A King's Commander (15 page)

“You' bes' eez formidable,
mon amour.”
She chuckled, shuddering a little with emotion, with perhaps a girlish, childish-pleased trill to her insides. And, perhaps, with some measure of relief, he imagined. “I am you's, alone. Oh, Alain, you mak' me
so
'appy!”

Right then he sighed, lost in their mutual embrace; if she makes a fool of me, after all, well . . . I went into it with mine eyes wide open. And, 'least . . . I'm a well-off fool. She means half what she says, 'bout bein' a careful buyer . . . 'bout bein' faithful to me, well. 'Tis a folly I can almost afford!

S
o
you never actually saw nor spoke Admiral Montagu's ships, Lewrie?” Admiral Lord Hood inquired, rather offhandedly, to Alan's lights.

“No, milord,” he replied. “A return voyage from Finisterre might have taken him inshore of me, if he'd planned to peek in at any of the French Biscay harbors, or pass close to Ushant.”

“Damn' good work, though, on old ‘Black Dick's' part.” Hood smiled thinly for a moment. “At least, his Villaret-Joyeuse wished an action. Unlike my opponent, Martin. Well . . . fewer French liners to return to Brest, the fewer they have to send to reinforce against us.”

Hood seemed preoccupied. A tall sheaf of reports, orders, and fair copies of dispatches mounded upon his desk, and a flag lieutenant and a brace of midshipmen and clerks trundled back and forth with more. And, he'd aged, too. Like Admiral Howe, he appeared worn down by care, far more than he'd looked when Lewrie had last spoken to him back in March. And aren't he and Howe
both
almost seventy?

“And fewer officers and seamen who know what they're about, milord,” Lewrie offered with a smile. Hood seemed, though, as if he had not heard the comment, so Lewrie blundered on. “Cut the heads off all their senior officers, or turned them into
émigrés.
Made captains out of bosun's mates. Command by committee, I've heard tell, bad as any Yankee Doodle privateersman during the . . .”

“Hmm? Aye,” Hood said with a nod, though handing his clerk a freshly signed document for sanding, folding, and delivering: Sounding as if his comment had been directed at the clerk, not Lewrie.

How many times I know better than to rattle on, and yet. . . . !, he chided himself, trying to find a graceful exit line.

“What do you draw, Lewrie?” Hood asked, though already intent upon a new document, which intent furrowed his brows dev'lish gloomy.

“Uhm . . . two fathom, milord.”

“Ah.” Hood nodded distantly. “Good. That'll be useful. Well.”

“Should that be all you require of me, milord, I'll not take a moment more of your time,” Lewrie offered his major patron. Trying most earnestly to not offend his commander-in-chief, who could make, or break, any officer's career in an eye-blink. And, Hood had done so before, sometimes over what others might consider to be mere trifles!

“Orders for
Jester
will be forthcoming, Lewrie,” Hood told him, with a brief but dismissive grin. “Make good any lacks . . . firewood and water, an' such . . .” Then Hood turned dour, and away.

“Aye, milord. Thankee for receiving me, sir,” Lewrie replied, backing toward the door in the day-cabin partitions.

Never know what that man's thinking, he griped, once he was out in the clear; never know whom you're dealing with, one day to the next! S'pose I got off fortunate, at that. And got at least
one
welcoming glass o' claret off him! It didn't matter whether Admiral Lord Hood liked you or not; he could be uncommon gracious in the forenoon, then tear a strip off your arse, for all the world to hear, by the First Dog Watch!

Well, Lewrie had already made arrangements for supplies, with the captain of the fleet, and Mister Giles was off to old HMS
Inflexible,
the fleet storeship with a working party, to secure fresh livestock and salt rations, to top off what little they had already consumed on-passage. The ship was in good hands, safely anchored in four fathoms of water, “as snug as a bug in a rug,” surrounded by larger frigates and 3rd-Rate line-of-battle ships.

Phoebe had the right of it, he noted—San Fiorenzo was steep-hilled, a wide and sheltered bay on Corsica's northwestern tip just west of, and below, now-taken Bastia; and about twenty or so miles east of now-besieged Calvi. San Fiorenzo itself wasn't much of a town, a small and drowsy place before the arrival of the fleet, and the Army, who were now busy farther west. Dusty, rocky, and sere, the color of old canvas, it was; roadways, buildings, soil, and hillsides, and many sheltering walls separating tiny farm fields or olive groves, grazings or residences all of a rocky pale-tan piece, but for the dull-red tile rooves, in ancient Roman fashion. What greenery there was consisted of hardy wind-sculpted trees, gorse-like pines, as matted and tangled as dogwoods or coastal capeland oaklets, as tightly kinked as the hair on a terrier's back, and that mostly a muted, well-dusted dark olive, even in the verdant month of June. Phoebe had said the forests were called the “maquis,” where only the toughest trees could survive.

