“Count on the Spanish for that, sir?” Westcott said, snorting in derision. “Not in our lifetime. It looks to be fairly prosperous, though. Lots of large fishing boats and coastal trading vessels … warehouses, there, behind the quays? They appear not to be locked up and idle, like the ones we saw along the South coast last Summer. It may be there’s a decent trade here.”
Lewrie crossed to the other side of the poop deck and took a long look at the Portuguese side of the river. There was a wee town over there, named Castro Marim on Mr. Yelland’s charts, and they had passed a larger town on the way up-river, Vila Real de Santo António, which also looked fairly prosperous. Evidently, the French invasions of both countries had not reached such un-important places, yet, and the war had left this corner of Spain alone.
There were small boats working the Portuguese side of the river, some heaped with huge mounds of what looked like seaweed or riverbank reeds, and Lewrie wondered what in the world they did with it; eat it? Several curious folk were gathered on the Portuguese shore where a road ended, and a ferry rested, and they were pointing and talking animatedly, but looked like they’d flee like rabbits if anyone glared at them the wrong way.
Ayamonte’s citizens were more in a dither, with some saddling up horses or hitching up teams, and loading immediately necessary belongings into waggons or carts. Others more bold were gathered in taut, angry bunches, some armed with cudgels, swords, kitchen knives or cleavers, and a few firearms. Lewrie could even see a few lances for hunting wild boar being waved aloft, and one ancient pike. Most of the Spanish seemed wary but curious.
Most of the ten companies from one of General Spencer’s battalions were already ashore and formed up in the streets and large plaza that faced the quays, a band was playing, and a colour party was parading the Regimental Colours and the King’s Colours.
Lewrie could spot Spencer and some of his staff in conversation with some well-dressed civilian men and several priests, and he hoped that Spencer had thought to include some Spanish-speaking officers in his force, for there was a lot of head-shaking, hand-talking, shrugging, and confused looks between all. One of the civilians wore a sash cross his chest, perhaps the town mayor, and he began to smile. One of the priests dashed inside the nearby church and bells began to ring as the group of soldiers and civilians shook hands. It was almost comical to watch as the town mayor mounted the church steps and tried to address the crowd while the bells pealed on and on. Finally, the eldest churchman sent another priest inside to silence the clanging.
After a time, the mayor’s address evoked loud cheers, clapping, and huzzahs. Spanish flags appeared from windows and balconies.
“I think it’s safe for heretical English to go ashore, now,” Lewrie declared. “Muster my boat crew, and fetch the cutter up from astern, Mister Westcott.”
“Aye, sir. If you discover some decent wine, the wardroom will appreciate news of it,” Westcott hinted. “Or, if you spot a fetching young señorita or two…?”
“If we’re here for a while, I’ll allow you shore liberty, and you can hunt up your own,” Lewrie assured him. He looked aloft and then peered at the steeple of the church ashore. “Might be a good idea to keep a lookout in the main mast cross-trees. If there are any French forces in the neighbourhood, we’d have a better view of them.”
“I shall, sir,” Westcott agreed.
Once overside and in the cutter, Lewrie looked over his boat crew. “Listen, lads. It’s a small town, a Spanish town, and I warn you t’mind your manners. The girls might be willin’, but I’d wager their menfolk’d not look kindly on any dallying. Stay close to the quays, and do not get drunk. Right, Furfy?”
“Arra, sor,” Furfy moaned. “Iff’n th’ Dons’re grateful for us t’be here, it’d be un-friendly t’turn down a swig or two if they offer.”
“We stay ashore th’ rest o’ th’ mornin’, sor, we’ll miss th’ rum issue,” Furfy’s long-time mate, Cox’n Liam Desmond, pointed out. “Mayhap a cup or two of wine’d make up for it?”
Even the usually-sobre bow man, Michael Deavers, was looking eager to set foot ashore and get a drink. “Aye, it would,” he said.
“Pass word for Midshipman Britton!” Lewrie shouted up to the quarterdeck watch. “He’s to come ashore with me!”
That put his oarsmen in lower spirits. Midshipman Britton was a Tartar when it came to finding sailors “drunk on duty” and have them at Captain’s Mast.
“Aw, sor,” Furfy said with a sad shake of his head.
“If offered by grateful Spaniards … assumin’ they’re all that grateful … you can take a drink, but Mister Britton will see that you don’t get drunk,” Lewrie promised them.
