“I Francesi?” Marine Lieutenant Venables was shouting to the few townspeople who hadn’t scampered off. “Francesi in città?” His Marines were making rapid searches of the first buildings, and not being too gentle about it, briskly entering the ground levels, with other men aiming their muskets at upper-storey windows.
“Or old Pat Furfy, sir,” Lt. Grace said of a sudden, grinning in remembrance. “Your Cox’n’s mate? Lord, the lengths he went for drink.”
Liam Desmond and Pat Furfy had fled their village in Ireland for mysterious reasons, steps ahead of British authorities, and had ended up in the hands of the Impress Service at Chatham, and shoved aboard Lewrie’s first Post ship, the Proteus frigate. Grace, his father and grandfather, had taken the Joining Bounty about the same time after their fishing smack had gone down, leaving them and their families penniless, and it was the Graces, Liam Desmond, and Pat Furfy that had stood by Lewrie during the Nore Mutiny of 1797.
“The Chinese Magnolia,” Lewrie laughed out loud. “The plantings ’tween the guns!” For Pat Furfy had sworn that it was that very sort of tree that stood in front of his old mother’s rough cottage, and a mob of other drunken revellers had ripped it from the garden of the Governor-General’s house at St. Helena, all the blossoms plucked off and waved or worn as cockades. HMS Proteus and her whole crew, had been banned liberty on the island as long as she was in commission!
“A damned good sailor and fighter, a good shipmate. I miss him,” Grace said.
“Aye, I still miss him, too,” Lewrie admitted, “Though he kept me busy, haulin’ his chestnuts from the fire. Well, carry on, Mister Grace. I’ll follow our Marines, and see what devilment they stir up.”
Furfy, God! Lewrie thought; I still hope it wasn’t him who fed the Governor-General’s wife’s lap-dog to one of the circus lions and choked it to death on its collar!
“Clearing the town, sir,” Captain Whitehead crisply reported as Lewrie caught up with him. “There were a couple of drunken Frogs in a tavern. Commissariat men, they claim. I’ve put them under guard, so the townspeople don’t tear them limb from limb. They’re getting their courage back, sir … Dutch courage.”
They strode the length of one of the main streets, into the wide town square before the church, where knots of civilians were emerging and coalescing into mobs with farm implements and clubs. As Marines trotted through with bayonetted muskets to continue their searches in the houses and shops behind the square, there were even some cheers raised, some redcoat backs patted in passing, and some wakened boys in their nightshirts trotting alongside, or trying to march.
Up ahead, round the Northern outskirts of Monasterace, a volley of shots rang out, sending Marines up against the walls of buildings, some kneeling with their muskets levelled.
“Second rank … fire!” someone ordered, prompting another flurry of gunfire. It sounded like Lt. Rutland, appointed to the command of the transport Coromandel.
“Rutland! That you?” Lewrie shouted as loud as he could.
“Captain Lewrie, sir? Aye, it’s me, with sixty men.” Rutland called back. “Mister Fletcher is off to the left, and we’ve caught a pack of drunken Frenchmen between us. Mostly un-armed and staggering. Don’t advance beyond me, or you might walk into a cross-fire. There’s a brothel yonder, where they came from. I was about to search it.”
“No, you keep the pressure on ’em, Mister Rutland,” Lewrie decided, “The Marines and I will search the brothel.”
That raised a quick Hurrah! from the Marines, for there would be naked women and opened bottles in there, and there might be time for a quick romp and a drink or two.
“Good Lord!” Lewrie gawped as he got beyond the last buildings in town to take in the full view of the French encampments, and what Col. Tarrant’s regiment had achieved, so far. There were enough of the waggons set alight to bare the entire seene. There were at least six separate waggon camps present, hundreds upon hundreds of canvas-covered four-wheel conveyances packed wheel-to-wheel. The stock pens for each convoy boiled with stirring, galloping, frightened horses or mules, panicked by the gunfire, the rising smoke smells, and the glare of flames. Somewhere, oxen bellowed, stamped, or pawed the ground in dread. Lewrie could dimly make out lines of tents further inland of the coast road, where cavalry escort troops had slept, and cooked rations. Were those French soldiers dashing back and forth, rushing to the lines where they had tethered their mounts, gathering their boots, saddles, saddle cloths, and arms?
