H.M.S. COCKEREL l-6

by Dewey Lambdin

  They reached the cliffs, gasping with effort. Lewrie turned to see the French cantering south, in fairly good order, heading for the far side of the arrow-shaped bluff below the beach, where there was a way up and off; steeper than the one they'd descended. He spotted Lieutenant Colonel Buonaparte on his dapple-grey, patiently waiting as his lancers thundered up the draw past him, braving long-range musket fire as his dragoons formed an open-order vedette to screen the retreat.

  Buonaparte made his grey rear, stuck his arm in the air to wave the captured sword. He was smiling, damn his eyes!

  "I'll get it back, you bastard!" Lewrie howled in his loudest quarter-deck voice, jabbing a finger at the sword. "Je prendre mon…! One day, I'll find you! Je trouvez-vous! Je prendre de vous, mon…"

  Damme, what's Frog for "sword"?

  "Espece de salaud!" he roared instead, his voice echoing off rocks and hills. "Va te faire foutre!"

  Scabbarded, Buonaparte flipped the sword so the hilt was in his fist-raised it to his face in mock salute, laughed as his horse did another impressive rear. He may have had no English, and Lewrie might not have had anything close to fluent French-but he thought he understood well enough. With a saw at the reins, the colonel was gone in a moment, up the draw and out of sight.

  "Seflores, pronto!" a Spanish cavalry officer directed, skidding his mount to a sand-strewing halt near them. "Ingles? We go! Muy pronto! Darse! Hurry up!"

  Not another language lesson, not two in one day, Lewrie sighed. The officer kicked an elegantly booted foot out of the near-side stirrup, reached down to offer him a hand as his men trotted up to aid the rest with spare French mounts, whose owners lay crumpled on the sands, or the mounts of Spanish soldiers who'd been spilled trying to rescue them. Alan hoisted his foot, reached for the saddlehorn, and hung on as the officer spurred his charger back up the draw to the Hieres road.

  "A minute sooner," he muttered ungraciously beside his saviour. "Just a bloody minute sooner, thankee very much!"

  Nothing could have spared him the shame of losing his ship, of course. But to see that swaggerin' little bastard ride off with his sword in his hands…

  His very honour!

  VI

  Hic portus inquit mihi territat hostis has

  aeies sub nocte refert, haec versa Pelasgum

  terga vides, meus hic ratibus qui pascitur

  ignis

  .

  Lo! Here the enemy is affrighting our

  harbour, and here beneath the cover of

  night he renews the battle, and here,

  see! the backs of the Pelasgians in rout;

  this fire that devours the rafts is mine.

  – Valerius Flaccus

  Argonautica, Book II, 656-59

  Chapter 1

  He dined alone, dispiritedly, picking at his supper and pushing it about his plate more than he ate. As thoroughly blockaded by land as Toulon now was, there wasn't that much food any longer, and prices had gone through the roof. At least the wine was still good, and cheap.

  There were few other diners in the restaurant, half of them officers in strange uniforms, proud with gold or silver lace, sprigged in ornate, gewgawy appurtenances which, no matter their martial gaudiness, still made their wearers look like scared shopkeepers. Sardinians, Neapolitans, Redmontese, Spanish… Lewrie was one of the rare British officers not out on the outposts. Bleak as his mood was, the others seemed even more morose. Large liquid Don and Dago eyes, aswim with fear or self-pity, hesitant gestures, where before they chopped at the air or waved their arms in braggadocio. Soft, sibilant mutterings of defeated conversation, much shrugging and sighing… stopping occasionally, as the drumfire of the artillery barrages increased in tempo or volume. Or a shell crashed into the town itself.

  They'd been doing that a lot lately, the Frogs; lofting mortars into their own city, five or six rounds a day. Now they had the range. Kettledrums pounded, the candle flames wavered on his table, and glassware softly tinkled as siege guns tore loose upon Fort Malbousquet, and Fort Malbousquet responded. Worried looks were shared among the foreign officers, bleak little giggles in attempts at gallows humour.