Britton came scrambling down the battens and agilely stepped onto the gunn’l then aft to sit near the stern thwart near Lewrie and Desmond.
“If I need messages passed ’twixt the shore and the ship, I’ll need you to bear them, Mister Britton,” Lewrie told him. “I’ll also want you to mind the men’s consumption of any offered wine.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Britton crisply answered, with a warning glare at the hands.
“Shove off, then,” Lewrie ordered.
* * *
“Ah, Captain Lewrie, come to see the sights, have you?” General Spencer boomed as Lewrie strolled onto the plaza.
“I came to see how things are going, sir,” Lewrie replied. “I assume the Spanish are giving you a good welcome?”
“Ah, the bloody Dons,” Spencer griped, snatching off his ornate bicorne hat and running impatient fingers through his hair. “They claim that I must encamp my troops beyond the town, instead of lodging them in houses. There’s some low hills a mile or so to the Northeast and East, and we’ll have to march out there and set piquets on the hills, and set up tents and all behind them. They will allow a small party in town, atop the church tower, but that’s about all the co-operation we’re going to get.”
“I’m keeping lookouts posted aloft, sir,” Lewrie said. “They can see farther than anyone in the tower. They’re higher up. Maybe you could erect a semaphore tower at your camp to speak your sentries in the church tower, and run a message to me, should the French show up. If you have to fall back and be evacuated, my guns could dissuade the Frogs from pressing you too closely.”
“Fall back and evacuate?” Spencer bristled up. “No, Captain Lewrie. Unless an entire French division marches here to confront me, I fully intend to stand my ground and chance a battle. That’s what I was sent to do … even if it’s the arse-end of this shitten country.”
“So, there are no French anywhere close?” Lewrie asked.
“Well, there’s L’Etang’s division at Seville, and there’s General Dupont at Córdoba, but those are rather far off, and couldn’t be here for days,” Spencer allowed, “even if your Admiral Purvis is of the opinion that the French can fly like so many sparrows from one place to the next. The nearest we’re aware of is the brigade under General Avril, and they’re nearer Cádiz than I am, dammit all! Where I should be is Cádiz, but will the Dons allow me? Gawd!”
“How are the locals receiving you, sir?” Lewrie pressed, turning to look at Ayamonte’s residents, who were back to their usual routines, now that most of the excitement was over. “I should think they would be thrilled to hear of the uprisings, the Junta’s declaration of war, and all.”
“Cagily!” Spencer said with a contemptuous snort. “Be careful where you camp, don’t pick fruit, don’t cut any olive trees for firewood, don’t look at our women, don’t go inside their churches. The rich ones are haughty, and the rest are scheming for money … as if your average British soldier has any. I’ve had to hire waggons and carts, teams and drivers, to carry all my supplies and ammunition out to the campsite, and pay dearly! The rest of them goggle at us like we’re lepers, and give us what the Sicilians call the ‘Evil Eye.’ Lord, what a country! Poor as church mice, as illiterate as so many goats, as lazy as butchers’ dogs, yet as testy of their honour and pride as mad bulls
. Must be some miasma specific to Mediterranean countries, Sicily, Malta, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, they are all alike. They are just not like the English, the Scots, or even the bloody Irish. A bad race to love, or fight for.”
“I was not aware that the transports didn’t bring along any horse or mule teams, or waggons,” Lewrie said with a frown. That was damned poor planning, to his lights.
“The original plan was to land at Cádiz, and garrison in town,” General Spencer continued to grouse. “At any rate, unless we ordered some from Sicily, there were none available at Gibraltar. I’ll write Dalrymple to be sure that the remainder of my troops coming from Sicily fetch some along. If I am finally allowed into Cádiz, I’ll have to march there, by Christ!”
“You’ll go by sea, sir, it’s fastest,” Lewrie assured him.
“If the French do not come to assail me, I may end up crossing the river and marching on Lisbon,” Spencer said, turning to look over the river into Portugal. “Might be good to place a battalion yonder, anyway. Guard the back door, and my arse, hey?”
“I’m sure the toll for the ferry will be steep, sir,” Lewrie said with a wee laugh.
“You do nothing to reassure me, sir,” Spencer bristled again. “And, I do not need reminding about money.”
