Jester's Fortune

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Be on ship . . . prize,” Mlavic answered without looking up from his trencher, shoving a handful between bread and fingers. “We bring here. Pay way on ship . . . pass-en-ger? Many, oh many.”

  “So what have you got to hide, if they’re passengers and such?” Lewrie wondered aloud. “Why didn’t your guards let Mr. Howse in, as they have before? Women, children . . . old men . . . not too many sailors, Mr. Howse tells me. What’s different about this lot, that your men kept him from tending to them?”

  “No diff’rent,” Mlavic insisted, still unable to match gazes with him.

  “Vhy does French ship engaged in smugglink,” Kolodzcy stuck in with a whimsical tone to his voice, “carry passengers, Kapitan? Book vomen unt chiltren aboart, knowink dhere are British warships upon de Mare? Dhat sounts vahry foolish, to me. Vahry . . . quvestionable. Unt ve do nod see vomen unt chiltren on odder prizes, eider. Chust now.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lewrie snapped. “You afraid word’d get back to yer Ratko Petracic, and he’d be displeased with you?”

  “Ratko?” Mlavic bawled, suddenly hugely, frighteningly amused. He let go a belly laugh, had to set his trencher aside, he was laughing so hard he might have spilled it. “Petracic mad, Dragan? Oh, ahahah! Rakto, never! Be ver’ please, Dragan. Laugh, too, I tell him. Make big joy, I tell him. Ship I take . . . well, may not be so please,” he admitted with a sheepish shrug. “But people on ship, diff’rent. He have big joy I take them,” he insisted, proudly thumping his chest.

  “And just why’d he be displeased over the ship, sir?”

  “Damned you!” Mlavic snarled, shoving his plate away, pressed beyond all enjoyment of food. “Too many question. I tell you, da . . . I tell you. Take Venetian ship, da? Give you big joy, know this? Pooh! Is Venetian ship . . . all rich, all big. See no good prize, see no ships days and days! She be ship I see, she is rich . . . I take!” He lurched into a furious outburst in his own language.

  “To heff carnal knowledche ohf yourself,” Kolodzcy translated, shaking his head at Mlavic’s utter greed and stupidity. “To go to de Devil . . . for you to heff carnal knowledche ohf your mother . . .”

  “Oh, thankee for that,” Lewrie muttered to Kolodzcy.

  He got to his feet, putting his sternest, iciest “captain’s face” on as he waited for Mlavic to run out of expletives. “You know this is the end of our arrangement, Captain Mlavic. You gave your word, swore to us that neutral ships were strictly out-of-bounds, that any prisoners were to be treated decent,” he accused. “Now you’ve broken your vow six ways from Sunday. Took a Venetian ship, most-like you killed her crew, too, didn’t you . . . to spare yourself the trouble of keeping them here? Pylades hasn’t had time to get to the straits, here and back, to take the French prisoners off your hands, either. Did you murder them, too, ’cause you got tired of guarding them?”

  Mlavic stood before him, a trifle hangdog, arms crossed over his chest, and glaring at Lewrie’s shirtfront, like a defaulter come before “Captain’s Mast” for peeing on deck.

  “We thought we were dealing with trustworthy men, sir,” Lewrie scoffed. “But it will be my unfortunate duty to inform Captain Charlton that you can’t be trusted . . . that no matter Serbian bravery and skill, you can’t be trusted out of sight.”

  Piss down his back a mite, Lewrie thought; maybe I can shame us back to Jester alive!

  “No more help, sir. No more alliance. You’re on your own, and whatever it is that Petracic does . . . even if he begins the liberation of all of Serbia . . . my country’s king and government will never award you recognition, or aid, or . . . You’re on your own, from this moment on.”

  “Serbs on own, ever!” Mlavic grunted, lifting his eyes at last. “Enemies everywhere . . . help, none. Pooh!” He spat on the ground. “I tell you, Serbs no need English help.”

  “Then how’d you get your damn’ brig . . . sir?” Lewrie smugly reminded him.

  “I would have take . . . you get in way!” Mlavic shot back.

  “Now you can keep that ship . . . and God help you,” Lewrie said, sensing he might have overplayed it, and not liking the truculence he saw returning to Mlavic’s face. “All her valuables, too. But those Venetian prisoners, those women and children, come with me, sir. I’ll take them aboard Jester and see ’em safe to Venice. Shilling per head, same as before. ’Cause I can’t trust you to keep them. You’d violate your word again . . . end up murdering them. Like your French-men, hmm?”

