A Jester’s Fortune

beamed.

'Quite,' Gharlton answered, as inscrutable as the Sphinx.

'This way, sir,' Lewrie offered, glaring at Knolles, trying to mouth 'Full kit!' at him without Charlton being aware. 'Aspinall?'

'Aye, sir?' his lank young servant piped up.

'Dash on ahead and get us chairs, glasses and such.'

'Aye aye, sir,' Aspinall grunted.

Lewrie cursed himself again. He'd gestured with the damned penny-whistle! This was not making a good first impression at all!

The odour of fresh paint predominated; fresh paint, linseed oil and varnish. All the deal-and-canvas partitions had been struck below, as if the cabins had been stripped for battle. Dining furniture, the sideboard, wine cabinet, desk, sofa and chairs had been shunted over to the larboard side and covered with scrap tarpaulins. The sleeping coach and that damnable big-enough-for-two hanging bed-cot were in plain view. Captain Charlton took in the clutter, the sight of a Free Black tricked out as Cox'n, chivvying the working-party out, up the narrow companionway ladder to the after quarterdeck, so he and this… this Lewrie could speak in private. A weedy young valet, too weak- looking to draw breath, was trotting out two good armchairs in the middle of the deck, a collapsible tea-tray between them, and a pair of glasses. As far as possible from any still-wet surface.

'Will you take claret, sir? Brandy? Hock?' Lewrie offered, crossing to his desk to throw up a paint-splotched tarpaulin cover, open a drawer and hide that silly penny-whistle from further view. 'Or we have most of a pitcher of lemon and orange water, sir. Sweet and tangy. With a weak admixture of Italian spumante, o' course.'

'Like a cold gin punch without the gin, sir?' Captain Charlton enquired, with what to Lewrie felt like immense forbearance and patience. 'Aye, that sounds refreshing.'

Aspinall poured from a pewter pitcher so cool, compared to the heat trapped belowdecks, that it almost frosted. 'Bit o' winter ice from shore, sir,' he explained shyly to their visitor. He topped up those glasses with an opened bottle of sparkling white wine.

'Remarkably refreshing,' Charlton allowed after a sip or two. 'Now, sir. Reason for my unannounced call 'pon you.'

'Oof,' Lewrie grunted again, as Toulon the two-year-old ram-cat leaped into his lap. He'd grown considerably and had filled out to be quite a lapful, all sinew and sleek fur. He stretched out upon Lewrie's thigh, head out towards Charlton, paws hanging atop Lewrie s knee, tail slightly bottled and the tip thrashing below his master's chin. His yellow eyes were half slit, coolly regarding this possibly hostile newcomer, unblinking, with his ears half flat and his whiskers forward on guard. ' Toulon, sir. Where I got him, so it seemed…'

No, this ain't goin' well at all! Lewrie thought with a sigh.

'Uhm, yahyss… quite,' Charlton rejoined, with a sigh of his own; that sort of sigh Lewrie had heard often in his school-days, the sort associated with tutors or instructors he'd let down badly.

' 'Bout the same sort of disaster, Toulon is, too, sir,' Alan said, for want of something cleverer, and instantly regretting it.

Charlton fixed him with a dead-level glare for a moment, nigh the same sort he'd been getting from the ram- cat, as if he couldn't quite believe his eyes. A Commission Sea Officer, a full Commander of the Royal Navy, sitting cross-legged with a twelve-pound feline in his lap- half-empty glass in hand-amid a barking shambles of a great- cabin, dressed as out-at-the-heels as a dockyard drunk and stroking the damn beast as if nothing much were amiss!

'Just came from Victory, Lewrie,' Charlton said at last. 'Had a word with Admiral Jervis. I am charged with command of a new squadron. And you, and Jester, are to be a part of it.'

'Good, sir.' Lewrie brightened.

'Good?' Charlton queried sharply. 'Why 'good'?'

'Because there's little value in blockading the Genoese Riviera any longer, sir. We've lost it,' Lewrie replied straightaway. 'The French now have the good coastal roads-Marseilles to Genoa -open year-round. Less coastal shipping to intercept, d'ye see, sir.'

