A Hard, Cruel Shore

by Dewey Lambdin

  Sadly, though, upon your suggestions on the matter, we and the late John Beauchamp’s family have discovered the manner of his passing. John became deathly ill on the long, cruel march to Corunna. In the mountain village of Bembibre, he became so stricken that he could no longer go on, and had to be left behind with the other sick men.

  The regimental surgeon related that there was no hope for recovery, and John and the rest were left, in hopes that the French would care for them, though we also heard dire tales that the French had no mercy in them, and, indeed, were rumoured to practise the utmost cruelty on the sick, wounded, and those too utterly exhausted to carry on. How can a just God, I ask you, suffer such beasts to walk the earth? Were I not a Christian, I would blaspheme, and and curse them to the nether pits of Hell!

  “Think ye just did, my girl,” Lewrie muttered, wondering if she had submitted her letter to her father for approval, first, as most young ladies did, or had sent it off without doing so. That showed Lewrie that she was a young lady of modern spirit, despite being the daughter of a sobre churchman.

  The rest of her letter was more cheerful.

  Once again, in closing, do accept my Apology for how brusquely I responded to your presence in our house. Though you may find my pitiful attempt to limn you merely passable, and may not have time to correspond with a goose-brained young woman, given the demands of your duties, our family and I would truly appreciate hearing how my youngest brother progresses, and we pray for your shared Success.

  Yr most humble & obdt. servant,

  Mistress Jessica Chenery

  Lewrie took a sip of his tea and determined that, aye, he would write her back. He closed his eyes, summoning up a mental image of her, and was amazed at how vivid his memory of her was, from such a short meeting.

  There was a tautness in his crotch.

  Damme, am I besotted? he had to ask himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Lewrie’s, and pretty-much everyone’s dealings with the Prize-Courts, always left him, and others, with their hackles up and a bad taste in their mouths, and this encounter was no different.

  “Cavalier?” Lewrie spat. “Cavalier, mine arse!” He re-iterated as he and the other squadron Captains left the chambers a little after mid-day, after a whole morning’s wrangling.

  “The idiots have no concept, sir,” Capt. Yearwood of Sterling commiserated, “they ain’t seafarers, or Navy men. Just jumped-up store clerks and penny counters, with no idea of what it is we do.”

  “So we shifted some cargo before we sank or burned our lesser prizes,” Capt. Chalmers scoffed, “then nailed the hatches shut, and fetched them in all proper, discarding the dross. But those … ah, people,” that prim officer said, as close as he might come to casting aspersions, or cursing, “want it all, for their side-profits or to make themselves more comfortable. Bah!”

  “You’ll join us for a toothsome shore dinner, sir?” Yearwood asked as they neared the edge of the great, paved, and shady square of the Praça do Comércio, and the quays where their boats waited.

  “I fear I must beg off, sirs,” Lewrie told them. “There are some government officers I must call upon … if only to beg for some newspapers. Do allow me to foot the bill for a later supper ashore, though, once I’ve discovered the best restaurant or chophouse.”

  Free of his compatriots at last, Lewrie made a quick way to Mountjoy’s offices. Across the street from it, he took note of some rather shady-looking sorts entering or leaving, with hats pulled low over their faces, some positively skulking.

  Looks like spyin’z a goin’ concern, he thought, grinning.

  He crossed the street, took hold of the heavy iron door handle, and stepped inside, with the little bell over the door tinkling as it had the first time he’d entered the so-called “Falmouth Import & Export Company Ltd.”. And there was the same thin and reedy younger clerk, busy at his quill-pushing, as if doing legitimate sums.

  “Ah, Captain … Sir, ah,” the young clerk stammered as he got to his feet, struggling to recall his name.

  “Sir Alan Lewrie,” Lewrie supplied.

  “Of course, sir … Sir Alan!” the clerk replied, relieved.

  “This still where Mountjoy hangs his hat? I’d admire to see him,” Lewrie asked, taking off his new bicorne hat.

  “He’s in, ah … conference, Sir Alan,” the clerk told him, gesturing towards a faded padded chair. “If you don’t mind waiting for a bit? I will tell him that you are here.”

