The King's Marauder (28 page)

“As you’d know best yourself, Sir Alan,” Romney Marsh said in a secretive whisper, leaning a tad closer than Lewrie liked. “We were told of your doings up the Mississippi to Spanish New Orleans a few years ago, and how you scotched that Creole pirate business. Mister James Peel sends his regards. His fondest regards.”

Marsh said that in yet another guise, this time sounding like the idlest, most affected courtier at St. James’s Palace with the grandest airs. Lewrie didn’t much care for simpering, either!

“Not all that dangerous, Captain Lewrie,” Cummings stuck in, “for my brief doesn’t require that I meet our agents face-to-face, but deal with drop-points where their reports are secreted. And Mountjoy is counting on the luxury goods we carry to make our presence welcome. I also have enough bribe money to mollify even the most-corrupt Spanish authorities. Marsh here has the more dangerous job…”

“Volunteered for it, gladly,” Marsh said in a loud boast, “for God, King, and Country. And, for the thrill of it all.”

“He’s to go to Madrid, and nose about,” Cummings said in awe of the mission, and Marsh’s daring.

“And get back, I presume?” Lewrie dryly asked.

“Contact whom I can among the influential in Madrid who oppose the French, and the Godoy administration,” Marsh preened, all but buffing his fingernails on the lapels of his waist-length leather jacket, “gather impressions of the sentiments of the common people and tradesmen, soldiers, and such. Perhaps
influence
whom I can, as well, and spread a little sedition.
Then,
get back to the coast and wait for
Señor
Rodriguez an’ heez feelthy
barca
to peeck me up,
comprender?
” he said, slipping into a Spanish accent once more.

“And how may I aid you two in that?” Lewrie asked, imagining that they would have steered well clear of
Sapphire
at first sight if they didn’t
need
something.

Just like gettin’ roped in by Zachariah Twigg as useful to his schemes ages ago in the Far East,
Lewrie sourly thought;
There’s never an end to it! There’s
always
something more!

“You’ll note, sir, that we’ve a large horizontal patch of new, white sailcloth in our foresail, from luff to leech,” Cummings told him. “By that sign you will know us, hah hah! If we must meet I will show a very badly faded, but perfectly strong, red jib, and you can pretend to chase me out of sight of land, and any watchers. Do you encounter us along the coast, and we’re anywhere near a port, I’d like you to chase after us … clumsily, so I can put in and escape, to the congratulations of other Spanish mariners, do you see?”

“That’s all?” Lewrie asked, both puzzled and relieved.

“That’s the nub of it, Captain Lewrie,” Cummings said, tossing up his hands and grinning. “Now, over on the Atlantic coast, round Cádiz, we’ll have to take our chances with our blockading ships, ’til Mister Mountjoy can get word to the Admiral commanding … Saumarez, the last I heard … but I’m still not sure if we’ll be sent there in the near future. What’s left of the Franco-Spanish combined fleet is still sulking in port, there, and the city’s an armed fortress, so we have very few assets in Cádiz, and getting an agent, or agents, sneaked in is even more difficult.”

“Oh, I suppose I could, if asked,” Marsh slyly boasted. “What is one more priest among many, one more sandalled peasant droving his pigs to market, or a proud
hidalgo
on a fine horse?”

“Marsh can portray himself as Catholic as the Pope himself!” Cummings bragged. “He can conduct any rite, or a Mass, in Latin
and
Spanish. I’ve seen him do it, to practise.”

“The benefits of a classical education, Cummings,” Marsh said, “and a … dare I say, a widespread, catholic interest. Small
C
‘catholic’, mind. Church of England, myself, and
damned
proud of it!”

“One never knows just who he is when he comes down to breakfast,” Cummings said with a laugh. “Costumes, wigs, false beards, and mustachios…”

“Well, it’s said that ‘clothing makes the man’,” Marsh airily stated. “Amateur theatrics was my chief delight at school, and with the help of Secret Branch, I’ve honed my skills by studying under the very best in Covent Garden and Drury Lane.”

He’s daft as bats!
Lewrie thought, amazed at his smug expectations.

“Do you ever want for droll amusement when in London, Sir Alan, you must attend Pulteney Plumb’s Comedic Revue in Drury Lane,” Marsh imparted, leaning close once more as if touting a sure-thing long shot horse at Ascot.

Lewrie, in mid-sip of his tea, spluttered a gulp in his lap!

