Much Ado About Lewrie

by Dewey Lambdin

  Sooner or later, Lewrie realised, those two lack-wits would set sail for somewhere in Calabria, some town or small city that he and his limited force daren’t risk, and they would surely come a cropper! He had to warn … who? Who could order them to re-think their operations to avoid disaster, and a humiliating defeat?

  For a wry second or two, Lewrie stretched his lips in an evil smile, wondering how big their come-down and embarrassment would be if he said nothing and they went ahead with a rash plan. Courts-martial for each, cashiered from the Army, “Yellow-Squadroned” along with the insane and incompetent from the Navy, denied any military or naval role or command the rest of their lives, like the nit-wit who’d lost a whole British army at Buenos Aires in 1806 to a hastily gathered pack of hot-blooded rebel amateurs and militia?

  No, he had to see someone in Admiralty, in Horse Guards, at the Foreign Office’s Secret Branch, perhaps with someone at the Secretary of State for War, like … Peter Rushton’s brother, Harold!

  No, let’s start with Secret Branch, Lewrie thought best.

  * * *

  “Is Mister Peel in?” Lewrie asked the secretive clark, after he had been passed through several vettings in the Foreign Office annex.

  “And who is calling, sir?” the clerk asked, all hush-hush, and aloof.

  “Captain Sir Alan Lewrie,” was the response.

  “I do not believe so, Sir Alan,” the clerk said with a sniff.

  “Head cold, is it?” Lewrie wryly asked. “Of course, Peel’s in. That’s his favourite hat and his walking stick yonder. And he really should purchase a new overcoat. That’un’s gone seedy.”

  The clerk let out a long, put-upon sigh and went to the massive carved oak door to the inner sanctum, peeking round it, ajar.

  “Oh, why not?” Peel’s voice could be heard, in exasperation, “shove him in.”

  “Hallo, Mister Peel,” Lewrie sunnily said as he shed his own hat and walking stick.

  “What is it this time, Lewrie?” Peel asked with a frown. “You’re missing an elephant? Thieves stole your shoe buckles?”

  “No, have you found an elephant, though?” Lewrie japed. “I know a circus that might be interested. Actually, I’ve come, well before time, to invite you to dinner, as a way of paying thanks for your aid in getting my dogs back, and finding those dog buffers.”

  “Aha!” James Peel exclaimed, slapping a palm on his desk-top. “I do believe I will allow you to do so, old son. And, in point of fact, there is a new and rather tasty dining establishment not two blocks from here, where many in government offices dine these days.”

  “I assume the many enemy spies in London know of this?” Lewrie quipped some more.

  “Oh, of course they do,” Peel said, closing a few files in large brown paper envelopes that he slipped into his large desk and locked the drawer with a key hung on his watch fob. “Shall we go?”

  “You know they’re listening?” Lewrie wondered aloud as he and Peel left the inner offices and Peel donned his overcoat, slapped on his hat, and took up his walking stick.

  “Only gentlemen obtain posts in His Majesty’s Government, Lewrie, and English gentlemen never discuss business, religion, politics, or gossip about women when dining,” Peel told him with a wink.

  * * *

  Peel’s choice of restaurant was several cuts above the two-penny ordinary that Lewrie had expected. Once in the entry hall of what had been a grand mansion in the old days, there was a porter to take their hats, overcoats, and walking sticks, and give them pasteboard cards with a number on them. A maître d’ led them to a table for two halfway along the ground floor and seated them. There was a snowy white tablecloth, up-ended wine and water glasses, and à la carte printed menus. There were enough candles lit, on tables and candelabras hung above, to make reading menus, and discerning if what you ordered was what you were eating easy to do.

  “I haven’t seen a place like this since Paris, or the restaurant in Savoy Street, near the Strand,” Lewrie marvelled.

  “All the rage, I’m told,” Peel said, grinning, “rivalling what a gentleman’s club like Boodle’s, Almack’s or White’s offers, without the high dues, and the vetting. All one has to do is come well-dressed, clean and sobre, and pay for what you order.”

  “What will they think of next?” Lewrie commented, scanning his menu. “Hmm, dover sole, with creamed potatoes, carrots, onion and peas sounds good … lemon sauce, gravy … a shilling?”

