A Jester’s Fortune

hat off after the two pirates had stumbled into their waiting felucca, letting the rain sluice on his reeling head, into his mouth and half-focused eyes.

'Success, then, gen'lemen… Lewrie,' Rodgers groaned.

'S'pose one could call it that, sir,' Lewrie replied.

'Good God, but I've never been so 'in the barrel'!' Rodgers confessed. 'Drunk'z a lord. No, drunk'z a bloody emperor! Christ, I need a lie-down.'

'Y'll dine aboard then, sir,' Lewrie presumed, figuring Ben Rodgers wouldn't survive a row across to Pylades. It would be a right comic miracle could either of them manage to get into the gig! Bleakly, Alan saw himself stuck with them another night, and in an hour or so, might they be so recovered as to require 'hair of the dog' for restoration?

'Swear t'Christ, there's bloody three o'ya, Alan, old son! An' th' one'z too damn many, already.' Rodgers swayed. 'No, thought I'd go…'

'Ah,' Lewrie said, mopping his face on his sleeve. 'Pity. Bosun?'

'Aye, sir?' Cony replied, coming to his side as Lieutnant Kolodzcy put his head on Lewrie s left shoulder, with one arm about Rodgers, and began to sing and kick one dainty booted foot; some Austrian mountain nonsense that involved a stab at yodeling, though it came out more a whimpering.

'Chair-sling for Captain Rodgers, and… get off me!'

'Cap'um, uh… How me t'suggest a cargo net?' Cony tittered.

Lewrie managed to steer Kolodzcy to lean on Rodgers; or Rodgers to lean on Kolodzcy. They looked like a pair of mast-hoisting sheer-legs, or a two-legged stool… sure to go smash any minute.

'No…' Lewrie sighed, after a long, difficult stab at thought. 'Can't insult the dignity of guest, Cony. Chair sling, starboard side. Lots o' frappin', to keep 'em in, mind. Do they get in.'

'Oh aye, sir,' Cony said straight-faced, knuckling his brow with three fingers. 'Dignity.'

Lewrie turned back to behold Leutnant Kolodzcy stumbling through steps of a slow minuet, still singing that lively country song in a cracked voice. Ben Rodgers was hanging on his shoulder with a death-grip, and forced to follow in a shambling dance of his own. He was barking and howling like a hound on a hot scent for a commentary-when he wasn't cackling like an inmate in Bedlam over his canine insult to Kolodzcy's singing.

'Mister Knolles,' Lewrie croaked. 'Here, sir.'

'Utmos' compliments to ya, sir,' Lewrie slurred, 'an' would I be so 'bliged… well, someone should, hey? You render debarkin' honours for me? Be below. Dyin', it feels like.'

'Ah. De-barking honours, sir.' Lieutenant Knolles guffawed as loud as discipline would let him as Rodgers threw his head back and crooned like a famished wolf. 'Directly, Captain.'

Lewrie sighed, wondering how funny it might feel in the painful light of morning, and stumbled off aft, lifting his feet almost knees-up to avoid the odd ring-bolt, to the gay air of a Tyrol tune and the hoarse growls and howls of a 'music critic.'

'Lemme help ya, sir… 'at's the way,' Aspinall offered.

'Some hot coffee, then yer supper, sir. Make a new man o' ya.'

'Not up to solids, Aspinall. Don't think.'

'Soup an' toast, sir. Get somethin' on yer stomach. Soak up-'

'Aye, we have, ain't we?' Lewrie at last grinned as he was led into his great-cabins and dumped onto the starboard-side settee, sprawling like a loose bale of rag-picker's goods. 'Soaked up.'

'Be back in a tick, sir,' Aspinall assured him.

Crossly, Lewrie managed to get one boot off, got the hilt of his sword out from under his left buttock and kidney, but that was about as much as he could manage on his own.

Lord, what've we gotten ourselves into? he wondered to himself as he began to drift forrud, towards the edge of the settee, with his legs feeling as if they belonged to someone else; and an uncooperative swine, at that. Pirates, for Gods sake. Bloody lunatick pirates! Holy sacrifice… vengeance. Holy war, 'gainst ev'rybody else on God's green o? earth! Lord, what've we bloody started?

