A King's Commander (43 page)

“Aye, sir.” Lewrie nodded hopefully. Hotham had trouble with recalling what he had for breakfast, his bloody hat size; or dither so long in making up what passed for his mind, he'd soon forget it.

“In the meantime, I may perfectly justify sending you away, then. Though I am already badly in need of reinforcement,” Nelson stated.

“Sent away, sir. I see,” Lewrie stammered.

“Your ship took damage, sir,” Nelson said, brightening a trifle. “I believe you've been eighteen months without a refit, as well. Leghorn is the place for you, Lewrie. With
Jester
away . . . out of sight, out of mind? . . . the rabble-rousers who spread these filthy lies will have to cut new ones from whole cloth to inflame Italian resentments. You will perform such limited repairs as you may here at Vado Bay, then go to Leghorn to complete them, and do a proper refit. Take your time, there. No need to rush back. Once back, I may find you useful again. Perhaps well offshore, still out of sight. And operating under a set of orders and cautions, which I pray will spare us the risk of future embarrassments.”

“I see, sir,” Lewrie said, even more gloomily. “Well, I'd best be about it, then. Was that all, sir? You said three . . . ?”

“Ah.” Nelson frowned sternly again, getting to his feet, with his hands in the small of his back. “Yes. There was.”

God what bloody
else,
Alan sagged; adultery?

“It is Captain Cockburn's complaint, sir . . . that you impeded his pursuit of Choundas's vessel . . . an enemy then flying . . . by the placement of your ship, by not obeying his flag signals to give him way seaward. Further, that your replies were preemptory and unsuitable for a junior to send to a senior officer.”

“Well, damme . . .” Lewrie muttered, quite nonplussed.

“A close-run thing already, I warn you, sir,” Nelson rejoined. “He asked ‘Do You Require Assistance?' sir,” Lewrie explained, feeling like he'd been doing so his entire bloody life! “My signals midshipman Mister Hyde's deck log will show that, sir. To which I sent ‘Affirmative,' taking it to mean did I need
rescuing
from Choundas . . . and I most heartily
did,
sir!”

He laid out his crippled state, barely under control and unable to steer clear, barely underway and almost dead in the water. How he had sent “Submit,” meaning that Cockburn should cut inshore, cutting a corner off the pursuit.

“We did
manage
to
claw about northerly, sir, when he ordered us to haul our wind. I had no intent to impede him, far from it. I meant no disrespect, or wished to ‘serve him sauce,' either, sir. Were he to catch Choundas up and murder the bastard, I'd be the first one to sport him a royal fireworks,
and
a concert! That man needs killing more than anyone ever I did see, sir, and if Captain Cockburn got the credit for it, then I'd be the last man on earth to complain. Had he cut inshore, well . . . he broke off his pursuit not an hour later, so . . .”

Nelson cut off his blathering with a chop of his hand.

“I've already sensed animosity between you before, sir. And did I not warn you both that I wished my captains to work together? Did I not make that plain enough, sir?” Nelson intoned harshly. “I cannot tolerate officers under me who can't put aside personal grudges so the greater good is achieved. With due deference, and mutual respect.”

“But I was trying to communicate to him how best my situation, and his desire for a fight, might coincide, sir.”

“He may be young, to your lights, Lewrie,” Nelson pointed out. “May have attained a great deal, perhaps an unseemly great deal in so short a time. But I find him to be one of the ablest, most honest and courageous officers it has ever been my pleasure to meet. Intelligent, with steel in his hand, and aggressive, with a burning desire to close with, and destroy the foe.”

“Well, of course, sir,” Alan wriggled.

