A King`s Commander - Dewey Lambdin

"Him, last, I should think," Lewrie speculated. "Let him stew over what the other missed."

"An admirable idea, sir. I'll see to it."

"Lock them all up, separate cabins. No personal belongings, I think would be best. These trunks and chests, ready for debarking at San Remo… could you go through them all?"

"These two, particularly, sir. This dead fellow seemed anxious to purge just these two open ones." Mountjoy dared to grin. Excited, again, to be useful. "Why just these two? His… and the snuff-brown man's, I'd wager? Rather plain, good leather, but unremarkable, hmm. Nothing as gaudy as those. I'd strongly suspect the fancy ones belong to the elegant gentleman. Might be the ship's owner, do you not think, sir? Might have bags of incriminating stuff crammed in his, but these got the attention, as if this ship's problems, and theirs, were…!"

"I leave it to you, sir," Lewrie interrupted. "I have to get way on her, sort out her crew, disarm and inspect em. Shuffle hands about-again!- to man all our prizes, and such. We'll speak later, once we're safe and snug in Vado Bay." And knowing, too, that once his clerk got enthused about something, he'd talk six ways 'round whatever had heated his blood, and waste the rest of the Day Watch doing it, too!

"Manifests," Lewrie said, snapping his fingers, delaying his departure for the upper decks. "Bills of lading, ship's papers, crew and passenger lists. I'll send you Mister Giles and his jack-in-the-bread-room to take inventory of the cargo, so you may see if it conforms."

"Very good, sir. I mean, aye aye, sir."

Lawyers, Lewrie thought, pounding up the companionway ladders: Minds like snake's nests, God save us!

CHAPTER

6

"A most gallant action, Commander Lewrie," Horatio Nelson told him, waving a hand toward a cut-glass decanter of newly arrived claret. "Perhaps a bit beyond our brief, to raid a Savoian port rather than a Genoese. But one which has no doubt discomfited the French, no end."

"Thankee, sir," Lewrie replied, making free with that welcome claret, and feeling like God's Own Damme-Boy to win praise from a man so aggressive himself.

"And most circumspect of you, as well, sir," Nelson went on, "to confine your findings concerning the merchant brig, and your suspicions, to a separate report."

"Mine and my clerk's, sir, Mister Thomas Mountjoy's," Alan added. He'd won almost gushing praise-there was enough and more to go around. And Mountjoy, surprisingly, had done almost as much as Knolles, Bootheby, Cony, or any of the others he'd cited for significant contributions to their overall success.

Too far from the entry door to be able to respond to the musket butt rapped on the deck, Nelson's next comment was cut off by the knock at the louvred partition door to the day-cabin.

"Excuse me, sir, but Captain Cockburn is come aboard, as you bid him," Lieutenant Andrews informed him, "and is just without."

"Ah, show him in, sir!" Nelson brightened. "Devil of a fellow, Cockburn. Took a Genoese just off Finale, 'bout the same time as your Jester was at Bordighera, Lewrie. And, in much the same mysterious… ah, here he is! Come in, Captain Cockburn! Come in, sir! Do you join us. And join us in a glass," Nelson offered. "New-come claret!"

"Captain Nelson, sir, good morning to you. Lewrie." Cockburn nodded, almost affably. Especially since Lewrie was sporting his newer full-dress coat, with the suggested epaulet and slash cuffs.

Small talk was made for a few minutes, a review of Cockburn's doings off Finale, which Lewrie felt politic to beam over; Lewrie's doings far to the west, over which Cockburn raised a brow and simpered, almost politely.

"And both of you have taken merchantmen violating our unofficial embargo," Nelson summed up. "Ships that present to us a most striking and mystifying similarity of circumstances. One might initially think that their coinciding similarities were simply that; coincidence. But I now am coming to suspect that any similarity between them is a first inkling of something planned, do you see. First off, Captain Cockburn brings in II Furioso, a ship of Genoese registry. All her papers seem to be in order, though she was observed departing Finale, a port that is now French-held. Her Captain Bavastro and her crew abandon her just as soon as they are able. She attempted to prevent Meleager's gallant First Officer, Lt. Thomas Hardy, from boarding. Her guns were loaded with canister and langridge, and her matches lit. Hardly the acts of a declared neutral, and therefore liable to legitimate seizure. Laden with valuables, too. Coin, gold bullion, silver plate, and such in her master's great-cabins. Which are now here aboard Agamemnon."

Damme, but Cockburn's a lucky bugger, Lewrie groaned to himself!

"Odd, though, that so far, Mister Francis Drake, ashore, cannot seem to find anyone who knows her as II Furioso, or has ever heard of a ship by that name clearing from Genoa. More perplexing is the presence of a different name on her transom. Nostra Signora di Belvedere," Horatio Nelson posed.

"And mine, sirs…" Lewrie exclaimed, sitting up straighter.

