The Baltic Gambit

by Dewey Lambdin

  Mrs. Beauman is reputed to delight in her Widowhood, and the salubrious Clime of Lisbon in particular and in the Society of the English colony in Portugal in general, Purchasing a substantial House in Lisbon, as well as a country Retreat, rather than leasing, and I have it on the best, first-hand Authority from one of our senior Benchers, K.C., of my Lodge, Grey’s Inn, who now represents her interests in London, that all Beauman holdings on Jamaica are now put on the market, Mrs. Beauman having absolutely no Desire to return to the Fever Isles, nor (so it is rumoured) any Desire to have any further Association with the quality of Society found there.

  My Bencher also informs me that she hopes to invest in the wine and spirits trade in Portugal . . .

  Lewrie did let out a whoop of glee at that point, slapping his desk-top for good measure, loud enough to startle the cats awake from their nap on the settee cushions, and make Whitsell, his little cabin boy, jump and gawk and gulp.

  “Good news from home, sir, pardon for asking?” Pettus enquired from the dining-coach, where he was setting out dinner things.

  “The very absolute best, Pettus!” Lewrie exclaimed, imagining that, someday, he could drink a toast to his freedom and continued life without fear of further litigation in a fine Madeira from a Beauman vineyard, and savour its taste doubly well! And, why wait? “Pettus, I’d admire did ye fetch me a wee glass o’ port while I go through the rest of my mail.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The last half-page of MacDougall’s letter was chatty folderol about London doings, the Spring Season, and hints that the Addington government was seriously considering negotiating a treaty of peace with Republican France, and its First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, of all the insane things! Just as Adm. Duckworth had taken Guadeloupe! Lastly . . .

  By the by, your Solicitor, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy, has told me that you may find News regarding a certain Lady in the currant trade of Interest. He tells me he shall write you with all the Particulars, but it seems that her recent Scandal, the details of which escape me, has found it necessary to Remove herself, her children, and household to Dublin to avoid the Acrimony.

  Allow me, last of all, to congratulate you on the complete Ending of your legal problems anent the Beaumans, et al. If I may ever be of service in the future, do consider me, your most obdt. Srvt. . . .

  “Well, well, well!” Lewrie chortled, wondering if Dame Fortune could be any kinder to him! He was about to request a larger glass of port, but before Pettus could even pour the first, two faint thumps in the distance could be heard, which thumps caused a stir on the quarterdeck overhead, which he could hear through the partly-open windows of the coach-top. A moment later and his Marine sentry was bellowing the arrival of Midshipman Plumb.

  “Lieutenant Fox’s duty, sir, and he bids me inform you that the flagship has made general signal for all ships of the fleet to send a boat to her again,” Plumb announced.

  “Very well, Mister Plumb,” Lewrie replied, “my compliments to Mister Fox, and he’s to despatch a fresh crew of his choosing. Keep me informed, what it’s all about.”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  Just after his dinner, and with all but Caroline’s letter left to read—he was still fearful of that’un!—the launch returned alongside. Not a minute later, Lewrie could hear another excited stir on the quarterdeck, the scamper of feet on one of the gangway ladders, and the sharp rap of his Marine sentry’s musket-butt on the deck as he called, “Midshipman Privette t’see th’ Cap’m, SAH!”

  “A note for you from the flag, sir,” Privette began, coming to the dining table to hand it over, puppy-eager. “George, who conned the launch . . . Midshipman Pannabaker, sir, sorry . . . heard a lieutenant on London say it was something about the Tsar, sir!”

  Lewrie cocked a wry brow at the lad. With his hat under his arm Midshipman Privette’s head still sported a gauze bandage where he had been struck unconscious at Copenhagen. The lad was all but panting in excited curiousity.

  “Calm as does it, Mister Privette,” Lewrie chid him, “you aren’t to over-exert yourself, our Surgeon tells me, not quite yet. Fluster over this surely can’t be good for . . . Holy fuckin’ shit!” Lewrie cried after he’d broken the soft wax seal and read the single-page note, and rose so quickly from his chair that he up-ended it. “Tell the officer of the watch . . . who’s on?”

  “Acting-Lieutenant Sealey, sir,” Privette supplied.

  “. . . that I’ll come up,” Lewrie ended, going for his hat. Once on the quarterdeck, he could see that Midshipman Pannabaker, fresh from the flagship, had already imparted his rumour to one and all, for he could see a sea of expectant, wolfish smiles.