  Mlavic put his fists on his hips, glared at the ground between them and made idle scuffing motions with his brand-spanking-new boots for a moment or two.

  “Da. Kill French,” he confessed. “Be too much trouble, watch . . . feed. Die quick, and feed to sharks,” he admitted, waving a hand out toward the west and the open sea. “See Dragan take Venetian ship, speak new prisoner . . . news is getting out, da? I keep ship. I keep all cargo.”

  “Then if you’ll bring the prisoners down, I’ll send to my ship for boats, and . . .” Lewrie nodded in agreement, feeling a sudden rush of almost blissful relief. He could hear Howse and Kolodzcy sighing.

  “No,” Mlavic said, almost pouting. “Keep prisoner, too. Not all Venetian. In ship are Muslims, go Ragusa, Cattaro, Durazzo. In ship are Montenegran, Albanian . . . Bosnian!” he spat, as if being a Slavic coastal Muslim were the ultimate scum, as bad as Hindoo “untouchables.” He glared at Lewrie, a gay smile beginning to lift his mouth, a crafty crinkle round his beady, close-set pig-eyes. “Enemies. Have still to play . . . games.” Dragan Mlavic tittered.

  “Sir, I must protest!” Lewrie barked. “How could innocent women and children be your enemies? How dare you insinuate you’d—”

  “Child grow up . . . kill and torture Serbs. Woman have enemy child, grow up . . . murder Serbs. Enemy men have murder Serbs. Serbs see father, mother . . . whole family, torture and kill. Make good Serb Orthodox, Catholic . . . Mus-lim! Then kill. In ship are Macedonian, in ship are Greeks! Same as Turk, same as Byzantium who let Turk armies in Serbia. No . . . I keep. We play games.”

  “Jesus bloody Christ . . .” Lewrie gasped, his mouth agape, never so appalled, so laid all-aback, his entire life! His innards and his spine went icy as he realised that Mlavic meant to torture, rape, then slay his prisoners. Even icier, he felt—nigh to shivering in fear—as he realised that Mlavic had murdered the French prisoners so they’d not be able to pass the word that he’d taken a Venetian ship; nor tell one word about the massacre he’d planned, soon as he’d captured her!

  And he, Mr. Howse, and Leutnant Kolodzcy were now witnesses, too!

  He plan t’murder us, too? Alan reeled, searching for a way out. Those prisoners ain’t no friends o’ mine, so would he let us go, ’fore his goddamn games begin? No, damme, I can’t just . . . !

  “Captain Mlavic . . .” Lewrie said, firm as he could, after thinking quickly, gazing into those agate-hard eyes, that upper-handed leer. “Again I protest! No civilised man would do such a thing, even dream of doing such a thing. Give me the women and children, at least. You can’t hurt women and children, man . . . it just ain’t done! Let me have them, and we’ll go. Then you can hold whatever sort o’ bloody games you wish. And be damned to you, you ugly, black-hearted bastard!”

  “You stay,” Mlavic pronounced, beginning to beam quite gladly.

  “Be damned if I will, sir!”

  “You stay,” Mlavic insisted. “You watch. I say you stay . . . I say you go. Dragan Mlavic captain here. I say you stay, now.”

  “Going to make us, are you? With a sloop o’ war not one cable off the beach?” Lewrie sneered. “Eat shit, an’ die!”

  Mlavic did the very worst thing then—he began to chuckle, then to laugh out loud, chilling them all to their bones. He put two fingers in his mouth and gave a shrill whistle. Instantly there were six of his pirates on them, coming from round the rear of the hut, to pinion their arms, strip them of swords and pat them down for knives or pocket-pistols.

  “You damn fool!” Lewrie ra
ged, thrashing against the grasp of two strong men. “Lay hands on a British officer, sir? Don’t you know my First Lieutenant will get to wond’rin’ what’s keeping me? Hears or sees what you’re doing . . . why, he’ll blow your filthy arse to Hell!”

  Mlavic laughed aloud again, then gave a second whistle.

  “Come wrong time, British,” he said with a sneer, putting his face within inches of Lewrie’s as he was wrestled to his knees before Mlavic. “Have go safe, but you come camp, ask too much question. You go safe? Die, tonight? Dragan Mlavic say, hah! You stay, watch games. Ratko plan holy thing, now I do holy thing . . . get men hot to war on enemy. What your ship do, I hold you, doctor, girlie-man, long as want? Him, too.”

  Three sailors came lumbering into the firelight, dragging their burden, which kicked, yelped and twisted—Midshipman Spendlove!

  “Sorry, sir . . . barely got into the water ’fore . . . !”

