The Invasion Year (53 page)

The pair of boats that
Reliant
had captured were hurriedly covered with great swaths of sailcloth and towed into an empty graving dock, then placed under armed Marine guard.

“Well, damme, Captain Lewrie, but ye do keep popping up with one surprise after another,” Admiral Lord Gardner commented after making a clumsy, arthritic way aboard one of them in company with his Flag-Captain, Niles. “They’ve a lot of these things, d’ye imagine?”

“The rumours say three or four hundred, my lord,” Lewrie said.

“First that nonsense about torpedoes, now these,” Lord Gardner went on, peering down into the bowels of the barge where the soldiers would sleep, sup, and shelter. “Three or four hundred, did ye say?”

“So I was told by a friend in Secret Branch, my lord.”

This tour was the fifth that Lewrie had given to various officials, and it was getting old, by then. The lack of praise beyond the usual “Good show!” was irksome, too. He imagined that if Nelson had come across them, that fame-hungry fellow would have commissioned special editions of all the London papers, with illustrations to boot!

“Damned waste of good artillery, packing a twenty-four-pounder in the bows,” Lord Gardner went on in a grumble. “Do the French think they can use them as gunboats, too? Wheel them round with those huge paddles? I saw armed galleys in the Mediterranean in my youth, but … it looks iffy to me.”

“Concentrating all the paddles in the forward end, too,” Captain Niles added. “I suppose they work well enough in a river but not at sea. Has anyone
tried
paddling them about?”

“Once we made port, sir,” Lewrie told him with a grimace, “to shift them alongside. They don’t row worth a damn, nor steer, either. They’re fitted with a tiller to the exposed rudder, and my helmsmen about wore themselves out on the way here under tow, tryin’ to follow the stern posts of the leadin’ barge, or my frigate. A handful o’ lee helm, then a handful o’ weather helm. We did hoist their sails, to steady ’em, but that didn’t help much. I’d imagine that did one try ’em under sail,
without
bein’ towed, they’d wallow from beam-to-beam, be slow as cold treacle, and with their flat bottoms, they’d make lee-way like a wood chip.”

“Heh heh heh,” the Port Admiral, softly, evilly cackled, bending down to survey the interior more closely. “How many soldiers might it carry, Lewrie?”

“These large versions are said to carry an hundred, my lord. A shorter one may carry about eighty,” Lewrie told him.

“One hundred Frogs, cooped up down there on those benches, or in those slat beds, my my!” Lord Gardner said, enjoying the image. “Cold rations. I see no galley facilities. No ‘heads,’ either.”

“Rations for five or six days, I heard, sir,” Lewrie supplied. “Though, part of that might be for after they landed in England before they could loot and pillage the countryside … or hope to.”

“Bonaparte must not have much regard for his soldiers, milord,” Captain Niles imagined, “if he expected them to use wooden buckets as their ‘necessaries,’ then have to pass them up from below. The reek would be horrid,” he said with a sniff, as if reeks already existed.

“The staleness of the air,” Lord Gardner happily fantasised. “The reek of their ‘cess,’ as well, Niles, and the stench of sea-sickness, which would naturally engender even more sickness! Why, after a day or two of that, with these daft things wallowing like hogs in the mud, and rolling like logs, it’d be a bloody wonder that they could fight at all! Right, Niles?”

“Stagger ashore reeling like tars off a whaler that’s been at sea two years running, and be so crop-sick even our militia can round them up, milord!” Captain Niles hooted. “They’re a completely daft idea, and if the French really mean to employ them, they’ll pay an ungodly high price in dead, and in prisoners.”

“Drown nigh a quarter of their men, should the Channel whip up rough during the crossing,” Admiral Lord Gardner estimated, looking highly pleased with his conclusion. “What was it that Bonaparte was reputed to have said, sirs? ‘Give me six hours’ mastery of the Channel, and we shall be masters of the world’? Bah! Bah, I say!”

“Lord Keith in The Downs estimates so large an invasion armada would take two tides to get across in sufficient strength, milord,” Captain Niles gleefully pointed out. “Twenty-four hours with the sea and tides scattering them, sickening them, and our ships clawing at them like so many tigers?
Let
them try, is what I say!”

“Congratulations to ye, Captain Lewrie,” Lord Gardner said as he stood erect, going so far as to offer his hand. “It was a brave thing to snatch them up, in such a thick fog, with no thought for the presence of escorts … and, to get them away for study!”

“Well, it seemed a good idea at the moment, my lord,” Lewrie replied, shaking hands with the old fellow and
trying
to sound modest.

“Damme, Lewrie … had you not already been granted a knighthood, this deed surely would have earned you one!” Captain Niles said in praise as well.

Well, damned if it might’ve!
Lewrie thought, feeling for the first time as if he had done something worthy of the honour, instead of secretly scorning his sash and star as a sop given for his usefulness, and the usefulness of his late wife’s murder, to ignite revulsion and hatred of the French, and Bonaparte.

“Long after the fact, though, Niles,” Lord Gardner said, dashing cold water on that speculation. “Our possession of the damned things is to be of the utmost secrecy … same as Lewrie’s torpedo devices. Least said, the better, what? Did the Crown decide Lewrie was worthy, it’d not be announced for years! Damme, even we’ve been put on strict notice to forget we ever
saw
them, and to not go blab to anyone they even exist! Do we dream about them, we’d best not talk in our sleep, hah!”

Lewrie felt his ears reddening. He
had
blabbed, in letters, at least, to Lydia Stangbourne, Sir Hugo, his sons at sea, and one of his in-laws, Burgess Chiswick, and had nigh broken his neck running to the post office to retrieve them before they left the dockyard offices!

“If you’ve seen all you wish, milord, there are other matters pending,” the jovial Captain Niles prompted as yet another light rain began to fall.