And San Fiorenzo was hot, even for mid-June. Sitting in the stern sheets of his gig, being rowed back to
Jester
from the flagship, HMS
Victory,
where one might expect motion to create a cooling breeze, it was beyond balmy warmth. Quite frankly, it was as hot as the hinges of hell! And as stifling and humid as Calcutta on a bad day before the monsoons.

Orders, he mused; upon Admiral Hood's promise, and his inquiry as to
Jester'
s
draught. Whenever senior officers had asked that before, it had meant service very close inshore, feeling his way through unfamiliar waters by lead-line and guess. And soon, he thought. If Admiral Goodall's blockade of the French fleet in Golfe Jouan was to continue, he'd need scouting vessels to warn of reinforcement or any attempt at resupply by sea. Roads ashore, anywhere in the Mediterranean were so horrid, Hood had intimated, that coasting merchantmen were the fastest and surest conveyors of civilian, or military, commerce. The local road to Calvi was little better than a goat track that wound a serpent's dance over every hillock and ridge. Coalition troops were better supplied from the sea, as well.

There was the blockade of Calvi, too; to sink, take, or burn any local vessels, no matter how small or unimportant, which could deliver even a single cask of water to the Frogs.

Shore service? He rather doubted it, and made an audible sniff of dismissal. Hood already had idled many line-of-battle ships, crews of seamen and Marines sent ashore to help the Army, to man-haul, then man, the heavy lower-deck guns to serve as siege artillery. To strip
Jester
of even two-dozen hands would leave her useless, swinging around her anchor, just as idly ineffective as any of those decimated liners.

And, after his most recent bitter spell of shore duty at Toulon, Lewrie would gladly have run on his elbows to Calvi and back, with his thumbs up his arse, before being forced to spend a single day playing at soldiers!

Out to sea, within the week, he suspected; and with more than a little joy in the doing, too. Perhaps a long, independent cruise, far removed from pettifogging admirals, commodores, and fleet captains, or any of their pestiferous interferences.

Far removed from Phoebe, too; for a time, at any rate. Sweet though she was, as heady and passionate though their
rencontre
had been . . . he was aflutter to be out and doing. And, be far removed from whatever horrendous expenses he was certain his heady, passionate, and sweet relationship was going to end up costing him!

Cost him, perhaps, that very afternoon, he gloomed to himself. Orders surely couldn't come
that
quickly, but . . . from what little he had seen of San Fiorenzo from shipboard, and as bustling as the Army traffic and many uniforms in the streets, the prospects of discovering suitable lodgings looked pretty damn' dismal. He'd have to get Phoebe settled that very day. There might not be time afterward.

And get her off my ship, instanter, he concluded, frowning just a trifle more, as he looked past Andrews's shoulder to gaze upon
Jester
at her anchorage. Gaze almost jealously.

Swore I'd never carry a wench aboard—to myself, too!—and just look what I've gone and done. Caroline to the Bahamas and back, well . . . that was proper doin's, takin' the wife along. But Caroline went ashore, and
stayed
there, when it came time to set out on King's business! Should have stuck her 'board a packet,
paid
her passage to Corsica, 'stead of . . . well. What's done's done.

'Sides, Toulon can't abide that Joliette of hers, and . . .

And, dammit, they're my great-cabins! And I want 'em back!

H
appily,
the first place was the perfect place; a walled house halfway up a straggling cobbled street from the waterfront. From the outside, it had seemed a blank-faced enigma, a warehouse, perhaps, on a corner, about five streets up and back. Only the propped-out wood shutters of the upper-floor windows revealed it to be a residence. A heavy iron-bound wooden gate in the outer wall, which towered almost nine feet above the street, was the only break in the lower level's fortresslike exterior on the cross street. As was a narrower iron-strapped doorway that faced the uphill street the only entrance upon that side; a doorway, they discovered later, which was the kitchen and servants' entrance.

Upon entering the larger gateway, though, they'd been delighted to find a miniature Eden. There was a small courtyard, sheltered from the harsh sunlight by an expansive wood-slat pergola, adrip with ivies or climbing, flowering vines. The courtyard was ringed with planters full of flowering bushes; round, amphoraelike planters, tropical and adobe-colored, or pale stone rectangular box planters. There was the luxury of a fountain and pool in the middle—tiny but refreshing—as a cherubic winged Pan poured an endless plashing trickle of water from a tipped jar. There were patches of carefully tended grass, verdantly green and tender, compared to the harshness outside. Though most of the courtyard was sandy soil over which square paving stones had been laid.

There was a door off the courtyard to the kitchens, a covered walkway wide enough to shelter a small table and two chairs whenever the residents felt like breakfasting
en famille,
and a larger round stone table with curved stone benches near the street-side wall, to seat a larger party.

