Jester's Fortune

by Dewey Lambdin

  And then the smoke thinned and blew alee, and Jester was out in the clear, to windward of the frigate at last. Lewrie turned to give her a scathing search, pleased by what he saw. Her beak-head rails and her figurehead were gone, the petty-officers’ roundhouse by the foc’s’le bulkhead was starred with shot, and no one living stirred by her chase-guns or fore-sail sheets. Her fore-mast was canted over as if shot from its keel step.

  “Damn knacky,” he whispered. Myrmidon had put about in her gun-smoke, was swinging up ’cross the wind and rapidly falling astern of the frigate, to avoid that delayed broadside. She’d cross their stern and boot her up the arse with a stern-rake, into the bargain! Fillebrowne was a shrewd tactician, he had to confess.

  “Sandwiched her, by God,” Lewrie laughed.

  “Or is that ‘shrewsburied,’ sir,” Knolles drawled, even if he was a tad pinch-mouthed and pale from their hammering.

  “Not you, too, Mister Knolles,” Lewrie groaned.

  “Stand on after the merchantmen, sir?” Knolles enquired.

  “Aye, we’ll take the left-hand’un, fine on our starboard bows, Mister Knolles,” Lewrie decided, lifting his telescope to eye her and estimate how long it would take to catch her up. “We’ll leave t’other on the right hand for Myrmidon. Assuming Lionheart doesn’t recall us?”

  “Signal, sir!” Midshipman Spendlove shouted from the taffrail.

  Lewrie frowned, wondering if Captain Charlton would need their presence to finish off the frigate. Was he the overly cautious sort?

  “Our number, sir!” Spendlove read off, stepping up onto the signal-flag lockers and balancing with one hand about the larboard lanthorn post. “‘Pursue Chase More Closely,’ sir!”

  “Well, right, then.” Lewrie sighed in relief. They’d begin the cruise with prizes. Another good omen, he thought.

  “More, sir!” Spendlove shouted. “She sends . . . ‘Well Done,’ sir! Our number, and ‘Well Done’!” he concluded proudly.

  “Mister Crewe, secure the guns,” Lewrie instructed the Master Gunner from the forrud quarterdeck nettings overlooking the waist and the still-smoking barrels. “And pass the word. The flag sends us a ‘Well Done.’ Pass the word for the Purser, too,” he called down to the grinning, smoke-fouled sailors of his crew. “Small-beer to be served up, a mug a man. ’Tis thirsty work, beatin’ the French, hey lads?”

  That raised a cheer from them. There’d be prize money from a big French frigate. Hull and fittings, stores and guns might earn a total of £20,000, with them receiving an eighth —plus “head and gun money” for every seaman aboard, and each artillery piece. For battle, it had been relatively bloodless, too, barely a whit of what a real slaughter it might have been.

  Mister Rees, their ship’s carpenter, came up from the mid-ships ladderway, brushing past the happy and relieved sailors, a look of some worry on his face, and Lewrie steeled himself for bad news.

  “Hulled, sir,” Mr. Reese reported at the top of the starboard quarterdeck ladder, doffing his knit cap. He was fairly young for his warrant, hawk-faced and eagle-beaked, but baked into premature middle age by a lifetime at sea, his dark Welsh complexion permanently bronze. “One int’ yer great-cabins, sir, an’ yer stern-lights all smash. One, a’low that’un, Cap’um. Fish-room an’ bread-room stores’re scattered Hell t’breakfast . . . can’t breathe down t’ere fer all t’biscuit-dust. Starb’d quarter scantlin’s all smash, but nought below t’waterline. Forrud bulwark . . . but ye seen that’un, I guess, sir. A day’s labour, in harbour, t’replank, starb’d. Last’un, sir . . .” Rees said with a gleam in his eyes. “Clean puncture . . . t’ rough t’surgery, sir.”

  “Good God, was anyone . . . ?” Lewrie gawked. That was a shot in the orlop, below the waterline, even if . . . !

  “T’surgeon, Mister Howse, sir . . .” Rees marveled. “Wearin’ a clean set o’ breeches, I’m told, Cap’um. Clean t’rough scant-lin’s, an’ t’second futtock, caromed off t’berth-deck wale, int’ t’orlop, an’ jammed int’ a knee-timber. B’lieve t’gent’man collected himself a wee splinter’r two, sir, but all’s well.”

  Lewrie found it very hard to hide a spiteful smile. He coughed to clear his throat and turned his gaze outboard. But he saw Rees in much the same predicament.

  “Aye, Mister Rees, thankee for your report,” Lewrie said. “Do you sound the well, though, just in case one lodged below.”

