The King's Marauder

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Not right offhand, no,” Mountjoy promised. “I think just the one raid will suffice, for now. Babies must crawl before they learn to walk, after all. Let’s get the rough edges smoothed down before we hit our stride.”

  “Meaning, ‘Lewrie, don’t make a muck of it’, hey?” Lewrie asked, with a wry expression.

  Mountjoy made no reply, but raised a brow and nodded.

  * * *

  That’s what comes of bein’ thought an idiot, Lewrie sullenly told himself as he strolled downhill from Mountjoy’s lodgings to the quays; The up-and-comin’ younkers like Mountjoy think they know better than older farts like me. Get a few years on me, and they marvel if I can eat with a knife and fork! Can’t even imagine what the puppies of the 77th make o’ me. Hallo?

  He spotted Major Hughes a’stroll along the quays with a woman on his arm, his free hand gesticulating at the harbour, and, from the way his egret-plumed bicorne dipped like a hobby-horse, was happily and boisterously engaged in conversation with her, which conversation seemed to be one-sided, for the woman’s hat and head did not follow his pointing.

  Lewrie could only see the couple from behind, but he fancied that she was the intriguing Maddalena. Her dark hair was worn simply in a long fall at the nape of her neck, not teased, roached, or ironed into an intricate updo like most women with pretensions to style wore it, and in comparison to the usual flounces and flummery, her gown was simple, a pale yellow, high-waisted affair trimmed in white. Her up-turned sun bonnet partially masked her head to protect her complexion, tied with a yellow ribbon under her chin.

  Hmm, slimmer than I thought, Lewrie appraised as he neared them, noting that her gown was more a sheath than a loose, bell-shaped thing, a modest muslin or linen instead of richer fabrics.

  “… and since our families are closely connected, Sir Hew was most accepting of my ideas, don’t ye know, m’dear,” Major Hughes boasted. “Now that I’ve gotten my men trained, it only awaits the go-ahead from him.”

  What? Christ on a crutch! Lewrie fumed inside; Takin’ credit for it, are you? And boastin’ that loud where ye shouldn’t?

  He’d gotten close enough to overhear that, along with half the dockworkers on Gibraltar, and overtook the pair as they drew to a stop to admire the transport with its waiting landing boats nuzzled alongside.

  “Why, Major Hughes, is that you?” Lewrie cheerfully called out, pretending pleasant surprise. “A good mornin’ to ye, sir.”

  “Oh, ah!” Hughes replied, turning to regard him with real surprise, his complexion flushing redder. “Ashore for the morning, are you, sir? Well met, Captain Lewrie, well met.”

  “And to you, sir,” Lewrie said, doffing his hat.

  “I was just telling Maddalena here about the training we have been doing,” Hughes went on. “My pardons. Captain Lewrie, allow me to name to you Mistress Maddalena Covilhā. Maddalena, I name to you Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, of the Royal Navy, and the Captain of the Sapphire, out yonder.”

  “Mistress Covilhā, a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said, sweeping his hat onto his chest and making a wee “leg”.

  “Captain Lewrie, the delight is mine,” she replied, dropping him a slow curtsy, though keeping her brown eyes on his face, in which there was, alongside a pleased curl of her lips, a glint of amusement.

  “Covilhā,” Lewrie said, trying on the name, “is that Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese, if I may enquire?”

  “I am Portuguese, sir, from Oporto,” she said with a smile and some greater animation, “though my family long ago lived in a town of our same name.”

  “Oporto!” Lewrie exclaimed with an easy laugh. “My father was there for several years … hidin’ from his creditors. Never been to that city, but he said it was most pleasant. And, he adored all the wines, of course.”

  “But, how can a gentleman of the English aristocracy be so poor that he must seek shelter from debt, Captain?” Maddalena wondered, with a shake of her head.

  “He was a Knight of The Garter, but our family was bankrupt, and never noble. He won his knighthood, as I did mine, As for bein’ a Baronet, let’s just say that King George the Third was havin’ a bad day when he dubbed me a knight.”

  Maddalena pretended shock that Lewrie would speak so casually of a monarch, much less his own, though she had to stifle an outright peal of laughter.

  “Really, sir!” Major Hughes chid him, appalled.

