A Jester’s Fortune

CHAPTER 3

Palms slapped on Brown Bess muskets, and the Bosun and his new mate, Sadler, trilled their calls as the makeshift side-party assembled to greet the officer who'd clambered up the man-ropes and battens, ascending at last to the starboard gangway. Lt. Ralph Knolles was there, in the proper fig (and thank God for that! Lewrie thought) to present his sword in salute. On-watch crew members doffed their hats, while the off-watch "Make and Menders" stood bareheaded, at some form of attention, anyway, amid all their flopping laundry.

Lewrie scampered forward, stuffing his voluminous shirttails into his casual slop-trousers, scuffing his old shoes as he all but hopped to roll down the trouser legs to his ankles.

"Captain Thomas Charlton, come aboard, sir!" he heard the man in the perfect uniform announce to Knolles. "Your captain?"

"Sir!" Knolles almost barked, distracting Charlton's eye from Lewrie, until he'd gotten somewhat presentable. "Welcome aboard, sir. Allow me to name myself to you-Lieutenant Ralph Knolles, sir, First Officer."

"Captain Charlton, sir?" Lewrie said at last.

"Yer hat, sir!" his cabin-servant/valet Aspinall whispered at his side, proffering his abandoned headgear at the last instant. Alan clapped it on his head quickly, leaving a rebellious rogue's lock of slightly curly hair under the front brim over his forehead. "Commander Lewrie, sir, your servant. Welcome aboard."

"Ah," Charlton replied primly, giving him a head-to-foot once-over, cocking a single sardonic eyebrow at what he beheld, as Lewrie doffed his hat in salute. Slop-trousers! Charlton sniffed to himself. No stockings on his ankles! Man's lucky to shew himself shod! Post-Captain Charlton's gaze went to the penny-whistle that Lewrie held in his left hand, along his side like a truncated small-sword. "Ah," he reiterated. "So you're Lewrie."

"Aye, sir," Lewrie answered. "Beg pardon, Captain Charlton, but we're having 'Make And Mend,' after a quick refit, and I wasn't expecting-"

"Quite." Charlton nodded, seeming to relent a bit. "Pardons to you, sir, for not prefacing my intention to visit with a note before I did so. Or simply sending you a summons aboard Lionheart. My ship, yonder." Charlton pointed to the fine 5th Rate that lay farther out in the harbour. There was a note of pride in his voice. "Well?"

Oh, Christ. Lewrie groaned to himself, feeling the urge to fidget. Bastard wants a glass o' something in my bloody cabins!

"You'll have to excuse the mess, Captain Charlton, but may I offer you a sip of something refreshing?" Lewrie beamed.

"Quite," Gharlton answered, as inscrutable as the Sphinx.

"This way, sir," Lewrie offered, glaring at Knolles, trying to mouth "Full kit!" at him without Charlton being aware. "Aspinall?"

"Aye, sir?" his lank young servant piped up.

"Dash on ahead and get us chairs, glasses and such."

"Aye aye, sir," Aspinall grunted.

Lewrie cursed himself again. He'd gestured with the damned penny-whistle! This was not making a good first impression at all!

The odour of fresh paint predominated; fresh paint, linseed oil and varnish. All the deal-and-canvas partitions had been struck below, as if the cabins had been stripped for battle. Dining furniture, the sideboard, wine cabinet, desk, sofa and chairs had been shunted over to the larboard side and covered with scrap tarpaulins. The sleeping coach and that damnable big-enough-for-two hanging bed-cot were in plain view. Captain Charlton took in the clutter, the sight of a Free Black tricked out as Cox'n, chivvying the working-party out, up the narrow companionway ladder to the after quarterdeck, so he and this… this Lewrie could speak in private. A weedy young valet, too weak-looking to draw breath, was trotting out two good armchairs in the middle of the deck, a collapsible tea-tray between them, and a pair of glasses. As far as possible from any still-wet surface.

"Will you take claret, sir? Brandy? Hock?" Lewrie offered, crossing to his desk to throw up a paint-splotched tarpaulin cover, open a drawer and hide that silly penny-whistle from further view. "Or we have most of a pitcher of lemon and orange water, sir. Sweet and tangy. With a weak admixture of Italian spumante, o' course."

"Like a cold gin punch without the gin, sir?" Captain Charlton enquired, with what to Lewrie felt like immense forbearance and patience. "Aye, that sounds refreshing."

Aspinall poured from a pewter pitcher so cool, compared to the heat trapped belowdecks, that it almost frosted. "Bit o' winter ice from shore, sir," he explained shyly to their visitor. He topped up those glasses with an opened bottle of sparkling white wine.

"Remarkably refreshing," Charlton allowed after a sip or two. "Now, sir. Reason for my unannounced call 'pon you."

