"Piedmontese," Peel pointed out, once they'd found a shady spot far off the road, downhill by the side of a small brook. "They were up north, thirty miles or more. And here they are, running to the sea. I think I spotted some Austrian uniforms of regiments garrisoned at Vado, too. Going the other way. That don't bode well, I tell you."
"It looked to be four or five miles to the coast," Lewrie said, forcing himself to be brutal and jerk his horse's lips from the water, before it foundered itself. "Last view we had, that last clear hill."
"We'll be on foot long before then, if it's that far," Mister Peel said with a fatalistic shrug. "If the Austrians haven't abandoned it, yet. God, the French ain't pursuin' them… they're herdin' 'em!"
"We've left the ones streaming down from west-to-east," Lewrie pointed out as they had to lash with their reins to get their mounts to leave the brook and begin a shaky walk again. "Think we'll run into a new wave, coming up from Vado?"
"Fight our way, cross-current, then." Peel sighed. "Might even be easier, who knows, Lewrie?" He drew up, as his horse began to limp, unable to put weight on its left foreleg. "That's that, for this'un," he said, dismounting at last. He stripped off the saddle and pad, the bridle and harness, to discourage anyone else forcing the poor beast any farther, and began to march beside them, leaving it spraddle-legged and head-down in utter exhaustion.
A mile later, it was Lewrie's that sank under him, too weak to stand, much less walk anymore. They stripped it, but it could not rise. Just lay in the road, its sides heaving, and whickering in pain. Lewrie drew a pistol and shot it behind the ear. He was an Englishman, adored horses, of course-and had never been forced to be so callous to one, ever. Hoped he never would again, either.
A mile more, and it was Mountjoy's that began to favor a forefoot. They were all three now on "shank's ponies," and perhaps a long three miles from the sea, still. It was almost all downhill, and they could see it, winking and glittering so invitingly, now and again, from a vantage point. The traffic was coming up to them, fleeing Porto Vado. They could see a mass migration heading north and east. Perversely, it was easier to work their way across the flow of traffic, cross fields ignored by the retreating army and its train of followers, who desperately clung near the roads.
"Porto Vado's out," Lewrie said, pointing south one hour later. They were within a mile of the sea, with the last strings of stragglers left behind them. Yet the port town swarmed with military activity, a constant coming and going in French uniforms. "Strike the coast over to the east, perhaps. Might find a boat on the beach, a scrap o' sail? We might have to go as far as Genoa. Fancy a shore supper in Genoa, Mister Mountjoy?"
"Fancy a horse, sir," Mountjoy muttered back, waving them to get low. "There's a French cavalry patrol yonder."
Half a dozen riders came up a dirt path from a distant village on the sea, swaying in their saddles and laughing loud enough to be heard from 200 yards off, waving foraged straw-covered wine bottles.
"Still have that cockade that Choundas dropped, Mountjoy?" Alan inquired.
"Yessir, but…"
"You wanted a horse," Lewrie grunted, taking it and wedging it beneath the gold loop of his hat. "So do I. Come on. Act superior."
He stood up and began to walk toward them, rifle slung on his shoulder, loaded and primed to fire, his pistols in his waistband. A march pace, nothing hesitant or suspicious about him.
"Mes amisl" he shouted loudly to get the cavalrymen's attention. "Alors,mes amisV From the corner of his mouth, he asked a question; "Mountjoy, how do you say, 'come here, you drunken fools'?"
The cavalrymen straightened up in their saddles, adjusting the undone collars of their shirts and stocks, corking their bottles and trying to hide them in their forage bags.
"Come here! I have need of you!" Lewrie shouted sternly, this time by himself, in what he hoped passed for decent French. "I am Capitaine Choundas… Navy! Come here!" Softer; "Pistols, lads."
They rode up to them, a sergeant and five privates, cutty-eyed and abashed at being caught drunk, cringing at the harsh tone from the officer with the cockade on his hat. They didn't recognize the uniform, but he had an epaulet, and his coat was blue, the same as theirs.
Quite close, within fifteen feet.
"Mes amis.. ." Lewrie began to smile, holding out his arms to admonish them. "Now!"
