In good, undebased silver, now, most definitely not billioni! “Ah, magnifico! ” the agent had declared, kissing his fingertips and thence, the very air. But, the piastre, the tallero, the scudo, the royal, crown, ecu and peso— the last two the tried-and-true French pre-Revolutionary Ecu, or the ancient Spanish Piece of Eight—they were understandable. Somewhat. And the mention of the sum “Crown” at least penetrated Lewrie’s fog. Though they all weighed different amounts of silver, at least he knew what a bloody Crown was worth!
“Let me see if I have this straight, so far,” Alan had stated, after what had seemed a full hour of haggling. “The greedy bastard is aware we aren’t buyin’ the damn’ place lock, stock, and barrel, isn’t he?”
“ Oui, Alain,” Phoebe had replied, a tad huffy and exasperated. “I s’ink, ” she had been forced to admit, kitten-shyly.
“Right, then. We’re makin’ progress, damme if we ain’t!” he’d cried, with a huge sigh of relief. “So, just how many good, English shillings make one of his bloody ducats? The ones he keeps rantin’ on about?”
“Uhm ze doppia, zat ees deu . . . two ducat, so . . .” she told him.
“And the ducat’d be . . . ?” he’d prompted, with a surly purr.
“Een silver?” she’d puzzled, followed by a rapid ticking off on her lace-gloved fingers, and much muttering under her breath.
“That’d be a grand place to start,” he’d muttered under his own breath, as she’d done her current exchange rates.
And trust a retired whore to know her sums, to the ha’pence, he’d told himself.
“Mmm, une ducat, zat ees twelve shillings, Alain, mon chou.
” “Aha! Now, we’re getting somewhere!” He’d beamed. “Let me see one of them.”
The fubsy agent had produced a ducat, from a floridly embroidered silk poke. It weighed next to nothing, a wafer-thin, and almost bendable gold coin little larger round than a silver sixpence.
“So, ten ducats . . . that’d be one hundred-twenty shillings the month, or six English Pounds, hmm.” Lewrie had pondered. He’d extracted his purse, weighing it on his other palm, heavy and promising, toying with it to make the gold one- and two-guinea pieces inside rustle and chink. The agent had swallowed heavily, eyes darting in a fever of greed. Or in fear that his ducat might be conjured away, if he didn’t keep his eye glued to it!
“Two two-guinea pieces, in gold, sir,” Lewrie had offered, as he lay them out on his palm next to the ducat, which shrank in comparison to the size of a tea saucer next to the dinner-plate appearance of the two-guinea’s breadth, and most importantly, its thickness! “I will offer four guineas the month, and not a pence more. That’s worth eighty-four shillings, or seven of his damn’ ducats. Or, you tell him, Phoebe, that when the troop convoy arrives, with thousands more English soldiers in need of billets, well . . . we may commandeer any house that isn’t already rented, d’ye see? For nothing, tell him?”
It amounted to £50/8/0, he’d thought smugly; a bargain. If the damn’ fool will just realize it! Markets not a stone’s throw off, down to the waterfront, or a short block uphill and one over, to that plaza we saw, and all the market stalls. No need for a carriage, after all, or even the keep of a single horse! Furnished, mostly; a tad tawdry, at present. Two bedchambers above-stairs, both with balconies and ocean views, rather good bedsteads an’ such. His price would have been £72, and that’d be a trifle steep, even for a decent set of London rooms!
Expostulating that he’d been gored, diddled, raped, the agent had at last acceded, and the place was theirs; if they’d pay the year in advance! Feeling just as gored, Lewrie had been forced to accede on his part, as well. Knowing that as long as the French had a Navy in-being, in Golfe Jouan or Toulon, that could threaten their hold on Corsica, or the sea-lanes across the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian seas to Genoa, Porto Especia, Rome, or Naples, he’d most like be based out of San Fiorenzo far longer than that.
Half that ponderous purse of his disappeared into the agent’s poke, with a further stipulation that he’d remove any items of furnishings they didn’t need, or wished to replace; thus lowering the rent somewhat, later on. That had required another spitting, hissing catfight to negotiate, but in the end it was done, to the begrudging dissatisfaction of both parties.
Phoebe had received the heavy ring of keys from him, had hugged them to her bosom, and had skipped and danced around her new parlor in great delight, after the agent had taken his leave.
