A King's Commander

by Dewey Lambdin

  “You, sir?” Lewrie asked of the hulking stranger, so tanned and fit, so martial in his carriage. “Whoever you are?”

  “Yes, sir, thankee,” the apparition spoke at last, taking wine and sipping at it, showing no trace of disappointment with its taste.

  “One of my associates, Lewrie,” Twigg grumbled. “A most competent fellow. Ex-Household Cavalry. Allow me . . .”

  “Looks far too intelligent to be Household Cavalry,” Alan said tongue-in-cheek, “nor British Cavalry, at all! And, if intelligent . . . then how’d he come to be stupid enough to associate with you, sir?”

  “One should never kick strange dogs, sir,” the dark fellow said with a faint smile, yet an air of menace. “They’ve been known to bite.”

  Officer, Lewrie surmised by his squirearchy, perhaps Kentish accent; ex-officer. Abscond with the mess funds, did you? Or your major’s daughter?

  “Enough of this rancor, Lewrie,” Twigg warned. “As you refer to me, ’pon your life, as Silberberg . . . you will take as gospel that my man is ever to be referred to as Mister Peel. Or ex-Captain Peel.”

  “Not ‘John Peel,’ surely,” Alan snickered, reminded of the old hunting song.

  “No, ’tis James, sir . . . James Peel,” the fellow purred, offering his hand, which Lewrie had to shake.

  “Right, then . . . Captain Peel, Mister Silberberg,” Lewrie said, sitting down, regretting his choice of wines, which he also was forced to drink. Thin, too fruity, and acidy; and fresh-poured already had a redolence of paint thinner. “So, what is so important that you sailed down from Genoa?”

  “Coached,” Twigg griped, shifting as if in pain. “As to that gruesome necessity, more later. What is important, Lewrie, is killing Guillaume Choundas. Still.”

  “Is that really necessary, sir?” Lewrie frowned. “We buggered him and his reputation, took his convoy at Alassio, and bagged four of his warships, such as they were. And, in spite of serving us as good as he got, we damaged his own corvette. I’d think his stock was quite low, by now.”

  “Can you forget the Far East, sir?” Twigg insisted. “Whenever we thought we’d truly crippled him, he wriggled free, and came back to bedevil us, twice as strong as before? No, sir. It won’t be over till I’ve his head in a sack, for all to see.”

  “When last we met, Mister . . . Silberberg, you told me you prided yourself on keeping things coolly logical and objective,” Lewrie said with a dubious look. “Frankly, I think Choundas is become your bug-a-bear. It sounds entirely personal and revengeful, to me. What can he hope to accomplish, with the few ships he has left? With Nelson commanding the Riviera coast? And with your . . . connections . . . alerting us to every convoy? In the Far East, he was the only pirate, privateer . . . whatever, that Paris would sanction, so eliminating him was important. Wartime, though . . . he’s just another ship’s captain at the moment, a commander of a minor squadron. There must be a hundred men in France just as potentially troubling.”

  “He’s in my bailiwick, Lewrie,” Twigg objected stubbornly, “in charge of the squadron that runs supplies to support the French Army, which will gobble up all of northern Italy if they’re not stopped. It makes him my preeminent problem, no matter our past connection. If he is killed, I save another region the grief of facing him. If he dies, Choundas rises no higher. He gets no frigates, no ships of the line to play with. Can you possibly imagine the harm he’d do, were he to become a junior admiral?”

  “Then why not have one of your . . . associates,” Lewrie wondered aloud, “stop his business with a knife under the heart?”

  “Told you he has a clear head, Peel.” Twigg smirked suddenly in glee. “When he thinks, that is.”

  “Yes, sir,” Peel agreed, stony-faced, peering at Lewrie openly, judging, weighing, and balancing.

  “He’s well guarded, Lewrie,” Twigg complained petulantly, as he sipped more wine, made another face. “Made no new friends on his rise with the original revolutionaries. Had damned few from before. Those still alive, that is. Once he’d culled ’em for past slights. Imagined slights, half of ’em. Stays sober, keeps his wits about him, of which I do not have to tell you, he has considerable. Personal guard force, a pack of Breton pets, including this Hainaut fellow we returned to him. As for vices . . .”

  “Goes for the windward passage, even with girls,” Lewrie stuck in. “So we learned from the Filipina villagers, and Chinese whores.”

