"Aye, sah," the onetime Jamaican house servant, who'd traded actual slavery by running away from his masters and accepted informal servitude in the Royal Navy, replied, looking up with a sunny smile.
"Row back to Jester and instruct the First Lieutenant to stand ready to hoist anchor and set sail as soon as the wind returns. Then come back here and wait for me."
"Aye aye, sah. Up, me bucks. Unship ya oahs…"
"B'lieve I will take that coffee, Commander Fillebrowne," Lewrie agreed, sharing a smile with his host. A smile of discovery, Lewrie realized ruefully.
The bastard's me-he all but gasped to himself-if you took off five years and kept me a bachelor! Or not, he further qualified.
"Bloody awful place, Elba," Fillebrowne drawled as he grimaced so his cabin servant could shave a spot under his jaws. "The Dons hold Porto Longone, on the sou'east coast. Governor-general and all, since the oared galley days. Matter of fact, the Frogs took it once, but Don Juan of Austria-won Lepanto, you'll recall?-got it back for Spain. The Medicis held Portoferrajo till the War of Austrian Succession, when the last'un died, and Austria got this port. Easy, there, Gwinn! I'm too young and pretty to die of a cut throat. And what'd the ladies do without me, I ask you?"
"Pardon, sir." His manservant chuckled. "I wouldna wish to deprive nobody."
"Rest of the island's supposedly Tuscan, under the Princes of Piombino. But they'll dance to any strong party's tune. They've a government here, too. Of a sort," Fillebrowne rattled on. Fearful of a cut throat or marred handsomeness or not, he was cheerfully at a thick slice of toast and jam between razor swipes.
"Didn't we almost buy the damn place, back in '86?" Alan asked between bites of his own and swigs of piping-hot strong coffee-the sort he really liked, and which few Englishmen seemed to brew, if one didn't clout them alongside their skulls to remind them every so often. "Same as we almost got Minorca and Corsica?"
"There was talk of it, sir," Fillebrowne agreed, with a more cautious nod as Gwinn laid on with his razor afresh. "But, again, the French- Louis the Umpteenth… the one got guillotined?-scotched it. They've always had their eyes on this place. Why, I can't-"
"So, in spite of their jealousies, all three parties have banded together to reject a British garrison?" Lewrie surmised.
"Well, sir… as for the Spanish, I doubt anyone's bothered to tell them yet," Fillebrowne hooted in derision, flinging off Gwinn's towel and rubbing his fresh-shaved chin. He came to the sideboard to pour himself more coffee. "Poor old buggers haven't a clue which day it is, 'less it's a festival on their church calendar! And nobody is telling the Boncampagni family, either. They're the Tuscan royalty on the island- whelp out the new Prince of Piombino every generation. Long as the peasants aren't revolting and the iron mines make money for them, they couldn't give a tinker's damn. No, it's the Austrians. Baron Knesevich, the stubborn old bastard, he's their governor-general. He's the one holds the whip-hand round here. And he doesn't want a British garrison, 'less there's certain 'guarantees.' "
"And we must be so very kind to the Austrians, mustn't we, Commander Fillebrowne?" Lewrie singsonged a sneer. "Wouldn't do for them to be upset with us, God forbid."
"Might take their toys and go home," Fillebrowne grunted, digging into his half-completed breakfast dishes with almost a carnal abandon. "And we'd have no one left to play with. Mean t'say, sir, are we actually allies, or not?"
"There's Spain, like to come in against us… and why they were ever with us, I still can't fathom," Lewrie wondered aloud. "This Baron Knesevich could use the help, should a Spanish squadron show up with reinforcements for their garrison. Or the Tuscans send one before we do, to enforce what passes for their neutrality."
"Like I said, sir"-Fillebrowne shrugged, with knife and fork at poise position over a chop-"if he'd stood us off another day, I'd have to be the one to sail back to San Fiorenzo and tell Old Jarvy. And you can imagine the filleting I'd get as the result of that. Senior Navy officer on the scene? Pity you even came to anchor, too, sir. That makes you senior man, temporarily."
"When in trouble, when in doubt-" Lewrie began to quote the old lower-deck adage.
"-hoist your main, and fuck-off out." Fillebrowne ended it for him with a wicked grin. "Aye, sir, exactly."
"Leaving the colonel of that infantry battalion, and the captain of the transport-" Lewrie again began.
"-holding the most honourable bag, so to speak, Commander Lewrie," Fillebrowne interrupted again, with a devilish grin and wink.
"And that, as soon as 'dammit,' " Lewrie concluded.
"Now you've delivered these orders to me, sir," Fillebrowne asked as he wiped his lips and chin, "would it be telling, were you to let me know where it is we're going, under old Thomas?"
"The Adriatic, sir," Lewrie informed him. " Trieste, the Ionian Islands. Maybe even Venice."
" Venice, my word, sir!" Fillebrowne gasped in sudden delight, his face lighting up a like a child's at a country fair. "The architecture! The music, the sculptures and the paintings!"
"The what?" Lewrie asked, rather surprised by Fillebrowne's odd first choices for enthusiasm.
"Tintoretto, Canova, Titian… that whole talented Dago lot, sir."
"And Casanova, sir?" Lewrie smirked, thinking that he had formed an accurate first impression of his man.
"Well, that, too, o' course, Commander Lewrie," Fillebrowne told him with a man-of-the-world shrug. "Once you get the Carnival costume, or her seed-pearled gown off, though, Venetian mutton is sure to be the same as Portsmouth mutton. God only made so many types, didn't He, sir? Your pardons for saying so, sir, but you've gained your name in the Fleet-the 'Ram-Cat'-for your fondness for the fair sex, not so?"
"I will own to my share of youthful.. uhm," Lewrie replied with a worldly shrug of his own, quite at ease with Fillebrowne-and more than a bit pleased to note how far his repute had spread.
"So you surely do agree, Commander Lewrie," Fillebrowne said with a teasing note in his voice, "that, as an experienced 'fancier,' as it were, you've found that all cats are grey in the dark?"
"Hah!" Lewrie laughed with a bark. "Mind now, sir, a touch o' scent and a thorough wash helps. Her own teeth… or the lack."
"Mhmmm," Fillebrowne cooed appreciatively. "I look forward to Venice 's wives and daughters as much as any of my lower-deck people. Though it may go against my grain, perhaps even the hired courtesans. The art, though… the opportunities do intrigue, however."
"A collector, are you, Commander Fillebrowne?" Lewrie asked.
"Runs in the family, so to speak, sir." Fillebrowne chuckled as he poured them more coffee, not waiting for his manservant Gwinn to do the honours. "Done the Grand Tour nigh like a religious rite, time out [of mind, as it were. Victims of the usual shammed masterpieces the mountebanks fob off on unwitting English visitors. Shame of it was so great, my grandfather actually studied up before he did his Tour, so he wouldn't be cheated or embarrassed to shew his acquisitions off back home to his friends. My father and his uncles, and hence my elder brothers and I, have become rather astute collectors. Missed my shot at a Grand Tour… Navy career and all. This war, now! Limited as I was board the flagship, even so I've been able to glean a few small but precious, and genuine, articles to ship home. From the French emigres. Going for a song. Damned rare things they came away with, I can tell you, sir! Then it was sell up or starve, thankee!"