A King's Commander

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Artillery!” sang out a watch officer. “I hear gunfire!”

  “Hé, merde!” Choundas groaned, biting his lip in anguish. “Sail ho!” Sang out the foremast lookout. “Dead on the bow!”

  He could hear it himself, now. Stuttering. Dull brumbles. A single flat bark. An irregular cannonading, around the headlands. His convoy! The “L’Anglais”—the “Bloodies”—were in Alassio Bay!

  “Sail is ship-rigged!” the lookout cried again. “Standing out to sea . . . larboard tack!”

  “Her flag!” Choundas howled aloft, cupping his hands.

  “Corvette!” the lookout shouted. “Warship!”

  “Her flag! Her damned flag!” Choundas screeched again.

  “C’est l’Anglais!”

  “Timonier, helm down a point, alee,” Choundas snapped, turning clumsily. “Close-haul to windward. Brail up courses, and chain-sling the yards. We will fight her. Drum us to Action!”

  “Sail ho!”

  “Where, away?”

  “ One point off th’ star -b’d bows!”

  Lewrie scaled the mizzen shrouds on the starboard side, telescope in hand, so he could see for himself. A ship, a proper ship, he thought; not one of those lateen-rigged locals. She was bows-on to Jester, aiming directly at her under a press of sail, flinging a great mustache of sea foam about her forefoot and cutwater, her arrogantly thrust bowsprit and jib boom cocking up and down as she rocked. No more than a league to leeward, standing on nor’east close-hauled, and about four miles offshore. The strange ship’s courses, tops’ls, t’gallants, and royals were cusped to the wind, their leaches almost edge-on to him.

  Something diff’rent, though . . . ? Even as he watched, the greater drum-taut billow astern of her fore-course went slack, winging out alee.

  “Brailing up her main course!” Lewrie shouted down to his deck officers. “To fight! She’s a French warship! Mister Bittfield, run out the starboard battery, now! Hoist signal, ‘Enemy in Sight’!”

  He clambered down, to hop the last three feet to the quarterdeck and stride to the nettings overlooking the waist. He lifted his glass again. Should Jester stand on, she’d keep the wind gauge above the foe, but allow her to slip astern. That French ship . . . a frigate, perhaps? . . . was as close to the wind as she could lie, already, and would slide aft as she stood on. Unless she tacked and bore away south to offer battle.

  Has to be a frigate, Alan frowned; a lesser ship’d haul her wind and not be confident of the outcome. But she’s so close inshore . . . I think I like her there. I allow her to tack out to deeper water, she’s all the maneuvering room in the world, then. Aye, stand on as we are, for a bit more, but then haul our wind and wear down to her. Then, if her captain feels he’s trapped himself, he’ll have to come about, tack ’cross the wind. But I’ll still have the wind gauge of her. And rake her, bows-on to me and helpless. She’d have to haul away west . . . ?

  “Brail up the main course, Mister Porter. Rig out the boarding nets. Loose, sloppy bights, mind.” Lewrie smiled. “Quartermaster . . . half a point to weather.”

  Without the force of the main course, Jester slowed, sailing off the wind toward the sou’west, the beginnings of a Levanter, an easterly, on her larboard quarters. Altering course, making it more of a run downwind, which took away the apparent wind, making her seem slower still as she moved no faster than the breeze itself.

  “Full-rigged ship, right enough, Captain,” Mister Knolles stated. “Small frigate, or large corvette . . . about our equal?”

  “Unless she’s a thirty-two-gun frigate, with twelve-pounders, Mister Knolles,” Alan speculated with a cautious growl. “Two points off our bow, and a mile nearer. She’ll shave the western headland by at least two miles, should she stand on as she is.”

  He cast a glance to Jester ’s rear, back toward the bay that lay off her starboard quarter. Surely, there was enough noise coming from there, enough high-piled rags of gun smoke, to tell this Frenchman that there were other British ships about. He rather doubted that she’d be foolish enough to go much further east than the headland’s tip, or risk being trapped between Jester and the rest of the squadron’s guns.

  “Let her slide aft to about . . . four points, almost but not quite abeam before we wear, Mister Knolles,” Lewrie decided aloud. “Perhaps half a point less than four. Then she’ll be between . . .” He felt the urge to snicker, “ between Jester and the Deep-Blue Sea! Let’s prepare. Hands to Stations for Wearing Ship.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Mister Porter?” Lieutenant Knolles bellowed, causing a stir, a chorus of piping, a stampede of bare horny feet.

