A King's Commander

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Uhm, sir.” Mountjoy sighed, feeling put upon, in spite of the necessity for him to be tricked out in Lewrie’s best coat and hat, and wearing a spare sword borrowed from the gunroom. “But wouldn’t it be best, sir, to pose as your first officer, while . . . ?”

  “No, sir,” Lewrie countered. “That might have been the way in the Royal French Navy, beneath the dignity of a titled captain. But a captain come up through the hawsehole’ll shout his own questions. Be ready, she’s within half a league of us. Practice bein’ a Tartar. A loud Tartar, mind. Scoggins? Hoist the French colors.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” the signalman-striker shouted back, hauling at a flag halliard on the mizzenmast.

  With the most powerful glass aboard, Lewrie could almost recognize the shivers of relief that went through the people on the strange brig’s quarterdeck. Instead of edging astern, as she had been to shy away, she now resumed her old course, straight for them.

  “Mister Knolles’s hoisted his own false colors, sir,” Buchanon said, almost in a conspiratorial whisper at Lewrie’s side.

  “Very well, Mister Buchanon, thankee.” Lewrie nodded emphatically, edgy and fidgety with worry of all that might still go awry. It was many a slip, ’twixt the crouch and the leap, as Caroline ever said.

  “Her own colors,” Mountjoy drawled out in a regular voice, an arm extended to point. “Mean t’say . . . there’s her own damn’ flag, at last!” he amended, suddenly gruff, and rather loud, too, in what Alan feared was a fairly accurate impersonation of his own style.

  Damme, do I sound that fearsome? he asked himself.

  “Tuscan, sir,” Buchanon identified first. “And a house flag I don’t know,”

  “Let’s pray it’s a house flag,” Lewrie said, “and not a secret recognition signal.” They’d tried, in the hour that HMS Jester and the strange brig had taken to close each other, to interrogate the French midshipman, but he’d gone even surlier, and more mute, once the subject had been broached. Surely there were signals, Lewrie thought; must be, if they’re to approach French forts that could blow ’em to flinders! A godsend for the entire squadron would be the discovery aboard the brig of her codebook, which would let them raid any harbor they wished for a time, before the French changed the signals.

  “Wearin’, sir,” Buchanon grunted. “Two cable up t’windward.” “Helm alee, Mister Spenser. Two points to weather. Close her. On tippy toes,” Lewrie told the helmsmen. “Nothing too sudden.”

  “Two points t’weather, sir. ’Andsomely,” Spenser replied, chuckling.

  “Can they hear us yet, do you think, sir?” Mountjoy asked.

  “Not upwind of us,” Lewrie scoffed. “Nor in the middle of a jibe. Mister Porter? Brail up, and reduce sail,” he shouted.

  The rather pretty brig wore her stern across the wind, and took in sail herself, slowing and sloughing atop her bow wave, and falling leeward at a slight angle. Warily keeping the wind gauge of Jester but approaching to as close as half a cable, possibly less.

  “She’ll be fine catch, sir,” Buchanon murmured, rubbing fingers as if shining a guinea between them. “A damn’ handsome thing.”

  Dark green gunwale over well-oiled oak, with only a miser’s pale yellow gloss paint in lieu of a braggart’s gilt, was the brig. Rigging was well set up, the wood of her yards and lower masts freshly painted in white, and her running rigging was almost golden-hemp new. Lewrie eyed her with his glass, estimating her length at around eighty-five or ninety feet, just a little larger than their brig-sloop Speedy. And there was gilt on her, he noted; a figurehead lady was gilded, as were the upper beak-head rails, and the trim around her quarter galleries.

  A pretty thing, he thought; and a richly done’un!

  A shout from her quarterdeck, as she fell down alee, within two hundred yards. In French! “Qui va la?”

  “Answer them, Mister Mountjoy,” Lewrie prompted.

  “Uhm . . .” Mountjoy quivered nervously, coughing and practicing a false basso, sounding like a mastiff with a chest cold.

  “ La corvette Emeraude, Marine de guerre Français!” Mountjoy said through the speaking trumpet, sounding a bit shriller than Lewrie might have liked, a touch too quavery. “ Ici capitaine de frégate . . . Hainaut! Et vous? Qui vive? ”

  “Il Briosco!” came the wail of a shouted reply. “En partance pour San Remo! Parlez-vous Italien, m’sieur, s’il vous plais?”

  “ Got you, you bastard!” Lewrie hissed with fierce glee.