Peel shot first, and the sergeant went backward off his horse, a bullet in his chest. Lewrie drew a pistol, pulled it to full cock, and fired at the next-nearest man, who was just reaching for his musketoon. He went down to be dragged, whimpering, and bounding behind his terrified horse. Mountjoy dropped another who'd drawn a saber, dashed in and snatched the reins as the man toppled into the dirt. Peel shot his second, a private who was trying to control his rearing mount. A shot in return that went wide, Lewrie missing with his second pistol, but Mountjoy, now mounted, popping off at another who swayed in the saddle, left arm useless. The last wheeled to gallop away, but Peel had the.54-caliber musketoon to his shoulder and snapped off a shot that took the fellow in the kidneys, spilling him onto the stubbly grain field he'd tried to cross.
They managed to snare the reins of two more mounts, swung up in the saddles, and lashed away from their hastily improvised ambush before the rest of the cavalry unit the patrol had come from were alerted.
"East!" Peel shouted, lashing with the reins. "Far as we can! Whoo!" he exulted for all of them; to have killed without a scratch. And to be astride strong, fresh horses… still alive and free.
Ten more quick miles, going cross-country above the coast roads, any pursuit left behind, it looked like, and beyond the reach of French soldiers, still encountering streams of Austrians headed away as fast as they could hobble on foot, mostly going inland and nor'east, running from nothing. Running away from the sea. Going almost as far as Savona, and hoping it was still in Genoese hands, daring to dip down to the coastal road, finally where the traffic was blessedly both sparse and civilian again.
They drew up on a low, shingly bluff, at last, just 100 yards from the surf. There were ships out there, not a mile off, which had fled Vado Bay themselves. Lewrie recognized Austrian colors, and Genoese under Red Ensigns, in sign of their captures.
"No boats," Mountjoy groaned, as spent as his stolen horse, by then. "No way off."
"Yes, there is," Lewrie said, stripping off his coat and hat. "There, sir! There!" he insisted, wigwagging his coat over his head. "Come on, you blind son of a bitch! See me! Be a little curious!"
Around the next point came a rowboat under two lugsails and jib, not a half mile off the beach. Lewrie began to shout, and urged them all to wave their coats, to fire off their weapons and scream.
The boat turned in, began to slant shoreward, close-reaching on a sea wind that had at last come up from the sou'east. The boat stood in cautiously, until almost level with them, as they dashed down to the surf line, still yelling and waving. The sails were lowered, and oars appeared to stroke her in. Within a cable, Lewrie could make out the dark red hull, the neat gilt trim of Agamemnon's borrowed barge. And the incredulous face of Midshipman Hyde in her stern sheets, surrendering the helm to a more experienced able seaman who'd beach her proper, without risk.
They waded out to meet her, the last few yards, splashing up to their thighs as some oarsmen stroked her sideways, to turn her bows to the sea, while others jumped over to push her around quickly to take the surf from forrud, not abeam, and to help them scramble over the side to the safety of a solid oak thwart.
" 'Bout given you up, sir!" Hyde yelped. "Been up and down this coast for hours, looking for you, Captain! Mister Knolles told me to wait till dusk, if you didn't…"
"Thankee, Mister Hyde." Lewrie sighed, glad for a sip of brackish ship's water, and a hard biscuit to rap, then gnaw dry. "And for Mister Knolles s perseverance. Thank him in person, soon's I meet him, and be damned glad of the doing."
"You get the bastard that stole the gold, sir?" Hyde asked, as the oarsmen strained to the he
lmsman's shouts of "Give way, together!" and "Put yer backs in it!" to keep the barge moving forward, up, over the dangerous breaking surf to calmer water beyond the breakers.
"Aye, we got him, Mister Hyde." Lewrie sighed with relief, and weary satisfaction. "We got the bastard. It's over. Now, take us to Jester, Mister Hyde. Take us home."
Epilogue
There had been so few casualties, for which the good doctor on duty had thanked a merciful God, that he and his compatriots had spent mostly an idle day, celebrating an almost bloodless victory over those much-vaunted Austrians. The coast was theirs, now, the entire Genoese Riviera, as far as Voltri, the surgeon had heard boasted, within easy ride of Genoa itself. The Austrians and Piedmontese had fled like so many terrified children, far inland; maybe thirty miles, he'd heard a cavalry chef du brigade crow. Once spring came, once the weather was suitable, the Republican Armйe d'Italie would march, to complete their conquest of all of the northwest. Paris was sending a new general to put life into things, some newly risen pet of the Directory, with the improbable name of Napoleone Bonaparte. He was reputed to be impatient and aggressive; rare in an artillery officer, the surgeon thought. Till then, though, through the long Ligurian winter, there'd be peace and quiet, some skirmishing but nothing of consequence, nothing that tasked his skills to the utmost. He could drink his wine, smoke his pipe, and sleep peacefully, to ready himself for the horrors to come.
