“Bom dia, senhores,” a waiter said as he came over.
“Ehm, bom dia,” Lewrie ventured, “ah … alguem aqui fala inglese?”
“Speak inglese, senhor?” the waiter puzzled over Lewrie’s horrid accent. “Sim, I do, falo um pouco … the little?” He launched into a lengthy explanation of how he’d become bilingual, all in fast Portuguese, of course, which went right over everyone’s heads. “Ja decidiram … what I get for you?” which sounded very much like zha-dee-see-dee-rowng, he asked at last.
The guitarist must have completed the long, long fado, for the locals in the tavern wearily clapped and whistled their appreciation. He began another tune, much faster paced, with many strums, plucks, and finger-drums against his instrument, head down in deep concentration, with a wide-brimmed country hat hiding his face.
“What the Devil?” Mountjoy asked as the musician began “Rule, Brittania!”
“Somebody likes us,” Lewrie said, turning to the waiter to ask for vinho verde.
“Viva Inglaterra!” the musician shouted, still head down. “Viva las inglese!”, and the local patrons raised a mild cheer to that, too.
“Maybe it’ll be their treat, hey?” Lewrie said, with a wink.
The guitarist suddenly looked up, then stopped playing, sprang off the tabletop to his feet, and swept off his hat. “Hallo, Mountjoy, and how d’ye keep, my good man?”
“Marsh?” Mountjoy blurted, stumbling to his feet and over-turning his chair in his astonishment. “How did you…?”
Knows how t’make the grand entrance, damn him, Lewrie thought as he stood as well.
“Have my ways, don’t ye know,” Romney Marsh/The Multitude said as he came over to shake hands, unable to help himself from dropping into his various guises as he explained himself. “Primero, I left Madrid as ze pobre musico, joos me an’ my guitarra, then from Seville to Ayamonte, I played ze gran caballero, wees deespatches from ze Seville junta. A fisherman, to cross the river and row up the marshes to Portugal … the French pay well for fresh eels and sardines, ye know … switched from Spanish to Portuguese, grounded the boat and walked off homeward with my nets and oars over my shoulder, and just kept on ’til I could steal a cassock and hat, some sandals, and became a Romish priest for most of the way, beggin’ my way, no problems at all, ’til I got close to Sentubal and the French patrols.
“Then, I made myself into a French cavalry officer from near Sentubal to the Tagus,” Marsh preened, changing his accent.
“You what?” Mountjoy exclaimed again.
“Well, the damned fool was just ambling along without a care in the world, looking for old Roman or Moorish ruins to sketch, and with an eye for available young women, too, I expect, as if he was in a park in Paris, not a hostile country. An extreme young’un, no error,” Romney Marsh said with a laugh as he sat down at the table with them and claimed a wineglass and the fresh-fetched bottle. After a deep sip, and an appreciative sigh, he continued his tale.
“I passed myself off to him as a Jesuit who had studied in Paris,” Marsh went on with a sly grin, “which explained my perfect French. There were some ruins, a mile or so off the main road, so I spun him a tale of their antiquity. He on his fine charger, me on my humble donkey, we rode up there. I warned him that what he was doing was dangerous, so … after he hopped about, sketching like mad, and we shared some bread, cheese, and wine, I fulfilled my warning.
“’Twas a warm day, so he’d taken off his coat, laid aside his sword,” Marsh said with a titter, “and I slit his throat and became … him, hah hah! Didn’t even get any gore on his trousers!”
“You got into Lisbon as an enemy officer?” Mountjoy gasped in shock. “Just … killed the bastard and…?”
Good thing he works for us, Lewrie thought, astonished by the callous way that Marsh described his murder; Was he back in London, there’d be nobody safe! He’s seriously twisted!
“No no, old fellow, I couldn’t do that,” Marsh pooh-poohed. “But I could make faster progress on a good horse than I could with a burro. There was a spot of bother when I came across a French cavalry patrol, but I had his sketch pad case, and claimed that I was going to Lisbon with despatches to report the presence of those evil British at Ayamonte, and we rode along together for a bit, and a grand time it was, too, for their officer and his troopers were jolly sorts, and we all knew the same French tavern songs, as it turned out. I got to Montijo, got a remount, and headed for Sentubal, their lodgement South of the Tagus. Around dark, I ran into some armed Portuguese patriots, sold them the horse and the whole uniform kit, got some peasant clothing and this fine new guitarra from them, and took the Lisbon ferry as an itinerant musician, serenading the locals, and the French garrison, for my up-keep, ’til the bastards left and our army marched in. Ah, Alfonso,” he called to the waiter, “another bottle of this excellent vinho verde, and these gentlemen will have…” He ordered for them in fluent Portuguese, which resulted in a pot of sardines, shrimp, and mussels in wine sauce, with crisp bread and smooth cheese.
