Jester's Fortune

by Dewey Lambdin

He was standing outside the toymaker’s, watching his purchases being packed into the cart, when he saw a familiar figure striding up the street. He turned his shoulder to the man, hoping, but . . .

  “Alan, old son!” Clotworthy Chute panted happily. “I say!”

  Talk about pests showin’ up when you least wish ’em! he thought when you’re flush, and they most likely ain’t. And he wondered how much he might be “touched” for.

  But there was no way to ignore Clotworthy. A quick glance to assure himself that it was Chute had made eye contact, and he could not do the “cut direct,” nor the “cut sublime.” He was forced to turn and wave.

  “Heard yer ship was in!” Clotworthy boomed. “Well met!”

  “Clotworthy, still in Venice?” Lewrie was forced to say, wearing a suitably “fond” smile for an “old school chum.” “And Peter. Where’s he?”

  “Off gettin’ stuffed into his redheaded mutton,” Chute brayed. “So I’m not welcome this afternoon, thankee very much. A true redhead, he assures me,” Clotworthy added, making a subtle pass at the fork of his breeches. “Sylph-like young chit, what Peter calls . . . langourous, haw. S’pose that means she coils ’bout his member like a snake, what? Been arse-over-tit ’bout her since he met her, the last month entire! Hired doxy, but not too bad. Gracious damn manners, the once I dined with ’em. Does a body prefer langourous. Always liked some beef ’pon the bones, meself. Easier on the poor mort, hey?” he said, slapping his expansive belly. “What some term Rubenesque. Cheaper quim, too, the bouncy’uns . . . not as in demand these days. And you, sir? Doin’ a bit o’ shop-pin’, hey? Well, Venice is a splendid spot for’t. Do they let ya off from all that ’away boarderin’ ’and ’vast, me hearty-in’?”

  “One day, at least,” Lewrie fibbed, hoping Clotworthy might take a hint that he was too busy to deal with him today. Though, recalling their old days together, he hadn’t been much on hint-taking before!

  “Ah, let’s see how you’ve done so far, Alan, me old. See have ya been gulled,” Chute offered, going to the cart and pawing into the packages. “Not bad, not bad at all. Bit darin’, this mottled fabric, though I’m told the fashion’s for damn-near see-through and show off yer privates, lately. Does a woman still have a figure for it, I can feature this’d run up nice. Exotic. Allurin’. Entrancin’.”

  Christ, last thing I need, Alan groaned to himself, suddenly regretting his purchase of that cloth; “exotic” in England gets people pilloried! He was sure Caroline still had the figure for this, and wouldn’t be quite that immodest with it. But she’d still get pelted with dung and mud by the Mob, should she trot it out on the town!

  “Ah, some for the kiddies,” Chute sighed dramatically. “Envy you, I do, old son. Family and all . . .” All but wiping a tear.

  “God knows when I’ll be able to ship all this home as presents,” Lewrie told him. “I expect I’ll be hard at it ’til supper. Shopping . . . then get it back aboard.” He hoped once more Chute would just bugger off.

  “Know yer way about?” Chute hinted.

  “Well, no . . . but . . .”

  “I do.”

  “Bless me, Chute, but . . . you would!” Lewrie chuckled wryly.

  “Aye, give me but one week in a strange place, and I’ll know it good as a native,” Clotworthy boasted. “I dare say I know Venice just as good as a local pimp or pickpocket by now. Better!”

  “I was surprised to hear the Shockleys are still here,” Lewrie said, for want of something better. “But you and Peter, too? Been up to much mischief?”

  “Oh, keepin’ me hand in . . . so t’speak,” Chute replied, leering and tapping his pate. “Bit o’ this, a bit o’ that. With Peter so quimstruck, I’ve bags o’ free time t’work a fiddle or two, for pocket money. Still have the bulk o’ me London money, never fear . . .”

  Which was the last fear on Lewrie’s mind!

  “Use it for workin’ capital . . . seed money. Here, now, Alan. Done any glassware yet? Oh, Venice has champion glass-works. You’ll never again see the like anywhere else in the world. Now, I know a shop . . .”

  Lewrie’s hand flew to cover his coin-heavy purse, by its own volition!

  “A particular friend of yours, this shopkeeper, Clotworthy?”

  “Lord, no, nothin’ like that!” Chute pooh-poohed. “Do ya crave fine art and such, then I’m yer man, me and my particular friends. Do ye get my meanin’! Shop’s not far off. Care t’see it? Man’s gettin’ older by the minute, and no one t’carry on once he’s gone. Sellin’ up stock at knock-down prices, but he ain’t on the local High Street, so’s it’s goin’ cheap as fiddler’s pay at a country dance.”

