The King's Marauder

by Dewey Lambdin

  “I do,” Lewrie replied, nodding gravely. “I was there. Whyever do they not inform you of his loss? Do they treat it like some state secret?”

  “To them, I was his hired woman,” Maddalena countered, “so no one will take the time! If I am not a wife, of his family … see?”

  “Let us go and find a place to talk, Mistress Covilhā, and I’ll tell you all I know,” Lewrie offered, stepping forward to give her his arm, and relishing in her scents of fresh-washed hair and a light, citrony-lemony perfume.

  A short block or two away, there was a tavern with an awninged outdoor sitting area and tables and chairs. He seated her, then took a chair across from her at a two-place table, laying his hat aside as a blue-aproned waiter came out to take their orders.

  “Is he dead?” Maddalena asked plaintively after they’d ordered light and cool white wine.

  “We think the Spanish made him a prisoner,” Lewrie said, explaining how the assault on the semaphore tower had occurred, drawing on the tablecloth with a finger. He told her of the gunsmoke and the earliness of the hour, of the confusion, and the last recollections from the junior officers that he’d gathered for his report, what were Hughes’s last words, and …

  “‘Must I be the one to save you fools from disaster?’ he said?” Maddalena repeated, and to Lewrie’s astonishment, a faint smile curled to life on her lips. “Māe de Deus, who was the fool? And did your officers say that he was red in the face? He always was the … how do you say … blusterer, hah hah!” She laughed right out loud. “English words, some sound so funny!”

  “But descriptive,” Lewrie drolly replied. “‘Blunder’ is another. He blundered into a party of Spanish stragglers, most-like, and they took him prisoner. I expect we’ll hear from the Spanish authorities, sooner or later, that he’s been taken somewhere inland and placed on his parole ’til he can be exchanged for a Spanish officer of equal rank.”

  “That will take long, Captain Lewrie?” Maddalena asked in some worry, turning sobre again. “A week or so?”

  “If we hold a Spanish infantry Captain, and I don’t know much on that head, it could take months,” Lewrie supposed. “If we don’t, well … it could be a year or more.”

  Maddalena’s face sagged from hopeful and anxious to a look of utter despair. She put her elbows on the tabletop and pressed fingers to her temples, looking as if she would begin to weep.

  “Didn’t know ye missed him that much,” Lewrie said, reaching a hand out, which she took and squeezed, hard.

  “Before he sailed away the last time, he left me two pounds,” Maddalena said, “the rent on my lodgings are due next week, and I have thirteen shillings, five pence left. My landlord, he will throw me out, and I will have nowhere to go.”

  “And how much is the rent?” Lewrie asked.

  “Two pounds,” she told him, “two pounds a month.” She gave his hand another squeeze and made a wee snuffling sound. “Pardon,” she pled, letting go his hand to pull a laced handkerchief from a reticle and dab at her nose and eyes.

  “Month-to-month, not long-term?” Lewrie wondered aloud, scowling. “Not t’speak ill of the absent, but … what a cheese-parer! He had money, surely, or his family did. His tailor’s bills looked like he spent hundreds … egret feathers and all.”

  “I know he did, but…” Maddalena agreed, looking him in the eyes, making a wee pout and a distraught shrug. “I know he had a full purse, even if he was very careful with it.”

  “Cheap?” Lewrie scoffed, “Or guarded?”

  “Both,” Maddalena replied, laughing. “Hmm … now that he is gone, is it possible he left his money in his rooms at the Convent, or with his regiment? Is there some way someone could get it for me?”

  “Unless he left some instructions, a will, or something, I’ve my doubts,” Lewrie had to tell her. “His uniforms, arms, and such will be crated up and stored with his regiment, and what funds he had would be sent on to him, along with his Army pay, to wherever the Spanish are holdin’ him. Once his family’s told, they might even advance him some money for his upkeep, too, but … if you weren’t his wife…”

  “Then I am lost,” Maddalena weakly said, hugging herself with her head down. “If I had some way to have some of his money, I would take ship back to Oporto, and start again, but…”

  “Portugal may not be safe for you, much longer,” Lewrie said. “Ehm … did Hughes speak to you of how the world’s goin’? Did he mention the rumour that Napoleon’s ready to invade Portugal t’shut down her trade with Great Britain?”