  And the French… pausing for a moment, stoic faces frozen in what they called sang-froid. Damnit, but the French always had le mot juste, the perfect word or phrase, he sneered. Alan chewed on a slice of goose and swirled the cabernet sauvignon in his large wine glass, studying his wine through the stuck-in-a-bottle candle flame. Studying the Frogs, the other diners. Pere et maman, with their children. Old aristocrats still clinging to silks and satins, successful merchants in well-cut wool coats and waist-coats, the very image of moderate wealth and the latest styles. And so few of them still wearing their Bourbon-white cockades. The last few weeks they'd slowly shed them, like oak trees giving up their final leaves to the winter winds. On the outskirts of Toulon, it was said, the new style was red-white-and-blue Republican colours. And in the middle of town, there were hastily chalked or painted threats on walls, fresh each morning, no matter the patrols. Long, red-wool stocking caps were seen now in public, sported by sour-faced, hard-eyed commoner "patriots"… the sans culottes. Swaggering bullies who dared show the Tricolour, and glared at those who didn't, as if memorising faces and names. Later, they seemed to forebode. We'll know who you are… later.

  "M'sieur weesh?" his waiter asked, pointing to his half-eaten and bedraggled supper. An ubiquitous omelet, only two eggs per customer now, a last gamy, oily slice of overcooked goose, and a heel of bread aswim in the fats of half-burnt, half-cooked pommes de terre escallopes.

  "Non, merci," he replied sarcastically.

  "Plus de vin?"

  "Non. L'addition," Lewrie sighed. Nearly a shilling it cost, for what he'd have paid no more than four pence back home. And kicked the cook's arse for ruining it. He got to his feet, gathered up his hat and cloak, and departed.

  The others watched him leave in silence, daunted by the grim look on the naval officer's face, the unspoken sneer of disgust he bore when he deigned to glance in their direction. Who is he to sneer at us, they seemed to say… a "pinch-beck" Anglais in a ragged, too-large coat, in slop-trousers instead of a gentleman's knee breeches? Worn old Hessian boots, a plain blue civilian cloak, a hat that had seen a previous war… and that pitiful excuse for a sword!

  It was cold that night, cold and icily clammy, with a light wind off the sea. Street lanterns wore haloes of mist, and it smelled like it might rain before morning. Lewrie wrapped himself in the too-large and tatty coat purchased off another officer, grateful its lapels buttoned over each other. Until he received his quarterly draft from Courts', he was forced to live on Navy pay, and a borrowed forty pounds-half of that gone already for the hat, cloak and a mediocre smallsword of dubious temper, the best of a table piled with second-hand blades of even more uncertain character at a civilian shopkeeper's bargain sale.

  He walked downhill towards the harbour and the basin, listening to the drumming of the guns. The batteries on des Moulins and Reinier were blazing away, round the clock now. The Little Road had all but been abandoned. So fierce was their fire that no line-of-battle ship or floating battery could dare it for very long.

  The streets were suspiciously empty of strollers or late shoppers, even of whores and Corinthians. And where almost every shop window or appartement above had been open and ablaze with light, they were now dark and shuttered, or out of business "temporarily." A waggon creaked down the street, drawn by four heavy dray horses. Moans of wounded could be heard within-a hospital waggon bearing the day's detritus to Hopital de la Charite north of town, outside the walls. A half mile from the site of the latest disaster of two weeks before.

  The Republicans had massed a battery on the Heights d'Arenes west of Fort Malbousquet, twenty guns or better, and had begun a deluge of shellfire against that most important strongpoint, the key to the western side. Dundas and O'Hara had marched out next day on 30 November with 2,200 men: Spanish, Neapolitan, Sardinian, 400 of the few French Royalist t
roops, along with 300 of their precious British; a majority of the mobile reserves who weren't tied to fixed positions, the best of their mediocre, ill-matched lot.

  A brisk attack uphill had driven the French from their guns again. But instead of stopping there and consolidating, the troops had rushed on, down into a valley behind the Heights d'Arenes to attack the next-west eminence. But upon that bill, all behind it, was hidden the bulk of General Dugommier's main body, over 20,000; Carteau's men, Mouret's, thousands of soldiers Kellerman and Dugommier had brought in from Lyons and the north.

  It had been a sharp slaughter, then a rout, and the French drove the remnants scurrying into Fort Malbousquet. General O'Hara had been wounded and taken prisoner, attempting to rally the troops by the guns. Twenty British had died, ninety wounded, ninety-eight had gone missing, and the allied casualties had been just as severe. The French got their guns back intact. And were now putting them to good use.

  And the Austrians… damn their eyes, Lewrie silently fumed! God, how they'd sworn they were on their way, yet… Suddenly, the 5,000 men they'd promised from Italy couldn't be spared, and Rear-Admiral Gell and his squadron, waiting for weeks at Genoa and Vado Bay, had at last sailed back to Toulon, empty.

