“So you surely do agree, Commander Lewrie,” Fillebrowne said with a teasing note in his voice, “that, as an experienced ‘fancier,’ as it were, you’ve found that all cats are grey in the dark?”
“Hah!” Lewrie laughed with a bark. “Mind now, sir, a touch o’ scent and a thorough wash helps. Her own teeth . . . or the lack.”
“Mhmmm,” Fillebrowne cooed appreciatively. “I look forward to Venice’s wives and daughters as much as any of my lower-deck people. Though it may go against my grain, perhaps even the hired courtesans. The art, though . . . the opportunities do intrigue, however.”
“A collector, are you, Commander Fillebrowne?” Lewrie asked.
“Runs in the family, so to speak, sir.” Fillebrowne chuckled as he poured them more coffee, not waiting for his manservant Gwinn to do the honours. “Done the Grand Tour nigh like a religious rite, time out of mind, as it were. Victims of the usual shammed masterpieces the mountebanks fob off on unwitting English visitors. Shame of it was so great, my grandfather actually studied up before he did his Tour, so he wouldn’t be cheated or embarrassed to shew his acquisitions off back home to his friends. My father and his uncles, and hence my elder brothers and I, have become rather astute collectors. Missed my shot at a Grand Tour . . . Navy career and all. This war, now! Limited as I was board the flagship, even so I’ve been able to glean a few small but precious, and genuine, articles to ship home. From the French émigrés. Going for a song. Damned rare things they came away with, I can tell you, sir! Then it was sell up or starve, thankee!”
“Aye, I’ve seen some of that,” Lewrie agreed casually.
“Lovely thing about a war, Commander Lewrie,” Fille-browne said breezily, stirring sugar into his coffee; a rather fine set of ornate French cups, and baroquely overelaborate coin-silver spoons, Lewrie observed, seeing them with a fresh eye. “Prize-money, loot and plunder—illiterate soldiery coming away with jewelry fit for a duchess, bartering it away for a tuppence, or drink. A necklace, do you imagine, sir, ancient beyond belief, made by Benvenuto Cellini, famous for its craftsmanship, not merely its weight in emeralds, and I got it for three hundred pounds, sir? And bedded its owner, to boot?”
“Well, hmm . . .” Alan began to say, suddenly put off a tad by Fillebrowne’s boast. And by the venal look in his eyes.
“Venice, now, sir!” Fillebrowne schemed on, oblivious. “The French, I’m certain, will try for Corsica again this year. March on Piedmont, perhaps? Lots of wealthy and titled refugees forced to run because of it. The French Royalists will head as far as their legs, and their hoarded ‘pretties,’ will carry ’em. Florence, I’d expect. And Venice. Far as possible from danger. Before the Austrians beat the Frogs silly, I anticipate Venice will be flooded with valuables. All up for sale at penny to the pound. A buyer’s market, and mine, I hope,” Fillebrowne concluded with a raptorial smile of avarice. “That’ll set my brothers back on their ears, when they see what they missed! With cargo space unlimited now, think of the sculptures.”
Lewrie cocked a wary brow over that, and could not keep a frown of faint distaste from his features. Here he’d been, almost coming within a hair of liking Fillebrowne for his brazen and open “damme-boy” air of the practiced rakehell since it in many ways reflected his own rather casual outlook on Life. But then had come the piggish eyes and the crafty, calculating look of a “Captain Sharp,” who would profit on others’ sufferings. And do it as cold as charity.
Lord knows I’ll never be promoted to saint, Lewrie thought in disgust; no one’ll bury me a bishop. But practiced sinner such’z I am, I don’t think I’d be that glad to cheat people. Hope I wouldn’t, at least!
There was, too, his long, though admittedly never looked-for, service in the Navy. He’d been beaten, and he’d learned, since being all but press-ganged as a midshipman sixteen years before. The Navy, the ship and beating the foe came first, last and always—even to a poor example of seaman such as himself. Fillebrowne was pleased to have command of a warship so he could buy bigger articles and store them on the orlop? Amass untold, but heavy, wealth to carry home, because it was impossible to ship such things, let them out of his sight, to be broken or lost, until Myrmidon paid off?