  “The younger and weaker, the sweeter, aye,” Twigg snarled with revulsion. “Barring someone doing him in like Marat in his bath-water, he’s almost impossible to get at. Our abilities, so to speak, are not that firm in Provence, or along the Riviera. Too much fear, d’ye see, ’mongst adult women, and his tastes run to the small, weak, and helpless. Recruiting a girl-child victim stands little chance, either, that he’d choose her, or that she could summon nerve enough to do the deed. We have a better plan, though.”

  “Oh, Christ, and it involves me, does it?” Lewrie groaned. “We played that card. He’ll not fall for it a second time.”

  “Hot as my hatred for Choundas is, Lewrie, it can’t hold a candle to his hatred for you,” Twigg cackled, entirely too pleased with himself. “Do you both survive this war, I’d expect he’d be panting to kill you when you’re both pensioners. Some things abide. He’ll bite.”

  “And what if I refuse, sir?” Lewrie snapped. “You’re Foreign Office, you can’t order a serving officer, or his ship . . .”

  Twigg smirked, reached into his coat, and produced two letters. One from Hotham, one from Nelson, Lewrie noted with horror.

  “Not afraid of him, are you, sir?” Peel posed, with a barely concealed sneer.

  “Name your weapon and place, and I’ll show you ‘afraid,’ sir!” “Didn’t ask were you afraid o’ me, sir,” Peel egged him on. “I asked were you afraid o’ him?”

  Lewrie took pause, considering; reading those two sets of orders. “Aye, I most fuckin’ well am fearful of ’im, sir,” Lewrie said at last with bald candor. “Anyone who’s ever had dealings with Guillaurne Choundas has right to fear him. Or should.”

  “Were you to render me a valuable service, Lewrie,” Twigg posed, his pencil-long, thin fingers steepled under his skeletal chin, “which I swear to you involves no physical danger to your ship, your crew, or yourself . . . which helps bring Choundas to book . . . would you do it?”

  “You say that now, sir,” Lewrie countered, still seething from Peel’s goading. And suspecting that it was Twigg’s arranging, for Peel to put him off balance with his sneer, his cocked eyebrow. “But things always have a way of going from a walk to a gallop, with you. Once you get the bit in your teeth, there’s no stopping you. And there I’d be, clinging to your scheme’s tail, half dragged to death. My people right with me, thrown into peril all unwitting.”

  “Swear it on a Bible, Lewrie,” Twigg’s eyes twinkled, “no harm will come to this ship you love so much, her hands, nor you. This will not involve artillery, nor steel. A single night’s . . . light duties?”

  “Means I’m the only one daft enough to listen to you, you mean,” Lewrie shot back, topping up his glass. “Or . . . damme!” He showed them a sly grin. “You mean to use me as bait again. Here in Leghorn? We don’t have to sail? That sounds like Choundas has learned where Jester lies, and has sent some bully-bucks to Leghorn to do me in! Coached to town, did you? You said you did. To keep an eye on the assassins he’s dispatched, right? Did he come himself? And you want me to trail my colors where you can catch him and kill him?”

  “Told you he was imaginative, too, Peel.” Twigg sighed in disappointment, like a tutor bored and despairing of a pupil’s lack of wit. “Though not always clever when he is. No, Lewrie, Choundas has pressing work up north, he can’t abandon his duties to suit his personal desires, You run no risk of assassination. Choundas will await your death until he can arrange it by his own hand, a face-to-face rencontre. He’ll not be satisfied with a report. I don’t believe that you’re in any danger. Your a
dmiral, and Captain Nelson, would never have issued these orders for your cooperation with me, else. Besides . . .”

  Twigg leaned forward, elbows on the desktop, the cabin shadowed as evilly as a conjured-up companion of Satan. And he was snickering!

  “Knowing you as I do, I am certain you’ll find this duty to be rather . . . enjoyable, in fact. Now, will you refuse me, sir? Disobey orders from your superiors? I must admit to you, sir, that there is no other person in the entire Royal Navy who may perform this task, since it most vitally concerns you, and you alone. It may very well be the last thing I ever ask of you, and we’ll call it ‘quits’ after.”

  “Enjoyable,” he grunted with deep suspicion. “Then quits?” “As enjoyable as the night in the brothel on Old Clothes Street in Canton, Lewrie,” Twigg tempted, like the hoariest pimp in Macao.

  “What, the night I got my head bashed in by Choundas’s cox’n?” Lewrie griped. “Hellish fun, that was! What’s the chore, then? As I seem to have no say in the matter, anyway . . .”

