A King's Commander (37 page)

“Of course, Mister . . . Silberberg,” Lewrie allowed. “This won't take much time, though, will it? The dancing, d'ye see.”

“Of course not, sir. Won't interrupt yer pleasures,” Silberberg promised, casting a sidelong, significant glance at Claudia Mastandrea.

“You will excuse me,
signorina,
”
Lewrie said to the mort. “Do save me at least the one dance, I pray you. Until later, hmm?”

“The night is young, Signore
Lewrie,” Claudia huffed, a bit beyond “cooled” from her ardor; downright snippy, in fact. “Perhaps you will accompany me later.
Ciao, signore.
”

“Should I escort you . . . ?” Lewrie offered, but she swept away. “Up to your old tricks, are we, Lewrie?” Silberberg sniffed in aspersion, his lips suddenly hairline thin and cramped together. And suddenly not half the hand-wringing senior clerk he'd seemed.

“Up to yours, are we . . . Twigg?” Lewrie scowled back.

“Yes,” the spy from the Foreign Office, the cold-blooded manipulator Lewrie had known in the Far East as Zachariah Twigg drawled in a toplofty sneer. “In point of fact . . . I am.”

S
ilberberg?”
Lewrie sneered softly. “However did you come by that? And, ain't you slightly out of your usual bounds, sir?”

“A half-addled banking clerk of the Hebrew persuasion may be an object of amusement, Lewrie . . . of some derision,” Twigg replied with a conspirator's mutter, though sounding pleased with his alias. “Hardly one to suspect as a spy, though.
We,
after all, finance
their
wars for them. Apolitically, mind . . . with suspected loyalties only to the bank, the guinea, and one's tribe. As for my presence, the Far East became more a military, or a naval problem, of the overt sort. And, too, our last escapade made me too well-known there. With French influence limited to Pondichery or their Indian Ocean islands, their trade dried up, and with trade their hopes to service informers, agents provocateurs, pirates, well . . .”

Twigg shrugged expressively, then with the dropping of his arms he seemed to fall back into his assumed character. They paced toward a wine table, Twigg all but fawning and bobbing, anxious to please.

“You will remember it
is
Silberberg, not Twigg, from now on, I trust, sir?” He wheedled in a whisper, laying a finger to his fleshy-tipped nose, the end-pad of which would have made a walrus jealous. A louder voice for his next statement. “So
very
sorry to take you from your amusements, Commander Lewrie, but since you're so much at sea, I have so few opportunities. If not tonight, sir, perhaps you may do me the honor of allowing me to call upon you, aboard ship, before
Jester
departs? Oh my, sir . . . your account prospers, indeed it
does.
Prize money, the Four Percents. Though you
are
aware there is talk of a tax on income, sir? Hideous notion, truly hideous, but there it is. Now, had we a moment, Commander Lewrie, I believe I may make to you such a proposition of investments to safeguard your farm income, making less of it subject to any future levy, as would warm the very cockles of yer heart. A glass of wine with you, sir? A true nautical hero? One such as I have so few opportunities . . . dine out on it for years, I could.”

“Oh for God's sake,” Lewrie whispered, frowning crossly. “Bit less of it, hey?”

The waiter turned away after pouring them each some claret, run in from France, of a certainty.

“Your ship, instanter,” Silberberg hissed softly, as Twigg, a finger to his thin lips. “We have
so
much to discuss, sir. Oh my, yes!” He gushed for the waiter's benefit, as Silberberg.

“But . . .” Lewrie protested, as the opening strains of a gay air soared from the far salon to the rotunda. He knew there was nothing he could say or do, but go along with Twigg's dictate. Again!

“Your father's well, sir,” Twigg told him as they tossed their hats and gloves in his great-cabins. “Made a brigadier, imagine that. He'll know of it, soon enough. This come from Leadenhall Street with me. Your brother-in-law Burgess Chiswick will become a major.”

“That's gratifyin'.” Lewrie sighed, opening his wine cabinet. “So sorry to spoil your fun,” Twigg posed, one brow lifted in amusement as Alan grudgingly gave him a snifter of brandy. “And, such bountiful fun it would have been, too.”

“Didn't think a cypher such as you'd notice, Twigg,” Alan spat. “
Au contraire,
Lewrie, I have always had an eye for the ladies.” Twigg chuckled. “Though I may hardly say that my face, or my choice of career, has ever stood me in such good stead as yours, in that regard. Such a splendid run of luck
you've
had, though. A lovely wife, truly lovely, is your Caroline. As is your Corsican doxy, the, uhm . . . shall I say the Contessa
Aretino?”