“Sorry, sir,” Lewrie apologised. “If you need anything, the Navy’s ready to assist you.”
“If I do, you’ll hear of it,” Spencer assured him. “I must be off. Too much to see to before sundown.”
“I’ll take my leave, sir,” Lewrie replied, doffing his hat in parting salute.
He strolled back towards the quays, taking in the town of Ayamonte, and its citizens. They did indeed seem a wary lot, who would not make eye contact. There were some pointing and laughing, though, as a second of Spencer’s battalions marched out of town. They were making fun of the battalion’s camp followers, the soldiers’ wives.
Every British regiment on Army List usually maintained two battalions at permanent home establishments. When a regiment was ordered overseas, one battalion would pack up to go, while the second would remain in barracks to recruit, drill, and train, and flesh out for the day when, after several years, the first battalion would be ordered home, and the second battalion would sail overseas to take their place. If the deployed battalion suffered casualties in action, or decimating diseases, if enough men were crippled for life, the home battalion would send out a trained draught of replacements.
The cruelty of that system was that when a battalion was sent out, only sixty or so of the soldiers’ wives or camp girfriends were allowed to go with them, chosen by drawing straws or marked slips of paper from a shako. The ones left behind might never see their men again, their children would never see their fathers, and the pay of a soldier was never enough, even at home in peacetime, to support those families, and what little a deployed soldier could allot from his pay couldn’t, either.
“Putas, putas!” some Spanish women were accusing, sure that the women were whores, for who else would follow soldiers overseas.
And, the battalion’s wives were a rough lot, poorly dressed, hard-handed, clumsily shod, and could curse like the women mongers at the Billingsgate fish market, or the coarsest sailor. They did present a rather un-appetising picture, with rarely a fetching one in their ranks, carrying packs like any soldier, cooking utensils, haversacks, and jute bags of possessions. On the march, they would help dress wounds, cook their husbands’ rations, do the sewing and mending, tend their children, and even give birth in camp when the time came upon them.
Lewrie had seen them in action after the battle that had broken the Dutch at Cape Town, two years before. They had swarmed over the dead and wounded Dutch to strip them of anything of value like harpies. They would pick fruit trees and berry bushes bare, forage to steal chickens, goats, or piglets, were as eager as their men for spirits, wine, or beer, and would get just as hoggish, screeching drunk as the men. Many of them marched by chewing quids of tobacco, or had fuming pipes in their mouths.
Lewrie doffed his hat to them, saying “Good morning, ladies.”
“Ahn’t he a grand’un!” one crone commented.
“Ladies me arse!” another hooted.
“Ye drop y’or sister one more time, an’ I’ll tan y’or hide!” one stout hag chid a boy carrying a swaddled baby along with a satchel.
“Arr, make ’em bloody damn’ Papists shut th’ fuck up! They’s poorer ’an we are!”
Lord God, who’d be a soldier in our Army? Lewrie thought; Or marry one! Nothing t’look forward to but lice, fleas and sleepin’ rough.
He went back to the boat, where his sailors were talking with some Spaniards, or attempting to. Bottles of local wine were being passed, despite Midshipman Britton’s loudest efforts to prevent it.
“Sir, I think the whole lot should be put on charges,” the Mid cried as Lewrie approached. “The Spanish gave them drink, and I could not stop them. I wasn’t sure whether I should, not entirely, and it got out of hand…”
“Because the Spanish are being friendly, for a change, and you didn’t wish t’turn them against us, Mister Britton?” Lewrie asked.
“That was my thinking, aye, sir, but…,” Britton sputtered.
“Lads!” Lewrie said in a quarterdeck voice. “Leave off, before ye fall down dead drunk. I said a cup or two, not a barrico.”
An unshaven Spaniard came up to Lewrie and offered him a bottle, gabbling happily away in rapid Spanish, and wheezing a foul, garlicky breath on him.
“Oh, Christ,” Lewrie muttered, but plastered a smile on his phyz and took a swig of what tasted as raw and foul as Navy-issued “Black Strap.” He swallowed it manfully, and patted the man on his back, handing the bottle back. “Gracias, mucho gracias,” he said in his little knowledge of Spanish, but that set the fellow off into a fresh bout of incomprehensible lingo.
“Does anyone know what he’s saying, sir?” Britton asked.
