A Jester’s Fortune

And had there not been both a boardinghouse chambermaid, and an actual whore at Leghorn, where even the dead could 'put the leg over' a fetching mort for the price of a scone? No, Clarence Spendlove didn't think his few years on this mortal coil had been a complete waste of chances.

'You, Clarence? Little 'hop o' my thumb'?' Hyde went on, louder as well. 'You've not a jot on the experiences I've had. Can't serve aboard Jester this long, without. Can't serve under the 'Ram- Cat'-'

'Sshh!' Spendlove cautioned.

'You wish to be just like him… when you grow up, that is,' Hyde shot back, a bit more quietly.

'And who wouldn't, I ask you?' Spendlove shot back, ignoring his own warning. 'Least, the early years, mind. 'Fore-'

'You gentlemen done skylarking?' their captain snapped from the edge of the dock, ready to enter his gig. 'Shake a leg, then.'

'Well, erm…' Hyde replied. 'Don't we both, rather. Before we get too long in tooth for it.'

CHAPTER 5

The squadron lay at rest, once more anchored in the mill-pond-quiet port of Trieste. On this visit, with the coming of summer, it was a much nicer-seeming place, no longer buried under gloomy skies, with all that drizzly, seeping rain and misty fogs. Securely anchored in an allied harbour, behind a breakwater fortified and armed against a raid, and with a walled town that was well patrolled by Austrian soldiers or city watchmen, Captain Charlton had allowed as how the crews could be let ashore, watch by watch, for some precious shore liberty. Those steady warrants and hands, of course. With not one man per ship able to speak German, it would be almost impossible for anyone to change his clothes and desert. And they had cause for celebration, after a month or more on patrol down south.

Pylades and Jester had managed to fetch in four prize-ships, and had been forced to burn three more, swept up farther south of the Ionian Isles; outbound carrying cargoes of timber and naval stores. Lionheart and Myrmidon had had a less productive patrol-they'd only brought in a pair of ships. Over on the Italian side of the straits, or the Adriatic Sea, it had been rare to run into a merchant vessel with improper, Colourable, papers and manifests. They'd encountered far more Neapolitans, Papal State, Venetian, or neutral traffick. They'd stopped thirty or more ships, and, while there had been some they'd suspected of being engaged in smuggling for France, their papers had either been legitimate and unimpeachable-or the very best forgeries they'd ever seen. More cautious than Rodgers and Lewrie, perhaps, they'd been

forced to allow them to proceed on their voyages. Better that than being hauled into an Admiralty Court for unlawful seizure and sued to their eyebrows!

'Uhm…' Lewrie smiled with pleasure. 'Sprightly, indeed, sir. And rather spicy, too. Hint of floral, to the nose? What did you say it was, again, sir?'

'A gewurztraminer, Commander Lewrie.' Charlton beamed back at him, quite pleased that his officers liked his wine selection. 'That is, I am told, German for 'spiced'… getourz. Not too sweet on your palates, gentlemen?'

'Not at all, sir!' Commander Fillebrowne was quick to reassure his superior. 'My word, sir, you must tell me the name of the shop you got it from. Have to have a case'r two of this aboard. Tastier than a proper port. Lighter, too,' Fillebrowne toadied on.

'Right fine, sir,' Rodgers told him. 'Kinder on th' tongue than 'Miss Taylor,' nor half as raw. Doesn't pucker ya like a hock or Rhenish. Aye, I'd take a case'r two aboard, as well, sir.'

Not all in one sitting, Lewrie thought with a secret grin. Rodgers was born with a hollow leg, holds his guzzle better'n any I ever did see, but Lord… what a packet he can stow away, and give no sign of!

'Perhaps the nicest bit come off from shore, sirs,' Charlton said, turning moody and a touch fretful. 'Sweeter by far than what I read in your report, Captain Rodgers, of what you and Lewrie learned of the poor state of Venetian defences, for certain. I would never have expected to see them let things get in such a shoddy fix.'