  “Well . . .” Lewrie hedged.

  “Right, then. We’re off!” Chute boomed, turning to spout fluent Italian at the carter and his lads in that slurring, syrupy Venetian dialect. “Two more items Venice is famed for, Alan, old son. Culture and quim. What else brings the young heirs to it on their Grand Tours? Well, straightaway I discovered that pimpin’s out, even with fellow Englishmen. Dagoes have that market cornered, and a nudge and a wink in the right direction don’t fetch me tuppence. And I don’t feature havin’ me throat cut or endin’ up dead in a canal ’cause I poached on some garlic-breathed bravo’s patch. And, it don’t take much wit for a man t’flog quim, exactly, does it? Lord, Alan! Dagoes’re all swagger, manly attitude and bad breath, but I doubt a dozen of ’em could muster the brains God only thought o’ promisin’ a hedgehog. Well, with quim right-out, that leaves culture and art. The pimps’re too slack-witted t’get into it, e’en though the profit’s a thousand times better.”

  “And you’re . . . profiting, Clotworthy?” Lewrie just had to ask.

  “Profitin’, aye.” Chute most beatifically beamed at him. “You’ve heard the tales, ’bout how some mincin’ foreign mountebank art dealers skinned some jingle-brains from home? So what’s finer than meetin’ up with a fellow Englishman . . . a refined and educated fellow, known among the best circles in London,” Clotworthy boasted, shooting his cuffs as he preened and laid a hand on his heart, “able t’drop a dozen names in a single breath, and back it up with inside information, mind! Man who knows his Cellini chalice from a wood piggin? Knows his way round, one who can steer ’em from bad shops to good, from the forgers to the honest? And know the old and genuine from the run-up last week. Or discover what they want most and have the connexions to get it run-up and aged, after wearin’ ’em to a frazzle lookin’ at hum-drum.”

  “Decent profit in that?” Lewrie queried, intrigued in spite of his cautions. Clotworthy still owed him that money for “tatties and gravy”!

  “Finder’s fee from the buyers . . . ’long with some excellent food and guzzle,” Chute expounded as they strolled, “yer modest five percent or so, whate’er their gratitude can be stoked to. Five percent from the shop-owners, for haulin’ ’em in. But ten percent do we foist off fake, from my, uhm . . . less honourable compatriots in the . . . reproduction lay.”

  “I wonder, then, what your aid might be cost me . . . old son.” Lewrie scowled. “After all . . .”

  “Lewrie, old fellow!” Clotworthy balked, leaning away with his hand on his heart once more, pretending to still be capable of feeling insulted. “What a scurrilous notion. To think that I, an old Harrow man . . . a schoolmate! . . . would play you false? Were I ‘skint,’ well! . . . That’s a possibility, hmm? But! As I said, I’m flush with ‘chink,’ so never you fear. My expertise is yours, sir . . . gratis,” he added with a deep flourish of his hat, and an only semi-graceful formal bow.

  “Well, in that case . . .”

  “Might you feel so abashed, after making such a base allegation,” Clotworthy resumed, rising and clapping his feathered hat on, “and might wish to tender some amends, I will allow you to treat me to supper. And a brace o’ wine per diner, mind. Old fellow, I forgive you. Totally!”

  Lewrie could but stand and laugh out loud at his audacity.

  “Like Dante’s Inferno,” Clotw
orthy promised, “I’ll be your ghost of Virgil. I’ll tour you through the Nine Circles of Hades, and fetch ye out without a single smudge o’ soot. Gad, see what a proper public-school education benefits a man? E’en did they flog it into us?”

  The glass-shop held spectacular bargains, for the shopkeeper really was as old as Methuselah, with one foot in the grave, Lewrie had to think, for he wheezed and coughed the entire time. Lewrie bought some pale pink-and-white dinner-ware, a service for eight, for their morning room when they dined en famille, replete with bowls, cups, salad plates and servers. Then a complete stemware set of glasses for everyday use in that same semi-translucent pale pink, with more ornate clear-glass for stems between bases and glasses. All was most carefully wrapped, with heavy paper, wadded with old newspapers, then crated in straw and dry seaweed before the crates were nailed shut. And all for only £20!

