“Uhm . . .” Hyde gulped, trying to swallow a hunk of bread he had almost chewed. “That she’s taken three or four prizes, sir. And was forced to sail off, unable to take, or man, any more?”
“Aye, that’s possible,” Lewrie granted. “But now she’s sailed off . . . where’s our smugglers, where’s our Frogs? Shouldn’t they be out by now? ‘When the cat’s away, the mice will play,’ right? Sorry, puss,” he said to his cat, who was lurking near his chair for dropped morsels.
“Sir,” Spendlove contributed, cautiously sipping wine before he spoke, to do so with an unobstructed palate. “Perhaps they’re holed up in those nearby Venetian ports, waiting for their timber. And they’re not aware Lionheart has left yet, sir?”
“Aye, again, sir,” Lewrie agreed amiably. “Though I still can’t understand them totally abandoning the trade. There’s still an urgent need for timber, for the French fleet at Toulon. No, I wasn’t speaking to you, greedy-guts. Oh, here, then.” He sighed, awarding Toulon some gravy-laden bits of mutton. To keep him quiet and off the table.
“Perhaps mistakenly, sir,” Lieutenant Knolles stuck in, his forehead furrowed in thought. “Do the Frogs have this new arrangement, ordered by their Ministry of Marine, d’ye see . . . to use the Venetian harbours. Lionheart arrived just as they were going to earth, and found nothing to seize. After two weeks or so of empty horizons, Captain Charlton might have abandoned the area and gone back north, expecting to discover better pickings in mid-sea. And to speak to Commander Fillebrowne about what Myrmidon might have turned up in her area. Might have been just bad timing on her part, sir.”
“Well, sir . . .” Hyde wondered aloud, getting into the spirit of things; with an empty maw, this time. “Captain Charlton might wish to meet up with us and Captain Rodgers in Pylades. See how our, uhm . . . our piratical endeavour was working out, too.”
“Meet the other players, so to speak, sir. Before the cards are dealt?” Spendlove added, forever trying to trump Hyde.
“All very possible, sirs.” Lewrie smiled briefly. “Damme, you know, I rather like this, gentlemen. Discussing shop talk over food. See how clear we think, like a well-stoked hearth? Brighter than ever? And, in private, where one may make a silly comment, with no recriminations. ’Less a cabin servant or steward tells tales out of school, that is . . . Aspinall?” Alan teased.
“Oh, mum’s th’ word, sir.” Aspinall grinned, not a whit abashed. “Top-up, Captain? Gentlemen?”
“So, our prey is lurking in Venetian ports,” Lewrie summarised, once their glasses had been recharged, “waiting for neutrals to come down and load ’em full.”
“Odd, though, sir,” Lieutenant Knolles objected softly, holding up his glass to the lanthorn light to admire the ruby glow, or inspect it for lees. “All the Balkans are thick with timber. I’d imagine that, were the French to throw enough gold about, they could get all they wished closer than Venetian-shipped Istrian or Croatian oak. Get the locals to go wood-cutting round Volona, Durazzo and such, and use Montenegran or Albanian trees.”
“Uhm, sir . . .” Spendlove threw out, most warily in contradiction. “Would that not be green wood? Unseasoned?”
“Well, aye, but . . . ah!” Knolles scowled, his logic confounded. “Do the Frogs have urgent need of seasoned oak and compass timber, they still have to depend on the Venetians or someone else. They can’t wait years for it to season, they need to construct ships now. Else, we’d always outnumber them or outbuild them so badly they might as well not bother with a navy, and put their money into their armies. As the Austrians do. Poor devils.”
“Ah, indeed, Mister Knolles,” Lewrie enthused, catching the import, at last. Might be a dim slow-coach, he thought; but I get there in the end! “Seasoned wood, ready to use as soon as it’s unloaded.”
“And, sir!” Hyde all but cried. “Montenegro and Albania can’t have local navies or shipping, as long as the Turks wish to keep them in harness. So where’s the timber industry that knows how to select compass timber, or season oak? Where’s large shipbuilding, at all?”
“Well, there’s Ragusa, Dulcigno, where the corsairs surely make their own . . .” Spendlove pointed out. “The Hungarians and Croats?”
“Small change, though,” Knolles dismissed quickly. “Couldn’t support much beyond their own few needs, not this quickly.”