"Oof," Lewrie grunted again, as Toulon the two-year-old ram-cat leaped into his lap. He'd grown considerably and had filled out to be quite a lapful, all sinew and sleek fur. He stretched out upon Lewrie's thigh, head out towards Charlton, paws hanging atop Lewrie s knee, tail slightly bottled and the tip thrashing below his master's chin. His yellow eyes were half slit, coolly regarding this possibly hostile newcomer, unblinking, with his ears half flat and his whiskers forward on guard. " Toulon, sir. Where I got him, so it seemed…"

No, this ain't goin' well at all! Lewrie thought with a sigh.

"Uhm, yahyss… quite," Charlton rejoined, with a sigh of his own; that sort of sigh Lewrie had heard often in his school-days, the sort associated with tutors or instructors he'd let down badly.

' 'Bout the same sort of disaster, Toulon is, too, sir," Alan said, for want of something cleverer, and instantly regretting it.

Charlton fixed him with a dead-level glare for a moment, nigh the same sort he'd been getting from the ram-cat, as if he couldn't quite believe his eyes. A Commission Sea Officer, a full Commander of the Royal Navy, sitting cross-legged with a twelve-pound feline in his lap- half-empty glass in hand-amid a barking shambles of a great-cabin, dressed as out-at-the-heels as a dockyard drunk and stroking the damn beast as if nothing much were amiss!

"Just came from Victory, Lewrie," Charlton said at last. "Had a word with Admiral Jervis. I am charged with command of a new squadron. And you, and Jester, are to be a part of it."

"Good, sir." Lewrie brightened.

"Good?" Charlton queried sharply. "Why 'good'?"

"Because there's little value in blockading the Genoese Riviera any longer, sir. We've lost it," Lewrie replied straightaway. "The French now have the good coastal roads-Marseilles to Genoa -open year-round. Less coastal shipping to intercept, d'ye see, sir."

There, that sounds sensible, Alan thought; so he won't think he's dealing with a hen-head, after all. He wouldn't have to be the one to admit that to Captain Horatio Nelson, his present squadron commander, or to his favourite, that toplofty earnest prig Captain Cockburn, he and Jester's presence were about as welcome as wasps at an outdoor wedding.

"With the Austrians and Piedmontese cut off from us inland, we serve no useful purpose on the Ligurian coast," Lewrie went on, since Charlton made no move to cut him off. "Had we sent the entire fleet against Toulon west of Cape Antibes to draw them out to battle last year, it might have been a different story, but-"

"So you think Admiral Hotham was in error, sir?"

Uh-oh. Alan all but cringed; a tiny voice told him to get off that subject quickly, since he didn't know Charlton's patrons.

"Outnumbered, hence cautious, sir," was all he'd say, so he wouldn't have to rise to the bait.

"I see," Charlton replied, noncommittal.

"This summer, sir," Lewrie dared opine, "the French will most-like force the matter. Try and retake Corsica. That'll take transports. Spread the war farther east, perhaps. Deprive our Navy of Porto Especia and Leghorn, too. Outflank us on land and force the issue with the Austrians. And I'd imagine that your squadron will be in the thick of it. That's why I said 'good.' "

He squirmed a bit in his chair, though Toulon wasn't moving.

"First impressions aside, Captain Charlton, Jester is more than ready, at an hour's notice. We're nearly two years in commission, with pretty much the same crew, sir. Shaken down and sorted out main-well. Experienced, battle-proven and ready."

Charlton lifted an eyebrow at that, took a temporising sip of his drink and used the time to think-and to look about the cabins. What he'd seen on deck, beneath the temporary mess, had not been unpleasing; Jester was set up as Bristol-Fashion as anyone could ask, and her people had appeared clean and fairly sober, a fit and healthy lot. And, with that chin-high open curiosity and ineffable sense of "how dare he come aboard to judge us"-that inner pride of men who'd been tested and proven their mettle. Much like, he wished to believe, the spirit of his own ship's company.

It struck Charlton that Lewrie's great-cabins were not quite the sybaritic sort he'd expect of someone so casually unconventional. The colours were muted. A proper deep red Navy paint upon the bulwarks and the gun-carriages. A glossy-varnished oak wainscoting above the gun-ports, as were the overhead deck beams. Vertical hull timbers were the same dark forest-green of the ship's gunwales, whilst the rest of the planked interior wood was, well, half painted, at present, a deep, mellow, beach-sand tan, picked out here and there round the transom sash-windows with gilt; the overhead 'tween the glossy deck beams was a light, neutral grey.

Half painted, and only half cleaned. There were still stains and smudges of gunpowder visible. The black-and-white chequer of the painted canvas deck covering was worn through round the cannon, though, where the carriages had recoiled in battle or been run in and out in countless drills.

And those great-guns, those long-barreled 9-pounders he saw; barrels not only free of rust, but gleaming under glossy black paint. Gun-tools immaculate, though worn. Carriage trucks as scuffed as an old pair of shoes-a sign they'd never sat idle for long.