There, that sounds sensible, Alan thought; so he won't think he's dealing with a hen-head, after all. He wouldn't have to be the one to admit that to Captain Horatio Nelson, his present squadron commander, or to his favourite, that toplofty earnest prig Captain Cockburn, he and Jester's presence were about as welcome as wasps at an outdoor wedding.

'With the Austrians and Piedmontese cut off from us inland, we serve no useful purpose on the Ligurian coast,' Lewrie went on, since Charlton made no move to cut him off. 'Had we sent the entire fleet against Toulon west of Cape Antibes to draw them out to battle last year, it might have been a different story, but-'

'So you think Admiral Hotham was in error, sir?'

Uh-oh. Alan all but cringed; a tiny voice told him to get off that subject quickly, since he didn't know Charlton's patrons.

'Outnumbered, hence cautious, sir,' was all he'd say, so he wouldn't have to rise to the bait.

'I see,' Charlton replied, noncommittal.

'This summer, sir,' Lewrie dared opine, 'the French will most-like force the matter. Try and retake Corsica. That'll take transports. Spread the war farther east, perhaps. Deprive our Navy of Porto Especia and Leghorn, too. Outflank us on land and force the issue with the Austrians. And I'd imagine that your squadron will be in the thick of it. That's why I said 'good.' '

He squirmed a bit in his chair, though Toulon wasn't moving.

'First impressions aside, Captain Charlton, Jester is more than ready, at an hour's notice. We're nearly two years in commission, with pretty much the same crew, sir. Shaken down and sorted out main-well. Experienced, battle-proven and ready.'

Charlton lifted an eyebrow at that, took a temporising sip of his drink and used the time to think-and to look about the cabins. What he'd seen on deck, beneath the temporary mess, had not been unpleasing; Jester was set up as Bristol-Fashion as anyone could ask, and her people had appeared clean and fairly sober, a fit and healthy lot. And, with that chin-high open curiosity and ineffable sense of 'how dare he come aboard to judge us'-that inner pride of men who'd been tested and proven their mettle. Much like, he wished to believe, the spirit of his own ship's company.

It struck Charlton that Lewrie's great-cabins were not quite the sybaritic sort he'd expect of someone so casually unconventional. The colours were muted. A proper deep red Navy paint upon the bulwarks and the gun-carriages. A glossy-varnished oak wainscoting above the gun-ports, as were the overhead deck beams. Vertical hull timbers were the same dark forest-green of the ship's gunwales, whilst the rest of the planked interior wood was, well, half painted, at present, a deep, mellow, beach-sand tan, picked out here and there round the transom sash-windows with gilt; the overhead 'tween the glossy deck beams was a light, neutral grey.

Half painted, and only half cleaned. There were still stains and smudges of gunpowder visible. The black-and- white chequer of the painted canvas deck covering was worn through round the cannon, though, where the carriages had recoiled in battle or been run in and out in countless drills.

And those great-guns, those long-barreled 9-pounders he saw; barrels not only free of rust, but gleaming under glossy black paint. Gun-tools immaculate, though worn. Carriage trucks as scuffed as an old pair of shoes-a sign they'd never sat idle for long.

'You're quite right, Commander Lewrie,' Charlton said, after a long, disarming moment of silence and adjudication. 'This summer will see a lot of action, more than like. God willing, it will see French anarchy and revolution conquered. And our cause, and right, upheld. Formal orders from the flag will, no doubt, come aboard to you shortly. I will send a draught of my initial strictures aboard, as well. Or better yet'- Charlton smiled for the first time in what seemed to Lewrie an aeon of frowning-'do you dine with me, at seven bells of the Second Dog, this evening, aboard my ship. There I will explain our mission more fully. To you and to my own officers. And to Captain Rodgers, of Pylades. For the nonce, I will call 'pon him after I leave you and make the same invitation. So we may get to know each other the better-our strengths- and our weaknesses.'