  “ Three point off th’ star- b’d bows!” a lookout cried over that preparatory din, as hands hauled taut on braces and sheets.

  “Tacking!” another lookout shouted, followed by the others in a reedy chorus of alarm.

  “Avast, Mister Knolles!” Lewrie snapped, countering the order. “Quartermaster, up your helm. Course, due west. Ease her onto a run, wind fine on the larboard quarter!”

  It was just possible that the Frenchman had the slant, around the headland’s tip, to see all he wished to see, and had spotted the powder palls, perhaps one or two more British warships. The French ship came about across the eye of the wind, slowing and luffing, beginning to present her larboard side to Jester.

  “Well-handled, sir,” Buchanon noted with professional interest. “None o’ ’at lubberly cock-billin’ an’ floggin’ you’d expect.”

  “Aye, she is, Mister Buchanon.” Lewrie frowned, feeling a sudden foreboding. A taut ship’s company, a rarity among the Frogs, from what they’d seen so far, A captain who acted with alacrity, and pugnacious aggressiveness; an eagerness, it seemed, for a stand-up fight. Another rarity, that. The Frenchman had come about due south, close-hauled hard on the wind once more, as if to claw himself up and take the wind gauge from Jester. Less than two miles away now, but they were approaching each other quickly.

  “Mister Knolles, we’ll harden up a mite. Quartermaster, put yer helm alee. Lay her head west-sou’west. Leadin’ wind, sir.”

  “Seed ’er afore, sir!” Seaman Rushing, high aloft on the foremast cried. “Corvette! Toulon, there!”

  Aye, it was the pretty corvette that had fired the insolent challenge off Cape Sepet. Lewrie eyed her in his glass. What had they determined . . . twenty, or twenty-two guns? French eight-pounders, more’n like. Which were the equal of his, rated as nine-pounders. Her pale golden-yellow upperworks had gone to seed since, she’d faded and dulled, turned darker as more linseed, tar, or paint had been slapped on to control the ravages of exposure. Her white gunwale was still bright, though, and the black chain wale . . .

  “Damme!” Lewrie shivered, lowering his telescope. Feeling real fear at the prospect of a fight for the first time, instead of the taut nervousness he usually experienced; the nervousness that had almost come to be a high-strung, but manageable, alertness. “Poisson D’or!”

  “Sir?” Knolles queried. “You know her, Captain?”

  “Just like his old ship . . .” Alan muttered, feeling as shuddery and weak as he usually did after a fight was ended. He slammed the telescoping tubes of his glass together, striving to disguise the trembles in his fingers. Painted, tarted-up just like his old . . . It was him!

  “No, Mister Knolles,” Lewrie told him, trying for a grim amusement. “But I think I know her captain. We’re in for a real scrap.”

  He looked astern again, back into the Bay of Alassio. Had any ship read his hoist yet, come about to sail out to aid him? It didn’t look like it. Jester was on her own against the Devil, Choundas!

  Think, he warned himself; what’ll he do! Once we close to gun range, I can go close-hauled, upwind of him, headed south. Else he’s a chance to bow-rake us. He’s French, he’ll fire high. Chain-shot . . . multiple bar-shot to take our rigging down and cripple us. He wears, he exposes his stern to my guns. He tacks again, though, after first broadsides . . . it’d be our stern wide open to raking! What to e
xpect? He was always so clever, so beastly good at it, unpredictable . . .

  “It’s her, Capitaine! ” Hainaut exclaimed. “Jester!”

  “Then God is good to us.” Guillaume Choundas nodded, his caricature of a human face made even fiercer by a smile of feral pleasure. “Sextant, Hainaut,” Capitaine Choundas demanded. Lewrie’s Jester had once been French; he could measure the height of her mastheads above the sea and determine when his guns might reach.

  “Not quite yet.” He sighed with impatience, willing himself to wait. But soon, my brutal English beast. Soon!

