Jester's Fortune

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Permittez-moi, m’sieur le capitaine Charlton, j’ai l’honneure . . . presentez-vous, le burgomeister, uhm . . . le maire . . .” An equerry said with a simper, a suppressed titter and a languid wave of his hand.

  “Thought they were Germans,” Rodgers muttered from the side of his mouth. “What’s all this Frog they’re spoutin’?”

  “Court-language, sir,” Lewrie whispered back. “Prussians and Russians, looks like the Austrians, too. Can’t bloody stand their own tongue. Not elegant enough, I s’pose. Ah! Madame Baroness . . . oui, baroness? Von Kreutznacht, enchanté. Simply enchanté!” He bowed to a particularly porcine old biddy who sported a rather impressive set of whiskers and moustache under all her powders, paints, rouges and beauty marks. She resembled a hog in a tiara.

  “M’sieur le Capitaine, uhmm! . . .” She tittered, or tried one, at any rate. She had a husky voice as forbidding as a bosun’s mate, and was about five stone too heavy to be seen tittering. She offered her hand, and Lewrie pecked dry lips on the back of it, looking for a spot free of jewelry or liver-spots. He heard the clash of heels in the line, the double-snap of bootheels thrummed together, combined with a short bow from the waist. He didn’t think he’d try that, no matter what they thought of his manners.

  “Swear to God,” Fillebrowne grated between bared teeth in a rictus of a grin. “But that last ’un, sirs . . . she oinked at me.”

  “Which ’un?” Rodgers asked him, now they were down among those lesser lights of the receiving line. “Oh, the baroness, Fillebrowne?”

  “Aye, sir. Her. A definite oink.”

  “That sound lascivious, Lewrie.” Rodgers smirked. “D’ye think?”

  “Oh, quite, sir!” Lewrie replied gayly. “Were she merely being polite, ’twould have been more a husky grunt. But, an oink, now . . . !”

  “You lucky young dog, sir!” Rodgers wheezed softly. “Not a dog-watch ashore, an’ a baroness throwin’ herself at ya. Oinkin’, an’ all! Damme’f I ain’t envious, sir. Mind, ya might strain somethin’, puttin’ th’ leg that far over. But think what a tale ya’ll have t’tell, sir.”

  “Handsome and dashing sort, such as yourself, Commander,” Lewrie could not resist cruelly jibing, “must surely expect to be oinked at.”

  “Uhm,” Fillebrowne commented, his eyes slitted in well-hidden anger over Lewrie’s barb, “hah, sir!”

  Supper was an ordeal. The four British captains were seated in a sea of Trieste’s finest, far apart from each other, and pent in with people who could not, or would not, speak a word of English. The linen, china, centrepieces and silverware were gorgeous enough, and there were nigh a whole platoon of servants in livery, one for every two diners, à la Russe. It was a heavy feed, though: potato soup, very greasy goose, a bland fish course that resembled mullet, the salad wilted, dry and fleshed out with what Lewrie took to be grass clippings. Roast venison, jugged hares, a whole roast hog, all made the rounds before it was done, topped with gargantuan, toothachy piles of sweets. And with Trieste’s finest tucking in like they’d just come off forty days aboard the Ark!

  Finally, after circulating amid the coffee, chocolate and tea drinkers, after listening politely to some untalented musicians and a male soloist doing some incomprehensible (and stultifyingly boring) lieder in German, they were allowed to ascend a wooden staircase for the first floor and were ushered into a smaller chamber, where they were delighted to find cheese, biscuit, shelled nuts and port waiting on a bare-topped mahoghany table.

  “Welcome to the gun-room, gentlemen,” their host said with an anxious smile of welcome. “Or as close as you’ll find, this side of Portsmouth.” And he said it in English, with a Kentish accent!

  “Major Simpson, my thanks, sir,” Captain Charlton said with some pleasure as he was shown to a seat near the head of the table and was presented with the port decanter and a goodly-sized glass. “The major, had you not already gathered from the receiving line introductions,” he said to the others, “is the senior naval officer here in Trieste. One of the most senior navy officers of the Austrian Empire, rather.”

  “That’s true, sir,” Major Simpson replied. “Oh, there’s a man over the Danube flotilla senior to me, but . . .” He was nigh preening. “Do allow me to name to you, sirs, my officers . . .”

  It was von Something-umlautish-von-Glottal-Stop something other. Half the officers wore the same pale blue breeches, waistcoat and cuffs that Simpson sported; the rest were from the Liccaner or Ottochaner regiments of Border Infantry, who formed the Austrian Marine Corps, dressed in tobacco-brown coats with sky-blue cuffs, breeches and waistcoats.