“Well, I never heard the like,” Mountjoy marvelled, between bites of food. “You astound me, Marsh, you really do. But, how did you manage to turn up at this very tavern the same time as us?”
“Serendipity, Mountjoy,” Marsh told him with a sly grin. “I’ve been haunting Beresford’s garrison headquarters, and Sir John Moore’s outside town, for nigh a fortnight, trying to get someone to listen. The Castelo’s not a hop, skip, or jump from here, you were obviously on your way there, and the rest was fortunate happenstance. What say we order more grilled shrimp, hey?”
“Listen to what?” Lewrie asked, still puzzled. “Now the Frogs have gone, what information do you have for them?”
“Yes, what you learned was most useful, and allowed us to keep the French from making off with all their loot,” Mountjoy praised, “but, now they’ve gone, I’d think you of more use back in Madrid.”
“Madrid, hah!” Marsh objected. “There’s nothing but a circus going on there, full of boasting and self-congratulatory blather! We need solid information for Moore’s thrust into Spain, assurances of Spanish support, and we have neither.”
“You don’t intend to ride into Spain ahead of the army and do a scout, do you?” Lt. Westcott asked.
“No, sir, I’ll leave that to our army to do,” Marsh dismissed the notion with a hoot of mirth. “But, someone should, and soon, but that fact doesn’t strike our generals as important, and what they’ve gotten from Hookham Frere is so much moonshine.”
“Who the Devil’s Hookham Frere?” Lewrie said, scowling.
“John Hookham Frere,” Marsh said with the sarcasm dripping, “is a clueless, inexperienced, fool who believes everything the juntas tell him, and passes it on to Moore. Lord Canning sent him to Madrid to be Ambassador, and a worst choice I can’t imagine. One just can’t believe a word the Spanish promise, but he does. Except for General Castaños at Bailén, the Spanish armies have been beaten like whipped dogs, and the posturing, braggart idiots in fine uniforms claim that they’ll do just as well, when their soldiers are without shoes, shot, powder, weapons, horses, and bread. Frere promises them all they lack, then promises Moore that he’ll find proper allies over the border.
“They can’t arm, feed, or train their own troops, but swear that our army will be amply supplied in Spain,” Marsh sneered, “and on the strength of those empty promises, Frere is urging Moore to get going as soon as dammit, and all is in place, just waiting for him, when nothing has been done to begin to gather any supplies!”
“I cannot believe that Sir John Moore will assume that his march into Spain will be that easy, or so well assisted,” Mountjoy said with a dis-believing shake of his head. “He, and we, well know not to put so much trust into our allies, by now. His Commissariat, his baggage train—”
“Inherited from General Wellesley,” Lewrie interrupted.
“Yes, very well thought out,” Mountjoy quickly agreed. “He’s the best we have, is Moore, the chief
reformer of our armies into the modern age. Why, I should think that he has cavalry vedettes out in the field this instant, scouting the roads, making maps…”
“Ever seen Spanish maps, of their own bloody country, sir?” Marsh sneered some more. “Even they don’t trust them, and they show nothing of how passable the roads are, how steep the elevations and descents are, whether the bridges are wide enough to take wheeled waggons or guns, or if they’re even still standing! Cattle paths one steer wide they call roads!”
“You say you’ve tried to speak with Beresford and Moore, sir?” Lewrie asked him, beginning to get a bad feeling.
“I have, Captain Lewrie,” Marsh archly and sarcastically told him, “but, I am a spy, sir … a despicable, sneaking, lying hound not worthy of associating with proper English gentlemen, or of being given the slightest note. Their aides openly sneer at my arrival.”
“Perhaps if you changed your clothes…,” Westcott suggested, a bit tongue-in-cheek, which earned him a sudden squint of anger and warning. Romney Marsh was not quite the half-mad theatrical poseur living out a great game of intrigue; he was murderously dangerous.
