A King's Commander

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Of course,” Alan responded quickly. “This heat, and all. Why, he must be wilting. And, they’ll starve to death, else.”

  Phoebe summoned a waiter who bowed to hear her whispered command, then quickly dashed off to invite the two officers to join them.

  “Grateful,” Fremantle explained as they shuffled their seats so Nelson didn’t have to face the sunset glare off the bay. “Awf’lly. An hellish crowd, hey? Settle for a bread stick . . .”

  “Captain Horatio Nelson, Captain Thomas Fremantle, allow me to name to you . . .” Alan began, grinning impishly as he continued in the spirit of the evening, and the sentiments of the town, “. . . la Contessa . . . Mademoiselle Phoebe Aretino? Contessa . . .” He gave her a quick conspiratorial wink, “Captain Horatio Nelson of the Agamemnon, and Captain Thomas Fremantle, of the Inconstant frigate.”

  “Messieurs, enchanté,” Phoebe replied, with another slight incline of her head, as if speaking from a throne to acknowledge lesser barons. Where’d she learn all this, so damn’ fast? Lewrie wondered to himself. “You appear-ed so, uhm . . . ’ow you say, indispose, Capitaine Nelson? Ooh la, I trus’ you are well, m’sieur.”

  “My infinite gratitude for your most gracious invitation, mademoiselle, ” Nelson rejoined, trying to be sociable even as he seemed to suffer another tiny spasm. “A trifling wound I received the other day.”

  “Trifling,” Fremantle countered with a snort. “Ha.”

  “Weeks ago,” Nelson discounted with a dismissive wave as their waiters returned with more wine, and actual written menus, “Middle of July, actually. I must say . . . this, uhm, ristorante is so certain of their supplies they can print their fare, ’stead of chalking it up by the day? Incredible.”

  “Ah, oui, m’sieur Capitaine Nelson,” Phoebe answered gaily, and Lewrie suspected, one of those on the island who had a hand in assuring those regular supplies; what didn’t she have her hand in by now! he wondered. “You will fin’ ze fare ees limit . . . limit-ed? Local ordinaire, on’y, n’est-ce pas, mais . . . you will fin’ eet consistent. An’ all ver’ tasty, Corsican cuisine.”

  Odd, Lewrie thought; I’d have thought Nelson was the sort to play up a tale of honorable wounds. Seen him posture and prose before, now, ain’t I? To Alan’s lights, though, Nelson didn’t look particularly cut up. No limp, no bandages . . . a bruise or two, some scabbed-over cuts on his face. Must have been too trifling, he concluded; else we’d be sitting deathwatch by his bed, to watch the hero pass over.

  “Pardon me for discussing ‘shop in the mess,’ as it were, sir,” Lewrie said, “but I must own that my curiosity has the best of me . . . you both have been up at the siege-work. ’Tis rumored the French are almost ready to give in. I was wondering if there was any truth to it.”

  “Pray God that will be so, Commander Lewrie,” Nelson said, with some heat. And with what almost sounded like a croak of uncharacteristic gloom. “Aye, soon. They simply must, do you see! They’re short of almost everything, by now. Save powder and shot. As I learned to my cost,” he added, with a faint, deprecatory grin. “Our parallels have been advanced nigh to musket shot of their walls, and our batteries are dominant over their artillery, at last. General Stuart is confident of their surrender within the week. Failing that, an attempt against them might, well . . . a final assault might have to wait, for a time.”

  “Horrid sickness,” Fremantle supplied as Nelson faltered, like a watch spring run down. “We’ve, what . . . barely two thousand men now? And half of them down, half the time. Bouillabaisse, hmm? Some sort o’ fish chowder?” Fremantle wondered, after pondering the menu. “Oysters . . . they might be in it, d’ye think? Like an English meal, back home?”

  “Aye, sir. More a brothy fish stew, but some oysters,” Lewrie informed his superior, hiding his smirk at how provincial most English gentlemen were away from home, how wary they were of unfamiliar dishes. And how un-English he sometimes felt, to delight in the exotic and new.

  “Might I offer a toast, sirs.” Lewrie grinned, raising his wine. “To our foes, the French, sirs. May they be similarly afflicted. And confused.”

  “Confusion to our foes,” Nelson and Fremantle rejoined, tossing back their sweet, sparkling wine, and echoing the ancient words of the mess or wardroom response to such a toast.