  “I heard that in the markets,” Maddalena said, looking up at him, again. “The Major … Hughes, he did not explain much to me, or why the French would do so. He boasted that he might have the chance to march with a proper army to defeat the French, and how he would liberate Lisbon, if they did. He did not think that I was able to understand important matters,” she said, with a sad bitterness.

  “Portugal and Sweden are the last hold-outs from his Continental System, and he can’t get at Sweden, so…” Lewrie explained, laying it all out for her. “You’re safe as houses here at Gibraltar, but not at home in Oporto, or your hometown of Covilhā.”

  He poured them both refills from the wine bottle, and she took a sip or two, looking towards the harbour, and the streets, looking pensive and thoughtful. At last, she turned her gaze to Lewrie, again, frankly and directly.

  “To stay here and be safe from the French, Captain Lewrie, I am in need of a protector,” she said in a soft tone, smiling a little. “The first time we saw each other at the ristoran,” she said, using the Spanish word, “and when you dined with us … I felt you wished to be … you flirted with your eyes? Yes?”

  Her slim hands were in motion, inches above the tablecloth, in hesitant, embarrassed fiddling.

  “Yes, I did,” Lewrie confessed with a smile. “Yes, I do want to protect you, Maddalena. That, and a lot more, and what’s taken us so long?” he joked, which drew forth a hearty laugh from her, and both her hands took hold of his, this time, as she gazed at him longingly. “And I dare say I’ll do ye a great deal better than Hughes ever did.”

  “I knew from the first that you would be a much kinder, a much more … pleasant man,” Maddalena replied, beaming. “I wished from the first, that … I day-dreamed?”

  Lewrie knew that there was a mutual attraction between them, but he wasn’t going to bet the bank on how sincere her protestations of affection were.

  “First things first, then,” Lewrie said, letting go her hands and reaching for his glass to clink against hers to seal the bargain. “There’s a branch of my London bank here, and I’ll be needin’ t’make a draught on my accounts. Then, we’ll go settle with your landlord. After that, a grand supper, your choice of the chop-house!”

  “Then let us go … how do I call you?” Maddalena asked with an impish expression, “Captain, or Lewrie, or…?”

  “My given name’s Alan, Maddalena,” he told her.

  “Alan,” she whispered as if it pleased her to her toes.

  * * *

  “Ye don’t get much for two pounds a month,” Lewrie commented, once they had climbed up the stairs to the second storey above the ground floor of her lodging house. There was one large, un-glazed window with inside shutters for night, with a rickety two-place dining table in front of it. Over to the left was a hard-seated, worn settee, a pair of wing-back chairs, and some end tables. Most of the right-hand wall was taken up with a waist-high stone hearth with an iron grill for cooking, the wood and kindling stored in buckets, and some pots, pans, kitchen tools, and a whisk and bucket to sweep out the embers. There was a doorway which led to the second room on the right-hand side, in which there was a decidedly ugly armoire and a couple of traveller’s chests, a vanity table and stool with a large mirror, and an ancient wooden bed-stead with a high and garishly-carved headboard, and a mattress as thin as charity, held up by rope suspension. He gave the mattress a hard shove, and it emitted some alarming squeaks. To make matter
s even worse, Maddalena’s windows overlooked a steep, narrow side street that led further uphill from the High Street, and he estimated that he could have spit and hit the narrow iron balconies on the other side!

  “‘A poor thing, but mine own’, hey?” Lewrie quoted.

  “It is cool, most of the day,” she told him. Indeed, the lodging house was in the permanent shadow of the mountainous Rock.

  “Love what ye’ve done with it, even so,” Lewrie allowed with a grin, for the coverlet on the bed was nice, the bed linens smelled as fresh as new-laundered and sun-dried. There were many candleholders, most black wrought iron, but some made of shiny pewter. In both of the rooms, there were rather good Turkey carpets, some colourful end table coverings, and the settee had been draped with a large, intricately-figured cloth to disguise its age. She’d hung some paintings she’d found in the used-goods markets that weren’t all that bad, and of course there was a cross on one wall in the main room and a wood crucifix near the bed-stead. Despite Hughes’s parsimony, she had made the best of it, with planters and flowers on the outer window sills, some potted plants inside to brighten things up, and … there was a large wire cage in which a reddish warbler flitted and cheeped.