  Oh, shit, we’re in the quag now! Alan shuddered, feeling those few bites of food, or sips of wine, turn to scalding acid, threatening to come up and sear his throat. He really means t’ scrag us!

  CHAPTER 4

  The first victim was bound to a log. A burning log.

  He was an older man, blond-haired and blond-bearded, a Slav who cried out and protested as he was forced to eat pork, stripped so he could be smeared on his face and chest—then chained atop a log as long as he was, that had been rolled away from a cook-fire. What agony he suffered they could barely hear above the jeers and taunts of Mlavic’s pirates. He was a Muslim Slav, though, one who’d surely killed Serbs when young and fit, so . . . he had to die, slowly.

  His wife was in her middle years, too, a properly plump matron with a round face and a pale complexion, with fair, greying hair under her Turk-style head covering. She was forced to watch her husband burn, before they made him watch her suffer. They stripped her, found her too round and withered to rape in a chorus of catcalls and boos, so she was slit open, belly and womb, and filled with searing-hot hearth-stones.

  The youngest son, who’d traveled with them to safe Venetian Spalato, on a safe Venetian ship, was about twelve. The pirates sliced his genitals off, then took him by wrists and ankles and heave-hoed him in the air—once, twice and thrice—and caught him on the points of a dozen swords.

  Lewrie was forced to watch, seated like visiting royalty on one of the logs near the central fire—with Dragan Mlavic his regal host to his right—defenceless and closely watched by two Serbs at his back.

  Mister Howse was already on his knees, spewing and weeping, but straddled by an angel-faced teenage pirate who kept pulling his head up so he must watch their entertainment through raging, howling tears.

  Leutnant Kolodzcy sat erect, his nostrils pinched and his eyes slit, but giving no sign that this spectacle affected him. Spendlove was to his left, clutching his stomach, a hand to his mouth, his every breath a rasping sob. “Albanians,” Kolodzcy whispered as the next victims were led in, knowing them by their desperate pleas.

  Husband and wife, both young this time . . . a dark-haired son in his sixth or seventh year, a nursing infant in the woman’s arms. Not for long, though. Pleas and prayers turned to shrieks as they tore the babe away, dashed its brains out on a rock, eviscerated it and discarded it in the leaping flames of the main fire, raising a great howl of victory . . . of revenge, which drowned its mother’s disbelieving wail. She was worth raping, so they took her, a half dozen of them, in front of husband and surviving son.

  “Have Serb baby now, da?” Mlavic chortled, nudging Lewrie once more like a racetrack tout. “Keep to see . . . take baby, raise a Serb. Alive that long, then . . .” He shrugged. “Boy baby. Greet him . . . ‘Hail, little avenger of Kossovo, ’ ahaha! Grow up, be Serb warrior.”

  “You’re a dead man, Mlavic,” Lewrie hissed, turning his head to glare at his merry host. “Swear t’Christ, you’re a dead man!” He would have said more, but a guard behind him laid hold of his head to turn it back to the “games.” “All our ships will hunt you down . . .”

  The young Albanian lad leaped on the first Serb to rise from his rape, as he was retying his trousers. A full dozen infuriated pirates sprang up to rescue their comrade—and beat or slice the boy to bloody offal, while the brutal rape went on and on, another dozen queuing up for their turn on her.

  The father—howling and out of his mind with grief—was stripped of his trousers, shoved facedown and spread-eagled. A man with a wood-chopping axe stepped forward, prancing round his victim to the catcalls and approving whistles of the crowd. Standing on the husband’s pinioned shoulders, he raised his axe, teased the crowd with a practice swing or two— he knew what played well with this audience—and hacked the heavy axe-head into the crack of the man’s buttocks, splitting him open as high as his waist. They pegged him down after that—so he could bleed, and scream . . . and beg for death as a mercy.

  But there would be no mercy. They let him lie, finding it very funny, and moved on to other amusements. There were shouts from the discontented, so Mlavic called an order, and more women were dragged into the fire circle. Two of them in the front were flung to the dirt, their dresses thrown up, and assaulted right off, so the men in line didn’t have so long to wait on the gibbering-mad Albanian woman.

  “Dhey choose,” Kolodzcy whispered from the side of his mouth, just loud enough to hear. “Cull de old, ugly . . . for murder. Odders, Mlavic says to auction off, vatch-against-vatch, gunners, sail-tenders . . . mates. Or indiwiduals, heff dhey enough plunder. Dhose vill liff a few hours more.”

