Of course, Lewrie could also consider that Mountjoy had merely got some very good news of late, and had come to impart it, in the usual “ask me first, I know something that you don’t know” way that most people in Secret Branch evinced … the smug bastards! He might even owe Mountjoy a drink at the end!
“Hallo, Captain Lewrie!” Mountjoy called out as Lewrie stepped onto the landing stage and ascended the ramp to the quay. He had his hat on the back of his head, hands on his hips, and his coat thrown back, beaming fit to bust and looking like a fellow who’d bet on the right horse at Ascot or the Derby.
“What’s this welcome in aid of, Mountjoy?” Lewrie asked, feigning a faint scowl. “Need my services of a sudden, hey?”
“Why, I’ve come to congratulate you on your splendid show this morning,” Mountjoy teased. “Most impressive, I must say!”
“Impressive, mine arse,” Lewrie scoffed as he doffed his hat in salute. “Could you see the Dons laughing?”
Mountjoy had lodgings high up in the town, the upper storey of the house to boot, with a rooftop gallery where he kept an astronomical telescope so strong that he could count nose hairs on the Spanish sentries on their fortified lines, and get a good look at Ceuta, their fortress on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar, on a good day.
“They were so amused that I fear several of their naval officers herniated themselves,” Mountjoy twinkled back. “And, I have come to share the latest news with you.”
“If it’s something that gets me out of the gunboat trade before the dockyard sets things to rights, and back to sea, it’d be welcome,” Lewrie replied, all but crossing the fingers of his right hand for luck.
“Well, it might,” Mountjoy allowed, “one never knows. Junot is across the border into Portugal, and is dashing on Lisbon as fast as his soldiers’ little legs can carry them, and thank God that the roads, or what pass for roads in Portugal, are so shitten-bad, if they exist at all. Come, let us stroll to a tavern, and I’ll tell you all.”
Lewrie noted, from a corner of his eye, that Mountjoy’s second-in-command, Deacon, was at hand and on a careful watch over his superior, whilst seeming to be merely strolling and window-shopping. The grim, craggy-faced ex-Sergeant in the Foot Guards was another of Zachariah Twigg’s or James Peel’s recruits to an informal secret force of house-breakers, lock-pickers, copyists and forgers, house-maids, and street-waif informers and followers, assassins and disposers of foreign spies. Twigg called them his Baker Street Irregulars, after the location of his London townhouse.
“If the roads are so bad, can the Portuguese army slow them down, block them in all those mountain passes?” Lewrie asked.
“I’m sure they’re trying,” Mountjoy said with a shrug, “but it’s a small army, compared to Junot’s, and even if a fair share of their officer corps are British, there’s only so much they can do.
“The royal court is packing up and taking ship as we speak,” Mountjoy went on. “The national treasury, libraries, and art museums, the gilded royal carriages and the horses, and nigh ten thousand retainers, ladies, and courtiers will all sail for the Vice-Royalty of Brazil. Our embassy’s packing up, too, and will go along with them, and be back in business. But, Portugal will be lost, in the end.”
“Damn!” Lewrie spat. “That won’t make Maddalena happy.”
“I daresay,” Mountjoy sadly agreed, then perked up. “Hopefully, it won’t make the Spanish all that happy. This alliance with France has simply ruined their country, destroyed the pride of their navy, and put all Spain on short-commons, with half the goods and foodstuffs going to feed France’s armies. A horrid bargain, altogether. Marsh sent me a note from Madrid—”
“Marsh?” Lewrie barked. “That insane fool?”
“I know, Romney Marsh is as mad as a hatter, but damn his eyes, he gets the goods, and his reports have been spot-on accurate. Whatever guise, or guises, he wears in Madrid, he’s effective,” Mountjoy had to admit. “Spying is the greatest game to him, a continual costume ball, and they’ll get him in the end, but for now…?”
“So … what’d he say?” Lewrie had to ask after a minute.
“The treaty that Godoy convinced King Carlos the Fourth to sign to let the French cross Spain to get at Portugal also allows any number of French troops into Spain itself,” Mountjoy imparted in a low mutter. “They’re marching South in several columns of corps, and they’re under the command of a Marshal Joachim Murat, one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s best generals. One column’s bound, so Marsh says, to Madrid, and that one’s gotten the Spanish worried that Godoy and all his French-loving, arse-licking allies will sell the whole country out.