  “Summon all hands, sir?” Acting-Lieutenant Sealey asked.

  “Not just yet, Mister Sealey,” Lewrie countered, “for we don’t know if the situation has changed all that much. What we do know is, gentlemen, that early this morning, one of our scouting cutters spoke a Prussian trading brig, which gave them a copy of a German newspaper . . . in which it was reported that the Tsar . . . the mad, despotic bugger . . . has been assassinated.”

  He had to hold up a cautioning hand to still the officers’ glee.

  “The new Emperor of All the Russias is Crown Prince Alexander, a lad not much older than Mister Furlow, here,” Lewrie went on. “And, we know what a fire-eater is Furlow, so the new Tsar may be even worse. God only knows will he continue his late father’s nonsense of an Armed League of the North, now we’ve thrashed the Danes, and run the Swedes back to port with their tails ’tween their legs. I assume he’s heard o’ those events by now, same as we’ve had news of his father’s demise.”

  “How, sir?” Lt. Farley pressed. “When?”

  “Accordin’ t’this, he was strangled in his bed-chambers,” Lewrie told him, “in the grand palace at Saint Petersburg, the night of . . .” he referred to the note, “the night of the twenty-fourth of March.”

  “Not two days after we landed those Russian emissaries, by God!” Lt. Fox marvelled. “My word, what a turn of events!”

  “Deuced favourable turn of events, for us, sirs,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Lyle, chortled.

  Damme, it was! Lewrie realised, stunned; Oh Christ, have we . . . have I, been part of regicide? Rybakov, Levotchkin, and . . . Twigg!

  Why else had it been so important for Count Rybakov, that shit Levotchkin, to hasten to Yarmouth in such a tear, escorted down from London by Thomas Mountjoy, his old clerk, sent by the Foreign Office? Mountjoy, whose mentor in Secret Branch was, who had been recruited and trained by, Zachariah Twigg, who’d once said that to spare Europe of Russian imperial ambitions would ignite class warfare and terror, civil war and peasant serf rebellion, no matter how many millions of people died.

  And, how best t’force the Russians out of the League of Armed Neutrality but t’scrag the insane bastard behind it all, the Tsar! he furiously thought . . . furious at himself for being fooled into a role in it, if it indeed was an English scheme. A “peace mission,” mine arse! Ye wish peace? Kill the leader who wants a war, Lewrie thought.

  He shook his head in mute anger as he paced the deck. He had always been Zachariah Twigg’s gun-dog, for bloody years, and in all of his dealings with the bloody-handed schemer, had never been told all the truth. There was the possibility that it was the Russians who had approached the Foreign Office, not the other way round, and asked for help, . . . which would explain why it was that Thomas Mountjoy had been so eager to foist his emissaries off on Lewrie, and wash Government’s hands, not even taking the risk of “un-official presence” in the Baltic.

  A simple task, oh, and drop these people off, why don’t you, on yer way? Countin’ me too simple t’puzzle it out ’til much too late, the arrogant old schemin’ bastard! And I didn’t! he ruefully thought.

  He couldn’t imagine the new Prime Minister, Addington, hatching such a plan; not if he was so hen-headed as to contemplate negotiating a peace treaty with France right after smashing Denmark and capturing the last French-held ou
tpost in the Caribbean! No, it smacked more of the former Prime Minister, William Pitt, the Younger, or Henry Dundas, the former Secretary of State for War.

  Once set in motion, though, and if Addington didn’t know about it . . . ! Lewrie realised. The current crop of buffoons, the Earl of Elgin, the Duke of Portland, Lord Hawkesbury at the Foreign Office itself, or Lord Hobart would never have had the nerve . . . so perhaps England hadn’t had a hand in it!

  Who’s t’say the old Tsar was such an insane terror, the Russians did him in, Lewrie further speculated; It’s happened to Tsars before, and it’s not like he didn’t give ’em hellish-good cause t’be rid of him. Like the old sayin’ . . . ‘Uneasy rests the head that wears the crown’?

  “Pipe ‘All Hands,’ then, sir?” Lt. Farley prompted.

  “My pardons, Mister Farley, but I was just composin’ my thoughts on how best to phrase it,” Lewrie lied, forcing himself to perk up and sound eager. “Pipe ‘All Hands,’ aye.”

