Kings and Emperors (41 page)

“You went ashore?” Cotton marvelled, squinting.

“I wanted to see it, one way or another, sir,” Lewrie said. “The slopes were carpetted with French dead, and thirteen pieces of artillery were captured. It was … grand!”

“Hmm, well,” Cotton said, referring to that damnable treaty once more. “I don't see any mention as to the disposition of the French warships, or the Russian squadron, at Lisbon. What were you told of them, Captain Lewrie?”

“Nothing, sir,” Lewrie told him. “I don't believe that they were even considered, but that's the Army for you. Perhaps Sir Hew Dalrymple might've
imagined
that the French ships would escort their army back to France, but that would be ridiculous.”

“
Damn
what Dalrymple imagined, or wants!” Cotton said, slamming a fist on his desk hard enough to make his pens jump. “I have long planned to find a way to bring them to action, or make prize of them, and by God, I
will
! As for Admiral Senyavin's Russian squadron, well … Russia isn't an out-right belligerent,
yet,
and Napoleon and the Tsar had it out last year at the Battle of Friedland, so it isn't clear if they and the French are allies, either. The Russians might not make Good Prize, but I could force them to intern themselves back in England 'til London tells me different.”

“Aye, sir,” Lewrie agreed. “No sense in allowin' them to roam free if they are, or will become, French allies.”

“Does your summary say anything about what constitutes ‘personal possessions,' Captain Lewrie?” Cotton asked, squinting at the documents more closely. “And, what the Devil does it mean, that ‘the export of specie will be permitted'?”

“This is the first I've heard of it, sir,” Lewrie had to admit, “but it sounds very much like a license to steal. Damned Frogs.”

“I've a few sources of information from Lisbon, you know,” the Admiral slyly boasted. “That Foreign Office fellow at Gibraltar…”

“Mister Thomas Mountjoy, sir?” Lewrie prompted.

“Aye, that's the one,” Cotton said. “He recently managed to get one of his skulking types into Lisbon, overland from Ayamonte on the Spanish border, who sent me a note by one of my regular fisherman informants … signs himself
Aranha,
which means ‘Spider.' He said that the French brought portable mints with them when they invaded. Made no sense at the time, but … that would be a sly way to melt down all their loot from cathedrals, churches, monasteries, and wealthy homes, and turn silver and gold to French coins. Just one more way that the Dowager's been gulled. This agent's latest says that Junot is hiring five neutral Danish ships to carry his own personal ‘baggage'! They fully intend to make off with the spoils of their conquest in
spite
of this damned treaty! Simply appalling!”

“Ehm, this Spider chap,” Lewrie asked, sure that he knew the agent's identity. “Are his messages … does he sound a tad insane?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” the Admiral confirmed for him.

“Know him,” Lewrie said with a shake of his head. “Well, met him once. He was in Madrid, before the Spanish revolted, and helped it along. He's daft as bats.”

Romney bloody Marsh!
Lewrie thought;
How's he still
alive?

“But, incredibly brave and clever,” Admiral Cotton said with a firm nod of praise.

“Anything else you wish to know, sir?” Lewrie asked, finishing his cup of tea. “If not, I must be off to Gibraltar, to deliver General Drummond his copy of the treaty.”

“Good!” Sir Charles Cotton boomed. “I now recall where I've heard your name before, Captain Lewrie. The newspapers, and the
Naval Chronicle.
Quite the dashing and active frigate captain, and more fortunate than most when it comes to prize-money. Not to be uncharitable, but, those French ships are mine, and my squadron's. We've all been banking on them, and I trust you would not wish to dilute the pot and deprive an older man his long-denied due, hah!”

“God no, sir!” Lewrie said with a laugh. “You're more than welcome to the spoils, tempting though it is to see the French humbled, and tour Lisbon, at last.”

“So you will be off at once,” Admiral Cotton sort-of-asked, one brow up in worry that he might linger, after all, for a few hundred pounds of profit, with a deep scowl to warn him that he shouldn't.

“Can't even stay long enough for a second cup of tea, sir,” Lewrie vowed as he got to his feet. “And, may I wish you great joy of your coming success at Lisbon.”

“Capital, simply capital!” Admiral Cotton barked with great satisfaction as he, too, rose to see Lewrie to the entry-port.

