A Hard, Cruel Shore

by Dewey Lambdin

  As his cutter was stroked towards the vast commercial piers, a second boat under Lt. Harcourt set out for the store ship with another list of things needed to replenish.

  Maybe the master of the store ship’ll know who t’salute round here, Lewrie thought.

  * * *

  Soldiers, my God … bloody Redcoats! The quays teemed with troops from the Quartermasters, the Artillery, and not one of them had the first clue where anything was. Even the Provosts who policed the city were struck dumb by Lewrie’s request as to where the Prize-Courts could be found. “Dunno, sir … Admiralty Court, ahn’t it on a ship out there?… Think it moight be way uphill, sir … Post Office? For letters d’ye mean, sir? ’Aven’t any idear, sir.”

  There were wholesale lots of Portuguese soldiery present, but Lewrie’s poor language skills were of no avail, either. Every time he began with “Bom dia, falar Inglese?” he got back enthusiastic shouts of “Viva l’Inglaterra!” and not much else. At least the Portuguese soldiers looked as fine as British troops.

  That could not be said for the loosely organised mobs of “volunteers” who idled in front of cafes, wine bars, taverns, or street corners, some of them engaged in laughable parodies of “square bashing drill”, armed any-old-how, with everything from hatchets and butcher knives to boar spears, lances, fowling pieces to rusty muskets. At least they seemed eager to fight, and were full of appreciation for anyone British.

  Lewrie ended up following many false leads, up narrow cobbled streets that were rather steep, and hard on the ankles if the cobblestones were too loose or too irregular. The lower Baixa district was laid out in a proper grid, but above and to either direction along the Tagus turned positively medieval, narrow and winding. After an hour or two, he felt that he had been led on a wild-goose chase, or a snipe hunt. At last he wound his way back downhill to the quays fronting the Baixa, continually pestered by begging children, his feet hurting, and his leg muscles crying out for a long sit-down. Trooping up such steep streets, then down again, nigh a mile or two of walking, Lewrie reckoned by then, was simply too much to ask of a sailor!

  He reached a tavern with its large double doors spread wide in welcome, almost limped in, and sat himself down at a rickety table, free of beggars or too-cheerful volunteers, at last.

  “Bom dia, senhor,” an aproned waiter said.

  “Bom dia. Cerveja, por favor?” Lewrie replied, fanning himself with his bicorne. A moment later and a pint mug of beer was placed before him, costing only five centimos. He handed over his usual sixpence coin, which delighted the fellow into more “Viva l’Inglaterra!”

  “Viva Portugal,” Lewrie replied, then drank deep.

  Hmmph! he thought after a second deep swig; At least the town’s not mounded with filth and garbage any longer.

  The last time he’d been in Lisbon, just after the French surrender and evacuation, some streets were clogged with vast piles of trash, offal, and garbage, swarming with flies, mice, and rats, some streets appearing as if a good rain had sluiced an avalanche downhill to where it clogged up like a log jam, leaving a long, foetid slug-trail in its wake. Some said it was because the French had shot all the stray dogs which usually dealt with any edible garbage, forcing the new-come British to think that Lisbon was the filthiest city they ever had seen, and the Portuguese even lazier and more used to dirt than the Spanish!

  He could almost see the lemony facades of the Praça do Comércio and all the mansions built on the centuries of wealthy trading from the Portuguese empire, the vast plaza with its neatly trimmed decorative bushes and flowering plantings, the stately trees that shaded it all, and …

  “Oh, my Christ!” Lewrie gawped aloud.

  Just up the street which followed the course of the quays and the river sat a neat pale-yellow-fronted building with a signboard that declared that the offices of the Falmouth Import-Export Company were inside. That had been the false front that Foreign Office’s Secret Branch had used at Gibraltar, and what were the odds that someone in the skulking-spying trade hung his hat there, too! Perhaps Thomas Mountjoy, their chief agent at Gibraltar, had removed to be closer to the scene of the action.

  “Just damn ’em all,” Lewrie muttered under his breath.

  Lewrie finished his beer at a slow, deliberate pace, steeling himself to call upon those offices. Long ago, ’tween the wars when he’d still been a Lieutenant idling about on half-pay, Secret Branch had roped him in on an expedition to India and Canton in China, then a romp all over the China Sea and the Philippines, a neck-or-nothing, dangerous business, run by a cold, sneering, top-lofty throat cutter and back-stabber, one Zachariah Twigg.

