Kings and Emperors

by Dewey Lambdin

  “They’ve been marching through country un-disturbed by the enemy, in high Summer,” Mountjoy supposed, “so they’ve surely managed to buy or forage the best of the local crops. Portugal is known for its own style of bullfighting. Perhaps they’ve found some fresh beef?”

  “If they have, I’d relish it,” Hughes declared. “Relish it, I tell you. I’ve been bilious ever since I set foot aboard this ship.”

  “Oh, my dear fellow!” Mountjoy pretended to sympathise. “You found naval fare distressing? My condolences.”

  Lewrie bent over to give Bisquit some “wubbies” to hide his delight. When he stood back up, his expression was bland again.

  “Mister Elmes, we will alter course to the Sou’east and close the shore,” he directed. “Hands to the braces, ready to ease the set.”

  “Wasn’t Navy victuals,” Hughes carped, stifling a left-over breakfast belch. “Not actually.” He threw a frown at Lewrie.

  “I found them quite toothsome and delightful,” Mountjoy said. “Captain Lewrie sets a fine table.”

  “If you say so, Mister Mountjoy,” Captain Hughes leerily said. “Well, I shall get out from under-foot of the sailors, and see to my despatches.” And with that, he descended to the weather deck and went down the steep ladderway below.

  Lewrie shared a look with Mountjoy, quite satisfied with the exchange, and with Mountjoy’s sly wit.

  * * *

  By sundown, HMS Sapphire was safely anchored bow and stern in about fourty feet of water. Hughes; his batman, a long-suffering Private from Hughes’s old regiment; and Mr. Mountjoy had gone ashore in the launch, and Lewrie was shot of both of them for a time, able to take the evening air on the poop deck in peace. There were several supply ships and troop transports closer to the shore, ships of less than half of Sapphire’s burthen which drew less water. Beyond them, past the two high headlands which framed the Maceira River, the night was aglow with campfires, where half-dressed soldiers took their ease by pale tan tents and cooked their rations with their arms stacked close by. It all looked quite peaceful, but once Lewrie employed his telescope, he could make out a chain of torches snaking down to the sea, and the rowing boats drawn up on the banks of the river and beach. There were even some carts trundling along, slowly and carefully. A closer look showed litter-bearers, and men on those litters.

  “Permission to come up, sir?” Lt. Westcott said at the base of the larboard ladderway.

  “Aye, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie allowed. “What the Devil?”

  Westcott had stopped at the glim which lit the compass binnacle, to ignite a Spanish cigarro, and was puffing away.

  “Thought I would indulge, before Lights Out is ordered,” Westcott explained.

  “When did you develop the habit?” Lewrie asked.

  “A week ago, on a run ashore at Gibraltar,” Westcott told him. “I find tobacco … restful, especially after a good shore supper, and with the trade cross the Lines so open, now, they’re damned near five pence for a dozen.”

  “Those torches,” Lewrie pointed out to him, handing Westcott his telescope, “they look like wounded, bein’ rowed out to the ships for care. What does it look like to you?”

  “I’d say you’re right, sir,” Westcott said after a long minute. “There’s been a battle, it looks like.”

  “Beyond, the army’s camped in what looks t’be good order, so … dare we imagine that Wellesley’s met the French and beaten them?” Lewrie wondered aloud.

  “Hmm, high Summer, bad food or water,” Lt. Westcott mused, “it may be sick men coming off the shore, not wounded. Disease will kill quicker than a bullet. Happens to every army that takes the field.”

  “I think I’ll go ashore tomorrow morning,” Lewrie decided. “I want to know, either way.”

  “And I must remain aboard to keep an eye on things, again, sir?” Westcott said in mock distress. “Damme, but you have all the fun.”

  “If you made Commander and had a ship of your own, you could go play silly buggers, too, Geoffrey. I keep throwin’ opportunities at you,” Lewrie told him with a grin.

  “When Sapphire’s active commission is up, I will pursue such,” Westcott vowed, “though it’ll be a wrench to part us, at last.”

  “Aye, we’ve become good friends since we got Reliant in Oh-Three,” Lewrie agreed, “and I trust we will always be, no matter where the Navy sends us. If I can, I’ll even dance at your wedding.”