“How many battles has England lost, sir?” Nelson sighed, gazing off in the middle distance, half turned away from him. “How many opportunities have we let slip, because of bickering and rancor, when they might have resulted in stupendous, crushing victories? All due to the spite and jealousy of our leaders, I tell you. You were at the Battle of the Chesapeake in eighty-one, I believe, sir?” Nelson snapped, turning to face him again. “Hood and Graves, sir, confusing signals? I doubt it. There was lingering animosity 'tween them, and Hood disgusted that his superior allowed de Grasse to stand out and exit the capes in good order, so he held his division back from engaging, and Graves left unable to prevail, unsupported. Hard as it pains me to say about our mutual patron, and as fine a sailor, a gentleman, and officer as we may ever know, he is not free of human failings. There
must
be trust, respect, and cooperation between us, sir!” Nelson cried, a messianic glint in his eye. “We must allow nothing to get in the way of Duty. Nothing! Mankind will never be free of spite, never become so contented with their lot, or with one another, that they march in lockstep, like some wind-up, clock-work toys. I cannot hope, nor order, that my officers
love
one another, Lewrie. But it is not too much to wish that they are respectful of one another, and the others' individual talents. Like a houseful of good-natured brothers and cousins might deal among themselves. Chaffer at home, with no vindictiveness, but ready to spring to the defense of each individual with as much alacrity as they would for their family's good name. I will not tolerate an officer who cannot work cheerfully with his fellows, Lewrie. Nor one who would play the serpent in the Garden of Eden behind the others' backs.”

“Aye, sir,” Lewrie replied, cowed by the vehemence with which Nelson spoke, his stubborn enthusiasm.

“You will write Cockburn and make amends to him,” Nelson told him; ordered him. “Explain yourself, and your signals, and the spirit in which they were intended. You might also thank him, even though you have already done so, for rescuing you at your weakest moment. Quarter-hour more, and you'd have been forced to strike, no matter how doughty a defense you presented, isn't that what you wrote in your report? It would not hurt to tell Cockburn that.”

“Perhaps it may mollify him, were I to offer him my tender, sir? Little
Bombolo?
I'll have no need of her at Leghorn,” Lewrie offered, hard as it pained him.

“I should think that would be received as a most welcome, and a most gracious gift, Lewrie,” Nelson replied with a tiny smile; a first of a gruesome half-hour's cobbing. He offered his hand.

Now there's a wonder, Lewrie thought, rising to shake it, taking it for dismissal, at last, thank God.

“I will make the strongest representation to Admiral Hotham that we've been hoodwinked by a clever and malicious French plot. A letter from that fellow Silberberg of yours, may be of aid, as well. That is, should your logs and journals satisfy me,” Nelson stated levelly.

“Aye, sir,” Lewrie flummoxed, seeing escape from Nelson's ire, and his predicament. “Assuming that Mister Silberberg is of a mind to be forgiving, since I didn't kill Choundas for him.”

“That was his intent?” Nelson frowned, pulling at his nose. “For someone to do it, sir, didn't matter whom. I was the bait to get at him. Just didn't expect him to pop up where he did, and so quickly. Crippling his squadron as we did, sir, that was only a part of it. Same with scooping up his convoy to Alassio.”

And, barring the fight with Choundas, it
had
been a red-letter day; a corvette
La Resolve
taken, along with a small corvette
La Republique,
and two Barbary Pirate-type xebecs,
three-masted-armed galleys, plus a total of seven assorted merchant ships crammed with munitions and food.

“Now we've bested him, sir,” Lewrie dared to suggest, with
his
first grin of the last half hour as well, “his superiors might turn him out, and give you an honorable foe. Probably a man less dangerous, do you see. Then, it'll be Silberberg's pigeon. Poison in the man's soup, or a knife in the back in a dark alley . . . his stock-in-trade. Find himself an assassin who can . . .”

“This Choundas may be a wily foe, Lewrie,” Nelson objected with revulsion, “as large a monster as he is painted, aye . . . but I doubt that anyone is so vital to the French, nor our fortunes grown so bleak, that we would ever sanction cold-blooded murder. To bring him to book, gun-to-gun, or with crossed steel is one thing, but . . . that's repugnant to me, to any honorable gentleman or Christian.”

“War to the knife, sir. As Mister Silberberg put it, long ago.” “You associate with the wrong sort of people, sir,” Nelson said with a sniff of disdain.

And don't I, just! Alan thought, fighting a rueful smile.

“Not exactly my choice, sir,” Alan told him. “He's very good at using people, whether they like it or not.”

