Kings and Emperors (2 page)

“Bloody idle … usurper,” Lewrie muttered to the dog, smiling even so, then raised his telescope to watch the gunboats manoeuvre.

With wig-wagged hand-held flags, Harcourt and Elmes directed their sections of gunboats into line-ahead, headed out as if to row towards Algeciras and challenge the Spanish, then wheeled them into two separate groups in line-abreast … very raggedly, Lewrie thought, even if it was the sailors' first try, but he willed himself to be patient.

The next evolution that he and his officers had discussed would be a bit harder. The 12-pounder guns in the boats' bows were fixed on wheeled carriages, and the whole boat must be slewed about to aim them. Harcourt and Elmes would order their boats to wheel about in their own lengths as if they had fired and would retire to re-load. One bank of oars must stroke ahead whilst the opposite bank of oarsmen must either back-water, or jab their oar blades into the sea for brakes.

The little flags wagged again.

Though the gunboats were over two hundred yards off by then, Lewrie could distinctly hear Lt. Harcourt swearing a blue streak as some of those braking oars snapped like twigs. To make matters even worse, two boats in Lt. Elmes's group had their tillers put hard over in the wrong direction, causing all four of his boats to collide. The helmsmen in that group out-shouted Lt. Harcourt, each blaming the other for the accidents. Lewrie could make out “Tom-noddy!” and “Hen-headed lubber!” and “Cack-handed idjit, ye geed when ye shoulda hawed!” Even more oars were damaged as they'd scraped down each other's sides.

“Lord, sir!” Lt. Westcott said, astonished.

“Show 'em the Recall hoist, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered in sad amusement, shaking his head and slowly collapsing the tubes of his telescope, “before the Spanish spot 'em and laugh themselves t'death. This looks like it's goin' t'be a
damned
long day.”

*   *   *

Fully armed and manned, the boats were just too heavy for the normal oars used in ships' boats to get them going from a dead stop, to back-water and shift their aim quickly, or bring them to a quick stop; they'd snap every time, leap out of the thole pins that held them, and slam oarsmen hard in their chests.

“Send ashore to the dockyards, Mister Westcott, and my compliments to Captain Middleton,” Lewrie decided, “but, what we need on the boats are cut-down sweeps. Bigger oar blades, with thicker, stronger shafts, and perhaps even thicker and stronger sets of thole pins. If he can pad the loom ends so they don't cripple my sailors every time they brake or back-water, we'd all very much appreciate that, too.”

The sailors in question, now back aboard for a more detailed explanation of their duties, had a good, appreciative laugh, but the First Officer had to scowl, and a scowl on Lt. Westcott's harsh face was formidable. “Sweeps, sir? I can't recall the last time I've seen even the smallest warship fitted with sweeps, and row-ports. He might not have a one on hand.”

“Exactly, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie replied with a sly, cherubic grin. “And until he does whip some up, our gunboats are useless.”

“Oh, I
see,
sir!” Westcott grinned back, tumbling to it. “I shall go over to the yards myself, sir, with your permission.”

“I couldn't deprive you of the experience, sir,” Lewrie told him with a wink and a nod. “Now, lads,” he said louder, turning to his sailors, “let's gather round the base of the main mast and we'll go over what
should
have happened this morning, hey?”

He put a bold and confident face on for their benefit, even as he thought that the whole endeavour was thankless, pointless, useless, hopeless.…
Christ, you can coin a whole
slew
o' new words to describe this shitten mess! Somebody,
anybody,
get me back out to sea!

 

CHAPTER TWO

Lieutenant Westcott had come back aboard an hour or two later that day with the cheering news that Captain Middleton didn't have any sweeps in store to be cut down. Equally cheering was Westcott's description of Middleton's reaction, how he had all but slapped his forehead, stomped round the wood yard in anger at himself for over-estimating the strength of the usual ash oars and under-estimating how the added weight made his fancy new gunboats so slow and unwieldy. It had been a joy to watch, Lewrie was assured!

Less cheering was the information that, once Captain Middleton had gotten over his “How could I have been so stupid?” and his groans and gargles of
Mea Culpa,
he had assured Westcott that the Gibraltar dockyard had a goodly lot of ash planks in stock, and that he could have enough sweeps fashioned to try out on at least half of the gunboats by the end of the week, and that his artificers would have the rowlocks strengthened on all the existing boats, and strengthen them on the four more under construction, as well!

