Oh, this is just bloody perverse! Lewrie thought, after days of searching for HMS Lionheart. It wasn't a large area he had to scour-from the sleepy port of Brindisi on the muddy Italian coast, then down the coast to Cape di Otranto and Cape Santa Maria di Leuca, about ninety miles. With a favourable slant of wind, it was only an eighty-mile sail to the Sou'east, to Corfu, to peek in the harbour. Another eighty miles back up the Albanian coast to Volona. Yet, not only was there no sign of her, there were hardly any other sails to be seen, either! A few merchantmen, which he stopped, boarded and inspected, yes; but they were all innocent local traders. And their masters, whatever their nationality, had nothing but puzzled shrugs for answers when he'd questioned them about sighting a British frigate.
"How is it," Lewrie griped to his First Officer and his midshipmen as he dined them in one evening, "that when you're anxious to join a friend, one can't find him? And, paradoxically, when you try to shun a pest, you practically trip over him everywhere one goes?"
"Dragan Mlavic, sir?" Knolles grimaced.
"Indeed, Mister Knolles," Lewrie allowed with a matching scowl.
"Father always said, sir," Spendlove piped up from his chair at the end of the table, where he filled the role of Mr. Vice, "that a thing that's lost can't be found by searching."
"Oh, he does, does he?" Lewrie smiled. "So, what does Mister Spendlove do, younger Spendlove?"
"Sends his mother to hunt it up, I'd expect, sir." Midshipman Hyde sniggered.
"Well, sometimes." Clarence Spendlove smiled and shrugged. "I have seen him just sit down and ponder, though, sir. Where he'd seen a thing last. Like walking into a room and forgetting what one went in there to get, sir? One has to retrace one's steps."
"Back to Trieste and Venice?" Knolles scoffed, signalling for a top-up of wine from Aspinall. Lewrie had at least put in at Corfu, and found a British merchantman or two come for the currant crop, bearing a cargo of wines from London or Lisbon, more suited to the palates of the many expatriate Englishmen who farmed or factored there.
"That'd be… pleasant, sir," Hyde simpered, sharing a lascivious look with Spendlove, "to stretch one's legs ashore."
"Ah, but which leg, sir?" Spendlove queried impishly. "Ahem!" Lewrie cautioned with a cough into his fist, riveting their attention. "I'm told a captain is responsible for the education of his midshipmen. Part of that is how to behave at-table. No talk of religion, politics… women!… or business is allowed."
"Least 'til the port and nuts, sir." Lieutenant Knolles chuckled. "After the ladies have retired to the drawing room."
"Damme, do I set a poor example?" Lewrie pretended to recoil in shock. "Lowered proper Navy standards, and corrupted you all?"
Don't answer that! he thought with a cringe. There's more'n a grain o' truth in that. And why not, when I'm such a sterlin' example to go by! Damme, ashore I'd talk o' nothin' else!
He'd made a jape. They responded like dutiful juniors should; they showed amusement. Lamely, of course, the jest hadn't been that good.
"Tsk-tsk, Mister Spendlove," he further pretended to chide. "We can't have you discussing lewd women in front of your mother once you return home!"
"Only did that with my brother, sir," Spendlove shyly confessed.
"Ah!" Lewrie chuckled easily.
How much they'd grown, he thought; Spendlove was now all but full-grown, not the callow stripling from HMS Cockerel. He was eighteen now, and Hyde, whom he'd gotten at Portsmouth, a year older. A pair of young men, no longer boys, more than halfway to their own commissions as Sea Officers.
"Well, since Mister Spendlove has already broken the ban, so to speak, perhaps we should discuss our… business… as well," he went on, after a forkful of a rather zesty mutton ragout over pasta, and an accompanying sip of red. "We may have to return to Trieste or Venice, after all. Either port, where some may make beasts of themselves, hmm? We've not seen hide nor hair of Lionheart, nor of any French men-o'-war which might have driven her off-station. Now, let's see what we could construe from this evidence. Mister Hyde?"
"Uhm…" Hyde gulped, trying to swallow a hunk of bread he had almost chewed. "That she's taken three or four prizes, sir. And was forced to sail off, unable to take, or man, any more?"
"Aye, that's possible," Lewrie granted. "But now she's sailed off… where's our smugglers, where's our Frogs? Shouldn't they be out by now? 'When the cat's away, the mice will play,' right? Sorry, puss," he said to his cat, who was lurking near his chair for dropped morsels.