“King Carlos is old, witless, and long past it,” Mountjoy expanded as they ducked under a gaily-striped awning and took a two-place table outside of a public house. “The Crown Prince, Ferdinand, is a stubborn dunce, too, too much under the influence of one of his aunts, who’s just evil-mad … but he has ambitions. Ferdinand is plotting to usurp the throne, and have Godoy garrotted … slowly … as soon as he pulls it off, and the Spanish seem just eager for that to happen, by now. Maybe Murat is bound to Madrid to save Godoy’s, and the French-lovers’, bacon before that happens, get rid of King Carlos, and put Ferdinand the Fool on the throne. We’ll see which of them comes out on top.”
“But … if the French are marching South, what if they come here?” Lewrie asked, frowning in deep thought. “What else is in that treaty?”
“Well, we don’t know, and that’s worrisome,” Mountjoy gruffly confessed. “I was up to the Convent earlier today, to see the Dowager, at his request. He told me that his Spanish counterpart in charge of the military district, General Castaños, had sent him a letter saying that Madrid has ordered him to cease all communication with us, and restrict all further trade cross the Lines.”
“Mine arse on a band-box,” Lewrie started. “That sounds like a joint Franco-Spanish attack on Gibraltar! What did Sir Hew make of it?”
Lieutenant-General Sir Hew Dalrymple, best known as the Dowager for his lack of field experience, governed Gibraltar, and was responsible for its defence and continued existence. During his short term in that post, Sir Hew had fostered a warm and peaceable line of communication with Castaños, a “live and let live” and a “let sleeping dogs lie” relationship. Lewrie imagined that Dalrymple’s headquarters, once a real convent when Gibraltar had been captured from Spain in 1704, would be as topsy-turvy as the city of Lisbon tonight!
“No sign of panic when I was there today, but bags of active scurrying,” Mountjoy told him with a grin. “Urgent despatches are being sent to our Army on Sicily, asking for re-enforcements, more are on the way to London, and Sir Hew’s dusted off his scheme to attack the Spanish fortress of Ceuta, again. It seems that Lord Castlereagh, our War Secretary, had an inkling that the French would be moving on Portugal way back in August, and sent Sir Hew a letter wondering if Ceuta could be used by the French as a base for an expedition to take Gibraltar from the South. In league with the Spanish, of course.” Mountjoy told him with a smirk of how that alliance would work. The Spanish had yearned to recover Gibraltar the last hundred years, and there had been siege upon siege, all failures. Would they want the Rock back so badly that they’d tolerate their own country full of Frenchmen?
From where he sat, Lewrie could look down the main town street which led to Europa Point, about four miles South, and picture in his mind the twelve miles of sea that separated Gibraltar from Ceuta. At Europa Point, there were no defensive works, such as there were on the West and North of the peninsula. The last fortifications ended a bit below the New Mole, and the Tuerto Tower, for the very good reason that there were no beaches on which to make a landing, and the bluffs were nigh-vertical, right down to the sea.
No, anyone landin’ there’d have t’be a Barbary ape just t’get a toe-hold, Lewrie told himself; And, can the French get a fleet and a huge convoy of transports to sea, with our Navy keepin’ close watch on their main bases at Toulon and Marseilles?
“I don’t see it happening,” Lewrie told Mountjoy, and explained why he doubted the French could pull it off. That seemed to mollify the man’s worries on that score.
“Well, you’re the sea-dog, so I’ll take your word for it being nigh-impossible,” Mountjoy breezily said, as if a large load had been taken from his shoulders. “But, the Dowager’s always wanted to take Ceuta, and now’s perhaps his chance. If Lord Castlereagh fears that the place is a risk for Gibraltar, they’d both want it eliminated.”
Back in the Summer, before he and Mountjoy put together their raiding force, Lewrie had scouted past Ceuta looking for supply ships which he might snap up as prizes, and he had his doubts about taking Ceuta, too.