  “My wedding!” Westcott suddenly hooted with mirth. “That’ll be a cold day in Hell. Ain’t in my nature, no. I’d put that off ’til I make ‘Post,’ and find a sweet little ‘batter pudding’ half my age like Hyde Parker did. Or less than half my age. Yum yum.”

  “You’re incorrigible,” Lewrie chuckled.

  “Said the pot to the kettle,” Westcott happily rejoined.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to your ‘Devil’s Weed,’ and go prepare for supper,” Lewrie said. “Don’t go settin’ the bloody ship on fire.”

  “Good night, then, Alan sir,” Westcott bade him, his harsh, brief smile baring his teeth which showed stark white in the glow of the taffrail lanthorns.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Lewrie had a change of heart and told Lieutenant Westcott to arm himself and go ashore with him, at the last moment. But when the cutter landed them on the North bank of the Maceira River, they had to wander about for a time to find the means to go further. At last, a young infantry officer on a nondescript horse accosted them with a shout and a laugh.

  “Halt, who goes there, sirs!” he hoorawed. “What do we have here? Two French officers in blue, and under arms? Never do, sirs!”

  “And who might you be, young sir?” Lewrie replied in a like manner, with a grin on his face. “We’ve come ashore from our ship to see what’s happening. Are there any mounts available?”

  “Allow me to name myself to you, sirs, Leftenant John Beauchamp, of the First Battalion of the Ninth Foot,” the young officer gaily said, and doffing his bicorne with a bow from the saddle.

  “Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, and my First Officer, Lieutenant Geoffrey Westcott,” Lewrie replied, doffing his cocked hat in kind.

  “A pleasure to make your acquaintances, sirs,” Beauchamp said. “Horses? Only if you will settle for poor local ‘bone-setters’ like mine, sirs, but I can round a couple up. We’re damned short on cavalry remounts. Follow me, if you will.”

  Lewrie and Westcott took station to Beauchamp’s larboard side and strolled along up the river-bank into the draw between the headlands. “We saw wounded coming off last night, sir.” Lewrie asked, “Has there been a fight?”

  “Indeed there was, sir, and we sent the French packing in short order!” Beauchamp boasted. “We marched down to a fortified town by name of Óbidos, the French general, Delaborde, didn’t like the odds, and retreated to a line of steep hills South of the town. You’ll see them in a bit, once we’re further inland. Here’s our remount service, such as it is,” he said, making a face and leading them to where some locally commandeered Portuguese saddle horses waited, their forelegs hobbled to keep them from grazing or running off. Several were already saddled, and Beauchamp breezily ordered the grooms to lead out a pair.

  “I assume that sailors know how to ride, sirs?” he teased.

  “It’ll come back to me,” Lewrie replied as he took the reins of a plain brown horse, hiked a booted leg, and swung up into the saddle.

  Beauchamp led them on into the plain and the army encampment.

  “Up yonder, sirs,” the Army officer said, pointing to the North. “There were steep hills, with deep gullies between, and a rough stone wall laid all along the tops of the hills, an incredibly strong position, yet…!” he enthused, “we went at them like lions, steep as it was, and threw them off and sent them swarming down into the plain, here. Three guns were captured, and an host of prisoners taken. But for a lack of cavalry, we could have pursued their broken ranks out onto the plain. The French had swarms of cavalry.”

  “So,
the French were beaten,” Lewrie stated with delight.

  “Decisively, sir,” Beauchamp hooted. “Decisively! Now, they’re South of us, and to the East of us. There’s perhaps nine thousand under a chap named Loisin, coming West from Abrantes, and Delaborde still lurks down that way. The General fully expects that there will be a bigger battle to come, and soon. We’re told that we’re to be re-enforced with another four thousand men, when General Sir Harry Burrard and his convoy show up in the bay.”

  “He’s senior to Wellesley,” Lewrie said. “He’ll take over?”

  “God, I hope not, sir!” Beauchamp said, grimacing. “We’re doing just fine with Sir Arthur. General Burrard has not seen action since the Dutch expedition in Ninety-Eight, and made no grand show of his abilities, then. He’s over seventy years old!”

  “Those are Portuguese carts and waggons yonder?” Westcott asked as they drew near a rather large conglomeration.

  “Army Commissariat, Portuguese we’ve hired,” Beauchamp told him, “with solid silver shillings, not chits, too. The rest are Irish, if you can believe it. The General hired them before we sailed here. He told my Colonel that he’d learned in India that arrangements for a big commissary train are absolutely necessary. Not that Horse Guards will believe that, though.”