“Alain . . . eez so . . . !” She’d sighed at last, coming to him and flinging her arms about him, crooning as he lifted her off her feet to eye level. “Eez non ze appartement no more . . . eez ze ’ouse grande, si belle! Eez non ze . . . shabby? Solid an’ secure! An’ I mak’ eet even nicer, soon! Merci, mon amour. Oh, merci si très beaucoup! ”
And there had been tears of joy in her eyes, to be so settled, at long last. Her lips had trembled against his as she kissed him so warmly. And her little shoulders had shaken in grateful emotion.
“We mus’ ’urry, Alain!” she’d declared finally. “We can ’ave mov-ed een, avant coucher de soleil, uhm . . . before sundown? Non cook, we ’ave, t’night, mais . . . we fin’ ze café, an’ zen, een our own bed, I tell you ’ow ver’ much I love you for . . . ! Non, I show you . . . ’ow much I am thanking you, mon chou! ”
They’d left Phoebe’s chests and luggage at a waterfront osteria, a tavern/lodging house, in the care of an elderly couple, who had made much of Phoebe’s arrival in their midst. Lewrie was arranging a burro and cart, and Phoebe was chatting away, gay as a magpie, with her fellow countrymen, and stroking Joliette, who was daintily lapping at some goat milk, when Midshipman Spendlove arrived, with a packet under his arm, sweating heavily.
“Sir!” Spendlove announced, doffing his hat. “Thank God you’re here, sir. Else I’d have had nary a clue as to where in the town . . .”
“Trouble aboard, Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie barked, breaking off his negotiations with the carter.
“No, sir.” Spendlove took the time to smile. “ Orders, sir! Come aboard not a quarter-hour past.”
“Mmm, good.” Lewrie sighed in relief. “That was quick work, I must say. I didn’t . . . Mister Spendlove. These have been opened, ” he rasped, turning stern and surly in an instant.
“Not my doing, sir,” Spendlove assured him with some heat. “Nor the first lieutenant’s. Uhm . . . your clerk, Mister Mountjoy, he, ahh . . .”
“Mountjoy?” Lewrie snapped.
“Said he thought they were normal correspondence, sir, that he . . . as your assistant, should read first, so . . .” Spendlove shrugged. Not in defense of the captain’s clerk, no. By the tone of his voice, even a lowly midshipman could express a tiny bit of exasperation, or disgust, with a “new-come” who knew so little. Or could not seem to learn.
“Damn fool!” Lewrie growled. Ship’s orders were addressed for captains only, for their eyes only. “Not you, Mister Spendlove. Pardon the comment, sir. No one else aboard has read them, yet?”
“No, sir!” Spendlove strenuously denied. “Mister Hyde was at the gangway to receive them, and took ’em aft, still sealed, to your quarters. We informed Mister Knolles, of course, and he thought it best if you saw them straightaway, so I readied a boat, to fetch you, Captain. But, were they urgent, Mister Knolles then thought to send them on, so he went aft, to get ’em, and he asked of them from Mister Mountjoy, well . . .”
“My ‘assistant’!” Lewrie hooted sourly. “My God, that’s rich!”
But, as long as he had them, he might as well read them, so he stepped away for a tiny shred of privacy. When he discovered:
You are directed to ready your vessel for sea, and, at your earliest convenience, the wind being obliging, proceed to the port of Leghorn, upon the Italian mainland, carrying with you the assistant surgeon of the fleet, his appurtenances, and monies, for the purchase of a quantity of onions and thirty to forty pipes of wine from the Tuscan authorities; to store aboard as expeditiously
as possible the aforesaid, upon affirmation by the assistant surgeon of the fleet as to the antiscorbutic properties, then to proceed afterward to San Fiorenzo Bay with the onions and wine . . .
“And just what do you draw, Lewrie, hey?” he muttered, half amused. “Jesus Christ!” There went all his previous speculation on hopes of neck-or-nothing sea service. Amazing, really, what fickle Dame Reality actually had up her sleeve!
He folded them and stuck them into an inner coat pocket.
“Very well, Mister Spendlove, Go back aboard, and deliver my utmost respects to Mister Knolles and the sailing master. They are to ready the ship for sea. Tell Aspinall we’ll have a single piece of ‘live-lumber’ aft, in the great-cabins, with some dunnage of his to store away in my personal lazarette. Have ‘Chips’ run him up a bed cot. And warn my cook he’ll be ’sizzling’ for two, this evening.”
