Dewey Lambdin - A Jester’s Fortune

"He supposedly has fifty thousand sir," General Berthier reminded him from across the map-table. "We, but forty-five thousand. And ten thousand of ours tied up in the siege at Mantua."

"Then 111 bludgeon every thrust he makes, from every mouse-hole pass in the Alps. He cannot march his entire army through merely one. He will divide, sure that he can regroup once he's below Lake Garda." Napoleon snorted. "But I'll not let him. Ever, Berthier. Ah, then. You will excuse me, but I must go rescue Josephine. She has so little Italian, I'm sure she's uneasy with the Milanese ladies."

"Allow me to accompany you, sir," Lieutenant Charles offered.

"Yes, do, Lieutenant." Bonaparte nodded. "Do. We must do our best to amuse my darling. Camp life can be so stultifying."

Berthier helped the general s secretary, Junot, roll up the map, to be returned to a better-guarded study: Berthier sighed with resignation, knowing by now that there would never be any purely social times for the Army of Italy or its commanding officers. On a whim, the spur of the moment, right in the midst of pleasurable, lighthearted salons… out would come the maps as General Bonaparte's ever-active imagination got the better of him; as if he schemed and pondered martial musings every waking moment. Dreamed in his sleep the solutions to guarantee a victory! And then, sometimes upon a brilliantly inspired flash of genius, simply had to withdraw to his map-table, his reports. And wake up the rest, of course. Or draw them from their amusements.

Such as Berthier's own, who waited for him across the salon, now amused by Massena and Augereau, by the gallant young Murat-the aristocratic and lovely younger Giuseppina Visconti. She flashed him a smile as he began to cross to them-quite eagerly, for Berthier was leery of those two raffish rogues and their intentions, though they'd made their own personal conquests of Italian ladies.

Massena cast him a glance-looking furtive and caught-out? the older Berthier could imagine. Was he feeling guilty, did he have something to feel guilty about? Berthier wondered, feeling a surge of anger?

But, no. Massena lifted an expressive brow and darted a significant look towards the settee beyond, on which Josephine sat, surrounded by her slim, dark sycophants, Lt. Hyppolyte Charles and the artist Gros. Their general stood by, like a servant waiting for orders, mute and clumsily inarticulate in the face of such glittering company, such easy and droll repartee.

Berthier cocked a weary brow himself, made a sad moue.

So clever, the general, he thought; in everything but Life. So observant towards all but his vexing wife!

Massena openly frowned, like an ill-tempered eagle who had just spotted a rabbit far below. A sardonic shrug, a theatrical lift of two gloved hands in despair was Augereau's comment.

"Not even a handsome whore," Berthier whispered to himself, and tried to put himself in a better frame of mind to rejoin his entrancing new mistress, to have her all to himself, apart from those "hot rabbits," Massena and Augereau, who'd couple with a snake could they find hips. "The poor little bastard."

"… winter, I am certain," that "poor little bastard" was now saying, a firmly fixed expression of unwavering certainty on his face, as he made his prediction; not a boast, but a prediction. "By winter, my army will be on the Austrian frontiers. We'll own all of Italy and even Venice, perhaps. And Austria will be beaten. I will beat them."

Berthier shook his head again. What could one say to something like that?

"Good charts," Sailing Master Edward Buchanon opined gruffly. "Marvels Pr accuracy, sir, 'ese Venetian charts."

"By God, they'd best be, hadn't they, Mister Buchanon?" Lewrie replied, gruff with his own worries for Jesters quick-work the past few days. "Very well, then, Mister Knolles. Round her up to the wind and bring-to. Prepare to anchor."

"Aye aye, sir," Knolles answered, almost hanging over the lee bulwarks for any sign of shoaling. He lifted his hat to swipe at his hair nervously before going to the helmsmen to issue his orders.

It was Lieutnant Kolodzcy's studied opinion that the very sort of Serb pirate they wished could be found in this netherland of coast controlled by no one, pretty much-this stretch of disputed or ignored shore between Venetian Spalato in the north and independent Ragusa to the south.

They'd been near their quest before without knowing it, when they'd sailed close to the large islands of Hvar and Brae in pursuit of a prize. For this was where the claimed territory of the ancient and defeated Serbian princedoms came closest to the sea, shoved like a knife-blade between the Croatian or Venetian lands and the now-Muslim, Turk-ruled Bosnians.

South of Hvar, which ran east-west, lay other isles, some smaller and less important, where many displaced, rootless peoples sheltered. The large isles of Korcula and Mjlet, the long, narrow isle that paralelled the coastline-Peljesac-and lay within spitting distance but totally removed from anyone's grasp. The smaller islets of Lastovo and Susak were farther out from the shore in deep water and favourably near the main shipping route for hostile merchantmen and smugglers. All, Kolodzcy assured them, were isolated, rarely visited by patrols of any local power, completely ignored by the greater powers, and the ownership up for grabs from one decade to another, depending on who'd put in for firewood and water last. And those grudging claims were forgotten by everyone involved once they'd sailed away.

For days, Jester and Pylades had sailed these waters, no matter the shoals, feeling their way with lead-line, preceded sometimes by a cutter or launch to probe the depths. They'd anchored near poor seaside villages or hardscrabble harbours, shamming the need for firewood and water, fresh lamb or goat, eggs and butter; and paying liberally in solid silver for their purchases, too. They'd taken Kolodzcy ashore to negotiate, where he'd dropped hints that they were British, at war with the French and any who'd aid them; that there were many ships passing by far out to sea, laden with treasure, and that even the mighty Royal Navy might need help in taking all of them. Powerful as they were, they had only two ships and could not catch every vessel they espied.

Now, here-at the low-lying northernmost tip of Mjlet-they came to anchor once more, near a settlement that couldn't quite aspire to be deemed a proper village at all. It looked to be a scattering of rude huts among rough clearings in the ever-present, brooding forest, clinging to the rocks above the muddy shoreline, where crude fishing boats rested half on the shore and half in the waters, bedraggled and abandoned.

There was no one to be seen, of course. Wherever they'd gone, the appearance of a real warship flying what was to these crude people a strange-alien-flag sent them tumbling inland, sure that they would be slaughtered. It would take hours, Lewrie thought wearily, to see even a few timorous watchers show their faces once curiosity, and the lack of activity on the part of the warships, got the better of them. He thought it much like what Captain Cook had experienced from the timid South Sea savages the first time he'd put Endeavour in some never-before-visited lagoon and given them a first sight of white men.

A quarter mile farther out, Pylades had already come to anchor in slightly deeper water.

Lewrie turned inboard as the heavy splash of Jesters best bower drew his attention. He looked aloft to see topmen taking in the last of the tops'ls and t'gallants, strung out like beads on a string along the footropes as they breasted over the yardarms to gather in canvas and gasket it. Blocks squealed as jibs and spanker deflated, rustled into untidy billows on the foredeck and the boom over his head above the quarterdeck. Men stood by under Cony's supervision, who'd soon be at the halliards and jears to lower the yards to resting positions. A party below the quarterdeck nettings, in the waist, even stood by with quarterdeck awnings. But not anti-boarding nets.