved us off, sir . . . drew pistols when we got impatient,” the young midshipman carped. “Could see through the logs, sir . . .”

  “I could still see enough, sir,” Howse announced, getting some of his old irritable-with-the-world back. “Been ’round sailors enough by now to recognise ’em, sir. I’ve eyes, haven’t I? There are damn-all seamen in the stockade, and when I called out to them in French I heard no French in reply. Italian, some other foreign jabber neither of us could fathom—”

  “Women and children, sir!” Spendlove burst forth. “Started up a fearful racket, soon as they heard our voices.”

  “What the Devil . . . ?” Lewrie gasped.

  “And dark as it’s got, sir,” Howse rumbled, beginning to sound like himself again, “I could swear, the brief glimpse I had, some of ’em are a tad swarthy . . . dressed in Eastern garb.”

  “Like Turks in turbans, sir,” Spendlove contributed quickly.

  “Just what the bloody Hell’s Mlavic done?” Lewrie griped, with a searing glare at the prize-ship at anchor. She showed but one light on her tall poop-deck, aft. All else was fading into the twilight and held no answer for him. A closer-in look at the beach showed him that both gig and cutter were gone, and now nestled Jester’s hull near the starboard entry-port. Working-parties were busy along the gangway to hoist up a sack or two of flour or a struggling beast. The funnel at the forecastle showed a thin plume of cook-fire smoke as the cooks got the steep-tubs ready for the evening meal. A cable off from shore, he reckoned, and every man-jack busy with doings inboard.

  Might’z well be 240 miles, not yards. Alan shivered, feeling a sudden, premonitory chill. We’re for it, do we handle this wrong!

  “Who’s a good swimmer?” he asked.

  “I am, sir,” Spendlove piped up. “Well, just adequate, really . . .”

  “Get back aboard Jester, quick as you can, then,” Lewrie said. “Mister Howse?”

  “Not a stroke, sir,” the surgeon confessed. “Why, sir? I say, sir . . . you must do something, enquire . . . demand, rather . . . !”

  “Then find a safe place to hide, Mister Howse,” Lewrie ordered. “As far from the beach and the camp as you can. Have you a weapon of any kind with you? In your kit-box?”

  “Damme, sir . . . I’m a surgeon, sir! Not a soldier,” Mr. Howse blustered, indignant. “Have no need of a weapon.”

  “Just your bad luck, then,” Lewrie wryly commented. “Find a place to hide. Do you find a log, a small boat, try to sneak out to the ship . . . long as no one sees you doing it. Don’t know how safe you’d be with us . . . me and the herr leutnant here. Unless you’re a good swimmer, too, herr Kolodzcy?”

  “An egzellend svimmer, herr Kommander,” Kolodzcy answered to that, quite gaily. “Bud, alas . . . sald vater ist nod gute on my boots or univorm. You heff need ohf company, I am thinkink. Should Mlavic ged engry enough, he loses his gommand ohf English . . . unt dhen vhere vill you be?” He laid a hand on the gilt hilt of his elegant small-sword and gave it a tug to assure himself it was loose enough to draw quickly. His mouth moved in a petulant little
twitching, brows lifted as if to sketch the slightest, half-amused, “oh, what the devil” shrug.

  “Right, then,” Lewrie sighed. “Mr. Spendlove, you’re to inform Lieutenant Knolles there’s trouble in the camp. Do I not return soon . . . in an hour and a half, say? He’s to assume that . . . well.” Lewrie felt like gulping in fright at exactly what Knolles could assume. “Do I not return, he is to first board the prize-vessel and the brig. I doubt they’ve many hands aboard, with such a grand party ashore. He’s to land the largest force possible, Marines in full kit, and the hands with pistols, muskets and cutlasses. Do they make a fight of it, he’s to scour the camp with fire . . . grape shot and canister in the nine pounders . . . solid round-shot for the carronades.”

  “But, sir!” Spendlove protested. “You’d be right in the middle of it! In the line of fire, sir. I can’t—”

  “Then I’ll just have to duck, won’t I, young sir?” Lewrie said, laying a hand on Spendlove’s shoulder and forcing himself to utter the tiniest of chuckling noises. “I’ll not be a bargaining-chip, should they try that on. This may be a misunderstanding. Or it could be a bloody massacre. Does Mr. Knolles know definite that I . . . that anything happened to me, he’s to exterminate ’em, root and branch. Root and branch, Mister Spendlove.”