Mean t’say, he told himself with a deeper scowl, every man has to have a hobby! I’ve my penny-whistle and the occasional quim, but not this. Swagger, cajole, toady and smarm as manly and “bully-buck” as Fillebrowne might, he wasn’t Lewrie’s type, after all. Underneath all that “hail fellow, well met” bonhomie was a scheming, heartless swine, no matter his patrons, his rapid rise, his possible talents as a Navy officer, or his ancestors. An egotistical, self-absorbed bastard! A one even bigger than I, Lewrie had to admit, weighing his own faults (and they were legion) in the balance, and happily finding himself to be damned near blameless in comparison.
“Well,” Lewrie said with a cough, gazing up toward the coachtop skylights for any sign of a breeze, so he would have a good excuse to depart.
Fillebrowne had run down like a cheap pocket-watch, real-ising that his enthusiastic rant about collecting, and his schemes, had come too close to a home-truth; that he’d said too much, revealing all those wrong things he’d usually squirrel away from proper gentlemen. Lewrie saw a quick glint of anger on his phyz.
“Found some rather good bargains at Corsica, too,” Fille-browne told him more coolly, his plumby “Ox” or Etonian sounding sneer-lofty, from clenched jaws. “Quite a trade in secondhand, at San Fiorenzo or over at Leghorn. I’m certain you’ve seen some of them, sir. Even fetched them off from Toulon yourself, sir? After Admiral Hood’s evacuation? Some rather rare, precious and darling pieces ’mongst the first wave of émigrés? Quite delightful finds, they were.”
Lewrie felt the fist in his lap, out of sight, tighten suddenly, and his ears went red with anger.
Who on Corsica had turned into the biggest broker of furniture, statuary, art, dresses and jewelry, who might Fillebrowne have dealt with, but Phoebe Aretino? Where else ’d a body go to hunt up bargains?
By God, did he . . . did she? . . . During? ’Course not, she wasn’t that huge a whore, ever! After, sure. After she caught me at Leghorn, and came back to San Fiorenzo. For spite. And you’d throw that in my face, you smirkin’ shit? That you’ve bedded my ex-mistress? In that house I rented for her? On that duke’s bed I paid for?
Much as he’d like to smash the man’s face in, he took a sip of coffee to temporise. Win a mistress, lose a mistress, he thought; and then she’s somebody else’s, ’cause she’s not the sort to go without a man. Needs a man in her life, that’s her way. He warned himself not to be jealous over her. But he couldn’t help it. Knowing there’d be others after him, intellectually, was one thing; but to have it all but said to his face by the fellow who’d done it, to gloat and to row him beyond all temperance, well, that was quite another story!
“Ahem,” Lewrie said as calmly as he could. “Thankee for a fine second breakfast, Commander Fillebrowne. But I fear I must be returning aboard Jester. Should that land breeze come, I’d regret any delay in using it, or keeping Captain Charlton waiting too long.”
“Of course, I quite understand, sir,” Fillebrowne replied, as they both rose, “one captain to another, hmm? A moment, and I’ll get my coat and hat to see you off, properly.”
All but simperin’ at me, Alan fumed silently; smug hound!
“Venice, I’m told, isn’t noted for its cuisine, surprisingly,” Fillebrowne prated on as they left the great-cabins, to the thuds of musket butts and the scurry to reassemble the side-party on the gangway, “but do we get our run ashore, I’d be honoured to sport you and your first officer a shore-supper, with me and mine. Become more familiar with each other and our ways, should our two vessels come to be paired? Bags of shallow water in the Adriatic, where our two frigates could not dare, hmm?”
“An excellent suggestion, Commander Fillebrowne,” Alan agreed unwillingly, forced to be pleasant in public.
Quite the practice I’
m gettin’, he thought sourly, that recent breakfast turning to ashes in his innards; lies to Charlton over his bloody whist, and now to this!
“It will be a red-letter day for Mister Stroud, d’ye see, sir.” Fillebrowne chuckled. “After all, he has so few chances to meet men such as yourself. Such a famous officer. The ‘Ram-Cat,’ hey, sir?”
Damn yer blood, you. . . . Lewrie thought.
“I must own to being a bit in awe of you, myself, sir,” Commander Fillebrowne told him further, seemingly all earnest. Betrayed, though, by the tiniest hint of drollity at the corners of his eyes; all but taunting. The sort of insubordinate air that could get a common seaman triced up and lashed!
“Now you do me too much honour,” Lewrie replied, doffing his hat to the salutes, the long, warbling calls of bosun’s pipes, with his teeth on edge in a humourless smile. “Sir,” he spat in warning. “Too, too much, indeed,” he drawled, his eyes gone from merry blue to Arctic grey, as cold and menacing as a drawn sword blade.