“Perhaps if I spoke with our generals of this matter, along with the other topics I came to Lisbon to discuss with them, I might make them see reason,” Mountjoy supposed.
“Someone must, sir,” Marsh agreed, settling back and making free with the wine bottle again, turning in an eye-blink to a mild and reasonable fellow. “You know that General Sir David Baird is to land eight or nine thousand men at Corunna, in Northwest Spain, and is to march to collaborate with Moore’s army? I gather from what I have picked up at headquarters, despite my shunning by one and all, that both armies are to meet at Salamanca, cut the French lines of supply, co-operate with Spanish armies, and drive the French out of Spain altogether.
“Hah!” Marsh erupted in sour mirth, loud enough to startle even a few sleepy whores in the tavern. “With no aid or support from the Spanish, with poor, or only imagined roads to march on, campaigning into Mid-winter … in the mountains of Spain in Midwinter? My Lord! They’ve no idea where the remaining French armies are, and how they might move against them. It’s daft, daft as March hares … as daft as I am!”
“That’s assumin’ that Napoleon’ll let Spain go without a fight,” Lewrie stuck in, feeling even more gloom and trepidation. “He can’t hold his empire if he’s seen bein’ defeated.”
“That’s right, sir,” Mountjoy agreed. “We in the Foreign Office are aware of growing dis-content in his possessions already, nationalist movements growing. Why, he’d have riot and revolution facing him from here to the Russian borders!”
“The French will be back in strength in the Spring, is that what you’re saying?” Westcott asked, equally gloomy. “‘Boney’ has untold thousands of fresh troops available, his own, and thousands of troops from the other countries he’s conquered. He has to come back and finish off the Spanish for good.”
“Then, God help the Spanish,” Lewrie gravelled, “even if they can’t seem t’help themselves.”
“And God help our armies, if they cross the border, trusting the Spanish,” Westcott sorrowfully agreed.
“Hmm, well,” Lewrie summed up, pushing his empty plate aside. “What’s it t’be, Mountjoy? A tour of fabled Lisbon, or will you go see General Beresford or Moore?”
“You weesh zhe grand tour, senhores?” Marsh offered, tittering and off in one of his guises, again. “I am expert guide!”
“Only if you can steer Westcott to the prettier whores, sir,” Lewrie said with a snigger.
“No, dear as I wish,” Mountjoy said, torn between finally seeing Lisbon’s impressive attractions, and duty, “I must go talk with our generals, first. A tour, later, if you’re still offfering, Romney.”
“My delight,” Marsh agreed, beaming.
“I suppose we should get back to the ship,” Lewrie told his First Officer. “Will you be staying on, Mountjoy, or should we wait for you and carry you back to Gibraltar?”
“Let you know later,” Mountjoy said, digging coins out to pay the reckoning. “I may only need to stay a day or two.”
* * *
“You’ll not be haring off to see another battle ashore, will you, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked as they made their way back downhill to the seafront.
“Too far inland for me, if one comes, no, Geoffrey,” Lewrie scoffed. “I’ve seen my share, and those are enough.”
“If half of what Marsh says is true, I’d not wish to go off with our soldiers, either,” Westcott said, displaying a deep scowl that made some Libson passersby duck away from him, in fear of the Evil Eye. “Maybe General Moore should wait ’til Spring.”
“But, the French will be back by Spring,” Lewrie pointed out.
“Marsh,” Westcott mused aloud, still scowling, “do you really think he murdered that French officer as he claims?”
“We’ve only his word for that,” Lewrie replied, shrugging. “I always thought he was much like a half-insane version of Mountjoy, an inoffensive sort who perhaps enjoyed playing some great, dangerous game a tad too much, but … now I wonder if he is indeed capable of violence, like that old spy-master, Zachariah Twigg, who’d cut your throat just t’watch you bleed. You saw that look he gave you when you remarked about his clothes?”
“Aye, I did, sir,” Westcott heartily agreed, “and it made me wonder if there’s a knife in my back, in future.”
“Tortas, senhores?” an old woman in widow’s black weeds cried from a pastelaria set between two tumbledown houses. “Tortas laranja, de Viana, tortas de limao?”
“Tarts!” Lewrie enthused. “Orange, lemon, and I think some with jam fillings. We didn’t have dessert, did we, Geoffrey? Ah, senhora, queria dois, dois, and dois,” he said pointing to each variety in turn. “Quanto custa?”