“Now why would you wish to know so much about me, Twigg?”

“I know a lot about everybody, Lewrie. That's my job.”

“So you can use 'em, I s'pose. And that, most cynically,” Alan accused. “Leave my wife and . . . mistress . . . out of this, Twigg.”

“Only if you will, sir,” Twigg shot back, even more amused with Lewrie's sullen truculence, his past grievances. “
I
will not use them, cynically or otherwise. I leave that to you, Lewrie. No matter. Now, sir. Might you summon your clerk, Mister Thomas Mountjoy? I confess I was quite struck by your clandestine report to Nelson, in which Mountjoy played so prominent a part. I've gotten little from our Frenchman you captured, and I wish to go over that report, fleshing out the sparsity of the written account with both your recollections.”

“Sentry?” Lewrie called to the Marine at the door. “Pass the word for my clerk. Come at once, tell him.”

“Aye aye, Cap'um . . . SAH!” the muffled voice shouted back. “
Inconnu,
my God,” Twigg mused, slouching in the sofa cushions. “How dramatic. How French! Fellow could have put on a fool's face and gotten clean away, since he'd purged his own chest so thoroughly. That partner of his, he's the same stubborn sort. All fired with adoration for his Revolution. Might as well make a Hindu kill a cow, as get him to talk. Bloody amateur, in his own theatric.”

“What did you learn of him?” Lewrie asked, wincing as he remembered Twigg on a captured Lanun Rover
prao,
with a wavybladed
krees
at a pirate prisoner's throat. Which Twigg had most dispassionately cut, after slicing and torturing what little he could from him. “And how? Up to
all
your old tricks, Mister Twigg?”

“And why not, now and again, sir?” Twigg allowed coolly. “I find they more than suffice. No, Lewrie, he lives. Shaken, one may hope, but no permanent harm done. An amateur, as I said. Marks on a pile of dirty linen, with several aliases, from several cities. Some of them most embarrassingly French. And caught red-handed, laden with gold, in a ship laden with military goods. Should have taken another vessel, traveled separately from his dead compatriot, that unlamented romantic,
Inconnu.
Secret writings . . . the lemon-juice variety 'tween the lines of innocent correspondence. Smell it, by God! A dead giveaway, every time. No, a more elaborate cypher would have served them better, but I doubt the poor fellow in charge of French spies in the region has much to work with yet. And, he's no Richelieu, himself, exactly. Learnin' . . . give him that much.” Twigg shrugged again, and took a sip to toast his worthy opponent. “Fellow'll be turned off in a fortnight, though. Hung for spying, soon as a military court at Corsica has him in.”

“And the French midshipman?”

“That clumsy lout, God no, Lewrie! He's to be exchanged. Too many of our squirearchy's slack-jawed sons aboard
Berwick,
those with
such
a lot of ‘interest,' are festerin' in France. Midshipman Hainaut will be reporting back to his masters, and the less said about
me
the better. Best he suffer an accident on the way, he knows too much already, seen too much, but . . .” Twigg sighed, as if to say “what can you do?” “Knows who you are, Lewrie, he does. Not as thickheaded a peasant as he looks. Scrub him up, dress his hair . . . a proper uniform, and the sky's the limit for him. His Die Narbe will take care of that, I assure you.”

“Yer clerk, Mister Mountjoy . . . SAH!” the Marine shouted.

“Of Die Narbe, more later,” Twigg promised smugly, rising for his introduction. Mountjoy, as usual, disappointed. He'd risen from a deep slumber, dressed haphazardly, and presented himself in a pair of bear-hide carpet slippers, bare ankles, and dark-blue slop trousers, into which he'd crammed the tail of his knee-length nightshirt, with a ratty old drab-brown wool dressing gown atop. Mountjoy still wore a tasseled sleeping cap over his unruly hair, too.

“You sent for me, sir?” he said, yawning and blinking from the sudden change to lanthorn light in the great-cabins. Scratching a bit, too, it must be admitted.

“Good God, what's that?” Twigg growled, stiffening. “Mountjoy, my clerk,” Lewrie puzzled.

“No, I mean
that,
Lewrie!” Twigg grumbled, pointing.

“That, sir . . . is a cat,” Lewrie enlightened him. “You know . . .
felis domesticus?
Name's Toulon. He's the
same
sort o' disaster.”

“I despise cats!” Twigg glowered, hellish-black.

“We wake you up from a good nap . . . sweetlin'?” Lewrie asked of Toulon, bending down to scratch the top of Toulon's head, concealing a small smirk of sudden pleasure.

