Dewey Lambdin - A Jester’s Fortune

"Prisoners, sir!" Howse tried to thunder indignantly. "Won't let us in the stockade to see to 'em, sir. I've a dreadful feeling… there's something horrid happened." He gulped. "Knew this would turn out badly, right off, sir… you must put it right, sir. At once!"

As if anyone asked yer opinion. Lewrie sighed, still leading them down from the camp toward the beach.

"Wouldn't let you in, sir?" he quizzed. "Mr. Spendlove?" "Don't speak any English, sir… the guards," Spendlove said, also out of breath, and sounding genuinely shocked.

"But we've seen the prisoners before, sir, no trouble before," Howse insisted. "This time, though-"

"Waved us off, sir… drew pistols when we got impatient," the young midshipman carped. "Could see through the logs, sir…"

"I could still see enough, sir," Howse announced, getting some of his old irritable-with-the-world back. "Been 'round sailors enough by now to recognise 'em, sir. I've eyes, haven't I? There are damn-all seamen in the stockade, and when I called out to them in French I heard no French in reply. Italian, some other foreign jabber neither of us could fathom-"

"Women and children, sir!" Spendlove burst forth. "Started up a fearful racket, soon as they heard our voices."

"What the Devil…?" Lewrie gasped.

"And dark as it's got, sir," Howse rumbled, beginning to sound like himself again, "I could swear, the brief glimpse I had, some of 'em are a tad swarthy… dressed in Eastern garb."

"Like Turks in turbans, sir," Spendlove contributed quickly.

"Just what the bloody Hell's Mlavic done?" Lewrie griped, with a searing glare at the prize-ship at anchor. She showed but one light on her tall poop-deck, aft. All else was fading into the twilight and held no answer for him. A closer-in look at the beach showed him that both gig and cutter were gone, and now nestled Jesters hull near the starboard entry-port. Working-parties were busy along the gangway to hoist up a sack or two of flour or a struggling beast. The funnel at the forecastle showed a thin plume of cook-fire smoke as the cooks got the steep-tubs ready for the evening meal. A cable off from shore, he reckoned, and every man-jack busy with doings inboard.

Might'z well be 240 miles, not yards. Alan shivered, feeling a sudden, premonitory chill. We're for it, do we handle this wrong!

"Who's a good swimmer?" he asked.

"I am, sir," Spendlove piped up. "Well, adequate, really…"

"Get back aboard Jester, quick as you can, then," Lewrie said. "Mister Howse?"

"Not a stroke, sir," the surgeon confessed. "Why, sir? I say, sir… you must do something, enquire… demand, rather…!"

"Then find a safe place to hide, Mister Howse," Lewrie ordered. "As far from the beach and the camp as you can. Have you a weapon of any kind with you? In your kit-box?"

"Damme, sir… I'm a surgeon, sir! Not a soldier," Mr. Howse blustered, indignant. "Have no need of a weapon."

"Just your bad luck, then," Lewrie wryly commented. "Find a place to hide. Do you find a log, a small boat, try to sneak out to the ship… long as no one sees you doing it. Don't know how safe you'd be with us… me and the herr leutnant Kolodzcy here. Unless you're a good swimmer, too, herr Kolodzcy?"

"An egzellend svimmer, herr Kommander," Kolodzcy answered to that, quite gaily. "Bud, alas… said vater ist nod gute on my boots or univorm. You heff need ohf company, I am thinkink. Should Mlavic ged engry enough, he loses his gommand ohf English… unt dhen vhere vill you be?" He laid a hand on the gilt hilt of his elegant small-sword and gave it a tug to assure himself it was loose enough to draw quickly. His mouth moved in a petulant little twitching, brows lifted as if to sketch the slightest, half-amused, "oh, what the devil" shrug.

"Right, then," Lewrie sighed. "Mr. Spendlove, you're to inform Lieutenant Knolles there's trouble in the camp. Do I not return soon… in an hour and a half, say? He's to assume that… well." Lewrie felt like gulping in fright at exactly what Knolles could assume. "Do I not return, he is to first board the prize-vessel and the brig. I doubt they've many hands aboard, with such a grand party ashore. He's to land the largest force possible, Marines in full kit, and the hands with pistols, muskets and cutlasses. Do they make a fight of it, he's to scour the camp with fire… grape shot and canister in the nine pounders… solid round-shot for the carronades."

"But, sir!" Spendlove protested. "You'd be right in the middle of it! In the line of fire, sir. I can't-"

"Then I'll just have to duck, won't I, young sir?" Lewrie said, laying a hand on Spendlove's shoulder and forcing himself to utter the tiniest of chuckling noises. "I'll not be a bargaining-chip, should they try that on. This may be a misunderstanding. Or it could be a bloody massacre. Does Mr. Knolles know definite that I… that anything happened to me, he's to exterminate 'em, root and branch. Root and branch, Mister Spendlove."

"Swear that, sir!" Spendlove shuddered.

"Be off, then. Mister Howse? Go to earth, delve yourself the deepest warren ever you did see," Lewrie ordered, "and pull it down over your ears."

"I…!" Howse demurred, casting a glance over his shoulder at the forest. But for the small encampment, it was stark, barren,, full of boulders and wind-gnarled pines, stirred to some mindless, brutal life by the leaping flames of the camp, making it writhe like a mythical Hydra. "But if it is a mistake, sir, I'll be alone… mean t'say, I'd have no way of knowing when to come out, 'less at dawn, after any assault. Should you be allowed to leave unharmed…"

Bloody miracle, most-like, Lewrie coldly realised.

"… I'd be denned up out yonder, no way to leave with you!" Howse concluded, sounding as if being alone, in a wild place, was his last wish, even if his other alternative was getting his throat cut.

"You could come with us, sir?" Alan suggested, tongue-in-cheek. "Mlavic assures me they've a splendid feed planned."

Howse glanced over his other shoulder, at Jester, lying out so safe and snug, her decks lit up with lanthorns; then at the waves on the gravelly beach, breaking slow and sullen and dark, like spilled oil on storm waters. Regretting he could not swim a lick.

"I'll come with you, if you do not mind, sir," Howse snapped, downright snippish.

"Mister Spendlove, still here, damn yer eyes?" Lewrie barked. "Give Mr. Howse your dirk and scabbard, sir."

Spendlove stripped the dirk off reluctantly; it was rather a nice 'un, a present from his parents. Howse took it gingerly, like a man being presented a spitting cobra. But he clipped it on his waistband and folded his coat over it.

Lewrie turned without another word and started striding back to the encampment, an icy, fey and echoing void building under his heart; one hand swinging fisted at his side, the other gripping his hanger by the upper gilt fitting below the hand-guard. He most devoutly wished there was a simple, an innocent, explanation for the absence of French prisoners… but he rather doubted it. Might he talk his way to the beach again? There'd be no other way out.

Asked him 'bout his prize, Lewrie recalled; twice, and he turned all cutty-eyed as a bag o' nails. Somethin' queer, there! Christ, I just wish Howse'd got to me 'fore I told the bastards those orders.

He turned to see Howse plodding along, stumbling a bit on tufts of tough shore grass, the odd shoe-sized rock, looking as miserable as a man on his way to the gallows to do a "Newgate-Hornpipe"!

Before, Mlavic might've been too shameful, Alan regretted; now, though… now I had t'be so gorfdamn' sly-boots an' stir 'em up…!

He was inside the flickering circle of light from the fires by then, elbowing past cavorting, singing, half-drunk pirates, ducking a clash of high-held blades of every cruel description, glittering keen and hungry. He approached the exultantly happy Mlavic…