“Well, it was Spanish for hundreds of years, and Moorish long before that, Mister Pettus,” Mountjoy explained. “We’ve owned it for only a bit beyond an hundred years. You’ll hear the difference, too. There are only a little over three thousand male inhabitants on the Rock, and only about eight hundred of them are British. Maybe nine hundred from neutral countries, and over sixteen hundred are registered as citizens of enemy nations!
“Add to that, there’s another two thousand or so foreign traders allowed to buy and sell here, with purchased three-month passes to let them do so … unmolested, mind,” Mountjoy went on. “You’ll hear every language of Europe, with Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian predominant. I even thought I heard some Russian, the other day.”
“Hmm, sounds t’me as if Dalrymple might have cause t’worry,” Lewrie said. “I’d think that you’d find it worrying, in your line of work.”
In answer, Mountjoy laid a finger against his lips and made a boyish “Sshh!”
* * *
Thomas Mountjoy kept lodgings on the top floor of a stout and old house, which allowed him access to a rooftop garden area with an awning rigged over it for coolness and shade. There were slat-wood chairs and settees, and Moorish-looking pottery urns for side-tables with wood tops, and a wrought-iron metal table. Most prominent was a large brass telescope mounted on a tripod.
“Should anyone wish to do me in, I’m harder to reach up here,” Mountjoy said in seeming seriousness as he invited Lewrie to “take a pew” and cool off from the exertion of walking so far uphill. “There are several very stout doors to get through, first, and by then I’m awake and well-armed. When needed, I putter with all my flowers and plants, and … keep an eye on Spain. See my telescope?”
There were indeed lots of potted greenery, and so many blossoms that the air was sweet with their aromas. Lewrie went to the telescope and bent down to peer through it. “Aha!” he said.
Mountjoy’s aerie was high-enough up the hills that he could see over the British Lines right across the wide swath of neutral ground at the narrow neck to the matching line of fortifications on the Spanish side. Mountjoy’s telescope was huge, and strong, good enough to serve an astronomer, and fill its entire ocular with the moon in all its details. He could even make out Spanish sentries pacing along at the top of the Spanish works, slouching, smoking, or yawning!
“Nice view of the harbour, too,” Mountjoy told him, “and what’s acting on the Spanish side of the bay, at Algeciras. Quite useful, my English eccentricities, do you not think? To all casual observers I’m in the grain trade, and keep an office in the South end of town … where people who report to me can come and go. Sir Hew allows me and mine to do some smuggling, in a small way, which gives my men in the field good reason to travel in Spain.”
“And you keep him informed on who the real smugglers are, I take it?” Lewrie asked, swivelling the telescope to seek out his ship to see what was going on there. He stood erect and looked South and could look right cross the straits to the other rocky headland, and the massive Spanish fort at Ceuta. It was more than twelve miles off, but the powerful telescope could fetch up a decent image, even so.
“When I come across one arranging a huge shipment,” Mountjoy said. “If I kept up with all of them, I’d have no time for my real tasks.”
“The one that Peel wants me to help with,” Lewrie said. “Before I sailed, I wrote him and told him that my ship’s too big and deep-draughted t’do you much good close inshore, but I never heard back. Now that I’m here, just what is it that you need from me?’ And just what is your main task?”
“London has charged me with turning the Spanish against the French, and getting them out of the war, perhaps even gaining them as an ally,” Mountjoy baldly told him.
“You’re joking,” Lewrie said, gawping.
“With the carrot, and the stick,” Mountjoy added, looking sly again. “Sweet talk and sympathy on the one hand, and promises of free trade, and on the other hand, making the lives of everyone from here to the French border miserable, with chaos and mayhem.”
“And my part is…?” Lewrie posed.
“The chaos and mayhem,” Mountjoy said with a chuckle.
“Hmm,” Lewrie said, with a shrug. “I can do chaos and mayhem … I’ve been dined out on it for years. Landings and raids, I’d suppose? Bring all Spanish coasting trade to a stop?”
