"I shiver in my boots, sir," Lewrie scoffed.
"How come you by that, sir?" Charlton snapped quickly.
"Beg pardon, sir, but… what force of arms?" Lewrie rejoined. "At the Arsenal this morning, Captain Charlton. Lord, what a pot-mess! They've ships laid up in-ordinary, two-a-penny, aye, sir. But they're rotting at their moorings! Harbour watch and anchor watches set, with warrants and their families living aboard. Bearded with weeds, sir! Forecastles and waists built-over with huts or shacks, like receiving-hulks back home, sir. No seamen to be seen, and damn few naval officers. No ships under construction, sir… no ships being fitted out or repaired. Place was full, but idle as Sunday in Scotland. Hundreds of idlers loafing about, pretending to do some chores."
"Like our own HM Dockyards, hmm?" Charlton posed.
"A thousand-fold worse, sir," Lewrie scoffed. "It's more like a series of palaces than a dockyard. Dependents of yard workers swarming like drone bees, but damn-all work being done. There are fountains in the Arsenal yards, sir. Wine fountains! Not temporary, for Carnival, but permanent stone fountains. Shift a couple of planks… go get yer cup o' wine. Tally salt-beef barrels… wet yer whistle again, sir. Then line up for dinner, sir… on the house, and take as much as you like. Then wash it down with more wine. All free, sir. Like a Roman dole. Bless me, Captain Charlton," Lewrie concluded his accounting, "they couldn't put a decent squadron together to overmatch ours were we to give 'em 'til Christmas!"
"Surely a seafaring nation, though, Commander…" Charlton said in puzzlement. "Mean t'say, Mistress of the Seas for nigh on a thousand years! The Arsenal must be crammed with stores, just waiting-"
"Bare-bones, sir," Lewrie interrupted. "Mast-ponds half empty, very little timber seasoning… the rope-walks were idle, and I didn't see that much spare ropes or cable coiled up and ready. Mountains of shot piled up, hundreds of guns ashore… but more than a little rusty, from what I could see of 'em. I don't think the Venetians could sail out a force larger than the Austrians at Trieste could, sir."
"Yet, after the news this morning…?" Charlton puzzled some more. "Forgive me, sir… but I was able to confirm those rumours we heard at the ridotto. The French, under this new general Bonaparte, did beat the Austrians and the Piedmontese and split them apart. Even worse, so the Venetian authorities told me not two hours ago, they were not minor skirmishes, but all-out battles. The Austrians lost over six thousand men, sir, and were damn near routed! And there's been another battle with the Piedmontese… at Mondovi."
Charlton gloomed up, took a sip of sekt, and wriggled his lips as if in distress, to be the bearer of even worse tidings.
"At Mondovi, Commander Lewrie," Charlton intoned, "may we trust the account, the Piedmontese were also routed. And an entire corps of their army captured. Their General Colli has asked for an armistice.. • and that was several days ago. It may have been signed by now. So you see what that means, sir?"
"Piedmont's defeated." Lewrie gulped. "Out of the war. Out of the Coalition. And all Italy west of the Po River is now held by French troops?"
"Correct, sir. They may now march east into Lombardy at their leisure, using any route they fancy, from the Riviera to the Alps. I will give you and Fillebrowne more details soon as we are all together this evening. Did you see Commander Fillebrowne ashore during your travels, Lewrie?"
"Aye, sir," Lewrie grunted. "Dined with him. We were all together at the Shockleys' lodgings."
"So, he should be back aboard Myrmidon soon. Good." Charlton nodded. "And we may sketch out our operations, now we own such fine charts. Dine you both aboard, say… four bells of the First Dog?"
"Looking forward to it, sir," Lewrie told him with a pleasant grin, though inwardly less than enthusiastic from all he'd just heard. And what he'd seen and heard earlier.
In his own shirtsleeves, he pored over his new set of Venetian charts, in the privacy of his great-cabins aboard HMS Jester. Andrews was puttering about, polishing the fittings of his sword's scabbard to get rid of the smuts of a morning's handling. A glass of cool Rhenish sat near his hand on the desk. Toulon didn't care for the scent of any wine, so he left it alone after a tentative sniff. Though he did like the crinkly feel of those new charts! And those corners that didn't bear any tooth-marks yet…!
"Fine navigator you are," Lewrie cajoled, shifting the cat off the middle for a third time, exposing a maze of islands off the Balkan shores. In keeping with the times, he supposed, their original Venetian names were now in very small letters, and were mostly labeled with odd Slavic names, which mostly began with otok-followed by a string of consonants that only the very inebriated would even try to pronounce. Like someone had slapped the entire Bahamas or Windward Isles from the West Indies along the shore… it looked to be a Paradise for any ship bent on escape. Soundings showed fairly good deep water, right up to the steep coastlines, too, and very few shoals to bar a fleeing French vessel from taking any course she pleased, once inside the isles. He and the rest of the squadron would be haring after them like hounds in a game-park back home, dodging the mature oaks and bramble patches, and their prey-the hare-able to double back, then sit and laugh at it all, as they lost the scent where it had crisscrossed itself time and again.
Flop went Toulon, crushing the Balkans once more, on his side… tail lashing and legs outstretched for a tussle. "Mrrr!" he urged.
"Catlin', why…" Lewrie sighed, then gave up. He began to play pat-a-cake between Toulon's front paws, to touch him gently on the belly, before escaping his grasp. Toulon always started with claws sheathed… but that didn't last a minute, once he got excited.
The Italian shore (the one the cat wasn't smothering) looked to be more promising, though dangerously shoal and marshy. Lewrie thought that any French ships trading in the Adriatic-or any French warships-would stick to that side, to aid their cause in the north, if nothing else. Or distract Neapolitan, Venetian or Austrian troops to another threat, to further their army's successes against Piedmont. There was a slim hope that they wouldn't have to get tangled up in the snares of the Balkan shore and those islands. It was still a backwater to the real war.
He paused, took a sip of his wine and rose from the desk to go rummaging in the chart-space for other sources of information. Toulon padded after him, leapt to the top of the chart-table, and cried for their game to resume. Lewrie unfolded a map of northern Italy-not a sea-chart, but a true landsman's map-over Toulon, of course. And that was a special treat for him, to play Blind Man's Bluff from under cover.
It was frustrating; half the places Charlton had mentioned, such as Ceva and Montedotte, weren't shown. But Alessandria was, and Mondovi and that Cherasco, the Po River, Milan, Turin and Pavia.
"Damme," Lewrie breathed.
Cherasco wasn't a day's march from Turin, the capital of Piedmont. If the Austrian commander, Marshal Beaulieu, was falling back on Alessandria, then he'd left the line of the Po unguarded! If that little bastard Bonaparte, or Buonaparte, had marched that fast, over such a distance, from Piedmontese front to Austrian front and back… he had a clear shot at Pavia, Alessandria… even Milan, the capital of the Austrian archduchy of Milan! He'd struck Lewrie as a knacky little shit back in '93-active as anything. Oh, but surely not!