The Baltic Gambit l-15

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Captain Alan Lewrie, sirs," Lewrie said, rising to shake hands with them all.

  "B… Black Alan Lewrie?" the Midshipman gushed.

  "Guilty," Lewrie said with a chuckle, though he felt like wincing over that sobriquet. "Or, as the court recently decided, not, ha! A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mister Oglesby, Mister Follows, Midshipman Oglesby. Will you join me at my table, sirs? What ship?" he asked as they moved over to sit with him.

  "Ehm… I'm to go aboard the Trojan, sir… seventy-four," Midshipman Oglesby shyly said. "With cousin George."

  "I'm Fifth Officer into her, Captain Lewrie," Lt. Follows said, eyes alight with glee to be introduced to an officer with a reputation in the Fleet as a scrapper, who went after enemies with the ferocity of a howling Tom; hence the name Follows more-likely knew, the "Ram-Cat"; that, or as Lewrie sarcastically suspected, to run into a lucky thief in the flesh! "I convinced my captain that Trojan needed another gentleman-in-training… the more the merrier, hey?"

  "We've spent the last two days purchasing the lad's sea-chest and such, the elder Oglesby told Lewrie, with a wink. "George, here, supervised, so Roger'd not go to sea with an hundredweight of useless fripperies. Tomorrow we'll all coach down to Portsmouth."

  "And the very best of good fortune go with you, sirs," Lewrie wished them as the waiter arrived to take their orders. "Why, with any luck, Trojan'll be in the thick of it by mid-March."

  "And you, Captain Lewrie?" Lt. Follows enquired. "Will you be with us, do you imagine?" He sounded eager enough for a good fight.

  "I had to give up command of Savage before Christmas," Lewrie was forced to admit, "the trial, and all, d'ye see, and… so far, I have not yet heard from Admiralty as to any new openings. One hopes for another frigate, even one half as fine, but… '' He ended with a shrug, as if it was only a matter of time before he received a fresh active commission, though in his heart he was dead-certain that Hell would freeze over before Lord Spencer or Evan Nepean would consider him "Decent" enough to command another King's ship.

  "Dev'lish-odd, this Russian business," the elder Oglesby said as he spooned sugar into his tea. "Thought we were allies not all that long ago. Now, this nonsense. That Tsar of theirs must be daft if he thinks he can take on England."

  "Man's got a huge army already, and millions more peasants to conscript if he feels like it," Lt. Follows remarked as he stirred up his own tea. "Big as the French Army is reputed to be, with that levйe en masse of theirs, I expect the Russians could field three times as many men. And wouldn't that be grand to see… the Tsar and Bonaparte going at each other hammer-and-tongs!"

  "He can parade an army," Lewrie said, "but I doubt he's any experience with ships. Strong as the Russians are on land, I doubt anyone'd try to invade, so they really don't have much need of a fighting fleet, and don't expect their navy to have much of a role to play, if anyone did. What did the Russians do at sea back when they beat the Swedes, early last century? Galleys and gunboats rowed up coves and marshes… round the maze of islands? Up the rivers?"

  "Well, they did send a strong squadron alongside us when we went at the Dutch, in '98," Mr. Oglesby pointed out. "Don't recall all that much action at sea, then."

  "Another fleet from the Black Sea," Lt. Follows added, "sailed round the Aegean, and the Med. And their Black Sea fleet has gained a lot of experience 'gainst the Turks over the years. When Catherine the Great was still alive, she knew to maintain an efficient navy… even if about half the officers were really British, or Americans."

  "Like John Paul Jones!" Midshipman-to-be Oglesby dared to contribute to an adult conversation.

  "I've met some fellows who served with the Russians," Follows told them, "when they couldn't find a post in our Navy. Promotion is quicker in Russian service, and the rates of pay are more lucrative, though… I never heard them say much good of their ships, or their men."

  "How so, sir?" Lewrie prompted, waving for a fresh coffee.

  "The way they told it, Captain Lewrie, is… when the Russians need warships, they go level several forests and set up shipyards on the banks of the nearest river to the sea. They round up just any old sort of carpenters, and put them to work in work-regiments, using green wood with no more seasoning or drying than the timbers get coming down to the banks from the woods on waggons! And they conscript their men the same way. Turn Army regiments into sailors overnight… conscript serfs from the nearest estates and drill them like parade ground soldiers on facsimiles of masts and decks ashore whilst their ships are still building. Good for part of the year, but when their northern ports freeze up, they're crammed into infantry barracks ashore, in unutterable squalor 'til they're needed again, and it's a wonder half of them don't perish. And by the time they're ready to go aboard in the Spring, it's good odds their assigned ship has already rotted and must be replaced.

