A King`s Commander

brief grin. 'So easily gulled, that one. I will make sure Paris knows of his gullibility. Should he have gotten the timing wrong, we sail for nothing. But, if this is a ploy to expose the convoy, then he will pay for it.'

So many places to cover; Nice, Sam Remo, Cagnes, Antibes, and Cannes. Martin had yet to send him his needed ships, so he could not hope to cover them all. Nor hope to stand out to sea, but not so far out that he could not espy signal fires to alert him where the British might strike. Nor hope to confront them in equal combat, ship against ship, either.

He glanced at Hainaut, wondering…

Never believe what is offered me too easily, either, Guillaume Choundas frowned. So quickly exchanged, bearing his cunningly gathered information about the British squadron. And the greatest news of all! That Jester, and that bastard Lewrie who'd maimed him, were one and the same!

When the British did not appear on the horizon, where he'd been assured they would, he'd begun to fret. First in anger, that a chance for revenge was delayed, that he'd have to wait to capture Jester, and carve her smirking bastard Englishman into stew meat, as he had lusted to do these past nine years! So close at hand, yet…!

Anger had cooled, replaced by trepidation; that he'd been told a lie, a cunning English lie, that someone was in league with them and had passed the lie on. Who would wish him humiliated? Pouzin? Yes, that could be it. He'd seemed so anxious to know the date of sailing, so he could make his arrangement, he'd said, but that could have been his way of getting what he needed to know, which he'd told the enemy! There might never have been a smuggled letter from Genoa, at all! It could have been Pouzin's fabrication.

Alan Lewrie, though, Choundas fumed in silence, clump-shuffling about the deck, oblivious for once to his crippled state. Lieutenant Alan Lewrie… Commander Alan Lewrie… Lewrie, Lewrie, Lewrie. Hate him! In the days since Hainaut had returned with that startling revelation of who his foe was, how close he was to vengeance, that name and what he wished to do to the person bearing that name had become almost a litany, like what he had once mumbled in rote duty over rosary beads.

But now, at sea, where a cooler head could prevail, he had begun to wonder about the timing of that revelation. Why now? Just before a convoy, a vitally important convoy…

It was late August, almost September. Soon, the weather would turn, the gales arise, cutting seaborne supplies by half, even without a British squadron on the Riviera. The first snows would fall in those mountain passes, and soldiers of both sides would go into winter quarters, unable to wage war until spring, bogged or snowbound.

To use me, he sneered, at last, when a blinding epiphany struck! To delude me, disarm me… to blind me with the brightness of revenge! Someone on the opposing side, someone incalculably clever, had revealed this to me, through Hainaut and perhaps even through Pouzin. Waiting, watching… being fed information by traitors and greedy shop clerks… biding his time until this could be used against me.

La Vengeance now stood on East, racing with every scrap of canvas spread aloft, bounding and soaring, cleaving foam with a sibilant, spiteful hiss, like an adder aroused and dangerous, warning everything in sight to get out of striking distance. She stood on alone, though. The rest of his patchwork squadron was too weak, too slow, too thin-scantlinged for what she might discover. The winds had not been that good, the last few days; the convoy and escort force could still be caught up, if they'd found scant winds or foul. There was a chance that Capitaine de Frйgate Bayard, the too-handsome beast, would use his innate cleverness, and put in each night in a snug harbor, not daring an evening passage on the open sea. Would he be that clever? Choundas devoutly wished. One of the rare ones, clever and pretty, was Bayard.

Yet, how many tiny seaports had they passed, getting closer to Alassio, and no sign of them. It didn't mean that they were really a target, Choundas could tell himself. Perhaps the British didn't know of their presence. That everything would turn out fine.

Diano, to larboard and now astern. Only a few miles more, once around the headland that formed the spine of the western heights of the Bay of Alassio. No sign of any enemy warships further out to sea. A thought did cross his mind, that it was a trap; that whoever that very clever fellow was in the British camp, they'd passed the tale, knowing he would do this-rush to the scene, to assure himself. It made the right sort of sense, to Choundas. Who was more important to the war effort than he? With all modesty, he could not think of anyone else whose loss would do more harm to the cause of the Revolution. It was not hubris, that awareness; it was merely his studied opinion, after coolly weighing the facts, and the rest of the participants. Lewrie. Would Lewrie be there? Would anyone? As bait, or…

'Artillery!' sang out a watch officer. 'I hear gunfire!'

'Hй, merdel' Choundas groaned, biting his lip in anguish.

'Sail Ho!' Sang out the foremast lookout. 'Dead on the bow!'

He could hear it himself, now. Stuttering. Dull brumbies. A single flat bark. An irregular cannonading, around the headlands. His convoy! The 'L'Anglais'-the 'Bloodies'-were in Alassio Bay!

'Sail is ship-rigged!' the lookout cried again. 'Standing out to sea… larboard tack!'

'Her flag!' Choundas howled aloft, cupping his hands.

'Corvette!' the lookout shouted. 'Warship!'

'Her flag! Her damned flag!' Choundas screeched again.

'C'est l'Anglais!'

'Timonier, helm down a point, alee,' Choundas snapped, turning clumsily. 'Close- haul to windward. Brail up courses, and chain-sling the yards. We will fight her. Drum us to Action!'

'Sail Ho!'

'Where, away?'

'One point off th' star-b'd bows!'

Lewrie scaled the mizzen shrouds on the starboard side, telescope in hand, so he could see for himself. A ship, a proper ship, he thought; not one of those lateen-rigged locals. She was bows-on to Jester, aiming directly at her under a press of sail, flinging a great mustache of sea foam about her forefoot and cutwater, her arrogantly thrust bowsprit and jib boom cocking up and down as she rocked. No more than a league to leeward, standing on nor'east close-hauled, and about four miles offshore. The strange ship's courses, tops'ls, t'gallants, and royals were cusped to the wind, their leaches almost edge-on to him.

Something diff rent, though…? Even as he watched, the greater drum-taut billow astern of her fore-course went slack, winging out alee.

'Brailing up her main course!' Lewrie shouted down to his deck officers. 'To fight! She's a French warship! Mister Bittfield, run out the starboard battery, now! Hoist signal, 'Enemy in Sight'!'

He clambered down, to hop the last three feet to the quarterdeck and stride to the nettings overlooking the waist. He lifted his glass again. Should Jester stand on, she'd keep the wind gauge above the foe, but allow her to slip astern. That French ship… a. frigate, perhaps?… was as close to the wind as she could lie, already, and would slide aft as she stood on. Unless she tacked and bore away south to offer battle.

Has to be a frigate, Alan frowned; a lesser ship'd haul her wind and not be confident of the outcome. But she's so close inshore… I think I like her there. I allow her to tack out to deeper water, she's all the maneuvering room in the world, then. Aye, stand on as we are, for a bit more, but then haul our wind and wear down to her. Then, if her captain feels he's trapped himself, hell have to come about, tack 'cross the wind. But I'll still have the wind gauge of her. And rake her, bows-on to me and helpless. She'd have to haul away west…?

'Brail up the main course, Mister Porter. Rig out the boarding nets. Loose, sloppy bights, mind.' Lewrie smiled. 'Quartermaster… half a point to weather.'

Without the force of the main course, Jester slowed, sailing off the wind toward the sou'west, the beginnings of a Levanter, an easterly, on her larboard quarters. Altering course, making it more of a run downwind, which took away the apparent wind, making her seem slower still as she moved no faster than the breeze itself.

'Full-rigged ship, right enough, Captain,' Mister Knolles stated. 'Small frigate, or large corvette… about our