A King's Commander

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Mister Drake says there’ve been so many bumboats alongside the privateer, coming and going, that it’s impossible to say if Choundas was in one of them, disguised, either.” Lewrie groaned. “She’s her sails harbor-gasketed, and her crew ranti-poling with the local whores, as drunk as lords. She’s not coming out tonight, at any rate. Or in the morning, either, the way he says they’re celebrating their new fortune.”

  He crumpled up his own note and tossed it over.

  “Their heads’ll be too thick.” Lewrie chuckled without amusement. “The senator does have a yacht. But then, so do almost all of the other conspirators. It’s a local sport, yachting.”

  “Those we know about, sir,” Peel cautioned in a covert mutter. “And them we still can’t link to the plot, direct. A fishing boat, or a yacht. By dawn, there could be hundreds of ’em out here.”

  “Does Choundas come out tonight, Mister Peel,” Lewrie schemed, trying to put himself in the wily Frenchman’s head, “it’ll most like be around nine or so, after full dark. Combined with us being close off the approaches, I should think. We’ll be turning away, to stand west on our leg. He could idle just off the mole . . . no lights showing, and follow us, damn his eyes! Close inshore, with a local pilot who can smell a shoal or rock. Not much moon to speak of . . . him black against a dark coastline. Trail us as far as Voltri. That’d take a couple of hours, then we’d have to turn back east, and he could scoot along the twenty or twenty-five miles to Vado Bay and be just a few miles west of there by false dawn tomorrow morning. A fishing boat, ’bout the same size as yon barge, would be too slow for him. He must know that Vado Bay’d be well-patrolled. There’s a decent wind tonight, and night winds are fairly steady in strength and direction. From the nor’east, for once. A perfect wind to ghost out on, and broad-reach west on. He’ll want a longer, faster boat for that. I would. If he doesn’t make it to Vado, he can’t expect to lay up for the day along this coast, not with Austrian troops about. Where are the French, last report? How far east?”

  “East of the inland road that comes down to Finale, sir.” Peel shrugged. “How far East, I . . . of late, I have no way of knowing.” He gave Lewrie a quick grimace before turning bland again. Hating to say “I don’t know” as bad as any secret agent. “Along the coast road, we must assume they’ve advanced closer to Vado.”

  “Other side of the headland?” Lewrie grumbled in surprise when Peel told him that. “That’d be only ten miles west of our anchorage!”

  “It’s possible, sir. Sorry I can’t enlighten you further.”

  “Forty miles, at most then,” Lewrie puzzled. “Genoa to Finale or thereabouts. Seven hours to safety, at six or seven knots. Damme if I’ll play his game!”

  But not knowing how he was going to accomplish that, yet. That barge could never catch up a larger, faster vessel, once she got to sea, with a bone in her teeth. He’d have to place Jester more to the west, if he hoped to get a decent slant at interception. With his ship tied too close to the harbor entrance, though, Choundas might gain a precious lead that he could never make up, once Choundas slipped past them close inshore. Yet, to remain far enough west to counter that, Jester couldn’t guard the entrance, could not spot any vessel leaving in time to overhaul her and inspect her.

  Or could he?

  “Mister Buchanon, ’vast your packing, sir,” Lewrie called out. “I apologize, but I’ll need you aboard, after all. Mister Hyde, you’re still in charge of the barge.”

  “Aye, sir!” Hyde grinned, proud to have a temporary “command.”

  “Pass the word for Mister Crewe to come to . . .”

  “’Ere, sir!” Crewe replied from the gangway above the tethered barge, which was still being loaded and armed.

  “Mister Crewe, you’re familiar with fire-arrows? Darde-au-feu? ” “Well, aye, Cap’um . . .” the gunner replied, creasing his brow. “Don’t ’ave no spring-iron t’make th’ arms t’catch in sails, though.”

  “Forget the spring-arms, Mister Crewe,” Lewrie countered, with a leer on his face. “Just make me up a half dozen that can be shot up high in the air, that we can see for, oh . . . six miles, at night? Shot at extreme elevation from a swivel gun. Like a signal-fuzee that Mister Hyde can light off like a fireworks.”

  “Oh, like a Roman candle, sir!” Crewe beamed. “I can do that, sir. Half dozen, no work a’tall, Cap’um.”

