Kings and Emperors (8 page)

“The Spanish are proud enough to rise up,” Mountjoy said, looking glum. “But,
will
they, and will it
amount
to anything? There's the rub.”

“Then, let's all keep our fingers crossed,” Lewrie suggested. “And like my First Officer says they do at the Artillery School at Woolwich, it depends on holding your mouth just right, too. Christ, Mountjoy, cheer up! The prospects are good …
and,
the menu shows they've a berry duff for dessert!”

 

BOOK ONE

Nothing should be left to an invaded people but their eyes for weeping.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Aren't they pretty, sir?” Lt. Westcott said in glee as they stood atop the poop deck to watch the gunboat squadron, now a dozen in number, exercise in the bay.

“So long as it's someone else's bloody gunboat squadron, I'll allow that they look … smart,” Lewrie said, lowering his telescope. “Speaking of smart, has the dockyard sent us the paint we requested?”

“The Commissioner's clerk says that there's very little paint on hand, at present, unless we prefer green,” Westcott told him.

“Well, I don't,” Lewrie said with a growl. “Green? Mine arse on a band-box. What's that here for, the walls of the hospital?”

HMS
Sapphire
had spent the better part of the tumultuous Winter at sea off Ceuta, and what she needed was black paint to renew the upper-works of the hull, and whitish-cream buff paint to touch up the gunwale stripes along her gun-ports, which colour scheme was becoming the standard for the Royal Navy,
à la
Nelson.

“It may be some months before an adequate supply arrives, sir,” Westcott said. “I suppose the old girl will have to look … dowdy for a while more. Any more word from shore, sir?”

“It seems that Spanish spies are as good as ours,” Lewrie told him with a bark of mirth. “The Madrid papers printed accurate details of our planned attack on Geuta on the fourteenth of February. By the time General Spencer's main body came in to harbour here, it was given up as hopeless.”

The Atlantic had been fierce that Winter, driving most of the expeditionary force back to ports in England, though some ships with three thousand of Spencer's army
did
arrive at Gibraltar in late January much the worse for wear, and Sir Hew Dalrymple did send them on to Sicily, which occupying force had been reduced when London ordered Sir John Moore's eight thousand back to England, not back to Sicily. Now, Spencer had come, with nothing to do, and his remaining four thousand were added to the Gibraltar garrison, in case French Marshal Murat did indeed plan to lay siege to Gibraltar for the umpteenth time since 1704.

“Just waiting for the shoe to drop, we are, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie told him, strolling over to the windowed coach-top above his cabins to retrieve his pewter coffee mug and take a sip.

“Pray God it does drop, sir,” Westcott said with eagerness to be doing something more than blockading Ceuta, “and flings us into a purposeful action. I'm growing bored.”

“You've your mistress ashore to relieve that, surely,” Lewrie teased. Finding a wench had been Westcott's first act as soon as he stepped onto the Old Mole, long before Lewrie had found his.

“She proved faithless,” Westcott said, heavily scowling. “She found herself an Army Colonel with a fuller purse to keep her. We've been at sea so long, so
uselessly,
that she grew bored, too.”

“Ah, well,” Lewrie said in sympathy. “I'm sorry for that. By God, you'd think that Spain'd be up in arms, by now!”

French Marshal Murat crossed the border into Spain in the middle of February, they had since learned. On one pretext after another, the French had taken Pamplona, San Sebastian, Figueras, and Barcelona, and were reputedly bound for Madrid, just as Mountjoy had expected. So far, though, there were no agents' reports of any Spanish reaction. Another of Mountjoy's agents, nigh as dashing as Romney Marsh, captained a filthy trading vessel along the coasts of Andalusia, pretending to be a Spaniard. He carried orders and requests for information from informers and brought back fresh news from Spain, and made a fair profit trading Gibraltaran goods to Spaniards starved for grains and luxuries. The harsh Winter seas had penned him in one port or other for weeks on end, but John Cummings,
aka
Vicente Rodríguez, reported that news of the Spanish incursion had not yet reached the South of Spain, and it was
he
who had spread the news to the Andalusians. Now, here it was March of 1808, and the fuse to the powder keg had been lit, but so far, there was no bang!