  Next, they hit a furniture store, though Lewrie wasn’t exactly taken with the cast-off Baroque pieces, nor with the painted-on floral busyness of most of the lacquered pieces in the Rococo style. He did rather admire a pair of small commodes, though, which he thought might look cunning on either side of their main staircase, once inside their entry hall. They were Chinee-red, four-footed, gently bell-shaped and bulging toward the top, rich with gold leaf and decorated with painted scenes of Venetian doings.

  “Lacca povera,” Clotworthy whispered softly, shaking his head in sadness. “Scenes’re printed on paper first, then lacquered on. Don’t even think of it, Alan, old son. You’ll note the bastard’s askin’ over three hundred pounds for the pair, same as he is for yon genuine pair . . . which are hand-painted. Thought the bugger wasn’t entirely straight!”

  “Couldn’t afford either,” Lewrie confessed.

  “Well, do you not mind they might be a tad, uhm . . . warm to the touch? In a manner o’ speakin’,” Clotworthy wheezed. “I think I know where the genuine article can be had. In a day’r two, mind. A week at the outside.” Chute tuttutted.

  “Stolen, you mean.”

  “Shhh! Not a word t’bandy about, now, is it?” Chute hissed, with a finger on his lips. “Not right out loud, thankee.”

  “Don’t know as I care for . . . warm, Clotworthy,” Alan whispered. “Even were they a guinea the pair. Caroline likes to get things which remind her where I’ve served. She’d like these, but . . . perhaps just a copy of a good painting . . . something like that? Wait a minute, that’s torn it! I’ve just blabbed what you want to know. Like your grateful buyers, hey?”

  “You have, indeed, and I’ll keep my eye out for something.” His corpulent old school chum winked. “Something special. And reasonable.”

  “Not pinched?”

  “You press me sore, Alan, old son.” Clotworthy pretended to wince.

  “Not pinched. Not a flagrant fraud, either. No Canaletto, when it’s really some toothless old rogue’s drunken copy-work,” Alan said.

  “Ah, perhaps we should call upon an art gallery which just this very minute springs to mind! They’ve—”

  “Think I’m shopped out, Chute,” Lewrie demurred. “Feeling a tad peckish, too. Let’s have all this over to the Molo, so I can stow them aboard ’fore sundown. And then I’ll buy you that supper.”

  “Well, if you’re wearied . . .”

  “Else I’ll have to hire a dray-waggon, ’stead of my cart.” Lewrie shrugged. “And have nowhere on the orlop to store it all.”

  “Aye, let’s be off,” Clotworthy agreed affably. “I must own to the need for sustenance. Some wine and a plate o’ biscotti on the way?”

  They left the shop and plodded back toward the water-front, with their cheerful carter and his boys serenading astern. Lewrie bought some sweetmeats for all— baicoli —and sugar-dusted, ring-shaped bussolai biscuits to munch on the way. To restore themselves.

  Well, restoring Clotworthy’s hard-taxed strength, anyway, for he downed more than half of them, in right good cheer.

  “My bloody oath!” Clotworthy yelped, stopping stock-still, with one of the cart’s handles all but up his arse. He turned away, busying himself at the back of the cart as if he were inspecting the lashings of rope. And dragging Lewrie back there with him.

  “God Almighty, Chute, what’s the matter?” Lewrie fussed. “Seen a creditor? Someone you ‘sharped’?”

  “Worse than that, old son,” Clotworthy assured him with rare gravity. “Look ye yonder. ’Pon that balcony, left on the corner by the turnin’.”

  Lewrie looked, down to the intersection of their already narrow street, to where an even narrower lane crossed it; upwards to the left, to a first-floor balcony above a wine-shop.

  “Rented rooms, by the day, the week . . . the afternoon,” he heard Chute whisper in his ear.

  “Christ shit on a biscuit!” Lewrie gawped.

  He’d gotten an impression of a uniformed man with a lady, still deep in the warm summer shadows of late afternoon, which were almost an ebon-black deepness compared to the brightness of the walls. Until the man stepped forward, into that graze of sunlight which slanted in . . . !

  “Fillebrowne,” he growled softly.

  “Worse yet,” Clotworthy cautioned.

  The lady was much shorter, pouter-pigeon plump, with blond hair and bee-stung lips. She was laughing softly, leaning against him, with a bauto ready to be donned, held over and behind her head and hat, like a kerchief. “Lucy? Lucy bloody Beauman?” Lewrie gawped aloud.