“Don't s'pose we could sneak over and set a huge fire in the yards,” Lewrie had glumly suggested at that news.

“That might not go down well, sir,” Westcott had cautioned him. “Sabotage, treason … all sorts of court-martial charges.”

“Unless we could blame it on the Spanish,” Lewrie pointed out. “The authorities ashore have foreign agents on their brains, and Spanish or French spies under every bed. General Dalrymple's sure that a mutiny plot has been in the works for most of this year. Ah well … we probably would be caught in the act.”

Long ago, Lewrie and two schoolboy chums
had
been caught in the act after setting fire to the governor's coachhouse at Harrow, and sent down, expelled, and denied the grounds forever.

*   *   *

“You'll be dining ashore tonight, sir?” Lewrie's cabin steward, Pettus, asked as Lewrie primped himself at his wash-hand stand. He asked with a straight face and a non-committal tone, since everyone knew by now where Lewrie might be, and with whom when ashore.

“Thought I might, Pettus,” Lewrie said, striving for “casual” himself as he dried and put away his razor after a touch-up on his morning shave. “Pass word to Yeovill that he's to prepare something for you, Jessop, and my clerk, Mister Faulkes, but not for me, but I will be back aboard for breakfast.”

“Aye, sir,” Pettus replied, casting a quick grin at the teen-aged cabin servant, Jessop, who, out of Lewrie's sight, also grinned impishly and made a hole of his left hand, poking a right finger into it.

Lewrie wetted his toothbrush in a cup of fresh water, ran it over a tin of flavoured pumice toothpowder, and began to scrub at his teeth. Once done, he put a hand to his mouth to catch his breath to sample its freshness. He would be dining with his “kept woman,” the lovely and intriguing Portuguese, Maddalena Covilh
ā
, and wanted very much to please. In a side pocket of his uniform coat he had a tin of London-made cinnamon
pastilles
for both of them, before and after supper.

In the other side pocket there were three freshly-cleaned sheep-gut cundums, also London-made. Though he did not plan to make the evening an “All Night In” at the lodgings he'd taken for her, it was always best to be prepared for surprises.

Surprises, well; here came one of the furry kind, for his cat, Chalky, sprang to the top of the wash-hand stand and found a precarious perch on one corner, then ambled along the narrow front lip with the skill of a circus rope walker, brushing his mostly white fur on Lewrie's recently sponged waist-coat, butting and stroking his head and his cheeks in affection, or in mischief; with Chalky it was hard to tell.

“Aye, and I love you, too, puss,” Lewrie said, giving Chalky a few long strokes from nose to tail as the cat turned about and pressed himself to Lewrie the other way, marking his master as
his
property. He also stuck his nose in the cup of water and had a swipe at the toothbrush.

“Just keep my coat out of his reach 'til I'm ready to put it on, my lad,” Lewrie told Pettus.

“Never a fear of that, sir,” Pettus promised, “we always hang it from an overhead beam hook … though, there is so much stray hair in the air, you're sure to catch a few.”

“As I well know, by now, aye!” Lewrie happily replied, taking a last brush of his hair. “Well, shove me in it, and I'll be off.”

*   *   *

Oh, Christ … him!
Lewrie thought with a groan as he espied Mr. Thomas Mountjoy at the top of the landing stage of the Old Mole as his boat ghosted up to it;
What the Devil's
he
doin' here, and what sort of shit is he lookin' for me t'do for him, now? We weren't to see each other 'til the end of the week!

Thomas Mountjoy was really a nice younger gentleman, a clever and diligent fellow who ostensibly ran a minor firm's office at Gibraltar, the Falmouth Import & Export Company, Ltd. He was the epitome of a second or third son of some Squirearchy family, sent abroad and into Trade, with a hope that he might make something of himself. Mountjoy was brown-haired and brown-eyed, and nothing remarkable at first impression, sobrely dressed, no flash at all.

What Thomas Mountjoy was, was the senior agent of the Foreign Office's Secret Branch station at Gibraltar, who ran spies into Cádiz to keep an eye on the French and Spanish ships that had been blockaded there since the epic Battle of Cape Trafalgar two years earlier, kept in touch with an host of paid, or patriotic, Spanish informers along the Andalusian coast; into Seville, the regional capital; and even in Madrid.