  “Those casualties we saw last night,” Lewrie pressed. “Was it dearly won?”

  “Oh no, sir!” Beauchamp said; he was irrepressibly cheerful. “We lost about four hundred and eighty, and the French lost nigh five hundred, plus the prisoners we took. Not bad at all, really. Aha! We’re coming to the Portuguese lines. Do keep a hand on your purses, sirs. They’re nowhere near so bad as Irish regiments, yet…! They are light infantry, called Caçadores. Quite good, really, under one of ours, Colonel Trant.”

  “Their Portuguese officers ain’t up to snuff?” Lewrie asked as he took in the foreign troops, mostly uniformed in brown coats.

  “From what I’ve heard, they’re miles better at their trade than the Spanish,” Beauchamp told him with a deprecating laugh, “but, over our long, good relations with Portugal, many British officers served in their army. Trant, now, sirs. He’s most capable and aggressive, but the General was heard to say that he’s a very good officer, but as drunken a dog as ever lived, hah hah! Uh-oh!” Beauchamp sobred quickly and put on a stern face as they rode deeper into the encampment, making a great display of pointing things out to Lewrie and Westcott.

  There was a rider approaching with a pack of hounds scouting at his mount’s flanks and rear, a grim-visaged fellow wearing an un-adorned bicorne hat and a long-skirted dark grey coat, with only a gilt-edged belt at his waist, and a sword upon his left hip, to denote him as an officer of some kind.

  Lt. Beauchamp doffed his hat to the fellow, and Lewrie thought it a good idea to do the same, and throw in a “Good morning to you, sir” for good measure, which earned him a scowl and a brisk nod of his head, which, admittedly, gave Lewrie a faint chill. The man was thin-lipped, haughty, his eyes cold and contempuous beneath a set of full brows, and that nose! It was a prominent hawk’s beak.

  “Who was that?” Lewrie asked, turning to look astern from his saddle once they had passed.

  “That was Sir Arthur Wellesley, sir,” Lt. Beauchamp said with a sigh of relief that he had escaped the Presence without a tongue-lashing for idling about, far from his battalion lines, and playing tour guide to a pair of idle sailors.

  “A stern damned fellow,” Lt. Westcott commented in a low voice.

  “Oh, indeed, sirs,” Beauchamp agreed with a shiver.

  “He didn’t look particularly happy to see us,” Lewrie said.

  “Well, we are taking a tour, sir,” Westcott said.

  “It may be that he expected that General Burrard had come into the bay, and that you were part of the convoy escort, sir,” Beauchamp dared speculate. “That’s where he was riding, to the river mouth, to see if Burrard had arrived.”

  “Well, no wonder he gave us the cold-eye,” Lewrie said. “In his place, I’d’ve stuck my tongue out at us, too.”

  That tongue-in-cheek statement gave the young Army officer such a pause that he burst out laughing, amazed that a senior officer of a high rank could be so droll.

  “What about Marshal Junot and the rest of his hundred thousand Frogs, though, Mister Beauchamp?” Lewrie asked, using the naval parlance. “When and if General Burrard arrives, you’ll have how many men against all of Junot’s?”

  “Oh, about sixteen thousand British, two thousand Portuguese, altogether, sir,” Beauchamp told him, looking off to the far distance to do his sums in his head, “but, we’ve information that the bulk of Marshal Junot’s forces are still far South, round Lisbon and Torres Vedras … just miles away! We would have been much nearer to Torres Vedras ourselves, but for the word of General Burrard’s arrival here in Maceira Bay. The General marched us over to the coast to cover the landings, pick up the re-enforcements and more guns and cavalry, before resuming our march on Lisbon.”

  “General Sir Hew Dalrymple’s coming, too,” Lewrie said with a scowl of dis-approval. “He’s to take supreme command over Wellesley and Burrard, God help you. He’s known as the Dowager.”

  “That’s not good, either, I may take it, sir?” Beauchamp said with a visible wince.

  “Not good at all, sir,” Lewrie gloomily told him.

  They were in the middle of the British lines by then, surrounded by tents, and soldiers in all manner of un-dress, and the aromas of unwashed bodies; horse, mule, and oxen manure; the sour reek of campfires burning green wood; salt-beef or salt-pork cooking; and a tang of illicit rum or locally-procured wine. Soldiers’ wives sat and sewed or idled, some with pipes or cigarros in their mouths. The few children allowed along with each regiment were whooping, running, and playing round between the tents and along the lanes between the tent lines, as ragged a bunch as their fathers, and just as rough.