  "I'd expect things are better in the Black Sea, where they may sail almost year-round," Lt. Follows allowed, "but their fleet in the Baltic may not be all that formidable."

  "Never heard the like!" Lewrie scoffed. "That's an insane way to care for a ship's crew, or train it to excellence."

  "Not our way, certainly, sir," Lt. Follows agreed. "I'm told their discipline is hellish"-He winced as he saw his uncle's deep frown-"brutal in the extreme. Russians are, so I've heard, a cruel and surly race, their peasants little better than dumb beasts rolling round in pig-stys. Illiterate, in the main, and horrid drunkards. Do they get their hands on vodka, they go as mad as Red Indians, and just as dangerous to themselves as anyone who crosses their path. With such men, I'd imagine only the cat-o'-nine-tails can keep control."

  "Hmm, like British tars with a shipload o' wine or rum?" Lewrie japed. "Give them just enough of a vodka ration t'keep 'em mellow, do they? Devilish tipple, that. Worse for you than gin."

  Back in better days, not all that long ago during the Frost Fair on the frozen Thames, Lewrie had run across Eudoxia Durschenko in an off-moment from her role in Wigmore's Peripatetic Extravaganza and had tasted a sip of vodka… used as he was to imported Kentucky bourbon, he'd thought he'd poisoned himself! It was better ice-cold, she had told him, but he rather doubted it. At least it did not have the juniper berry taste of good old British "Blue Ruin"!

  "Malta was the problem with the Tsar," Mr. Oglesby mused aloud. "We took it back from the French before the Russians could get there. Admiral Nelson hoisted the flag of the Kingdom of Naples and the Two Sicilies, 'stead of our flag, or the Russians', and the Tsar most-like was mad enough to fall down and chew the carpets over it. That King Ferdinand of Naples was the real owner, in a way, after all."

  "And Lord Nelson spent a lot of time with King Ferdinand and his wife, our ambassador to his court, Sir William Hamilton," Lewrie said (leaving Emma Hamilton unsaid!). "They did influence him, for certain, but I was in Naples in '94 through '96, and dined with King Ferdinand several times. D'ye know he maintained a waterfront fish shop, where he did the cooking? An odd sort o' bird!… and a dab-hand cook, too! But I never heard that Naples claimed Malta. 'T wasn't Malta owned by the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem since the Crusades?"

  "Ah, but King Ferdinand is the Grand Master of the Knights, sir!" Mr. Oglesby slyly returned. "The real one, I suppose. Though I heard that the Tsar thought he was, since a few Knights in the Russian court flattered him up and held an election of their own, making him the Grand Master. Imagine what an uproar that could cause in Russia, their own Tsar, the upholder of the Orthodox Church, accepting an honourific that is usually awarded by a Catholic Pope, ha ha!"

  "The Tsar had another grudge with us, too," Lt. Follows contributed. "During the Holland expedition, there were two prizes taken… not worth tuppence, really, a fifty-six gunner and a seventy gunner… were supposed to be Russian prizes, but we kept them."

  "My Lord, is he that petty?" Lewrie said, amazed.

  "It would appear so, Captain Lewrie," Mr. Oglesby said, nodding. "What's worse, when his mother, Catherine the Great, was still with us, i
n 1787, Turkey declared war on Russia, for the umpteenth time, and we… Great Britain and Prussia… egged the Swedes to invade Russian-owned Finland, so Tsar Paul… Crown Prince Paul, then… naturally despised us for meddling, and distrusts us to this very day. The only reason Russia became our ally in '98 was because he thought that Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion in Egypt's final aim was against Russia, not our possessions in India! Why else would he ally himself with his worst enemy, the Ottoman Turks, against the French?" Oglesby said with a mystified shrug. "Perhaps only the madness of kings may explain why the Tsar now is so enamoured of Bonaparte, and the French."

  "Napoleon told the Tsar he'd surrender Malta to the Russians, Lt. Follows stuck in. "Only the Russians. And Napoleon had captured thousands of Russian soldiers when he conquered Switzerland. To make the deal sweeter, he returned them, in new uniforms, boots, and kits, with all their colours, as a gesture of good will."