San Fiorenzo Bay was a mirror. There wasn’t a breath of wind, and every commissioning pendant, every sail freed of its gaskets and let hung to prevent mildew, were as slack as a hangman’s noose, still and flaccid. There’d be no departure this evening. Perhaps the morning might bring up enough wind to work out of harbor on. Or, they’d lower the ship’s boats and row her out, in tow, to a sea breeze. He’d have about an hour, no more, to settle Phoebe, leave her some coin for incidentals, but would have to forego her expressions of “gratitude.”
Before he could inform her of that sad fact, though, he espied a Navy officer at the dockside, one familiar to him, about to mount a horse.
“Captain Nelson?” he called, walking down to the pier-front, to remake his acquaintance.
“Ah, Commander Lewrie!” the little minnikin of a post-captain cried jovially, once he’d gotten his “seat.” “Saw your Jester lying at anchor, on my way out to Victory. Just come in. And with such a wondrous packet of news, too, about Admiral Howe’s splendid victory! How I wish I’d but been there to take part, but . . . And how do you do, sir?”
“Main-well, and thank you for recalling me, sir,” Lewrie said, doffing his hat. “And thank you again for the permanent loan of men off your Agamemnon. They eased our passage home wondrous well. Form the very backbone of my new crew. I can’t express how indebted I am to you for your generosity, short-handed though you were at the time.”
God, what a complete toadying wretch you are, Lewrie, he chided himself; must be instinctive! Nelson’s just another captain, not an admiral whose back you have to ‘piss down’ for favors!
“And you are well yourself, sir?” Alan asked, as a party of seamen trudged by in a dust-raising shamble, loaded down with sacks like so many draught animals.
“In splendid fettle, sir,” Nelson assured him. “Been on shore service, over toward Calvi, d’ye see. As long as the French Navy is blockaded, there’s the seat of the action. There’s the very cockpit! A chance for action, great doings!”
Capt. Horatio Nelson was such a thin and nervous whippet of a fellow, so lean and wee to begin with, well . . . Lewrie thought his duty ashore had sweated him down. He didn’t look in splendid fettle, really. Haggard as a dog’s dinner, in point of fact.
“Why, were I half sunk with the flux, the opportunity for action against our foes would revive me from my very deathbed, sir,” Nelson assured him firmly, speaking a trifle louder, for the benefit, Lewrie imagined, of those trudging, plodding sailors, and the general audience at dockside.
Always did have a touch o’ Drury Lane theatrics in him, Lewrie recalled, smiling in reverie.
“You should see what British tars can accomplish, Lewrie,” he “emoted,” regaining that infectious enthusiasm for a chance to get himself blown to bits, or knighted—whichever came first, “You simply must ride up and visit us, should you have the chance. Erecting batteries, man-hauling guns over hill and dale, digging trenches and parallels . . . ah, here’s Captain Fremantle! Another of our stalwarts.”
Taller, lankier, and mastiff-dour, was Captain Thomas Fremantle, whose sole response to Nelson’s introduction was a nod and a grunt.
“. . . shelling the Frogs night and day, storming their positions to keep monsieur on the hop,” Nelson rattled on. “Minding shot around their own ears no more than peas, I tell you, Lewrie! Been at it ever since the first days of the siege of Bastia. Well, Captain Fremantle might mind shot and shell, after our little . . . ‘incident,’ hey?”
“Uhm,” interjected that worthy, shifting in his saddle rather uncomfortably.
“The Frogs got the range of us, at Bastia,” Nelson reminisced gaily, “and literally blew us off a hillside. Right down off the side of the path. Showers of earth, gravel, and dust. Fremantle was sore hurt.”
“Tore a good pair o’ breeches,” Fremantle grunted laconically. “Now he swears he’ll not walk within a musket shot of me, sir.” Nelson chuckled. “I attract too much attention from their gunners!”
Sounds like Fremantle is smarter than he looks, Alan thought.
“Should I do come visit, sir,” Lewrie said with an agreeable chuckle of his own, “I’d hope for better horses than these for the journey.”
While all the while swearing that it would take a battalion of gaolers to drag him anywhere near Calvi’s trenches. Or Nelson’s side.