  Major George Simpson, Lewrie soon learned, was the genuine article, an authentic Royal Navy officer, one of those thirtyish lieutenants of ill-starred fortune when it came to patronage, prize-money or promotion. The Russians, Turks, every foreign power with hopes to build a navy had hired them on to smarten up their own landlubberly officers and crews. Christ, the Russians had even taken the Rebel John Paul Jones to lead their Black Sea fleet at one time!

  “Can’t tell you what a joy it was, to see a proper squadron of British ships come to anchor, sir,” Simpson told them. “You’ll be in the Mare long . . . or is this simply a port-call?”

  “We’ll be operating out of the Straits of Otranto, mostly, sir,” Charlton told him. “With the odd patrol to sweep up French or French-sponsored mercantile traffick. And to cooperate with your Emperor . . . Franz II’s squadron ’gainst the French. Lend you every assistance to ready your ships for any future action which may occur this season? Urge Admiral Sir John Jervis, our new commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, to write to London on your behalf, anent supplies, arms and such. Ships and crews, hmm?”

  “Now, that would be wondrous fine, sir!” Simpson exclaimed, and translated that news in German for his compatriots. “The annual naval budget, d’ye see, is rather limited of late. Austria’s a land power, mostly. Keep control of the Danube River, and protect Trieste. A lion’s share of the military budget goes to the army up on the Rhine, or over in Piedmont and Lombardy. Every little bit is welcome.”

  “Now, sir . . .” Charlton purred after a sip of port, “tell me how you stand. What’s your strength? Besides the vessels in port at this moment.”

  “Uhm, d’ye see, sir . . .” Simpson blushed, “this is the Austrian Navy, sir. All of it.”

  “Aha,” Charlton said, raising an expressive brow in surprise.

  Thought so, Lewrie told himself, sharing a weary frown over the table with Captain Ben Rodgers, who was all but rolling his eyes.

  “We’ve Le Ferme, sir, the brigantine, and two feluccas . . . armed merchant ships, really,” Major Simpson confessed, wriggling about in his chair like a hound might circle on a fireplace mat. “We’ve those two schebecks . . . brace of twenty-four-pounders in the bows, and some light side guns, and the Empire has authorised me to increase the number of gunboats from seven to sixteen. The same sort as was so useful during the siege of Gibraltar.”

  “Nothing else, uhm . . . cruising the coasts, or . . . ?” Charlton asked with a hopeful, but leery, tone to his voice.

  “Sorry, sir, that’s the lot.” Simpson grimaced. “And it’s been the very Devil to get the city of Trieste to see their way clear to giving me funds enough to start the new gunboats. The governor of the port, and the mayor . . . the burgomeister, sir? You see, uhm . . .”

  Here comes another, Lewrie warned himself; that “you see, uhm” sounds like a bloody dirge already! You see, uhm . . . I’m poxed?

  “The naval budget is very small, sir,” Simpson went on, wearing a sheepish smile, which he bestowed on the British captains, hoping for a single shred of sympathy. “And a fair portion of it . . . sixty thousand guilden a year . . . comes from the port of Trieste itself. And they’ll not pay for more navy than they think is necessary for their own defence, sir.”

  “These sea going gunboats, Major Simpson?” Ben Rodgers prodded, stumbling over the unfamiliar, and most unnautical, rank.<
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  “Uhm, d’ye see, sir . . .” Major Simpson began to say.

  Bloody Hell, another’un. Lewrie groaned to himself, pouring his glass brimming with port when his turn came.

  “Harbour defence, mostly, sirs,” Simpson admitted, palms up and out like a Levant rug-merchant. “Point of fact, save for La Ferme, our brigantine, the vessels here at Trieste are almost useless unless there is a calm sea and a light breeze. I’ve written again and again to the Naval Ministry in Vienna, sketching what vessels’d prove more useful . . . mean t’say, sirs, that’s why they hired me on, hey? For my deepwater experience? But . . .” He tossed them another palm-up shrug. “The Hungarians have a better flotilla.”

  “Aren’t the Hungarians part of the Empire, though, sir?” Lewrie just had to ask.

  “Oh, aye, they are, sir! An important part,” Simpson assured him. “Hundreds of years ago, the Hungarians advanced to the coast, the Croat lands, and the Croats were most eager to make alliance with them, then with Austria. Then Austria became dominant over the Hungarians, though they keep a certain measure of semi-autonomy. Most of the coast, that is the Hungarian Littoral. Fiume, Zara, Spalato, Ragusa . . . it extends quite far. Well, sort of Spalato and Ragusa, d’ye see. They’re still either Venetian ports or independent. There’s the independent Republic of Ragusa, quite old. Genoese or Spanish enclaves on the Dalmatian coast—hated Venice since Hector was a pup, so they’ve played everyone off against the other. Though Turkey still claims them, they’re mostly Catholic, Venetian or at least Italian.”