"Il Briosco," Nelson agreed. "That is to say, Lively, as in a lively tune.' But bearing the name Nostra Signora di Capraia across her stern. Of Tuscan registry. Or at least, flying a Tuscan flag when taken. Lured in by Jester flying false French colors, and playacting as escort to a convoy, which were really his prizes and tender, Captain Cockburn. I strongly hold that only the nearness of II Briosco to her captor, and her run-out battery… and the suddenness of Lewrie's revelation as a British ship, which took them all aback, prevented them from resisting. Her guns, too, were loaded but not run-out. With langridge and canister," Nelson stressed, lifting a finger, "one person, at least, did resist below, whom Lewrie suspects was a French spy, intent upon jettisoning a bag of incriminating documents. The man succeeded. Just as someone aboard II Furioso did, Commander Lewrie."

"As if it were the drill, sir?" Lewrie puzzled. "No, it hardly sounds like coincidence at all!"

"Take him, sir?" Cockburn asked.

"Shot dead, in an exchange of fire with my Marines, sir," Alan had to admit. "There's a second, though, whom my clerk thinks might be another Frenchman, traveling under a false identity. Gave us a name… Enzio Brughera… but his companion, who called himself Inconnu' in his dying breath, didn't quite empty this Brughera's chest. There was a purse of Italian coinage, and a hefty purse of French gold, too. We found some odds and ends that show at least two more Italian names."

"I have him below, in irons," Nelson said. "I intend to hold him here, until Mister Francis Drake may contact some, uhm… associates, more used to this sort of chicanery."

"And out of the hands of the civil authorities, sir," Lewrie added. "Who might feel pressed, politically or militarily, to set him free. Or look the wrong way for a minute or two."

"Quite." Nelson nodded grimly. "While your French midshipman may go ashore, once he's given his parole, and may be exchanged, along with the civilian sailors and those passengers we think are legitimate."

"Another mystifying thing, sirs," Lewrie commented, "is Captain Menzi of lI Briosco, or Our Thing-gummy-whichever-departed Leghorn two days after we arrived off Genoa Mole and set off on our blockade… yet, he knew to inquire about the presence of our ships along the Genoese Riviera, and off San Remo. Why was that?"

"That, too, is intriguing, I'll grant you," Nelson agreed with him, waving a hand toward the decanter, so Lewrie could play "Mother," and top them all up.

"Well, sir." Cockburn sniffed. "It is not as if British ships have been completely absent from these waters. They were engaged in a smuggling endeavor, after all."

"Genoese ships might know it is now considered smuggling, sir," Lewrie countered. "But how did a vessel ostensibly Tuscan come to know of it, and so quickly? That, too, smacks of chicanery, of an organized and well-informed combination."

"Latins," Nelson chuckled with a world-weary sigh and a raising of his good brow. "Gossip, and informing, is in their temperaments, I do declare-bred into their very bones and blood."

"Something larger than turning a quick profit, or any charitable motive, if you will allow me to color it so, sirs," Lewrie continued. "Both, of these ships feared the presence of the Royal Navy… not since we just did intend to stop up all coastal trade… but because they were engaged in trade with the French, sirs. Someone, perhaps a great many someones, are eager to aid their cause, beyond turning a profit. Those two agents aboard II Briosco, the similarity of the subterfuge… then, too, there is the possibility that influential or simply corrupt people actually believe in the exportation of French Republicanism and revolution. And would do anything possible, long as they may make a fortune from it, to aid the Frogs. Undermine their own governments."

"A very large supposition, Commander Lewrie," Cockburn drawled, pulling a face. "Nor one spun from whole cloth, but only a few raveled strands, as of yet."

"Well, perhaps the French may pay more than we can offer, sir," Lewrie rejoined. "All the wealth seized from Royalists, from guillotined aristocrats, the Catholic Church in France. And what they looted from their recent conquests."

"We'll leave it to the proper authorities," Nelson decided for them, raising a brow slightly as he detected the slightest hints of animus be-tween them. "We don't have all the facts, and cannot discover more from Leghorn or Tuscany. Commander Lewrie, you did recover commercial documents from Il Briosco, which lead you to suspect, at least, a financial combination?" he urged.

"Il Briosco is owned by a Leghorn joint-stock company, much like the East India Company," Lewrie said, sitting back in his chair. "Men invest as ship's husbands, or as risk-coverers such as Lloyd's, sharing the risk, and the possible profits. It's called the Compagnia di Commercia Mare di Liguria. Rather confusing, though. Neither my clerk nor I can make heads or tails of it, so far, sirs. Captain Menzi is shown as a shareholder in some papers, just a hired captain in others. The super-cargo aboard, a Signore Gallacio, admitted he's a shipowner, not a shareholder. Yet, there's an inscrutable little ledger book Mister Mountjoy turned up that shows several people, or organizations, and their share of the profits of the ship's voyage. There's a 'G-G,' which I take to stand for Guilio Gallacio. The rest are just initials, and no telling what they really mean, sir. I find it odd, though, for a Tuscan company to call itself a Ligurian sea-trading firm."

"We are in the Ligurian Sea, sir!" Cockburn snorted.