Dewey Lambdin - A King`s Commander

"Signores," Lewrie stated. "Commander Lewrie, the Jester sloop. Reg-gia Marina Britannico." He knew that much Italian, anyway. "With me yet, Mister Mountjoy?"

"Here, sir," Mountjoy replied from his right rear.

"Tell these gentlemen that…"

There was a hefty splash from starboard and astern.

"Papers, sir!" Mountjoy wailed.

"Corp'rl Summerall, the great-cabins!" Lewrie barked. "Move!"

A sneer on the peacock's face, crude grins on the mates'. And from her captain, an attempt to remain bland, but a daunting smug look of satisfaction in spite of his best efforts. Only his lively wee eyes laughed.

"Damn them!" Lewrie spat. "They think this is some bloody game?"

"Perhaps, sir," Mountjoy confessed softly.

"Introduce me, tell 'em they're prisoners, and that we're taking this brig into Vado Bay." Lewrie sighed bitterly, working up the enthusiasm for an air of false bravado, and success, in spite of them. And in spite of his dashed hopes that he'd discover just how they knew to fear a British squadron along the Genoese Riviera so quickly.

"Then, sir?" Mountjoy asked, once he'd delivered that news.

"Tell 'em no harm will come to them, but they're to be searched for weapons, then confined until we drop anchor. Officers, passengers, and crew. We'll search their personal belongings and cabins…"

A muffled bang from below! Followed by several louder reports!

"What the Devil…?" Lewrie shouted, wheeling toward a ladder to the waist. "Watch 'em, Andrews."

"Aye, sah," Andrews drawled, drawing his pistol and pulling it back to full cock. He might not have been tall enough, or beef to the heel enough to seem menacing; but his feral grin, and the unspoken and exotic danger of a dark-skinned man with a gun did the trick for him.

"What happened, Corporal Summerall?" Lewrie demanded once he'd gained the great-cabins.

"Civilian, sir," Summerall reported from rigid attention, eyes fixed over Lewrie's shoulder on a cabin door. "Caught 'im pilin' up a mess o' papers an' such, sir! Drew a pistol, sir! Fired at us. Returned fire, sir. No 'elpin' it, Cap'um, sir!"

He might have been a servant, a valet to one of the gentlemen on deck. A wiry-haired fellow approaching middle years, his hair gray and neatly dressed. An aging clerk's soft hands and cherubic face. But he now lay sprawled between two open chests or traveling trunks, amid the blizzard of loose and bound correspondence he'd tried to jettison. His clothes were quite good. Much better than a servant usually received as part of his wages. Castoffs, Lewrie thought, kneeling down? No, they were too new, of good fabric, and elegant cut. Drab gray trousers, not breeches, but of excellent wool. A black waistcoat, now torn and gory. A fine cambric linen shirt with lots of lace, slowly turning rusty red.

"You're a damn' fool, sir," Lewrie told him, as his eyes opened and his breath, which had seemed stopped, heaved his chest.

"Aaahh…" He whimpered. A trickle of blood appeared along his mouth. Lung shot, or gut shot, and goin' fast, Lewrie grimaced.

"Who are you, sir? Anyone we should write?" Lewrie offered as he knelt down beside him. "Tell your family? Familial Famille?"

"In…" The little fellow almost chuckled, though he was choking on his filling lungs. "Inconnu . .." And with a rictus of a grin, he closed his eyes. A racking cough, the gout of blood that drowned him, flooded his mouth.

"Dammit!" Lewrie groused, sliding back on his knees to escape the last coughed blood. "Inconnu?"

"In French, sir, that is to say…"

"I know what it means, Mountjoy! 'Unknown,' was what the damn' fool said," Lewrie fumed, getting to his feet. "Having his last wee jest. See his eyes twinkle for a second there? Means whatever there was worth finding went overboard. And he died 'fore we could interrogate him. Might've planned it that way. Couldn't find the 'nutmegs' to put a pistol to his own skull, but he could make us do it for him."