  Capt. Alan Lewrie, RN, took himself a contemplative pace about the deck, head down and his hands in the small of his back as the Bosun, Mr. Dimmock, and his Mate, Pulley, fweeped away on their silver calls, and Thermopylae’s people not on watch came boiling up from below in a thunderous roar of feet, both shod and bare, on companionway ladders.

  Lewrie hitched his shoulders before turning to go forward to the break of the quarterdeck to overlook his men in the frigate’s waist, the hands assembled on the sail-tending gangways. The sun was shining in a mostly clear blue sky, and the Baltic glistened and heaved slowly and peacefully, a glittering steel-blue, with only here and there any specks of rotting ice. The wind stood in the Sou’west and, for once, actually felt almost temperate! There would be no more need for his reeky furs, except as a place for his cats to romp, and nap.

  “Ship’s comp’ny . . . off hats, and stand easy!” Lt. Farley bellowed. “All hands assembled, sir.”

  “Thankee, Mister Farley. Lads!” Lewrie began, with expectant faces looking back at him from HMS Thermopylae’s 250 sailors, petty officers, Warrants, and boys. “We’ve gotten a bit of good news . . .”

  AFTERWORD

  As one may see, we’ve come a long way in the conduct of trials since Alan Lewrie’s appearance in court. As his barrister, Andrew MacDougall, Esq., told him in Troubled Waters, before his first court appearance, the first trial that lasted more than a single day didn’t occur ’til 1794!—and yes, there was no such thing as cross-examination allowed; nor were there government prosecutors. A barrister could go both ways, depending on the wishes of his “brief,” not client; Defence Counsel for one trial, then be hired as Prosecutor for another. People back then had about as much distrust of a too-powerful government as we do today. And for good reason! Both systems hang too many.

  The identity of Alan and Caroline’s anonymous tormentor; it was a retired NYPD detective, living in Florida, who was the only one who nailed Theoni Kavares Connor as the culprit, years ago, for which I congratulate him, and I hope when he reads this, he’ll enjoy a drink, with his friends buying, to reward his shrewdness, and insight into human nature. He’s so sharp, they ought to throw in appetisers, too!

  The Baltic Gambit depended heavily on three sources of research, two of which my friend Bob Enrione at CBS sent me: The Great Gamble: Nelson at Copenhagen by Dudley Pope, and, to a lesser extent, Naval Wars in The Baltic, 1522–1850 by R. C. Anderson, both of which, unfortunately, are long out of print, and it’s a trusting soul who loaned them to me for over a year, once I’d mentioned that Lewrie might be going to the Baltic in the winter of 1801. The third, providing all the “Dirt” on the King of Denmark, his queen the unfortunate Caroline Matilda, the daughter of King George III, and that earnest nut-job, her lover, and father of her bastard daughter, Johann Struensee. Oh, I know, people now prefer “love child,” but they took bastardy and illegitimacy very seriously in those days, so bastard it’ll be. As I said before, I’d rather be Historically Accurate than Politically Correct. I bought Royal Affair: George III and His Scandalous Siblings by Stella Tillyard locally. It’s a very fun read, the prissiness of Jane Austen’s novels bedamned; the eighteenth century and the first part of the nineteenth was “warts and all,” “balls to the wall,” and pretty randy, right through the Regency, before all of Wilberforce’s moralising, and the influence of Jeremy Bentham, Hannah More, Priestley, and all the other “Do Good” reformers led to the reigns of King William IV and Queen Victoria . . . even Jane Austen commented on how radically morals and mores had changed in her own life; what was tacitly accepted without a roll of anyone’s eyes in her youth had become Crude, Lewd, and Common in her adulthood.

  Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, and that infamous Signal Number 39; all newspaper quotes I cited were real, culled from Dudley Pope’s The Great Gamble. What Lewrie did not witness, since he did not stay in Yarmouth Roads with the rest of the gathering fleet, was Sir Hyde’s complete lack of urgency. The allotment of warships to Lord Nelson or Rear-Admiral Graves, and the Order of Sailing, had to be wrung out of him bare hours before the expedition set sail. Indeed, it took a very stiff note, what Harry Potter would call a “howler,” from the Earl St. Vincent (“Old Jarvy”) at Admiralty in London, to get the man to board his flagship, HMS London, leave his bride, Frances, his “little batter pudding,” at the Wrestler’s Arms, and “pull his bloody finger out!”