"Sir," Spendlove contributed, cautiously sipping wine before he spoke, to do so with an unobstructed palate. "Perhaps they're holed up in those nearby Venetian ports, waiting for their timber. And they're not aware Lionheart has left yet, sir?"
"Aye, again, sir," Lewrie agreed amiably. "Though I still can't understand them totally abandoning the trade. There's still an urgent need for timber, for the French fleet at Toulon. No, I wasn't speaking to you, greedy-guts. Oh, here, then." He sighed, awarding Toulon some gravy-laden bits of mutton. To keep him quiet and off the table.
"Perhaps mistakenly, sir," Lieutenant Knolles stuck in, his forehead furrowed in thought. "Do the Frogs have this new arrangement, ordered by their Ministry of Marine, d'ye see… to use the Venetian harbours. Lionheart arrived just as they were going to earth, and found nothing to seize. After two weeks or so of empty horizons, Captain Charlton might have abandoned the area and gone back north, expecting to discover better pickings in mid-sea. And to speak to Commander Fillebrowne about what Myrmidon might have turned up in her area… Might have been just bad timing on her part, sir."
"Well, sir…" Hyde wondered aloud, getting into the spirit of things; with an empty maw, this time. "Captain Charlton might wish to meet up with us and Captain Rodgers in Pylades. See how our, uhm… our piratical endeavour was working out, too."
"Meet the other players, so to speak, sir. Before the cards are dealt?" Spendlove added, forever trying to trump Hyde.
"All very possible, sirs." Lewrie smiled briefly. "Damme, you know, I rather like this, gentlemen. Discussing shop talk over food. See how clear we think, like a well-stoked hearth? Brighter than ever? And, in private, where one may make a silly comment, with no recriminations. Less a cabin servant or steward tells tales out of school, that is… Aspinall?" Alan teased.
"Oh, mum's th' word, sir." Aspinall grinned, not a whit abashed. "Top-up, Captain? Gentlemen?"
"So, our prey is lurking in Venetian ports," Lewrie summarised, once their glasses had been recharged, "waiting for neutrals to come down and load 'em full."
"Odd, though, sir," Lieutenant Knolles objected softly, holding up his glass to the lanthorn light to admire the ruby glow, or inspect it for lees. "All the Balkans are thick with timber. I'd imagine that, were the French to throw enough gold about, they could get all they wished closer than Venetian-shipped Istrian or Croatian oak. Get the locals to go wood-cutting round Volona, Durazzo and such, and use Montene-gran or Albanian trees."
"Uhm, sir…" Spendlove threw out, most warily in contradiction. "Would that not be green wood? Unseasoned?"
"Well, aye, but… ah!" Knolles scowled, his logic confounded. "Do the Frogs have urgent need of seasoned oak and compass timber, they still have to depend on the Venetians or someone else. They can't wait years for it to season, they need to construct ships now. Else, we'd always outnumber them or outbuild them so badly they might as well not bother with a navy, and put their money into their armies. As the Aus-trians do. Poor devils."
"Ah, indeed, Mister Knolles," Lewrie enthused, catching the import, at last. Might be a dim slow-coach, he thought; but I get there in the end! "Seasoned wood, ready to use as soon as it's unloaded."
"And, sir!" Hyde all but cried. "Montenegro and Albania can't have local navies or shipping, as long as the Turks wish to keep them in harness. So where s the timber industry that knows how to select compass timber, or season oak? Where's large shipbuilding, at all?"
"Well, there's Ragusa, Dulcigno, where the corsairs surely make their own…" Spendlove pointed out. "The Hungarians and Croats?"
"Small change, though," Knolles dismissed quickly. "Couldn't support much beyond their own few needs, not this quickly."
Lewrie listened to their energetic back-and-forth, idly making furrows through his ragout, skirting the lee shores of muttony islets with the tines, deep in thought. He put down his fork at last and had another sip of wine.
"I don't believe we will be returning to Trieste," he announced. "Not right off, I'm afraid. For whatever reason Captain Charlton had to leave the straits unguarded, he's done so, and for us to rush back in search of him… well, that'd be remiss. Do the Frogs and the rest of the smugglers know the coast is clear, they'll load up with timber and toddle off back to France with everything they can carry in the interim. No, I think we have to stay. Else…"
He looked up to see his three bachelor juniors' true disappointment that there'd be no crawling through the fleshpots of Venice, nor even those of staid Trieste, anytime soon.
"Well, there is the information 'bout which ports they're going to use, sir… and Venetian complicity," Knolles said. Gloomily.