"French agent, without a doubt, sir," Mountjoy flatly stated. "No one sane would kill himself for loss of profit." Mountjoy looked a little queasy, as if he were suffering seasickness again. So far, there hadn't been much dying aboard Jester for him to witness, for the young gentleman to wade through. "Hellish business, sir. Still… I say, Corporal Summerall? Was he still trying to gather bundles of his papers, as if there was something left to toss into the sea?"

"Aye, Mister Mountjoy, sir. Saw us, dropped 'em, then snatched up 'at pistol, sir," Summerall reported, turned to face them but still speaking to windowsills and the like.

"There is a remote possibility, sir," Mountjoy posed.

"Have at it, then, sir," Lewrie agreed with a weary air.

"And, sir?"

"Aye?"

"That fellow in the snuff-brown, sir, did you notice?"

"Notice what, Mister Mountjoy?"

"Well, sir, he was the only one of the principals aboard this ship who didn't look pleased when they heard that splash, sir," Thomas Mountjoy pointed out. "Didn't look… anything. Stone-faced as a good gambler, sir. Pinched his eyes at the shots. For an instant, I recall a trace of sadness. Then, back to his pose, sir. As if he knew this'n was going to die beforehand. Didn't flinch or jump, like the others, that's what made me remark him, sir."

"Well, damme, Mister Mountjoy, that's…" Lewrie gawped, as if Toulon had begun forming words and speaking in English. "That's sharp of you, I must say. However did you come by this… talent of yours?"

"A barrister I clerked for, sir, when I was reading the law, he discovered to me certain quirks people have when they give testimony in the dock. Had he feigned surprise, I might have dismissed my first impression of this fellow, but…" Mountjoy shyly confessed. "Lead them on with innocuous prattle, sir. Then rock 'em back on their heels hard, with a question they don't expect. Then read their reactions."

"And, since you speak Italian and French so well, in addition to this most welcome skill of yours, Mister Mountjoy," Lewrie decided, "I will put you in charge of not only perusing what remains, but of quizzing our prisoners, as well. Especially our snuff-brown friend."

"Er… thankee, sir. I think," Mountjoy all but preened. Just before he realized how much, and how arduous a labor that would be.

"Him, last, I should think," Lewrie speculated. "Let him stew over what the other missed."

"An admirable idea, sir. I'll see to it."

"Lock them all up, separate cabins. No personal belongings, I think would be best. These trunks and chests, ready for debarking at San Remo… could you go through them all?"

"These two, particularly, sir. This dead fellow seemed anxious to purge just these two open ones." Mountjoy dared to grin. Excited, again, to be useful. "Why just these two? His… and the snuff-brown man's, I'd wager? Rather plain, good leather, but unremarkable, hmm. Nothing as gaudy as those. I'd strongly suspect the fancy ones belong to the elegant gentleman. Might be the ship's owner, do you not think, sir? Might have bags of incriminating stuff crammed in his, but these got the attention, as if this ship's problems, and theirs, were…!"

"I leave it to you, sir," Lewrie interrupted. "I have to get way on her, sort out her crew, disarm and inspect em. Shuffle hands about-again!- to man all our prizes, and such. We'll speak later, once we're safe and snug in Vado Bay." And knowing, too, that once his clerk got enthused about something, he'd talk six ways 'round whatever had heated his blood, and waste the rest of the Day Watch doing it, too!

"Manifests," Lewrie said, snapping his fingers, delaying his departure for the upper decks. "Bills of lading, ship's papers, crew and passenger lists. I'll send you Mister Giles and his jack-in-the-bread-room to take inventory of the cargo, so you may see if it conforms."

"Very good, sir. I mean, aye aye, sir."

Lawyers, Lewrie thought, pounding up the companionway ladders: Minds like snake's nests, God save us!

