A Jester’s Fortune

goes for the short and the dark. Lieutenant Charles… that other willowy fop, that artist Antoine Gros, she fetched along. They're more her type. Poor little bastard. I don't think he does know. Yet. God, it makes me want to spew! We finally get ourselves a great general, and he's saddled with a whore like her. Makes him look like a turnip. Once he finds out, he'll be destroyed, I tell you! And then where'll we be?'

'Take a turn on her, open his eyes so to speak. Or make sure Lt. Hyp-polyte Charles goes back to his goddamned First Hussars. With a Davids writ… like Uriah, the Hittite,' Augereau suggested. 'A hero's death… nose to nose with the foe.'

'That could be arranged,' Massena calculated, rubbing his chin in thought. 'Won't matter, though. Once we're back in the field, it's certain she'd just find herself another. As for the other idea…?'

'Mmm?' Augereau asked softly.

'Frankly, I wouldn't stick your dick in it,' Massena said with a laugh.

'It's narrow, but vital,' General Bonaparte expounded over one of his many maps to several officers. Murat was there, along with Lieutenant Charles. Josephine was foisted off on some Italian ladies, bored beyond tears by how provincial even royal Italians could be, by how crude was their command of French, the only elegant and civilised tongue!

'Come right down and relieve Mantua.' Murat frowned.

'Never,' Napoleon said, chuckling. 'We move forward to Brescia, use that as our new base of operations. Wurmser must advance against it, down the Brenner Pass. Lake Garda sits between, to divide his forces. Does he use the Adige Valley, to the east, there is still Lake Garda. I command the square between-Lonato, Castiglione, Brescia, free to move against his every advance. Either way, he must muffle himself in one of the river valleys- Adige, Chiesa, Mincia or Po-to get down to Mantua. Wurmser will try to relieve the siege, not destroy me. I know how he thinks. The old way. Lift the siege, drive us back. Not destroy us. Mantua I use as bait for him. Let him come.'

'I see, sir.' Murat beamed.

'Ah, yes,' Lieutenant Charles sighed, stifling a yawn and turning to look over his shoulder for a brief second, to exchange sympathetic and intriguing looks with the 'incomparable Josephine,' for both were bored rigid by their separate company.

'Most especially do I wish General Wurmser to consider Rivoli as an easy approach-march route,' Bonaparte said, tapping the map with his pencil. 'I've seen the ground, and it's heavenly. Easy-rolling, flat and even, and fairly open, where I could really manoeuvre. Where our guns could be positioned to best effect. Massed batteries, hein, cher Murat? All our guns, and the ones we've captured, massed into three or four gigantic, death-dealing batteries. Then let him send an avalanche against me, a tidal wave of Austrians, and I'll break him like coastal cliffs break even the mightiest waves. And with massed batteries for bulwarks, like miniature fortresses, I use the rest of the infantry as foot-cavalry. Quick, and fast, and smash his nose, no matter where he sticks it in. Blunt his every move, and confound him. Out. Out, this could happen.'

'He supposedly has fifty thousand sir,' General Berthier reminded him from across the map-table. 'We, but forty-five thousand. And ten thousand of ours tied up in the siege at Mantua.'

'Then 111 bludgeon every thrust he makes, from every mouse-hole pass in the Alps. He cannot march his entire army through merely one. He will divide, sure that he can regroup once he's below Lake Garda.' Napoleon snorted. 'But I'll not let him. Ever, Berthier. Ah, then. You will excuse me, but I must go rescue Josephine. She has so little Italian, I'm sure she's uneasy with the Milanese ladies.'

'Allow me to accompany you, sir,' Lieutenant Charles offered.

'Yes, do, Lieutenant.' Bonaparte nodded. 'Do. We must do our best to amuse my darling. Camp life can be so stultifying.'