“Sink, take, or burn everything that floats, yes,” Mountjoy agreed. “And quick cut-and-thrust raids on coastal ports and villages. Along the way, to and from, I’ll also need you to drop off some of my field agents, now and again. Picking them up and fetching them back may be too much to hope for, but I have managed to put together a few ways for their reports and informations to reach me, somewhat timely. It would really help, though, if, upon your first venture, you could obtain for me a small coasting vessel or fishing boat.”
“Steal you a boat, right,” Lewrie said. “Simple enough.”
“Something dowdy and un-remarkable, and easily manned by as few people as possible,” Mountjoy went on. “From the times of old General O’Hara, the ‘Cock of The Rock’, everyone talks of protecting the town and the bay with gunboats and cutters, but no one has built, or bought, or followed through on the plan. When Nelson commanded the Mediterranean Fleet, he planned for twenty gunboats, but that came to nothing, either. Individual ships sailing into the bay are easy pickings for all the Spanish gunboats at Algeciras, and the mouths of the Palmones and the Guadananque Rivers. There’s nothing for me to work with.”
“Something that could be handled by a Midshipman and seven or eight men,” Lewrie schemed. “All of whom can speak decent Spanish, I suppose? I can get you some sort of boat, but…”
“I’ve a man coming to do the talking, if it comes to it,” Mountjoy promised quickly. “In the Andalusian dialect, and high Castilian to boot … with lisp and all!”
“Even so, it might be best did Sapphire see your new boat near where you wish to land or recover agents, but stay safely offshore,” Lewrie told him, going to one of the chairs and sitting down on a faded green cushion. “Best that we’re not seen too close together.”
“That makes sense,” Mountjoy agreed with a nod or two. “Lord, what a poor host I am! I’ve a very nice and light white wine. Smuggling can go both ways, what? It’s a Spanish tempra … tembrani … well, whatever it’s called, it’s quite good.”
Mountjoy went into the bedroom adjoining and fetched a bottle from a dim corner, where he kept a tub of water with which to cool his wine. “Now where’s the bloody cork pull?” he grumbled.
Thomas Mountjoy had been an idle and direction-less young man when he’d been Lewrie’s clerk, a pleasant but callow fellow whom his elder brother, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy of London—Lewrie’s solicitor and prize agent—had foisted upon him when Lewrie had the Jester sloop. It was hard for Lewrie to picture Mountjoy in the same trade as the thoroughly dangerous Zachariah Twigg, or James Peel. Mountjoy just didn’t look the part; he was the epitome of a nice, inoffencive scion from the Squirearchy, who didn’t have to really work at anything.
He was brown-haired and brown-eyed, and his eyes and expression seemed too merry and innocent for skullduggery. He did not give off a sense of being capable of murder, or of being dangerous.
Well, maybe that’s his best asset, Lewrie thought; No one would suspect him of anything. Not strikingly handsome, or remember-able. Christ, is that even a word?
“Deacon?” Mountjoy called out. “Where did I leave the cork pull?”
A well-muscled and craggy-faced man came out of an inner room, a fellow who did look furtive, and very dangerous, from the way that he carried himself. “Here, sir,” he said, handing it over. “You left it on the side-table, from last night’s supper.”
“Daniel Deacon, one of my assistants, and my bodyguard when such is needed,” Mountjoy said, doing the introductions.
“Much danger to you, here on the Rock?” Lewrie asked, “With so many soldiers p
atrolling the town, I’d expect that it’s better guarded than Saint James’s Palace.”
“With so many foreigners here, sir, and so many traders coming and going with temporary passes, it’s best to be overly cautious,” Mr. Deacon said, most seriously and earnestly, not waiting for his superior to answer the question. He had a way of glaring that could be quite dis-concerting, and held himself like a taut-wound watch spring.
“Daniel’s another one of James Peel’s protégés,” Mountjoy said, “recruited from Twigg’s informal band of Baker Street Irregulars.”
“Formerly a Sergeant in the Foot Guards,” Deacon added.
“Saved my bacon once, the Irregulars did,” Lewrie told Deacon. “A damned efficent group.”
“Thank you, sir,” Deacon said, with a faint hint of a smile. “I will go out and attend to that … other matter?”