  “So many need lodgings, so the prices are high, and you find what you can find,” Maddalena said by way of apologising, going to the bird cage to whisper and coo to the warbler, which came to her inviting fingers and began to sing its song.

  “Down the hallway, in front,” Lewrie said, sticking his head out the front, door. “It’s open.”

  “Ah, sim, a grain trader rented it, a man who had the temporary license?” Maddalena said, joining him at the door. “But, he lost the right for some reason, and gave it up yesterday.”

  “Let’s go look,” Lewrie prompted, leading her down the hall. “Now, this is much better!” he declared, after a quick look about.

  The corner unit’s two windows were glazed double doors which led to a wide iron balcony, and both of its rooms were much larger, to boot. The planked floors admittedly creaked, here and there, but it was much nicer, and they had been polished. Like Maddalena’s it came furnished, but the appointments were newer and showed much less wear.

  “How much did he pay for it, I wonder?” Lewrie mused aloud.

  “Oh, I think I heard that it was three pounds a month,” she said with a rueful look, as if that was simply too extravagant.

  “Let’s see your landlord,” Lewrie announced.

  A quarter-hour later, and Lewrie had taken the better lodgings for her, laying out £18 for the next six months, with another pound to see that all her own things would be moved for her, immediately. That lit a fire under her landlord, another of those English expatriates who’d served at Gibraltar and taken their retirement there. He whistled up some porters idling at a nearby tavern, and within the next hour, all her chests and household goods, her plants and linens, all her decorations, and the bird cage had been shifted. She and Lewrie had seen to her wardrobe, and it had proved to be a thin selection of clothing, which he swore that he would improve, at once.

  “Deus, I cannot believe it!” Maddalena exclaimed after the last porter had gone and the door had been closed. She clutched her new key to her chest for a moment, then flung out her arms and whirled about in delight, dancing round the much larger main room.

  “Done good, did I?” Lewrie teased.

  She laughed, and came to him to give him a hug in gratitude, a hug which turned into a long, closely pressed embrace.

  Damme, but does she feel promisin’! Lewrie thought in a delight of his own. He considered it too early on to grope her, but she felt slim and lean, and the press of her breasts against his waist-coat and shirt front bespoke firmness, and perhaps more to her than what her gown had hidden. The hoped-for revelation made his crutch tighten.

  “Alan, I knew that you would be a kind man, but this! A very kind man you are,” she said, almost purring with her cheek against his, and giving him a squeeze. “And one so generous!”

  “D’ye think you’ll be happier here?” he asked with a wide grin.

  “Immensely happy!” she declared, breaking away at last, and leading him to sit with her on the settee.

  “What else d’ye need? A cook? A maidservant?” he prompted to show her even more generosity.

  “I have always cooked for myself, or my family,” she shrugged the idea off. “Living alone, I do not need a maid, like the grand ladies. What would I do with myself if there was someone else to do all the work?” She found the concept amusing. “Even if this is much larger, where would I keep a maid? Maybe … oh, once a week, I may need a woman to come in and help with the cleaning, but only for a few hours. There is a laundrywoman nearby, and the markets, when I need something, and I do it by myself.”

  “How much did Hughes give you to maintain yourself when he was not around, then?” Lewrie offered.

  “Two or three pounds,” she told him. “It was more than enough. He called me … another of your odd English words … frugal? I need little. Bread, jam for breakfast, perhaps an egg. Cheese, bread, and fruit at mid-day, and I cook a soup with some vegetables for my supper, with a little something sweet for after. I live simply.”

  “With more, cheese, bread, and wine,” Lewrie joshed.

  “But, of course, Alan!” Maddalena said, flinging back her head to laugh. “When I wish something finer, I expect that you will take me out to a nice ristoran, or, how you say, a chop-house?”

  “I noted you don’t have a locking caddy,” he said, craning his head round to peer towards the cooking facilities. “You’ll need one, for coffee, tea, cocoa beans, and sugar.”