"Aye, there is, Mister Knolles." Lewrie nodded. "But after we inform Captain Charlton of this new arrangement, just what in Hades may he do about it? We haven't a full ambassador at Venice, just a consul for trade matters, so how high may our consul-a merchant himself!-take a complaint? And it ain't a formal complaint from the Crown or the Foreign Office, so Venice can listen, make soothing noises at him, then forget it, and it's business as usual. It's not as if we'll begin to stop and inspect Venetian ships, either. Ships bound for Venetian ports, carrying perfectly innocent cargoes?"
"Well, there is that, sir, but…" Knolles frowned.
"Timber borne for sale on speculation, with nothing in writing to tie them to French buyers, Batavian buyers… anyone," Lewrie said with a sneer. "Nothing our… auxiliaries, the Serbs, could do about it, either, less we want to turn 'em loose on a neutral country. It might work for a few times, but sooner or later word'd get out, and England would be dumped in the quag right up to her eyebrows. God help us, it might even stir those comatose Venetians into arming and fitting their fleet to chase us out of the Adriatic! 'Fore they do for Petracic and his cutthroats, mind."
"Aye, sir," Knolles replied. "Cleft stick, hmm?"
"Perhaps." Lewrie sighed, taking another sip of wine. "Perhaps not. You gentlemen recall last year, off the Genoese Riviera, and much the same sort of problem with Tuscan and Genoese traders? And neutrals hand-in-glove with the Frogs? How did our former squadron commander, Captain Nelson, handle it? Recall what he said about acting upon his own initiative, did he determine his actions were contrary to orders or the lack of 'em… but best for Navy, King and Country, in the long run."
He saw a whole new set of expressions on their phyzes. Curiosity he'd hoped for; but a sudden wariness, a trepidation that his comments presaged some insubordinate, high-handed, lunatick freebooting? Some deed as mad as a March Hare?
Pretty much what they've come t'expect, 'board this barge, Alan told himself with a well-hidden smirk.
"Our first duty would, at first, seem to be to dash off and tell Captain Charlton," he continued. "That's the safe and dutiful. Toss this lit shell into his lap, wave a cheery 'ta-ta,' and leave it up to him t'snuff it out 'fore it blows up in his face."
"Beg your pardon, sir, but… ain't that why they pay him a lot more than us?" Lieutenant Knolles japed. Though Lewrie saw that his hands had a damn firm death-grip on the edge of the table and his wineglass.
"Normal custom and usages of the Fleet, Mister Knolles." Lewrie chuckled. "Plod on, deaf and dumb, well to windward of risk."
"Aye aye, sir," Knolles said in dumb agreement, but his expression said something else, though his face was taut and unreadable. Lewrie knew that sound, and that look. Had he not used it himself to a senior officer-a dozen or more?-the last sixteen years? Bleat "Aye aye" and put on your gambler's mask, cross your legs and hope when the other dirty shoe dropped, it didn't turn out half as horrible as you expected?
"For now, we're the only ship on-station, sirs," Lewrie said to them all, explaining carefully. "Now, if this information of ours does Captain Charlton no immediate good, then we aren't exactly bound to tear off and give it to him… immediately. How long may it take to find him… a week or more? Leaving the straits wide open for two weeks or more? No, I had something else in mind we could do for the next few days. Mr. Knolles? At dawn, I'd admire did we alter course. Let's sail over for a peek into Cattaro. We haven't seen it yet, and it's closest for any French ship to get its load of timber. Shortest voyage for a Venetian supplier, too. Right up to the harbour mole. You'll inform the Sailing Master, so he'll know to have his charts selected."
"Aye aye, sir," Knolles dutifully piped. Rather calmly, Alan decided; even allowing for a bit of "crisp" to his voice, that shudder he hid so well, that look of "Oh shit, where s this all going?" as he contemplated a quick end to a rather promising career should he be implicated.
"Then we'll have us a stroll down to Volona, then a quick dash back to Durazzo, too." Lewrie smiled wolfishly. "Corfu last. That'd be best, I think. Unpredictable movements."
"I see, sir," Knolles parroted; even if he didn't.
Odd, Knolles thought; all this time I knew he had the scar on his right cheek. Old sword slash or something. So faded-or me so used to it- I barely mark it, these days.
But m the flickering light from the candles on the sideboard and from the gently swaying pewter lanthorn on the overhead deck-beams every now and then a trick of their shadows made it stand out. Darker a bit more ruddy and fresh-more prominent.
More ominous. For someone, Knolles thought.