Jester's Fortune (Alan Lewrie Naval Adventures)

451 Pages·2002·1.22 MB·English

by  Dewey Lambdin

FICTION $17.95 US | $22.95 CAN
DEWEY
“Stunning naval adventure, reeking of powder and mayhem.
I wish I had written this series.” LAMBDIN
—Bernard Cornwell
The Alan Lewrie Naval Adventures #8
“You could get addicted to this series. Easily.”
—The New York Times The
Alan Lewrie “Fast moving at sea, nicely lewd ashore . . .
Naval Wonderful stuff.”
I
T’S 1796. Alan Lewrie and his 18-gun sloop Jester take on the Adventures #8 —Kirkus Reviews
enemy as Napoleon Bonaparte makes his presence felt in the
Mediterranean. Eager to fight the French, Lewrie is uneasy when his
squadron commander decides to enter into an alliance with Serbian
pirates on the Croatian coast. Misgivings about the Serbs, as well as
the distraction of a former flame—now married to a jealous noble-
man—interfere with Lewrie's attention to duty. But when the chips
are down, he manages to save what's left of the day with typical
Alan Lewrie flair!
•
J ’
ESTER S
FORTUNE
Dewey Lambdin is a self-proclaimed “Navy brat”
and a sailor since 1976. He has worked as a
director, writer and producer for television and
advertising. Besides the Alan Lewrie series, he is
also the author of What Lies Buried: a novel of
old Cape Fear. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
ISBN:978-1-59013-034-6
51795
Alan Lewrie Naval Adventures #8
McBOOKS PRESS
MCBOOKS
www.mcbooks.com
PRESS
9 781590 130346
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Jester’s Fortune
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The Alan Lewrie Naval Adventures
The King's Coat
The French Admiral
The King's Commission
The King's Privateer
The Gun Ketch
H.M.S. Cockerel
A King's Commander
Jester's Fortune
King's Captain
Sea of Grey
Havoc's Sword
The Captain's Vengeance
A King's Trade
Jester's Fortune Lambdi#4282E43 8/21/07 5:47 PM Page 3
Jester s
’
Fortune
DEWEY LAMBDIN
The Alan Lewrie Naval Adventures #8
MCBOOKS PRESS, INC.
ITHACA, NEWYORK
Jester's Fortune Lambdi#4282E43 8/21/07 5:47 PM Page 4
Published by McBooks Press 2002
Copyright © 1999 by Dewey Lambdin
First published in 1999 by Dutton, New York
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or
any portion thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher.
Requests for such permissions should be addressed to
McBooks Press, Inc., IDBooth Building,
520 North Meadow St., Ithaca, NY 14850.
Cover painting by Geoffrey Huband
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lambdin, Dewey.
Jester's fortune / by Dewey Lambdin.
p. cm. — (The Alan Lewrie naval adventure series ; no. 8)
ISBN 1-59013-034-0 (alk. paper)
1. Lewrie, Alan (Fictitious character)--Fiction. 2. Great
Britain—History, Naval—18th century--Fiction. 3. Napoleon I,
Emperor of the French, 1769-1821—Fiction. 4. Adriatic Coast
(Croatia)–Fiction. 5. Pirates—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3562.A435 J47 2002
813'.54--dc21
2002010214