  “Frightful campaign weather,” Nelson admitted as the waiters topped them up. “Worse than any ever I did see, even in Nicaragua in the last war, for heat, and disease. Bad as the Indies, I must allow!”

  “Een Corsica,” Phoebe informed him, “we name zis season ze Lion Sun, Capitaine Nelson. ’Ow you say, uhm . . .”

  “Dog days?” Fremantle offered.

  “ Oui, merci, Capitaine Fremantle. Dog Days . . . Lion Sun, aussi, ” Phoebe went on. “July to October. Ze ’eat, an ze damp! Zis time of year, mos’ people stay indoor, an nap s’rough ze wors’ of ze day. An’ many sick. Many leave us, even so, quel dommage. I marvel, zat you’ Eenglish soldier, you fight in zis weather. Non wait for cool time.”

  “As you pointed out, Mademoiselle Aretino,” Nelson said, with unconscious pride. “We’re English. English seamen! ”

  “Fight in any weather, hey?” Fremantle commented.

  “Though ’tis true, mademoiselle, ” Nelson sobered. “Many leave us. Dear Lord, so many leave us. Why . . . !”

  A spasm of grief perhaps, another tic of pain in his brows that quieted him for a moment, but Nelson’s voice broke, and he was forced to massage his right temple and brow, as if to knead away whatever agony ailed him with those long, slim, delicate fingers that seemed so out of place on such a wee little fellow, so fond of hard-handed war.

  “Oh, do forgive me for . . . for being a killjoy.” Nelson frowned after he’d mastered himself. “For even broaching the subject, but . . . Fremantle and I just came from the local churchyard. A fellow officer, Commander Lewrie. You understand, I’m certain?”

  “My condolences for your loss, sir,” Lewrie gravely offered.

  “A most gallant young man, sir,” Nelson all but croaked. “One who’d have made a name for himself that would have been on everyone’s lips, had he not . . . hmm. Lieutenant James Moutray, ’board Victory. A fine young fellow. Was to have been promoted, soon. His father, Captain Moutray and his mother . . . we were great friends, when I had Boreas at Antigua, ’tween the wars. He was Navy Commissioner at English Harbour, d’ye see. And I knew

  James, from a child. Just a wee lad, back then. It’s as if I’d lost my own son, had I . . . as sorrowful a thing as if Fanny and I had lost our dear Josiah.”

  Fremantle made a tiny face, rolled his eyes in dubious humor, which expression of contempt Lewrie caught.

  “Knew you were married, sir,” Lewrie prompted, to pique his further curiosity. “But I didn’t know you were a parent, as well. Might I offer you congratulations. Some cheer, that he’s safe abed in England at this moment.”

  “Uhm . . .” Nelson was forced to confess, pulling at his long, thin nose. “Stepson, actually. My dearest Fanny and I met on Nevis, while I was in Boreas, as well. She’d been widowed, and . . . no, Josiah is with me, Lewrie. In Agamemnon. Brought him aboard as a midshipman. To keep a weather eye on his progress, hmm? To assure myself that there will be a successor in the Navy. Why, as I recall, Lewrie, you’ve sons of your own.” Nelson brightened, of a sudden, as mercurial in his grief as he was in his enthusiasms. “Perhaps ’twas Lady Emma Hamilton, in Naples, who spoke of you, when I represented Admiral Lord Hood with King Ferdinand. I’m sure she was the one told me.”

  “Mmm, well, sir . . .” Lewrie almost winced. Phoebe turned a cool and amused gaze upon him. Though she already knew his marital status, and that he was a father, and didn’t seem to mind . . . “My eldest, Sewallis, I rather doubt. Now, Hugh, the second son, o’ course . . . had to fetch him down from the mizzen stays, just before we left Portsmouth.”

  “Ees devotion to ees family amaze me, Capitaine Nelson.” Phoebe chuckled. The other shoe dropped, at last, and Nelson al
most flushed as he realized their relationship. Phoebe also took pains to tap the side of her shoe against Lewrie’s, under the table, and reward him in public with a cocked eyebrow and tiny smile, hiding her impish teasing for later, in private.

  “Mmm, well . . .” Nelson summed up.

  “At least the Moutrays may have some comfort, sir,” Alan went on, trying to change the subject, and wiggle his way free. “That their son Lieutenant Moutray passed over in an honorable cause, fighting his King’s foes.”