  “Ah, hmm!” Captain Charlton purred, wriggling in his own chair, as thoroughly puzzled as the rest by then. “Perhaps, sir, you might fill us in on the eastern shore’s doings? Its nature?”

  “Well, sir,” Simpson replied slowly, “it’s rather complicated, d’ye see, uhm . . .”

  First had come the Roman Empire, so Simpson carefully related to them; then the Eastern Byzantine Empire had held sway, punctuated by a series of local princedoms or kingdoms that had aspired to be empires—Macedonians, Albanians, Serbs, then Bulgars or Hungarians, what had been the Dark Ages. All had been swept away quite bloodily by another, finally by the all-conquering Turks; back when they had been all-conquering, of course. Venice, Genoa, Spain, the Italian city-states all had nosed about, warring with each other until Venice had become great and had carved out a province that had run the entire length of the eastern shore. Only to be lost, except for a few remaining bits of coasts round harbours, to the Turks, at last, in the 1400s.

  Below the Hungarian Littoral was the Independent Republic of Ragusa, which Turkey still claimed but was too weak to conquer any longer, and let it go in semi-autonomous bliss, long as tribute was paid to the Sultan, while all inland was Muslim-Slavic, termed Bosnia or Herze-govinia. South of there was Montenegro, another semi-autonomous province of the Turkish Empire, but which still held a small Venetian enclave with a fine harbour, called Venetian Cattaro. Montenegro was almost totally Muslim, too. The Turks still ruled Albania, even more mountainous and forbidding than Montenegro; but that too was pretty much in name only, and Venice still clung like weary leeches to the harbours of Durazzo and Volona, with shallow, narrow coastal lands, as Venetian Albania.

  Venice still held the Ionian islands, down at the mouth of the Straits of Otranto, off the Albanian coast: Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante and Cerigo, plus some appendages only goats could love. Off the lower Ionians, the Turks owned the Morea, which was their name for the Greek Peloponnesus, famed in Homer’s works, part of the long-ago exterminated Byzantine Empire.

  “The coast is mostly Catholic . . . Hungarian, Croat and Venetian,” Simpson related over a second decanter of port. “Inland, though, they are Muslim, all down through Albania and the Morea. Forcibly converted long ago, though you couldn’t tell a Balkan Slav Muslim from a European. Now, you still have some Greeks, Eastern Orthodox Church, down in the islands, the far southern lands . . . sheltered by the Venetians. Betwixt Venetian ports and such, the coast is Muslim, so it’s rather tricky, depending on where you go ashore. Far inland, there are many Eastern Orthodox Serbs, still clinging to their mountaintops. Turks never could get at ’em easily. Toppled their empire in a night and a day, Lord . . . four hundred years past. They’ve a Serbian Orthodox Church of their own, ’stead o’ looking to Roosia or wherever other Slavs look to as the seat o’ their religion. Oh, lowermost Montenegro, there’s the port of Dulcigno. Muslim, independent, home of the Dulcigno Corsairs. Just behind them, by the Albanian border, is the Rebel Pasha of Scutari. Not quite as bad as the Barbary Corsairs, but they’re aspiring people. Split off, like the Mamelukes who rule old Egypt? ’Tis a hellish stew, the Balkans and Dalmatia.”

  “It sounds very much like it, sir,” Charlton grunted.

  “Well, worse than that, sir. D’ye see, uhm . . .”

  Don’t tell me, they’re cannibals! Lewrie scoffed in quiet derision; and they ate Captain Cook! He needed more port. Badly!

  “So much trampling back and forth, Captain Charlton,” Simpson grimly mused. “All of ’em were great, one time or another. Even with the Turks ruling most of it, the people’re so intermixed. Every little valley . . . all those peoples, religions, languages in some places. Any slightest thing sets ’em off, and then it’s holy war, neighbour ’gainst neighbour. They take their tribal backgrounds and their religions damn’ serious in the Balkans, they do, sir. Red-Indian, massacreing serious. Give ’em a wide berth, that’s my best advice to you.”

  “Yet where does the best Adriatic oak come from, sir?” Rodgers enquired. “From the eastern shore? Or from higher up, round Trieste, or Fiume?”

  “Bit o’ both, but mostly from the north, Captain Rodgers,” the good major allowed. “From Venice and Trieste. What the Hungarians do, in spite of orders from Vienna . . .” He gave them a hopeless shrug.

  “So we must investigate that shore, I take it, sir? In spite of the problems?” Lewrie asked, not liking the sound of it. “The Venetian ports, too?”

