A Jester’s Fortune

you're anxious to join a friend, one can't find him? And, paradoxically, when you try to shun a pest, you practically trip over him everywhere one goes?'

'Dragan Mlavic, sir?' Knolles grimaced.

'Indeed, Mister Knolles,' Lewrie allowed with a matching scowl.

'Father always said, sir,' Spendlove piped up from his chair at the end of the table, where he filled the role of Mr. Vice, 'that a thing that's lost can't be found by searching.'

'Oh, he does, does he?' Lewrie smiled. 'So, what does Mister Spendlove do, younger Spendlove?'

'Sends his mother to hunt it up, I'd expect, sir.' Midshipman Hyde sniggered.

'Well, sometimes.' Clarence Spendlove smiled and shrugged. 'I have seen him just sit down and ponder, though, sir. Where he'd seen a thing last. Like walking into a room and forgetting what one went in there to get, sir? One has to retrace one's steps.'

'Back to Trieste and Venice?' Knolles scoffed, signalling for a top-up of wine from Aspinall. Lewrie had at least put in at Corfu, and found a British merchantman or two come for the currant crop, bearing a cargo of wines from London or Lisbon, more suited to the palates of the many expatriate Englishmen who farmed or factored there.

'That'd be… pleasant, sir,' Hyde simpered, sharing a lascivious look with Spendlove, 'to stretch one's legs ashore.'

'Ah, but which leg, sir?' Spendlove queried impishly. 'Ahem!' Lewrie cautioned with a cough into his fist, riveting their attention. 'I'm told a captain is responsible for the education of his midshipmen. Part of that is how to behave at-table. No talk of religion, politics… women!… or business is allowed.'

'Least 'til the port and nuts, sir.' Lieutenant Knolles chuckled. 'After the ladies have retired to the drawing room.'

'Damme, do I set a poor example?' Lewrie pretended to recoil in shock. 'Lowered proper Navy standards, and corrupted you all?'

Don't answer that! he thought with a cringe. There's more'n a grain o' truth in that. And why not, when I'm such a sterlin' example to go by! Damme, ashore I'd talk o' nothin' else!

He'd made a jape. They responded like dutiful juniors should; they showed amusement. Lamely, of course, the jest hadn't been that good.

'Tsk-tsk, Mister Spendlove,' he further pretended to chide. 'We can't have you discussing lewd women in front of your mother once you return home!'

'Only did that with my brother, sir,' Spendlove shyly confessed.

'Ah!' Lewrie chuckled easily.

How much they'd grown, he thought; Spendlove was now all but full-grown, not the callow stripling from HMS Cockerel. He was eighteen now, and Hyde, whom he'd gotten at Portsmouth, a year older. A pair of young men, no longer boys, more than halfway to their own commissions as Sea Officers.

'Well, since Mister Spendlove has already broken the ban, so to speak, perhaps we should discuss our… business… as well,' he went on, after a forkful of a rather zesty mutton ragout over pasta, and an accompanying sip of red. 'We may have to return to Trieste or Venice, after all. Either port, where some may make beasts of themselves, hmm? We've not seen hide nor hair of Lionheart, nor of any French men-o'-war which might have driven her off-station. Now, let's see what we could construe from this evidence. Mister Hyde?'

'Uhm…' Hyde gulped, trying to swallow a hunk of bread he had almost chewed. 'That she's taken three or four prizes, sir. And was forced to sail off, unable to take, or man, any more?'

'Aye, that's possible,' Lewrie granted. 'But now she's sailed off… where's our smugglers, where's our Frogs? Shouldn't they be out by now? 'When the cat's away, the mice will play,' right? Sorry, puss,' he said to his cat, who was lurking near his chair for dropped morsels.

'Sir,' Spendlove contributed, cautiously sipping wine before he spoke, to do so with an unobstructed palate. 'Perhaps they're holed up in those nearby Venetian ports, waiting for their timber. And they're not aware Lionheart has left yet, sir?'

