“Uhmm, yahyss . . .” Charlton drawled, suppressing a yawn. “Now, as to those prizes we fetched in, Major Simpson . . . or any others we may take, once we hit our stride, hmm? Does Trieste support a Prize-Court, since Austria is a belligerent ’gainst France?”
“But of course, sir!” Simpson beamed. “Survey, inspect and valuate any prize you fetch in. Imprison or parole any passengers or crews who are French, allied with them or shipping contraband. We’ve already discussed it, the governor, the burgomeister, and I. All are most enthused at the opportunity. Once condemned and purchased, those ships and their cargoes will be most welcome on Trieste’s markets.”
“Supplies, sir,” Charlton pressed gently, “victuals, firewood and water. Perhaps the odd cask of gunpowder, stand of shot . . . naval stores and your famed Adriatic oak for repairs . . . now and again?”
“Well, uhm, sir, d’ye see . . .” Simpson shrugged helplessly. “At present, uhm . . .”
Useless bastards, Lewrie groaned silently; some allies!
“Well, perhaps we could meet again, sir,” Charlton suggested, hiding his disappointment rather well. “We must spend at least a day more at anchor, making repairs from onboard stores. Your people to take charge of the prizes, freeing our prize-crews aboard at present? Oh, excellent, sir, thankee. Would tomorrow be convenient? There’s so much for us to discuss, before we sail for Venice, to announce our presence . . . Splendid! Well, sir. It’s quite late, I see. And this has been a most enjoyable evening, but . . .”
“Shoddy sorts, Lewrie,” Rodgers growled as they stood apart, waiting for the carriages to bear them back to the quay. That rain had finally come, sullen, chill and depressingly steady. “Not worth a tinker’s damn, they are. ’Less there’s more to ’em than we’ve seen today. Or tonight.” Rodgers yawned, too, digging out his watch to peer at the time. “By Jesus, half past midnight!”
“Well, sir,” Lewrie agreed softly as a coach clattered up at last. “I’d suspect, long as we’re about the Adriatic, they’ll not be sticking their noses out to sea. Didn’t sound as if they’d seen the sea-side of the breakwater in a dog’s age.”
“All they’re good for is swillin’ an’ drinkin’, it seems.” Ben Rodgers chuckled. “Lord!”
“Well, sir . . . a man’s got to be good at something!” Lewrie smirked.
“Least Charlton sounds as if he knows what he’s about. Smooth as silk, did ya mark him? A perfect diplomat. And a fine hand when it comes to fightin’, thank God. At pistol-shot range. By the way . . . thankee for cripplin’ that bastard frigate, you an’ Myrmidon. Might’ve been a real scrap if you hadn’t.”
“Well, I’ve got to be good at something, don’t I, sir?” Lewrie laughed as a liveried catch-fart opened the door and lowered the step for them so they could hop into the coach.
“Aye, ya always were a scrapper, Lewrie,” Captain Rodgers said as he settled in the rear seat, forcing Lewrie to take the forward one. They were both relieved to be free of the estimable Captain Charlton, though; he and Fillebrowne would ride in the second. “Prize-money to start with, bags of honour with Old Jarvy, right off. Well, four of us ‘In-Sight’ . . . may not be that grand a share-out, but it’s a start. I’d hope we could cruise together, Pylades and Jester. Like the old days . . . me a bit offshore, you further in. We made a hellish pair o’shit-stirrers, ’deed we did, sir.”
“I’d admire that, too, sir,” Alan truthfully said. “Aye, like the high old times.”
“Here, this Fillebrowne,” Rodgers puzzled, after another giant yawn. “Know much of him? One o’ Hotham’s ‘newlies,’ ain’t he?”
“Well, sir . . .” Lewrie said, suddenly guarded. And feeling that flush of embarrassed irritation all over again! “But so is Charlton in a way.” And, as the coach rattled and swayed over the poorly cobblestoned road, he related his first meeting with Fillebrowne at Elba, and what a first impression he’d formed. Without being too spiteful-sounding, he hoped!