  “I’m on it, sir,” Rees said, knuckling his brow and turning to go. Then here came Cony in his wake to make his report.

  “Sir, we come through right fair,” he related. “No riggin’ in danger, no damage below th’ waterline, no guns dismounted. I run into Mr. LeGoff, an’ ’e tol’ me t’tell ya . . . three wounded. Marine Private Dykes . . . Landsmen Orick and Siler. ’T ain’t too bad, consid’rin’. Be a few weeks o’ light-duty, God willin’, an’ they’ll be right as rain. Ord’nary Seaman Butturini, though, sir . . . well, ’e ain’t got long.”

  “One of our Maltese seamen, aye.” Lewrie sighed. It was such a short “butcher’s bill”; but any one was much too long. “Didn’t see much hope for him right off. I s’pose you’ve a bottle of rum handy?”

  “Well, o’ course, sir,” Cony said with a sad grin. “I’m th’ Bosun, ain’t I?”

  “Him and his mates . . . see he goes comfortable, if you would,” Lewrie told him. “I’d be obliged.”

  “Aye, sir. An’ I’ll tell th’ sailmaker.”

  “Right.” Lewrie nodded abruptly. It would be Mr. Paschal’s duty to sew up a canvas shroud for Ordinary Seaman Butturini and be ready to stitch him into it, once he passed over; with a final stitch through the nose, so everyone would rest easy that he was really gone.

  “Pity ’bout Mr. Howse, though, ain’t it, sir?” Cony chuckled. “’Eard-tell Mr. Buchanon swore they wuz blood on th’ wind. Didn’t think h’it’d be his, though. Why, ’tis enough t’put th’ fear o’ God in a man, Cap’um Lewrie, sir! Which god, now . . .”

  “Get along with you, Mister Cony,” Lewrie said with a smirk.

  “Aye aye, sir.” Cony grinned, doffing his plain cocked hat.

  There was muffled gunfire astern. Lewrie turned to see that French frigate, now being engaged by Lionheart and Pylades, two miles or more alee. That wouldn’t last long, he thought. Nor would those two merchantmen, which were clawing their way eastward, into the teeth of the wind, but too heavily laden to escape. It had barely gone two bells of the First Dog-watch—half past four P.M. They’d be up with the merchantmen they were chasing a little after sunset, he reckoned; and Myrmidon level with hers a bit before. Prize-money, and a handsome letter to Jervis—then the Admiralty—from Charlton for a plucky afternoon’s work. So promising a beginning, aye . . . yet . . .

  A man had died. One of their Jesters had died. And what sort of foreboding omen was that? Alan wondered.

  CHAPTER 3

  They were two big, fine three-masted ships, almost large enough to be mistaken for 4th Rate 50-gunners or very large but older two-deck frigates, and their arrival in the Austrian port of Trieste, with the British ensign atop their mizzen masts, might have led an observer on shore to think them part of a powerful squadron at first glance. A closer inspection, though, would have shown the French Tricolour flag flown lower, from their stern gaffs. Led by a pair of sloops of war, followed by two unmistakably British frigates, the six vessels swept into harbour about midday, their eighth on-passage, after calling for pilots beyond the bar, then standing off-and-on until someone in authority woke up and took notice of their arrival.

  “Sleepy damn’ place,” Lewrie observed dryly, giving Trieste a good look-over once Jester had made-up to a permanent Austrian naval mooring, and had rowed out a single kedge to keep her from swinging afoul of the other ships in port.

  British ships, mostly, he noted. Trieste was Austria’s one and only naval base, home of their own small East Indies Trading Company to the Far East. But it was remarkably empty and inactive. Buoys dotted the glass-calm waters, but ver
y few were taken, and the network of quays and warehouses were bare of bustle. He’d expected a busy seaport, just as full of commercial doings as Plymouth . . . damn, even a faded Bristol! Nowhere near a Liverpool, or the Pool of London, of course, but . . . !

  There were damned few warships flying the horizontal red-white-red crowned flag of Austria, either. There was a trim little gun-brig sporting a commissioning pendant, a pair of feluccas, such as he’d come to know from his Mediterranean experience. There were even a brace of what looked to be xebecs, long, lean and low to the water, like Barbary Corsair raiders. What looked to be a 6th Rate frigate now careened on a mud flat, mastless and abandoned, half rotted to pieces. And there were galleys! Small galleys with only one short lateen mast, lateener-rigged, with spars as long as they were; with row-boxes built out like “camels” on either beam, and pierced for dozens of oars or sweeps on either side. There were even more ashore, run up on launch ramps, and partially sheltered from the weather by open-sided sheds, such as he’d read in Homer’s Iliad was the Greek fashion, back in the ancient days of Athens’ glory two thousand years or more before!