  “Swear that, sir!” Spendlove shuddered.

  “Be off, then. Mister Howse? Go to earth, delve yourself the deepest warren ever you did see,” Lewrie ordered, “and pull it down over your ears.”

  “I . . . !” Howse demurred, glancing over his shoulder at the forest. But for the small encampment, it was stark, barren, full of boulders and wind-gnarled pines, stirred to some mindless, brutal life by the leaping flames of the camp, making it writhe like a mythical Hydra. “But if it is a mistake, sir, I’ll be alone . . . mean t’say, I’d have no way of knowing when to come out, ’less at dawn, after any assault. Should you be allowed to leave unharmed . . .”

  Bloody miracle, most-like, Lewrie coldly realised.

  “. . . I’d be denned up out yonder, no way to leave with you!” Howse concluded, sounding as if being alone, in a wild place, was his last wish, even if his other alternative was getting his throat cut.

  “You could come with us, sir?” Alan suggested, tongue-in-cheek. “Mlavic assures me they’ve a splendid feed planned.”

  Howse glanced over his other shoulder, at Jester, lying out so safe and snug, her decks lit up with lanthorns; then at the waves on the gravelly beach, breaking slow and sullen and dark, like spilled oil on storm waters. Regretting he could not swim a lick.

  “I’ll come with you, if you do not mind, sir,” Howse snapped, downright snippish.

  “Mister Spendlove, still here, damn yer eyes?” Lewrie barked. “Give Mr. Howse your dirk and scabbard, sir.”

  Spendlove stripped the dirk off reluctantly; it was rather a nice ’un, a present from his parents. Howse took it gingerly, like a man being presented a spitting cobra. But he clipped it on his waistband and folded his coat over it.

  Lewrie turned without another word and started striding back to the encampment, an icy, fey and echoing void building under his heart; one hand swinging fisted at his side, the other gripping his hanger by the upper gilt fitting below the hand-guard. He most devoutly wished there was a simple, an innocent, explanation for the absence of French prisoners . . . but he rather doubted it. Might he talk his way to the beach again? There’d be no other way out.

  Asked him ’bout his prize, Lewrie recalled; twice, and he turned all cutty-eyed as a bag o’ nails. Somethin’ queer, there! Christ, I just wish Howse’d got to me ’fore I told the bastards those orders.

  He turned to see Howse plodding along, stumbling a bit on tufts of tough shore grass, the odd shoe-sized rock, looking as miserable as a man on his way to the gallows to do a “Newgate-Hornpipe”!

  Before, Mlavic might’ve been too shameful, Alan regretted; now, though . . . now I had t’be so god damn’ sly-boots an’ stir ’em up . . . !

  He was inside the flickering circle of light from the fires by then, elbowing past cavorting, singing, half-drunk pirates, ducking a clash of high-held blades of every cruel description, glittering keen and hungry. He approached the exultantly happy Mlavic . . .

  “Captain Mlavic, sir!” he bellowed. “A word with you!”

  CHAPTER 3

  “N ow, sir!” he demanded, once Mlavic had gone stock-still in his tracks and turned to face him, a displeased scowl on his face already.

  “What you want? Supper?” Mlavic barked back.

  “I want to know what happened to the French prisoners. I want to know why your men didn’t let Mister Howse enter the stockade. And who all those women and children are up yonder, sir,” Lewrie rasped, deciding to play it high-handed still. Cringing and hand-wringing as meek as a shop-clerk or a diplomat wouldn’t suit at all, he thought. Dragan Mlavic was a hard man, a bloody-handed brute, and the only language his sort understood was the forceful approach.

  “What?” Mlavic chuckled, looking about at his men, as if to say ‘Are you crazy?’ assuring himself he was in charge here, surrounded by his well-armed minions. “Too fast. My English. You have drink on me, hah? Go slow,” he almost implored, shamming sheepish and dumb.

  “Put it to him, herr Kolodzcy. In his own tongue.”

  “Go there,” Mlavic snapped, pointing to his hut, wheeling about to exhort his men with a long, cheerful speech, which raised a huzzah. “Talk there. Eat first.”