“Boat ahoy!” one of the Midshipmen standing Harbour Watch shouted to an approaching boat.

“Message for your Captain!” one of the boatmen shouted back.

Lewrie and Westcott crossed the poop deck to the starboard side to see what the fuss was as the boat was rowed to the bottom of the entry-port, and a shoeless boy in his shirtsleeves scampered up the boarding battens to hand a letter over, then just as quickly got back down the battens and into the bows of the boat.

“A letter from shore, sir,” Midshipman Spears reported with a doff of his hat after he'd come up to the poop deck.

“Thankee, Mister Spears,” Lewrie said, turning the wax-sealed missive over to see that it was from Thomas Mountjoy. Once it was torn open, Lewrie grinned quickly, with a hitch of his breath. “I'm summoned ashore, instanter, Mister Westcott, for a discussion.”

“You think…?” Westcott hopefully asked.

“Fingers crossed, mouth held just right, all that. Continue with provisioning whilst I'm away,” Lewrie said, almost bounding to the quarterdeck and aft into his cabins for a quick change of clothes.

*   *   *

“Good morning, sir!” Mountjoy's assistant, and bodyguard, said with un-wonted good cheer as Lewrie entered Mountjoy's lodgings. Mr. Deacon was usually a cautious, guarded fellow who bore himself in total seriousness, but now his harsh features were split in a smile. “He's waiting for you, sir,” Deacon said, pointing a finger to the top of the stairs.

Lewrie trotted up the stairs and went out on the top-floor open-air gallery, where he found Mountjoy in his waistcoat, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, and his neck-stock discarded. He held a smuggled bottle of French champagne.

“We're celebratin' something, I trust?” Lewrie asked, pausing by the glazed double doors.

“They've done it! The bloody Spanish have at last done it!” Mountjoy whooped in glee. “A week ago … they're calling it the Tumult of Aranjuez, God knows why … it was too much for 'em, all those bloody French, all the cities taken over.…”

Is he insane, or drunk?
Lewrie had to wonder;
He's babblin'!

“The Spanish mobs have risen up, they've forced King Carlos to step down, and they've put Ferdinand on the throne, and for all that I know,
he's
finally arrested the Foreign Minister, Godoy, and named a new one! I fully expect to hear in a few days that that treaty with France is torn to shreds, too. Oh, they're teetering on the brink of changing sides, maybe raising armies to drive the French back home. Christ Almighty!” he yelled at the sky, and began to whirl about in an impromptu dance, putting Lewrie in mind of an Ottoman
dervish.
“Have a drink, Captain Lewrie! Have a whole bottle, hah hah!”

“Damned if I won't!” Lewrie hooted, and went to the iron table before the settee to pour himself a glass from a second open bottle.

Neither Mountjoy or Deacon had taken time to cool the champagne in a water-filled bucket or tub, so Lewrie felt as if his mouth was full of foam as he glugged down a goodly measure. He looked to the West, over towards Algeciras, then North to the Lines, and the Spanish fortifications beyond them.

“Mind if I borrow your telescope?” he asked. Mountjoy paid him no mind; he was still dancing and drinking from his bottle, so Lewrie stepped round him and bent down to see if the Spanish troops on the walls had heard the news, too, and if they had, what was their reaction. It was a fine astronomical telescope, able to fill the ocular with an image of the moon when pointed aloft at night.

Right, no reaction,
Lewrie told himself;
perhaps their officers haven't told 'em yet, or they haven't heard, themselves.

Some sentries under arms were slowly pacing their bounds atop the parapets, but most were leaning on the walls, some smoking their pipes or
cigarros,
and one un-kempt corporal was picking his nose and puzzling over what he'd gouged out. He slewed the tube over to look at Algeciras, and the mouths of the rivers that fed into the bay; the many Spanish gunboats were sitting empty at their moorings or along the quays beneath the fortifications there, and that enclave looked as somnolent as the Spanish Lines. A downward tilt showed Lewrie a close-up view of one of the British gunboats wheeling itself about in almost its own length as the exercises continued.