  “My choice, you said,” Peel replied with a beamish grin.

  “What, we’re served by bare-naked Chinese virgins?” Lewrie had to scoff.

  “And, like a proper English gentleman’s club, not a woman to be seen,” Peel pointed out. “A welcome break from the wife and kiddies.”

  “Well, you rendered me good service, and I suppose this is a way to thank you,” Lewrie said, laying aside the menu as a wine steward come to the table and suggested a smuggled Alsatian riesling to start.

  “Knacky, how you avoided linking Secret Branch to your criminal affair, too,” Peel told him. “How did yo put it? Haddock, an itinerant knife-grinder, and a likely lad who knew his way about?”

  “I didn’t see you in court,” Lewrie said. “Sit in the back?”

  “No, I read the transcript,” Peel admitted. “Just to make sure you didn’t blab something embarrassing to Foreign Office.”

  “You’re beginning t’sound like old Zachariah Twigg,” Lewrie complained, “always unsure if I had two wits t’rub together.”

  “Bless me, Lewrie, you’ve managed more than well without them!” Peel twitted him. It was good that the wine came, and a waiter to take their orders. “I see you had to toss the police a bone. Poor bastards. So many criminals in London, so few of them, and armed only with their wood truncheons. In the beginning, I thought a police department would be a tyrant’s tool, like a huge standing Army, as dictatorial as the Prussians, the Russian Cossacks, or the French. But, now I’m starting to appreciate the idea, if they ever get round to solving crimes that they didn’t witness and catch the perpetrators in the act.”

  “Well, the French,” Lewrie said, savouring his first sip of the spicy riesling, “their mobs and thieves must be more plentiful, and a lot more active, than ours. And their police are oppressive! To have police here … it’s just not English!”

  “It might grow on us, if crime is reduced,” Peel prophecied.

  “Ehm, I got some bad news from Sicily, Peel,” Lewrie said, opening his plaint, “Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Charlton’s caught a recurring fever, and he’s going to strike his flag and come home.”

  “Oh, poor fellow!” Peel sympathised. “Didn’t you tell me that it was he who set you to planning how to land and recover raiding forces?”

  “It was,” Lewrie gladly confessed, “I can’t take all the credit. One thing he said, that he doesn’t envy his replacement, since he just can’t goad my replacement, Commodore Grierson, into doing anything with the ships he has, and Brigadier-General Caruthers, who now commands a three-regiment force, seems more interested in drilling and training than having a go at the French. Colonel Tarrant complained to me that the man’s still trying to find a way to get artillery ashore, so he can make a proper lodgement that’ll draw the French to him for a battle.

  “I was wondering if you’d heard from your Mister Quill,” Lewrie asked, “to get his view on it.”

  “Yes, I have,” Peel said, leaning forward over the table. “But, as I said, that would be a matter best discussed back in my offices, hey.”

  “Oh,” Lewrie said, “then how’s your family?”

  * * *

  Back in Peel’s inner sanctum, the fellow, mellowed by his dinner and half a bottle of riesling, was much more informative.

  “It’s the same old story, really, Lewrie,” Peel gloomed as he laid out several past reports to remind him, “proper gentlemen don’t dirty their hands with espionage, and, when the sources of what information comes to them are criminals, smugglers, and strong-
arm thugs, both Grierson and Caruthers are even more loath to listen. They deem Don Lucca Massimo and his men as scum of the Earth, have no truck with him or his capos and barely listen to what they learn when provided by Mister Quill. It’s as if their plans for future operations over on the mainland have nothing to do with the partisans, and what Quill and Mister Sylvester are doing.”

  “Which is what, exactly?” Lewrie asked.

  “Oh, they’ve made great inroads!” Peel boasted, “Sylvester most especially. He can now deliver reports to Sicily like a penny post, and has recruited hosts of listeners, observers, and informants among almost every French garrison town. They can’t saddle up for a road-march or do close-order drill without us knowing of it. Children, tavern waitresses, whores … recall that a lot of the French in Italy are Italians from other regions, so no one has to learn French to listen to their drunken boastings and complaints and pass them on.