Lewrie listened to their energetic back-and-forth, idly making furrows through his ragout, skirting the lee shores of muttony islets with the tines, deep in thought. He put down his fork at last and had another sip of wine.
“I don’t believe we will be returning to Trieste,” he announced. “Not right off, I’m afraid. For whatever reason Captain Charlton had to leave the straits unguarded, he’s done so, and for us to rush back in search of him . . . well, that’d be remiss. Do the Frogs and the rest of the smugglers know the coast is clear, they’ll load up with timber and toddle off back to France with everything they can carry in the interim. No, I think we have to stay. Else . . .”
He looked up to see his three bachelor juniors’ true disappointment that there’d be no crawling through the fleshpots of Venice, nor even those of staid Trieste, anytime soon.
“Well, there is the information ’bout which ports they’re going to use, sir . . . and Venetian complicity,” Knolles said. Gloomily.
“Aye, there is, Mister Knolles.” Lewrie nodded. “But after we inform Captain Charlton of this new arrangement, just what in Hades may he do about it? We haven’t a full ambassador at Venice, just a consul for trade matters, so how high may our consul—a merchant himself!—take a complaint? And it ain’t a formal complaint from the Crown or the Foreign Office, so Venice can listen, make soothing noises at him, then forget it, and it’s business as usual. It’s not as if we’ll begin to stop and inspect Venetian ships, either. Ships bound for Venetian ports, carrying perfectly innocent cargoes?”
“Well, there is that, sir, but . . .” Knolles frowned.
“Timber borne for sale on speculation, with nothing in writing to tie them to French buyers, Batavian buyers . . . anyone,” Lewrie said with a sneer. “Nothing our . . . auxiliaries, the Serbs, could do about it, either, ’less we want to turn ’em loose on a neutral country. It might work for a few times, but sooner or later word’d get out, and England would be dumped in the quag right up to her eyebrows. God help us, it might even stir those comatose Venetians into arming and fitting their fleet to chase us out of the Adriatic! ’Fore they do for Petracic and his cutthroats, mind.”
“Aye, sir,” Knolles replied. “Cleft stick, hmm?”
“Perhaps.” Lewrie sighed, taking another sip of wine. “Perhaps not. You gentlemen recall last year, off the Genoese Riviera, and much the same sort of problem with Tuscan and Genoese traders? And neutrals hand-in-glove with the Frogs? How did our former squadron commander, Captain Nelson, handle it? Recall what he said about acting upon his own initiative, did he determine his actions were contrary to orders or the lack of ’em . . . but best for Navy, King and Country, in the long run.”
He saw a whole new set of expressions on their phyzes. Curiosity he’d hoped for; but a sudden wariness, a trepidation that his comments presaged some insubordinate, high-handed, lunatick freebooting? Some deed as mad as a March Hare?
Pretty much what they’ve come t’expect, ’board this barge, Alan told himself with a well-hidden smirk.
“Our first duty would, at first, seem to be to dash off and tell Captain Charlton,” he continued. “That’s the safe and dutiful. Toss this lit shell into his lap, wave a cheery ‘ta-ta,’ and leave it up to him t’snuff it out ’fore it blows up in his face.”
“Beg your pardon, sir, but . . . ain’t that why they pay him a lot more than us?” Lieutenant Knolles japed. Though Lewrie saw that his hands had a damn firm death-grip on the edge of the table and his wineglass.
“Normal custom and usages of the Fleet, Mister Knolles.” Lewrie chuckled. “Plod on, deaf and dumb, well to windward of risk.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Knolles said in dumb agreement, but his expression said something else, though his face was taut and unreadable. Lewrie knew that sound, and that look. Had he not used it himself to a senior officer—a dozen or more?—the last sixteen years? Bleat “Aye aye” and put on your gambler’s mask, cross your legs and hope when the other dirty shoe dropped, it didn’t turn out half as horrible as you expected?
“For now, we’re the only ship on-station, sirs,” Lewrie said to them all, explaining carefully. “Now, if this information of ours does Captain Charlton no immediate good, then we aren’t exactly bound to tear off and give it to him . . . immediately. How long may it take to find him . . . a week or more? Leaving the straits wide open for two weeks or more? No, I had something else in mind we could do for the next few days. Mr. Knolles? At dawn, I’d admire did we alter course. Let’s sail over for a peek into Cattaro. We haven’t seen it yet, and it’s closest for any French ship to get its load of timber. Shortest voyage for a Venetian supplier, too. Right up to the harbour mole. You’ll inform the Sailing Master, so he’ll know to have his charts selected.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Knolles dutifully piped. Rather calmly, Alan decided; even allowing for a bit of “crisp” to his voice, that shudder he hid so well, that look of “Oh shit, where’s this all going?” as he contemplated a quick end to a rather promising career should he be implicated.