The surgeon made his last rounds among the pitiful, whimpering wounded who lay in the large tents that the Austrians had been so good as to abandon so hastily. French casualties under canvas, of course… and the few Piedmontese or Austrians under the stars or the trees. It was almost cozy in the cavernous pavillion tents, glowing like so many amber jewels, lit from within by a single lanthorn.
"This one, sir?" his assistant said with a sad moue. "The poor fellow's left us, I'm afraid."
"Both legs." The surgeon shrugged philosophically. "Too much stress, too quickly, for his humors to restore their balance. C'est dommage. And that one?"
"Feverish, but better, sir," the assistant said, gesturing for orderlys to remove the dead infantry officer.
The surgeon took the lanthorn to peel back the blanket and look at his handiwork. A neat bit of sewing, he grunted with pleasure, as he puffed on his pipe.
"You are with us, sir?" the surgeon whispered as the man opened his eyes and groaned in pain. "I do not recall treating anyone from our Navy before, sir. You came up to headquarters to see the battle, hein? And saw too much of it, quel dommage."
"I… will I live?" the officer croaked, gritting his teeth to withstand his pain, now that he was awake to feel it roar and gibber.
"A fairly clean wound, sir," the surgeon assured him, chuckling a little. "Your coat and shirt easily extracted from it. Nothing left behind to cause sepsis. So few casualties, the water still very hot in the instrument pails… I have noted that there is less later infection when the water is bloodless, and the water is scalding hot. Why it is, I have no idea, but I think it may be worth a letter to Paris, hein?"
"Ahh…!" The naval officer grunted, screwing up his horribly disfigured face in torment for a second, then almost seemed to find it amusing. "Ahh…" he sighed as that wave of agony subsided. "I have cheated him again. I beat him, after all!"
"It does not pay to boast of beating the Angel of Death yet, I suggest, sir." The surgeon laughed. "A week or more, before we count you free of fever, and able to be moved to the rear, to complete your recovery in nicer surroundings, hein? For your stump to drain, to show a laudable, healing pus."
"Stump?"
"Certainment, Capitaine, uhm…" The surgeon frowned, not sure if that was even the proper title of rank, and not knowing his patient's name, "Your arm was so completely smashed, the bone in shatters…"
Guillaume Choundas tried to raise up, to raise his arm, against the surgeon's entreaties and pressing hands. It was gone! There was a thick wrapped bandage over absorbing batt, the whole once white but now pink or dull red, crusted with oozed blood. So short, almost all…!
"Nnnoooo!" Choundas screamed. "NnnooooH! Lewrie! Lewrie! You… Lllewwrieeee!!! Lugh… Lugh's bird! The raven. That bass-tardd!"
* * *
"C'est dommage. " The surgeon sighed minutes later, after giving the distraught fellow a cup of laudanum-laced wine. He took a seat on an upturned crate by the fire, under the flyleaf of his wagon, with the tailgate boards for a rough table. "Bernard, pass the wine, hein? So good, this. Real Provence, not that Italian muck."
"What was that all about, Jean-Claude mon ami?"
"Some poor fellow lost his arm." The surgeon sighed, bourgeois happy in his bear-skin slippers, at last, instead of those ridiculous boots the army insisted he wear. The tailboard and the fire wasn't as comfortable as his old cafй back home, once the shops, and his offices, were closed for the night, but it could be rather pleasant, this life of an army surgeon, so far from home. "You know how they can be, once they know it. A fellow scarred as he, you'd expect he's used to pain and loss, but he raved like a madman. Not many unman themselves so."
"Loss of his looks, anyway," Bernard snickered. "Une hideux."
"Kept ranting about Lugh, Lir, Lewrie, and ravens," the surgeon muttered over his wine. "Whatever those are. Ever heard the like?"
Surgeon Bernard had not, so he merely shrugged. "Nonsense words, alliterative ravings. Was there a head wound? Hmm. Might keep an eye on the poor fellow, Jean-Claude. Recommend he's kept longer, once he's well enough to transfer. Then he's someone else's worry. Cards?"