Six convoys, six troops of escorts, that’s … three hundred and sixty cavalry! Lewrie realised; If they get mounted and organized … Oh, Christ on a crutch!
There were a couple of shots fired nearby, louder than the rest.
“Upper windows in the brothel! Fire, lads, fire!” Whitehead ordered, pointing with his drawn sword. “Mister Kellett! Take a file of ten and clear the ground floor!”
Muskets banged, and the window sills, shutters, and upper sashes were splintered, glass panes disappearing in shards. Lt. Kellett led his men through the stout door and into the ground floor tavern, raising shrieks of alarm from the whores inside. Several women came dashing out the door, clutching what little they wore about themselves in haste, covering bare breasts or chemises with colourful shawls.
More shots from the windows, answered by a volley, and someone inside gave out a scream as he was hit. Stout low boots thundered on the stairs inside, Marines were yelling. There was another scream of agony, a shot or two, the sound of doors breaking, another flurry of gunfire, and a uniformed Frenchman in a blue tunic appeared in one of the windows, howling as he was bayonetted, and riddled with lead balls from shots fired from outside, too.
“The Frogs’re comin’ out, lads!” someone yelled, followed by three bodies being heaved out the windows to thud on the stony soil, and all the Marines gave out a great cheer.
“What’s next?” Whitehead demanded, eager for more action.
“Let’s send a runner to Lieutenant Fletcher and his shore party,” Lewrie suggested. “There’s that large farmhouse and barns up ahead … where they keep their forge waggon and repair facilities. If Rutland can take it under fire from the right, and Fletcher the left, we can attack it from the front.”
“Sounds good, sir,” Capt. Whitehead agreed with a firm nod of his head. “Mister Venables, pick a runner to go off to the left. I’ll brief him on what to say.”
“Rutland, I’m coming to you,” Lewrie yelled over to the right. “Don’t shoot me, right?”
“Right, sir,” Lt. Rutland called back, sounding amused for a rare moment, for he had proved to be a terse and dour fellow.
“We’re going to take on the big farmhouse and barns ahead of us,” Lewrie told him once he’d spotted him and approached him. “You look most piratical, may I say, Rutland?” for Lt. Rutland’s battered old cocked hat was askew on his head, he sported a heavy cutlass instead of his slimmer smallsword, hung cross his chest on a baldric, four pistols jammed into coat pockets and his breeches waistband, and on his shoulder he’d slung a Tower musket, with all the accoutrements.
“Came prepared for a fight this time, sir,” Rutland explained. “Not like the last neck-or-nothing battle we stumbled into here.”
“Enjoying yourself?” Lewrie asked.
“I will own to, ah … certain, ehm … excitement, sir,” Lt. Rutland cautiously expressed himself, not the sort of man to blurt out his personal feelings, or display much joy over anything.
“Fletcher and his men will fire on it from the left, and I and Whitehead will take it on from the front,” Lewrie told him. “Do link in close to our right-hand end, close enough for orders to be passed.”
“I will advance my party now, if I may, sir, and look for any decent cover,” Rutland said with a nod of understanding, and Lewrie let him deploy.
Lewrie turned to eye the farmhouse and barns, now silhouetted by fires that had sprung up behind it, making it look grimly formidable.
Wish I’d brought my Ferguson, Lewrie thought, chiding h
imself for imagining that it would have made him too clumsy on the boarding nets. He was, like many of his sailors who’d come from mill towns or cottages, unable to swim, and a fall into dark waters from the nets, wide of one of the barges, and he’d have sunk under all the weaponry he was already carrying. There were many upper-storey windows in that farmhouse, now turned amber and glittering with reflected fires, and a breech-loaded rifle would have come in handy at daunting or killing the French.
“Runner’s on his way to Mister Fletcher, sir,” Whitehead said, whipping the tip of his sword through high grass and bracken round his feet. “My word, I do believe that Tarrant’s men have set the stores of hay afire!”