  Secret Branch had found Lewrie to be a useful gun-dog, and over the years, he had gotten dragged back into dealings that, had he one minute’s warning, he would have run from, screaming. He and Sapphire most recently had been given Independent Orders to serve as Thomas Mountjoy’s one-ship Navy in 1807 for raids along the Andalusian coast, and the delivery and retrieval of spies and their messages.

  It was understandable, therefore, that the prospect of going in to call upon whomsoever was the chief agent in Lisbon made Lewrie a tad bilious, or made his bowels feel a little looser than normal.

  “Hang it,” Lewrie said at last, “nothing for it.” He got to his feet, tossed the waiter a “thankee”, and crossed the street.

  * * *

  There was a thin and gangly young fellow manning a desk in the outer office who looked up as the bell over the door tinkled when he opened it. “Good morning, sir. I fear you have the wrong place. We are a commercial trading company, not a chandlery.”

  “Who’s the chief agent, Thomas Mountjoy, or Daniel Deacon?” Lewrie asked. “Some other sneaky fellow? Please inform whoever it is that Captain Sir Alan Lewrie has come to call.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you mean, sir … Sir Alan,” the young fellow stammered, looking shocked that anyone other than another Secret Branch spook saw through the facade. “The manager of the firm is Mister Mountjoy, but…”

  “Just announce me, lad,” Lewrie insisted. “I promise that I won’t prowl through any classified documents while you do so.”

  Very reluctantly, and scanning the innocuous outer office as if to fix it all in his mind should anything be pilfered or dis-lodged, the young man opened the door to the inner offices a mere crack, and edged through the narrow gap sideways, like a house-breaker. The door was not only firmly shut, but Lewrie heard the clank of a key turning in a lock.

  “Damn my eyes! Who?” someone shouted inside. A moment later and the lock was turned again, the door flung open wide, and Thomas Mountjoy came bustling out. “Well, just damn my eyes!” he said once more, offering his hand, “Captain Lewrie! Where the Devil did you spring from? Hellish-grand to see you! Come on in!”

  Lewrie was quickly shown into the inner sanctum, as bland and innocuous as the outer offices, then up the stairs to the first storey where Mountjoy kept lodgings. Like his former “digs” at Gibraltar, there was a wide and spacious gallery overlooking the street, the quays, and the river, topped with a shading awning. In one corner sat Mountjoy’s powerful telescope on a tripod stand.

  “Wine, first,” Mountjoy decided, “a lovely rosé vinho verde. Now, where did I lose the cork-puller this time? Saw you sail in … no clue it was you. The Commodore’s pendant put me off. A squadron, is it? Good for you. And such a swarm of prizes you fetched in, too. Where did you get them all?”

  “French convoys all along the northern Spanish coast, Corunna to San Sebastian,” Lewrie told him, finally getting a word in. “They were just cruisin’ along, fat, dumb, and happy, with no escorts about. Ah, thankee,” he said as he got his first glass of the fruity, sweet vinho verde. The bottle glistened with water, fresh drawn from a tub to cool it, and it went down marvellously well. “How are you?”

  “Oh, doing just topping-fine,” Mountjoy happily stated as he took a seat across from Lewrie in one of the well-padded chairs that Lewrie recalled from M
ountjoy’s Gibraltar aerie. “London decided I should remove here, now that it’s determined that Britain will hold Portugal, and have another go in Spain. Gibraltar’s become a backwater for now, unless the French march down and lay siege. Deacon’s still with me, but London’s placed another man in my place at Gibraltar, with his own team of agents.”

  Thomas Mountjoy had, long ago before, been Lewrie’s clerk at sea when he’d had HMS Proteus, before Mountjoy had been beguiled by Zachariah Twigg to go into his line of work.

  Mountjoy didn’t look like the popular image of a spy; but then who truly did? He was most un-remarkable, which was probably an asset; brown-eyed, brown-haired, a very average-looking fellow now in his mid-thirties or so, soberly dressed, mostly free of revealing or dangerous vices, and to most observers a mild, adequately educated, and inoffensive sort, easily dismissed.