“They come up so fast these days, Lewrie,” Rodgers sighed, a fist over his mouth to cover another yawn. “So did we, come to think on’t. Nicest, gentle-mannered Lieutenant in th’ world, jumped out of th’ gun-room or wardroom, onto his own bottom, well . . . there’s always a few turn into th’ world’s biggest bastards. Never know what a command’ll do to a fellow. And the newest, Lord . . . did ya ever note it? Get such big heads, ’tis a wonder there’s a hat’d fit ’em! Scared o’ makin’ an error at th’ same time, too. I’d expect Fillebrowne needs half a year o’ command t’gain his confidence. That’ll take all th’ toplofty starch out o’ th’ lad. New shoes pinch sorest, ’til ya break ’em in. An’ captain’s shoes th’ snuggest.”
“I’d s’pose there’s something in what you say, sir,” Lewrie had to admit. Hadn’t he been half terrified, his first day aboard Alacrity? Whole- terrified ’board Shrike, when he’d been jumped to First Officer, fresh from an Examining Board in ’82, and knew just enough to be dangerous . . . but nothing near what a Lieutenant should?
Even if Fillebrowne had schemed, even murdered, to gain his promotion and his command, the sudden strain, the sense of isolation aft in the great-cabins and the immense, unpredictable and everlasting burden of total responsibility would turn a saint grumbly!
“Perhaps I should find him a kitten, sir,” Lewrie chuckled in the dark interior of the coach. But Ben Rodgers wasn’t listening to him any longer. He was awkwardly draped across the opposite leather seat, legs asprawl to either corner and his head tucked over sidewise like a pigeon would, to tuck his head under a wing to roost. Hat on sidewise, too, almost over his nose, and beginning to snore about as loud as an ungreased bilge-pump chain.
“Oh, Christ!” Alan sighed, tweaking his nostrils shut as Ben Rodgers relieved his heavy Teutonic supper at last. A belch or two of stentorian loudness, that put a throaty gargle to his snores for a moment; then the sort of fart that’d make most producers sigh aloud with delight and pride. And make the rest envious.
“Dignity of command,” Lewrie reminded himself in a soft voice, as Rodgers produced another that quite turned the air blue. The coach-horses couldn’t do a finer! he thought. This’un now, was ripe and pungent beyond all imagining, making Lewrie grope for the sash-window’s release strap to let it down so he could stick his head out!
His own supper sat heavy, his breeches as tight as a glutted tick, so . . . well, two can play this game, he thought. And Rodgers, lost in a creamy, greasy, alcoholic stupour, had the gall to wriggle his nose at the result. But, he snored on, most thoroughly oblivious.
Well, damme, Lewrie thought; the nerve!
CHAPTER 4
“Let ’em go?” Lewrie ranted upon his quarterdeck, once he’d read the letter that Charlton had sent aboard. “Mine arse on a band-box, sir, but . . . let ’em go? Well, damme!”
The older midshipman from Lionheart, a fellow in his mid-twenties named Birtwistle, cringed and took half a step back from Lewrie’s sudden fit of pique at that unwelcome news from the Venetians.
“Well, sir . . .” Birtwistle said with a shrug, when he could get a word in. “Since the captain only requested a ruling from the Doge and the authorities ashore, it isn’t as if we’re bound by it. We never turned the ships over to them, so they’re ours to deal with as we like, the captain said to tell you, sir. B’lieve the letter goes on to say—”
“And what did the Doge and his senators say to that, Mr. Birtwistle?” Lewrie fumed.
“Didn’t ask ’em, sir,” Birtwistle grunted. “The captain said he thought they’d most-like be wringing their hands over it. But it’d be all they’d do. Captain Rodgers is to take charge of them, and sail them back under escort to Trieste and a real Prize-Court.”
“Well, that’s more like it,” Lewrie sighed, at least a trifle mollified. “Thankee, Mister Birt-wistle, for deliverin’ this.”
“Captain Charlton also sent this, sir . . .” Birtwistle said, as he reached into his uniform coat’s breast-pocket to produce another of those letters.
“I’m to wait for a verbal reply, sir.”
Lewrie wrenched the letter open, expecting more bad news, but was delighted to find that Captain Charlton wished the pleasure of his company, along with one of his officers or midshipmen, to accompany him ashore that evening for another of those diplomatic suppers.