  At least there was a fairly recent London paper to occupy his time whilst he waited. The clerk emerged from the door to the inner offices, trying to slink through a six-inch gap as if opening that door fully would jeopardise the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, and seated himself behind his ledgers, as quiet as a mouse.

  A moment later and the door was opened fully, revealing a man with a swarthy complexion, in what looked like farmer’s garb, a man who shied as Lewrie shot to his feet. The strange fellow looked as if he’d seen a spook! He was quickly, stealthily, out the door to the street.

  “Ah, Captain Lewrie!” Thomas Mountjoy exclaimed with seeming joy, coming forward with a hand outstretched, “Back from the wars, are you? Come in, come in. I’ve some sparkling wine cooling in a water tub.”

  “Don’t suppose I should ask who that fellow was,” Lewrie said after sitting down in a much cleaner club chair, and crossing his legs.

  “Oh, best not,” Mountjoy said with a snigger as he poured them both glasses of wine. “He scouts cross the Spanish border for us, so the less said of him, the better. Isn’t that wine delightful? I suppose you’ve come to enquire about Senhora Covilhā.”

  “She’s here, in Lisbon?” Lewrie perked up, eagerly.

  “Just arrived a week ago, and is busily establishing her new lodgings,” Mountjoy said with a knowing wink, “not too far uphill from here, a place with a balcony overlooking the Tagus. There is a decent place to eat up that way, if you’re feeling peckish at the moment. I can show you where it is.”

  “Well, that’s one worry off my mind,” Lewrie said, letting out a sigh of satisfaction. “What I really came for is news of what’s acting in the world, first.”

  “Ah, well!” Thomas Mountjoy said, all but rubbing his hands to do what his sort did best; knowing what one did not, and relishing a chance to expound. “I’ve plenty of papers from home, and the local English-language papers, of course, and you’re more than welcome to them. Where do you wish to start?”

  “How’s the war going here, first-off,” Lewrie suggested.

  “Hah!” Mountjoy tossed back his head in joy. “To everyone’s delight, General Sir Arthur Wellesley was appointed Supreme Commander in Portugal and Spain. He arrived here, the twenty-second of April, whilst you were at sea, looking like a Drake or Raleigh, gathered up all the effectives that General Cradock had re-organised, along with the rump of poor old Sir John Moore’s reserves, all the Portuguese troops that General Beresford had recruited, armed and trained, and set off for Oporto before the music at the welcoming balls had died down. We think he’s up above Coimbra, already, and moving fast.”

  “I’d love it if he took Oporto,” Lewrie said, enthused by the prospects. “That harbour’d be much closer to my assigned area. Who’s he up against?”

  “Marshal Soult,” Mountjoy told him with a grimace of dislike, “the same bastard who chased our army to Corunna, and butchered so many people when he took Oporto earlier this year. Hard as I have tried, my informants can’t get hard numbers. The French don’t dare come too far South of the Douro River, except in large numbers … else the partisans get them. We’re all hoping that Wellesley has an equal number of troops, or a slight edge. I expect we’ll hear, one way or another, soon.”

  “Over the border in Spain?” Lewrie asked, taking a deep sip of that sparkling wine, and finding it so sprightly that he wished that he had two cases of it aboard, that instant.

  “Oh, God, the bloody Spanish,” Mountjoy sneered. “One would thin
k they’d learn not to boast before they try to bring the French to battle, ’cause it always ends in tears and embarassing defeats, but … with the help of Almighty God, the recent discovery of some saint’s bones, or El Cid’s toenail clippings borne to the forefront, their immensely amateurish generals send their half-clothed, poorly armed, un-paid, and starving soldiers into impossible situations … then abandon them and run for the rear once the French crush them. It’s like setting kittens into the dog-fighting pit!”

  “Then of course it’s England’s fault, one way or another?” Lewrie snidely concluded.

  “Of course it is!” Mountjoy scoffed. “We ain’t fast enough with the arms, cannon, powder and shot, or too niggardly at getting it where it’s needed, and where’s all that silver and gold that we promised them?