  “Should I repeat that to him, sir?” Mountjoy whispered from a corner of his mouth, with an expression on his phyz that questioned his captain’s sanity.

  “Mine arse on a bandbox, sir, o’ course not! Just palaver with

  ’em in Dago, till she drifts a little closer!” Lewrie spluttered. And wondered about Mountjoy’s sanity. “Be ready, Mister Bittfield.”

  “He asks about any British ships in the area,” Mountjoy went on.

  “Tell him no, not this far west,” Lewrie prompted.

  Damme, how’d he know of our ships even beginning patrols so quick, Lewrie frowned in puzzlement. “Home port,” he demanded, jogging Mountjoy in the small of his back.

  “Leghorn, sir,” Mountjoy muttered, turning his head a trifle to speak from the side of his mouth again, after posing the question.

  “That’s at least a two-day passage, and we only arrived four days ago, so . . .” Lewrie frowned again. “Damme. Close enough, sir.”

  The brig had made a little leeway, sailing alongside Jester, while Spenser and Brauer had been edging the helm over, spoke at a time, to go up to her. There weren’t a hundred yards between the two hulls, wakes creaming slowly, their outer wave fronts beginning to mingle astern.

  “Gun ports open, and run out!” Lewrie screeched suddenly. “True colors aloft! Marines, up!”

  Up, the port lids flew, and truck carriages squealed and roared as wood wheels rumbled over oak decks. Down came the French Tricolor, to be replaced with the White Ensign with the Union Jack in the canton. Up, the Marines bounded, from kneeling behind the bulwarks of the starboard gangway, half turned, muskets at half cock and ready to aim.

  “Heave-to or I will open upon you!” Lewrie snarled to Mountjoy. “Resist, and I will blow you to hell, tell him! Mister Porter, cutter to the starboard main chains! Muster the boarding party!”

  Andrews, a boat crew, four spare sailors, and six Marines under Corporal Summerall trotted to the entry port, as the cutter was led out from being towed astern.

  “Mister Buchanon, you have the deck, until my return, sir,” Alan instructed. “Mister Mountjoy . . . you have my coat and hat! I’ll thank you for ’em back.”

  “Yes, sir, uhm . . . could I go with you, sir?” Mountjoy pleaded as he stripped to shirt and waistcoat. “They speak either French or Italian, sir. And their papers will be in Italian, most likely. I’d do best at translating for you, or searching. Speed us along, sir?”

  “Right, then. Come on.” Lewrie nodded, retrieving his uniform. “Keep that sword on you. But try not to cut yourself.”

  “Thank you, sir!” Mountjoy gushed, breathless with excitement. Down they went into the cutter, without ceremony, clambering on the boarding battens to the chain platform low on the chain wale, then timing leaps into the gently bobbing cutter.

  “Ship starboahd oars!” Andrews snapped. “Toss larboahd. Shove off, bow man, and fend off forrud. Back-watuh, starboahd! Fend off, larboahd aft . . . easy all! Now, ship oars, larboahd. And give us way, togethah!”

  The brig had let fly all, clewing up her courses and tops’ls, her jibs and spanker flogging. It was a short row to her, and within a minute they were hooked on and boarding; Lewrie first with a pistol in his waistband and his sword dangling from his right wrist from a leather lanyard. Four cutlass- and pistol-armed sailors next preceded the Marines.

  A damn’ well-kept little brig, Lewrie thought happily as he saw how clean, how “Navy Fashion” her decks had been holystoned or swept. He waited for his sailors to joi
n him, glaring at the crew that gathered near the main cargo hatch and the entry port in her waist. They didn’t appear much concerned of their capture. Nor cowed, either, he thought. Defiant, smug; and only a trifle hangdog. As if they knew Nelson’s orders that they’d soon be released?

  Aft was a bit of the same story, as he paced along the gangway to the brig’s quarterdeck. Helmsman, after-guard, a couple of men in plain blue coats and cocked hats who were probably the mates, and one dapper little fellow with gray hair and a close-trimmed gray beard in a fancier coat and hat he took for the captain. Two further civilians in the latest fashion, one drab in snuff-brown and boots, and the last a silken peacock, clad in an almost metallic-gleaming electric blue and silver-trimmed coat with dark-blue velvet cuffs. Clerk and owner, Alan speculated?

  “Signores,” Lewrie stated. “Commander Lewrie, the Jester sloop. Reggia Marina Britannico. ” He knew that much Italian, anyway. “With me yet, Mister Mountjoy?”