"A most gallant action, Commander Lewrie," Horatio Nelson told him, waving a hand toward a cut-glass decanter of newly arrived claret. "Perhaps a bit beyond our brief, to raid a Savoian port rather than a Genoese. But one which has no doubt discomfited the French, no end."

"Thankee, sir," Lewrie replied, making free with that welcome claret, and feeling like God's Own Damme-Boy to win praise from a man so aggressive himself.

"And most circumspect of you, as well, sir," Nelson went on, "to confine your findings concerning the merchant brig, and your suspicions, to a separate report."

"Mine and my clerk's, sir, Mister Thomas Mountjoy's," Alan added. He'd won almost gushing praise-there was enough and more to go around. And Mountjoy, surprisingly, had done almost as much as Knolles, Bootheby, Cony, or any of the others he'd cited for significant contributions to their overall success.

Too far from the entry door to be able to respond to the musket butt rapped on the deck, Nelson's next comment was cut off by the knock at the louvred partition door to the day-cabin.

"Excuse me, sir, but Captain Cockburn is come aboard, as you bid him," Lieutenant Andrews informed him, "and is just without."

"Ah, show him in, sir!" Nelson brightened. "Devil of a fellow, Cockburn. Took a Genoese just off Finale, 'bout the same time as your Jester was at Bordighera, Lewrie. And, in much the same mysterious… ah, here he is! Come in, Captain Cockburn! Come in, sir! Do you join us. And join us in a glass," Nelson offered. "New-come claret!"

"Captain Nelson, sir, good morning to you. Lewrie." Cockburn nodded, almost affably. Especially since Lewrie was sporting his newer full-dress coat, with the suggested epaulet and slash cuffs.

Small talk was made for a few minutes, a review of Cockburn's doings off Finale, which Lewrie felt politic to beam over; Lewrie's doings far to the west, over which Cockburn raised a brow and simpered, almost politely.

"And both of you have taken merchantmen violating our unofficial embargo," Nelson summed up. "Ships that present to us a most striking and mystifying similarity of circumstances. One might initially think that their coinciding similarities were simply that; coincidence. But I now am coming to suspect that any similarity between them is a first inkling of something planned, do you see. First off, Captain Cockburn brings in II Furioso, a ship of Genoese registry. All her papers seem to be in order, though she was observed departing Finale, a port that is now French-held. Her Captain Bavastro and her crew abandon her just as soon as they are able. She attempted to prevent Meleager's gallant First Officer, Lt. Thomas Hardy, from boarding. Her guns were loaded with canister and langridge, and her matches lit. Hardly the acts of a declared neutral, and therefore liable to legitimate seizure. Laden with valuables, too. Coin, gold bullion, silver plate, and such in her master's great-cabins. Which are now here aboard Agamemnon."

Damme, but Cockburn's a lucky bugger, Lewrie groaned to himself!

"Odd, though, that so far, Mister Francis Drake, ashore, cannot seem to find anyone who knows her as II Furioso, or has ever heard of a ship by that name clearing from Genoa. More perplexing is the presence of a different name on her transom. Nostra Signora di Belvedere," Horatio Nelson posed.

"And mine, sirs…" Lewrie exclaimed, sitting up straighter.

"Il Briosco," Nelson agreed. "That is to say, Lively, as in a lively tune.' But bearing the name Nostra Signora di Capraia across her stern. Of Tuscan registry. Or at least, flying a Tuscan flag when taken. Lured in by Jester flying false French colors, and playacting as escort to a convoy, which were really his prizes and tender, Captain Cockburn. I strongly hold that only the nearness of II Briosco to her captor, and her run-out battery… and the suddenness of Lewrie's revelation as a British ship, which took them all aback, prevented them from resisting. Her guns, too, were loaded but not run-out. With langridge and canister," Nelson stressed, lifting a finger, "one person, at least, did resist below, whom Lewrie suspects was a French spy, intent upon jettisoning a bag of incriminating documents. The man succeeded. Just as someone aboard II Furioso did, Commander Lewrie."