A King's Commander (52 page)

T
he
tartane
dribbled down
Jester
's
side as she got a way on her, with Lewrie alone on the quarterdeck, shoving the helm hard over to the starboard corner, alee, to force her back onto the wind. Mountjoy and Peel sorted out weaponry below the ladders, amid-ships; a souvenir from Lewrie's Florida adventure in '83, a long-barreled .54-caliber fusil musket, and a French cavalry musketoon, six brace of assorted dragoon, pocket or naval pistols, and their various reloads.

Finally, clear of
Jester
's
side, falling astern, and turning up to use the wind, instead of being wafted aimless by it. He eased the tiller sweep as Peel came to the quarterdeck, complete with a battered-looking saber and scabbard at his hip. They both gazed shoreward, as Choundas's rowing boat cocked and surged over the beginnings of feeble breakers within fifty yards of the beach, another quarter-mile inshore.

“Hell of a lead on us.” Peel grimaced, baring his horsey teeth. “Village around the point, 'bout another quarter-mile, I recall. We'll sail around and put in there, I take it?”

“Thought we'd do things direct, Mister Peel,” Lewrie said, with a humorless laugh. “He's lame. He can't scamper too far. Or quick.”

Lewrie swung the tartane's
bows a touch off the wind, her decks canting over a mite more, but making more speed, as if he was aiming to shave the point by the thinnest of hairs, east of where Choundas would ground.

“Ah, land us 'twixt him and town, so he can't get a horse,” Mister Peel supposed aloud.

“Something like that,” Lewrie agreed.

“But, uhm . . .” Peel demurred, “we don't have a rowboat. They . . .”

“We
have
a boat, properly speaking, sir.” Lewrie beamed, humming to himself. “Why I didn't want any extra hands along. Bit iffy, this. But you said ‘this instant,' so, ‘this instant' it'll be. Looks steep-to, around there, not so much sand in the shallows so we'd not reach the shore. Yon rocky notch? Maybe six feet of water within musket shot of the shingle. Remind Mountjoy to keep his powder dry, sir. When we hit, and when we go over the bow.”

“Good God, you . . . !” Peel went quite pale. “I can't swim that . . .”

“Mister Peel, I can't swim at all!” Lewrie hooted, grinning at him maliciously, happy to be getting some of his own back. “Just lie back, grit your teeth . . . and think of England, hey?”

“You're daft, you're . . . !” Peel gasped.

Lewrie put the tiller hard-over for the shore. He looked about for the rowboat; it was already ashore, abandoned, bows grinding upon the strand. A flash of white shirt on a rocky path above the beach was the tail end of the escapees, scrambling around the point to the village where they could blend in with their fellow Genoese, perhaps prop their feet up in an
osteria,
sip some wine, and pretend to be simple fishermen. Choundas, though . . . ! He hadn't a hope, except to find a way to hide or flee. And if there were troops in the village, as Peel seemed to recall, they might persuade them to remember their “neutrality” and hunt for the French officer who violated it.

“Dear Lord, sir!” Mountjoy screeched as he learned what Lewrie had in mind, as the tartane
arrowed in toward the beach.

“Hang on!” Alan warned. They were back up to at least five knots. Rocks were visible underwater to windward as she went in at a sixty-degree angle. There was a shudder as she scraped over something, a slither of sand, then a thunderous roaring and groaning as her bow and forefoot planking tore away, as her keel shattered forrud, and stout ribs of her hull timbers almost exploded into kindling! Her bow pitched high, then came crashing down again, she canted to starboard amid the shrieking of her masts and yards, stays, taut halliards and sheets twanging and snapping loud as gunshots, as everything came down in ruin!

Her motion came to a stop in an eye-blink, throwing everyone off their feet. Lewrie fetched up at the forward edge of the quarter-deck, rolling over to get back upright, and regretting his precipitate action just a tad; after all, she'd been a pretty little thing, worth a pretty penny at the Prize Court. For all the good that would have done him if his previous experiences with those thieves was anything to go by.