  “Really, he did, sir,” Lewrie gladly rejoined. “There was a long line of us t’be honoured, two or three ahead of me were dubbed Knight and Baronet, and I expect it stuck in his head, so when it came my turn, there it was. I thought it wouldn’t count, but the palace flunkies told me that the Crown don’t err,” he related, drawing out “err” into a long growl that sounded more like “Grr”, which set the girl tittering, and Hughes going redder in the face.

  He was trying hellish-hard to please, and going for charming, witty, and amusing, and was delighted to see that his effort was working. Mistress Covilhā was giving him the same sort of speculative regard she’d shown him when he’d dined near her and Hughes at Pescadore’s, a frank consideration that he might be more fun than her present companion.

  “Well, we were just about to dine, Captain Lewrie, so I’m sure you will excuse us,” Major Hughes said, looking a trifle irked.

  “But of course, sir,” Lewrie allowed.

  “Perhaps Captain Lewrie might care to join us,” Maddalena suggested quickly.

  “Wouldn’t care t’intrude,” Lewrie pretended to beg off.

  “Oh, but he must, Major Hughes!” Maddalena eagerly insisted, going kittenish and coy. “You are the … brothers in arms?”

  Major? Lewrie scoffed to himself; Is she in his regiment? Why not “my dear” or “darling”, or “woolly bear”? She don’t sound all that affectionate with him.

  “We work in close co-operation, yes, m’dear, Captain Lewrie to the sea-side, and me on the land, but…” Hughes tossed off as if it was the sketchiest of associations.

  “Then between the two of you, you can tell me all about it,” Maddalena sweetly said,

  “Well, if you’d care to, sir,” Hughes grudgingly allowed, looking as pleased with the idea as a Hindoo served a slab of roast beef.

  “Well, I must confess t’feelin’ peckish,” Lewrie said with a shrug, as if it did not matter a whit, “but, do allow me to play host. My treat? Where did you plan to go?”

  “Thought we’d dine at Pescadore’s,” Hughes gruffly said.

  Maddalena made a face, hidden from Hughes by the side of her bonnet, and allowed her to share a wry smile with Lewrie.

  “An excellent choice,” Lewrie congratulated. “Let us go.”

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, at his total ease in his cabins aboard Sapphire, and slowly nursing a cool glass of sangria, the discovery of which delighted both him and his cook, Yeovill, Lewrie reviewed their mid-day dinner with a great deal of satisfaction.

  When the waiter, Michael/Miguel, had asked for their beverage choice, Lewrie had ordered a pitcher of sangria, claiming curiosity, and Maddalena had seconded him, leaving Hughes to his pale ale, siding with the girl to win a bit more favour, and thank God that it had proved sweetly enjoyable. For his entree, Lewrie had gone for the fried fish and cracked-open lobster, as did Maddalena as if taking her cue from him, leaving Hughes to his roast beef and potatoes.

  He’d given Maddalena a culinary tour, from Canton in China to Indian fare at Calcutta, regaling them with the spiciness of the West Indies, the game meats of Cape Town, the glories of Low Country fare in the Carolinas in the United States, even the moose, elk, and cod of Halifax. Hughes, it seemed, had not travelled all that far, and could only speak glowingly of salmon, grouse, and pheasant when shooting or fishing in Scotland.

  Despite a strong urge to do so, Lewrie had not boasted of his naval career, or his battles, hopefully leaving the impression that he’d done a slew of things heroic, mentioning only the battle off the C
handeleur Islands of Louisiana which had won him his knighthood in 1803. The faint scar on his cheek? A youthful idiocy when he was a Midshipman, in a pointless duel on Antigua, and he hadn’t even won the girl in the end!

  She had asked if he was married, or had children, and he had told her of Sewallis and Hugh, now both at sea in the Navy, and his daughter, Charlotte, back home at Anglesgreen (the less said about that sullen, spiteful wench the better!) and that his wife had died five years before, leaving the details to her imagination; leaving Maddalena with the notion that “poor, widowed Alan Lewrie” was lonely and alone, and possibly available. He told her of his cat, Chalky, who was good company at sea, and the ship’s silly dog, Bisquit, and how he’d been acquired, pretending to laugh off the idea of his loneliness … upon that head, at least.