“Don’t see that happening either,” he told Mountjoy, describing how mountainous and rocky, how North African–desert dry was the land on which the great fortress complex was built, the massive height and thickness of the walls, and how many heavy guns he’d counted when he sailed Sapphire temptingly close to extreme gun-range. “There’s no approaching any gate, or landing at its foot. You can blockade it, but I doubt it can be taken, even if ye had God’s own amount of heavy siege guns, and even then, it’d take a year t’batter down a breach in the walls. Best isolate it and leave it be to starve.”
“Well, I’m sure Sir Hew’s aware of all that, but he’s still so dead-keen on the attempt, I expect he relished Castlereagh’s letters,” Mountjoy scoffed. “Ceuta’s his bug-a-bear.”
“Hmm … he’d need someone t’go scout the place, wouldn’t he?” Lewrie suggested, feeling sly and clever.
“Well, yayss,” Mountjoy drawled back, “but only if that person kept his fool mouth shut and kept his doubts to himself. Have anyone in mind?”
“Me, Mountjoy,” Lewrie snickered. “Dalrymple’s sent off all of his available ships in port t’carry his letters, and who’s left here? You’re up to the Convent tomorrow? Good, you can suggest that Ceuta needs a close eye-ballin’, and remind Sir Hew that I’m familiar with the place from before.”
“Anything to get free of those gunboats, right?” Mountjoy said with a laugh.
“You’re Goddamned right!” Lewrie assured him.
“I’m to attend a staff meeting just after breakfast, I’ll put the flea in his ear then,” Mountjoy promised.
* * *
After a couple of glasses of a sprightly white Portuguese wine, Mountjoy sloped off for his lodgings for the night, covertly shadowed by ex-Sergeant Deacon, who tipped Lewrie a grim nod of recognition.
Lewrie strode South, further down the quayside street to meet Maddalena for his own supper. There was a lovely and colourful sunset behind Algeciras and the Spanish mainland the other side of the bay, one that was mirrored in the harbour waters, and there was a slight cooling breeze wafting down the Strait from the Atlantic, a breeze that had a touch of Winter to it, at long last. Looking up at the massive heights of the Rock, Lewrie could see that the sundown colours painted the stark mountain red and gold, and tinted the white-washed stone buildings of the upper town in the same warm hues.
He reached Maddalena’s lodgings and trotted up the stairs to her floor, down the hall to the front of the building, and knocked at her stout wooden door.
“Ah, you are here!” Maddalena said as she swept the door open, and quickly embraced him with a fiercer hug than usual. As he stroked her back, Lewrie felt a tenseness in her.
“What is it, minha doce?” he asked, using what little Portuguese that he’d picked up from her over the months: my sweet.
“It is true, the rumours in the markets?” she fearfully asked. “The French are taking my country? Lisbon?”
“I’m afraid it’s true,” Lewrie had to admit to her. “They aren’t there yet, but they’re marching on Lisbon,” and he added what Mountjoy had told him of the evacuation of the Portuguese court and all of the national treasures.
“We’ve a dozen ships of the line to see them to Brazil, along with all the Portuguese navy. The French won’t get anything.” Lewrie added, “Your Dom João bamboozled Bonaparte and the French, stringin’ them along ’til the last moment, promising t’close his ports to British trade, but planning t’flee all along.”
“But your country cannot stop them?” Maddalena fretted. “Your army and navy can’t…?”
“Not right away,” Lewrie had to tell her. “We have t’save Gibraltar first, then London will come up with something.”
“I never saw Lisbon,” Maddalena mournfully said, drifting off towards the wine-cabinet to pour them drinks. “When we sailed from Oporto on our way here, we came close … but not so close that I could see the city. I was always told how beautiful it is, and now … you must save Gibraltar first?” she asked with a deep frown.
“The French are sending several armies into Spain, too, bound here and Cádiz, most-like, t’lay siege here, and get their ships from Trafalgar back. Gibraltar’s always held, and I doubt if the French and Spanish together can change that. We’re safe. You’re safe,” he assured her as he took an offered glass, marvelling again at how fortunate he was to have discovered her. She’d been “under the protection” of an army officer, a Brevet-Major Hughes, when he met them, and a dull and joyless relationship that had been for her, for Hughes was a fool. General Dalrymple had put Hughes in command of the land forces for the raids, and, fortunately for Lewrie, the idiot dashed off in the pre-dawn dark and confusion and was captured by the Spanish, and still languished in their custody, on his parole ’til a Spaniard of equal rank could be exchanged for him. Hughes never knew what he’d had.