“Make it seem casual,” Mountjoy cautioned, and Deacon departed. “A little surveillance on a new-come trader,” he explained to Lewrie. “Now, let’s sample this wine!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“First step, then,” Lewrie summed up, after a convivial, but business-like, half-hour of plotting and savouring the light, fruity Spanish white wine. “I capture you a boat. A large fishing boat will do quite nicely, about fourty or fifty feet overall. She’d be large enough t’live in if the weather goes against you, and would be the sort that ventures further out to sea than the type employed by coastal Spanish fishermen.”
“And, could plausibly explain her presence near any Spanish village along the coast,” Mountjoy happily agreed. “Up by Almeria, we can claim to sail from Málaga, up near Cádiz on the West, we could claim to be from Cartagena … chasing after the herring, or something.”
“Her crew would have to actually put out nets, and have a catch aboard, if they run afoul of a Spanish garda costa,” Lewrie cautioned. “Not that there are too many of those who’d dare set out, these days, with our Navy prowling about.”
“Troops to re-enforce your people,” Mountjoy eagerly prompted, making a list with pencil and paper. “Garrison duty is so hellish-boresome, I’d imagine thousands would volunteer. Though, Sir Hew the Dowager might be loath to give up a corporal’s guard.”
“Perhaps you can sweet-talk him,” Lewrie said, snickering.
“He’s a reasonable-enough old stick,” Mountjoy agreed, again.
“I’ve fifty private Marines, and can put another fifty sailors ashore, without harming the operation of the ship,” Lewrie volunteered. “Can I lay hands on one troop transport, of decent size, she’d be able t’carry about one hundred and fifty soldiers. Any more, and they’d be arseholes to elbows. That’s what, three companies? Light infantry’d be best. Perhaps fewer,” he said, after further musing, “since I would have to put enough sailors aboard her t’man the boats. The average is about three hundred tons, with only fifteen merchant seamen to handle the ship.
“Get them all ashore in one go,” he schemed on, “and more importantly, get them off all together … in, raise Hell, then get out as quick as dammit … I’d need six boats. Barges, or launches, with at least eight men in each to row and steer. Scrambling nets.”
“Beg pardon?” Mountjoy asked, his pencil poised in mid-air.
“Use old, cast-off anti-boarding nets hung down each side of the transport by the chain platforms for all three masts,” Lewrie explained. “A boat waitin’ below each.” Lewrie borrowed a fresh sheet of paper and snatched Mountjoy’s pencil to make a quick sketch. “The soldiers’d climb down the nets into the boats, instead of going down the boarding battens and man-ropes, one at a time, which’d take for-bloody-ever, see?”
“Wouldn’t they be over-loaded, and clumsy, though?” Mountjoy said with a frown. “Laden with all the usual…?”
“Light infantry, like I said,” Lewrie almost boyishly laid out. “There for a quick raid and retreat. They’d need their hangers, their muskets and bayonets, perhaps double the allotment of cartridges, and their canteens. Packs, blanket rolls, cooking gear … all that would be un-necessary. They’re not on campaign, and won’t make camp.”
“Oh, I think I do see,” Mountjoy said.
“Of course, I’d have t’do the same with Sapphire, t’get all my people ashore at the same time,” Lewrie fretted. “The nets, and more ship’s boats than I have at present. Perhaps the dockyard here can cobble me up some more launches or barges.”
“The yard’s very efficient,” Mountjoy assured him, slyly retrieving his pencil. “When Victory put in after the Battle of Trafalgar, rather heavily damaged, she was set to rights and off for England within a week. I’m certain that Captain Middleton will have all the used nets and lumber to satisfy all your wants. Our wants, rather.”
“My orders did not name anyone,” Lewrie said. “I was to report to the senior naval officer present. Middleton, d’ye say? Don’t know him.”
“Robert Gambier Middleton,” Thom Mountjoy expounded. “He has been here for about two years, now. He’s the Naval Commissioner for the dockyard, the storehouses, and oversees the naval hospital. Quite a fine establishment, with one thousand beds available.”
“Well, I shall go and see him, right off,” Lewrie determined. “He’ll have the spare hands I need, too, most-like, perhaps even the transport under his command that I can borrow.”
“Ehm … that’s all that Middleton commands, I’m afraid. Even the defence of the town and the bay are beyond his brief,” Mountjoy told him. “Now, when there’s some ships in to victual or repair…”
“What? He don’t command even a rowboat?” Lewrie goggled, and not merely from the effects of the excellent Spanish wine.