  “Pass the word for Mister Giles. My compliments, and he is to supply the barge with two days’ dry rations and water, biscuit, cheese, and small-beer. And enough wine for two days’ ‘Clear Decks and Up Spirits.’ You’ll not be splicing the main brace, Mister Hyde, till I tell you. You’re to loaf about just off the entrance, showing no lights of any sort. Stay furtive as mice, till any vessel leaves larger than a rowboat. You’re to fire off one of Mister Crewe’s fuzees from a swivel, soon as one does. Almost straight up, but in the general direction of her course. Anything heading west is what we’re interested in,”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Hyde agreed, though not sure what it was he was agreeing to.

  “The captain of that corvette we fought, Mister Hyde, that’s the bastard we want. He captured a commissary ship full of British gold . . . and he now thinks he’ll slip away and go back home to crow about it,” Lewrie told his senior midshipman first, before he explained things to the rest of his crew before dark. “I want him, Mister Hyde. And with your help, I mean to have him, this time.”

  C H A P T E R 6

  A hot supper, for which he had little appetite, almost uncivil a host to Mister Peel and Lieutenant Knolles who dined with him, talking “shop” for once. And so eager for news that most of what he heard wasn’t an awkward conversation, but the loud ticking of his chronometer in the chart-space on the starboard side of the great-cabins.

  Then back on deck, wondering if Choundas had made a total fool of him, of them all, no matter how cleverly they’d schemed. Alan had always come a cropper, whenever he’d thought himself especially sly—didn’t matter at what, he’d always tripped over his own wits—hoping against hope that just this once, events would prove an exception. A gelatinous crawling of time, an age between the half-hour watch bells. Nine o’clock, then three bells at nine-thirty, four bells at ten . . .”

  “Signal!” a lookout screamed, as a tiny phosphorescent spark leapt into the inky night sky, trailing an amber train of embers. At a fifty-degree angle, Lewrie estimated. Pointing toward Jester, four miles offshore and ten miles down the coast, near Voltri. Pointing to the West! “Got ’at bastid, sir! We’uns got ’im!” A cheer rose from the decks, the duty watch, and the gunners standing idle in the waist. Ferociously satisfied, their blood up for the hunt, a kill. Sure that Jester would avenge herself, prove herself a lucky ship once more.

  By God, we’d better, Lewrie thought! But not a very good night for it. Perversely, the winds had risen a trifle, the sea was surging and creaming now and then in tiny whitecaps—cat’s paws and horses. What there was of the moon was occluded by scudding clouds coming down from inland, some storm rushing downslope off the Alps. Their view of the coast was only a black smear against a cold-ashes evening, merely a matter of degree.

  “Fetch-to, Mister Knolles,” Lewrie commanded. “We go galloping off east, he’s sure to slip past us.”

  “Aye, sir! Duty watch, hands to the braces and sheets!”

  A quarter-hour later, riding cocked up into the wind, bows almost due north, the ship making no headway. Still nothing to be seen.

  “Signal!”

  Another fuzee skyrocketing into the night, pointing west, a bit closer to them, as Hyde sailed in pursuit of whatever had aroused him. No hope of catching his Chase, of course, whatever she turned out to be. Safe enough for Hyde and his men, Lewrie thought, relieved; Choundas did not have night enough to turn and make her pay for alerting the blockade he’d have to thread. Assuming that so-far unseen vessel was his; if it was, he’d gotten a late start, and lost a precious hour already.

  “We’ll begin to stand
inshore, Mister Knolles,” Lewrie said with impatience, after another quarter-hour had passed. “Slowly, at first.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Another half hour, Hyde’s barge making no more than five knots at best, even with that stiff broad-reaching wind on her quarters. An hour, so five miles closer to us he’s come, Lewrie plotted, almost frantic, but concealed by darkness on the quarterdeck, as Jester prowled without even a single glim burning. A tartane , la-teen-rigged, he thought; she’d go around seven knots off such a goodly wind . . . two miles closer to us than Hyde? Yet not a whiff of her, not hide nor hair?

  Another fuzee, this time fired slantwise, as if Mister Hyde was firing a very long, up-the-stern shot, as a miniature comet arced up and down like the trail of a burning carcase shot from a mortar. Within two miles of Jester ’s bows, so the Chase surely must be in smelling distance!