“By God, sir, he will not use me!” Nelson declared. Which gave Alan as much joy as could be expected, given the circumstances.

L
ewrie
had always been pretty sure that there were some quite positive things to be said for Greed, and Lust for Mammon. 
Positive things most likely said from the comfort of an expensive club chair. Though Tuscany may have gotten some of those inflammatory flyers, and a few of the merchants, some few of the shipyard workers of Leghorn may have resented, perhaps even despised
Jester
's
presence at the careenage, in the graving dock, or moored stern-to at a stone quay, Dago fashion, they didn't allow personal grudges to mix with business, or a chance to turn a handsome profit on her repairs, and her refit.

One hellacious profit, if Mister Giles's ledgers, old Mister Udney's receipts, and Cony's stores' lists were anything to go by. There were other profits to be made, ashore, too, and Leghorn's brothels and taverns, food stalls and chandlers, pimps and bumboat marketers were as apolitically avaricious as the rest when it came to shillings or gold guineas. And the resulting claims for damages to taverns and brothels, when those of
Jester
's
people reliable enough to be trusted with shore leave occasionally went on “a high ramble,” and were sometimes fetched back alongside in the custody of the neighborhood watch.

Certainly, glum and ever unsatisfied Mister Howse their surgeon, was prospering. He, LeGoff, Mister Paschal the sailmaker, and one of the loblolly boys who'd been a glovemaker's assistant were making a killing on manufacturing cundums—or administering the Mercury Cure for the Pox. Howse's purchases of mercury were beginning to rival what a small, but thriving, silver refinery might consume.

“Can't you put saltpeter in their food, or something, Mister Howse?” Lewrie crossly inquired of him. “I mind a rumor around more than a few schools I attended that it was done regular, to reduce the parish pregnancy rates blamed on students. Or faculty buggery.”

“I have no definitive proof that such an admixture is efficacious, Captain,” Howse grumbled. “An old wive's tale, more like. And, should medical science admit it as a proper medicament . . . I am operating on a strictly limited Admiralty allotment
per annum
for the purchase of . . .”

“Which seems to be going for sheep gut and mercury.” His much put-upon captain sighed in frustration over another damned indenture form from his medical staff.

“Should you order the ship back into Discipline, sir, keep our men aboard and away from the whores, you would find my expenditures . . . and the crew's good health, and their moral state, much improved, I'm certain,” Howse said, in that truculent, edge-of-accusatory way he'd perfected. “To allow the people to engage in such licentious manner, to ‘spend' on whores their vital and precious bodily essences . . . which weakens their bodies and minds, renders them lackluster and feeble of wits . . . incites continual thoughts of lust, contributing to their perpetual moral decline, well . . . I'll say no more, sir.”

“I should
certainly
hope so, Mister Howse,” Lewrie snapped, at his breaking point. The reek of fresh paint being slathered on by the barricoe, the din of hammering and sawing, had had him in an ill humor for days. That, and their enforced idleness. “What would you have of me . . . sir! Lash 'em below, seal the hatches on 'em, and let 'em free only when we need 'em? Sir? Would you be happier if they flogged the palms of their hands raw from ‘boxing the Jesuit'? Or would you like a bugger's orgy in the cable-tiers . . . sir? By God, sir, you hired on as a naval surgeon, not a hedge-priest. Sew their wounds, cure their
bodily
ills . . . not Society's. Sorry your flock need to gambol like a pack of spring lambs, Mister Howse. Get blind-drunk and put the leg over some poll, now and then. They're
men,
sir, not your social experiment!”

“I can see, sir, that discussion at this point is . . .” Howse sulked.

“You take that tone with me one more time, sir,” Lewrie warned him, glad to have someone or something to rant at for release, “do you
dare
look cutty-eyed at me when we suffer casualties doing our duty . . . and I'll bloody break you, Mister Howse! Men get hurt at sea, whether it's peace or war. Men die! I'm not your heartless monster to sneer at 'cause we've lost a few since you came aboard. Men
I
knew, men who served with me
long
before you brought your disdain, you . . .”