Off the courtyard on the house side, there was a pair of tall glazed windows, and shutter panels, a wide doorway that led into the parlor. There was a proper dining room behind that, just off that kitchen. Pantry, stillroom, butler's closets, and a “jakes” completed the downstairs. A rather larger than necessary “necessary,” he noted with amusement which also held the splendor of a large copper hip bath. Perhaps that “necessary closet” had once been a first-floor bedchamber, he thought; though one done all of stone, which he deemed rather an odd choice. And with a trough set into the floor for outflow of effluents and used bathwater that looked intentional.

The agent, a wary old tub of a puffing, panting
padrone,
done up in velvet and satin finery—as unctuously leering and “Beau-Trap” as a Covent Garden pimp—had insisted upon cash payments, and only in gold, preferably.

“What's he sayin', now, hey?” Lewrie had asked, over and over again, as their negotiations proceeded; and those, mostly in extremely rapid French, far too fast for Lewrie to follow, or in Italian, which was another of the world's languages he most definitely lacked. She did all the negotiating, switching easily from French to Italian, then an aside, now and again, in fractured English. Which had become even more tortuous and fractured as the afternoon drew on, as Phoebe's brow furrowed in frustration. Now and again, too, there were shouts, some hand gestures more easily understood by Mediterranean peoples.

“Ah,
billioni!”
the well-larded agent had once exclaimed, in a worse-than-usual snit, “Poo!” He'd pretended to spit upon the tile floor of the parlor.

“Alain, ve 'ave arriv-ed on ze price,” Phoebe had then informed him. “'E tak' no less zan ze five
doppia
per mont', ze feelt'y peeg!” For emphasis,
she
had then pretended to spit upon the floor.
And
put her thumbnail to her teeth and flicked her hand at him for good measure!

“Billion?” he'd been forced to ask rather tremulously. Wait half a minute, he'd thought in alarm. There's people invested with “John Company” in the Far East, some're said to be worth a
million
pounds, by now! I ain't
buyin'
the whole damn' island, just payin' rent on a single house, by God, I ain't!

“Eez
pauvre
silver coin, Alain, non to be worry,
mon coeur?
”

There had followed a bewildering tirade, from both sides, it must be admitted, as to the relative merits of
florins, zecchinos, scudos,
and
doppia,
in comparison to the value of
livres, liri,
and the
ducat.
Savoian
lira,
versus the Papal States, or the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Where Alan had learned (whether he'd really wished to or not!) 12
denieri
made one
soldi,
20
soldi
made one
lira,
or 6
lira
equaled 1
scudo.
But, as good Catholics, should they obey the Pope's decrees that 30
baiocchi
made 6
grossi,
or 3
guilio,
or one
testone,
and 100
baiocchi
equaled a
scudo?
Or, more closely attuned to English measure (perhaps!) 6 Sicilian
cavalli
made 1
tornasi,
and 240
tornesi
equalled 12
carlinis,
or 1
piastre.
No, no, “
piastre,
zat eez trop 'igh,” Alan dimly recalled her stating. Although 200
tornesi,
which was only one ducat,
would
be preferable.

In good, undebased silver, now, most definitely
not billioni!
“Ah,
magnifico!
”
the agent had declared, kissing his fingertips and thence, the very air. But, the
piastre,
the
tallero,
the
scudo,
the
royal, crown, ecu
and
peso—
the last two the tried-and-true French pre-Revolutionary
Ecu,
or the ancient Spanish Piece of Eight—they were understandable. Somewhat. And the mention of the sum “Crown” at least penetrated Lewrie's fog. Though they all weighed different amounts of silver, at least he knew what a bloody Crown was worth!

“Let me see if I have this straight, so far,” Alan had stated, after what had seemed a full hour of haggling. “The greedy bastard
is
aware we aren't
buyin'
the damn' place lock, stock, and barrel, isn't he?”

“
Oui,
Alain,” Phoebe had replied, a tad huffy and exasperated. “I
s'ink,
”
she had been forced to admit, kitten-shyly.

“Right, then. We're makin' progress, damme if we ain't!” he'd cried, with a huge sigh of relief. “So, just how many good, English shillings make one of his bloody
ducats?
The ones he keeps rantin' on about?”

“Uhm ze
doppia, zat
ees deu . . . two
ducat,
so . . .” she told him.

“And the
ducat'd
be . . . ?” he'd prompted, with a surly purr.

“Een silver?” she'd puzzled, followed by a rapid ticking off on her lace-gloved fingers, and much muttering under her breath.

“That'd be a grand place to start,” he'd muttered under his
own
breath, as she'd done her current exchange rates.

And trust a retired whore to know her sums, to the ha'pence, he'd told himself.