“Ah,” Lewrie said, eyes crinkling in delight. “Very good, sir. Pray, do you render to Captain Charlton my utmost respects and thanks for the invitation, and I will fetch along my First Officer, Lieutenant Knolles. We’ll be aboard Lionheart by the start of the First Dog.”
“I’ll tell him, sir,” Birtwistle assured him, doffing his hat and making an escape before something else set Commander Lewrie off.
Let ’em go, mine arse! Lewrie groaned.
After a day of repair work, the squadron had sailed for Venice, on a beautiful morning with a brisk little Easterly gushing down off the Balkan mountains. Twenty miles out to sea, they’d stood, outside anyone’s territorial claims. It wasn’t much of a voyage; seventy or so sea-miles to the west. But they’d come across several merchant-ships and had been forced to overhaul them and speak them, anyway. Two had been British, one a Maltese. But the last two had made sail and run as soon as they’d spotted them, and it had taken half a day for the swifter Jester and Myrmidon to come up to musket-shot of them and fire a warning under their bows.
Fetched-to, and all else aluff, they’d boarded them, to discover that they were both “neutrals,” one a Dane, the other Dutch. But once a good search had turned up more ship’s papers, they’d found that both were French-chartered. And the Dutch ship was not a refugee, but one of those still working from a Batavian Republic port, which meant that she was from a French ally.
And she was crammed with tons of compass-timber, naval stores, masts and spars! The pitch, turpentine, tar and such was crammed below by the tun and cask, the spars atop that, the masts slung to either beam of her gangways and weather deck. The compass-timber, though, in the rough, was piled any-old-how, atop sawn oak plankings and baulks.
And rare, and valuable beyond belief to the French Navy! Just about to anyone’s navy!
One could steam or bend straight-cut oak to some sort of shape, though it was costly. But to find the boughs, the butts of oak that were curved by nature, which could be adzed into the thick, stout oak beams that arced upward from the keel of a warship, which made first, lowermost futtocks, upper-deck tumble-homes, re-inforcing bow or stern knees, well . . . it took over fifty acres of oak-trees to make a ship of the line, and not one tree in a thousand yielded proper compass-timber for all the sweet curves of a well-built ship.
They’d fetched them into Venice, hoping to have them condemned, thence subject to prize-regulations, but they’d waited two days for a judgement. Two days of rocking, pitching and yawing, with anchors set four-each, as a Sutherly blew up the Adriatic—foreign warships were not allowed inside the Lagoon of Venice, especially behind the shelter of the Lido, where the Venetian ships and their many small island fortifications were located. Two days of heaving and snubbing, watching a wind-driven tide-race run in through the entrance channels, and wishing a biblical flood on all quavering, cowardly Venetians!
Well, if they were too sniveling a lot, too proud of their own neutrality to risk getting embroiled in this war, Lewrie thought . . . fuming again for a moment at what Charlton had mentioned in his first letter—that the two prizes had cleared from a Venetian port, after all, and should be allowed to complete their voyages, since they had found no fault in their papers! . . .
“Damn ’em,” Lewrie muttered. “Damn ’em all. Root and branch.”
Two whole days they’d lain at anchor, watching the lights, the constant coming-and-going ashore. Watching Venice light herself up in a misty swirl of faery-light each evening, and glitter like a precious, unattainable pearl . . . so near and yet so far, the other side of a sandbar and barrier island. It almost made him feel empathy with some of those ancient, hairy and flea-ridden barbarian Huns or Teutons who’d come down from their primeval Germanic forest hovels to the gates of a civilised old Rome; there to sit in awe and wonder (scratching away, of course) and realise what complete hogs they were in comparison!
Spires, soaring belltowers and cathedrals, great palaces and mansions, all shimmering in rosey-hued dawn or a liquid, lambent gold of sunset, shrouded in morning mists and fogs . . . verily, the Shining City, just out of reach, like a cup of water for Tantalus.
But, like one of those old barbarian sword-swingers, Alan ached for a shot at revenge, too; at taking Venice by storm, if they played it so aloof and grand. So he looked forward to their trip ashore with a feral, wolfish hunger. And vowed he’d not be overawed, no matter what!
° ° °
“Ooh!” though.