*   *   *

When HMS
Sapphire
coasted to a stop and dropped her anchor off the Old Mole at Gibraltar, it was evident that the grand news which Mountjoy had carried from Vimeiro was already known from one end of the town to the other. Bands were parading, and all the battlements were fluttering with Union Flags everywhere one looked. The faint sounds of drunken cheers made their way out to the ship, and some daytime fireworks were being let off in enthusiasm.

The mood was not so merry at the Convent, though, when Lewrie handed over the copy of the Convention of Cintra to Major-General James Drummond. Lewrie had had no dealings with the man so far, but that worthy struck him at once as a much more active, intelligent, and capable officer than Dalrymple.

“Hmm,” Drummond grumbled as he read it through a second time, still dis-believing. “Quite extraordinary, even astonishing. Not to criticise my predecessor, but … it appears the
French
wrote it and our senior officers slavishly surrended to
them
! Damme, we had them in the bag, then they just let them wiggle free!”

“It's worse, sir,” Lewrie gloomily told him, repeating what he had gotten from Admiral Sir Charles Cotton, and Romney Marsh's mystifying despatches. “Junot's loading five ships with his own loot, and the mints have been workin' round the clock. Napoleon may end up with as much solid coin as he got when he sold Louisiana, and gets an entire army back, with all their arms. Well, we get to keep all their artillery, about two-dozen waggons full of powder, shot, all their stores, cavalry mounts and draught animals, and over twenty thousand rounds of ammunition. Once Lisbon harbour is ours, a lot of that could be useful to the Spanish. All in all, though, Portugal ends up completely looted. The cupboard's bare.”

“I would have made them
march
back to France,” Drummond said with a derisive snort, “if they
had
to be set free. Ideally, I would have imprisoned them all, but for the cost of
feeding
the bastards. Bah! How could we have settled for this?”

“I'd've stripped them naked and made them cross the Pyrenees with their thumbs up their arses, on their heels and elbows, sir,” Lewrie said, repeating his jape to Major Hughes.

“That might have gone a
bit
beyond the recognised rules of war, Captain Lewrie,” General Drummond replied, though the comment awoke a wry grin on his phyz. “You've shared this with the Foreign Office agent, yet?”

“Not yet, sir,” Lewrie said. “He's my next stop.”

“Well, I won't keep you,” Drummond said, pacing over to his large map pinned to a board. Instead of Dalrymple's map of Spain, Portugal, and his pet project of taking the fortress at Ceuta, the General's was of Gibraltar and its immediate environs. He pulled a face, not yet dimissing Lewrie, though Lewrie had already risen to his feet, hat under his arm. “At least we have Wellesley's triumph to celebrate, and that's the main thing … that, and the ousting of the French from Portugal. This…!” Drummond said, waving the sheaf of paper about, “does not affect us here. We shall celebrate and put a good face on it. I'm told that all the regimental messes are co-operating to stage a grand supper ball, a
fête champêtre
, even if Italian sparkling wines must stand in for champagne proper. Are you still in port, sir, be assured that you and your officers shall be invited.”

“Thankee kindly, sir, and I look forward to it,” Lewrie said, perking up. “I'll take my leave, then. Good day, sir.”

*   *   *

It took Lewrie a hot, sweaty hour of walking to hunt up Thomas Mountjoy after that; Pescadore's, Mountjoy's lodgings, the fraudulent offices of his Falmouth Import & Export Company in the lower town, and the Ten Tuns Tavern. He finally bearded him in his den at his upper-town lodgings, having missed him somehow in transit.

“Ah, Lewrie, back at last, are you?” Mountjoy said jovially as he sat out on his awninged gallery overlooking the harbour, and at his ease following a fine mid-day meal. “You look hot. A cool wine?”

“Yes, thankee,” Lewrie said, sitting down on an upholstered iron chair and fanning himself with his hat. “I thought you'd use me as your private yacht to get back here.”

“News of our success just had to be gotten to General Drummond, and the Spanish
Junta
at Seville. Sorry 'bout that,” Mountjoy said.

“You really should have hung around a tad longer,” Lewrie chid him as Mr. Daniel Deacon came outside with a freshly-opened bottle of sprightly floral Spanish wine and an extra glass. “Hallo, Deacon, and how d'ye keep?”