  Scabrous, too, that half dozen afloat, as if ships’ timbers were prone to leprosy; and like the xebecs, they were armed only at the bows with what he took for heavy artillery, and only empty swivel-gun brackets lining their sides. Except for small harbour-watch or anchor-watch parties, they were as abandoned as ships laid up in-ordinary, though their guns hadn’t been landed.

  To top it off, completing Lewrie’s disappointment with his first sight of fabled Trieste, it was a grey and gloomy day, with low clouds clinging to the grim-looking surrounding hills, and barely a breath of wind once inside the breakwaters and moles.

  Lionheart was last to come to anchor, to make-up to a red nun-buoy. She was doing it handsomely, reducing sail, brailing up, turning up, with “buoy-jumpers” under her figurehead as she ghosted to a stop within feet of the buoy—and firing a Royal, 21-gun salute to Austria and her Emperor, Franz II, as she did it! Even as a boat was got down off the falls and rowed her kedge anchor-out astern.

  Then they waited for a reply. Then waited some more. Every sailor in the squadron began to titter, speculate aloud and roll his eyes as they waited a long piece more.

  Finally, some activity could be espied along the ramparts of a harbour fort. Half-dressed soldiers shrugging into coats and clayed belting, tossing shakoes to each other as if they’d picked up someone else’s in their rush, or simply forgotten them. Muzzles emerged from a row of embrasures, and the first shot in reply bellowed out.

  “An’ here I always thought ’twas th’ Spanish who were slip-shod,” Mr. Buchanon snickered. “’Ese fellers put siesta t’ shame, sir!”

  “Delivered twenty-one . . . was received of . . .” Knolles chuckled, rocking on the balls of his feet as they counted them. “Was that five and six, together? My word! There’s seven . . . well, come on, eight . . .”

  “Of eleven,” Lewrie said after it appeared that the last shot had been fired. Or the gunners had fallen asleep from sheer boredom, he thought sarcastically. Since Captain Charlton did not fly a broad pendant of the blue from his masthead as even a Commodore of the Second Class, the fort had saluted with the number due a mere Captain . . . though a captain with four warships should have gotten thirteen, with or without broad pendant. That was simple logic. And good manners!

  A rather ornate oared barge, fit for a full admiral, or Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty back home, at last appeared, stroking a leisurely way out from a stone quay to Lionheart. There was an officer in the stern-sheets, almost awash in gold-lace fripperies, wearing a dark blue coat, with pale blue cuffs and turn-backs, pale blue waistcoat and breeches. Lewrie snorted with derision at the bouquet-sized egret plume arrangement on his cocked hat. ’Bout fifty birds perished for that, he thought with a dismissive shrug.

  “Right, then, gentlemen,” Lewrie snapped. “Bosun over-side to square the yards, break out the brooms and give ’er a last sweep-down should anyone come callin’. Mr. Knolles, I’ll have the quarterdeck awnings rigged. It looks very much like rain ’fore sunset. Mr. Cony, do you get all the boats down. The Austrians will be taking charge of our prizes, and I want our prize-crews back aboard as soon as they do. Pipe a late rum issue, then hands to dinner, Mr. Knolles.”

  “Excuse me, sir?” Mr. Giles, the Purser, harrumphed to gain his attention. Their rather “fly” bespectacled young “Pusser,” along with his newest “Jack-in-the-Breadroom,” Lawless, were almost wringing their hands in anticipation of a run ashore in search of fresh victuals and such. “Could we have a boat, sir? Once the Bosun’s done?”

  “Of course, Mister Giles,” Lewrie agreed. “Boat crew will not await you ashore, though. Remember last time, hmm?”

  Giles wasn’t a naval officer, exactly; not in the chain of command. He was a civilian hireling, bonded and warranted. The last time, at Leghorn, he’d taken most of a boat’s crew inland to help fetch and tote. Half had snuck off from him and had gotten stupendously drunk in a raucous quarter hour before the cox’n could collar them!

  “No grappa in Trieste, sir.” Giles winced into his coat collar. “Nor rum, neither, pray Jesus.”

  “Indeed, sir,” Lewrie intoned. “By the way, I’ve a taste for turkey. Should you run afoul of one . . .”

  “Turkey, sir, aye,” Giles replied, making a note on a shopping list. “So close to the Turkish Empire, one’d think, hah? Thankee, sir. Come on, Lawless. Perhaps Mister Cony may row us ashore, once he’s done squaring the yards and all.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” his lack-witted new clerk mumbled.