  So swaggering, that Lewrie, so conceited and cocksure of just how gently life should treat the handsome and well-formed, the landed aristocracy—the son of a British knight. Money, servants, the best schools . . . best of everything. Dissolute, a randy rabbit, and a wag, he’d learned of him; thought himself infinitely clever, those informers’ reports told him once he’d regained access to Ministry of Marine files after ’89, so he could begin seeking his tormentor. But never quite as clever as he believed. Again, just like the English, who depended upon Luck, Fate, and breeding to “muddle through,” instead of applying themselves diligently. They threw money at problems, as if that would keep them safe, hired others to do their dirty work, like dismissing pregnant household servant girls. Never really tried in the fire, never . . .

  A bit more, and his guns would reach at extreme elevation, with mast-damaging shot, he concluded. A precious minute more in which to enjoy the taste of success at meeting him face to face.

  Stand on, my dim-witted beast, stand on, pretty one! Be so very English, and expect me to be conveniently clumsy, like the other shop clerks. Do you know who you face, yet? This time, I will beat you!

  “Ready, about!” Lewrie cried, of a sudden, after long thought.

  “ Give her the wind gauge, sir?” Knolles wondered.

  “Damn the wind gauge, sir!” Lewrie roared. “Stations to Wear! Mister Bittfield, double-shot the larboard battery now, for later.”

  He was too fearful, covering it with bluster, too impatient and edgy with frightful expectations of the unexpected. He had to do something, even if it was wrong. Besides, wearing Jester north would sail her back to the headland, able to flee into the bay should Guillaume Choundas cripple her aloft. And it would force Choundas to maneuver, might upset the careful aim of his gunners with their first broadside of disabling shot.

  “Hands at stations, sir . . . hauled taut,” Knolles reported. “Mile and a bit, I make it,” Lewrie muttered, twining fingers nervously, rocking on his feet, unable to stand stolid. “A long shot, but . . . his and ours. Mister Bittfield, we’ll engage with the starboard battery, at extreme elevation!”

  “Ready, sir!” the master gunner replied, sounding as dubious as his first officer.

  “Mile, just about . . .” Lewrie sighed, rising on his toes with anticipation. “Wait . . . wait . . . Mister Bittfield . . . Fire! ”

  “On the uproll . . . Fire! ”

  A broadside from the long Nines, the great-guns, crashed out in angry roars and a sudden fog-bank of smoke and sparks erupted from her starboard side. With the wind gauge, Jester was heeled too far over for her solid round-shot to score crippling damage aloft, the disadvantage of firing from upwind. Fall short, perhaps, skip into the enemy . . .

  “Secure the starboard battery at run-in. Ready about? Helm a’weather! New course, nor’west, Quartermaster. Wear ship!”

  He could feel his vessel wheel, her decks coming level, the wind coming stronger on the nape of his neck, as she pivoted within the pall of her broadside, which was hazing and misting as it expanded, thinning to show him the French corvette, which was . . .

  Firing!

  Moans, warbles . . . eldritch screeches, wailing higher and higher in tone, even as Choundas’s ship was suddenly surrounded by feathers of spray as his own shot arrived. Fired high, elevating quoins fully out and breeches resting on the carriages . . . and her decks angled upward to the force of the wind on her full-and-by course to windward.

  Crashes aloft, crashes and bangs. The royal mast and yard upon the main was shattered at the doublings, bringing down the commissioning pendant, sails and ropes, in a blizzard. The fore t’gallant twitched as it was punctured by bar-shot and star-shot, punctures ripping open from luff to leach in an eye-blink. Fore-stays snapped, and the outer flying jib lashed out to leeward, shivering like a spook!

  “Nor’west, sir!” Spenser called, easing his helm, watching the main tops’l for a clue to his luff and winds, with the pendant gone.

  “Ready, larboard batt’ry, sir!” Bittfield reported.

  Mile, or less, Lewrie judged, glad to have drawn first blood; or first honors, at the least. Better shootin’ range.

  “Fire, Mister Bittfield!” he urged, gripping the railing with one hand, chopping at the air with the other as if it held his sword.

  Cripple him, Bittfield, he thought grimly; save my poor arse! “Sure o’ yer aim, now, wait for itt! ” Bittfield cautioned his gun captains, still not trusting Rahl to scamper about and train those barrels inward, so their shot would converge amidships of their target. Following along behind quickly, sensing how Jester rode the sea, when she’d rise up, decks almost level, pent on the up-roll. Waiting for a good one, perhaps, a convergence of wave and counterwave.

  Come on, you perverse bloody perfectionist, Alan wished to yell!

