A Jester’s Fortune l-8

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Aye, we've encountered some," Rodgers allowed.

  "Ja!" Kolodzcy exclaimed, somewhat like the "Yipp!" an excited lap-dog might make. He paused to take a dainty sip of champagne, then. curl his left wrist inward for a puff of cigar smoke. He threw back his head to shoot smoke at the overhead, and then shot his cuff to return the cigarillo to "Run-in, Load" position. It was most elegantly, though foppishly done.

  "Though mine family ist frohm de easz… Transylwania… 'Ungar-ian, do you see?" Kolodzcy languidly explained, "I am many yahrs upon de Balgan goast, and am knowink it guite intimadely, sirs. Unt I dell you now, chentlemen, dat dhere are only vahry few pirade bants awailable to you."

  "Beg pardon?" Rodgers said, having to ask for a repeat before he grasped all that Kolodzcy had lisped out. "And why is that, sir?"

  "Herr Kapitan Rodgers," Kolodzcy simpered, as one might to the dimmest student in the class, "for de vahry gute reason dat dere are few who heff need of you, in de firsd blace. Gonzidder…"

  Don't know I care to 'gonzidder'! Lewrie thought, trying to not cackle out loud. This Leutnant Kolodzcy was better than an entre-acte at a Drury Lane theatre! Surely he was a poseur, a clown!

  "De Uscocchi, de Croatians, sir," Kolodzcy droned on, puffing on his cigarillo with all the panache of a lady hard at it with her fan. "Allied vit de 'Ungarians, already. You abbroach Croatian pirades in 'Ungarian ser-wice, you inwolve 'Ungary. A formal, overt alliance, vich I do nod think your Kapitan Charlton vishes? Anyway, Uscocchi are all promised to Vienna… not awailable, nicht wahr? Gonzidder alzo Corsairs ohf Dul-cigno. Vahry strong, vit no need ohf your arms or assistance. To use them, inwolves gountry vich is neutral. Nod much of a gountry, bud a gountry even zo. Ach… mine glass ist empty." Leutnant Kolodzcy pouted of a sudden.

  Rodgers flicked his eyes at his cabin-servant, who sprang to pour Kolodzcy another bumper into the glass which the fellow held out side-wise, without looking. He busied himself with his tobacco, shooting another "broadside" towards the sky-lights of the coach-top.

  "Zo alzo, sirs, ist Ragusa de neutral gountry, nicht wahr?" Lt. Kolodzcy smirked, as though it was he who was senior aboard, not them. "Ewen a temporary alliance musd be formal, public? Unt you vish…?"

  "Sub rosa, completely, Lieutenant Kolodzcy," Rodgers said with a conspiratorial air. "We wish a most informal, ermmm…"

  "Unt I am given to unterstand dhat your Kapitan Charlton vishes to strike de bargain only vit a… Christian bant, sirs? No Muslims?" Kolodzcy enquired, rolling his eyes as Lewrie and Rodgers wished they could have, the first time they heard it said. Leutnant Kolodzcy turned the tiniest cock of a brow, the least lift of a corner of his mouth into a gargantuan sneer, and let loose a restrained, gentlemanly howl of laughter, "Unglaiiblich! Dat ist to be sayink.. incredible!"

  "Quite adamant about it," Lewrie assured him with a droll roll of his own eyes. "No bloodthirsty pagans or heathens."

  "A grade piddy, Herr Lewrie," Kolodzcy sighed. "De Muslims are grade fighters, though they heff liddle knowledge ohf de sea. Zose few on de goast vit boats? Nein, to use dhem vould brink notice unt vould mean grade trouble vit de Oddoman Durks."

  Christ, "Oddoman Durks"? Lewrie silently whimpered, thinking he would have to put a fist in his mouth to stifle himself!

  "A local pasha who vish to make de quick profit might, berhaps," Kolodzcy schemed, furrowing his serenely unruffled brow for the first time. "Rud, vhen Sultan in Constantinople learn ohf dis, dhen dhere ist slaughter. He sends army to punish any pasha or province vich is armed by you, thinkmk of rebelling, later? Ja, a grade piddy, sirs… you use Muslim pirades for a few veeks or months only, dhen inform Sultan, who sends army to crush dhem. Problem of alliance is solved. Problem of deniability, alzo. No blut on British hands for de vorld to see.. simply renegade locals. Never allied vit Royal Navy, you see?"

  Kolodzcy smiled at them, nigh angelically.

  "So Muslims might be best, after all, in spite of what Captain Charlton wished?" Rodgers frowned. "Perhaps one of those provinces already broken away… Albanians, Montenegrans? Greeks?"