His fundament met the turkey carpet and the chequered deckcloth, legs sprawled at a wide angle, with his head now resting so far back on the settee cushions a sober observer might think him neck-broke.

His gaze swam about, cockeyed as if Jester were heaving, pitching, yawing and rolling in a hurricane under bare poles. There, in the dining coach, over the table on the forrud bulkhead, he found something to focus on. His wife Caroline's portrait. All sunny and radiant in a wide-brim straw bonnet, smiling so eye-crinklin' pleased, before their first house in the Bahamas, with East Bay and the shipping behind her.

He screwed one eye shut, to peer more intently.

'Needs o' th' Service, m'dear,' he apologised. 'Ne'er seen me bung-full, I know. Bloody barbarians… in f r dinner an' drink. Had t'keep up th' side, don' ysee? King an' Country…?'

He thought of crawling over for a closer, fonder look. Damme, though; was that a frown in her forehead… right where she wrinkled in those times she was vexed with him? Or was she laughing at him, at his ludicrous condition?

'Ben's fault, damn yer eyes,' he whispered. Peering took too much [out of him, so he shut the other eye, too, and let his head loll.

Aspinall returned with a mug of soup and some piping-hot toast, but he was too late. His captain's top-lights had been extinguished for the evening. With Andrews s help, they removed his coat, sword-belt and stock, the other fancy Hessian boot, and slung him gently into bed, with a swaddling coverlet atop.

Where he dreamed the most vivid and disturbing plum-brandy dreams. Of blood and crows, of a vast plain of bones, of biblical patriarchs with swinging swords, red-eyed vengeance, rapine and slaughter.

And of whispering seals whose voices were too soft to understand, or be heeded.

CHAPTER 6

South of the isle of Susak, smack in the middle of the Adriatic, lay a small cluster of rocky, barely inhabited islets round a larger, which was named Palagruza. Pylades and Petracic s galliot sailed there, to establish a camp, from which they would then go back to the Balkan mainland so Petracic could have a chance to raise his fellow Serbs. Ben Rodgers would capture him that suitable European ship, too.

Dividing their forces once again, Lewrie and Jester were sent off toward the Straits of Otranto. He was free of Rodgers, but most especially was he free at last of Leutnant Conrad Kolodzcy. Forced to beat against a persistent Sutherly, the Sirocco, for several days, he zigzagged his way down the Adriatic, quartering it thoroughly on-passage and hunting for prey once more.

The weather was hot, now it was late July, and the sere wind up from Africa was no refreshing relief, sometimes hazed with gathered dust or sand particles, reducing visibility. The seas, forced up the narrows into the cul-de-sac of the Adriatic, humped long, folding waves of seven or eight feet. Jester bowled over them surefooted, though, swooping on their faces and cleaving them in delightful bursts of spray with a quick, lively and satisfied motion. As if their warship felt as free as they-as liberated from their dubious dealings, and fresh-washed in proper Royal Navy business.

No, the only fly in their ointment was the presence of the dhow on their larboard quarters, for Dragan Mlavic had been sent off by his master Petracic to glean what pickings he could from Jester's successes. He'd fade back whenever they stood on larboard tack towards Italy. But, like a nemesis, they'd espy her again when forced over to starboard tack and angle for the Albanian or Montenegran shores.

Uncanny, it was. Surely, Lewrie thought, the Adriatic, narrow as it was, still held room enough to lose the bitch in! But no. There she was, hull-down to the East'rd. Could she be any other dowdy two- masted coaster, since the Adriatic teemed with them? Time and again, though, and hope against hope, they'd recognise her dun brown sails with the odd patches of new canvas they'd been forced to give Mlavic, which _; formed a stylised lightning-bolt pattern on her foresail! Until the very sight of that accidental emblem made every man-jack groan with disgust, as if a penniless relation had shown up to sponge off them, just