He’s deader than cold, boiled mutton!
Lewrie thought;
Soon as he steps ashore, the Spanish’ll be askin’ him if he’s up for a match of cricket! Pulteney bloody Plumb, of all the…!

Once he calmed himself, all he could say in reply was, “Seen it.”

“Man’s a genius, as is his wife,” Romney Marsh praised.

Lewrie thought that perhaps James Peel hadn’t told Cummings or Marsh
all
about Lewrie’s past, or his association with Pulteney Plumb during the Peace of Amiens, when he’d somehow insulted Napoleon Bonaparte at a
levee
in the Tuileries Palace in Paris, and had to flee for his life to Calais, pursued by police agents and soldiers, and it had been that daft fool Plumb and his wife who had spirited Lewrie and his wife clear cross France in a variety of costumes and guises, re-living his younger days of doing the same thing for condemned French aristocrats as part of a larger secret collaboration, and naming himself the “Yellow Tansy”!

Lewrie had to grudgingly admit that Plumb
had
gotten them to the coast, where a schooner was waiting to bear them to Dover, as it had during The Terror in 1793 for the Yellow Tansy, the Ruby Begonia, or other human smugglers of that coterie. It had only been bad luck that the French had caught up with them as the schooner’s boat was in the surf, just feet from showing the French a clean pair of heels.

Less he knows, and the less said of Plumb, the better,
Lewrie thought, almost snarling his displeasure.

“You show a red jib, I chase you out to sea for a ‘rondy’, and if not, I pretend t’chase you. Got it,” Lewrie summed up. “D’ye need chasin’ today?”

“It would not hurt, I suppose,” Cummings said. “We’re bound to Estepona, first, then Almeria, then Málaga, where we land Marsh. The roads are better from there to Madrid.”

“Not Estepona,” Lewrie quickly cautioned. “Your ship’s master and crew I let go free, there, and they’d have you hung for piracy as soon as they recognise her. But, let’s be about it, before someone ashore sees us together.” He set aside his glass of tea and rose to bring matters to a welcome close.

*   *   *

They saw Cummings/Rodriguez and Romney Marsh/The Multitude off without a side-party or debarking honours, though Lewrie doffed his hat from the lip of the entry-port as they scrambled down the battens to their waiting rowboat, thinking that he
might
see Cummings again, but Marsh? The odds were definitely against it. There were some people who were just too confident to live!

Oddly, when the boat was about one hundred yards off, Marsh took off his narrow-brimmed hat and waved back at
Sapphire,
shouting “
Floreat Etona!
”, for some reason or another.

“We’ve one of his fellow Etonians aboard?” Lt. Harcourt wondered aloud. “Who, I can’t imagine.”

“The Captain, very briefly, before he was expelled,” Westcott informed him from the corner of his mouth in an amused whisper.

“Expelled? For what?” Harcourt asked, surprised.

“You’d have to ask him,” Lt. Westcott said, with a snicker.

“Perish the thought!” Harcourt said with a mock shiver.

“Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie said, returning to the quarterdeck. “You may get us under way, slowly. Once their vessel is around five miles off, we will put about and pretend to chase her past Estepona.”

“
Pretend,
sir?” Harcourt asked, all a’sea.

“Under-handed, secret Crown doings, sir,” Lewrie sternly told him, “and pray the Good Lord keeps you at arm’s length from such.”

“Aye aye, sir. Get under way, then come about in chase,” Lieutenant Harcourt replied, his curiosity piqued.

“
Gallegos,
that’s funny,” Midshipman Kibworth said to one of his mates, Midshipman Carey, in a tittery mutter.

“What’s funny, Mister Kibworth?” Lewrie demanded.

“I was told that one of Columbus’s ships was named the
Gallegos,
sir,” Kibworth cringingly explained. “It means ‘dirty whore’, and to avoid embarassing Queen Isabella, they changed it to
Santa Maria.
” He could not help blushing red and snickering to dare say a bad word.

“Ah, the further benefits of an education,” Lewrie bemoaned. “I think that’s enough slang Spanish for one day, don’t you?”

“Ehm, aye aye, sir,” Kibworth said, with an audible gulp.

“Carry on, Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie said. “I’ll be aft ’til the change of watch.”

Moppin’ tea off my waist-coat,
Lewrie thought;
And airin’ the stench o’ spies from my cabins.

BOOK THREE

Be frolic then

Let cannon roar

Frighting the wide heaven.