Lewrie turned away and took a sip of his coffee, on the verge of being personally insulting, of abusing a gentleman. Howse did deserve that distinction, at least. The coffee was tepid. And it stank from paint, tasted like cool enamel.

“That'll be all, sir. Get out,” Lewrie ordered.

“Very well, sir.” Howse all but coughed in outrage, but determined to be his captain's moral and intellectual superior to the end.

“Goddamn him!” Lewrie whispered, tossing his coffee overboard, out the opened sash-windows in the transom. Porter, minus his arm and pensioned off discharged, Bittfield off in hospital at San Fiorenzo . . . sure to die of sepsis; Rushing atop the amputated fore topmast. Five dead, a dozen wounded aye, and four of those maimed so badly they'd be cripples and pensioners once they got back to England. Teenaged topmen, first-voyage Marines too young to shave proper. Not too many of the petty officers, thank God, Lewrie thought, or the able seamen the ship depended on. Mostly the feckless young. The worst slaughter was usually reserved for them. The worst heartbreak . . .

Dolorous as the crew had been when they'd anchored at Leghorn, Lewrie had known . . . as Mister Howse never would . . . that sailors were a resilient lot. Beaten and terrorized as they'd been with Choundas close-aboard, they'd stood game, ready to dare to the last. Stubborn pride, courage . . . fear of letting mates down, revenge for the fallen friends, or that ineffable spirit of English sailors that their ship would win, that their
Jester,
their home, would never strike. That had been what kept them from falling apart, then. And what would save them now. A great deal of physical labor, beginning with stripping her down to the fighting tops and gant lines, hoisting out artillery, shot, powder, and stores to float her onto a careenage shore so they could scorch off the weed on her bottom, chip off barnacles, search for rot and missing copper, physical labor took their minds off fell musings.

A long-delayed distribution of a portion of the prize money they had earned had helped. That, and the chance for a spell ashore, while
Jester
was uninhabitable, and days Out of Discipline once she was back afloat, so they could caterwaul and carouse their way back to feeling like men who were unbeatable.

Poxed, some might have been, staggering dizzily with their teeth gone gray from the Mercury Cure, which no matter Howse's lofty disdain fetched him fifteen shillings per sufferer, but they were still Jesters.

Floating catamaran work-stages alongside, bosun's chairs or wood trestles slung overboard so they could paint and tar, a perceptive ear could ascertain that they were working cheerfully. Fiddle and fife played to divert them. Hands near the great-cabin's quarter-galleries chatted and joshed one another. Cursing the bosun, of course, for putting them to such a messy chore, for tar stains and paint splotches on even their worst old slop trousers. Which was about all they wore at the moment, rolled to their knees. The scuttlebutts were kept full and handy for all, the amount of thirst-slaking water unrationed for once. Mister Giles, with only mild objections to the expense, supplied small-beer in liberal amounts. There was fresh food come from shore almost every day, along with the tons of chandlers' goods.

Lewrie sat down to read it over, again, mind-boggled that he had been allowed so much, that Udney and the local Admiralty shore agent at Leghorn were so prodigal with Navy funds. Well, almost prodigal, Alan thought with a rare grin; the prices local chandlers charged were downright sinful, and limited the largesse he might take aboard.

New canvas and thread, new rope cable for standing rigging, and running rigging, new replacement masts and spars—all Tuscan pine or Levant cedar—of the highest, best-seasoned quality. Tar, 
turpentine, pitch, white-lead, and copper to pay the bottom with barnacle-poisoning, weed-killing lead over canvas and felt, thin sheet-copper to seal that so
Jester
would be as smooth as a baby's arse, and slip across the sea like a thoroughbred once more. Timber and planking of the best Adriatic oak to replace smashed or wormed hull members and blown-in bulwarks.

And paint, Lewrie gagged again, as the breeze shifted, bringing the heavy odor into his day-cabin. He threw his quill pen on the desk and leaned back in his chair, recalling what a captain outfitting back home in an English port had written the Admiralty, once he'd received the usual, meager, ration of paint from HM Dockyards:

“Which
side
of the ship do you wish me to do, sirs?” Alan asked the echoing cabins, with a faint chuckle.