Berthier helped the general s secretary, Junot, roll up the map, to be returned to a better-guarded study: Berthier sighed with resignation, knowing by now that there would never be any purely social times for the Army of Italy or its commanding officers. On a whim, the spur of the moment, right in the midst of pleasurable, lighthearted salons… out would come the maps as General Bonaparte's ever-active imagination got the better of him; as if he schemed and pondered martial musings every waking moment. Dreamed in his sleep the solutions to guarantee a victory! And then, sometimes upon a brilliantly inspired flash of genius, simply had to withdraw to his map-table, his reports. And wake up the rest, of course. Or draw them from their amusements.

Such as Berthier's own, who waited for him across the salon, now amused by Massena and Augereau, by the gallant young Murat-the aristocratic and lovely younger Giuseppina Visconti. She flashed him a smile as he began to cross to them-quite eagerly, for Berthier was leery of those two raffish rogues and their intentions, though they'd made their own personal conquests of Italian ladies.

Massena cast him a glance-looking furtive and caught-out? the older Berthier could imagine. Was he feeling guilty, did he have something to feel guilty about? Berthier wondered, feeling a surge of anger?

But, no. Massena lifted an expressive brow and darted a significant look towards the settee beyond, on which Josephine sat, surrounded by her slim, dark sycophants, Lt. Hyppolyte Charles and the artist Gros. Their general stood by, like a servant waiting for orders, mute and clumsily inarticulate in the face of such glittering company, such easy and droll repartee.

Berthier cocked a weary brow himself, made a sad moue.

So clever, the general, he thought; in everything but Life. So observant towards all but his vexing wife!

Massena openly frowned, like an ill-tempered eagle who had just spotted a rabbit far below. A sardonic shrug, a theatrical lift of two gloved hands in despair was Augereau's comment.

'Not even a handsome whore,' Berthier whispered to himself, and tried to put himself in a better frame of mind to rejoin his entrancing new mistress, to have her all to himself, apart from those 'hot rabbits,' Massena and Augereau, who'd couple with a snake could they find hips. 'The poor little bastard.'

'… winter, I am certain,' that 'poor little bastard' was now saying, a firmly fixed expression of unwavering certainty on his face, as he made his prediction; not a boast, but a prediction. 'By winter, my army will be on the Austrian frontiers. We'll own all of Italy and even Venice, perhaps. And Austria will be beaten. I will beat them.'

Berthier shook his head again. What could one say to something like that?

CHAPTER 2

'Good charts,' Sailing Master Edward Buchanon opined gruffly. 'Marvels Pr accuracy, sir, 'ese Venetian charts.'

'By God, they'd best be, hadn't they, Mister Buchanon?' Lewrie replied, gruff with his own worries for Jesters quick-work the past few days. 'Very well, then, Mister Knolles. Round her up to the wind and bring-to. Prepare to anchor.'

'Aye aye, sir,' Knolles answered, almost hanging over the lee bulwarks for any sign of shoaling. He lifted his hat to swipe at his hair nervously before going to the helmsmen to issue his orders.

It was Lieutnant Kolodzcy's studied opinion that the very sort of Serb pirate they wished could be found in this netherland of coast controlled by no one, pretty much-this stretch of disputed or ignored shore between Venetian Spalato in the north and independent Ragusa to the south.

They'd been near their quest before without knowing it, when they'd sailed close to the large islands of Hvar and Brae in pursuit of a prize. For this was where the claimed territory of the ancient and defeated Serbian princedoms came closest to the sea, shoved like a knife-blade between the Croatian or Venetian lands and the now-Muslim, Turk-ruled Bosnians.

South of Hvar, which ran east-west, lay other isles, some smaller and less important, where many displaced, rootless peoples sheltered. The large isles of Korcula and Mjlet, the long, narrow isle that paralelled the coastline- Peljesac-and lay within spitting distance but totally removed from anyone's grasp. The smaller islets of Lastovo and Susak were farther out from the shore in deep water and favourably near the main shipping route for hostile merchantmen and smugglers. All, Kolodzcy assured them, were isolated, rarely visited by patrols of any local power, completely ignored by the greater powers, and the ownership up for grabs from one decade to another,