The tartane
was firmly aground, canted hard-over to starboard and wrecked beyond repair, her forward third splayed open and her back broken, with her long outthrust rectangular Dago-fashion bowsprit platform hanging over the top of the surf line and some shallow rock pools. When the wind did come from seaward later in the day, she'd grind and pound to death, until she resembled a dead whale, all spine and ribs.

“Well, let's go ashore!” Lewrie urged, trotting forward to find some loose bights of line to ease their scramble down the starboard end of the sprit platform to shin-deep water.

There were no troops in the village. Peel's and Mountjoy's fluent Italian gathered that much from the locals; they'd ridden off a day before. No, no smugglers had come ashore,
signores,
they were assured; only honest fishermen and herders, here. Though more than a few tarry sorts eyed the heavily armed trio nervously from the lone tavern's windows or doorway. A uniformed man,
si si, signores,
and very ugly, he'd come but he had gone quickly; hired a horse and ridden off, too. Their village didn't attract many visitors, and they rarely stayed for long in any event. Horses?
Si, signores,
there is a man who has horses to buy, they are
“molto costoso” . . .
very expensive, they were told, with many villagers rubbing their fingers together in a universally understood sign.

“Bloody rejects,” Peel said, as he pawed a chocolate gelding's chest for defects. “Austrian, Genoese, maybe French . . . sound-enough, once, I s'pose. Girth galls and saddle sores, almost healed? Cavalry remounts. Stolen, I shouldn't wonder. Maybe this bastard's fattening 'em up to sell back, later.”

“No matter,” Lewrie snapped, impatient for a gotch-eyed, gangly ostler lad to put saddle and pad on the likely dun mare he'd picked. “He admits he sold a horse to Choundas? He recognizes our description?”

“Yessir, best of his lot,” Peel replied, doing his own saddling. “Our boy, ‘Brutto Faccia' was here, right enough. Paid in gold, didn't quibble. Didn't wait for change, either. Now, price he asked for ours you'd think we'd just bought blooded Arabians, 'stead o' these. In the Household Cavalry, we'd deem these Welsh coal-pit ponies.”

“I had a pony once.” Mountjoy crooned to his choice to calm her as he sat her back, already mounted. “Bit me, rather often, he did.”

“Paid for information, too, this brute tells me,” Peel went on, kneeing his horse to tighten the girth. “Don't hold yer breath, damnye. So we had to, as well. There's the coast road . . . east to Vado, or west to Finale, pick it up 'bout a mile inland. Another road at the junction . . . goes inland, northwest.” Peel swung up into his saddle and leaned down to adjust his off-side stirrup.

“Which did he take, does this fellow know?” Lewrie pressed, as he swung a leg over, his Ferguson rifle muzzle-down across his back.

“Asked about Austrians,” Peel said, sitting upright. “I doubt this man really ever knew, but he told him there
had
been Austrians on the Finale road, to the west. That much gold gettin' slung about, he told him anything he wished to hear, more than like. But I can't remember reports of Austrian patrols this far away from Vado. I wager he took the northwest road, inland. For certain, the French Army is that way. Let's go. Catch him up before he finds them.”

They set off at a brisk trot, posting in their saddles, finding Latin saddles' high pommels and backs awkward. The horses were awkward, too, too long unexercised and fractious; taken too soon from their period of recuperation to be strong. The road junction was uphill all the way, less than a mile, but their mounts were already breathing hard.

A quick halt for Peel to study clues in the wheel ruts and hoof-prints that went in every direction, those partly obliterated by boot marks of the soldiers who'd left the village.

“Sir!” Mountjoy yelped, having ambled down the Finale road for about two musket shots' distance. He came cantering back, waving something aloft. “Tricolor cockade, sir. Just lying in the middle of the road. Off a Frenchman's hat, do you think, Mister Peel?”

“Yessir, I do.” Peel squinted down the road. “You stayed in the middle, or on the verge, sir?”

“Middle, sir.” Mountjoy groaned. “Did I err?”

“We'll see. You wait here for a bit.”

Peel walked his gelding down the left side of the road, peering at the ground. He stopped where he saw fresh shoe prints that Mister Mountjoy had made when he dismounted, then crossed over to the right-hand side, kneed his mount through the brushy undergrowth, and disappeared! Minutes later, though, he emerged; on the northwest road!