“Oh aye, I’ve seen quite enough, Niles,” Lord Gardner told his aide. “Help me off this monstrosity before the weather turns even more nasty.”

That involved an embarrassingly awkward clamber out of the after cockpit of the French barge, down the slick slope of the upper deck and hull to the waterline, where a jolly-boat awaited to bear them the short distance to the dry stone cobbles and blocks of the upper end of the graving dock, where they could step onto dry land.

“Getting on for Autumn, Lewrie,” Lord Gardner said as he stumped his way towards the tall flight of stone steps that would take them to street level. “It will be October in a week, and the weather in the Channel might force Bonaparte to hold his invasion ’til next Spring.”

Where
does
the time go when we’re havin’
so
much fun?
Lewrie cynically thought.

“Now or never, perhaps, my lord?” Lewrie said with a grin.

“Pray God. By then, well,” Lord Gardner agreed. “Nettlesome as Bonaparte is, surely he’ll so worry some other continental powers that they form another armed coalition against him, forcing him to take his huge army off to defend his borders … or look to expand his empire somewhere else. All our fears may amount to nothing.”

“Good grief, what’s that about, I wonder?” Captain Niles said as the sound of a loud argument reached them. “Have they caught a French spy, or a nosy newspaper man?”

“Shoot either, on the spot, instanter!” Lord Gardner snarled.

As they reached the top of the stone stairs, they could see that the Marines had nabbed an intruder who’d found a way through the newly-erected wooden screen wall and sailcloth-curtained gate. The Marines had him pinned to the wall, surrounded with fixed bayonets on their levelled muskets.

“… bloody Hell do you mean I can’t enter, you puppy! I’m a Post-Captain in the Royal Navy, Captain Speaks, and I
know
that Captain Lewrie’s in there! I must speak to him, at once, and bedamned to you if you think…!”

“Oh, bloody Hell,” Lewrie groaned, sure he’d seen the last of the fellow.

“Speaks? Speaks? Who’s he, Niles?” Lord Gardner grumbled.

“The mysterious torpedo fellow, milord. The one in charge of testing those ‘Gosport wonders’?” Niles told his admiral. “It’s all very hush-hush.”

“There’s entirely too much of that going round!” Lord Gardner tetchily snapped.

Ain’t there, just!
Lewrie silently agreed.

“
There
he is!” Speaks barked, pointing accusingly. “
There’s
the fellow I must see, damn your eyes, sir!” he railed at the young Marine officer in charge of the guard unit. “You did not stay on station as I ordered you, Lewrie! I should prefer charges!”

Get in line!
Lewrie told himself.

“Niles … go tell that noisy jackanapes to stop his gob, or I’ll have him stood against the wall and shot, for entering a secret area! I
can
have him shot, can I not, sir?”

“Well, ordinarily no, milord, but … given the circumstances and the secrecy of our possession of the French devices…,”Captain Niles mused aloud, with a “sly-boots” grin.

“Go threaten him into next year!” Gardner demanded. “At once!”

Speaks’ll take his rebuke out on me,
Lewrie mournfully thought;
Ye’d think after bringin’ these things in, I’d get fresh orders, but … am I
still
his, damn his eyes?

CHAPTER FORTY

Captain Speaks refused to come aboard
Reliant;
he despised cats as sneaking, vicious Imps from Hades, the familiars of warlocks and witches. No, Lewrie had to go aboard
Penarth,
the bought-in collier, for his dressing-down, where Speaks’s own familiar, his loquacious parrot, ruled the after cabins. Speaks did
not
offer refreshments!

“Why did you not strictly obey my verbal orders, Lewrie?” the choleric fellow seethed, seated behind the wee desk, looking down his nose at Lewrie with the fierce air of a Lord Justice regarding an habitual criminal about to be sentenced to hang.

“You told me to go make a nuisance on the French coast, sir,” Lewrie calmly replied. “That we did, and in the process, we stumbled onto some secret French … devices, in a thick fog off Coutances, and took two of them and sank a third. I’d been apprised t’keep one eye out for ’em, and that, should I encounter any, I should—”

“
Secret
devices!” Speaks barked. “What sort of devices?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you, sir,” Lewrie answered, finding it too tempting to keep to himself. “They’re secret. Very secret.”

“And just who the Devil, or when, were you ‘apprised,’ hah?”

“Just before we began experiments with Mister MacTavish’s cask torpoedoes, sir, as for the when,” Lewrie went on, seemingly seated at ease in a folding chair, clubman fashion, with one leg over the other. “As for who, sir … it was Mister James Peel of Foreign Office Secret Branch, with whom I’ve worked in the past, now and again. He had had correspondence from … sources in France alerting the government and Admiralty that they existed. I gathered that is his brief, sir … the recruiting and handling of intelligence sources.”

“Keel-haul the bastard! Keel-haul!
Rwark!
” from the parrot.

“And you deemed these …
things
you captured were more important than
our
secret work, Lewrie?” Speaks sneered.

“I did, sir,” Lewrie firmly stated.

“Your orders charged you to safeguard
Penarth
and her cargo of devices from capture by the French,
‘at all hazards,’
Lewrie!
‘At all hazards’!
That phrase slip your mind, did it?” Speaks accused. “What do I find when I return to the
rendezvous
? Nothing! No one to safeguard this vessel or her vitally secret weapons, no aid in conducting fresh experiments, either, and no message left with the authorities at Guernsey explaining
why
you just up and left! And I couldn’t very well commandeer
another
warship from the blockading squadron and expose the secret of the torpedoes’ existence to just
any
damned fool!”

“Given the importance of my find, though, sir, I acted as I deemed best,” Lewrie insisted.

“Saucy rascal! Flog the bugger,
too-wheep
!” from the bird.