  “Sylvester has also managed to smuggle in several shipments of arms and ammunition,” Peel went on, “along with small kegs of gunpowder and slow match fuses. A lot of mountain roads have been blocked with fallen trees or rockslides, and when the French try to clear them, the partisans are lurking high above in the mountains and shoot at them or drop lit kegs on their heads, and the French troops aren’t mountain goats, nor are their cavalry horses, hah hah!”

  “So, it sounds like Grierson and Caruthers are hoping for a big battle, and the partisans’ aid isn’t necessary for that,” Lewrie said, making a face. “They, and Quill, are working at cross-purposes.”

  “It sounds very like it, yes,” Peel agreed.

  “And if they do land all their regiments and then sit and wait to draw a French army to them,” Lewrie surmised, “they’re courting a disaster. If they go beyond the range of Grierson’s guns. Peel, someone has to slap them down before they do. Horse Guards, Admiralty, your branch, Lord Castlereagh?”

  “Hmm, I suppose a report sent round to the various offices that you mentioned might stir some interest,” Peel said, scratching his chin. “You haven’t written Admiralty yourself?”

  “I go to beg for a new command,” Lewrie gravelled, “but gettin’ an interview to criticise Grierson and Caruthers’d look like I was chewin’ sour grapes. I could prevail upon my father to visit one of his old friends at Horse Guards … and an old school friend has a brother who works for Castlereagh, but…” he ended with a helpless shrug.

  “Ah, that’s right,” Peel commented, “you have few patrons of high enough influence to play politics for you. I’ll do what I can with a cautionary report, but…” Peel, too, lifted his hands in a shrug of his own.

  “Well, at least we had a good dinner,” Lewrie said, sighing.

  Lewrie took himself home in a puzzlement, striving to come up with the wording of a letter, or letters, he could send to all parties involved in the command of far-flung military operations against France. Yet, who was he but only one Post-Captain of More Than Three Years’ Seniority on the Navy List, and one ashore on half-pay at that? Peel was right; he had no powerful patrons with influence and the ear of those who led the war. Those who had arranged for him to be stripped of his ship and his command on Sicily would always prevail. He could only sit back and wait for foreign events to unfold, for good or ill.

  And commiserate. He would definitely write letters in answer to the ones he’d just received, to Quill, Colonel Tarrant, Lt. Fletcher who led the first batch of troop transports when he’d first anchored at Sicily. And Harold Rushton at Lord Castlereagh’s offices?

  He would give that one a try, too, so long as he avoided pleading, or angrily exhorting; he could not sound like a Cassandra, who always knew the future, but was never believed, then slain at last when her dire predictions grew too bothersome.

  He’d write Sewallis, too, and ask if he was aboard a warship or a trading brig.

  * * *

  He rapped at his own pineapple door knocker, and scraped some mud from his boot soles on the implements by the steps. Pettus opened the door and took his hat, overcoat, and walking stick.

  “Damned good news upstairs, sir,” Pettus told him, grinning.

  “What’s up?” Lewrie asked.

  “Mister Chenery’s heard from Admiralty, sir,” Pettus told him as he headed for the stairs. Lewrie could hear some youthful whoops of joy.

  “Well, hallo, Charlie,” he said in greeting when he entered the drawing room, “had good news, have you?”

  “Oh, it’s grand, sir!” Chenery shouted. “Hugh … Lieutenant Lewrie, that is … met his new Captain, a fellow by name of Hogue who…!”

  “Hogue?” Lewrie said, dredging his memory, “Oh, of course! He was with me in the Far East, and was in the Gironde River when I had the Savage frigate!”

  “Anyway, Captain Hogue was delighted to have the son of one of his old shipmates as his Third Officer,” Charlie happily babbled on, “and when Hugh … Lieutenant Lewrie … asked if he had all of his Mids, he said he still had openings for two more, so when … your son dared suggest my name, he was more than willing to take me on. Hugh, hang it! Your son just wrote that Captain Hogue would be delighted to offer a berth to someone who spent several years in two ships under a Captain who’s won such a sterling repute. I’m off tomorrow, the first diligence coach, to Deptford, before he can change his mind, hah hah!”

  “Captain Nathaniel Hogue,” Lewrie reminisced, “in Eighty-Four, he was a Master’s Mate, just turned eighteen, as smart as paint. Got his Lieutenantcy in Eighty-Six, I think, and he was a Commander when we ran into each other in the mouth of the Gironde. The lucky bastard…”

  “Alan!” Jessica snapped. “Language!”