“Clever, this Choundas!” Peel laughed, waving them to join him. “For a sailor, I'd not expect it. Tossed his cockade to lure any pursuit down the Finale road, then doubled back through these woods to hide his prints, With that uniform he wears, under a cloak, he could almost pass as an Austrian artillery officer. Or Genoese, Piedmontese . . . as little as most have seen of 'em. Yet, here's his prints, leading right up this inland road. There's still a chance! Must we kill our horses, so be it, but we can still catch him! Follow me!”

Capitaine de Vaisseau Guillaume Choundas was not a horseman. He had never owned one. His father couldn't afford one when he was growing up; even if their principal diet came from their catches at sea, grain for a horse's nourishment was better put in the bellies of the Choundas family, than such an extravagance.

Yet a man who'd aspire to the level of the aristocracy or those untitled rich, as his father had schemed for him to do, the brightest of his sons,
must
ride. There'd been a retired Norman cavalry officer who'd drilled him, hours and hours in a paddock or the countryside of St. Malo, for a small fee, but young Guillame had never taken to it as he had the skill of the sword, pistol, or mathematics. What need had a naval officer-to-be with a good “seat,” except to impress the ladies? Equipoise was nothing to him but a regrettable means to an end, an onerous task to perform until he'd been deemed reasonably competent, and quickly abandoned as he focused on the knowledge necessary for a naval career. His time at the Jesuit school as an impoverished charity student, pretending to espouse their vows of poverty, chastity . . . Bretons made the world's best seamen, perhaps stout infantry. Let the rest of the Franks, Normans, and effeminate Gauls who had come to dominate the ancient, original pure Breton race have their love of horses! Let the other lads prate and pose on their expensive living toys! He would be a Breton, with his feet firmly planted on the ground, or an oak deck.

So he sat his horse lumpishly, his crippled left leg too weak to tolerate a trot. He could post with his overdeveloped thighs, but a few minutes' work with his calf created a burning, engorged numbness before it went slack and nerveless. A canter or lope was much better, but even a poor horseman such as he could see that this horse was not up to a fast pace for long. After the road junction, he'd rested his gelding, gone down the Finale road and torn off his Republican cockade to leave a false scent, as he'd read that Rousseau's Noble Savages did. He'd then loped for three-quarters of a mile inland, until his horse began to toss its head, and slowed to a steady, long-legged, distance-eating walk. Once on the northwest road, the going was more level and easier, the inclines gentler among the rock-bound pastures filled with goats and sheep, the gleaned-over fields of stubble, the orchards and patches of forest. Easier on the horse . . . and him.

“Maniac,” Choundas whispered in uneasy awe, recalling again the tartane
driving ashore, with that madman Lewrie at her helm. Choundas had recognized
Jester
after their first tack, from three miles off, and had known at once who it was pursued him. But he'd bested Lewrie one more time, in spite of his best efforts. He'd gotten ashore, and then gotten away! But why, he asked himself, would such an idle rakehell turn manic, insane? Was it possible that Lewrie's hatred was just as hot as his own for him? Even though it had been Guillaume who'd suffered at
his
hands? No, someone must be ordering him, driving him to chase me. Even at two hundred yards, he had smelled defeat, and fear, the last time their ships had dueled off Alassio. But for that damned frigate, he'd have had him, at last. Lewrie would not come after him so lustily, unless pressed to it. For at heart, he was surely afraid of him, by now! A cowardly English gentleman-“aristo” weak-wrist!

British agents? How pleasurable it had been, to send Pouzin's spies off on a false errand, knowing from the first which ship carried the gold. His next report would damn Pouzin for being led astray by a “Bloody” plot, for failing, as he had concerning Alassio, and the loss of the convoy and warships, Choundas suspected British agents, and a vague description of a Jew from London, a banker— he sounded like a cadaverous butcher who'd confounded him in the Far East—Twigg! It was more than possible. And with Pouzin gone, himself installed as a replacement, he could recall that whore Claudia Mastandrea to France—to answer questions! Lewrie had had her, so he must. Then lure Lewrie to his death, with her the bait, this time. His bait!