  It seemed a tiny tad-bit safer, Lewrie allowed, pivoting on his heel to stalk to the log and fling himself down by his abandoned wine-chalice. Kolodzcy followed, not quite so fastidious this time, sitting without dusting. With his small-sword extending over the back of that log, a slim, dainty-fingered hand on the upper scabbard still. Dragan Mlavic had to follow or break into an unseemly lope to arrive ahead of them. He ended up tailing along behind. For that reason, he remained standing, to assert his questioned authority after they’d sat.

  “Brandy?” Mlavic offered, still trying to play “Merry Andrew.”

  “Once we get this resolved, perhaps, sir,” Lewrie said coldly. “Now, where are the French prisoners?”

  “Frigate captain . . . dark hair? He come. Take them to Trieste.” Mlavic shrugged, speaking in a deep, guarded voice, and his eyes just too disinterested for Lewrie to believe that.

  “When?” Lewrie shot back. “Last I spoke to him, he was going back south, to the straits.”

  “Yesterday!” Mlavic snapped, going to his stone crock for more plum brandy, miming an offer to share; which was refused. “I come yesterday with prize, frigate man come same day. So many prisoner . . . I say be trouble, so he take. You go Trieste, ask him,” he slyly hinted.

  Damme, could be true, Lewrie puzzled; one more prize, and Pylades would have had to leave the straits. Or met up with Charlton, taken over their prizes, so . . . no! Not that many to take, lately. Spoke to him only five days ago . . . here! A day to gain the straits, a day back, even if he didn’t run into the others . . . Mine arse on a band-box!

  “How many shillings did he pay you, Captain Mlavic?” Lewrie asked. “At a silver shilling per prisoner.”

  “Three guinea!” Mlavic quickly bristled. “Three pieces of gold, he give.”

  “Sixty-three shillings . . . sixty-three prisoners?” Lewrie drawled. “A neat, round number, ain’t it? No small change to mess with. Sounds rather too little, though . . . for the fiftyodd who were here five days ago. Plus the twenty or so from the prize he’d already taken, plus the thirty-five or forty off your latest capture? Closer to five pounds, I’d reckon it, hmm?”

  “By God, he cheat me!” Mlavic exclaimed, sounding outraged and all but slapping his poor dumb forehead. “Here, good food. Serb food. You eat. We friends, da? Holy warriors, you . . . me. Kill many Turks together . . . kill many enemies together.”

  “Not in my brief, sorry,” Lewrie primly pointed out, “killin’ Turks. I’m not at war with Turks.”

  Some you
nger Serb lads, barely old enough to be cabin-boys, offered heaping wooden trenchers of food, still steaming from the spits and pots.

  “Eat! Drink!” Mlavic urged, digging in with one hand, without utensils, and slurping a paw-ful down with another draught of brandy. “Is good,” he tempted, like a governess with a willful toddler who’d turned his nose up at carrots. “Spice . . . Serbian, best in world.”

  Damn him! Alan groused, seeing Howse tentatively dig into his platter; not five minutes away from gettin’ yer bowels ripped out and you’d go with a bellyful! Well . . . no need to be a total Tartar.

  “Croat, Albanian . . . Greek,” Kolodzcy whispered in Lewrie’s ear. “Turkish!” He snickered. “All de same cuisine. Serb food! Hah!”

  “Didn’t happen t’steal some forks, did you?” Lewrie enquired.

  “Forks, da! Spoons, there,” Mlavic said boisterously, indicating a small chest near the doorway of his hut.

  Lewrie tried some food, poured himself a bumper of wine from that bottle he’d first opened. It was lamb, skewered on sticks with onion and garlic, some vegetables as well. Underneath was a gravied, fine-milled . . . tiny round rice-pellets? he wondered. A gnat-sized pasta? Rather infuriatingly, it was good, heavy and piquant with spices.

  “Cow come,” Mlavic hinted. “Beef? Aha! ‘Roast Beef of Old England.’ Da, this I know-ing,” he said through a mouthful of food. “Or . . . want goat? Have pig, too. All good.”

  “Another question, sir . . .” Lewrie persevered. “Your men kept my surgeon from examining the prisoners in the stockade. Even so, he says he heard women and children up there. Saw women and children in the pen. Who are they, sir?”

  “Too many question,” Mlavic grumbled, shaking his head, masticating a chunk of bread. “Why too many question? No work. Is time for eat . . . sing. Play game.” He winked, ever the spirited host.

  “Who are they, sir?” Alan pressed.