Toulon came slinking in from up forrud, low to the deck, imitating a caterpillar, with a distressed, grumpy trilling yowl, on a beeline for Lewrie's lap. Where, once ensconced, he could make his strongest complaints over some new cat-galling disaster. Rather loudly!

“Poor puss, what's got you . . . ?” Alan cooed. His hand came off Toulon's hindquarters wet with dull red inboard-bulwarks paint, which was used to disguise bloodstains. “Christ, you clumsy litl'un. You've put your tail in the paint pot? Aspinall?”

“Sir?”

“Fetch a cloth, 'fore it dries on him. Might need one dipped in turpentine, too. No, Toulon, don't lick it . . . God . . . !”

There
was a pair of kerseymere breeches that had seen their last Day Watch, Lewrie sighed; a good shirt, too, if I'm not . . .

“I'll ask Mister Cony, sir,” Aspinall vowed. “Back in a trice.”
Mister
Cony. With Porter gone, Will Cony had risen to bosun, and Able Seaman Sadler, one of the old Cockerels from the times at Toulon had become bosun's mate. Just as Mister Crewe was now the acting master gunner, Yeoman of the Powder Room Hogge was gunner's mate, and the Prussian Rahl was acting yeoman. Another Cockerel, Preston, had become quarter-gunner, though Lewrie wasn't sure that Rahl's eye for gunnery wasn't wasted below, in the magazines.

“Cap'um clerk, Mister Mountjoy . . . Sah!”

“Enter,” Lewrie snapped, trying to hold Toulon still and not get paint-stained until Aspinall returned.

“Letter's come aboard for you, sir,” Mountjoy announced. He coughed into his fist, looking cutty-eyed to all corners. More softly he added, “and this, too, sir. From your, uhm . . . banker? He's ashore and wishes permission to come aboard.”

“Sergeant Bootheby to muster his Marines, Mister Mountjoy,” Lewrie growled, opening Twigg's note first, no matter how he hated doing that; it was official, after all. “Full ‘bullock' kit, red tunics and pipe-clay. We'll execute him by musketry, at the taffrail,
à la
Admiral Byng.”

“Can . . . can you
do
that, sir?” Mountjoy gaped. “Should, I mean.”

“No, but I can wish, sir.” Alan sighed futilely. “Very well . . . tell the devious bastard he may come aboard. A
tradesman's
welcome, do you inform the harbor watch. No honors.”

Aspinall returned, to take Toulon from him and carry him off to the pantry for a cleaning with some dishcloths moistened with turpentine.

“Well I'm damned . . .” Lewrie whispered as he opened the second.

It was from Signorina Claudia Mastandrea!

He'd gotten several supportive, kindly letters from her, and her keeper Senator Marcello di Silvano. He'd sent the senator the expected “thankee” for his invitation, with apologies for missing the ball that followed. Twigg's doing, damn his eyes! Maybe just as well, though . . . ?

Claudia's first note had been just before
Jester
sailed, and more than the usual social obligation to a new acquaintance; so pleased she met him, sorry we missed our promised dance, do forgive the forwardness, and blah-blah-blah . . . But laden with so much double meaning, that she might have rewarded him with more than one turn around the floor, that he still
must
allow her to show him that map, that collection . . . those
treasures?
That there should be perfect freedom between them? Hmm . . .

After the battle with Choundas, another brace of letters. The one from Signore di Silvano so outraged that he was being smeared with such a scurrillous set of lies; promises to get to the bottom of it and refute them, in concert with Drake and Nelson; how di Silvano had spoken to his fellow senators and the Doge, would use his every good office to maintain Genoese neutrality,
and
independence. That Lewrie should consider him a friend, with many mutual, historical interests to discuss when he returned from Leghorn.

Claudia's though . . . it was almost tearful, that a good and decent man had been falsely accused, and her remorse that Genoa was so ungrateful to him. A stronger hint, concerning her high regard, her inability to get him out of her mind, a wistfulness . . . ? Hmm . . .