  "Hmmph," Lewrie commented. "I s'pose that would be enough for the Russians to say 'thankee kindly' and stand aloof from now on, but… to cozy up to the Frogs? Surely their aristocracy should be quaking in their boots, lest all that Jacobin French insanity take root in their country. 'Libertй, Йgalitй, Fraternitй,' and bloody revolution, would be the end of 'em. Whish… chop!" he said, miming the drop of the guillotine's blade with one hand, "I've an… acquaintance who's Russian, who's told me how they use their serfs so cruelly. Let the landless, powerless slave-peasants get a whiff of freedom and rise up, and it'd be the Terror all over again, with the slave revolt on Saint Domingue thrown in, to boot!"

  "Factor in, Captain Lewrie, the atheism of the French Jacobites," Mr. Oglesby sagely pointed out, in full agreement with him. "Russia is a deeply religious country, though its Orthodox Church is even more of a mystery to me than Popery. I'd imagine their theologians and lords spiritual would consider the French the very imps of Hell, and their First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Anti-Christ revealed."

  "Indeed, uncle," Lt. Follows chimed in. "One of the fellows who took service in their navy told me that the peasant conscript sailors 'board his ship took the authority of their priests as solemn as their officers', and that the only reason there weren't more revolts by serfs out in the countryside was deathly fear of condemnation and excommunication by the local priests. Even nobles walk wary round them. After a thousand years of servitude, with the threat of abandonment by their church, and the coming of the Cossacks to hack them to pieces should they turn on their masters, abject subservience and resignation to a life of misery is common.

  "Mind, he said your average Russian sailor or soldier is a marvellous fighter, if decently led, and treated," Lt. Follows said on with a grin, "but, dull as oxen, in the main. Superstitious, un-educated, and easily controlled… so long as one doesn't act too much the tyrant."

  "Push 'em into a corner, whip 'em for no reason?" Lewrie mused aloud. "You bully and beat a puppy, you end up with a wolf who'd tear your throat out. Sounds t'me as if all Russia is teeterin' on a thin razor's edge, with nothing but the fear of Hell and Cossack sabres to keep it from exploding."

  "A grievous social system," Mr. Oglesby sadly commented, "much like our own West Indies colonies, or the American South, with so many restive slaves. I doubt any rich or titled, and landed, Russian dares sleep too sound of a night. Surely, the Tsar knows, as does his court nobles and church leaders, how dangerous this new friendship with the French can be."

  "Well, you mentioned the madness of kings," Lewrie japed. "But as you say, surely those who have the Tsar's ear could advise him not to run the risk."

  "Fellow's a Nero, a Caligula," Mr. Oglesby said with a sniff of disdain. "Emperor of All the Russias, reputed to be as mad as a hatter, and, unlike our parliamentary system, he's a total autocrat, as powerful as any Roman emperor, with nothing and no one able to rein him in. And, like a Caligula, the Tsar is indeed mad. Cruel, sadistic, and is rumoured to be… perverted. Cover your ears, Roger, there is evil coming," he told his youngest son, who had been sitting gape-jawed to be allowed to hear adults talking of such worldly things. "The man is said to have the morals of a wild beast, such that no woman, from the highest to the lowest palace servant, is safe. Some also say that no man is safe, either," Mr. Oglesby added with a grimace of distaste of such practices. "Does he take a dislike to someone… noble, valet, or stableman… because he didn't like the wine, the temperature of the soup, someone's new suit or dress, hair ribbons, or a beard not shaven that morning… well, off one goes to gaol, Siberia, or a dungeon full of instruments of torture.

  "Russia has already had one ogre such as he… Ivan the Terrible," Mr. Oglesby intoned with a grim nod. "Thankfully, the Russians did away with him, though I cannot help but imagine that his death was but a temporary respite. An absolute monarch will, sooner or later, turn monstrous, if only to preserve his seat on the throne… which is so rewarding and pleasing."

  "Well, with luck, perhaps his nobles will treat this Tsar Paul as they did their Ivan the Terrible," Lt. Follows said with a laugh. "Oh, I know… lиse majestй and all that," he partly retracted not a tick after, but still with a merry air, "yet… he's not our King…"

  "Thank God," Midshipman Oglesby piped up.