“Maybe you should send some letters cross the Lines,” Lewrie told his host. “I don't see any riots in the Spanish garrisons.”

“They're military,” Mountjoy gleefully stated. “They aren't
allowed
to riot. God, it'd be grand if Madrid sent General Castaños orders to march off and defend their country. Might be hard, though,” Mountjoy said, taking another deep swig from his bottle, and calming down. “I've heard that Murat's sent a small advance party to scout our lines, with lots of money and grain, which the Spanish really need. Who
knows
who in their army can be bribed to go along with the occupation of their own nation? Castaños may be too closely watched for him to take action on his own. Yet.”

“The Dowager must be over the moon,” Lewrie speculated, going to the settee to have a sit-down, and a refill of his wineglass.

“Damned
right
he is!” Mountjoy buoyantly said. “He's still in a quandary whether Gibraltar is threatened, but
very
pleased with the news. If the revolts spread, as we expect, we may have Spain as an ally, and a British army in Spain to assist them. Not from here, ye see … not 'til we know one way or another what else the Spanish will do … but from England. As soon as the weather at sea is improved, London will be sending an army to re-take Portugal, and you did
not
hear that from me. Maybe Sir John Moore, again.
Or,
we might launch ourselves into Southern Spain from here, depending.”

“Well, that's all grand news,” Lewrie said, scowling in deep thought, “but it don't signify to me, or
Sapphire.
That's soldier's doings, and I'd still be stuck here at Gibraltar, keepin' an eye on Ceuta.”

“Grand events, even so, Lewrie,” Mountjoy chortled.

“Aye, fun t'watch unfolding, like watchin' a play, with no part in it but t'clap and laugh,” Lewrie sourly commented. “Grand, hah!”

“Lord, but you're a hard man to please!” Mountjoy groused.

“Aye, I s'pose I am,” Lewrie admitted. “Last Summer's raids … those were just toppin' fine. We were
doing
something, killing Dons and smashing things, burning captured ships and semaphore towers. Now, it's … plodding off-and-on the same bloody headland, days on end.”

“You could be in charge of the gunboats,” Mountjoy pointed out. “Be thankful you're not. You could be ordered to join Admiral Collingwood's blockading squadron off Cádiz, Charles Cotton's off Lisbon, or do your plodding at Marseilles or Toulon as a
minor
part of the Mediterranean Fleet.”

Lewrie feigned a shiver of loathing for either of those choices. He no longer had a frigate, and would have no freedom of action to probe and raid inshore, and it would be bloody dull sailing in line-ahead behind larger ships of war, continually under the eyes of senior officers and their Flag-Captains. Except for single actions or small squadron actions in the Caribbean or Asian waters, there had been no grand engagements since Trafalgar, now three years before. France, and her puppet ally, the Batavian Dutch Republic, still built warships, but, once built they sat at their moorings, their crews idling, bored to tears with “river discipline” training, which was not the same as the experience gained through long spells at sea. The best of the Spanish navy had been crushed at Trafalgar, and blockaded into ports ever since, and might
never
dare come out again.

He'd helped in making them fearful a few months back in 1807, when he stumbled across a brace of large Spanish frigates off Cabo de Gata, East of Gibraltar. Fine ships, fine crews, gallant captains … with the gunnery skills of so many chipmunks, and he'd taken both on, getting to windward of them and keeping the wind gage through a two-hour battle, forcing one to strike and the other to limp off for the nearest port, sinking an hour later.

The way things are goin', I may never see an enemy at close broadsides again!
he fretted to himself;
Twenty-eight years in the Navy, it's been, and it's
all
been shot and powder stink!

He frowned heavily again as he pondered the possibility of Bonaparte's eventual downfall, and peace. What sort of life would he have, then? A decade or so on half-pay with no new active commission, slowly going up the list of Post-Captains, a meaningless promotion to Rear-Admiral of the Blue, then a slow ascent of
that
list as elder officers died?

I'll whore and drink myself to an early grave, damned if I won't!
he thought;
Just like my useless father!