“Mmm,
une ducat,
zat ees twelve shillings, Alain,
mon chou.

”
“Aha! Now, we're getting somewhere!” He'd beamed. “Let me see one of them.”

The fubsy agent had produced a
ducat,
from a floridly embroidered silk poke. It weighed next to nothing, a wafer-thin, and almost bendable gold coin little larger round than a silver sixpence.

“So, ten
ducats . . .
that'd be one hundred-twenty shillings the month, or six English Pounds, hmm.” Lewrie had pondered. He'd extracted his purse, weighing it on his other palm, heavy and promising, toying with it to make the gold one- and two-guinea pieces inside rustle and chink. The agent had swallowed heavily, eyes darting in a fever of greed. Or in fear that his
ducat
might be conjured away, if he didn't keep his eye glued to it!

“Two two-guinea pieces, in gold, sir,” Lewrie had offered, as he lay them out on his palm next to the
ducat,
which shrank in comparison to the size of a tea saucer next to the dinner-plate appearance of the two-guinea's breadth, and most importantly, its thickness! “I will offer four guineas the month, and not a pence more. That's worth eighty-four shillings, or seven of his damn'
ducats.
Or, you tell him, Phoebe, that when the
troop
convoy arrives, with
thousands
more English soldiers in need of billets, well . . . we may commandeer
any
house that isn't
already
rented, d'ye see? For
nothing,
tell him?”

It amounted to £50/8/0, he'd thought smugly; a bargain.
If
the damn' fool will just realize it! Markets not a stone's throw off, down to the waterfront, or a short block uphill and one over, to that plaza we saw, and all the market stalls. No need for a carriage, after all, or even the keep of a single horse! Furnished, mostly; a tad tawdry, at present. Two bedchambers above-stairs, both with balconies and ocean views, rather good bedsteads an' such. His price would have been £72, and that'd be a trifle steep, even for a decent set of London rooms!

Expostulating that he'd been gored, diddled, raped, the agent had at last acceded, and the place was theirs;
if
they'd pay the year in advance! Feeling just as gored, Lewrie had been forced to accede on his part, as well. Knowing that as long as the French had a Navy in-being, in Golfe Jouan or Toulon, that could threaten their hold on Corsica, or the sea-lanes across the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian seas to Genoa, Porto Especia, Rome, or Naples, he'd most like be based out of San Fiorenzo far longer than that.

Half that ponderous purse of his disappeared into the agent's poke, with a further stipulation that he'd remove any items of furnishings they didn't need, or wished to replace; thus lowering the rent somewhat, later on. That had required another spitting, hissing catfight to negotiate, but in the end it was done, to the begrudging dissatisfaction of both parties.

Phoebe had received the heavy ring of keys from him, had hugged them to her bosom, and had skipped and danced around her new parlor in great delight, after the agent had taken his leave.

“Alain . . . eez so . . . !” She'd sighed at last, coming to him and flinging her arms about him, crooning as he lifted her off her feet to eye level. “Eez non ze
appartement
no more . . . eez ze 'ouse
grande, si
belle!
Eez non ze . . . shabby? Solid an' secure! An' I mak' eet even nicer, soon!
Merci, mon amour.
Oh,
merci si très beaucoup!
”

And there had been tears of joy in her eyes, to be so settled, at long last. Her lips had trembled against his as she kissed him so warmly. And her little shoulders had shaken in grateful emotion.

“We mus' 'urry, Alain!” she'd declared finally. “We can 'ave mov-ed een,
avant coucher de soleil,
uhm . . . before sundown? Non cook, we 'ave, t'night,
mais . . .
we fin' ze café, an'
zen,
een our own bed, I tell you 'ow
ver'
much I love you for . . . ! Non, I
show
you . . . 'ow much I am thanking you,
mon chou!
”

They'd left Phoebe's chests and luggage at a waterfront
osteria,
a tavern/lodging house, in the care of an elderly couple, who had made much of Phoebe's arrival in their midst. Lewrie was arranging a burro and cart, and Phoebe was chatting away, gay as a magpie, with her fellow countrymen, and stroking Joliette, who was daintily lapping at some goat milk, when Midshipman Spendlove arrived, with a packet under his arm, sweating heavily.

“Sir!” Spendlove announced, doffing his hat. “Thank God you're here, sir. Else I'd have had nary a clue as to where in the town . . .”

“Trouble aboard, Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie barked, breaking off his negotiations with the carter.

“No, sir.” Spendlove took the time to smile. “
Orders,
sir! Come aboard not a quarter-hour past.”

“Mmm, good.” Lewrie sighed in relief. “That was quick work, I must say. I didn't . . . Mister Spendlove. These have been
opened,
”
he rasped, turning stern and surly in an instant.