There were very large canvas pavillions back of the stock pens, piled high with bound sheaves of hay, stacked round the tent poles vertically like they would be in the English countryside. And under that canvas that protected the feed from the weather, there would also be mounds of bags filled with oats. Now, smoke and flames were boiling from beneath the canvas, the outer edges of one vast pavillion alight like a burning sail, the fire eating its way to the tops of the tent poles, and little blazing mice-like flames skittering up the support ropes.
The Marine private who had borne the message to Lt. Fletcher’s party came panting back, musket held cross his chest, and slammed to a boot-stamping stop by the officers. “Mister Fletcher says he’s ready t’give fire when ordered, sir! His sailors’re stretched out t’cover the side windows, an’ the ones in front, too.”
“Ready when you are, sir,” Whitehead told Lewrie.
“Very well,” Lewrie said, drawing his hanger. “Let’s be at it.”
“Lieutenants Venables and Kellett,” Whitehead roared, “Form your platoons in two ranks! Load and prime! Ready? First ranks, do you give fire!”
Over thirty muskets went off nearly as one, muzzle flames stabbing the dawn, quickly followed by Rutland’s and Fletcher’s weapons. The farmhouse and barns were an almost impossible hundred yards off, too far for any sort of aimed fire, but lead balls spanged off stone walls, making quick flashes and the zinging sounds of rounds flying off in ricochet.
“Second ranks will advance three paces, first rank stand fast, reload,” Whitehead snapped. He waited to give his men time to reload, then ordered “Both ranks, advance ten paces!”
There were muzzle flashes and the sound of gunshots from the farmhouse, and Lewrie distinctly heard a bee-like buzz of a ball go past his head.
“First rank, fire!” Whitehead roared, stepping out in front of his men to join that first rank. “Reload! Second rank, three paces forward … aim and fire!”
That was closing the range to about seventy yards, about as far as one could expect smoothbore muskets to be aimed and actually hit. Meanwhile, Fletcher’s and Rutland’s men on either flank were peppering the building’s sides, and firing obliquely at the front. But more of the enemy returned fire. More bees hummed past, and a Marine fell.
“Marines, ten paces forward!” Whitehead yelled, “Fix bayonets!”
“They sound more like pistols,” Lewrie commented as he stood by Whitehead’s elbow. “The French, sir! Cavalrymen in there? Short-range musketoons, not muskets?”
Whitehead cocked his head to one side to listen more closely, a frown on his face, then pointed his sword at the farmhouse. “Marines! Charge! Get in there and murder those bastards! Charge!”
Off they galloped to cover the last fifty yards or so to the farmhouse, howling like fiends, muskets poised stiffly in front of them, and the wicked blades and points of their bayonets glittering in the firelight. Lewrie got swept up in the spirit of the charge, running even with the first rank, though behind Whitehead and the two Lieutenants.
There was a stout double door to the front of the farmhouse, and it was locked and barred, but the windows of the ground floor were open, shutters swung back, and Marines spread against the stone walls either side, firing and jabbing to clear a way, then rolling inside over the lower sills. Gunshots erupted inside, men howled and roared, and surprised shouts turned to cries of pain and curses.
“Doors, open the doors!” a Sergeant was roaring, and a moment later, wood bars were lifted from iron brackets and flung aside, and the doors swung open to admit Marines who had been peering upwards with loaded muskets to cover the upper-storey windows.
“Huzzah!” was the cry as they trooped in, Lewrie carried by the haste of the Marines either side of him. He found a large room in the centre of the building, a substantial stairway with a landing leading upwards. There were two large rooms either side of the entry, filled now with Marines, and several Frenchmen on the floor, some dead, and some rolling about to clutch at their wounds and cry out in pain. A quick bayonet thrust took care of those.
“Up, lads! Follow me!” Lt. Kellett yelled, waving his sword and taking the stairs to the landing two at a time, flanked by men with loaded muskets. There was a volley of fire from upstairs, and one of Kellett’s Marines fell dead, tumbling back down the stairs, hampering the advance of the rest for a moment.
Lewrie went to the back of the farmhouse, right through the dining room and the kitchens, where fires still burned in the chimney nooks, and the beginnings of breakfast lay scattered about. He tore the rear door open and had to duck back as several French cavalrymen, clumsily retreating in their high boots, took time to turn and shoot at him, and he really wished that he’d brought his Ferguson rifled musket.