  Sardinians and Neapolitans… liars, too, Alan cursed. Their commissariats too incompetent, disorganised or lazy to arm, equip or train the men promised; no matter how much mon-ey'd been thrown at them, they weren't up to the task. In the spring… perhaps, for more money?

  "Fat lot of good they'll do us in the spring," Lewrie snarled in a harsh mutter. "Place doesn't have a month left in it."

  And British regiments. That was the worst disappointment. With their so-called allies so suspicious and jealous of England and each other, hedging bets for after the war, arguing points of pride and honour, not cooperating… what looked at times as nigh to treachery… they had need of stalwart British regulars more than ever.

  Yet where were they? Dundas and Grenville, the new prime minister William Pitt, the Younger… they'd settled for "war on the cheap." They planned long before the war started to fritter the Army away overseas in the West Indies, to destroy the economy of the French, to take the rich Sugar Isles they'd always lusted after. March up the Hooghly to Chandernagore above Calcutta, destroy the French Indian and Indian Ocean colonies. Destroy their trade and choke them to submission.

  That's where the bulk of the British Army had gone, there or into Holland with the Duke of York. And for the enterprise at Toulon, they could not spare one regiment more. And the Army was now doing what all white troops did in the tropics… dying by the battalion of Yellow Jack and malaria without firing a shot, of no use to anyone, gaining nothing, barely able to muster enough strength to take what they'd been sent for!

  Drumfire to the south. The Frogs had erected five new batteries in front of Fort Mulgrave on the Hauteur de Grasse, digging and trenching forward, moving nearer each day. If Mulgrave fell, there went Balaguer and L'Eguillette. And with them, any approach to Toulon 's basin, or any hope of sheltering ships in the Great Road, too.

  That little coxcomb Buonaparte's work, Alan suspected with a sour groan; aye, take joy of it, ya arrogant little bastard! They were quartered once again in the guardhouse by the dockyard gate. De Crillart spent his nights at home with his family, high up in the town, but his twenty or so surviving Royal Corps of Gunners bunked with Alan's fourteen. Not enough to make crews for two cutters or barges. He'd been assigned a dozen more, men cut adrift from ships off on God knew what missions, more survivors of brave but doomed adventures, those plucked from the sunken ruins of other gunboats that the French had wrecked. No more gun-boats for them, though. Floating batteries were a tad thin on the ground these days, as were the huge sea mortars. As were hollow explosive shells from the arsenals. And fuses and powder. The Poudriere and Fort Millaud had shut down their production after they'd run out of charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur… and Republican bursting-shell had begun to drum around them, threatening a tremendous explosion which would shave the hills level. They'd also run out of Royalist workmen who dared set foot in the places.

  No, Lewrie and his men were boatmen now, ferrymen equipped with cutters which shuffled supplies and such about under lugsail or oars to keep the coastline posts fed and armed, to bear wounded from Hauteur de Grasse to hospital, or scuttle between the line-of-battle ships and shore with replacements, rum, biscuit and salt rations for their hands detached ashore.

  The wind was picking up, ruffling his cloak and hat, but Alan stood his ground near the guardhouse gate, unwilling to go inside to another night of frowsty air and loneliness, cooped up alone in his miserable little room, with the stink of all those men below wafting up to him. There wasn't coal enough or wood enough to keep a warm fire going long enough to take off the chill, nor enough candles or oil to read by, what was the point; he'd lost all his books when Zele had gone down, and didn't have the patience to ruin his eyes trying to puzzle his way through something written in French anyway. No, he would spend another night, mittened and cloaked, abed with his eyes wide open, staring at the low ceiling 'til sleep came. Or pace the wharves along the basin until he was too tired to care.

  Something was moving on the esplanade besides himself. A woman, also cloaked and mittened, hobbling under the burden of a hard-leather portmanteau and a large cloth sack. Her face was concealed by her hood, and the sad straw brims of her bonnet, which the hood forced down either side of her face like horse blinkers, hunched against the cold winds.

  "Bonsoir, m'sieur," she drawled. "Etes-vous seul, ce soir?"

  Oh, a whore, he sighed to himself. For a moment he'd thought it might be a refugee, looking for shelter, or some girl moving to cheaper lodgings.

  "Seul, oui, mais…" he replied sourly, already dismissing her. "Alone, yes."