  "Greeks, no," Leutnant Kolodzcy dismissed airily, pointing his ciga-rillo at Rodgers like a tutors ferrule. "Too terrorised by de Sultan's troops, on goast especially. Inland, Durks nod as strong, bud no use to you, dhose inland Greeks, who are still Orthodox Christian. Greeks on goast heff few boats. You arm dhem, train dhem, dhey organise into fighters who could rebel, once you are done vit dhem. Dhen de Sultan or one ohf his pashas hess to crush dhem. Make de blut bad."

  "Sorry… didn't get that last bit," Rodgers enqired, shaking his head as if to clear stuffy ears. "You said…?"

  "De blut bad" Kolodzcy repeated. "Blut bad. Blut bad!" he insisted, all but stamping a dainty foot, sure he was making sense.

  "A blood bath I think he means, sir," Lewrie offered.

  "Ja!" Kolodzcy yipped. "Egzagdly… blut bad."

  "Ah," Rodgers sighed, a lot less hopefully. "Quite."

  "Whole prowince, nod chust one willage," Kolodzcy expounded. "Unt long before you are done vit dhem. Gomplete massacre."

  "So," Lewrie posed after a painfully long silence, broken only by the sigh of more cigar smoke being jetted aloft, "just who does it leave us, then, Lieutenant Kolodzcy?"

  Kolodzcy swung his right hand out, idly shook his empty glass, looking at Lewrie in silence. Griggs stepped up to refill him.

  "You do nod vish de already strong," Kolodzcy lectured, after a refreshing sip. "Dhey are allied already, or heff no use for vhat you offer. You gannot employ existink gountries, for your Kapitan Charlton ist vishing anonymity unt deniability goncernink ties to pirades. Nor can you use Muslims or Durkish subjects. Dhey might be slaughdered before you could train dhem. No… de only people who come to mind… de only warlike Christians, who heff exberience ohf de sea, are Serbs. De Serbians. Ja, genauische!"

  Powder-Yeoman Rahl says that! Lewrie exulted; damme, I can get that bit of German! He said exactlyl

  "Serbians, chentlemen," Kolodzcy echoed, sounding enthused for once, all but smiting his forehead for being remiss in not considering them earlier. "De Balgan goast ist hodgepodge. Ja, hodgepodge? Gute. Croatian, Muslim, callink dhemselves Bosnian or Herzegovinan. Inland are Serbians, bud dhey are alzo scaddered among de odders unt along de goast. Eine Slavic people, Eastern Orthodox Christian people, gradely outnumbered. Dhey heff resisted conwersion by de Durks for centuries! Grade warriors alzo, who fight forever to win dheir independence from de Durks. Bud, nod heffink numbers or weapons. Fisherman… sailors unt zometimes pirades. Small boats only, bud dhey could sail larger, vit your help, unt vit your arms unt gaptured ships. Dhey gontrol some ohf de smaller offshore islands, alzo!"

  "And they don't fear Turkish reprisals?" Rodgers puzzled.

  "Ha, sir! De Serbians scoff at de Durks! Dhey vould radder die vit Durkish blut on dheir hands dhan liff as slaves, I dell you," the little officer boasted. "Serbians vould radder massacre a Durkish wilage, a Muslim willage, dhan eat! Dhat ist how dhey liff, raidink along de goast. Bud, boor bickinks, mosd ohf de time."

  "Sorry, again. Boor…?" Rodgers flinched in perplexity.

  "Poor pickings, he said, sir," Lewrie translated for him.

  "Ja, boor!" Kolodzcy sulkily agreed. "Bud remember, it ist de hungry wolf vich hunts de hardest. Unt de Serbian wolves are hungriest of all. Any ships vich escape you inshore, de Serbians vill eat up in de plink ohf de eye! Ships, gargoes unt grews, all gone… phffft!" Leutnant Kolodzcy said with a twinkle and a happy conjuring motion.

  "Cargoes and crews," Lewrie supplied without being asked.

  "Who ist to say vhat happen to ships vich de Serbs take, sirs?" Kolodzcy simpered. "Unt your gomplicity vit dhem you may deny. Dhey are nod zo many, zurrounded by zo many Muslims. Dhey heff grade need ohf you. Unt, vhen you are done vit dhem, veil… Ragusa, Dul-cigno, odder goastal powers vill not tolerate a strong Serbian pirade fleet for long. Competition, nicht wahr? Rebellion, nicht wahr? If vord gets out ohf your arrangement, dhen you can t'row d
hem to de wolves!"

  "Uhm, that bit about cargoes and crews disappearing," Rodgers quibbled, making a similar conjuring "poof of his own. "Surely, sir, there will be Europeans aboard the ships the Serbs take, should they ally with us. There will be officers and passengers who should properly be detained, sent here to Trieste for internment or exchange…"

  "Dhen your secret ist oud, sir," Kolodzcy objected lazily, with another dismissive conjurement. "Frenchmen, Batavians or Danes speak ohf pirades unt Royal Navy vorkink togedder, dhen…? Bedder dat dey disappear. Sold in slave-markets ashore."