  “Why, to allow yourself to be seduced, Lewrie,” Twigg replied, beaming in triumph of his small victory. “You’re hellish-good at that, I know.”

  “Seduced?” Alan gaped, rocked back on his heels in utter shock. “Have anyone particular in mind, then, do you?”

  He pictured the ugliest, fubsiest, most-raddled and bewhiskered old mort in all creation who, unfortunately, possessed information just vital to Twigg concerning Choundas’, and French, intentions.

  “I most certainly do, sir,” Twigg cackled again. “It is my wish that you rattle Senator Marcello di Silvano’s mistress, Lewrie. Signorina Claudia Mastandrea.”

  “What?” he cried. “Why her? Mean t’ say . . . ? ”

  Lord, you’ll remember it’s orders, for King and Country, he pled. Though suddenly not quite so averse to the duty as he might have been.

  “Because we have discovered that she is a French spy, sir.” “What?” he reiterated, beyond shocked. “Beg pardon, you . . .” “Why else do you think she’d ever be interested in you, sir?” The old schemer hooted with joy of his revelation.

  C H A P T E R 2

  Tell him, Peel,” Twigg instructed, once Lewrie had calmed. “You recall the ledger book, sir,” Peel began, getting to his feet to make free with a fresh bottle of a much better wine from Alan’s cabinet. “The enigmatic heading, ‘U-R’? Not the initials of a single person . . . rather a corporate entity, Captain Lewrie,” Peel said, with a military man’s proper deference to a naval officer’s title. “As you commented to my employer, he told me . . . a group of three, twenty, even sixty? Quite right, sir.”

  Peel at least was crisp in his delivery, the perfect soldier, reeling off a situation briefing, compared to Twigg’s infernally circuitous maunderings.

  “It has two meanings, one for the inner circle, one for the outer.” Peel smiled. “It stands for ‘Ultimi Romani,’ that is to say . . . ‘The Last Romans.’ It spans Italy, every kingdom or republic, made of substantial men with what they deem progressive, idealistic Republican and patriotic sentiments. A cabal of romantics quite infatuated with the unification of Italy, first and foremost, like the early Republican era of ancient Rome. Secondly, for the expansion of a unified Italy on the world stage, which will come to resemble somewhat the scope of the Roman Empire. All Italy, of course, all Mediterranean islands, all of North Africa, Egypt, the Levant, Turkey, and the Ottoman possessions in their grasp again, as well as the Holy Land and eastern Adriatic coast. With the Austrians removed as occupiers.”

  “To achieve this,” Twigg interjected, “they’ve entered into a Devil’s bargain with France, to drive the Austrians out, overrun the peninsula and topple every sovereign state, using French occupation as the catalyst for revolution. Become a unified French possession. For a time, only. Until they may negotiate, or take by force, their later autonomy.”

  “Counting on the Coalition, sir,” Peel went on, once Twigg had his nose back in his brandy, “to so weaken France, they can play silly buggers in the Mediterranean. See France so weaken England, Prussia, or Austria that once they have autonomy, by hook or by crook, we’d welcome them as allies at the proper moment, and acquiesce to their greater ambitions, which involve Savoia, the French Riviera, and Provence, maybe even a portion of Spain. They hold that eventually the entire Mediterranean must be Christian, but most importantly, Roman. And that the rest of the great powers wouldn’t mind seeing Moslem power kicked back across the Bosporus and the Red Sea. Catholic Christian, o’ course.” Peel chuckled, with a raised brow.

  “So they’d get in bed, so to speak, with revolutionary atheists to gain it?” Lewrie pondered.

  “Indeed, sir. Anything to further the cause.” Mister Peel smiled. “‘U-R’ has an inner meaning, much like Masonry. We’re fairly sure that it refers to a particular set of collaborators. They’re quite cleverly compartmented, so the exposure of one minor, regional group would never expose the whole. ‘U-R’ also stands for one man, ‘Ultimo Romano,’ who may be in charge throughout Italy, or merely the pocket in this region. The Greatest Roman of Them All, sir? The Last Roman? From this man’s correspondence, we’ve discovered a tantalizing clue to a larger cabal, to which he seems to be answerable, which goes by the enigmatic-notation of ‘Pee-Numeral One.’ Either a higher council that pulls all the strings, of which he’s a member, or a single person. P as in Pope or P as in Papa? Pee-Primo, or the First One? God only knows, Captain Lewrie.” Peel shrugged, giving him the honorific title of his post. “By tracing correspondence from Gallacio and Randazzo, we have found the regional leader’s identity. Signore Marcello di Silvano.”

