A Jester’s Fortune

Letters of Marque and Reprisal, they would have to declare them Austrian subjects, to begin with. Would have to allow them to work from Trieste, since the home port must be stated. And they would have to sail under the national colours of the nation which issued the documents. And, I rather doubt any Balkan pirates could be stood here, do you, sir?'

Charlton took a sip of wine and almost had himself a chuckle of sardonic amusement in contemplating the sight of illiterate, seagoing peasants and cutthroats in placid Trieste 's beer cellars.

'And, given the long-standing hostility 'twixt Austrians and the various minorities down south, I equally doubt the pirates would enjoy the association, either, so… no, sir. There will be no letters from the Austrians.'

'Not from us, then, surely, sir!' Lewrie carped.

'Nor from us, Commander Lewrie,' Charlton told him. 'I haven't that authority in the first instance, and as I said, this arrangement… should it even be possible to make such an alliance… would be of a temporary, ad hoc nature. Sub rosa, so to speak. Not the sort of thing one wishes bruited about. A rather loose, informal arrangement.'

For a man who'd been writhing just a second before, Charlton had gone rather calm, Lewrie thought. Now that his decision to co-opt piratical bands was out in the open, and had not immediately been shouted down, Charlton seemed to have firmed the decision in his mind, and it was not going to be a topic for discussion.

'War on the 'cheap,' ' Lewrie muttered.

'You said, sir?' Charlton queried most petulantly.

'Something one of my old captains said, sir,' Lewrie answered, chin up. 'When we were trying to talk Red Indians into alliance with the Crown back in '82. Came up again in the Far East, with South Sea pirates, 'tween the wars. War on the 'cheap,' he called it, sir. And no good ever came from either.'

'S'pose you'd be preferring the Uscocchi, sir?' Fillebrowne said, breezing on as if there'd been no objections.

'I would, indeed, Commander Fillebrowne,' Charlton mused, patting his unruly hair back in place. 'Splendid fighters on land, since they're Croat. And deuced good seamen, too, as the Austrian officers at our welcoming supper told us. Catholic, don't ye know. Fiercely devoted to their religion.'

'Holy war, sir?' Lewrie posed. 'There's a Pandora's Box we-'

'Devoted to a religion, sir, that is at least European!' Captain Charlton shot back, glaring him to silence once more. Or at the least trying to. 'And I tell you, Commander Lewrie, I begin to tire of your particular sense of humour, forever drolly mocking and-'

'I'm not japing, sir. Not this time,' Lewrie assured him with a dead-level and dead-sober gaze. 'I've seen war on the 'cheap,' and it's a blood-red horror, sir. Fought by… well, sirs, one can't call massacre and ambush fighting, exactly. Rape, pillaging, torching and leveling, and once it's begun, there's no calling it back, sir. Blood calls for blood, revenge… Corsican vendetta, Scottish feud, and there is no European, civilised control over it once it's got rolling, sir.'

'War waged by, as you just admitted, Commander Lewrie, savages! Red Indian tribes in the Americas? South Sea islanders and heathens in tattoos and breechclouts?' Charlton boomed, his blood up. 'What the heathens do 'mongst themselves, once armed with European weapons, isn't our concern, I tell you! What they can do with them 'gainst our enemies is. What feuds and grievances the Balkan inhabitants suffer are already centuries old, sir, and will still be brewing long after we're gone. To co-opt, as you put it, a band of coastal pirates of whatever persuasion-temporarily-will make no difference. Whether they are at each others' throats with Roman short-sword and spear, or flintlock muskets and bayonets-with bloody cannon!-is moot. As odd as they are, the Slavs of the Balkans are Europeans, Commander Lewrie. Cut off from the finer things of life, admittedly, but still Europeans. They're not your painted Indians.'

Are they not, sir? Was on Lewrie's tongue, but he thought it'd be a bit beyond insubordinate to say it. No one had dealt with Balkan peoples yet, other than the odd brush with them off Brae and Bar, so he wasn't so sure that Charlton was completely wrong, or that he was so completely right, either. He screwed his face up, almost biting at a cheek in purse-lipped frustration, and kept silent, reddening.