  “Your pardons, my dear,” Lewrie had to apologise. “Hogue made off with one, maybe two, big three-masted merchantmen, both stuffed to the deckheads with all sorts of fine, export wines and spirits, and made a pile o’ ‘tin’ in prize-money. A hell … a fine sailor and navigator, and I expect a fine Captain. You’re fortunate, Charlie. Need a shoppin’ trip before you go?”

  “My sea chest and dunnage are like Jessica’s hope chest, sir,” Chenery dared jape, “all prepared and stocked, in hopes of orders. I have already told father, and he’s suggested a last family supper.”

  “Hang that,” Lewrie countered, “we’ll host you and him here this evening, and trust Yeovill t’lay the same sort o’ feast that he did for Hugh when we saw him off, right, Jessica?”

  “But of course, Alan,” his wife said, though she had lifted the hem of her apron to dab at her eyes which were shiny with moisture. “Though I hate to see my little brother sail away again.”

  “Did Hugh say anything of where Hogue’s orders take Greyhound?” Lewrie asked, knowing that he and Jessica would have to have a long discussion before that “joyous” supper.

  “No, sir,” Charlie said, “but then, he wouldn’t be privy before she’s fully manned, and might not know ’til we’re far out to sea.”

  “Either way, you and your father be back here by Seven, and we will stuff you both ’til pudding comes out of your ears,” Lewrie promised. “Off with you, young Mister Chenery, and finish your packing.”

  “On my way, sir!” Charlie said, going to give his sister one more hug, and a manly handshake to Lewrie.

  “And he only got to ride his new horse but two weeks,” Jessica said with a sniff. “Now, it’ll be years before he can go to Anglesgreen or sleep in his old childhood bed at the manse.”

  “I think he’s outgrown that childhood bed,” Lewrie told her.

  “Yes, I fear so,” she said with a long sigh. “At least he and Hugh will be together in the same ship. They’ve become good friends.”

  Lewrie didn’t tell her of the gulf between a sixteen year old Midshipman and a Commission Sea Officer, or the private travails that Charlie would face belowdecks in the Mids’ cockpit among strange new faces. Lewrie was sure that he would cope; he had so far.

  “If you’d tell Yeovill what’s wanting,” Lewrie said, looking at hi
s pocket watch, “I have some letters to answer.”

  “Oh, speaking of mail,” Jessica said, taking a letter from her apron pocket, “you got this from that association of animal lovers, the … National Society For the Elimination of Cruelty Towards Animals In All Forms, or whatever they call themselves.”

  “Oh, that lot,” Lewrie scoffed, grimacing. He tore it open to discover that those worthies had a monthly meeting coming up at the Nerot’s Hotel near St. James’s Palace and were extending an invitation to him to be their guest of honour. “Hah! I’m to be feted! Wish to come along?”

  Jessica shook her head negatively, looking amused, more than anything else; at least it shook her from her sad study. “I had nothing to do with your raid, Alan. The honour is all yours. Ehm, Yeovill says he has a beef roast ready for tonight. Will that be grand enough, or should I ask him to be more lavish?”

  “Oh, lavish is the word, my love!” Lewrie hooted, striking a comic pose with an arm upthrust, “Lavish! I like that word!” We use it so seldom. Say it with me! L … avish!”

  “You’re daft,” Jessica tittered, and headed belowstairs.

  At least I cosseted her out of her pet, Lewrie told himself as he headed for his study; Hugh at sea, again, Charlie at sea, again, and only me still “beached.” Two down, one to go. And maybe Peel can put Grierson and Caruthers in their place before they do something stupid.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Good evening, Pettus,” Lewrie said on greeting as he returned home late. “A nippy damned night,” he added as he handed over his damp hat and overcoat.

  “Yes sir,” Pettus agreed as he shut the front door against the chill wind and a misty, cold rain. “The new thermometer by the doors to the back garden says it’s in the mid-fourties. You’ll be wishing hot tea, and some rum or brandy, sir?”

  “In front of a roaring fire, aye,” Lewrie agreed, shivering for real as he rubbed his hands together.