  “Shoulda flown th’ French flag, all o’ us, Cap’um,” Buchanon said with a sigh, looking at the fort, which had gone back to its well-deserved rest and now looked as forlorn as a fallen church. “’At’d lit a fire under ’em. Or fetched in ’at frigate.”

  “Well, we didn’t, so there it is, Mister Buchanon,” Alan spat.

  Bad luck, all-round; inexplicably, instead of a last broadside fired for the honour of the flag and a quick surrender, the French hadn’t struck, as they seemed most wont to do these days in the face of superior force. They’d gone game to the last, losing more masts and spars, shot through and riddled, but still firing back, until a lazy-fuming spiral of whitish smoke had risen from her amidships. A fire had broken out below-decks, and then it was sauve qui peut, as the Frogs said— “save what you can.” They left her like rats diving off a sinking grain-coaster. Far astern, round sunset, Lewrie could see a tiny, kindling-like spark of flames, then a sullen bloom of red and amber as the fire, accidentally or intentionally set, reached her magazines and blew her to atoms.

  “Signal from the flag, sir,” Spendlove called, intruding upon his broodings over all that lost prize-money. “‘Send Boats,’ sir. For the French prisoners, I’d expect.” Lionheart had taken aboard most of the frigate’s survivors, after plucking them from the sea, and a gaol ashore in a port now at war with France was the best place for them.

  “Very well, Mister Spendlove. Mister Cony? Belay your squaring the yards. Or Mr. Giles’s trip ashore. Lower every boat and row to Lionheart to transport prisoners ashore. Sergeant Bootheby, your Marines to form an escort-party . . . pistols and hangers’d be better in the boats, I’d presume.”

  “Aye aye, sir . . . pistols and hangers,” that stalwart baulk of ramrod-stiff oak replied crisply; though Lewrie was sure by the glum expression on his face that Bootheby would much prefer muskets tipped with gleaming spike-bayonets, to show the sluggard Austrian garrison what real soldiers were supposed to look like . . . all “pipe-clay, piss an’ gaiters.”

  “You’ll see to the rum issue, once the boat crews have returned aboard, Mister Knolles, then their dinner,” Lewrie prompted.

  “Aye, sir. And the awnings are ready for rigging.”

  “Very well, I’ll be below, sir. Out of the way.”

  Which was where he stomped for, irked that a sensible routine of a single ship would fore
ver be altered and amended by the presence of a squadron commander, and a day-long flurry of signal flags. And feeling just glum enough to resent the constant intrusions a bit!

  There’d been no turkeys available, no decent geese, either. Mr. Giles had returned with some fresh-slaughtered and skinned rabbits, and Aspinall had jugged them in ship’s-issue red wine. It may have been a Tuscan or Corsican, but it was commonly reviled as the Pusser’s Bane—“Blackstrap”— thinned with vinegar, and about as tasty as paint.

  Fortunately, a boat had come from Lionheart about four bells of the Day Watch, bearing an invitation—more like an order, since it was from Captain Charlton—to dine ashore that evening, as guests of the Austrians. Number One full-dress uniform, clean breeches, waistcoat and linen, well-blacked shoes with silver buckles (gilt if they owned a pair), presentation swords (were they so fortunate, etc.). Hair to be powdered and dressed, and blah-blah-blah . . . Captain Charlton was determined to impress their allies if it killed him.

  “Aspinall, heat me up a bucket of fresh water,” Lewrie told him. “And hunt up that bar o’ soap. We’re to shine tonight. Or else!”

  Boats crews in neat, clean, matching slop-clothing took them to the quays, landing them in strict order of precedence. Carriages waited to bear them townward to what Lewrie took for a medieval guild-hall of a place, a towering, half-timbered Germanic cuckoo-clock horror of a building, simply dripping with baroque touches, right down to the leering gargoyles at the eaves and carved stags and hunting scenes round the doorway, with sputtering torches in lieu of lanthorns to light the street and antechambers. He expected one of those bands he’d seen in London, so loved by his Hanoverian monarchy, whose every tune sounded very much like “Oomp-pah-pah-Crash/bang.” That or drunken Vikings!

  A very stiff reception line awaited them, made up of civilian, military, and naval members. The men glittered in satins or heavy velvets or gilded wool, no matter how stuffy it was, with sweat running freely to presage the expected rain. The women . . . Lord, he’d never seen such a fearsome pack of chick-a-biddies, all teeth and teats, all bound up pouty-pigeon-chested in lace-trimmed gowns as heavy as drapery fabrics, with double or even triple chins declining over scintillating brilliants, diamonds or pearl necklaces. Everyone’s hair was powdered to a tee, pale blue or starkest white, and how he kept from sneezing his head off during all the bowing and curtseying, he couldn’t fathom.