  Lewrie looked South to scan the prospects, taking in the plain that stretched from Óbidos and Roliça, and the line of hills that lay beyond, to the Sou’east.

  “What’s beyond those hills?” he asked, pulling his telescope from a side pocket of his coat for a better look.

  “Some scattered villages and hamlets, sir,” Lt. Beauchamp told him, squinting to recall them all. “There’s a Toledo, a Porto Novo on the coast, a wee place called Fentanell, and the village of Vimeiro. Some cavalry videttes have scouted down yonder, and I heard that it’s pretty broken country, and that the road’s horrid. But then, every road we’ve seen so far has been horrid. It’s getting on for tea time. Might you gentlemen care to partake at my regimental mess?”

  “Thankee, no, Mister Beauchamp,” Lewrie said, shaking his head as he lowered his telescope, “but I think that Mister Westcott and I will return to our ship. We might have to shift Sapphire out of the way of the arriving convoy and its escort. I’m grateful for your taking the time to show us round.”

  “Very well, sirs,” Beauchamp said with a grin, doffing his hat to them in parting salute. “Leave the horses at the remount station. Don’t know if they’ll be available, later, but, if you wish to come ashore and witness the battle to come, the best of luck to you.”

  Lt. Beauchamp put his mount to a stride and headed off for his mess, and his tea, whilst Lewrie and Westcott turned theirs round and ambled back to the beach at a slow walk.

  “At least he seems confident, sir,” Westcott commented after a long, quiet moment. “But, he is a younker. All flags and bands, and glory.”

  “Aye, we know better by now, don’t we,” Lewrie cynically agreed. “But, ye know … I think I would like to see how this army does when the time comes.”

  “I would, too, sir,” Westcott strongly hinted. “If only to relieve the boredom. We’ve spent too long at escort-work, with nary one sight of an enemy sail, or the prospect of a fight. I fear that you have spoiled me, and our crew, you know.”

  “We have had a good run at it, haven’t we, Geoffrey?” Lewrie mused. “Until
the French went missish, and lurk in port, scared to risk themselves at sea any longer.”

  “Five whole years of excitement,” Westcott summed up with a longing sigh. “God, it’s so dull, we might as well be at peace!”

  After half an hour, they reached the remount station and surrendered their tired mounts, then continued on foot to the banks of the shallow Maceira River.

  “There he is, again,” Westcott pointed out as he espied the mounted man they now knew for Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley. He was peering out to sea with his own pocket telescope, looking both intent and angry. His horse had its head up, too, looking seaward, as were the hounds that accompanied him, who sat on their hindquarters with their tongues lolling, panting in perfect patience as if awed by their master’s mood, and barely bothering to scratch at their fleas.

  “What’s he looking at?” Westcott wondered aloud, but in a soft voice, as if he was daunted, too.

  Lewrie pulled out his glass and had a long look, then handed it to Westcott. “There are dozens of ships out there, Mister Westcott, tops’ls and t’gallants above the horizon. They might be hull-up by mid-afternoon. If it ain’t the French, it’s Burrard and his brigades, come at last.”

  “No wonder he looks so black, then,” Westcott said with a wee laugh.

  Wellesley heard that, and snapped his head about to glare at them both for a second, his face all “thunder and lightning.” Those thin lips half opened for a hurled curse, then clapped shut just as quickly before he returned his steely gaze to the incoming ships.

  “Let’s get back aboard,” Lewrie said, “before he has us flogged at a waggon wheel.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The troop transports, “cavalry ships,” and supply vessels came to anchor off Maceira Bay in droves, with the convoy escorts anchoring further out. HMS Sapphire’s four boats were manned and sent off to aid the dis-embarkation that proceeded throughout the afternoon and long into the night. Lewrie stayed on the poop deck no matter the heat of the day, swivelling his telescope about to take it all in, finding that General Wellesley’s efficiency applied to the new arrivals, too, for the whole bay hummed with activity, and battalions, batteries, and horse troops went ashore with an alacrity rarely seen, making those landings at Blaauberg Bay at the Dutch Cape Colony in 1806 look like a perfect shambles by comparison.