"You're quite right, Commander Lewrie," Charlton said, after a long, disarming moment of silence and adjudication. "This summer will see a lot of action, more than like. God willing, it will see French anarchy and revolution conquered. And our cause, and right, upheld. Formal orders from the flag will, no doubt, come aboard to you shortly. I will send a draught of my initial strictures aboard, as well. Or better yet"-Charlton smiled for the first time in what seemed to Lewrie an aeon of frowning-"do you dine with me, at seven bells of the Second Dog, this evening, aboard my ship. There I will explain our mission more fully. To you and to my own officers. And to Captain Rodgers, of Pylades. For the nonce, I will call 'pon him after I leave you and make the same invitation. So we may get to know each other the better-our strengths- and our weaknesses."

"Captain Rodgers, sir?" Lewrie brightened with hope anew. "That wouldn't be a Benjamin Rodgers, would it?"

"In point of fact, it is, sir," Charlton told him. "Do you know of him, Commander Lewrie?"

'Deed I do, sir!" Alan said with a pleased-as-punch laugh. "We served in the Bahamas, 'tween the wars. And a merry… and busy old time of it did we have, sir. It'd be a pure delight to serve with him again. Much less renew our acquaintance."

"Good friends, were you?" Charlton enquired calmly, feeling helpless at the thought that he was saddled with two subordinates cast from the same slapdash mould!

"Aye, sir," Lewrie admitted. "He even stood godfather to my eldest son in '87. Though we haven't been in touch lately."

Charlton took another fortifying sip, whilst he pondered that latest revelation. Lewrie had an eldest son, born in '87. Born in the Bahamas, hey? Pray God, to a white, English lady? Logic dictated that there was at least one more male offspring in the woodpile.

He studied Lewrie once more, trying to balance what little he knew of his reputation, what he'd seen as a first impression in these last few minutes, with what was slowly being revealed. Paradox, he shrugged to himself.

Lewrie was about three inches shy of his own six-foot height; almost courtier-slim, about eleven or twelve stone. Perhaps early thirties, he guessed. That meant he'd married damn young, when still a lieutenant. Quite unlike himself, who had waited until his captaincy to wed. Good cabin furnishings, from what little he could see peeking from beneath the painters' tarpaulins. Coin-silver Ian thorns stacked atop the sideboard; rather exquisite Turkey or Chinee carpets, now rolled up, but their tag-end coloured patterns showing. Married for love, most like, in infantile "cream-pot" love; and perhaps not well at all-yet, with all signs of moderate wealth. Her money? Captain Charlton speculated. Is he that sort? Or is this recent, a result of Jesters many prizes? Dash it all, but this Lewrie was turning out to be a most perplexing devil! Captain Charlton rather preferred his conundrums a bit more… solvable.

"Well, I shall leave you to the rest of your refit, Lewrie," Charlton announced, finishing his glass.

"Will we be sailing soon, sir?" Lewrie asked as they rose.

"Soon as the wind obliges, sir." Charlton smiled at the man's eagerness to be off, to be up and doing. "Perhaps in the morning, after a good meal and a good night's rest."

"I can have this finished and under way then, sir." Alan chuckled.

"When you come aboard this evening, sir…?" Charlton posed in midstride for the forrud doors.

"Aye, sir?" Scrub the filth off-put on real clothing, he mused.

"Bring a copy of the receipt for this marvelous cold punch, sir. I must admit, it's quite zestful."

"But of course, sir!" Lewrie said, breathing a sigh of relief. "You have Tuscan asti spumante in your lazarette, sir? Or should you allow me to bring that as well? Or… 'tis really so much better if one uses a proper champagne, sir."

"I possess neither, at present. Send to shore for spumante, I s'pose?" Charlton shrugged, almost in a good mood by then. "As for a Frog wine, no harm in drinking it, d'ye think?"

"Ask of Captain Rodgers, do you go aboard his ship, sir. He's sure to have some. His very favourite in the whole world. Politics or war aside, he's bound to have a case squirreled away for special occasions. And a chance for action is just that, sir."

"Aye, I'll enquire of him, Lewrie."

Good God, Charlton thought, once more betwixt being reconciled to Lewrie and Rodgers. He was being put on warning that they were a proper pair of blackguards. Does Rodgers tipple a lot of wine? More than is good for a man beyond a gentlemanly brace of bottles a day?

The door that led to the gun-deck, at the forward end of the great-cabins, had been left covertly ajar, Lewrie noted. Some quick-witted sod with an ear to the ground, he thought. As he walked with Charlton to see him off, he caught a flash of scarlet and white; a Marine in proper kit, at last. There was a subtle thud of a musket butt on the deck beyond. Knolles had most-like cleared the rigging of laundry, sent the Marines below for tunics, hats, belts and gaiters and had Jester and her full complement ready to give their new senior officer the right sort of sendoff.

"Oh, bloody… 'ware that…!" Lewrie burst out, as Charlton clapped his large cocked hat on his head.

Captain Thomas Charlton walked on a pace or two, though his hat didn't. It remained, plastered to the still-wet varnish of one of the overhead deck-beams by its "dog's vane" and riband bow, tied beneath the gold-laced loop and gilt button of rank on the left-hand side. He reached up for it… back for it.

"Uhmm, yer hat, sir?" Lewrie blushed scarlet.

"Uhmm, yayhss," Charlton fumed, just as red-faced. "Quite."