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Printed in the United States of America
9 8 7 6 5 4
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This one is for those long-suffering folks who were deluded
enough to take me on as one of their authors long ago;
George and Olga Wieser at Wieser & Wieser, and Jake Elwell,
who not only has to “baby” me, but a newborn of his own,
who just might be a tad less of a bother than I.
And, for Foozle 1985–1997
One of the sweetest, most affectionate and loving “lap” cats
it’s ever been my privilege to amuse and cater to, whenever
she wished—for the regal little gold eyed minx she was.
Bye, li’l grey girl. Sleep tight, “Foozey.”
• • •
Heu, quibus ingreditor fatis!
Qui gentibus horror pergit!
Alas, to what destinies doth he move forward!
His coming is the terror of nations!
Argonautica, Book I, 744–745
Gaius Valerius Flaccus
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Jester's Fortune Lambdi#4282E43 8/21/07 5:47 PM Page 7
PROLOGUE
I
t was a chilly, blustery March morning, only just a little
warmer than the winter days that had preceded it. Here,
even near the ocean at Nice, springtime was only beginning
to make its mark, and that—like the temperatures—was only
a matter of degree. Icy mountain streams that the coaches
had crossed on their madcap dash from Paris, roaring down
the steep slopes of Provence days before, had begun to swell
and churn with meltwater from the towering crags of the for-
bidding Maritime Alps.
Yet, it was a clear, cerulean blue morning, and the winds
off the Mediterranean were now and then stronger than those
that slumped off the snow-covered slopes far inland. Each
sea-gust was as tantalisingly warm as the easy, unguarded waft
of a sleeping lover’s breath. By the end of the month—no
later than the middle of the next, certainly—the rugged moun-
tain roads, now nigh-impassable, would melt clear, then begin
to dry. The passes that led east and south would be usable.
And, God willing, the young general in the lead coach
thought, there would be good campaign weather.
His army could finally begin to march.
He almost scoffed at the condition of his army! He’d seen
them, here around Nice in their winter quarters, in conquered,
compromised, and complaisant Savoy; ragged, hungry troops
with the pinched faces of starving foxes. Some in blue tunics
and Republican trousers, as required in Regulations; some still
in Bourbon white of pre-Revolutionary Royalist regiments.
Patched and raveled, all of them, by now, their shoes and
boots worn out, wearing wooden sabot clogs, feet wrapped in
tattered remnants of blankets or Italian peasant straw sandals.
Hats as varied as civilian or military fashions, they wore what-
ever they could trade for, mend or steal. Wool peasants’ berets,
long-tasseled Jacobin caps—even their sleeping caps.
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8 The Alan Lewrie Naval Adventures
He had 36,570 infantry, the young, newly promoted gen-
eral pondered—for he was a man in love with numbers—3,300
cavalry, 1,700 artillerists, engineers and field police, stable-
men, farriers, armourers, aides or commissionaires—41,570
officers and men, all told.
He frowned. An uninspiring infantry, though, a cavalry
arm on the worst collection of spavined nags he’d ever beheld.
Too few guns to suit him, since he’d come up from the
Artillery. But these men had secured Marseilles in ’93, had
besieged, then retaken Toulon in the same year, skirmished
and fought little wastrel battles in those hills against the
Piedmontese and Austrians, even routed their General de Vins
and secured the Riviera from Savona to Voltri the previous
autumn. They’d spent a winter’s penury, grumbling and
pinch-gutted, their pay so far in arrears, their precious news
from home so long delayed, it would be a miracle if he could
wield them in battle more than once without breaking possi-
bly the only real army of any sort he’d get.
The young general leaned out of the coach windows to
study those men who lined the approaches to the parade
ground, as the staff carriages rattled into camp.
Pinched they might be, surly and starving, feeling aban-
doned by their own country, and their leaders, the Directory
of Five, in distant Paris. But they were for the most part rug-
ged men, an army made of men of the South; Provençals,
Gascons, mountaineers from Dauphin and Savoy. And some
of his Corsicans, of course.
He’d come south as quick as lightning, eager for the chal-
lenge no matter how daunting, fired by the charge in his
orders from Barras and the rest of the Directory, from the
Army:
Take this raggedy-arsed army into Piedmont and conquer
all of the rich upper Po Valley; defeat the Piedmontese, then
the Austrians. Conquer the Austrian duchy of Milan; cow the
rest of Italy; secure a quiet border so troops could be turned
against the last rebellious holdouts inside France; by his
actions, divert the Austrians from an invasion across the
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Jester’s Fortune 9
Rhine. And loot. For God’s sake, loot to fill the empty coffers
before the great ideal of their Cause went down to abject
defeat and the sneers of the world for a lack of money. Before
it became an historical footnote for the want of a few sous! It
was his plan, to the tee—accepted, at last.
“A reminder, Junot,” he said to the harried aide-de-camp
at his side, “M’sieur Saliceti is to go to those whimpering
hounds at Genoa. Now we hold the whip-hand over them,
hein? He is to arrange a loan on their treasury, at the most
favourable terms he may obtain for France. We let them pay,
or be conquered, as well. And Saliceti is to demand free pas-
sage for our troops through Genoese territory. Or else.”
“Demand, sir?” Junot murmured in puzzlement, scribbling
on a pad with a pencil—a French invention, the lead pencil.
“But I thought—”
“Oui,demand.” The general snickered. “For a reason, Junot.
If nothing else, he must get grain for both men and horses.
And boots. I insist on boots. With bread and boots, I can
manage.”
There was the staff to welcome his coach; the young cav-
alryman, Murat—the fearless. Mad as a hatter, as the English
might say, like all cavalrymen. Like his senior, the mad Irish
general Kilmaine, at his side. At the head of the pack stood
General Louis Alexandre Berthier, the oldest at forty-three,
and a former Royalist officer who’d fought with distinction in
the American Revolution; Berthier, with a mind as quick as a
musket’s fire-lock, as calm and steely as the jaws of a bear-
trap—his chief of staff, who forgot nothing.
Massena behind him, whip-thin and wiry, cursed with a
nose like a down-turned sabre, and darting, shifty eyes. He
was a former man of the ranks who’d spent fourteen years as
a sergeant-major, since common men could not rise higher in
the old Royal Army. A clever smuggler, it was said. Yet Massena
was also known as a man whose shifty eyes were able to divine
the least advantage of terrain, and that large nose of his could
smell a way to do a foe a mortal hurt.
Massena he’d have to watch, though; it was well known