“Eh … vinte centimos, senhor,” the old lady dared ask, not sure if that was too much in these troubled times.
“Twenty of their pence, is it?” Lewrie said, digging out his wash-leather coin purse; he had no Portuguese coin, but he did have two six-pence silver British coins, and handed them over. The sight of silver almost made the old lady faint.
“Aqui esta, senhor, bom apetite!” she exclaimed, wrapping his selections in a sheet of newspaper.
“Obrigada, senhora,” Lewrie replied, “thankee kindly.”
“Viva Inglaterra!” she shouted in departure.
“I say, these are tangy,” Westcott said as he bit into one of the orange-flavoured tarts as they resumed their downhill stroll for the docks. “But, just when did you become fluent in Portuguese, sir?”
“Fluent, me?” Lewrie laughed off. “Not a bit of it, Geoffrey, ye know how lame I am at languages. But, the best place to learn a tongue, even a little, is with the help of a bidding girl.”
“So I’ve always thought,” Westcott said with a smug leer.
“Viva inglese, viva Inglaterra!” a pack of street urchins began to chant, skipping and prancing behind them, and begging for centimos.
“It appears we’ve made some Portuguese happy,” Lt. Westcott said, looking over his shoulder at them.
“For now, at least, Geoffrey … for now,” Lewrie mused.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“All this will fill the cisterns, sir,” Pettus commented as he came back into the great-cabins from the stern gallery, where he had been trying to dry some washing in the narrow, dry overhang of the poop deck above. “Still damp, sorry,” he said of Lewrie’s under-drawers and shirts.
“Well, hang them up in here, then,” Lewrie told him, looking up from his reading, “and we’ll hope for the best.” When last the planking seams of the poop deck had been stuffed with oakum and paid over with hot tar with loggerheads, some wee gaps had been missed, so spare pots and wooden pails stood here and there on the deck chequer, and the good carpets had been rolled up, to catch the dripping, and save expensive Turkey or Axminster rugs. He looked upwards as the incessant Winter rain increased and began to
seethe on deck. It was December at Gibraltar, nigh Christmas, which usually had a mild Winter, but this year was damper, and colder, than what he’d experienced last year.
It wasn’t raw or chilly enough to wish for a Franklin-pattern coal stove to heat his cabins, but Lewrie did his reading fully dressed, less uniform coat, and with a loose-sleeved, ankle-length robe made from a wool blanket. It was white wool with red and green stripes at both ends, and upon first exposure to cabin visitors, Lt. Westcott had japed that he looked like an Indian who’d swapped furs for a Hudson’s Bay Company blanket.
The weather at sea had delayed many ships’ arrival, but Royal Mail packets had managed to come in, bringing him letters from home, most of which were pleasant, and some outright delightful.
Both James Peel at Foreign Office Secret Branch, and his old school chum, Peter Rushton, had written of the scandal, and the court of enquiry, into that disastrous Convention of Cintra. Dalrymple had been removed from command in Spain and Portugal, his career at an end, and General Burrard had been reduced to domestic duties only, never to serve abroad again. Wellesley was the only one of them who had gotten off rather mildly, and the papers championed the real victor, claiming that Dalrymple and Burrard had ordered and brow-beaten him to sign the damned thing. He was idle in Dublin, with no real harm done to him.
Both of his sons were well. Sewallis was still on the Brest blockade, bored to tears with the incessant plodding in-line-ahead for months on end, standing off-and-on the French coast with no sign that the enemy would ever come out to challenge them, with only the rare week or so in an English port to re-provision and have a run ashore where, admittedly, he had taken strong drink aboard and attended some lively subscription balls; he boasted that he was one of the best dancers aboard, had instructed the younger Mids in his mess in the art, and had been quite taken by more than a few pretty girls.
His younger son, Hugh, was still in the Mediterranean aboard a frigate, and as he described it, a taut and happy ship led by an energetic and daring captain. They had done some cutting-out raids in Genoese harbours and had seized merchant prizes right from under the noses of the French and their grudging Italian allies, had made chase of several others off Malta, taken two more, and had fought a spirited action with a French corvette, made prize of her, and Hugh suggested that his father should look into the latest issues of the Naval Chronicle in which Midshipman Hugh Lewrie was mentioned by his captain as having shown pluck, courage, and skill!
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