“Main-well, sir,” Deacon said, pouring all round.

“Celebrating still?” Lewrie asked. “A bit premature, that. As I said, you really should have stayed long enough to hear the details of the terms that Dalrymple, Burrard, and the French thrashed out.”

“Mmm, well … what are they?” Mountjoy had to ask, and Lewrie took joy of being the source of information that the spy-master did not know; it was rare that
that
shoe was on
his
foot.

“Well, first, the French will evacuate all their troops from every inch of Portugal,” Lewrie told him. “We get it all back at one blow.” And as they cheered that, he took a welcome sip of his wine. “But…” he added, sticking a finger in the air, “they get to sail back to France, in
British
ships, with all their arms, colours, and … personal possessions, which means whatever loot they'd stolen from Portugal. And, their
pay
chests,” Lewrie said, scowling, as he explained about the portable mints, the ships that Marshal Junot hired for his booty. “I heard that General Wellesley wanted to march down to Torres Vedras at once, keep the initiative, and box the rest of Junot's troops in at Lisbon, but that was scotched. The whole thing has simply turned to shit, a great, steaming pile of it!”

“My God, the lack-wits!” Mountjoy gravelled, after a minute of slack-jawed amazement. He tossed off his wine at one go. “We've been diddled! How incredibly … stupid!”

“Still, we beat them, sir,” Deacon said. “I would have loved to have seen it, myself. And we get Portugal back.”

“I went ashore with my Ferguson rifled musket, and saw it right from the firing line,” Lewrie told him, “and yes, it was grand to see. The French column can't beat the British line, and rolling platoon volleys.”

“Portugal free, and the Spanish revolt has driven the French North of the Ebro River,” Mountjoy stuck in, seeking
any
solace. “If Spanish math is to be trusted, ‘Boney's' invasion has cost him over fourty thousand killed, wounded, and captured, and King Joseph Bonaparte's fled Madrid for Burgos, maybe as far as Vitoria.”

“And, we've been told that General Sir John Moore is on his way to Lisbon,” Deacon added, looking for another bright spot. “General Sir David Baird is to land another army at Corunna in Northwest Spain, too, and they might be able to unite and drive the French from the rest of Spain.”

“Lisbon's where your boy, Romney Marsh is, now,” Lewrie took a great joy in relating, loving Mountjoy's astonishment. “However he managed that. He's been sending Admiral Cotton useful news.”

“I'd rather
not
know,” Mountjoy gawped. “The details would scare me out of a year's growth! I got one note from him from Seville, then another from Ayamonte, then he dropped off the face of the earth. I didn't know he was fluent in Portuguese, but then he would be, wouldn't he? French, Spanish, Latin, Greek, he's as daft as you are, Lewrie. The two of you are of a piece! Playing private soldier, my Lord! You do anything to relieve your boredom, anything to smell gunpowder.”

“Nonsense, I was just witnessing history,” Lewrie demurred.

“Well,
there's
a faithless bitch that'll put you in the ground, if you're not careful,” Mountjoy cautioned. “History, hah!”

“Can't do without me, is it?” Lewrie teased as he sat back down with his re-fill. “Me, or your private navy? Speaking of that, I suppose I'm still under your orders? Do ye have anything in the works for me to do?”

“More arms deliveries,” Mountjoy idly said with a shrug. “Do some scouting of the cities along the coast where the French are holed up, the forts. I may have you sail to Lisbon to retrieve our mystery man, now that we occupy the place.”

“I promised Maddalena that she'd see Lisbon someday,” Lewrie said with a fond smile. “Speaking of, if ye have no more questions for now, I'll see you both at the ball.”

“What ball?” Mountjoy asked with a scowl.

“The garrison officers are poolin' resources t'throw one, and I'm told I'll be invited,” Lewrie said, tossing off the last of his glass and getting to his feet again. “I expect you both will be, as well, so … shave close, bathe, and brush your teeth, hmm?”

*   *   *

Back on the street, Lewrie set a fast pace South along the quayside, threading his way impatiently through carters, barrow men, and half-drunk sailors. As
Sapphire
had come in under reduced sail, he had peered closely at the rented lodgings, and, sure enough, Maddalena had come out onto the balcony and had enthusiastically waved a tea towel in welcome.