  “I’ll kill the sonofabitch!” Lewrie grated, though his vow came out more a strangled sob. “If it’s the last thing I do, swear t’ God I will. Never seen such a . . . never dreamed people could . . .”

  “Ve match high cards, sir,” Kolozcy muttered, his cheeks aflame in a face gone a pasty, deathly white. “Vinner hess pleasure.”

  “Do we get near cards again . . .” Lewrie whispered bleakly. By this point, he doubted Mlavic wished a single living witness. Was he saving them for last? Could he be that stupid, to think that sometime before midnight Knolles wouldn’t send a boat ashore to find out what was keeping them? Was Mlavic hoping for that, so he’d have even more hostages to bargain his way out with? Andrews, Midshipman Hyde, eight or nine hands off the cutter, too? Knolles might waver, once. But if Mlavic threatened to keep his prisoners even longer, sail away, still holding them . . . didn’t he know that Knolles would inform Charlton, and the squadron would hunt them down and destroy them?

  Or was he capable of thinking that far ahead; thinking at all?

  “Drink, Captain!” Mlavic hooted. “Be too pale! Brandy bring colour to cheeks, ahahah. Drink . . . Dragan order! Good show? Like my games? You live, you tell world Serbs fight holy fight. Drink. Or Mirko cut you . . . a little,” he wheedled, looking back at a guard.

  One of the silver chalices was shoved into his nerveless hand, some brandy sloshed into it, over it, onto his breeches. He gagged as he looked into it, feeling the keen razor’s edge of a knife beside his throat; seeing his wavering reflection so filled with fear; seeing for the first time how craven and helpless he looked, no matter his fight to mask it.

  And, admitting to himself for the first time that he was about to completely unman himself, should they turn their attentions to him; sure he’d scream, grovel, plead, curse God then beseech Him. Offer up wife, children, good friends, anybody but himself for a minute more . . .

  “Drink, Captain. Is good for you.” Mlavic snickered.

  “To your death, Mlavic,” he said, though turning to bestow on that hulking hirsute brute a glare that could have slain all by itself. “To your long, slow, agonising death . . . soon,” he hissed; then drank.

  God! he prayed. Don’t hear much from me, do Ya? Just help me kill him, let me stick a knife in the bastard and know I’ve sent him t’Hell, that’s all I ask. Ev’ry last mother-son of ’em! That’s holy, ain’t it? He means t’kill me first, though . . . can Ya help me
go like a gentleman? Spit in their faces? Not shit my breeches?

  He took another sip. It seemed to calm his shudders. He took a third, then a deep, quaking breath; found the where-withal not to cry out or flinch when Mlavic clapped a huge paw on his shoulder, laughing at him and thinking him thoroughly cowed.

  “Good, good!” Mlavic cruelly teased. “Make new man. We sell women now. You want buy woman, ahaha? We sell you. But cost much guineas!”

  “Fuck you,” Lewrie said with a snarl, through a taut, deadly grin. “Go fuck yourself . . . with bloody bells on!”

  Kolodzcy coached from the far side, actually blushing!

  “Ah, aye . . . the Serb way, thankee,” Lewrie jeered, turning to Mlavic once more. “Fuck your mother. Or did the monkeys wear her out?”

  “Brandy good for you, have much courage,” Mlavic cooed, not the slightest bit insulted. “You may die well! ‘Blood-ey bells on,’ hah. I like!” So did Mirko and the other guards, once he’d passed it on.

  “Doing it again, sir. Rowing people, when you shouldn’t. Like that time on the beach at Toulon?” Spendlove warned.

  “Can’t help it, Mister Spendlove,” Alan confessed. “When it’s all I have left, I like insulting people.”

  Mlavic got to his feet and paced before the clutch of terrified women, ogling them. He snatched out a wee young lass, all black hair and wide eyes, not over fifteen, dragging her by the wrist back to the logs and pawing her. The pirates cheered his choice, and then a mate began to work the crowd, encouraging them to bid on the first girl to be hauled out, stripped down to her chemise and pinioned to display her charms. Most of the prisoners were poor coastal folk, attired in local garb like Turks, or in something similar to what the girls at Corfu had worn. The old, the ill-favoured and the unpleasing the pirates just booed down and murdered, their throats cut, and left to bleed to death, expiring with blood-sobs and gurgling screams as they sank to the earth.

  “Savink de European ladies for lasd,” Kolodzcy spat, turning his head to see Mlavic peeling the peasant blouse off his choice, putting a rough hand under her skirts. She sat numb, too scared to wail, on Mlavic’s lap, tears coursing down her cheeks, hiccoughing in fear. “For de richer mates vit bigger share in prize.”