  “Where’s it all gone, is my question,” Mountjoy went on with another sneer. “Down near Cadiz, there’s a spanking new manufactury for the production of muskets, oh, just a grand edifice, makes one think of a ducal palace … cost umpteen thousands, and it took forever to run up, yet it hasn’t turned out a single musket! And it’s sitting right next to other gigantic, empty buildings the Spanish could have bought for a lot less, and could have been arming their troops for the whole last year, ’stead of begging and demanding of us for our Tower muskets!”

  “Makes one long for the old days, when we had Hessians on the payroll,” Lewrie sniggered, holding out his glass for a refill. “It is delightful, and where do I get some?”

  “I’ll show you,” Mountjoy promised, topping both of them up. “What is your bag, this time?” he asked with a twinkle.

  “A round dozen,” Lewrie told him, explaining the change in how the French carried out their supply deliveries, and their use of smaller vessels that could enter almost every wee fishing port on the coast, and his suspicions that the enemy was organising smaller road convoys inland, which took more front-line troops away from availability in the field. “Undaunted and Blaze potted themselves one of their corvettes. Pity I wasn’t ‘in sight’, or a flag officer, due a share!” he laughed.

  “Hmm, hate to disappoint you, but what information I’ve gotten, and reports from other sources further afield, is that the French in Northern Spain aren’t suffering for lack of supplies as much as we’d wish,” Mountjoy had to dis-abuse him. “Oh, you’re making them pinch, but only for so long as you’re on the coast, and the large seaports are still doing a thriving business, and Marshal Ney is loath to fritter away his soldiers at every little inlet village.”

  “Well, if Wellesley gets us Oporto, our time in port’d be much shorter,” Lewrie replied, shrugging that off. “Out and back, with the stores ship moved there, maybe even a small Prize-Court office. Those idle bastards’d most-like working there, with first pick of all the ports and sherries, hah hah.”

  “Or, might you need more ships?” Mountjoy hinted with a speculative brow up. “Two squadrons, handing off from one to the other, or … I imagine it’d not be as profitable, or as much fun, but, might it not require a proper blockading fleet?”

  That turned Lewrie grumpy and defensive at once. “Why, what’ve ye heard? Someone sayin’ we’re not doin’ enough, is what you’re implyin’?”

  “No complaints yet,” Mountjoy said with a dis-arming smile and spread-open hands, “you’ve done hellish-well, so far, but … there’s that corvette your ships took. Ney needs supplies, and he already holds the major seaports, with as many garrison troops as he can take from his army in the field. Sooner or later, the French navy must come out and try to run you off; and then where would you be?”

  And here I thought I enjoyed talkin’ to Mountjoy, Lewrie told himself, feeling peevish. He realised, though, that the Foreign Office spy, a fellow years younger than he, and one who had long before been his clerk, was, despite all that, the closest thing to a direct voice of His Majesty’s Government at Lisbon.

  Christ, the prat might even be smarter than me! he thought in uncomfortable disgust; Next thing I know, me and my ships’ll be just a little part of a fleet, ploddin’ about under an Admiral. Damn his eyes, Mountjoy’s right.

  “Maybe Admiralty will send you Admiral Gambier,” Mountjoy said in jest.

  “Gambier?” Lewrie snorted in derision. “Dismal Jemmy, the mournful prophet? No thankee! His sailors don’t dance hornpipes or jigs on his ships, they’re on their knees, prayin!, and all their chanteys are hymns!”

  “He’ll soon be free of his current command,” Mountjoy said as he rooted through a pile of newspapers and shoved one at Lewrie. “Read this.”

  “Good Lord,” Lewrie exclaimed, half-way through the article, “A proper cock-up. The miserable idiot.”

  First off, Admiral James Gambier’s temporary absence from the blockade had allowed a French squadron of eight ships of the line and four frigates to escape from Brest, bound South to meet up with even more warships from Lorient and Rochefort for some nefarious venture—the article only speculated that they might be bound for the West Indies—which venture had been scotched, and they had all taken shelter in the well-protected anchorage of Basque Roads near Rochefort, and behind the Ile d’Aix and its fortress guns.