“They’re making for the barns!” he yelled to caution his men, drawing one of his single-barrelled pistols, but the range was too far, and he didn’t try to cock it. “They’re getting’ away!”
There was a volley from the left, and he stuck his head out once more to see Lt. Fletcher and his sixty armed sailors out in the open, taking the barn under fire, and cutting several retreating French down before they could reach one.
Thumps, stamps, boots hammering hard enough to shake dust from the wood rafters and upper floor planks, the clash of swords or steel bayonets, some shots, as if a battle royal was going on up there.
“Ground floor’s cleared, sir,” Capt. Whitehead panted, wiping blood from the blade of his sword with a scrap of window curtain. “You say they’re bound for the barns?”
“Aye,” Lewrie told him. “Look out!” he yelped as he spotted movement from a corner of the kitchens. He re-drew that pistol, got his wrist on the dog’s jaws and pulled it to full cock as a Frenchman came rushing out with a short sabre-briquet in his hands.
Bang! and Lewrie took the man square in the chest, knocking him back to crumple in the dark corner from which he’d sprung.
“Commissariat,” Whitehead commented, looking at the dead man’s uniform, and the odd fore-and-aft red cloth cap with a long tassel that he’d worn. “Not real trained soldiers. He looked terrified, but I do thank you, Captain sir.”
“It’s gotten quiet upstairs,” Lewrie noted, re-loading his pistol. “Your men must have done for them, at last.”
“Not without casualties, I fear,” Whitehead said, pulling a face. “Quite a melee, it sounded. In the barns, are they? And open ground ’twixt here and there, and the sun’s almost up. It’ll be nasty work, winkling the French out of the barns.”
Whitehead had gone to a kitchen window for a look-see as he said that, and as he turned to return to Lewrie, a musket ball ricocheted off the lower stone sill, caroming round the kitchen.
“There’s someone over there with a proper musket, and he’s a good shot,” Whitehead said, as if pointing out the danger of attacking cross that open ground.
Lewrie drew his hanger and put his hat on the tip of the blade, then went to the window to raise it into view. A few seconds later, the distant marksman could not resist the bait, and a musket ball came through an upper glass pane. For a quick second or two, Lewrie swung over to peer directly out, then ducked away.
“Oh, I don’t know, Whitehead,” Lewrie said with a wry smile, “I think they don’t have enough gun-ports.”
That prompted
the Marine officer to press himself against the wall, sidle to the opened back door, and dare a quick look.
“There’s the double wooden doors, either end,” Lewrie told him, “but no ground floor windows. There are square wooden doors either end of the loft, where there are hoists, and on either side of the long walls, there’s one wee window. All easily kept under fire to pin them down. If we rush ’em, and they bar the big double doors, we have them trapped inside with no way out.”
“Attack the long side, then, and there’s only the one window in the loft to shoot from, yes,” Whitehead agreed, perking up. “Fletcher and his men can deal with the Western end of the first barn, Rutland the East, ’til we’re up against the wall and ready to rush in one of the ends.”
“Anything handy round here t’make torches with?” Lewrie asked, poking round the shelves of the kitchen. “Some olive oil’d be welcome, too. Of course there’s olive oil! What’d Italy do without it?”
“Burn the doors if they’re barred, yes!” Whitehead enthused, joining him in the hunt. Whitehead yelled for his Lieutenants to come join them, and explained what was wanting, and how they would attack the first barn. One of the stout kitchen tables, and the finer dining table in the next room, were stripped of their legs, and cloth curtains, towels, and tablecloths were wrapped round them and soaked in olive oil.
“Runners to Fletcher and Rutland,” Lewrie insisted, his excitement growing. “Tell them what t’shoot at, and to cease their fire, just before we have a go at the doors.”
It took long minutes for runners to dash over to the parties of armed sailors, brief them, then dash back again. Surprisingly, there was little fire directed at them, for the good reason that there was little room for French soldiers at their windows to shoot, shoulder to shoulder.
“Best we leave the house through the front door, sir,” Whitehead suggested, “trot out left ’til we’re facing the barn’s long wall, and then rush it. Let’s light the torches, now, lads. There’s a decent fire in the kitchen hearth. And mind those jars of olive oil.”
Much Ado About Lewrie Page 7