“Hell if I know,” Lewrie told him. “Look here. The army is going to march inland to those hills, yonder, and set up a semaphore tower. They’ll have another in the church tower, and I wish to establish a small shore party here at the quays, should they send any messages to us. We’ll keep one of the cutters here day and night, with one Midshipman and a boat crew to fetch off any news. Someone get this oaf off me, hey? Yes, yes! Sí, sí, buenos mañana, buenos dia? Ehm, Adios? Back in the boat, lads, we’re off. Bye bye!”
The Spaniards seemed sorry to see them go, eager to give them a “stirrup cup” as the hands sat down on the thwarts and un-shipped their oars.
After the cutter was around one hundred yards off the quays, out in the river and stroking for the ship, Lewrie turned a stern and “captainly” glare at his miscreants.
“How the Devil did ye get so much t’drink so quickly?” he asked in a growl.
“Remember, those blank papal dispensations that were taken out o’ the prize afore we got to Buenos Aires, sor?” Liam Desmond asked. “Them that nobody knew what t’do with? The ones we took ashore and doled out like money to the whores and inn-keepers?”
“Good God, you still have some of ’em?” Lewrie gawped.
“Nossir, but doffin’ our hats, smilin’, an’ makin’ th’ sign o’ th’ cross does just as good,” Furfy told him. “An’ ain’t th’ most of us good Catholic Irishmen?”
Lewrie clapped his lips shut and shook his head, thinking that sure as Fate, every sailor sent ashore would hear of that ploy, and try it on. Of course, they’d have to practice “breast-beating” before they set off!
“Back to the ship, you rogues, and don’t give me cause t’put the lot of you on bread and water,” Lewrie told them.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Good God, what are you doing up here, Captain Lewrie?” General Spencer asked as Lewrie rode up on a hired mount.
“I was bored, sir, and wanted to see how you were doing with your defences,” Lewrie told him, with a smile. “Admire my horse, do you?”
General Spencer guffawed in answer, for Lewrie’s rented horse was a shaggy, un-curried shambler, more like a plough-horse than one bred to the saddle.
“I’d ship him home and enter him in the Derby, if the voyage didn’t kill him,” Lewrie japed. “His hire is closer to the price of an outright purchase … damned Spanish ‘sharps.’ This is your camp, sir? And your defences lie beyond?”
“We’ve settled in quite nicely,” Spencer grumpily allowed after a quick look round to see that all was in order. “My troop lines are there, the Spanish volunteers, there,” he said, pointing beyond the orderly lines of canvas tents to a shambolic encampment off to the North. “There were several hundred of their soldiers that the French had dis-armed and imprisoned, down South of here. When Cádiz arose, their gaolers were called back to Avril’s brigade, and they were left to fend for themselves. I’ve distributed all the arms I had to spare, with accoutrements and ammunition, but that leaves half of them armed with scythes, swords, or boar spears. As for boots, clothing, tents, and camp gear, they’ll have to get by as best they can. The officials in Ayamonte think that I should feed them, but the rations I brought won’t stretch that far, and the Spanish won’t see to their own, damn them.”
“Are they worth anything?” Lewrie asked.
“They claim that they were trained troops, once, but now they are a shabby joke,” Spencer gravelled. “Shoeless armed bands of Gypsies would be more dangerous. So … bored, are you, sir?”
“To tears, sir,” Lewrie eagerly confessed. “I almost wish the French would come down from Lisbon to the border, so I could shoot them t’Hell.”
“I’d admire did the French try me on, too,” Spencer admitted, with a wistful note to his voice. “The horse I was forced to buy off the Dons is much of a match to yours, Captain Lewrie, but, if you wish a tour of my lines, I’ll have it fetched.”
“Thankee, sir,” Lewrie told him.
He was indeed bored to distraction. Remaining anchored far up a river with little room to manoeuvre if trouble came, idle and feeling useless and cut off from imagined grand doings elsewhere gnawed at his patience. He had moved Sapphire closer to the town quays so his guns could cover the ferry landings and the road on the Portuguese side of the Guadiana, and closer to communications with the signalling party in the church tower. He had worked himself to a daily sweat at sword-play, with his pails filled with shot; he’d paced the length of the ship for a full hour each morning, and had gone ashore for long, vigourous strolls. He had hoped that a brisk canter out to the army encampment would be distracting, but his poor hired mount would not go beyond a bone-setting, jouncing trot.
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