  Did Hughes’s regiment have a mascot animal, like the “Regimental Ram” of the Light Dragoons he’d escorted to Cape Town? The coat of arms and badge of the 53rd featured a gryphon, but, being mythical, were rather thin on the ground, unfortunately.

  All in all, it had been a fine dinner, for Lewrie, at least. And, when Maddalena had glided off to the “necessary” leaving Hughes and himself alone, he had had the wee joy of cautioning Hughes to be careful where, and with whom, he revealed any details of what they were training for.

  “Sir Hew’s a bee in his bonnet about spies on every street corner already, and I dare say he may be right, with all the foreigners on Gibraltar,” Lewrie had hinted, “and keepin’ Mister Mountjoy up nights lookin’ for ’em, when he ain’t rootin’ round for what he calls agents provocateurs. I’m sure ye can be somewhat open with Mistress Covilhā, but only in private, hey? ‘Under the rose’, and all that?”

  Hughes had grumpily assured him that “the silly baggage” was not a spy, had no maidservant to pick up on careless statements, and did for herself, and in the end had more sense than to blab in the markets. “Women, what?” Hughes had scoffed. “We could most-like include her in the briefings, and she couldn’t make heads or tails of it in the end.”

  What a perfect, purblind fool is Hughes, Lewrie thought in smug delight; The bluff bastard doesn’t see her as anything more than a convenient “socket”, and doesn’t know the first bloody thing about keepin’ a woman fond, and it’s God’s own truth that she doesn’t much care for him.

  It was the lot of many women in this life to make the best of their shortened circumstances, were they poor, widowed, and had no husband or kinfolk to support them, and it was the rare woman who could follow any sort of trade. The brothels and alleys were full of them, and the prettiest in domestic service were fair game for the masters and the masters’ sons, which usually led to the brothels eventually.

  However Maddalena had ended up on Gibraltar, she had had to settle for being a kept woman. Hughes had taken her “under his protection”, as the saying went, the lucky shit, paying for her lodgings and up-keep somewhere here in the town, but was so abstemious that he didn’t provide her with a cook or a single maid-of-all-work when one would be hired so cheap?

  Now, what can I make o’ this? Lewrie wondered with a sly grin on his face; Mountjoy’d most-like warn me off t’make sure that Hughes stays agreeable, but … hmm!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “By the deep, five!” a leadsman in the forechains shouted aft. “Five fathom t’this line!”

  “Close enough, I think, Mister Yelland?” Lewrie said to the Sailing Master.

  “Aye, sir,” Yelland agreed, sounding a tad eager to bring the ship no closer to the shore. But for a wee glim in the compass binnacle, HMS Sapphire showed no lights of any kind, and Yelland was deprived of a peek into the chartroom to consult the local chart. With its lanthorn unlit, and with no windows or ports, it would have been moot, anyway. All officers had committed the details of the coast to memory, along with the soundings.

  “Mister Westcott, fetch her to,” Lewrie ordered. “And if God’s just, we should find ourselves about a half-mile off, by sunrise.”

  One Bell was struck up forward at the forecastle belfry as the ship was put about to cock her up into the wind, with the jibs, staysails, and spanker driving her forward and the squares’ls laid aback to retard forward motion. It was half past four in the morning, usually the time that lookouts were posted aloft instead of standing watch on deck, the time for wash-deck pumps to be rigged and swabs and holystones fetched out to scrub the decks. This pre-dawn morning, though, was time for battle. The cutters, launch, and pinnace were being led to their stations alongside both beams, and the scrambling nets were being heaved over. In the waist, Sapphire’s Marines shivered, yawned, and shuffled their feet as they waited to board those boats, wearing full kit, muskets, cartridge pouches, sheathed bayonets, haversacks at their left hips, and full water canteens.

  “Show one light to seaward, sir?” Midshipman Kibworth asked.

  “Aye,” Lewrie agreed, and a small hooded lanthorn was brought up above the bulwarks and its wee door opened. Everyone on the quarterdeck peered outboard, looking for its mate, and after a long minute, there was a tiny amber glow from the transport, Harmony, announcing her position, and the fact that she, too, was fetched-to and ready to dis-embark her troops.