  “Haul our wind, Mister Knolles! Time to stand in directly. Due north, Quartermaster!”

  “Sail ho! ” from a larboard forecastle lookout. “ One point awrf th’ lar- b’d bow! ’Gainst th’ town’s lights! D’ye hear, there?”

  Lewrie dashed to the larboard side, leaned out over the bulwarks to peer into the gloom as Jester swung. The town of Voltri was three miles north, almost dead ahead, by then. They might have been holding a festa to celebrate the recent harvests, or some saint’s day, for the waterfront and main streets were lit with torches, lant-horns, and a big bonfire, producing a pencil-thin smear of light. And suddenly, there was a ship; a quick, eye-blink glimpse of a ship atop the amber, scintillating fire-glade of the town’s lights, stark and black in a second of silhouette—high-pinked stern, sharp bow, and three crescent moon sails, low to the deck; two large lateens, and a long lateen jib!

  “Haul our wind, Mister Knolles, come about to west by north!” he howled. “A tartane , no error! And she’s already west of us!”

  Hellish-fast, too, Lewrie shivered, as the night wind went cold; fearing he’d left it too late. Seven knots mine arse, she had to be going eight or nine, or I’m a Turk in a turban! By the time we get turned in pursuit and settled down, she could have a mile lead on us.

  Six bells of the Evening Watch chimed up forrud; eleven o’clock on a dark, filthy night. Jester was quick with the wind on her quarters, he knew, but this tartane would be fast as a witch. He rolled his eyes, to peer without straining or staring, for a glimpse of her, but blackness had swallowed her up, once more.

  He looked astern as Jester came around on her new course, the sea swashing down her flanks, the babble of water ’neath her fore-foot, under her transom an urgent mumbling. Hyde was to return on-station till daybreak then come west to safety in Vado Bay. Pray God there were no more signals from him! Had Choundas sent a first vessel out as a false lure, to test the waters and draw any watcher away, there was little he could do about it. For better or worse, he was now committed.

  “We escape her,” the captain of the tartane crowed to his crew, to his lone passenger the “Brutto Faccia” Francese huddled deep in his warm boat cloak. “Barge, signore? Pretty barge of a capitano, I say. I see her before. Ah-gah-mem-non,” he pronounced carefully in a poor French, mingled with quick native Italian. “She was only Britannici I see off Genoa. And she is slow. Big and slow, signore! ”

  “You are quite certain?” his passenger demanded, unused to being an idle commodity to be carted about, fretful that he had not been given charge of the saucy yachtlike coaster by Pouzin’s cabal of plotters, but was now at the mercy of this filthy, unshaven brute with his dark, liquid eyes, olive complexion, and harsh Arabic face. Mongrels, he thought them all, unwanted Persian, Turkish, Egyptian polluters of the ancient Etruscan, Celtic blood of the first Latins.

  “Only Britannici we see, days and days, signore, ” the tartane’s commander insisted. “Barge, come in today then go back out. Watchers, in fishing boats see ship of this Nel-eh-son-ey go west, meet another, but do not return. We are safe now, signore! ” he boasted, thumping his chest. “I sail circle around big, slow ship-of-line! Ecco, we go out to sea. Coast come down to us, at Vado there are Britannici patrol. We reduce sail, too. No one can catch us.”

  “No, we should press on,” Guillaume Choundas curtly replied. He almost felt a mythic prickling in his thumbs, an unease that would not be stilled until he was ashore, or back aboard his ship. “I order . . .”

  “No one order me,” the other barked. “I am capitano, you are the passenger. We reduce sail. It is blowing almost too good. We go out from the coast. We get to Finale before sunrise, we go so quick, and cannot land you on that coast in the dark. Lay still, off Finale, and wait till the dawn, we meet Britannici patrols, you see? If more wind comes, we are safe out at sea, not on rocky coast. You want to live, signore? We do what I say. Angle out, stand back in, go fast all the time. But not too fast, si? Shut up and drink some wine, signore. I am best capitano in all of Genoa, the senatore, he knows this. Why he hires me to carry his letters to you Francese. I command his yacht if he did not give me so many orders. I do not like orders.”