  “Here, sir,” Mountjoy replied from his right rear.

  “Tell these gentlemen that . . .”

  There was a hefty splash from starboard and astern.

  “Papers, sir!” Mountjoy wailed.

  “Corp’rl Summerall, the great-cabins!” Lewrie barked. “Move!”

  A sneer on the peacock’s face, crude grins on the mates’. And from her captain, an attempt to remain bland, but a daunting smug look of satisfaction in spite of his best efforts. Only his lively wee eyes laughed.

  “Damn them!” Lewrie spat. “They think this is some bloody game?”

  “Perhaps, sir,” Mountjoy confessed softly.

  “Introduce me, tell ’em they’re prisoners, and that we’re taking this brig into Vado Bay.” Lewrie sighed bitterly, working up the enthusiasm for an air of false bravado, and success, in spite of them. And in spite of his dashed hopes that he’d discover just how they knew to fear a British squadron along the Genoese Riviera so quickly.

  “Then, sir?” Mountjoy asked, once he’d delivered that news.

  “Tell ’em no harm will come to them, but they’re to be searched for weapons, then confined until we drop anchor. Officers, passengers, and crew. Well search their personal belongings and cabins . . .”

  A muffled bang from below! Followed by several louder reports!

  “What the Devil . . . ?” Lewrie shouted, wheeling toward a ladder to the waist. “Watch ’em, Andrews.”

  “Aye, sah,” Andrews drawled, drawing his pistol and pulling it back to full cock. He might not have been tall enough, or beef to the heel enough to seem menacing; but his feral grin, and the unspoken and exotic danger of a dark-skinned man with a gun did the trick for him.

  “What happened, Corporal Summerall?” Lewrie demanded once he’d gained the great-cabins.

  “Civilian, sir,” Summerall reported from rigid attention, eyes fixed over Lewrie’s shoulder on a cabin door. “Caught ’im pilin’ up a mess o’ papers an’ such, sir! Drew a pistol, sir! Fired at us. Returned fire, sir. No ’elpin’ it, Cap’um, sir!”

  He might have been a servant, a valet to one of the gentlemen on deck. A wiry-haired fellow approaching middle years, his hair gray and neatly dressed. An aging clerk’s soft hands and cherubic face. But he now lay sprawled between two open chests or traveling trunks, amid the blizzard of loose and bound correspondence he’d tried to jettison. His clothes were quite good. Much better than a servant usually received as part of his wages. Castoffs, Lewrie thought, kneeling down? No, they were too new, of good fabric, and elegant cut. Drab gray trousers, not breeches, but of excellent wool. A black waistcoat, now torn and gory. A fine cambric linen shirt with lots of lace, slowly turning rusty red.

  “You’re a damn’ fool, sir,” Lewrie told him, as his eyes opened and his breath, which had seemed stopped, heaved his chest.

  “Aaahh . . .” He whimpered. A trickle of blood appeared along his mouth. Lung shot, or gut shot, and goin’ fast, Lewrie grimaced.

  “Who are you, sir? Anyone we should write?” Lewrie offered as he knelt down beside him. “Tell your family? Familia? Famille? ”

  “In . . .” The little fellow almost chuckled, though he was choking on his filling lungs. “Inconnu . . .” And with a rictus of a grin, he closed his eyes. A racking cough, the gout of blood that drowned him, flooded his mouth.

  “Dammit!” Lewrie groused, sliding back on his knees to escape the last coughed blood. “Inconnu?”

  “In French, sir, that is to say . . .”

  “I know what it means, Mountjoy! ‘Unknown,’ was what the damn’ fool said,” Lewrie fumed, getting to his feet. “Having his last wee jest. See his eyes twinkle for a second there? Means whatever there was worth finding went overboard. And he died ’fore we could interrogate him. Might’ve planned it that way. Couldn’t find the ‘nutmegs’ to put a pistol to his own skull, but he could make us do it for him.”

  “French agent, without a doubt, sir,” Mountjoy flatly stated. “No one sane would kill himself for loss of profit.” Mountjoy looked a little queasy, as if he were suffering seasickness again. So far, there hadn’t been much dying aboard Jester for him to witness, for the young gentleman to wade through. “Hellish business, sir. Still . . . I say, Corporal Summerall? Was he still trying to gather bundles of his papers, as if there was something left to toss into the sea?”

  “Aye, Mister Mountjoy, sir. Saw us, dropped ’em, then snatched up ’at pistol, sir,” Summerall reported, turned to face them but still speaking to windowsills and the like.