  “Hmm, a bit further out to sea than us, sir, and further from the beach. That will make a longer row for her people,” Lt. Harcourt commented.

  “Captain Hedgepeth has a touchy bottom, it appears,” Lt. Elmes quipped. “Afraid of being goosed?”

  “The boats are alongside, now, sir, and we’re ready to go any time,” Marine Lieutenant Keane reported from the bottom of the starboard companionway ladder.

  “Very well, Mister Keane, you may begin boarding, and the very best of good fortune go with you,” Lewrie allowed.

  “Thank you, sir,” Keane replied, returning to his men.

  There was a noisy bustle and the drum of boots on the deck as the Marines lined up at the entry-ports and the nets, as the sailors who manned the boats went over the side to lay out their oars ready to hand, and take hold of the bottoms of the nets to make the Marines’ descent easier.

  “Once they’re gone, we’ve enough room to play tennis, or bowls,” Midshipman Fywell muttered to Kibworth, and that was true. With over fifty of Sapphire’s people seconded to the transport, the boats’ crews away to get the Marines ashore then stand guard over the beach, and the Marines themselves, the ship’s berthings below were echoingly empty.

  Lewrie groped his way to the binnacle cabinet to fetch out one of the night-glasses and returned to the bulwarks to peer shoreward. A telescope for use at night presented an image upside down and backwards in its ocular, which took some getting used to. At full extension, Lewrie could see a few lights. Two were lower in the ocular, and he took those for lanthorns or torches along the stone parapet of the battery. To the left of those, actually to the right of the battery, there was a dim light in the window of a fisherman’s cottage, and one square of vertical grid. What was there?

  “Bugger the bloody thing,” Lewrie muttered, lowering the telescope and relying on his eyes. Behind his back, officers and watchstanders grinned.

  The grid, he determined, was a wood-shuttered window with a light inside, leaking round all four corners of the badly fitted shutters. Further up the town there were a few more lights, some half-hearted attempts at street lighting, or lanthorns hung outside some taverns or lodging houses for travellers. The windmills, the granary, and the secondary objectives were indistinct black lumps on dark grey. Puerto Banús was deeply asleep, it seemed, and even the fishermen were still a’bed, else the quays and gravelly harbour shores would be lit up with dozens of glims as nets were removed from the drying racks and stowed, rowing boats hauled back into the water, and the larger offshore boats would be hoisting sails already.

  “Our boats are away, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported.

  “Very well, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie replied. “Mister Kibworth? Show two flashes from your lanthorn to Harmony.”

  “Aye aye, si
r.”

  It took another three or four minutes before the transport made a replying signal light, announcing that her boats were also away and laying on their oars, waiting for the three-flash signal to row ashore.

  Two Bells were struck; it was 5 A.M.

  “We’re really going to do it, by God,” Lt. Elmes muttered with rising excitement. He could not yet quite make the fellow out, but Lewrie could hear his new Hessian boots, of which Lt. Elmes was especially proud, squeaking as the Third Officer rose and flexed on the balls of his feet.

  They had sailed from Gibraltar three days earlier, but once at sea, another bout of squally weather and rough seas had sprung to life, forcing the ships to stand well offshore under reduced sail, with the men of the 77th Foot at the bulwarks to “cast their accounts to Neptune” as they suffered their first exposure to the way that Harmony rode the swells. One would have thought that their long voyage from England to Gibraltar had given them some sort of “sea legs”, but, evidently it had not. They were as sea-sick as so many dogs.

  Lewrie had delayed the attack one full day after the weather had moderated to let them recover, fearful of shoving them ashore and into combat, still crop-sick and puking from a ship still reeking of vomit.

  As long as I’ve been at sea, the smell’d make me shit through my teeth, Lewrie thought, recalling how a kindly older sailor had put it when he’d gone aboard the old Ariadne the first time in 1780.

  “A trader told me that down at Tetuán, the Arabs say that the dawn is when one may distinguish ’twixt a black thread and a white one, sir,” Lt. Westcott said in a soft voice by Lewrie’s elbow.

  “Makes sense, I suppose,” Lewrie replied. “Have you tried it, yet?”