  “Aye, the Venetians.” Charlton perked up like a spaniel at the sight of a fowling-piece. “I’m told their fleet is still a factor in this region. What’s their strength, and where do they base?”

  “Well, sir . . . officially that is,” Simpson told him, “they have twenty ships of the line, still. Two-decker 68’s, what we’d take for an undergunned 3rd Rate 74. Some 60’s, same as an over gunned 4th Rate 50? Smallish. Ten real frigates, again smaller’n we’re used to, most of them like our 6th Rates, and shallow-draught. Fixty or sixty sloops, brigs o’ war, xebecs or oared galleys, all told. Laid up, in the Lido at Venice, the various ports . . . most of ’em in-ordinary with their guns landed. Haven’t seen much of them at sea since their last war with the Tunisian Corsairs back in ’92, just before their Admiral Angelo Emo died.”

  “And the Turks, sir?” Charlton wondered.

  “Lord, sir! The Turks?” Simpson laughed, as did the rest of the Austrian officers. “In the Black Sea, to keep an eye on the Roosians, mostly. What else is left, and that ain’t worth much, mind . . . is anchored inside the Golden Horn below the Sultan’s shore-guns, should they turn mutinous on him. At best they patrol the Dardanelles, to keep out tricky folk like we infidels, so the world may leave ’em be, sir.”

  “So we wouldn’t encounter any off the Balkans, sir?” Fille-browne enquired. “Not even a revenue cutter or two?”

  “Not in a month of Sundays, sir.” Simpson chuckled. “Balkans are so poor to start with, there’s little revenue to protect! And the local pashas, however they style themselves, too weak to collect or enforce it. Should there be some money scraped up, it never goes beyond a pasha’s purse, you may be certain . . . the Sultan bedamned.”

  “Seeraübers,” one of the Austrians sneered. “Der pirates, Ja? Sehr viele . . . zo mahny ist, meinen herren kollegin?”

  “The kapitan refers to you as his colleagues, sirs,” Simpson translated. To Lewrie’s ears, even hearing the man’s name for a second time, it still sounded hellish l
ike “Von Glottal-Stop/ Atchoo”!

  “He warns there are many pirates on the coast,” Simpson added, “like the Corsairs of Dulcigno. With the Turks sunk so low they can’t, or no longer have the will to guard their coasts, some local buccaneers have gotten into the game. Albanian, Montenegran, Bosnian, some Greeks from the Morea . . .”

  “Die Uscocchi,” Kapitan Von Glottal-Stop growled, as morose as a drunken badger; the fourth bottle of port was making the rounds, with some local stuff, too—a gin-clear paint remover.

  “Ja, danke herr kapitan.”

  Simpson squirmed, turning a furious eye on the fellow for a second. “Croatian pirates, d’ye see, sirs. Their rulers, the Hungarians, try to keep ’em in line, but . . .”

  “Ungarischen, pah!” Herr Kapitan Von Gargle-Umlaut-Argey-Bargey spat in anger from the other side of the table. “Arschlochen! Die Ungarischen Kriegsmarine, die Godtverdammte Uscocchi, ist!”

  “He says the Hungarians don’t try too hard to rein ’em in, sir,” Simpson unraveled for them, blushing. “Being so new to the sea, Croats make up a fair number of their sailors so far.”

  “Like good English smugglers, Major?” Lewrie japed. “The best seamen in time of war? Worth your time to snare ’em . . . ’pressed, or as volunteers?”

  “May one catch them first, Commander Lewrie,” Simpson agreed, a touch bleary. He wasn’t feeling any pain himself by then. “I must confess our compatriots the Hungarians have recruited many for their flotilla. Or turn a blind eye to their doings, at times. For their continuing goodwill. After all, the Uscocchi are stronger than most of the freebooter bands. Damn near own the myriad of islands along the coast, d’ye see. And their presence keeps the other raider bands out of Hungarian waters. I told you, ’twas a hellish stew in the Balkans. There’s hardly a coastal community safe from piracy or slaughter. Not much to loot, d’ye see, though . . . ’tis mostly tribal or religious grudges being worked off. Greeks ’gainst Turks, Turks ’gainst anyone Christian, Croats ’gainst Bosnians or Serbs, and vice versa. And ’gainst Muslims, which is pretty much everybody else down the coast. Your best hope, Captain Charlton, is to see that British merchantmen keep well out to sea, over towards the Italian shores. Venetian waters are safe enough, and down ’round the Straits, Naples keeps a lid on things. The Papal States, though . . . in the middle of the western shore . . . not much of a navy, these days. Nor army, either! So you’ll see raids over there now and again. Though even the Uscocchi don’t stray far from their home waters in the islands. Too easy to hide ’mongst ’em, sir.”