  “There is a remote possibility, sir,” Mountjoy posed.

  “Have at it, then, sir,” Lewrie agreed with a weary air.

  “And, sir?”

  “Aye?”

  “That fellow in the snuff-brown, sir, did you notice?”

  “Notice what, Mister Mountjoy?

  “Well, sir, he was the only one of the principals aboard this ship who didn’t look pleased when they heard that splash, sir,” Thomas Mountjoy pointed out. “Didn’t look . . . anything. Stone-faced as a good gambler, sir. Pinched his eyes at the shots. For an instant, I recall a trace of sadness. Then, back to his pose, sir. As if he knew this’n was going to die beforehand. Didn’t flinch or jump, like the others, that’s what made me remark him, sir.”

  “Well, damme, Mister Mountjoy, that’s . . .” Lewrie gawped, as if Toulon had begun forming words and speaking in English. “That’s sharp of you, I must say. However did you come by this . . . talent of yours?”

  “A barrister I clerked for, sir, when I was reading the law, he discovered to me certain quirks people have when they give testimony in the dock. Had he feigned surprise, I might have dismissed my first impression of this fellow, but . . .” Mountjoy shyly confessed. “Lead them on with innocuous prattle, sir. Then rock ’em back on their heels hard, with a question they don’t expect. Then read their reactions.”

  “And, since you speak Italian and French so well, in addition to this most welcome skill of yours, Mister Mountjoy,” Lewrie decided, “I will put you in charge of not only perusing what remains, but of quizzing our prisoners, as well. Especially our snuff-brown friend.”

  “Er . . . thankee, sir. I think,” Mountjoy all but preened. Just before he realized how much, and how arduous a labor that would be.

  “Him, last, I should think,” Lewrie speculated. “Let him stew over what the other missed.”

  “An admirable idea, sir. I’ll see to it.”

  “Lock them all up, separate cabins. No personal belongings, I think would be best. These trunks and chests, ready for debarking at San Remo . . . could you go through them all?”

  “These two, particularly, sir. This dead fellow seemed anxious to purge just these two open ones.” Mountjoy dared to grin. Excited, again, to be useful. “Why just these two? His . . . and the snuff-brown man’s, I’d wager? Rather plain, good leather, but unremarkable, hmm. Nothing as gaudy as those. I’d strongly suspect the fancy ones belong to the elegant gentleman. Might be the ship’s owner, do you not think, si
r? Might have bags of incriminating stuff crammed in his, but these got the attention, as if this ship’s problems, and theirs, were . . . !”

  “I leave it to you, sir,” Lewrie interrupted. “I have to get way on her, sort out her crew, disarm and inspect ’em. Shuffle hands about—again!—to man all our prizes, and such. We’ll speak later, once we’re safe and snug in Vado Bay.” And knowing, too, that once his clerk got enthused about something, he’d talk six ways ’round whatever had heated his blood, and waste the rest of the Day Watch doing it, too!

  “Manifests,” Lewrie said, snapping his fingers, delaying his departure for the upper decks. “Bills of lading, ship’s papers, crew and passenger lists. I’ll send you Mister Giles and his jack-in-the-bread-room to take inventory of the cargo, so you may see if it conforms.”

  “Very good, sir. I mean, aye aye, sir.”

  Lawyers, Lewrie thought, pounding up the companionway ladders: Minds like snake’s nests, God save us!

  C H A P T E R 6

  A most gallant action, Commander Lewrie,” Horatio Nelson told him, waving a hand toward a cut-glass decanter of newly arrived claret. “Perhaps a bit beyond our brief, to raid a Savoian port rather than a Genoese. But one which has no doubt discomfited the French, no end.”

  “Thankee, sir,” Lewrie replied, making free with that welcome claret, and feeling like God’s Own Damme-Boy to win praise from a man so aggressive himself.

  “And most circumspect of you, as well, sir,” Nelson went on, “to confine your findings concerning the merchant brig, and your suspicions, to a separate report.”

  “Mine and my clerk’s, sir, Mister Thomas Mountjoy’s,” Alan added. He’d won almost gushing praise—there was enough and more to go around. And Mountjoy, surprisingly, had done almost as much as Knolles, Bootheby, Cony, or any of the others he’d cited for significant contributions to their overall success.

  Too far from the entry door to be able to respond to the musket butt rapped on the deck, Nelson’s next comment was cut off by the knock at the louvred partition door to the day-cabin.