  "Ah, m'sieur Luray!" she cried suddenly, dropping her luggage to come to his side. "M'sieur lieutenant? C'est moi, Phoebe!" she exclaimed, folding back the hood of her cloak. "Vous… remember? Bonsoir!"

  Oh, poor Mister Scott's whore, he corrected himself.

  "Bonsoir, Phoebe," he grinned. "Haven't seen you around, not… not since Mister Scott passed over." He shrugged in sympathy. She and Scott had become regulars with each other. He might have become all of her trade, the few weeks before his death.

  "C'est tragique, pauvre Barnaby," she pouted. " 'E waz ze bon… good man. Tres gentil avec moi, beaucoup de bonte, ver' kin'. Et genereux. Generous? C'est dommage." She shrugged. She did not say that Barnaby Scott had been gentle, just… kindly. In fact, Lewrie thought he'd dealt rather brusquely with her; too dead-set against all French people, even the one he'd been topping, to be civil or gentlemanly.

  "Now?" Alan inquired. "Comment allez-vous, maintenant, mademoiselle Phoebe?"

  "Ah, je suis tres seule, m'sieur," she replied, snuffling from the cold, though with a game little smile. "Am ver' 'lone. Avant Barnaby nous a quitte… 'e lef us, j'arretez mes affaires… ze beeznees I stop? Encore, je suis la pauvre jeune fille de joie mais… mes affaires ver'… bad. Pour tous les courtesans, all. Gentilhommes 'ave no time, no monnaie, phfft! Too beezy… too pauvre. Too effrayant. Frighten?"

  That was another ominous portent to Lewrie's mind-that men in the enclave no longer had coin or time enough to waste on the whores of Toulon -too wrapped up in fears for their safety, too concerned about plotting their escapes with their whole skins to rattle? He'd expected the opposite would be true, that they'd be kicking her door down. Rantipoling always seemed to increase in the face of impending disaster, took men's minds off doom for a while. Like that old adage, "Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die"?

  "I waz 'ope you be 'ere, encore, m'sieur Luray," Phoebe told him quickly, taking his arm and sounding insistent.

  "Me? Whatever for?" he scoffed, albeit gently, though he thought he knew already. Phoebe needed money, and a new gentleman-protector.

  "Apres votre navire a coulee… you' ship sink?" she explained. "An' you tell me, si chretien… so
gently, concer-nant Barnaby, zen j'sais… I know vous 6tes l'homme, si prevenant et bienviellant. You 'ave ze kin'… considerate 'eart? D'avance, you waz toujours bonte avec moi, m'sieur Luray, ver' gentle an' kin'. Non speak severe to me, as putain. Toujours as la jeune dame, ze young lady! Si charmant et amu-sant!" She brightened, sounding almost wistful, but sobered quickly as she sped on with what Alan was certain was a tale of woe.

  "Now I am… in ze trouble?" the girl coaxed. "Oh, merde alors, ze trouble terrible, m'sieur! D'abord, I s'ink of you, seulement… on'y? I come 'ere, 'ope you are 'ere, you le plus, of all ze Anglais Navy? You, mos' of all." Phoebe fought a flood of tears, snuffling again, wiping her nose on her mitten. "Eef you do not help me, m'sieur, I am los'! Mais… I know, you 'ave pity vers moi! I know you 'elp me!"

  "Phoebe, uhm…" Lewrie sighed. "Look, it's so cold out here. Si froid? Let's go over there, through the dockyard gate, out of the wind." He picked up her traps, already beginning to regret it. Once in the lee of a stout stone wall, in more privacy, he turned to her. "Now, what sort of trouble are you in, petite Phoebe?"

  "I am so effrayant, m'sieur Luray," she began, shivering with more than cold, stepping closer to him. "I mus' 'ave votre protection! Plais, mon Dieu, you weel protec' moi, plais?" the tiny mort entreated, her soft brown eyes huge in a pinched little gamine face. "Les Republicans, les sans culottes…" she sneered for a moment, almost spit upon the pavement despite her fear, "les paysans connardes, wan zey reprendront… zey tak' Toulon, I die. Mais oui, I know zis! Merde alors, zey keel me! On mes murs et ma porte… walls an' door? Les sales patriotes, zey write: 'ere reside une peau de vache degueu-lasse, la sale putain des ennemies Britanniques cracra'! Zat I am ze traitresse?" She weakened and began to wail helplessly, though still with an undercurrent of anger and resentment. "La sale putain des aristos, hein?"