  "… and perhaps the new'un might take years before he goes as mad as his predecessor, ha ha!" Lt. Follows suggested. "Unless insanity runs in the Romanov family."

  "Peter the Great was sane," Mr. Oglesby pointed out, "though I can't recall why his heirs weren't suitable to rule, and Russia ended with a German girl on the throne. After the Dowager Tsarina died, and Catherine got rid of her useless idiot of a husband, no one could say that Catherine the Great ever evinced the slightest sign of madness. Her son, though… well," he said, finishing his latest cup of tea, and dragging out his pocket-watch. "Good Lord, lads, we were to meet the wife in the Strand by twelve. We must go, else she'll be wroth with us… me, more to the point. You will pardon us do we depart, Captain Lewrie?"

  "It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintances, sirs, and a most enlightening conversation, for which I thankee," Lewrie said as they all rose and made their parting salutations.

  After they'd bustled out the door in overcoats and boat-cloaks, Lewrie decided that he might as well pay his reckoning, too, and hunt up his own mid-day meal. Stultifying, and as earnest, as dinner conversation at the Madeira Club could be, with so many gentlemen who had made their fortunes in Trade sharing stock tips and complaints about workers, prices, and goods, the club did lay a good table, and could boast of a wine cellar that even Almack's, White's, or Bootle's might envy. There was also the realisation that said table, said wine list, was included in his weekly fee, which his father had arranged for him, which was about a quarter less than the others were charged-in some instances, being kin to the old lecher had its advantages!

  Was his pace quick enough, he could just make it back in time for a glass of something warming before the dining room door opened!

  Though, as he maintained a brisk stride back up Orchard Street to Wigmore Street, Lewrie could not help recalling a late-night talk with that devious old rogue Zachariah Twigg nearly two years before, when his legal troubles were just beginning to come home to roost…

  Twigg's grand scheme did not care a whit for the abolition of slavery, though many of the reformers thought him an ally against the "peculiar institution," did not care if thousands of planter families in the West Indies were impoverished should slavery be outlawed in the British Empire, along with the slave traders and shipping interests in West Country seaports. What Twigg intended was to cripple any threat to Great Britain from slave-driving nations, with his own country and its abolition of slavery the shining example; the United States of America, for one, whose economy, treasury, and power was based on agricultural exports, mostly reaped by slave labour. Create a rebellion as bloody as Saint Domingue, or Haiti, or whatever they were calling it, these days, and America might even fracture in twain, with one of the halves forced to ally itself with Great Britain against the o
ther half, perhaps even see the error of its ways and rejoin the Empire someday!

  No matter how much blood might be shed in servile revolts and civil war, no matter how many hundreds of thousands perished! And… hadn't Russia come up, that night? What had Twigg cold-bloodedly said? That, if Russia ever turned its insatiable appetite for conquest westward, and set its massive peasant conscript armies on the march, those "white slaves," the serfs, could be turned against the nobility and the landowners, against the Tsar himself, and all the Cossacks in the world could not put down the revolution, the civil wars 'tween the warlords that would ensue, in the Holy names of Abolition and Freedom!

  Russia now seemed a foe. And what was Twigg up to in the face of that? It wasn't just the nip in the air that made Lewrie shiver!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  There was a warming pea soup, served with a pleasant hock; then Dover sole with boiled potatoes and carrots; the salad course was nothing worth much, in the dead of winter, but the roast pigeons, accompanied by more potatoes, carrots, and peas, was succulent, and complemented by a promising Beaujolais. Cheese, sweet biscuit, and the port, some of the house's famed namesake, a Portuguese Madeira, finished off the meal, which, despite the victuals, was nothing but a litany of bad, sad, gloom, and the portent of utter ruin.

  Some of Lewrie's fellow lodgers, while not strictly so deep in Trade that they kept a shop and handled money directly, had all taken "flyers" on the Exchange, had invested in stocks and bonds beyond the safe and sane Three Percents and the Sinking Fund as a repository for their "New-Made Men" profits, and the Northern League recently formed round the shores of the Baltic, their Armed Neutrality, and the threat of an expanded war, had many of them shivering like a dog that was trying to pass a peach pit… as an American naval officer had so vividly said to Lewrie a few years back.

  "The Tsar is so demented he could be committed to Bedlam," said one who had invested heavily in naval stores.