  He took off his uniform hat and slunk down to peer over the load on the cart, through the juddering knees of the carter’s boys. He got a clear shot at the couple, sharing a last passionate good-bye kiss in the elevated privacy of their love-nest. Then they parted, walked into the stygian black shadows deeper in the balcony and disappeared.

  “Christ, who’d ever thought it?” Clotworthy tittered excitedly. “Lady Lucy and yer sailor-boy. Who’d ever o’ suspected, Alan? Rantipolin’ the day away. Or do ye have a nautical term for it?”

  “Doin’ the blanket hornpipe,” Lewrie muttered. “With your live-lumber’s lawful blanket. God, I knew he had nerve, but this . . . ! I doubt our Captain Charlton would have let him stay anchored off Venice this long, had he known the reason for his remaining. God, I do believe I despise the bastard!”

  “Still not sweet on the bitch, are ye? Or, do ye feel beaten to her boudoir?” Clotworthy posed with his usual chary outlook on life.

  “Long ago, and far away . . . long past,” Lewrie assured him, with a fierce scowl. “Damme, it just ain’t done! Not ’til she’s a cast-off ‘grass widow,’ it ain’t.”

  “Or widow for true,” Clotworthy sobered, daunted by Lewrie’s glare.

  “Thing that rows me most is, I like Sir Malcolm,” Lewrie told him. “He strikes me as a solid sort. Quite intelligent, agreeable, so . . .”

  “Oh, so do I, Alan, old son, I assure ye,” Chute agreed. “Fair breaks me heart t’see a man that kind—a man that bloody rich!—be cuckolded s’soon. Faithless mort! Knew it straight off, Peter and me. Deserves better, he does. That’s my thinkin’. I . . . Duck!”

  Out came Fillebrowne, his hat far down over his brows, with left hand gripped on his sword scabbard to rein it in, with right hand out to plough pedestrians like Moses parting water with his staff, setting a brusque pace towards the water-front; away from them, thankfully. It wasn’t a minute later that Lucy appeared in the doorway, summoning her sedan-chair, to be jog-trotted off to the right down the narrower lane, back to her suite of rooms hard by the Grand Canal.

  Smarmy bastard! Lewrie fumed, once they could rise to full height once more; an’ bloody whore! He thought himself quite lucky for their teenage “cream-pot” love to have gone smash so long ago. What sort of Hades would he have been put through by now, had he wed her in the Caribbean? Even with all her daddy’s gold as consolation? He felt a bit sad, too, that the entrancing, fascinating, so-full-of-promise Lucy from his memories had turned out to be so base.

  Mean t’say, he thought; you were already a widow, w
ith oceans of money from daddy’s an’ husband’s estates. Could’ve removed t’London and rogered yourself stone-blind, like so many widows do. And thank God for ’em! he added, recalling flashes of youthful experience. Why marry at all, again . . . ’specially a decent man, when there’s so many rakehells available? Was Sir Malcolm just too rich t’miss? And did ya plan t’be an “open beard” right off? Bah! He felt like spitting.

  Fillebrowne, though . . . he’d flaunted a relationship with Phoebe Aretino, damn near to Lewrie’s face. Whether it was true or not, or if he had tried to nettle him, to prove which of them was the chief crow-cock, well . . . it didn’t signify. Now here he was, topping another of Alan’s old flings. Lewrie had a sense of why; ’twould be the most impish deed for a smug rogue to do, a tripled joy. Bull a married woman, and always cock one eye and ear for discovery—a most delicious thrill, he knew. It was such an intriguing game, to keep the story straight, the blankly innocent demeanour in public . . . before the husband, under his very nose! And the older and richer the husband, the greater the thrill. Second, there was revenge, the thrill of the chase, the victory over another to savour. Seeing what a round-heel Lucy might have been over Lewrie, the coy flirtation she’d bestowed that dinner before. And beating him into the breech—and “Who’s the better man, now, hey?” after he’d turned her offer down. Before he could reconsider and move on her himself!

  Fillebrowne could make a name for himself in the Fleet. Lewrie squirmed, turning red. The man who stole quim from “Ram-Cat” Lewrie. Men would ever vie, over just about anything, but nothing caught their competitive heat quite as quick as the chance to stick it to a rival’s wife, daughter or mistress!

  Finally, there was Lucy herself, the prize. Still a fetchin’ bit of fluff, short, springy and bouncy, soft and yielding (he suspected) as a feather mattress, now obviously an avid player at “the game,” and time restraints would turn two blissful stolen hours with her into that sort of “all-night-in” that’d kill lesser men. For both of them, he told himself; out to top their last record, and make the most of their time.