It had been Mountjoy who arranged for the hire of the transport ship that had carried Lewrie's borrowed soldiers to carry out his raids in the Summer, and he who amassed the information about, and sketches of, the targets they'd raided. It was Mountjoy who had been sent to Gibraltar by his mentors, the coldly calculating old cut-throat, Zachariah Twigg, who'd been Lewrie's bane since the early 1780s 'tween the wars, roping him into one neck-or-nothing affair after the other, and the cool James Peel … “'tis Peel, James Peel” … who was just as scary.

Lewrie hadn't seen Mountjoy's dangerous side,
yet,
but he was mortal-certain that, with teachers like those, the man had one, and before this active commission in command of
Sapphire
was done, there always was a good chance that he'd ask, or order, Lewrie to perform some “damn-fool” mission. Secret Branch had their hooks in him and they'd never let him off; it was only a matter of time!

What was really disturbing about such a mild-looking man as Mountjoy was that, once, he had told Lewrie that a part of his mission here at Gibraltar was to find a way to turn Spain, which had been at war with Great Britain since late 1804, to abandon its alliance with Napoleonic France and switch sides!

That had appeared to be a chore worthy of Hercules, like mucking out the Augean Stables, but, of late, events had arisen that might make it happen. The slavishly Franco-phile administration of Spain's Prime Minister, Godoy, had signed a treaty with France to let one of their armies march cross Spain to invade and conquer Portugal to force that country to cut off all trade with Great Britain, and at that moment, that army, under a Marshal Junot, was doing that very thing. Would the Spanish people be too proud to abide that?

Damn my eyes, but he's grinning!
Lewrie thought, groaning to himself again;
I may be in the “quag” up t'my neck!

Of course, Lewrie could also consider that Mountjoy had merely got some very good news of late, and had come to impart it, in the usual “ask me first, I know something that
you
don't know” way that most people in Secret Branch evinced … the smug bastards! He might even owe Mountjoy a drink at the end!

“Hallo, Captain Lewrie!” Mountjoy called out as Lewrie stepped onto the landing stage and ascended the ramp to the quay. He had his hat on the back of his head, hands on his hips, and his coat thrown back, beaming fit to bust and looking like a fellow who'd bet on the right horse at Ascot or the Derby.

“What's this welcome in aid of, Mountjoy?” Lewrie asked, feigning a faint scowl. “Need my services of a sudden, hey?”

“Why, I've come to congratulate you on your splendid show this morning,” Mountjoy teased. “Most impressive, I must say!”

“Impressive, mine arse,” Lewrie scoffed as he doffed his hat in salute. “Could you see the Dons laughing?”

Mountjoy had lodgings high up in the town, the upper storey of the house to boot, with a rooftop gallery where he kept an astronomical telescope so strong that he could count nose hairs on the Spanish sentries on their fortified lines, and get a good look at Ceuta, their fortress on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar, on a good day.

“They were so amused that I fear several of their naval officers herniated themselves,” Mountjoy twinkled back. “And, I have come to share the latest news with you.”

“If it's something that gets me out of the gunboat trade before the dockyard sets things to rights, and back to sea, it'd be welcome,” Lewrie replied, all but crossing the fingers of his right hand for luck.

“Well, it
might,
” Mountjoy allowed, “one never knows. Junot is across the border into Portugal, and is dashing on Lisbon as fast as his soldiers' little legs can carry them, and thank God that the roads, or what pass for roads in Portugal, are so shitten-bad, if they exist at all. Come, let us stroll to a tavern, and I'll tell you all.”

Lewrie noted, from a corner of his eye, that Mountjoy's second-in-command, Deacon, was at hand and on a careful watch over his superior, whilst seeming to be merely strolling and window-shopping. The grim, craggy-faced ex-Sergeant in the Foot Guards was another of Zachariah Twigg's or James Peel's recruits to an informal secret force of house-breakers, lock-pickers, copyists and forgers, house-maids, and street-waif informers and followers, assassins and disposers of foreign spies. Twigg called them his Baker Street Irregulars, after the location of his London townhouse.