  Perhaps to make amends for letting them escape in the first place, Gambier took his eleven ships of the line to blockade them, but could not discover a way to get at them. He had requested fire ships to go in and burn them out, and Admiralty had sent him both fireships and explosive-packed bomb vessels, under the command of the illustrious Capt. Thomas, Lord Cochrane, a very un-conventional and pugnacious man who, reputedly, could drive his superior officers to distraction by going his own way, and bedamned to orders.

  Cochrane and ‘Dismal Jemmy’? Lewrie thought in amusement; One bad combination! Did he ask Cochrane if he was saved, right off?

  Cochrane and his frigate, Imperieuse, had bulled his way in, using the bomb vessels to blast away a stout log-and-cable boom at the mouth of the Roads, sent his fireships swarming forward, driven by a stiff breeze. Cochrane had been one of the last men to leave one of the bombs, lighting the fuses himself, then had gone back aboard … to rescue the ship’s dog! As some of the fireships got through the hole in the boom, panic had ensued as eleven ships of the line and four frigates cut their cables.

  Cochrane signalled Gambier that success was in the offing. Inexplicably, Gambier did nothing, and kept on doing nothing for hours, ignoring Cochrane’s repeated signals before finally sending frigates and lighter warships to aid him, long after dark.

  Two French ships of the line had struck their colours, two more and a frigate were set on fire and abandoned, burned to cinders, and the rest had been driven onto the shoals or the mainland. They all could have been gobbled up, if only Gambier had acted! Once the tide had risen, the grounded ships had been floated off and had taken safer shelter in the mouth of the Charente River which leads to Rochefort, and the whole grand scheme had been a bust. The newspaper gloated over how many French flag officers and captains had been put on trial and shot, imprisoned, or cashiered, but, all in all, it was not the Royal Navy’s finest hour.

  “Christ,” Lewrie said at last, letting out a sigh.

  “Know what Gambier said of it?” Mountjoy sneered. “‘It is all simply too bad’.”

  “I’d love to attend the court-martial,” Lewrie sniggered. “I’d vote for death by firing squad. They shot Admiral Byng for less.”

  “Ah, but we live in such enlightened times, now,” Mountjoy drolly countered. “I doubt if the old Bible-thumper will get much more than a slap on the wrist, or put on half-pay for the rest of his natural life. What does the Navy call it?”

  “Being ‘yellow-squadroned’,” Lewrie said with a laugh. “There’s the Blue, lowest of all, then the Red, and very senior flag officers are atop in the White. Fools, poltroons, and village idiots are in the Yellow … barred from goin’ within twenty miles of the sea for the good of the Service!”

  “Feeling peckish?” Mountjoy asked, lifting the bottle to see how much wa
s left, and using the last of it for a final top-up for both of them. “If you are, I’ve found a grand restaurant just re-opened … the French trashed and looted the place on their way out when they evacuated Lisbon. Spite, I suppose, for better cooking than a Parisian establishment. Our army officers adore the place.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Lewrie happily agreed. “I promised that I’d lay on a shore feast for my Captains.”

  “It will suit you admirably,” Mountjoy promised, tossing off the last wine in his glass and rising. “Here. You’re welcome to all these newspapers. They ought to catch you up on things.”

  “You are the epitome of Christian kindness.” Lewrie laughed.

  “But Lewrie,” Mountjoy teased. “Are you saved?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Hope she’s happy t’see me, again, Lewrie thought as he shot his cuffs, tugged down his waistcoat, and fiddled with the set of his neck-stock outside the lodging house that Mountjoy had pointed out to him just before he’d set off to return to his “lair”.

  It was a rather nice place of pale tan and white stone, with a double door entry, three-storied, with many large balconies bound with ironwork, all shaded with dark green canvas awnings that had faded in the bright sunlight, the only shabby touch to the building’s finery.

  He also had to ask himself just how much these fine lodgings were costing him, as he entered, at last, discovering an entry hall much larger than a house foyer, with a large Turkey carpet on the tiled floor, sparsely filled with casual rattan furniture, and with potted plants spotted in the corners. There were some big paintings on the walls, dog hunting scenes in gilt frames, too. Along one wall by the stairwell stood a stout wooden counter, behind which a round older fellow with a cherubic full white heard puttered, sorting out letters in a rack of mail slots, much like a clerk in a hotel.