“So far as I know, Captain Lewrie, there never has been a man in command of a squadron permanently assigned to Gibraltar. When I got here, ’bout the same time as Middleton, there was a fellow named Otway, who had the office,” Thom Mountjoy had to inform him, shrugging in wonder why not. “He was more than happy to leave, I gathered, ’cause he was pulled both ways by the needs of the commander of the Mediterranean Fleet and the commander of the fleet blockading Cádiz, and what was left of the combined Franco-Spanish fleet after Trafalgar. But, neither senior officer thought he could spare warships from his command to do the job that the Army’s many artillery batteries do. If a few two-deckers and frigates come in for a few days, then the senior officer among them is temporarily responsible.”
“Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie exclaimed. “D’ye mean t’say so long as I’m here, I’m senior officer present?”
“I fear so, sir,” Mountjoy told him. He tried to do so with a suitable amount of sympathy, but during his years aboard HMS Jester as Lewrie’s clerk, he had always been amused by Lewrie’s trademark phrase for frustration, and could not contain a grin.
“Sorry, Captain Lewrie, it’s just…” Mountjoy apologised.
“It ain’t funny,” Lewrie gravelled, scowling. He flung himself back into his chair, feeling that he was deflating like a pig bladder at the end of a semaphore arm; hanging useless!
“Good God Almighty,” Lewrie muttered. “It’s Bermuda or the Bahamas all over again. Backwaters like those I can understand, but Gibraltar? As vital to our interests as the Rock is? Mine…!”
“One would suppose, sir, that His Majesty’s Government, and Admiralty, imagine that the closeness of two large fleets, able to respond with more than sufficient force should they be called upon to do so, would suffice,” Mountjoy said more formally, and humbly.
“Aye, I suppose,” Lewrie grumbled, his head thrown back, deep in thoughts of how to salvage his position. “Hmm … it’s not as if either the French or the Spanish are able t’put an invasion fleet together, not after Trafalgar. They can pin-prick us with those gunboats you mentioned, cut out a prize now and then, but they can’t pose any real threat.”
“And if Foreign Office, and Secret Branch, can manage to manipulate the Spanish into withdrawing from their alliance with France, sir, there would be no threat at all,” Moun
tjoy pointed out.
“And how likely is that?” Lewrie asked, still in a wee pet.
“Spain’s bankrupt, and has been for some time,” Mountjoy told him. “Her overseas trade with her New World colonies has been cut to nothing, and all the gold, silver, and jewels they were used to getting are not available, and what they do have is syphoned off to support the French. To make things worse, there’s Napoleon Bonaparte’s Berlin Decrees, which is ruining all of Europe, and frankly, ruining France herself.
“Bonaparte’s trying to shut down all trade ’twixt all of the countries he dominates, or occupies, and Great Britain,” Mr. Mountjoy explained further, “and that applies to Spain, which is going even broker because of it. Only Sweden and Portugal are hold-outs, and we have gotten rumours that France may take action against Portugal sometime in the future. But, if Spain turns neutral, then all her goods and exports are open to the world, as would all the world’s goods be available to Spain once more.”
“Hold on a bit,” Lewrie said, sitting up straighter and lifting an interrupting hand. “How the Devil are the French going to be able to take action against Portugal? They can’t do it by sea, by God.”
“Well, we’ve gotten informations from Paris that one of Bonaparte’s favourites, Marshal Junot, has been ordered to assemble an army,” Mountjoy said, almost furtively. “They’re calling it a Corps of Observation, and that ‘Boney’s’ Foreign Minister, Talleyrand, is in negotiations with Godoy in Madrid about marching across Spain to get the job done.”
“Christ on a crutch!” Lewrie hooted in sudden glee. “And the Dons are so lick-spittle they’d abide that?”
“London is trusting that they will not stand such an insult to their national pride, sir,” Mountjoy said with a sly and gleeful look of his own. “We’ve passed that on to ‘the Dowager,’ and Sir Hew relayed the rumour to his counterpart t’other side of The Lines, a General Castaños, in charge of all Spanish forces surrounding Gibraltar.
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