"Might be some saint's day, sir," Knolles opined as he walked with him to the entry-port. "Or they extend Carnival longer here."
"Might be they're blind and stupid into the bargain, Mr. Knolles," Lewrie hooted, doffing his hat to take the departure salute from his men.
"Oh… d'ye mean Venetian, sir?" Knolles japed back.
Corfu Town, though, was a most pleasant place, he had to admit: well-wooded, shaded, and park-like, with several wide, open squares and wide, collonaded main thoroughfares. A seeming maze of lanes and narrower streets, nicely stepped and flagstoned, climbed inland and towards either fort-some buildings rising to five or seven stories. They were rather plainly wrought, but well plastered and painted in pastels or natural shades. Perhaps the sea-wind swept most of the noisome stinks of town away before they registered, he thought, for Corfu had a pleasant aroma of countryside dust, olive and fig trees heavy with spring blooms in the hinterlands and jasmine, broom rose, wisteria and orange-trees in the bright little gardens. Pines, scrub oaks and even cypress trees sang a pleasant, continual rustling lullaby.
He'd gotten a tour of the place from the provveditore, a man who fortunately possessed some English, and an aide from Zante who was very fluent. Atop one of the defensive land-side walls, he'd seen greater bucolic splendours, as if some great lord of the realm had decreed long before that the entire island become a decorative park. The hills were bright green with budding olive groves, vineyards and orchards. Every holding he could see from atop the wall, whether a great-house or a more modest country farm villa, was as well landscaped as any estate back in England. The cypresses paraded alongside the dusty roads, while on the hills were silver fir, myrtle, holly-leaved kermes oaks, silver poplar and God only knew what else. And where the fields were not yet tilled or were left fallow for a season, they swayed fragrant with blue or white thistles or asphodels.
Now, standing on the stones of the harbour jetty, his clothing and hair ruffled by a scant but refreshing wind, he could admire every fine but plain aspect of Corfu Town: the wispy, cloud-laced sky against the ivory hues and faint weather-washed pastels of the houses and apartment blocks, the Venetian-style belltowers and church spires, or those forts made of Istrian limestone of a darker, rosier hue. Northward lay the rugged little island of Lazaretto, an ivory and green jumble. And all surrounded by a sea that was almost a peacocks-wing blue. Even farther off on the Turk-held mainland were the Albanian mountains, shading off to a distant purple, capped here and there with stark white snow.
The provveditore had assured him that all the holt del Levant-or Ionians, to their Greek inhabitants-were almost as pretty, though none as fair as Corfu, and Lewrie wished he could stay longer than twenty-four hours to savour their beauty.
He almost wished, for a fond moment, that a man could settle there! The Navy and his wars had taken him to an hundred places that most Englishmen would never see except in black-and-white woodcuts or charcoal etchings, all grander, more exotic, more beguiling than a foggy, rainy and grimy England. He marveled to imagine that, were the world not besotted with hacking away at each other in this war, he'd still be captive upon 160 acres of Surrey smallholding-a rented smallholding!-in wee Anglesgreen, where nothing exciting would ever happen. Well…! There was a pang, to think how deprived was a sailor s lot, how seldom a man of the sea had a chance to savour such lush, well-ordered beauty. He felt another pang-this one of disloyalty not only to England, but to Caroline and the children-that he could contemplate escaping all that waited for him at home for this.
But, by God, he thought, we could all come here! Establish a decent school, o' course! Or fetch in a good tutor. A farm, well… much as he hated farming (or his lack of knowledge about farming!), an estate with a good overseer could work out. And the sea was so close… right at one's doorstep, really…
It should have been a happy thought. But Lewrie wore a distinct scowl, instead. And whispered for his own ears, "This is a place I'd fight to keep. Like that fellow Schulenburg they put up a statue for. By God, somebody should, 'fore the Frogs…"
"Excuse me, sir," Midshipman Hyde reported, with his companion Midshipman Clarence Spendlove with him. "That's the last of them, sir. All the prisoners ashore now, and Sergeant Bootheby's Marines ready to embark."
"Ah, thankee, Mister Hyde." Lewrie nodded, still staring out to sea, turning to inhale the gardens' sweetnesses before being forced back to Jesters stale and rancid reeks.
"Sir, do you think, since we're allowed twenty-four hours…" "No shore-leave, Mister Hyde. Sorry," Lewrie moodily grunted. "No sorrier than I, sir," Spendlove groaned. "It's a fine town, it appears. Very attractive, indeed."
Lewrie noted that Spendlove's gaze was riveted upon the bevy of local beauties who'd come down to see the excitement of a warship come to call, and the spectacle of the prisoners being landed. Girls whose angelic features stood out in stark contrast to the black or goat-brown gowns they wore.
Gowns, Lewrie took note, that were very low-cut in the bodice and promised a beguiling vista themselves, barely covered with stiff points of the headclothes that lanced down from their hair. As well, they wore white, embroidered aprons, overskirts turned back and tied behind and tiny waistcoats as vestigial as what Greek dancing girls had worn on those ancient jars, more colourful or more ornately embroidered. Some of the girls were clad in loose flax or linen peasant blouses and long satiny skirts, those blouses artfully tied to bare lissome olive-complexioned and inviting shoulders. Only the noblest of the Corfiots, recorded in their Venetian-inspired Golden Book of ancient aristocracy, wore the high hair, the huge hats or the bauto, or the lacier mainland fineries.
Lewrie couldn't help nodding and smiling at one or two, for they were exotically lovely. British sailors, British officers and redcoat Marines were a rare novelty, and these enticing girls seemed intrigued with them. Lewrie saw a half dozen open and approving glances, demure coquetries… or arrant, hip-rolling "come-hithers," within musket-shot.
"No, no shore-leave," Lewrie repeated himself. Partly for his own caution. Lord, lookee… I'm tryin' t'be decent, for a change, see? It was hard, though, to imagine not diving right in and making a swine of himself. "Not a good liberty port, young sirs," he explained. "It's hard enough to get the Venetian authorities to let us stay in port for twenty-four hours. Or land the noncombatant prisoners. And with that Frog merchantman here, too, well… there'd surely be a brawl, do you see? A knifing or a murder 'fore midnight, and we'd never be let in harbour again-Jester or any other ship of the squadron. And the authorities'd…"
He tailed off, sourly irritated, as Marine Sergeant Bootheby put on a short display of close-order drill to march his small Marine contingent down the quay from the town gaol, to the delight of the Corfiots and the sneers of the French sailors off that merchantman.
Whether the Venetian authorities on Corfu disapproved of brawls or not, there would be precious little they could actually do about them, he thought. During his tour of the town, and a rather good midday meal, he had learned several disturbing things about Corfu and the rest of the isles.
Such as the fact that the largest, oldest fort on the eastern point-the Citadel-was pretty much an empty shell after a powder magazine explosion a few years back in '89, which had leveled half the Old Town under its walls.
Such as the fact that the New Fort didn't have a garrison, either. There was a colonel and two captains, their manservants, cook and stable-hands. And that was the entire garrison of Corfu! The colonel and his officers still sent in musters to Venice, though, which showed a battalion, and were billing the Serene Republic for men who'd deserted, died or resigned at the end of their enlistments.