“T
O THE
V
IRGINIAN
V
OYAGE
”

M
ICHAEL
D
RAYTON
(1563–1631)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“Just where in the bloody world did ye dredge
him
up?” Lewrie asked Thomas Mountjoy a few days later as they sat in the lush bower of greenery on Mountjoy’s roof gallery.

“It does take all kinds,” Mountjoy said, with a sigh, “doesn’t it? Personally, I don’t think Mister Romney Marsh will last a week on the road to Madrid, but I had no say in it. Cummings, I requested, for I know he’s good, for an amateur ‘yachtsman’. People senior to me and Mister Peel pushed Marsh on me, despite Peel’s misgivings.”

“Dammit, Mountjoy, as soon as the Spanish arrest the fool, the authorities’ll suspect everyone who doesn’t shout praise for France, and start roundin’ them up, too,” Lewrie groused. “They’ll be seein’ British spies in their toilets. And what the hell’s a ‘yachtsman’?”

“Idle rich, and titled dilettantes who muck about in sea-going boats,” Mountjoy explained. “Or race each other in small ones.”

“They go t’sea for
fun?
” Lewrie gawped in amazement.

“There’s some ‘New Men’ of industry who’d cruise the world if there wasn’t a war on, in their own ships the size of trading brigs or schooners,” Mountjoy went on, finding it amusing, and an example of how people wasted their new-made fortunes. As far as he and Lewrie knew, only the King had an official Royal Yacht, which never left the Thames, and had rarely ever been used.

“Of all people t’give lessons on cloak and dagger play-acting, the Foreign Office chose Pulteney Plumb! Jesus!” Lewrie carped.

“Without Mister Twigg’s cunning, now he’s retired and doesn’t even consult any longer,” Mountjoy said with a glum shrug. “There are all
sorts
of hen-headed men in charge, who have their own ideas about fieldcraft. At least, Cummings and Marsh also brought along lashings of money for me to work with. Give London long enough, or become too desperate for results, and I expect they’ll be ordering me to dress up in women’s clothing, with lessons on how to flutter a fan!”

“Now there’s an ugly picture!” Lewrie joshed, making a face.

He had a mental image of Thomas Mountjoy in a flounced red gown with tall hair combs, a black lace
mantilla,
with a rose in his teeth, doing the
flamenco
all the way to Madrid, and it
wasn’t
pretty!

Mountjoy had been sprawled on the cushioned settee, wineglass in hand. He sat the glass down and rose to cross the gallery to his telescope, bent, and scanned the harbour.

“Lewrie,” he said over his shoulder, “if all else fails, what does it cost to
hire
a ship? How does Admiralty do it, and how much might it set me back?”

“Hmm, something large enough for trooping?” Lewrie mused, feet up on a hassock and slumped into a deep padded chair. “They usually run about three hundred fifty tons, and if their bottoms are properly coppered, the Transport Board pays their owners nineteen shillings a month, maybe a full pound per ton, these days. Skin-flint owners try to get by with wood-sheathed bottoms, or no protection at all, and they go for less. But, I wouldn’t recommend ’em. Copper sheathing’s your man, even if they’re hard t’find. Expensive, though.”

“That’s … four thousand two hundred pounds a year,” Mountjoy said with a groan. “Damn! And the upkeep and pay for master and crew atop that? Damn.”

“Well, Admiralty usually pays the owners and ship’s husbands, the investors,” Lewrie explained, idly wondering if there was enough of that light white Spanish wine left in the bottle for a top-up, or did they need to open a new one. “So the pay, rations, and necessary ship’s stores come out of that, and if they get damaged, the Navy will repair them. From that sum, the master gets his passage money for unexpected expenses, and re-victualling.”

“How many troops can they cram aboard a ship that big, a three hundred fifty-tonner?” Mountjoy pressed, coming back to the sitting area to take a squint at the bottle, too, and dribble a bit into both their glasses.

“The goin’ rate’s one soldier for every two tons, ah thankee,” Lewrie told him. “Now if we only had some Swedish ice for this wine.”

“No more to be had, and it isn’t even high summer, yet, there’s a pity,” Mountjoy said, looking gloomy. “Something smaller, say, about
three
hundred tons, that’d be one hundred fifty soldiers … three companies? Just about what we planned for, and the lease would cost less.”

“London didn’t send you
that
much, did they?” Lewrie asked.

“No, they didn’t,” Mountjoy groused. “If you can’t capture one that’s suitable, and if Middleton at the yards can’t contract with a ship under Transport Board authorisation, then I suppose we’re stuck.”