Dewey Lambdin - A Jester’s Fortune

"And they don't fear Turkish reprisals?" Rodgers puzzled.

"Ha, sir! De Serbians scoff at de Durks! Dhey vould radder die vit Durkish blut on dheir hands dhan liff as slaves, I dell you," the little officer boasted. "Serbians vould radder massacre a Durkish wilage, a Muslim willage, dhan eat! Dhat ist how dhey liff, raidink along de goast. Bud, boor bickinks, mosd ohf de time."

"Sorry, again. Boor…?" Rodgers flinched in perplexity.

"Poor pickings, he said, sir," Lewrie translated for him.

"Ja, boor!" Kolodzcy sulkily agreed. "Bud remember, it ist de hungry wolf vich hunts de hardest. Unt de Serbian wolves are hungriest of all. Any ships vich escape you inshore, de Serbians vill eat up in de plink ohf de eye! Ships, gargoes unt grews, all gone… phffft!" Leutnant Kolodzcy said with a twinkle and a happy conjuring motion.

"Cargoes and crews," Lewrie supplied without being asked.

"Who ist to say vhat happen to ships vich de Serbs take, sirs?" Kolodzcy simpered. "Unt your gomplicity vit dhem you may deny. Dhey are nod zo many, zurrounded by zo many Muslims. Dhey heff grade need ohf you. Unt, vhen you are done vit dhem, veil… Ragusa, Dul-cigno, odder goastal powers vill not tolerate a strong Serbian pirade fleet for long. Competition, nicht wahr? Rebellion, nicht wahr? If vord gets out ohf your arrangement, dhen you can t'row dhem to de wolves!"

"Uhm, that bit about cargoes and crews disappearing," Rodgers quibbled, making a similar conjuring "poof of his own. "Surely, sir, there will be Europeans aboard the ships the Serbs take, should they ally with us. There will be officers and passengers who should properly be detained, sent here to Trieste for internment or exchange…"

"Dhen your secret ist oud, sir," Kolodzcy objected lazily, with another dismissive conjurement. "Frenchmen, Batavians or Danes speak ohf pirades unt Royal Navy vorkink togedder, dhen…? Bedder dat dey disappear. Sold in slave-markets ashore."

"Or their throats cut, sir?" Lewrie objected.

"Vat is old pirade sayink, Herr Kommandeur Lewrie?" Lieutnant Kolodzcy chuckled. "Dat 'dead men dell no dales'?"

"No, that's out," Rodgers snapped. "Right out. Prisoners must be taken, given proper treatment. Held on one of those offshore islands, perhaps. Or your officials here in Trieste could hold 'em incommunicado 'till-"

"Anything else would be unthinkable, sir," Lewrie chimed in, his dander up. "The Royal Navy, nor England, would never countenance murder or enslavement."

"Bud, you vill goundenance piracy, nicht wahr?" Kolodzcy mocked.

"Well, erm…!" Lewrie fumed.

"Dhey gome here to Trieste, dhen Austria musd take note, sirs," Kolodzcy cautioned. "Vord gets oud, eventually."

"Let's say the Serbians pick a small, rocky island, where they'd be easy to guard, then," Rodgers countered. "Use timber and canvas off a prize for materials to build huts. Food and water come off the prizes, too, so it won't cost tuppence t'feed 'em, either. Your Serbians keep the ships they take, those that suit 'em. They can burn the rest for their metal and fittings, if they like, and have what valuables there are aboard as strikes their fancies, too. But… your Serbians should keep the prisoners alive, sir! No slave-market, no other harm to come to 'em. Save the ships' papers, manifests and such, and turn 'em over to us, with a list of all prisoners from each capture."

"Head-money, sir," Lewrie suggested. "Like we pay our hands for taking a warship or privateersman. A set sum for each live prisoner… a shilling, or half-crown. So its in their interests to spare 'em."

"Head-money, aye! Thankee, Lewrie." Rodgers beamed. "We've a fair sum already, with your Prize-Court. Even a gold coin per captive wouldn't be out of the question. But anything less than that, and the deal's off 'fore it's even struck. That way, the secret's kept, 'til we're ordered out of the Adriatic. Or the Frogs are beaten, and then who's goin' t'make a fuss? The losers?"

"Long as the survivors have nothing beyond captivity to complain about, d'ye see," Lewrie added sternly. "No torture, no brutality… beyond what prisons like, anyway. That's our terms, right, sir?"

"Take it or leave it," Rodgers agreed.

And if we can't find Serbian pirates who'll abide by our terms, Alan thought, then it wasn't our fault Charlton's half-arsed pipe-dream didn't work, is it? And there's this whole hellish business, stopped altogether!

Try as hard as he might to be the proper junior officer, who'd "shut up and soldier" no matter his own reservations, he felt a rebellious itch to find a way to scotch this before it gained much more momentum. He'd quibbled as much as he thought it politick to quibble. Rodgers had already warned him to keep his wits, and his cunning, to himself for a welcome change, and go along, showing all properly "eager." Yet was there a way to scuttle it?

"Then we're agreed, sirs?" Rodgers pressed.

"Aye, sir," Lewrie spoke up quickly.

"Such terms, sir…" Kolodzcy puzzled. "Bud, even zo, it may be bossible. Ja, sir. Ohf gourse. Ve are agreed."

"Good!" Rodgers hooted, clapping his hands together. "Then it only awaits this 'dead-muzzier' of a Sirocco wind to back or veer, and we're out of harbour by sundown. And on our way. About our… business."

"A vahry exellend champagne, Kapitan Rodgers." Kolodzcy beamed slyly. "Undil dhen, perhaps ve may share annoder boddle, nicht wahr? Unt, I am thinkink… vhen do we dine?"

Hospita vobis terra, Viri, non hie ullos

reverenta ritus pectora;

mors habitat saevaeque hoc litore pugnae.

No friendly land is this to you, O Heroes,

here are no hearts that reverence any rites;

this shore is the home of death and cruel combats.

Argonautica, Book IV, 145-147

Gaius Valerius Flaccus

The general was happy, nigh to Seventh Heaven.

The very day of his return to conquered Milan, his centre of operations-laden with the paintings, the statuary, the silver and gilt masterpieces of the southern kingdoms, bedecked with glory, new fame to fuel his dreams and with forty million francs of solid specie to support the patrie -Josephine had come, at last.

Nigh to a second, blissful honeymoon, her presence seemed, after such a long wait. So fortuitously timed, too, in that glorious hiatus between the first arduous conquests and the near-bloodless but brutal | marches to the south. Even the Austrians conspired to spare the young general, to give him this joyous rencontre with his beloved bride, and peace enough in which to enjoy it, for the new Austrian commander General Wurmser had yet to arrive from the Rhine with his fresh armies.

"A terrible risk, but I tweaked their noses," General Bonaparte boasted, "I got my way, thank God."

"A terrible risk, indeed." Josephine frowned. "You know Paul and the rest of the Directory can be so arbitrary. Really, my dear…"

"There could not be two generals in charge here in Italy, sweet one." Bonaparte chuckled. "I could not serve under Kellermann, though he's the hero of Valmy. He's so old, so set in his hidebound old ways. It i would have been two dancing-masters doing a minuet with each other, Kellerman and Wurmser, and I relegated to the southern campaign, robbed of troops and unable to cow Tuscany, much less Rome."

"Promise me you will never threaten to resign, again, mon cher," Josephine admonished him, as the brilliant salon and its hundreds of guests-willing or unwilling-swirled about them. "Heroes, even a successful hero, are expendable. To play at politics so far removed from the latest gossip, your supporters…"