  "Or their throats cut, sir?" Lewrie objected.

  "Vat is old pirade sayink, Herr Kommandeur Lewrie?" Lieutnant Kolodzcy chuckled. "Dat 'dead men dell no dales'?"

  "No, that's out," Rodgers snapped. "Right out. Prisoners must be taken, given proper treatment. Held on one of those offshore islands, perhaps. Or your officials here in Trieste could hold 'em incommunicado 'till-"

  "Anything else would be unthinkable, sir," Lewrie chimed in, his dander up. "The Royal Navy, nor England, would never countenance murder or enslavement."

  "Bud, you vill goundenance piracy, nicht wahr?" Kolodzcy mocked.

  "Well, erm…!" Lewrie fumed.

  "Dhey gome here to Trieste, dhen Austria musd take note, sirs," Kolodzcy cautioned. "Vord gets oud, eventually."

  "Let's say the Serbians pick a small, rocky island, where they'd be easy to guard, then," Rodgers countered. "Use timber and canvas off a prize for materials to build huts. Food and water come off the prizes, too, so it won't cost tuppence t'feed 'em, either. Your Serbians keep the ships they take, those that suit 'em. They can burn the rest for their metal and fittings, if they like, and have what valuables there are aboard as strikes their fancies, too. But… your Serbians should keep the prisoners alive, sir! No slave-market, no other harm to come to 'em. Save the ships' papers, manifests and such, and turn 'em over to us, with a list of all prisoners from each capture."

  "Head-money, sir," Lewrie suggested. "Like we pay our hands for taking a warship or privateersman. A set sum for each live prisoner… a shilling, or half-crown. So its in their interests to spare 'em."

  "Head-money, aye! Thankee, Lewrie." Rodgers beamed. "We've a fair sum already, with your Prize-Court. Even a gold coin per captive wouldn't be out of the question. But anything less than that, and the deal's off 'fore it's even struck. That way, the secret's kept, 'til we're ordered out of the Adriatic. Or the Frogs are beaten, and then who's goin' t'make a fuss? The losers?"

  "Long as the survivors have nothing beyond captivity to complain about, d'ye see," Lewrie added sternly. "No torture, no brutality… beyond what prisons like, anyway. That's our terms, right, sir?"

  "Take it or leave it," Rodgers agreed.

  And if we can't find Serbian pirates who'll abide by our terms, Alan thought, then it wasn't our fault Charlton's half-arsed pipe-dream didn't work, is it? And there's this whole hellish business, stopped altogether!

  Try as hard as he might to be the proper junior officer, who'd "shut up and soldier" no matter his own reservations, he felt a rebellious itch to find a way to scotch this before it gained much more momentum. He'd quibbled as much as he thought it politick to quibble. Rodgers had already warned him to keep his wits, and his cunning, to himself for a welcome change, and go along, showing all properly "eager." Yet was there a way to scuttle it?

  "Then we're agreed, sirs?" Rodgers pressed.

  "Aye, sir," Lewrie spoke up quickly.

  "Such terms, sir…" Kolodzcy puzzled. "Bud, even zo, it may be bossible. Ja, sir. Ohf gourse. Ve are agreed."

  "Good!" Rodgers hooted, clapping his hands together. "Then it only awaits this 'dead-muzzier' of a Sirocco wind to back or veer, and we're out of harbour by sundown. And on our way. About our… business."

  "A vahry exellend champagne, Kapitan Rodgers." Kolodzcy beamed slyly. "Undil dhen, perhaps ve may share annoder boddle, nicht wahr? Unt, I am thinkink… vhen do we dine?"

  Book IV

  Hospita vobis terra, Viri, non hie ullos

  reverenta ritus pectora;

  mors habitat saevaeque hoc litore pugnae.

  No friendly land is this to you, O Heroes,

  here are no hearts that reverence any rites;

  this shore is the home of death and cruel combats.

  Argonautica, Book IV, 145-147

  Gaius Valerius Flaccus

  CHAPTER 1

  The general was happy, nigh to Seventh Heaven.

  The very day of his return to conquered Milan, his centre of operations-laden with the paintings, the statuary, the silver and gilt masterpieces of the southern kingdoms, bedecked with glory, new fame to fuel his dreams and with forty million francs of solid specie to support the patrie-Josephine had come, at last.