  “You British and your tea!” she teased. “I love coffee in the morning, and cocoa at night, but…!”

  “If we don’t find one before I sail, I’ll leave you some extra, so you can buy what you need,” Lewrie promised, describing the way he’d have his cool tea prepared, with lemon and sugar. “Why, with a little more, you could dine yourself out, when ye wish a better supper, like the lobster at Pescadore’s.”

  That made her look away and down, and when she looked back up at him, she was frowning, and had turned serious.

  “I have been under a man’s protection before, Alan, but I have never been a whore,” she solemnly explained. “I pray to all the saints that I never must be. A woman in Portugal, Spain, or here at Gibraltar especially, where there are so many soldiers … unless she is old, a woman who dines alone is mistaken for a whore, and that I will never do. When you are away, I live alone … frugally,” she swore, her seriousness dissolved by amusement over that English word, again. “Your women in England, they dine out alone, or do they only do so escorted by a man? And what would you think of a woman who goes out alone?”

  “Well, they can shop during the day alone, or with a maid or a friend,” Lewrie flummoxed, “another girl, their mother, or a member of her family? At night, that’s another proposition, ’cause there’s the risk of criminals prowlin’ about, then they would need a man’s protection. T’be considered ‘respectable’ and all.”

  “But, what you think of a woman by herself at night?” Maddalena pressed, halfway ’twixt dead-serious, but with the air of someone who was eager to win a point.

  “Well, is she pretty…?” Lewrie teased, tongue-in-cheek.

  “Aha! You see? Even you would think her a whore!” Maddalena crowed with delight to prove her assertion, playfully shoving on his chest. “Without a Senhora Dona or man of her family, it is not done!”

  “Bit lonely, though, just sittin’ round by yourself?” Lewrie posed, cocking his head to one side. “Mean t’say…”

  “Ah, there is the newspaper, books to rent,” Maddalena explained, “in Spanish, Portuguese, and English, there is sewing, my bird to talk to … I would like to get a kitten, but the Major did not like cats. Perhaps if you do not mind…”

  “Get one!” Lewrie exclaimed, “get a pair! I’ve had cats aboard in my cabins for ages!” He quickly des
cribed Chalky, and what splendid company he made at sea.

  Maddalena rewarded him with another close, long hug, and a kiss on his cheek. “Por Deus, but you are wonderful man!”

  * * *

  He found a runner to carry a note out to his ship, saying that he would be back aboard by the start of the Forenoon, then helped Maddalena finish stowing away all her things where she wanted them. They went out to the nearby markets for her staples; wine, cheese, bread, fruits and jams, olive oil for cooking, some spices, and coffee, cocoa beans, and coned sugar. She also needed flour, rice, and some of that Moroccan pasta, cous cous. Lewrie learned that it was one word, and was not pronounced “cows cows”. He had to pay a street urchin to help get their “haul” up to her new lodgings.

  They dined after sunset at a nearby establishment, lingering to talk and sip wine long after their spicy omelets, cured ham, sliced tomatoes, and rice puddings were finished.

  Then … back at Maddalena’s lodgings, with the heavy oak door locked and barred, Lewrie was invited to get comfortable, taking off his coat, waist-coat, neck-stock, and sword while she hummed to herself at her vanity in the bed-chamber. When she returned, she was barefoot, padding to join him on the settee in a dressing robe which she held close at the throat, as if hesitant to fulfill her part of the “bargain” she’d made with him for a time.

  Only a few candles were lit, there was another bottle of that effervescent Spanish wine to share, and after some time spent talking and laughing softly, she leaned closer, then closer, ’til they shared a first, timid kiss. Lewrie did not wish to maul her, to begin their arrangement brutishly, but it was a damned hard thing to deny his rising excitement. Their embraces and kisses began gently, worshipping her fine neck, her ears, her eyes and cheeks, and it was Maddalena who responded with pleased moans, loosening her dressing robe to bare her shoulders, her throat, to his kisses, chuckling low and drawing him onward. Teasingly, tantalisingly, at last she took hold of his right hand, kissed his wrist and his palm, then placed his hand on her breast.