“Then we’ll have us a stroll down to Volona, then a quick dash back to Durazzo, too.” Lewrie smiled wolfishly. “Corfu last. That’d be best, I think. Unpredictable movements.”
“I see, sir,” Knolles parroted; even if he didn’t.
Odd, Knolles thought; all this time I knew he had the scar on his right cheek. Old sword slash or something. So faded— or me so used to it—I barely mark it, these days.
But in the flickering light from the candles on the sideboard, and from the gently swaying pewter lanthorn on the overhead deck-beams, every now and then a trick of their shadows made it stand out. Darker, a bit more ruddy and fresh—more prominent.
More ominous. For someone, Knolles thought.
CHAPTER 9
“Dawn by my reckonin’ll be half an hour yet, Cap’um,” Mister Buchanon promised. “False dawn within five minute.”
“And our position, Mister Buchanon?” Lewrie asked in a hushed tone, stalking his quarterdeck, swaddled in his boat-cloak against the brisk chill that swept down from the East-Nor’east. They’d had Bora winds during the night, though clocking Easterly as the Middle Watch had wound down. It might veer enough to form a Levanter by midday. “Can you assure me of our position as positively, sir?”
“’At light astern, sir, ’at’s th’ beacon on th’ breakwater, by th’ entrance in th’ harbour mole. Light t’th’ Nor’west by North, ’at’s Vido Island. Smallest, yonder . . . ’at’s Lazaretto. We’re makin’ barely a knot o’ drift inshore, fetched-to as we are. E’en so, sir, call it a touch less’n four miles off. A bit o’ sunrise’ll tell me true,” the Sailing Master assured him. In the light of the candles in the binnacle cabinet he tapped a finger on an accurate Venetian chart, right beside an irregular penciled-in trapezoid—a “cocked hat” of reckoning from what few shore marks they’d been able to spot with the long night telescopes, which showed everything upside down, unfortunately.
Lewrie left the binnacle and wheel to pace aft to the taffrail, between the two brightly lit lanthorns at Jester’s very stern. Golden ripples balleted off the ebony sea, far aft and to either beam, as she lay cocked up to weather, waiting for the sun. The wind kissed a part of her sails to sail her forward, caressed the backed jibs to lock her in place as if anchored. A touchy balancing act, against a Bora wind that gusted and muttered, then sighed more softly. With Knolles now gone . . .
Lewrie looked down over the taffrail, to watch the water break round her rudder and transom post, below the overhang of the gun-room and his great-cabins. His cabin lights were lit, too, and there was Toulon, for a moment, with his nose snuffling the panes of a window, below him. No drift, he thought; well, not much. Gurgling, plashing, sucking sounds arose from the idled hull. A kelpy aroma of weed and slime, a clammy, mussely tinge of a barnacled bottom met his nostrils, along with the faint seashore smell of the not-so-distant land. And the piney, loamy tang of forest on the wind from across the narrows, off the bows, stroking his cheeks as he turned his head from side to side and faced forrud. To weigh them and guess whether Jester needed a pull or a bracing-in to maintain her immobile station ’til dawn.
Fetched-to or not, she moved under his feet with a steady rise and fall, her timbers complaining, and blocks aloft clacking and groaning, her masts working gently as she swayed, pitched easy or fell a bit bows-down as the wind-driven waves in the channel flowed round her like she still had a way on.
He went back forrud to peer into the well-lit compass bowl, to determine had her head fallen off; to blink glim-spotted eyes aloft and strain to make out details of masts, sails and ropes against the skies.
There! No longer ghost-grey, but darkening, beginning to silhouette against a barely lighter greyness, stood the sails. He could see the cat-heads by the forecastle, make out the brutish humps of the carronades and almost espy the rising, quivering thrust of the jib-boom and bowsprit. A few men could be espied, spectrelike, up forrud.
“False dawn, sir,” Buchanon exulted, “six minute. Not ’at far off my guess o’ five.”