Nightfall on the sea, aboard a sloop of war that surged surefooted and secure, serene for once, her young captain pacing the decks bone-weary but unable to contemplate sleep as she made her way among a gaggle of escapees from the anchorage at Vado Bay. A bath, a shave, a clean uniform, and a more than ample supper had gone a long way toward physical recovery, though he could not be sure what the next days might bring him, or his ship.
"Excuse me, sir," Mountjoy said, interrupting his solitary musings with an apologetic prefatory cough. "Could I speak with you?"
"Aye, Mister Mountjoy?" Lewrie replied pleasantly.
"I, uhm… I rather loathe to cause you or your affairs any disruption, or distress, but… well, Captain Lewrie," Mountjoy said with a sheepish gulp, "I'd like to resign my position as your clerk, sir."
"I'll not put you in danger again, Mister Mountjoy, if that's…"
"No, sir! Quite the opposite, in fact!" Mountjoy gushed. "Going ashore with you and Mister Peel was the most exciting thing I've ever done, sir! For the first time in my life, I felt active and alive, useful and… doing something other than scribbling. As if I'd discovered my true calling, do you see, sir. To shed another man's blood… strive to shed Choundas's, too, well… Mister Peel has suggested that his employer, and their, uhm… 'department,' would find my skills very useful. Forgive me, but I intend to hold him to it, and take service with that Mister Silberberg. As an assistant in training, as it were."
"They'll bloody get you knackered," Lewrie countered. "Knife in the back some night. It'll be dry, Mountjoy. What we did today isn't the usual. More skulduggery, like whist or chess, creeping…"
"God, I hope so, sir!" Mountjoy laughed. "Like that, I did, as a climax to the intellectual, though I'm not a born soldier. I enjoy both sorts of action, what Mr. Silberberg described? Never make a sea officer, sir, you know that. Have to start very young for that. Not enough money for an Army commission, but… this I'd be good at, sir. And be able to make just as grand a contribution. Padgett, Mister Giles's jack-in-the-bread-room, could move up to be your clerk, sir, and he's diligent. More so than I, we both know. Would it be all right, Captain? Do I owe the Admiralty a term of service, or…"
"No, you don't, Mister Mountjoy." Lewrie sighed. "You serve me, at my pleasure. And, eventually, yours. You're quite determined…"
"I am, sir. Completely," Mountjoy said, with fervent certainty.
"Very well then, Mister Mount
joy," Lewrie said, offering a hand to the young man. "I'll accept your letter of resignation. And may God protect you in your new career. You may go ashore with Peel at Genoa."
"God always sends the Right, sir." Mountjoy beamed. "Thankee."
Wish I was that certain, Lewrie thought; of anything. With France holding almost all of the Genoese Riviera now, Jester could be sent God knew where. There was still the matter of false colors to settle, with Hotham to decide whether it was glory, or infamy and a court.
He was just bone-weary enough, though, to suspend disbelief, to feel a small, heretical sense of hope that things would work out, in his, and Jesters favor. After what Buchanon had said over supper.
"The sea!" he'd shouted in the heat of pursuit; look at the seal He thought he'd meant that broad, perverse windless river of calm that had doomed Choundas's tartane. But Buchanon's real meaning had been a lot more, he'd whispered only one hour ago, over port and biscuit.
"A seal, Cap'um, I saw it!" he'd hissed. "Close-aboard. What 'at Mister Peel told, o' th' raven ashore, too? Dear Lord, sir! Made me go ice all over when I heard. 'Twas th' Old'uns, sir. Lugh, and Lir" "But really, sir… mean you really, or just thought …?" "All the way from home t'here, sir," Buchanon had whispered so reverently, shivering with wonder. "Lir's eye 'pon ya-'pon her, sir! An' you, an' me, an' all o' us, in his hand, still. Swear t'Jesus, sir, I think where'er we sail, Lir means t'follow. Mayhap he meant t'use ya, Cap'um… t'settle this fellah Choundas's business. Must've rowed Lir sore, over somethin', for him t'grant ya good cess ashore. But once he uses ya, he don't forget his favorites."
Me, lucky ashore, Lewrie wryly mused; now there's a new'un!
Still, he went to the bulwark to gaze out at the swelling, dark sea, and raise one hand, almost in supplication, as eight bells began to chime up forrud, so blissfully routine, so fragile, thin but brassy-mellow.
"If you're out there, thankee," he whispered. "You've your eye on us, spare a glance for Mountjoy, too. He'll need it. What comes… good or ill… so be it. But, thankee… for Jesters Fortune."
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