  “Ah, you see, though, Lewrie,” Nelson said with a bitter sigh. “God knows why they allowed it, but . . . he was their only son and heir. And it wasn’t honorable battle, no. ’Twas a fever, so please you! A bloody fever took him, just as . . . a horrid waste of talent, of promise.”

  Can I dig the grave any deeper, hey? Lewrie asked himself, feeling an urge to look heavenward, where, he was mortal-certain, God was having Himself a knee-slapping good time at Lewrie’s expense.

  “‘Absent Friends,’” Fremantle harrumphed, raising his glass in toast to bridge the embarrassment of the moment. Embarrassments, rather.

  “Wrong day for it, but . . .” Fremantle shrugged. Absent Friends was the Sunday toast in the wardroom aboard a King’s ship. Lewrie was of a mind, though, to believe that the morrow’s—Thursday’s— might be more apt; the one Lieutenant Moutray’s fellows were probably most callously making at that very moment, now a rival for promotion or command had passed from their midst— A Bloody War, or a Sickly Season.

  Thankfully, Alan was spared any further chances to embarrass himself by the arrival of their food. Bouillabaisse, aswim with clams and crabmeat, with mussels and a few puny oysters that might please Fremantle, and a host of tiny pink bits of cut-up shrimp peeking coyly from the rosy broth, “decks awash.” A fresh wine course, the hard Mediterranean bread sticks, then an appetizer of golden-fried crab cakes, with a remoulade of horseradish, garlic, and a dash of olive oil. Lewrie tucked in, savoring every morsel, though Fremantle and Nelson seemed a bit put off. Nelson ate as if being merely polite. Fremantle muttered, scowled, and inspected every bite, as chary as a customer in some two-penny ordinary who knew a fellow who’d died after eating there. He almost sniffed each new arrival, casting his eyes about as if looking for a hound to try each dish out on first.

  He’d have a rough go of it, Alan thought. The carte de menu had no roast beef, no smoking joint of mutton to offer. The choices were mostly fish, wild fowl, pigeon, or chicken, eked out from paltriness of portion with rice, pastas, and tomato gravies. Like the goat ragout he had ordered, at Phoebe’s insistence, the arrival of which he was awaiting with a great deal of almost lustful anticipation. And some manner of glee. Just to see the look on Fremantle’s phyz when he declared what it was he was eating!

  Small pheasants or grouse appeared, and with them, a new course of wine. Squab, most like, Alan thought; how many Corsicans had powder or shot with which to hunt, these days. Squab, on a thin bed of rice, colorful with steamed vegetables and a brown sauce.

  One of the waiters came to Nelson’s right side to fetch off his near-empty glass of rhenish, and replace it with a fresh stem of some red wine. Just as Nelson reached for it, to drain the last of it down to “heeltaps.” Their hands collided, the glass turned over, and went smash on the tiled floor.

  “Frightfully sorry, tell him,” Nelson snapped, now it was his turn to burn with embarrassment. Once more, he massaged his right brow as if to knead a devil out. And wince with more than mortification.

  “Just have ’em come under your lee from larboard, from now on,” Fremantle attempted to jape. “There’s your answer, Nelson.”

  “Perhaps that would be best, Fremantle,” Nelson responded, essaying a matching light tone of voice. “My sight, do you see . . . still a bit impaired, sir . . . mademoiselle. Frogs smashed three guns complete to flinders while I was in the battery. Rock, sand . . . splinter of something. I had the misfortune to be within feet of a shell that burst. A temporary affliction, I do trust, yet . . . ’tis hard for me to discern much more than light from dark with this poor eye. Could not spot the fellow to my starboard side.”

  “Pray God that will be temporary, sir,” Lewrie said. Should he lose his sight, Alan thought, surely he’d stand a good chance of being “beached,” and lose his ship. No wonder he’d not made much heroic ado ’pon it! “Least said, soonest mended,” went the old adage. The least-mentioned a commission-ending, career-ending wound, perhaps the soonest forgotten by their superiors!

  “Surely, you saw someone . . . ?” Lewrie wondered aloud.

  “Oh, of course,” Nelson assured him warmly, turning nigh jovial to disguise those very fears, “Doctor Harness, a physician . . . a surgeon Mister Jefferson. Certified me today, as a matter of fact. ‘Sawbones’ and ‘potion pushers,’ I tell you. ‘Eye of newt and toe of frog,’ that’s about all they’re good for . . . all their kind prescribe. I’m down to see Chambers, surgeon to forces in the entire Mediterranean, in a few days. I am most confident my veil will be lifted, as it were, and full vision restored, by then, or shortly after. A few days’ rest . . .”