  The voyage from Yarmouth Roads to the Skaw, the top of Denmark, took longer than Lewrie’s voyage, with a few odd, un-necessary jogs at Sir Hyde Parker’s orders, with no communication between Nelson, Graves, or Sir Hyde about how they’d go at the Danes, or what was to be done with the fleet, did they get into the Baltic! It was only after they anchored in the Koll, on the Swedish coast above the Narrows, that all three commanders of the Van, Main Body, and Rear divisions even “clapped top-lights” on each other, and both Nelson and Graves came away with not a clue to Sir Hyde’s intentions. Then came the dithering as to whether they could sail down the Narrows past Kronborg Castle with both Danes and Swedes firing at them, as Lewrie dreaded, or whether it would be safer to take the long way round through the Great Belt, and come at Copenhagen from the South, which might delay the decision for battle a week or more! They tacked back and forth for at least a day before Nelson got the man to commit to the Narrows.

  Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker’s favourite colour could safely be called “Plaid,” and, if asked whether he ever had trouble making a decision, his likely answer would have been “Well, yes . . . and no.”! Sir Hyde was surely in dread of the Russian Fleet, big as it was reputed to be, and even if he successfully engaged the Danes, feared that his ships would be so cut-up and damaged that they could never risk a fresh battle. He was certainly one of those historical figures who could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and, if left on his own, could screw up a two-car funeral.

  It seems certain that Lord Nelson finagled Sir Hyde out of the way, with the winds of April 2, 1801, dead against him, as Captain Hardcastle realised; his squadron could have no effect on the battle, and it was Nelson’s alone to manage as he wished with no interference.

  Ah, but Sir Hyde did interfere, didn’t he? His signal to “Discontinue the Action,” Number 39, made absolutely no sense; he couldn’t see, from his distant vantage point, through the pall of gunsmoke, that most of the Danish ships below the Trekroner Fort were surrendering, fallen silent, afire, or drifting out of the battle already.

  Horatio Nelson, upon seeing Sir Hyde’s signal, put his telescope to his blind right eye and told Capt. Foley that he really couldn’t see it—“I have a right to be blind, sometimes,” he said. He acknowledged it, since Number 39 with two guns was General to all ships, but he kept his own Number 16 aloft to “Engage the Enemy More Closely,” knowing that he was winning. Nelson arranged the terms of the truce on his own, too.

  There was a bit of a scandal within the Fleet after the battle, too, when Sir Hyde heaped praise on his favourites from his own distant squadron, which had hardly fired
a gun in anger the whole day, his old favourite swashbuckling, prize-money reaping Capt. Otway, in particular, and ignoring the accomplishments of those of Nelson’s, and Graves’s, squadron. It is unlikely that Capt. Alan Lewrie will be “Mentioned In Despatches” in the Gazette! No medals were awarded for Copenhagen.

  To Sir Hyde Parker, Horatio Nelson was a “whipper-snapper,” too famous for his own good, too young, promoted over the heads of stolid, conventional men—perhaps too infamous for his scandalous dismissal of his wife, Fanny, and his affair with Emma Hamilton, which, by the by, resulted in another bastard daughter, Horatia, just as Nelson went down to Plymouth to board his first flagship. To the “Respectable,” solid Sir Hyde, Nelson might have seemed such a little “pip-squeak” of a man, so prone to flattery, so in love with fame, glory, and honours, that he was quite put off. Which made things even worse for Adm. Parker, later in the Spring, when he was relieved of command and ordered home, whilst Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson was given command of the British fleet in the Baltic, where it would cruise for the rest of the Summer.

  Did Great Britain, Zachariah Twigg at Foreign Office, and Alan Lewrie really have a hand in the assassination of Tsar Paul?

  For all you conspiracy nuts, there were no black helicopters in those days, so . . . stifle yourselves! Take a deep breath and remind yourselves, “It’s only a novel, it’s only a novel.” Though it was “a thing devoutly to be wished,” an act that did destroy the League of Armed Neutrality, and its prime sponsor, it appears that it was home-grown. How else could one explain how all the devoted Cossack guards were somewhere else at the moment, the night of March 24, and how the conspirators gained such easy access to the Tsar’s bed-chambers? The Tsarina’s apartments were cross the passageway, and, from her own open doors, she witnessed the deed done through the open doors of the Tsar’s apartment! Without too much in the way of complaint, it seems.