“Mister Mountjoy, the name that you are to remember, on pain of your life, sir . . . is Silberberg. Simon Silberberg,” Twigg began, and riveting Mountjoy's attention, turning the beginnings of a yawn into a gape of awe. “From Coutts's, do you follow? A representative of your captain's bank, do you understand, sir? But . . . and this you will forget immediately I'm gone . . . damme!”

Toulon, following the perverse wont of his tribe, had gone for Twigg immediately, purring with secret, malicious delight to discover a cat-hater—to twine around his ankles, sniff at his shoes and silk stockings, which were new, fascinating . . . and perhaps might require a sprayed marking . . . or a few clawed snags to make 'em simply
perfect!

“Get that . . .
that . . .
beast away from me, Lewrie!” Mister Twigg demanded, skittering as if he were going to do a dance to Saint Vitus—or hop atop the sofa like a lady who'd seen a mouse.

“Here, Toulon. Mousey,” Lewrie tempted, fetching out the wool scrap toy on a length of small-stuff. “Leave the bad old man alone.” He sing-songed to his ram-cat, which was a perfect excuse to expose a childlike smile of fiendish glee.

Think I
really
love you, puss, he thought quite warmly.

Twigg, in his guise of Simon Silberberg from Coutts's, had been in Leghorn and Porto Especia, with an occasional jog inland to Florence, as a commercial representative ought, when Mister Drake had sent a messenger to him, regarding the seizures of
Il Furioso
and
Il Briosco.
He'd not found ships registered as Tuscan under those names, indeed, had not discovered any public record of a trading company calling itself the
Compagnia di Commercia Mare di Liguria.

“No public stock offer on what passes for their exchange, sirs,” Twigg/Silberberg told them over an eye-opening glass of brandy. “Nor any articles of corporation filed with their government. Pretty much the same murky situation as obtains here in Genoa that so puzzled Mister Drake. It was helpful in the extreme, though, Mister Mountjoy, to receive a fair-hand copy of the entries in that small ledger book you found. Cryptic as the headings were, still I was able to form an educated guess as to the identities of the principals.”

“Guilio Gallacio, sir?” Mountjoy inquired eagerly, quite awake by then, though they'd been at it for at least an hour.

“To the tee, young sir,” Twigg replied quickly, with an admiring smile, though a damn' thin'un, as was his wont. “Unfortunately, I cannot ‘front' him in any fashion, and he's much too prominent for me to . . . uhm, spirit away, for a probing interrogation. Though, I'm told he was quite upset, and shaken, by his capture so early on in the life of their venture. I have arranged for his correspondence to be intercepted, and read. More of the vinegar or lemon-juice secret writing, as I mentioned earlier, you recall, Lewrie?”

“Uhm,” Alan commented, feet up on his desk and slouched down in a padded chair, with Toulon now quietly napping in his lap.

“Unfortunately, too,” Twigg went on, as if he, and
ergo
them, had all the time in the world, though it was growing quite late. “I cannot substitute correspondence, either overt or covert, to cause confusion. Indeed, until we are certain of all the principals, we cannot strike at any of them.”

“There is the niggling problem that they're neutrals, citizens of a sovereign Tuscany,” Lewrie pointed out. “But that never stopped you much before.”

“My Lord, this is fascinating, sir!” Mountjoy cried, wriggling in his chair with excitement.

“You do me too much injustice, Lewrie, 'deed you do, sir,” the old spy carped. “Why, were I a passionate man, I'd take a grave exception to it. Though, fencing words with you
is
amusing, at times . . .” He tossed Lewrie a beatific smile; another damn' brief 'un. “No, I fear I can do little, for the nonce. It will be up to you, and your Nelson, to . . . how
did
Captain Ayscough put it, Lewrie? That I should hold his coat, and let another batsman have his innings? No, to lop off conspiracy at the root may be beyond us, but I shall be quite content should your squadron take as many of their ships as possible, cutting profits to nil . . . and disabusing the conspirators of the notion that they may aid France and prosper. Or that France will aid them in their plans.”

“So it goes beyond profit, sir?” Mountjoy gushed.

“Indeed it does, Mister Mountjoy. Lewrie, I'm told you have a wager with Captain Cockburn? He'll buy you that shore dinner. May I suggest roast crow for him? No, sirs. This exceeds humanity, or care for their fellows, from the Genoese. Or for the neutrality, the very sovereignty of Tuscany. Signore
Gallacio, I have learned, is part of a salon group of like-minded progressives, quite taken with the American Revolution, and with its ideals. Overeducated, overwealthy dilettantes and intellectual wastrels. Idealists, some of them.”