  After Lewrie’s experiences with the likes of Zachariah Twigg, James Peel … “’tis Peel, James Peel” … Mountjoy’s second, Daniel Deacon, and a few others who’d served the aforementioned, most especially that murderous maniac, Romney Marsh, who might still be roaming about Spain or Portugal with his pet dagger, Thomas Mountjoy seemed tame in comparison, an organiser, not a cut-throat. Though Lewrie always suspected that he must have a dangerous side, a well-disguised one. Mean t’say, he thought; What was trainin’ in spy-craft for?

  “And you were sent to call upon me?” Mountjoy puzzled, shaking his head. “No one’s told me about it. Secondary orders, for us…”

  “Good God, no, Mountjoy,” Lewrie hooted with glee. “I’ve spent half the morning stumbling round Lisbon tryin’ t’find the Post Office and the Prize-Court, saw your signboard, and thought you’d know where the Hell they are, if anyone did!”

  “Oh! That’s simple!” Mountjoy exclaimed, looking relieved. “I’ll show you the way, after we’ve polished off this vinho verde. This time round, my brief is more oriented to the land, anyway, working with the army, cobbling up decent maps of the countryside, which General Sir John Moore didn’t have, sadly. Finding where the French are garrisoned, and in what numbers, that sort of thing.”

  “I was at the evacuation of Corunna,” Lewrie told him. “It was a damned shame that Moore had no idea how rough and trackless the interior of Spain was before he set out. What happened to his army was simply pitiful.

  “You say we’re goin’ back into Spain? This spring?” Lewrie asked. “With what?”

  “Well, there’s strong rumours that General Sir Arthur Wellesley will be coming back to command the army, after the good showing that he made at Roliça and Vimeiro,” Mountjoy told him, squirming about in his chair and leaning forward to impart his news, as if it was secret. “For the last six months or so, General Cradock has held Lisbon with about ten thousand British troops, and the Portuguese, some of our remnants of Moore’s army that got evacuated from Vigo, and the garrison that Moore left here, originally. General Beresford, remember him? He’s been whipping the Portuguese back into shape, recruiting, training, weeding out the chaff of the Portuguese officer corps … Do you know, there’s some of their generals in charge of fortresses that have never seen them, just loaf about Lisbon? He’s stiffened them with British officers and senior sergeants, and they look about as good as any British soldiers, now, fully armed, shod, provisioned, given everything they need. There’s about twenty thousand of them, by now, foot, horse, and artillery.

  “Speaking of fortresses,” Mountjoy happily went on, “there’s one at a place called Badajoz, on the border with Spain, that was just in awful condition, and Beresford’s having it rebuilt and strengthened.”

  “Badajoz,” Lewrie mused over Mountjoy’s semi-native Portuguese pronunciation, “sounds like a bad sneeze.”

  “Oh, don’t it, just,” Mountjoy gaily agreed. “It’s like a magnet for all those eager volunteer sods. I wish the ones loafing about in Lisbon would move on there. Can’t even stick one’s head out of the door without being mobbed with Viva l’Inglaterra!”

  “At least they seem to like us,” Lewrie commented.

  “Immensely,” Mountjoy agreed. “So, what brings you to Lisbon? Is this your new base of action?” he asked as he topped up their wine glasses.

  “Aye, for now,” Lewrie told him, “though it is rather a long trip to the coast of Northern Spain and back. I was hoping to work closer, from Oporto, say.”

  “Oh, that’s out, for now,” Mountjoy objected, pulling a face. “The French have it. Marshal Soult crossed back into Portugal and took the city. God, what a massacre he made! Portuguese soldiers and volunteer militia slaughtered, civilians too. It didn’t signify to him. There was a bridge of boats cross the Douro River, simply packed with fleeing townspeople. Broke under the weight, Soult shelled it, either way it broke and thousands were drowned.

  “Now, Marshal Ney, he’s in charge of your new patch, Galicia and Cantabria provinces, and having a very hard time of it from the Spanish partisan raiders, the guerreros. From the reports I have gotten so far, they’re finally making an impact. So, too, are Portuguese partisans round Oporto. The French hold the territory where they stand, within a long musket shot, and no further … have to travel in large units, because the smaller units are found stripped, looted of their arms and such, and most appallingly dead.