“My word!” Lieutenant Knolles breathed.
“Umphf!” Captain Charlton was heard to sniff in appreciation.
“Ahhh . . . !” A moment later, from even the sardonic and mostly silent Fillebrowne, as their gondolier pointed out another magnificent scuola or palazzio even finer than the last, along the Grand Canal.
“Christ, shit on a biscuit,” Lewrie muttered under his breath.
Venice was ten times grander, more impressive (dammit all, more awe-inspiring!) than London, even on a good day! Its every mansion, its every fine public building, palace or cathedral, was taller, more ornate, more colourful, or simply bigger, than anything Sir Christopher Wren had wrought, even Saint Paul’s! The Duke of Marlborough’s Blenheim Palace might be a match . . . but Lewrie thought it’d be a near thing were he to compare Blenheim against Venice’s best.
And old! Ancient beyond any Italian city he’d seen, areek with the smell of ancient glory, of conquest, power and wealth. Shit-arsed English Crusaders had ridden these canals on their way to the wars in the Holy Land! Had begged or pawned their wealth for Venetian ships to take them there. He’d thought Naples a very classically Roman city, to be adored and studied, but this . . . ! Why, some of these palaces had been old when the Crusaders had come, when the Turks had come, still inhabited by the same princely families!
It was getting on for dusk, and the Grand Canal was ambered with sundown, the walls of the houses, palaces, mansions, cathedrals, towers . . . even the plebeian warehouses and such, were glowing with the fading light, as if they soaked it up during the day to radiate back like pig-iron, which stayed red-hot for a time after pouring. Lanthorns lit up the faces of the tall buildings, round the steps that ran down into the Canal, round the magnificent entryways . . . atop the pilings that led along the Grand Canal, and winked down every byway or turning as they passed them; the waterfront streets— the fondamenti —were as lit up as the Strand along the Thames, and every side-street ashore winding round enticing, intriguing corners was prelit with firefly glows in a grey-blue dusk.
And even at dusk, the Grand Canal teemed with a thousand boats of all sorts, though most were the artfully curved, fragile-seeming gondolas. They breezed past each other with bare inches to spare, in an unending stream, crossed each others’ bows from side-canals from inshore campi, as effortlessly, as majestically, as languidly as swans on a lake or pond. All were painted not a funereal black, but a shiny, a glossily sleek ebon, each sporting a tiny lanthorn of its own, dressed with gilt, silver or polished brass tokens as big as firedogs. Many held canopied midship shelters, like open coaches, those shelters filled with men and women in the height of fashion . . .
“Ooh!” Lewrie gulped in awe once more, in spite of himself.
Beyond the height of fashion, some of them, as if Fashion had risen to a high art form.
“Aah!” Fillebrowne all but groaned, as a lady in a passing gondola deigned to reward them with a regal, and imperiously lazy, nod of her head as she wafted past. Her hair was done up bigger than a watermelon on a form, powdered, dressed, crimped and curled, and sprigged with miniature portraits, bows, ribands and what Alan took for jewels! Streaked, though . . . a bit of powdery white, some blonde, some natu
ral Italian coffee-brown? That’d take her hours, he thought. Her gown had been dripping with flounces, furbelows, laces, ribands, tiny seed-pearls sewn into intricate patterns. And, like a faery queen, there she’d gone, as if she’d never been, an unutterably lovely but forever unattainable paragon of feminine beauty! But wait, here comes another just as fine, attended by some simpering, ribboned fop!
These were masquers . . . from the six-month Carnival season, he suspected; draped in light cloaks, bibbed fronts of black, though all embroidered with pearls, sequins and gold-lace thread. The man wore a dark veil over his tricorne hat, which slumped over his shoulders and cloak, a black-and-white mask with a prominent bird’s beak. So did his consort! Her veil over her high, cabbage-shaped hat and gigantic hair fell below her mask, pinned up over one ear as if she were a Moor or Turk! Even more gondolas presented idle revelers, out taking a cool boat in the refreshing night air, dressed much the same—though Alan didn’t think he ever saw two masks exactly the same. And those that didn’t wear masks might as well have; there was a stiff, frozen air to their features, as if bored beyond life, as they chatted in sweet whispers so wearily.
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