  “Whether you like them or not,” Choundas protested, “your employer told you to get me to a French-held port. If we’re making such good time, then it could be Loano, even Alassio. It doesn’t have to be Finale. Stay inshore, keep up your speed, and land me at the port where dawn finds us.”

  “Too far for us,” the captain objected, turning surly. “There is too much risk coming back to Genoa. I do not ever see ships of you Francese to protect me, signore. You are capitano importante in such a little navy. There are ten of us . . . one of you. You do not tell us what to do, Capitano Grande. ”

  With that, he turned away to shout orders to his crew, to reduce sail, and went to the tiller-bar aft, to direct the helmsman to wear out to sea. The tartane slowed, began to slough and rock. Lateen rigs were horrid when it came to sailing so fine downwind. A square sail, off the wind, would belly full, strain equally from corner to corner, and reduce the excess wallowing motion, which robbed a ship of speed.

  Shop clerks, Choundas was forced to fume in silence! Eager for their own beds tomorrow evening, no stomach for a long voyage. Working for the gold, the excitement . . . but with no sense of discipline, purpose, or loyalty. Mongrels, he added to the list of their sins. Just as bad as those swaggering, cockscomb mercenary privateers; all bluster and brag. Once Genoa was theirs, Choundas vowed, and the guillotines came, to winnow out the “aristos,” the usurers, those opposed to the new regime, he would be sure that this captain’s name was found in the book of the damned. Mongrels, he thought, squinting his eyes in fury; so dumb they cling to barbaric Arabian lateens, when even the most famous man of Genoa, Christopher Columbus, knew to change over to square rig! An ignorant, mongrel race!

  “I’d not be pressin’ closer ashore, sir,” Buchanon warned him. “Too dark t’see what we’re about. Nor whether we’re still chasin’ yon tartane . ”

  “There’s depth enough, Mister Buchanon?” Lewrie countered. “A nor’east wind to drive us offshore, for once? Not a lee shore . . .”

  “But th’ coast trend’s southerly, sir,” Buchanon insisted. “I suggest we come t’ west by south, Captain. E’en does our Chase stand inshore o’ us durin’ th’ night, the coast’ll shoulder her out.”

  “It’s the coast he wants, to land on, Mister Buchanon,” Lewrie spat, as two bells of the Middle Watch chimed at one a.m.

  “Which he’d be a purblind fool t’do, with such a sea runnin’,” Buchanon countered. “He can’t close it till dawn, same’z us, sir.”

  “Very well, Mister Buchanon. West by south it is. Mister Knolles, we’ll haul our wind a mite more, to west by south. Hands aloft, take in sail. First reefs in the main course, mizzen and maintop’sls. I don’t wish to shoot past her in the dark. Nor be blown too far loo’rd of the coast by sunrise . . . by this nor’east wind.”

  Should there be a wind shift, which usually happened along such a coast, should it moderate or clock northerly, he’d be headed, robbed of po
wer when he needed it most, and badly placed for pursuit.

  Assumin’ there’s somethin’ t’see at dawn, he sighed, frustrated. Jester had logged a steady eight knots since espying their Chase around Voltri. Three hours later, and they were almost level with Vado Bay, at that speed. And still had no further sighting of that spectral tartane . He had to admit that Buchanon was right to be cautious. Rocks aplenty inshore, the sea not so boisterous they’d be warned of risk by white foam breaking on them, the moonlight too weak to give them first sight to steer clear. Stout as the wind had blown, he’d expected some rain with it, such a pall of storm cloud overhead that what poor view the lookouts had would be blotted out entirely; but that hadn’t come. The solid black of the shore could still be guessed at, if one didn’t peer too long or hard at it; whitecaps could be espied all about, by the faint moon. But no sign of that damned tartane!

  Jester slowed as her sail was reduced, even with the wind fine on her starboard quarter. Purring now, as three bells chimed, solidly surefooted and ploughing. But to where?

  C H A P T E R 7

  Sir?” Knolles prompted, a little closer to Lewrie’s ear, and giving him a “gentlemanly” nudge. “Sir?”

  “I’m awake, sir,” Lewrie grumbled, rising from a treacly sleep from his wood-and-canvas deck chair. He fought the constricting folds of his boat cloak, sensing immediately that the weather had changed.