'Aye, again, sir,' Lewrie agreed amiably. 'Though I still can't understand them totally abandoning the trade. There's still an urgent need for timber, for the French fleet at Toulon. No, I wasn't speaking to you, greedy-guts. Oh, here, then.' He sighed, awarding Toulon some gravy-laden bits of mutton. To keep him quiet and off the table.

'Perhaps mistakenly, sir,' Lieutenant Knolles stuck in, his forehead furrowed in thought. 'Do the Frogs have this new arrangement, ordered by their Ministry of Marine, d'ye see… to use the Venetian harbours. Lionheart arrived just as they were going to earth, and found nothing to seize. After two weeks or so of empty horizons, Captain Charlton might have abandoned the area and gone back north, expecting to discover better pickings in mid-sea. And to speak to Commander Fillebrowne about what Myrmidon might have turned up in her area… Might have been just bad timing on her part, sir.'

'Well, sir…' Hyde wondered aloud, getting into the spirit of things; with an empty maw, this time. 'Captain Charlton might wish to meet up with us and Captain Rodgers in Pylades. See how our, uhm… our piratical endeavour was working out, too.'

'Meet the other players, so to speak, sir. Before the cards are dealt?' Spendlove added, forever trying to trump Hyde.

'All very possible, sirs.' Lewrie smiled briefly. 'Damme, you know, I rather like this, gentlemen. Discussing shop talk over food. See how clear we think, like a well-stoked hearth? Brighter than ever? And, in private, where one may make a silly comment, with no recriminations. Less a cabin servant or steward tells tales out of school, that is… Aspinall?' Alan teased.

'Oh, mum's th' word, sir.' Aspinall grinned, not a whit abashed. 'Top-up, Captain? Gentlemen?'

'So, our prey is lurking in Venetian ports,' Lewrie summarised, once their glasses had been recharged, 'waiting for neutrals to come down and load 'em full.'

'Odd, though, sir,' Lieutenant Knolles objected softly, holding up his glass to the lanthorn light to admire the ruby glow, or inspect it for lees. 'All the Balkans are thick with timber. I'd imagine that, were the French to throw enough gold about, they could get all they wished closer than Venetian-shipped Istrian or Croatian oak. Get the locals to go wood-cutting round Volona, Durazzo and such, and use Montene-gran or Albanian trees.'

'Uhm, sir…' Spendlove threw out, most warily in contradiction. 'Would that not be green wood? Unseasoned?'

'Well, aye, but… ah!' Knolles scowled, his logic confounded. 'Do the Frogs have urgent need of seasoned oak and compass timber, they still have to depend on the Venetians or someone else. They can't wait years for it to season, they need to construct ships now. Else, we'd always outnumber them or outbuild them so badly they might as well not bother with a navy, and put their money into their armies. As the Aus-trians do. Poor devils.'

'Ah, indeed, Mister Knolles,' Lewrie enthused, catching the import, at last. Might be a dim slow-coach, he thought; but I get there in the end! 'Seasoned wood, ready to use as soon as it's unloaded.'

'And, sir!' Hyde all but cried. 'Montenegro and Albania can't have local navies or shipping, as long as the Turks wish to keep them in harness. So where s the timber industry that knows how to select compass timber, or season oak? Where's large shipbuilding, at all?'

'Well, there's Ragusa, Dulcigno, where the corsairs surely make their own…' Spendlove pointed out. 'The Hungarians and Croats?'

'Small change, though,' Knolles dismissed quickly. 'Couldn't support much beyond their own few needs, not this quickly.'

Lewrie listened to their energetic back-and-forth, idly making furrows through his ragout, skirting the lee shores of muttony islets with the tines, deep in thought. He put down his fork at last and had another sip of wine.

'I don't believe we will be returning to Trieste,' he announced. 'Not right off, I'm afraid. For whatever reason Captain Charlton had to leave the straits unguarded, he's done so, and for us to rush back in search of him… well, that'd be remiss. Do the Frogs and the rest of the smugglers know the coast is clear, they'll load up with timber and toddle off back to France with everything they can carry in the interim. No, I think we have to stay. Else…'

He looked up to see his three bachelor juniors' true disappointment that there'd be no crawling through the fleshpots of Venice, nor even those of staid Trieste, anytime soon.