'Catholic, Russian Orthodox or Greek Orthodox, those are European religions of a sort, sir,' Charlton rushed on, as if he'd already wrestled the main points of the logic behind his decision to the ground. 'Not as rational, I'll grant you, none of 'em, as the Church of England, nor Protestantism. Yet each has redeeming features of Christianity at bottom. The Dalmatian peoples do not have the Inquisition, as civilised Spain does, after all! As hand-to-mouth as they live, according to the accounts you brought of the few you encountered, they might even be of a placid, bucolic nature. Rustic, poverty-stricken peasants, toiling 'pon a few miserable, rocky acres or less, like so many Irish tenant crofters. Closer to the soil, closer to God, perhaps? Denied the luxuries of civilisation, may they not be closer to that Frog Rousseau's depiction of 'noble savages'? But, sir! Christians! Europeans. Capable of-'

'Turks're out, I take it, sir?' Rodgers interrupted, posing such a ludicrous notion that Charlton looked fit to lean over and bite him.

'Right out, Captain Rodgers!' Charlton barked. 'As I was about to say, the Dalmatian peoples are, at bottom, European stock. Capable of civilised doings, of forming firm pacts, of disciplining themselves and their behaviour. Look at the many units in the Austrian or Hungarian armies, for God's sake! Capable of following orders, of knowing a right from a wrong, and acting upon that knowledge with… with…! Well, if not from a gentlemanly sense of honour and propriety, then with the innate sense of honour and propriety which centuries of Christian dogma's drummed into them. It's not as if we're allying ourselves, even temporarily or expeditiously, with Gibraltar Apes! Nor with any of those swart kings of Dahomey, who sell their own kin to slave-dealers… or satanic beasts, after all!'

'God forbid, sir.' Fillebrowne all but shivered. 'It's quite like what that Scotsman, Burns, said in one of his poems, sir. That a 'man's a man, for a' that'? No matter his land of birth.'

'Exactly, Fillebrowne!' Charlton smiled thankfully, relieved that at least one of his officers sounded supportive. 'Exactly. No matter where one goes, people are people, when you get right down to it, with the same way of thinking, of deciding right from wrong. I'd take issue with your Burns, or anyone else, though, who professes that a day-labourer from the stews might be the equal of a proper gentleman… mean t'say, isn't that why we fought the Colonies? Are now embroiled in war with France, hey? Birth, class, privilege and education, and a sound religious upbringing by sober, dependable parents, make the difference-for European, Christian folk, at least. Just look at us!'

Oh, aye, look at us! Lewrie felt like groaning aloud; one a toad-eatin' swindler-to-be, one a feckless womaniser with a hollow leg, and me… an adulterous bastard! Fine lot we are, for examples!

'Wouldn't that make the French, or the Rebels, decent folk, then… at bottom, sir?' Lewrie couldn't help asking. 'Sensible, peaceful Christians, sprung of European stock?'

'But deluded, sir, by rabble-rousing, leveling Jacobinist cant,' Charlton growled. 'No different from us, I will allow Just dead-wrong in their thinking. And now intent on spreading their creed of the Common Man being the equal of a king, by force of arms. Using guns to settle the question which would be more suited to an intellectual wrangle than a war. And most hypocritically using their pious cant to justify taking territory they've always coveted, by conquest!'

Charlton was huffing hard, in high dudgeon and colour, his wind wheezing in and out through constricted nostrils like a forge-bellows.

'Now, sir…' he demanded, 'do you have any other pertinent comments to make, or care to share with us, Commander Lewrie?'

'Uhm…'

'So you are settled in your mind that we should approach Balkan pirates and attempt to form a temporary arrangement?' Charlton pressed. 'Well, not completely settled, sir. After all…' Lewrie sighed. 'Fillebrowne?' Charlton snapped, wheeling on him. 'It's a most unusual, and as you said yourself, sir,' Fillebrowne trimmed, coughing into his fist, 'a most onerous proposition. But one I feel is absolutely necessary. And you would not have proposed it had you not given it much difficult consideration, sir. I am at your total disposal. Game for anything you deem worthy, sir. At your orders.'