“Close, indeed, Mister Buchanon,” Lewrie congratulated. “Hmmm. Under the circumstances, let’s say . . . accurate, rather. Don’t want us to be close. That close.”
“Aye, sir.” Buchanon softly laughed, bending down over the compass bowl like a feeding ox, to peer across it at the shore-lights. He snapped his fingers and he and Mr. Wheelock his Master’s Mate went to the rail with a night glass, a day telescope and his personal boat-compass in a golden oak box, to take more bearings as the lee shore emerged from the stygian blackness to become a storm or charcoal grey murkiness.
“Best I can reckon’z four miles, sir,” he reported at last.
“Very well, Mister Buchanon, thankee,” Lewrie said with a nod. “Give it ten minutes, say, and we’ll be about it. Mister Crewe? Ten minutes.”
“Aye, sir!” the Master Gunner said from the forrud edge of the quarterdeck. “Ready whenever ya order, Cap’um.”
Lewrie looked over the larboard side, to the second glowing set of lights; binnacle cabinet, forecastle belfry and taffrail lanthorns, plus candle or whale-oil lights ranged along the gangways. More lamps staggered lower down the side, from opened gun-ports. The great-guns were run in to load position and out of the way. Loaded, though, and fully depressed; and ready to fire—when there was a touch more sunrise, closer to true dawn. But before a fully risen sun took anything away. A spectre, seen only by those lights, the rest unfathomable not ten minutes earlier, now he could make out details of sails and masts, the rough textures and dingy paintwork of her hull, and the blooming of discernible colours, where before all had been granite-block black.
Lewrie took out his watch and eyed the pointer of the optional, and more expensive, second hand clack the tense minutes away. The watch face was now almost tattletale grey— not quite true white—as the false dawn spread a gloomy cloud cover of slightly brighter dimness. It was time.
“Mister Crewe?” he bellowed, breaking the yawning, sleepy hush of the four-’til-eight watch. “Let there be light!”
“Aye, sir!” Crewe roared back, waving a smouldering slow-match fuse in a linstock for a signal. And along Jester’s bulwarks, a dozen answering fireflies were fanned into heat. “Swivels . . . fire!”
And a dozen slow-matches were lowered to the touch-holes of the skyward-pointing swivel guns. There were sudden gouts of smoke and sparks. Then, with breathless whooshes, a dozen rockets went soaring aloft, scattering comet-trails of red and amber fire-dust. Darde à feu —fire-arrows—minus their iron spring-arms, designed to snag in sail canvas and burn a ship to the waterline; un-Christian w
eapons, some said. Pirate weapons, said others; a sneaking, vile, ungentlemanly invention. Now they were signal fusees that hissed skyward, no more dangerous than holiday fireworks; pretty amber comets bearing copper-blue starbursts.
A creaking and an oaken groaning, a faint muttering from larboard and the jangle and snapping of blocks and halliards, as the second ship let go her backed jibs, braced round her backed mizzen tops’l. Canvas thundered, flagged and crackled for a moment, all a’luff, then drawing, curving neatly to the press of wind as she fell away to starboard and began a slow wear-about, beginning to cream salt water down her sides.
“And again, Mister Crewe!” Lewrie snapped. And once more, the swivel guns coughed out their pyrotechnic charges, flinging a brilliant galaxy of stars to five times the height of the main mast truck. Well out abeam, so they’d not drift back and ignite anything.
“Light, sir!” Buchanon shouted, pointing astern. Ruined or no, the Citadel had watchers on her walls, and had hoisted a lanthorn atop the seaward parapets. A third volley of fusees two minutes later, and tiny lights began to wink into life ashore as people were roused.
“Cease fire, Mister Crewe, and secure the swivels,” Alan said, feeling satisfied. “Tend to your larboard battery. Mister Buchanon, get the ship under way, larboard tack, then wear her.”
“Aye aye, sir. Bosun, hands to the jib sheets . . . !”
Then it was Jester’s turn to fall away, to cease fighting cross-hauled, and surrender to the insistent winds, to heel and creak as she went about, presenting her left side, then her stern to the wind, with the Citadel and the town, the surrounding hills sweeping across the bow and settling on the larboard bows, just over the cat-head. The courses were brailed up, t’gallants at second reef, tops’ls at first reef, and the royals gasketed to horizontal pencils atop her spiralling masts to make a slow passage.
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