Fillebrowne doffed his own hat, caught that subtle sea-change as he lifted his head from a departing nod and paused for a second, as if suddenly wary that he’d bitten off a tad more than he could chew. He scrubbed that smirk from his face and turned sombre.
Eat a hatful of shit and die, ya bastard! Alan devoutly wished as he scampered down the boarding-battens to his cutter.
“Shove off, Andrews,” he hissed.
“Aye, sah,” his Cox’n replied crisply, knowing the signs of a man contemplating mayhem. This was quite unlike the usual easygoing way of his captain. He smelled trouble in the offing.
May take more time to make up my mind ’bout Charlton, Lewrie fretted stonily, till we’ve served together a watch or two. But you, me lad, I can read you like a book already. That’s the last time you ever dare sneer at me, no matter how clever an’ subtle you think yerself! What was it Choundas threatened at Balabac? “I’ll rip off your head an’ shit in yer skull”? Cross me, Commander Fillebrowne. Cross me, I dare you!
“Smahtly!” Andrews bawled at his oarsmen. “Put ya backs inta it!”
Lewrie looked up at him, met his eyes. Andrews cocked his head and raised a questioning brow, and Lewrie rolled his eyes in a silent reply, made a sour grimace as he pursed his lips as if he wished to spit something over the side.
“Wind’s comin, sah,” Andrews offered hopefully. “’Bout tahm.”
“A-bloody-men, Andrews,” Lewrie grunted. “A-bloody-men!”
BOOK II
Inde omnem innumeri reges per litoris oram,
hospitii quis nulla fides; sed limite recto
puppis et aequali transcurrat carbasus aura.
Then along all the line of coast come kings
innumerable, whose welcome none may trust;
but let thy canvas speed past with
straight course and level breeze.
Argonautica, Book IV, 613–615
Gaius Valerius Flaccus
CHAPTER 1
Two days of sailing South, past the Egadi Islands and Cape Boeo, west of Sicily, into the Straits of Sicily. Then another day beating East-Sou’east, South-about Malta, on the open sea. Then a fourth day, butting against an Easterly Levanter, heading Nor’east for the Ionian Sea. The squadron barely logged 150 sea-miles a day, in fretful winds that never quite seemed to make up their minds as to which point of the compass they cared to blow from one hour to the next. A slow passage, certainly—but a sure one, at least.
There’d been very little merchant traffick to be seen, beyond a few anonymous slivers of t’gallants on the hazy horizon every now and then, for most vessels preferred to stand closer inshore, north of Malta, or in the dubious safety of Neapolitan waters. As far as they could from the hostile Barbary Coasts to the far south, naturally, if they were legitimate. Some flotillas and fleets of scruffy fishermen had made their appearances when they were within sight of Sicilian or Maltese shores. But for them the sea seemed swept clean of the bigger game they were sent to seek.
The pair of frigates, Lionheart and Pylades, sailed in-company, a short column in line-ahead, about two miles apart. Jester and Myrmidon Charlton had flung out far ahead, another twelve miles or more; Myrmidon to the landward side, and Jester up to windward, to the Sou’east. Still within good signalling distance, however.
Four days, and a bit, at sea.
And, like the winds, Lewrie was still fretful. Going over his encounter with Fillebrowne, cringing with embarrassment or surging hot with a sullen rage, betimes, as a man will when reliving the chagrin of a hasty retort or stinging comment twenty years in the past. Or like running his tongue over an aching tooth. They both could still evoke the same quick hurt.
“And . . . time!” Mr. Buchanon rasped as the half hour and the hour glasses were turned, and the very last of the eight bells marking the end of the Forenoon, and the beginning of the Day Watch, chimed at the forrud belfry. The Sailing Master, Mr. Wheelock the Master’s Mate, a pair of midshipmen, and Lieutenant Knolles all lowered their sextants to make their observations on slates or scrap paper. This was the daily ritual of the Noon Sights, when by chronometer, sextant and the height of the noon sun Jester reckoned her midday position to determine where she was and how far she’d run since the past noon reckoning. Noon Sights was also the dividing line, that last chime of the ship’s bell ’twixt the previous day and the beginning of a new one, no matter what a calendar, or a landsman’s arising, said ashore.