' 'Lo, how the mighty are fallen,' sir, aye. Something like that,' Commander Fillebrowne cited with a commiserating shrug and head-shake.

'Something very much like that, sir.' Captain Thomas Charlton grimaced. 'S'pose it'd do no good to alert the Venetian senate to what venal situation obtains on Corfu, do you? Do no good to… tattle?'

'I doubt the Venetians would appreciate it, sir,' Lewrie replied when it looked like no one else would rise to it. 'There must be hundreds of their nobility profiting from some other corruption already. To alert 'em would cause just enough grief for them to resent us.'

'And,' Fillebrowne pointed out with a raised finger, 'since the provveditore down yonder, and the others, are nobles recorded in their so-called Golden 'Stud' Book, they're untouchable.'

'Don't know, sir,' Rodgers countered with a sly look. 'Venice is known f r cleanin' up scandals quiet-like. Th' odd body dumped in a canal, anonymous stabbin's in the streets by hired bravos… stranglin' th' overgreedy with a silk noose in prison. Beats th' cost of a trial-an' th' public embarrassment-all hollow.'

'Onliest thing is, Captain Rodgers'-Charlton brightened, wryly amused-'they've a tradition of killing the messenger who brings 'em the bad tidings, too!'

'Well, there is that, sir,' Rodgers allowed with a wry grin.

Charlton set his glass on the dining table and smoothed down his unruly, wiry grey hair-hair, Lewrie noted, that had been more pepper than salt just scant months before they'd sailed for the Adriatic.

'I was ashore, gentlemen,' Charlton announced, folding his hands in his lap and working his lips from side to side, as if trying to find a comfortable fit. 'There are two items of note. One merely bad-and one utterly appalling. S'pose we should get the worst out of the way first. That old acquaintance of yours, Lewrie, this Bonaparte-'

'Oh, aye, did Latin verbs together, sir,' Lewrie sniggered.

Charlton gave him a beetle-browed glare, which shushed him, and his too-quick wit, much like an irate tutor.

'Seems he's given the Austrians more woes, according to what the good Major Simpson told me,' Charlton went on, after a last glare, for assurance that Lewrie was properly chastened and would make no more amusing comments. 'Crossed the Po River into Lombardy round the beginning of May. Ignored their fortress-city of Pavia and found an unguarded stretch where no one ever would have thought to look for him-at Piacenza. Fillebrowne, you're still our expert on Italian geography. Do you unroll that map for us, sir… there's a good fellow? Ah, just here… far east of Pavia. Marched or flew, I don't know which would be harder to credit, from Turin in bare days.' Charlton looked gloomy, a hand waving over the general vicinity, once Fillebrowne had dutifully displayed the map and began to anchor it with glasses.

'Marshal Beaulieu, I'm told, had planned to entrench behind the Ti-cino River and the Po, anchoring things with Pavia, but with the French threatening him from the east and Milan wide open, the Austrian Army was forced to retreat. Abandoning Pavia, and part of its garrison-and all the supplies gathered there- same as happened before, when they had to abandon Alessandria,' Charlton related with a disappointed sniff. 'Now, here… the Adda River, at a place called Lodi… Bonaparte caught up with Beaulieu's rear guard. Fought his way across the narrow bridge under heavy fire and cut up the rear guard. Rather handily, I must say… or so Major Simpson related it to me.'

'And that, rather reluctantly, I should expect, sir,' Fillebrowne quipped with a derisory smirk.

'Quite, sir,' Charlton snapped, turning his frosty humour on Fillebrowne for a welcome change, and glaring his smarminess to scorn. 'I am also told-reluctantly or not, Commander Fillebrowne-that Milan fell to French troops about the middle of the month… not five days after this battle at Lodi, and Marshal Beaulieu and his Austrians- what's left of'em, mind-have scuttled back to Mantua to regroup. And what that means, sirs, is that the western half of Lombardy is now lost!'