Maddalena Covilhā had come down from a mountain town of the same name, Covilhā, to Oporto to make her fortune, struck up with a wine merchant who’d brought her to Gibraltar in 1804 and then died of Gibraltar Fever the same year, leaving her penniless and alone.
Beyond her slim and supple body, beyond her bold good looks, Maddalena Covilhā was also a very intelligent young lady of great sense, who had taught herself English, then Spanish, and was literate and fluent in all three languages.
Such was the fate of all un-attached young women, and young widows, on Gibraltar, unless they’d inherited a family business or a bequest, and could support themselves; they had to be dependent upon a man who would take them “under his protection” and pay for their up-keep. Maddalena might have expected her new keeper to be the same sort of un-feeling brute as Hughes, but both she and Lewrie found their arrangement to be a mutually pleasing, amusing, and affectionate relationship, even knowing that it might not be permanent. He’d been a widower since 1802, and a sailor who could be ordered away any time.
She was wearing a new gown in a russet colour, trimmed with just a bit of white lace, which he thought complemented her dark brown hair and eyes and slightly olive complexion quite nicely. He noted that a white lace shawl and a perky little straw bonnet trimmed with russet ribbons awaited their going-out atop a tall chest, out of reach of her cat, Precious. Maddalena had gone to the set of double doors that led to the harbour-front balcony of her set of rooms, to stare out at the sunset and sip her wine. He went to join her.
“Ye know, minha doce, that we’ll kick the French out of Portugal, and you’ll see Lisbon,” he cooed, and she leaned back into him. “Hell, I vow you’ll end up a fine lady in Lisbon, in a free country.”
“Sim … yes, I would like that, someday,” she whispered back, still looking outwards. She then turned to look at him and put her arms round his waist, with a dreamy look on her face. “You will do that for me, I know. You’re a good man, Alan. Now, will you feed me? And where do we dine?”
“Pescadore’s!” they said in chorus, and laughed aloud, for that seafood establishment, run by a retired British Sergeant-Major and his Spanish wife and children, was one of the few really good places on the Rock to dine.
* * *
As merry as Lewrie tried to be with her, though, and as merry as she pretended to be, Maddalena’s mood, her sadness and worry, could not rise to the occasion, and she mer
ely picked at her succulent seafood supper.
Worst of all, for Lewrie at least, was later when they returned to her lodgings. When they sat on the settee and began to kiss and fondle, she laid a reticent hand on his chest.
“Alan, I am … how you say, ‘under the moon’?” she whispered.
“Under … ah!” he realised, then deflated. “Damn. Well…?”
It was Maddalena’s time of the month, and those cundums in his coat pocket would go un-used. He’d never much cared for tupping any maiden when she was having her bloody flux, and had slept in a separate bed-chamber when his late wife had hers. It was just too messy!
“I am sorry, dear man,” she said, whispering into his neck.
“Don’t you be sorry for Mother Nature,” he insisted, trying to laugh it off. “There’ll be plenty of other nights. Eh, I don’t think I’ll sleep ashore, if that’s alright with you. I adore sleeping with you, mind, but I’d only get tempted, and…”
“Frustrated,” Maddalena finished for him. “Sim, I would be frustrated, também,” she added with a nervous little laugh.
It was awkward for both of them, but, after a final glass of wine and a few hugs and kisses in parting, Lewrie ended up strolling back to the quays and the landing stage in the dark and mostly empty streets, hand on the hilt of his everyday hanger, and glad to see the Provost patrols who served as the Town Major’s police force.
“A boat, sir?” a sleepy waterman at the landing stage asked, rousing himself from a nap.
“Aye,” Lewrie told him. “Out to the Sapphire.”
My idle ship, he thought.
The large taffrail lanthorns at the stern were lit, as well as smaller lanthorns on the quarterdeck and forecastle. The wee street-lights along the quay and the main street barely reached her sides, making the 50-gunned two-decker merely the hint of a wooden ghost out on the calm waters of the bay, and her furled and harbour-gasketted sails seemed more like old parchment.
It’s only a day’s jaunt, out and back to Ceuta, but I’ll take it, he told himself; I’ll take any opportunity t’get under way again.
Kings and Emperors Page 2