“Thirty-eight degrees . . . twenty minutes north latitude, I make it, sir?” Midshipman Spendlove opined hesitantly.
“’Tis or ’tisn’t, sir,” Buchanon grumbled. “Own up t’it or hold yer peace.”
“Thirty-eight degrees, twenty minutes North, sir,” Spend-love declared more firmly, though Lewrie noted that he held one hand behind his back with a pair of fingers crossed.
“Thirty-eight degrees, uhm . . . nine minutes North, I make it,” Knolles puzzled, holding his scrap of paper at arm’s length, as if he had misread it. He gave his sextant an experimentary shake, a tilt to either side, to chase the gremlins from it.
“Ten minutes, sir,” Wheelock commented.
“Closer t’ten minute,” Buchanon sighed. “Mister Hyde?”
“Oh, thirty-eight, ten, Mister Buchanon, sir,” Hyde chirped in quick agreement.
“Toadyin’ wretch,” Buchanon groaned. “But, aye . . . ten’s more like it. Now, longitude, sirs . . .”
“Eighteen degrees, ten minutes East,” Lewrie snapped. “Which places us about a day’s run South of the Straits of Otranto. Or one hundred twenty miles Sou’west of Corfu, the nearest Venetian-owned island. Do you concur, Mister Buchanon?”
“A moment, sir . . . a moment.” Buchanon grinned, bending over the binnacle cabinet and the jury-rigged chart table. “Aye, sir. Or there-’bouts. Slates, gentlemen. Let me see yer . . . conjurin’ tricks,” he said to the midshipmen. “You, ’specially, Mister Hyde.”
Lewrie stowed his sextant in its velvet-lined teakwood case, careful with the latch. He gathered up his own cased chronometer as the others completed their reckonings, after a long glance to see if his was running even close to the Sailing Master’s, the First Lieutenant’s or the larger master, which was Admiralty-issue.
“Done, sir,” Buchanon said at last, handing him the reckoning, scribbled on a slip of margin—paper scissored off a completed sheet of foolscap. “Thirty-eight, ten North; eighteen, eleven East.” The Sailing Master whispered the last, with an apologetic shrug.
Lewrie shrugged, too, thankful that Buchanon covered his error. It wasn’t a great one, that. But he’d been too distracted to reckon properly, had gotten sloppy with his sums. And was still too fretful to keep his guesstimate to himself.
“Sights completed, sir,” Lieutenant Knolles reported officially.
“Very well, Mister Knolles. Dismiss the starboard watch, and set the larboard. Then pipe the hands to dinner.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“I’ll go below, sir,” Lewri
e told him, heading for the after companionway ladder by the taffrails. Andrews was there to take the sextant case, while Lewrie carried the chronometer box, handling them both as if they were eggshell-delicate, and not quite trusting to the brass carrying-handles.
He wrote in his personal log, noting the weather, the sea state, their position at Noon; that decks had been swept, washed and stoned in the pre-dawn, that the hands had exercised at gun-drill for an hour and a half in the Forenoon, followed by Secure, an inspection, then an hour of small-arms and cutlass drill before Clear-Decks-And-Up-Spirits. Two men on bread-and-water, no rum or tobacco, for malingering; two down ill and one ruptured, trussed and on light duties after trying to shift a wine keg for the Master-At-Arms, by himself.
Damn fool! he thought.
He threw down his pen and leaned back in his chair, restless and irritable as Jester bowled along, thrashing into the winds, and taking a quarter-sea on her starboard bows, which made her thrum and creak.
Did I read more into what Fillebrowne said than what was there? he asked himself for the hundredth time. He can’t be that large a fool, to think he’d serve me sauce with impunity, can he? I have to work with him, dammit. Surely he knows better. He has to work with me! Does he think Captain Charlton will protect him? Greedy pig or no, he’s competent. Runs a taut, trig ship. Patronage only goes so far; it can’t make a complete fool of a commander, or a captain. Damme, his First Officer, Stroud, was so protective of him. Those Marines of his thought it was funny, but they seemed worried about him, too. Only been in charge of Myrmidon a dog-watch and has that sort of loyalty already, so . . .
’Less he’s too idle, he let’s ’em get away with murder, that’s why they cosset him. A stern captain’d ruin their lives! No . . .
“A sip o’ somethin’, sir?” Aspinall intruded on his thoughts from the doorway of his pantry across from the dining-coach.
“What?” Lewrie snapped irritably.
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