Kings and Emperors

Lewrie was caught with his mouth open.

“He had the most recent copy of Steel’s, so he knew who commanded all our ships, and he cautioned me to keep a close rein on that ‘rapscallion “Ram-Cat” Lewrie’ from having a go at the ships in the Tagus, either, and he said that you’re ‘a relentless, rapacious reaper of prize money,’ hah hah!”

“Well, I have had good fortune over the years, but I haven’t gone … reaping on purpose,” Lewrie rejoined. “I’ve just had good luck.”

“You aren’t known as the ‘Ram-Cat’ for your choice of pets,” Shirke pointed out. “Good God, cats! Can’t abide them!”

“I thought you were better known as ‘Black Alan,’” Fillebrowne fussily added. “For when you stole those dozen Black slaves to crew your ship.”

“Liberated, not stolen,” Lewrie corrected. “Their idea, too.”

“Stood trial for it,” Fillebrowne went on.

“Honourably acquitted,” Lewrie pointed out.

“You saw that French corvette, and that big Spanish frigate at anchor at Gibraltar, Captain Fillebrowne?” Shirke asked him. “Alongside those Spanish xebecs? Those are Sapphire’s prizes, all in the last year. Lord, in the old days, none of us thought you would make a sailor. You were the worst cack-handed, cu

“I think it was all the time I spent ‘kissing the gu

“We couldn’t recognise him by face, and wondered if he could stand erect, he spent so much time bent over a gun,” Shirke wheezed with glee, “and our Bosun and his Mates could swing a starter so hard, they could have lit off the priming powder at a gun’s touch hole with one blow, hee hee!”

“Raised sparks on my arse,” Lewrie said, laughing along. “You know, I can’t remember either you or Keith Ashburn ever bein’ whipped.”

“That’s because we were never caught out at our duties, Alan,” Shirke reminisced with joy, “nor caught at our games and skylarking, either,” he added with a tap on the side of his nose.

“Excuse me, sir, but supper is laid and ready,” the senior steward a

Lewrie noted that Fillebrowne had merely pretended to laugh along with the others, and he caught his agate-eyed glances as they sat down. He looked almost archly surly, which pleased Lewrie.

What is he, jealous, or irked? he wondered; He keeps that up, and I will tell Hayman one or two o’ my yarns!

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

All four ships of the escort returned to Gibraltar, and turned their sailors loose on the town’s taverns and brothels. After a day or two of provisioning, though, Captains Fillebrowne and Hayman took their frigates back to sea to rejoin their commands in the central Mediterranean, and the following day Captain Shirke and Newcastle departed, leaving Sapphire by herself, again, and Lewrie was glad to see the back of them, Fillebrowne especially.

He had treated them all to a shore supper at Pescadore’s, the seafood chop-house in the upper part of town near the Convent, and it went well. The next night, though, he and Maddalena had supped at the Ten Tuns, and who should pop in in the middle of their meal but Captain Fillebrowne and Captain Hayman! It was impossible not to ask them to join them. Hayman was the soul of discretion, but Fillebrowne had skirted the edge of propriety, attempting to flirt mildly and taking over their conversations, as if laying the groundwork to assume possession of another of Lewrie’s mistresses.

“He assumes a lot,” Maddalena had commented on their walk back to her lodgings. “I thought all English gentlemen behaved like gentlemen.” She had even clutched her arms cross her chest and darted glances behind them, as if in fear that she’d see Fillebrowne skulking after them.

“Well, we both know that that ain’t true, Maddalena,” Lewrie had said, trying to cosset her. “There’s Captain Hughes, for a shabby example.” He’d tried to laugh it off, but inside he was fuming, too.

There’s un-finished business ’twixt me and that arrogant shit, Lewrie had thought; Don’t know what it is, but, I just hope we don’t cross hawses again. Is he tryin’ to row me so angry that we’d have to duel?

Fortunately, though, a shared bottle of sparkling wine, and a night with Maddalena, in which she assured him who truly had her affection, was passionate enough to distract him from his qualms.

*   *   *

“Going anywhere soon, are you, Captain Lewrie?” the Foreign Office’s chief spy, Thomas Mountjoy, asked with mock urgency as they met in the street in front of Mountjoy’s lodgings a morning or two later. “If you are, I’m sorely tempted to go with you.”

“French assassins’re after you?” Lewrie asked. “Or, is it a woman you spurned?”

“There’s a diplomatic disaster just waiting to explode, and I wish to be half a continent away when it does,” Mountjoy told him in what Lewrie recognised by now as real urgency.

“Whatever’s the matter, then?” he asked him.

“That ship that came in yesterday, the Thunderer?” Mountjoy said, stabbing a finger at a two-decker Third Rate in the harbour. “She’s just come in from Sicily with a brace of pretenders to the throne of Spain aboard. One’s Prince Leopold of the Kingdom of Naples and the Two Sicilies, King Ferdinand the Fourth’s heir—”

“Is he as ugly as his father?” Lewrie asked, suddenly amused by Mountjoy’s distress. “Does he run a waterfront fish shop, same as his Daddy?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t clapped eyes on him … what? Fish shop? Where did you get that?” Mountjoy demanded, most perplexed and thrown off his rant.

“Met Ferdinand ages ago, when my ship put in to Naples, back when Sir William Hamilton was our ambassador, and his wife, Emma, was still slimm-ish. We ate at Ferdinand’s shop, where he cooked for us himself. Quite tasty, really.”

“Emma Hamilton? Nelson’s Emma Hamilton?” Mountjoy gawped.

“Umhmm,” Lewrie rejoined with an idle leer. “She was tasty at the time, too. So. What’s young Leopold doin’ here?”

“Offering himself to the war effort, so long as his military post is suitable to his illustrious rank,” Mountjoy scoffed, “and offering his father, Ferdinand, as either a king or a regent. The other passenger is Prince Louis-Phillipe, Duc d’Orléans, the eldest of the French royal family, who would have succeeded to the French throne, if the Revolution hadn’t come along. He’s offering himself, a French Bourbon to replace a Spanish Bourbon. It’s all impossible, of course, and the Spanish juntas will never hear a word of it, and Dalrymple’s in a dither, trying to put out fires and soothe the Spanish, saying that neither of the sods are a British idea.

“Worst of all, there’s rumours that Archduke Charles of Austria might be on his way to get a seat at the table, too,” Mountjoy went on. “What good relations we’ve built in Spain could be out the window if they think we approve of a foreign king, regent, or emperor, or … generalissimo! Dalrymple hasn’t allowed either of the princes to set foot ashore, yet, Thunderer’s captain wants them off as soon as dammit, and the whole thing could be an utter mess by the end of the week.

“Wait,” Mountjoy said, ceasing his nervous tirade and peering at Lewrie. “You and Emma Hamilton? Really?”