  Nigh to a second, blissful honeymoon, her presence seemed, after such a long wait. So fortuitously timed, too, in that glorious hiatus between the first arduous conquests and the near-bloodless but brutal | marches to the south. Even the Austrians conspired to spare the young general, to give him this joyous rencontre with his beloved bride, and peace enough in which to enjoy it, for the new Austrian commander General Wurmser had yet to arrive from the Rhine with his fresh armies.

  "A terrible risk, but I tweaked their noses," General Bonaparte boasted, "I got my way, thank God."

  "A terrible risk, indeed." Josephine frowned. "You know Paul and the rest of the Directory can be so arbitrary. Really, my dear…"

  "There could not be two generals in charge here in Italy, sweet one." Bonaparte chuckled. "I could not serve under Kellermann, though he's the hero of Valmy. He's so old, so set in his hidebound old ways. It i would have been two dancing-masters doing a minuet with each other, Kellerman and Wurmser, and I relegated to the southern campaign, robbed of troops and unable to cow Tuscany, much less Rome."

  "Promise me you will never threaten to resign, again, mon cher," Josephine admonished him, as the brilliant salon and its hundreds of guests-willing or unwilling-swirled about them. "Heroes, even a successful hero, are expendable. To play at politics so far removed from the latest gossip, your supporters…"

  "The lifeblood of politics," the elegant young aide, Lieutenant Hyppolyte Charles, simpered from the offhand side.

  "The army would have been divided into threes," Bonaparte said, regarding Lt. Hyppolyte Charles with a wary eye. "Part to besiege Mantua, part under Kellermann to dance the old way against the Austrians… and I, the smallest part, sent off on errands, too far removed to aid Kellermann when the Austrians attacked him. And attacked him they very well would have. Wurmser, Beaulieu, they would have understood General Kellermann and his methods. He would have offered nothing novel. He'd not frighten them… as I do."

  "But before you defeated the south and won their tribute, mon cher, your threat was empty. And far too brash," Josephine belaboured, fanning herself as if faint with dread at her husband's daring. And sharing a look of puzzlement with her escort, Lt. Hyppolyte Charles.

  "No matter, ma cherie. It worked. I alone command in Italy," Bonaparte bragged. "Anything else would have spelled disaster, and I alone prevented it. And will present the good Paul de Barras and the Directory even more victories. Within a week, I believe. Do you fear for me, ma cherie? Ma biche?"

  "Husband…" Josephine all but writhed in mortification to be so addressed in public, to be called "his little doe," for she was not that affectionate a woman. "Of course I fear. The able man is envied, the hero must be cut down to size by paper-shufflers and intriguers-"

  "Ah, but I will not be cut down to size, ma cherie," Bonaparte confided, leaning close to her, to infuse himself with her womanly aromas. After so many months…! "At Lodi, I realised something about myself. By the bridge, with battalion after battalion surging forward beside me… I am not a run-of-the-mill being. Not a lesser being at all. I will rise above all the rest. I will make history."

  And the sureness in his voice, the strange, fey brilliance in his eyes, which blazed
with such certitude, almost frightened her. What sort of fellow had she married, then? Josephine wondered, not for the first time. So passionate, so ardent, so intent and cocksure over everything he did, so capable of trampling roughshod over anyone and anything that stood in the way of what he wanted. So impressive, so confident, he'd seemed, though he wasn't amusing in the slightest, had no easy personal charms… no savoir faire. What a folly their marriage was, a patriotic gushing over a bull-calf of a schoolboy turned soldier. No matter how successful, how slim and attractive… he smothered her. She'd written a friend, Madame Theresia Tallien, "My husband doesn't love me, he adores me! I think he'll go mad."

  She shared another covert glance over the top of her fan with the dashing young Lieutenant Charles, a glance to which Bonaparte was oblivious. He was far too happy, this day.

  Months and months he'd written her, almost daily. She wrote in reply every fourth day at best, when his passionate, adoring heart craved two a day from her. Short, curt, gossipy inconsquentials were those few letters, too. Why, she'd even addressed him formally, called him "vous"!

  Once Piedmont had been beaten, he'd sent for her, written the army to allow her to come down to Turin or Milan, and they'd acceded. He'd sent the dashing young cavalry genius Joachim Murat from his own staff of aide-de-camps to fetch her. Yet, when Murat had gotten to Paris, he'd had to report that she'd been ill, retired to the country… and very possibly pregnant. Of course, with his child, Bonaparte was certain. Weeks, months more of chilly correspondence, then she'd finally come! With Murat as her escort. And with the rakishly handsome Lt. Hyppolyte Charles of the First Hussars on her other arm.

  And no child.

  Lieutenant Charles was slim, courteous, so elegant in his red Hussar uniform with the pelisse slung by silver chains over his left shoulder, silver-trimmed and edged with fox fur. He wore red leather tasseled boots and spurs. Ah, well, he made her laugh, Bonaparte thought resignedly.