  “Why that two-faced, canting . . . hound!” Lewrie fumed. “He’s written me, so humble, so supportive . . . !”

  “So politically astute?” Twigg laughed. “Who’d be suspected of treason the least, than the patriot who brays the loudest? Signore di Silvano wears a half-dozen faces, depending upon whom he’s dealing with. I expect he found gulling you with sympathy and friendship to be an amusing exercise, no more. Just keeping his hand in, practicing his pose of hand-wringin’, puppy-eyed insincere mendacity.”

  “So, you want me to bed his mistress, and somehow winkle information from her ’bout his plans?” Lewrie frowned.

  “God no, Lewrie!” Twigg boomed, almost wheezing with amusement. “Bless me, but you’re far too thick for that! No, sir. You are the one to be winkled. Signorina Mastandrea knows what she’s about, you let the professional do her work.”

  “You’re certain she’s a French spy, then?” Lewrie had to ask. “No doubt about it, sir,” Twigg informed him. “A gift to the senator, ’bout the time Savoia was overrun. Like your Corsican doxy, she’s of mixed parentage, French and Italian. Not from Bergamo, as she tells people, but Breil, near the old French border. Got her marching orders from my opposite number, to go to Genoa and cozy up to Silvano, who had the means to pass messages, and was already in contact with the French. Huge landowner, do you recall, estates all up and down the Riviera? Estate managers and overseers, goods-carts to and from those farms pass all the time, even through Austrian-held lands. That’s how she contacts her employers, and how di Silvano services his local Roman patriots, by land and sea. Intercepted a few of his, found one from her and read it. Rather laughable encryption, actually . . . wouldn’t think a woman was capable of mastering such, but she did. Were she a man, I’d have found a tougher code to crack, I expect.”

  “She doesn’t work for Choundas, then?” Lewrie inquired, rather earnestly. Though he couldn’t feature a woman so beautiful even being in the same province as Choundas, much less agreeing to do his dirty work. Even in his younger days, scrubbed up and looking human!

  “Her superiors have sometimes given her tasks that might serve his interests, and his squadron’s,” Twigg allowed with a breezy wave of one hand. “But she is not in his direct employ. And what is this concern, sir? Sweet on her, are you? I forgot, you’ve already contemplated topping her. A most fetchin’
morsel, ain’t she. Sorry that I interrupted your courtship in Genoa, might have been advantageous for you two to have an existing relationship. But back then, she had me fooled. I took her as nothing more than a silly, round-heeled slut, too stupid to stay faithful to a rich and vengeful master. All sheep-eyed over the pretty young sailor. There is a risk the senator might not enjoy her chore with you. Taken a fancy to her, no matter they’ve a working relationship. She and the senator are on intimate terms, I know for a fact. So intimate, and exclusive, since he ditched t’other mistress he had, at Paris’s bidding, that he dares to sport with her bareback . . . do you get my meaning? You might not even need cundums. No, Lewrie. Your job will be to play her fool, then let slip to her what we wish you to let slip, once she’s got you in the proper frame of mind.”

  “And that is . . . ?” Lewrie snorted, still dubious and edgy, no matter how pleasurable his duty might be, how he’d fantasized about Claudia Mastandrea. Twigg had dreamt it up, after all, so . . . !

  “Choundas, of course,” Twigg sniffed. “Him and the Austrians.” “The Austrians . . .” Lewrie drawled, now totally confused. “Finest army in Europe, sir,” Peel stated, most drolly. “And, the slowest.”

  “We pay them a hideous sum of money to stay in the Coalition,” Twigg sighed wearily. “I do not know whether their emperor has ordered de Vins to delay his campaign another season, so they may touch another four million pounds sterling of ours . . . or whether General de Vins is a raging fool. All their damned generals! War is a German’s trade, sir. That’s when they earn their highest pay, and get the most adulation, so why wrap things up too early, then go back to barracks and be bored to death? Or perhaps General de Vins is much like our poor Hotham, too timorous and dithering to risk failure. Either way, the nub is that we owe the Austrians another installment in gold. No way to ship it downriver along the Rhine, with the Frogs at its mouth, nor through Hamburg overland. It has to come by sea, to Vado Bay, which is de Vins’s only link to the sea. A substantial sum of money, Lewrie.”