  Lewrie kept an enigmatic expression on his face, though he peered closely at that offending eye. No reason he could see to follow the biblical injunction, to “pluck it out.” Yet, it did not seem to wax or wane as a normal eye should. Did not follow in conjunction with the dartings of the left orb. And the faint scar that might have been the result of rock or sand, or a tiny splinter . . . Lewrie kept himself from wincing with nutmeg-shrinking horror when he finally noticed that the scar was not on the brow, only . . . but far down onto the right eyelid itself!

  Poor little bastard, Lewrie silently cringed! Raised a glass in mute sympathy. To restore his own courage, too, and damp the fear that he’d ever suffer such a mutilation himself.

  There was a commotion at the entryway. Some shouting in the road, and the scruffing of urgent feet. Calvi, blah blah blah . . . ! Louder in Italian, inside the door. I Francesi! Calvi! Waiters translating for a party of British infantry officers on the main floor, and a host of loud hosannas of triumph from them, once the news had been digested.

  I Francesi, esse arrendere Calvi, di mattina!

  Applause and cheers arose from everyone in the ristorante, Corsican or émigré French, Italian, or British. The French would surrender Calvi in the morning. And British forces had, at last, won an important victory in the Mediterranean, to expunge last year’s shame of Toulon and its abandonment. And something worthwhile, too; the total ownership of the strategically valuable island of Corsica!

  Nelson appeared weary, yet relieved, and wore a faint, bemused smile. He applauded briefly, but remained seated. Fremantle, though, rose to cheer cock-a-whoop, abandoning even those half-mute essays of his at complete sentences to howl and cheer, not even trying to form recognizable words for a minute. Until recalling that English gentlemen weren’t supposed to be seen enthusing, and sat back down, abashed.

  Thank Bloody Christ, Alan thought, getting to his own feet, and dancing Phoebe about, using the joy of the moment to embrace her in a most un -English expression of joy. The fleet’ll be fully manned again, he speculated; all those seamen and Marines back aboard from the siege. We’ll put to sea again, and fight the Frogs proper, at sea! Sail into Golfe Jouan or Gorjean Bay, whatever they call it, and shoot the Frog fleet to kindling, if they won’t come out to fight! And get the damn’ war over in another three months or so! Austrians, Piedmont, Genoese all ready to march west, into France, and them without ships to serve their troops, protect their seaward flank . . . why, we’ll chop them to Hindu chutney sauce!

  And prizes, he further speculated! With few warships left, the French coasting trade would lay wide open and unprotected to his guns. In another three months, Jester could reap a bountiful harvest. Then he could go home the hero, wearing the laurel wreath corona. A gilded laurel-wreath hero’s crown, he crowed to himself! With enough money to buy his rented land from damnable old uncle Phineas Chisw
ick, buy even more acres, have that London town house, at last, into the bargain . . . !

  And see Caroline and the children. Enchanting mistress or no, he’d been on the beach too long before, those four years between commissions, and where his heart lay, and where his lust romped, were two different places entirely. Only one letter had come from Anglesgreen, so far, in reply to the half dozen he’d sent off.

  Aye, get this over with quickly, he mused, as he resat Phoebe at their table; she’s a fetchin’ little mort, but she’ll land on her feet, when I’m gone.

  “You gentlemen will permit me?” Alan asked them. “In the spirit of the news, I think a brace of champagne might be in order.”

  Spumante was the best the house could boast; overly sweet, for most tastes, a bit on the cloudy side. But sparkling and spritely on the tongue, frothy with pearly bubbles as they charged their glasses.

  “Sirs . . . mademoiselle contessa . . .” Lewrie posed to them. “A toast. To a complete and convincing victory over our enemies. And an even greater one, at sea, soon to follow.”

  “Here, here!” they all agreed.

  B O O K I V

  Haec deus in melius crudelia somnia vertat

  et iubeat tepidos inrita ferra Notos.

  May a god turn this cruel dream to good, or bid the

  hot South Wind carry it away without fulfillment.

  Book III

  “Lygdamus’s Dream,” 95–96

  ALBIUS TIBULLUS

  C H A P T E R 1

  It’s working,” Lieutenant Knolles exclaimed, with the sound of true wonder in his voice. “It is actually working.”

  “Well, o’ course, it is, sir,” Mister Buchanon chided his earlier skepticism. “Th’ cap’um knows a thing’r two.”