  “Ready . . . on the uproll . . . Fire! ”

  A stunning blast of sound, explosions, and the scream of truck carriages running inward, axles and wheels howling, breeching ropes and restraining bolts juddering bar-taut making thick cable squeal, forged iron moan.

  “Eat it, you bastarrddd! ” Lewrie howled, too jittery to remain stoic and captainly. He never had been—never would be— any good at stoic. At least, fear had turned to something useful, now that he was getting into a battle fever, the insatiable kind that would leave him wringing wet, spent, and gasping.

  The French corvette returned the favor, again slightly later, just as Jester ’s double-shotted barrage reached her. There were more crashes aloft. The foremast fighting-top seemed to explode into dust, as a solid shot smashed into the upper mast, bringing down the tops’l, and t’gallant together, cleaving away stays for both the inner jib and fore-topmast stays’l. Topmen aloft, swivel gunners and Marines in the top, came spilling out and down, riding the wreckage or flung bodily by the force of the strike! Two massive flashes of sparks and oaken splinters erupted alongside, amidships, as the main chains and stays writhed like disturbed asps, and the entire upper mainmast groaned and creaked, and supporting lower shrouds let go under the suddenly unequaled tension, popping as loud as musket fire!

  “Hullin’ her, sir!” Knolles cried. “Hullin’ her, ’twixt wind and water!” he hooted as he pointed to larboard at their foe. Plumes of spray skipped in lines toward the French ship, some almost on her waterline, bursts of dust and wood splinters as she was hit above the water, around her midships gun ports.

  “Half a mile, sir,” Buchanon adjudged, more calmly.

  “Run-out!” Bittfield was screaming, his voice breaking on all the reeking smoke, and his emotions. “Point yer guns! Carronades as well . . . stand clear? Ready . . . Fire! Whoohoo!” He was gun-drunk.

  “That’s the way, that’s the way!” Lewrie snarled, pounding his fist on the railing, just as caught up in the stink and roar of those monsters, his beautiful, reeking, but beloved guns, as the “Smashers” on the quarterdeck came reeling backward on their slide-carriages in a bitter cloud of spent powder. “Quartermaster, steer half a point to loo’rd. Close her.”

  He can’t come up higher to the wind on me, all he can do is haul off, he thought with scintillating but frenetic crystal clarity. We’ll rake his stern, unless he wears away. Or tacks! Twigg made sure he’d know I was here, available—he can’t scamper off ’thout trying to do me in!

  Moanings and warbles, dire humming, and this time round-shot hit lower. Jester reeled like a punc
h-drunk boxer as she was hulled, shuddering with each savage blow taken. A portion of the larboard gangway bulwark caved in, scattering waisters and brace-tenders. Splinters and shards from shattered iron shot keened amid the sudden screams of pain and fright. Men were down, lucky Jester ’s lucky people were bleeding, dying!

  “He’s tacking! Sir, he’s tacking!” Spendlove wailed from the larboard side. “Swinging sou’east, into wind!”

  “Broadside, Mister Bittfield, now! Aim high!” Lewrie ordered. “Take her rigging down while she’s busy comin’ about! Knolles, ready to wear about to east-nor’east!”

  “ Er ist vounded, zir!” Rahl cried up from the waist, “I send to Herr Crewe . . . ?” Even as Crewe boiled up from the midships hatchway ladders, still in his white apron and list slippers from the magazine.

  “The stays, sir,” Knolles panted beside him, smudged with soot and smoke, his hat askew. “Might bring all the main topmasts down if we come about.”

  “The windward stays are sound, sir. Might ease the lee’uns, if we wear. Hands to the braces, ready to wear, sir,” Lewrie retorted.

  “Run out yer guns . . .” Mister Crewe intoned more calmly. “ Prime yer guns . . . cock yer locks! ”

  “Porter, hands to the braces, ready to wear nor’east!” Knolles bellowed into his brass speaking trumpet.

  “ Point yer guns . . . ! Quoins half out . . . ready . . . Fire! ”

  No, dammit . . . Lewrie groaned to himself; you rushed ’em, they’ll shoot too low, and . . . !

  In, they lurched, all but number five larboard nine-pounder, which had been struck dead on the muzzle, and blown backward off its truck carriage, trunnions ripped from the cap-squares, and its crew savaged.

  Brutal noise and a hellish reek of the roasting damned, Jester shaking and rattling under Lewrie’s feet and hands, the enemy blotted out by the massive gush of burned niters.