"No, sir!" Spendlove strenuously denied. "Mister Hyde was at the gangway to receive them, and took 'em aft, still sealed, to your quarters. We informed Mister Knolles, of course, and he thought it best if you saw them straightaway, so I readied a boat, to fetch you, Captain. But, were they urgent, Mister Knolles then thought to send them on, so he went aft, to get 'em, and he asked of them from Mister Mountjoy, well…" "My 'assistant'!" Lewrie hooted sourly. "My God, that's rich!" But, as long as he had them, he might as well read them, so he stepped away for a tiny shred of privacy. When he discovered:
You are directed to ready your vessel for sea, and, at your earliest convenience, the wind being obliging, -proceed to the port of Leghorn, upon the Italian mainland, carrying with you the assistant surgeon of the fleet, his appurtenances, and monies, for the purchase of a quantity of onions and thirty to forty pipes of wine from the Tuscan authorities; to store aboard as expeditiously as possible the aforesaid, upon affirmation by the assistant surgeon of the fleet as to the antiscorbutic properties, then to proceed afterward to San Fiorenzo Bay with the onions and wine …"
"And just what do you draw, Lewrie, hey?" he muttered, half amused. "Jesus Christ!" There went all his previous speculation on hopes of neck-or-nothing sea service. Amazing, really, what fickle Dame Reality actually had up her sleeve!
He folded them and stuck them into an inner coat pocket.
"Very well, Mister Spendlove. Go back aboard, and deliver my utmost respects to Mister Knolles and the sailing master. They are to ready the ship for sea. Tell Aspinall we'll have a single piece of live-lumber' aft, in the great-cabins, with some dunnage of his to store away in my personal lazarette. Have 'Chips' run him up a bed cot. And warn my cook he'll be 'sizzling' for two, this evening."
San Fiorenzo Bay was a mirror. There wasn't a breath of wind, and every commissioning pendant, every sail freed of its gaskets and let hung to prevent mildew, were as slack as a hangman's noose, still and flaccid. There'd be no departure this evening. Perhaps the morning might bring up enough wind to work out of harbor on. Or, they'd lower the ship's boats and row her out, in tow, to a sea breeze. He'd have about an hour, no more, to settle Phoebe, leave her some coin for incidentals, but would have to forego her expressions of "gratitude."
Before he could inform her of that sad fact, though, he espied a Navy officer at the dockside, one familiar to him, about to mount a horse.
"Captain Nelson?" he called, walking down to the pier-front, to remake his acquaintance.
"Ah, Commander Lewrie!" the little minnikin of a post-captain cried jovially, once he'd gotten his "seat." "Saw your Jester lying at anchor, on my way out to Victory. Just come in. And with such a wondrous packet of news, too, about Admiral Howe's splendid victory! How I wish I'd but been there to take part, but… And how do you do, sir?"
"Main-well, and thank you for recalling me, sir," Lewrie said, doffing his hat. "And thank you again for the permanent loan of men off your Agamemnon. They eased our passage home wondrous well. Form the very backbone of my new crew. I can't express how indebted I am to you for your generosity, short-handed though you were at the time."
God, what a complete toadying wretch you are, Lewrie, he chided himself; must be instinctive! Nelson's just another captain, not an admiral whose back you have to 'piss down' for favors!
"And you are well yourself, sir?" Alan asked, as a party of seamen trudged by in a dust-raising shamble, loaded down with sacks like so many draught animals.
"In splendid fettle, sir," Nelson assured him. "Been on shore service, over toward Calvi, d'ye see. As long as the French Navy is blockaded, there's the seat of the action. There's the very cockpit! A chance for action, great doings!"
Capt. Horatio Nelson was such a thin and nervous whippet of a fellow, so lean and wee to begin with, well… Lewrie thought his duty ashore had sweated him down. He didn't look in splendid fettle, really. Haggard as a dog's dinner, in point of fact.
"Why, were I half sunk with the flux, the opportunity for action against our foes would revive me from my very deathbed, sir," Nelson assured him firmly, speaking a trifle louder, for the benefit, Lewrie imagined, of those trudging, plodding sailors, and the general audience at dockside.
Always did have a touch o' Drury Lane theatrics in him, Lewrie recalled, smiling in reverie.
"You should see what British tars can accomplish, Lewrie," he "emoted," regaining that infectious enthusiasm for a chance to get himself blown to bits, or knighted-whichever came first. "You simply must ride up and visit us, should you have the chance. Erecting batteries, man-hauling guns over hill and dale, digging trenches and parallels… ah, here's Captain Fremantle! Another of our stalwarts."
Taller, lankier, and mastiff-dour, was Capt. Thomas Fremantle, whose sole response to Nelson's introduction was a nod and a grunt.
"… shelling the Frogs night and day, storming their positions to keep monsieur on the hop," Nelson rattled on. "Minding shot around their own ears no more than peas, I tell you, Lewrie! Been at it ever since the first days of the siege of Bastia. Well, Captain Fremantle might mind shot and shell, after our little… 'incident,' hey?"
"Uhm," interjected that worthy, shifting in his saddle rather uncomfortably.
"The Frogs got the range of us, at Bastia," Nelson reminisced gaily, "and literally blew us off a hillside. Right down off the side of the path. Showers of earth, gravel, and dust. Fremantle was sore hurt."
"Tore a good pair o' breeches," Fremantle grunted laconically.
"Now he swears he'll not walk within a musket shot of me, sir." Nelson chuckled. "I attract too much attention from their gunners!"
Sounds like Fremantle is smarter than he looks, Alan thought.
"Should I do come visit, sir," Lewrie said with an agreeable chuckle of his own, "I'd hope for better horses than these for the journey."
While all the while swearing that it would take a battalion of gaolers to drag him anywhere near Calvi's trenches. Or Nelson's side.
"Spavined wretches, are they not, sir?" Nelson shrugged, even as he patted his ill-featured mare's neck. "A poor prad, but mine own, to quote the Bard. And, well… Father's a churchman, and our glebe didn't run to blooded hunters. Then I, away to sea at such a young age… I must confess I am nowhere near as confident upon this horse as I am upon my quarterdeck. This idle waiting, and swinging around the anchors… I quite envy you, sir, your freedom of a smaller ship. Out at sea, our proper place… anything exciting by way of orders for you yet, Lewrie?"
"Onions, sir." Lewrie sighed. "Onions and wine. I'm off for Leghorn at first light, pray God the wind returns, to purchase onions to prevent the scurvy."
"Oh, poor fellow." Nelson seemed to commiserate for a single sober moment, though he perked up rather quickly, not a second after. "Still, your turn will come, sir, be confident of it. Once Calvi is ours, we'll all be free to seek out our foes, and win such glory as even a Hawke, Anson, or Drake might envy!"
Lewrie continued to smile, though he did raise one rather dubious brow. Fremantle, though, who'd been slouching like a sack of onions in his saddle, sat up a bit straighter, got a light upon his dull visage, as if he'd just been Saved, and was leaving Church with his Life Amended. Uncanny, how this wee fellow Nelson could inspirit people! "Well, sirs, if you must ride as far as Calvi before dark, I won't keep you a second longer. And the best of fortune go with you, sirs. Captain Nelson, Captain Fremantle… I'll save you a sack of my very best… mmm, produce, sirs," he could not help saying with a deprecatory smirk. "My word on't."