  “As for their other armies, Marshal Victor’s last position we think is round Mérida, stretching down toward Madrid, and there is another large army under a General Laplisse near Ciudad Rodrigo … oh, but that’s all soldiers’ doings, none of interest to you.”

  “Well, takin’ ships that feed Marshal Ney do interest me,” Lewrie said with a laugh. “That vainglorious bastard. Deprivin’ him of his horse shoes and nails might slow his famous cavalry down.”

  “And that’s always a good thing,” Mountjoy heartily seconded. “From all I’ve read about him, Ney is either the bravest cavalryman in history, or simply too stupidly daft to see the dangers. Hmm … much like you, perhaps?” he added with a sly look.

  “I don’t go courtin’ death like he does,” Lewrie objected, “but I will fight if I have to.”

  “But so often!” Mountjoy said with a roll of his eyes. “Ehm … have you heard from Maddalena Covilhā lately?”

  Damned spies, Lewrie thought; I’ll bet he has, knows all about what’s happened at Gibraltar.

  “I wrote her, soon as we got back to England,” Lewrie told him, “and wrote her again before I hoisted my broad pendant and set sail, saying that I’d be working out of Lisbon, but if she wrote me back, her letters haven’t caught up with me, yet. I imagined that she’d be excited about it. I sort of promised her that she’d see Lisbon someday, like she’s always wanted. Do you know anything about her? She hasn’t taken up with an army officer in my absence, has she?”

  “She called upon me, just before I sailed here,” Mountjoy told him, refilling their glasses yet again and peering owlish to see how much was left in the bottle. “Worried about you, all that … and about her own prospects if you didn’t come back, or went down with your ship. It was a stormy winter when you set out for Corunna, remember.”

  “How well I know it.” Lewrie nodded agreement, thinking it time to trot out the tale of his lightning strike.

  “I assured her that you’d be back, eventually,” Mountjoy went on. “And if you didn’t, you’d left her in decent prospects, so she’d not have to find herself another protector for some time. Her lodging paid for another six months or so, some funds at the garrison bank?”

  “Aye, I did,” Lewrie said. “More than enough for passage here if she wished.”

  “Recall that I once considered putting Maddalena on my payroll,” Mountjoy reminded him. “She’d’ve made a grand listener in the markets, the chop-houses, and no one would ever suspect her. Then, there are her linguistic skills … Portuguese, Spanish, English, some Italian, maybe even French by now, I don’t know,” Mountjoy said with a shrug, and a chuckle. “On the strength of those talents, I recommended her to my replacement, to spy fo
r him and serve as translator, perhaps aid him with our forged news accounts.”

  “Still doing those are you?” Lewrie asked. When the French had marched into Spain, just after conquering Portugal, early on he and Mountjoy had cobbled together drawings from Lieutenant Westcott and Midshipman Fywell depicting French atrocities which, strictly speaking, hadn’t yet occurred, along with fake newspaper articles to infuriate the Spanish people into rebellion against their useless old king, and becoming a British ally. They had kept the Gibraltar Chronicle’s presses busy, and well paid, to boot.

  “Of course we are,” Mountjoy replied, beaming. “War by the printing press is all the ‘crack’ these days, and London has taken it up, wholeheartedly. Earned me creditable notice and approval from my superiors, too, thank you very much.”

  “And I got no credit for it?” Lewrie groused, or pretended to.

  “Of course not, sir!” Mountjoy hooted. “Credit for such subtle skullduggery can’t go to a tarry old sea-dog!”

  “Just a simple sailor, me,” Lewrie frowned. “Ah, well. So … did your replacement take her on?”

  “Haven’t a clue, sorry,” Mountjoy said, “though, if you wish her to remove to Lisbon, I could use him to aid her along, claiming that Maddalena is needed on my staff here. I really could use her.”

  “I may take you up on that, Mountjoy,” Lewrie was quick to accept, “if she’s still of a mind, and wishes t’stay under my protection. We’ll see what the next mail brings.”

  “Speaking of mail,” Mountjoy said, finishing his wine in three quick slurps, “I still have to direct you to the Post Office, and the Prize-Court offices. Show us ‘heel-taps’ and we’ll be off.”