“Spavined wretches, are they not, sir?” Nelson shrugged, even as he patted his ill-featured mare’s neck. “A poor prad, but mine own, to quote the Bard. And, well . . . Father’s a churchman, and our glebe didn’t run to blooded hunters. Then I, away to sea at such a young age . . . I must confess I am nowhere near as confident upon this horse as I am upon my quarterdeck. This idle waiting, and swinging around the anchors . . . I quite envy you, sir, your freedom of a smaller ship. Out at sea, our proper place . . . anything exciting by way of orders for you yet, Lewrie?”
“Onions, sir.” Lewrie sighed. “Onions and wine. I’m off for Leghorn at first light, pray God the wind returns, to purchase onions to prevent the scurvy.”
“Oh, poor fellow.” Nelson seemed to commiserate for a single sober moment, though he perked up rather quickly, not a second after. “Still, your turn will come, sir, be confident of it. Once Calvi is ours, we’ll all be free to seek out our foes, and win such glory as even a Hawke, Anson, or Drake might envy!”
Lewrie continued to smile, though he did raise one rather dubious brow. Fremantle, though, who’d been slouching like a sack of onions in his saddle, sat up a bit straighter, got a light upon his dull visage, as if he’d just been Saved, and was leaving Church with his Life Amended. Uncanny, how this wee fellow Nelson could inspirit people! “Well, sirs, if you must ride as far as Calvi before dark, I won’t keep you a second longer. And the best of fortune go with you, sirs. Captain Nelson, Captain Fremantle . . . I’ll save you a sack of my very best . . . mmm, produce, sirs,” he could not help saying with a deprecatory smirk. “My word on’t.”
“Likewise, good fortune attend your voyage, sir, and I would be much obliged for something more savory than ‘Army’ rations. For the men, d’ye see.” Nelson beamed. “Godspeed, Commander Lewrie!”
He kneed his spindly mare into motion, to clatter off to join a procession of heavily laden mules, heavily laden sailors, and top-heavy two-wheeled carts crammed with ammunition.
Damme, I just promised to deliver them onions! Lewrie shuddered. Now I’ll have to ride up there, once I’m back. Within speakin’ distance of Nelson, and let’s hope the Frog gunners’re sleepin’!
Wherever that firebrand went there was blood and mayhem. And the Devil’s own amount of shot and shell involved in a Nelson “outing.” Forever thrusting himself forward, all that Death or Glory twaddle . . . and Alan suspected the little minnikin actually believed what he was forever saying.
Still . . . he could almost essay a feeling of . . . dare he call it jealousy? . . . to be left out. Grubbing about in trenches, plagued with insects, flinging oneself flat whenever a shell howled over. Well, an officer could wish to fling himself flat, but had to stand and take it, like a dumb ox. To inspire courage, so please
you! Sleeping rough as a gypsy . . . well, perhaps not. Alan wished to make his name, and his ship’s name, at sea, where sailors belonged. Not playing greengrocer, certainly, but . . .
He felt a hellish snit coming on. Sent off to be a carter for the fleet, ’stead of a fighting cruise. Deprived of Phoebe’s charms—that he’d by God paid damn’ dear for!—not even one evening with her in their new “house.” The prospects of a damn’ dull supper, with a “sawbones” for company; they were usually horrid drinkers, and just how much of his wine cabinet would be left to him by the time Jester returned to San Fiorenzo Bay? he wondered.
It all put Lewrie in a Dev’lish black fettle.
Mayhem? Well, God help Mountjoy, when he got back aboard. A chance to shout, to rant and scream at someone, to vent all his frustrations . . . it sounded damned pleasant, of a sudden!
B O O K I I I
Ego, dum cremandis trabibus accrescit rogus,
sacro regentum maria votivo colam.
Now while the pyre feeds on the burning beams with promised gifts will I worship Him who rules the sea.
Hercules Furens, 514–15
LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA
C H A P T E R 1
Now this is more like it, Lewrie told himself, fidgeting, but with pride, as he stood foursquare on his quarterdeck, with his hands clasped together in the small of his back. Rocking and swaying on the balls of his feet, easy, as Jester tore through the waters, gun ports open, and artillery run out.
It was a rare day, no error, a brilliant, glittering morning of bright-water winds, whitecaps and horses, the sea heaving and chopping in short, close-spaced waves, and the sirocco up from the south was a force one could almost lean into, a stout, clear-weather quarter-gale, deafening in his ears. A hat-snatcher of a wind into which HMS Jester pounded close-hauled, in pursuit of prey.
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