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.
Christ, they’ve been together so long, they even think alike! Lewrie told himself. The parrot had an eerily impressive vocabulary, indeed!
“Forcing me to cancel experiments, and return to Portsmouth,” Captain Speaks said in a huff, “failing in my express orders from Admiralty. Experiments which have become even more vital than before, sir. Vital, I tell you! By God, I really should lay court-martial charges against you. Turn you over to Admiral Lord Keith, and let him deal with you. So you can explain to him why the weapons that he intends to employ might be wanting!”
Lord Keith commanded in The Downs, subordinate to Admiral Lord William Cornwallis of Channel Fleet, making Lewrie wonder why Speaks would prefer charges with him, instead of Cornwallis, or Admiralty directly. Weapons he intends to
employ? Lewrie wondered.
“These damned French things you brought in, Lewrie,” Captain Speaks said, turning too mellow and “chummy” too quickly for Lewrie’s taste. “We both have access to high secrets. What are they, really?”
“I cannot reveal that, sir. Truly!” Lewrie insisted.
“Bosun, lay on! Two dozen lashes! Rwark!” the parrot uttered, prefaced, and concluded, with what sounded like a throaty and rasping gargle, or cat-purr, as it paced along its perch.
“Have the French developed a form of torpedo, Lewrie? Perhaps anchored torpedoes?” Speaks further asked, almost cajolingly.
“I can assure you that they’re not torpedoes, sir, but that’s all I can tell you,” Lewrie cautiously replied. “About Admiral Lord Keith, though … he intends to employ catamaran torpedoes, did y’say? Before the weather in the Channel turns foul?”
“You will be informed at the proper time, Captain Lewrie,” the choleric older fellow snapped, seeing that the nature of Lewrie’s secret would not be forthcoming, and keeping his own ’til the last minute. He turned snippish once more. “Thanks to you, sir, there will not be time for further testing, and the catamaran torpedoes will be employed before their ultimate perfection, and…,” Speaks gravelled, levelling a finger at Lewrie like a pistol barrel, “should they fail to achieve the desired results, such failure will not be placed upon my head, but upon yours, sir, for your lack of support to me!”
“Despite our suggested improvements of drogues and rudders that drifted them quicker and straighter, sir?” Lewrie asked, having a hard time stifling his anger at such a threat, and the unfairness of it. “I and my men have been very supportive to you, as you told me earlier.”
“Damn my…!” Speaks said, spluttering with fury. “You are to keep your bloody frigate ready to sail at a moment’s notice! You are to restrict access with the shore, and except for victualling, you are to keep your people aboard, where they cannot blab.”
“Well, Reliant’s people have earned a brief spell Out of Discipline, after…,” Lewrie countered, instantly regretting how tongue-in-cheek that sounded.
“Absolutely not, sir!” Speaks roared. “You will sit and swing at anchor ’til I’ve need of you. Do not be obstreperous or insubordinate with me … I’ll not have it, do you hear?”
“Quite clearly, sir,” Lewrie replied, abashed.
“Dismissed, Captain Lewrie,” Speaks ordered, stone-faced.
“Mutinous dog! Mutinous dog … rwark!” from the parrot.
Once out on deck in the fresh air, Lewrie let out a deep pented breath, puffing out his cheeks and sharing a rueful glance with Lieutenant Douglas Clough, Penarth’s captain, who had wisely found another place to be while Speaks was tearing a strip off Lewrie’s arse. Clough looked sympathetic.
“Might there be something up, Mister Clough?” Lewrie asked him in a close-by mutter as he made ready to board his waiting big.
“Ye dinna hear it from me, sir, but … we’ve been ordered to take a fresh load of torpedoes aboard, in a tearing hurry, mind, and once done, I’m to take her down to Saint Helen’s Patch and wait for a favourable wind … for The Downs, sir, to join Admiral Lord Keith! Captain Speaks gave me a hint … it’s to be Boulogne, sir!” the rough-featured Scot muttered back, though with an eager grin. “Explosive boats, fireships, our torpedoes, and even some rocket-firing vessels … Mister William Congreve’s explosive rockets!”
“What’s a Congreve rocket?” Lewrie wondered aloud, in a soft, conspiratorial tone. “I know signal rockets, but…”
“Don’t rightly know, sir, for no one ever tells me things, if they don’t pertain to our torpedo trials,” Lt. Clough said with a wee and wry laugh. “Mark my words, Captain Lewrie … we’ll be a part of a grand attack on Boulogne, sure as Fate, and that soon!”
“Thankee, Mister Clough,” Lewrie said, grinning back, “for the news. Now, I’ll have t’play dumb ’til our superiors decide t’tell us for certain.”
“With no shore liberty for anyone … even officers,” Clough mournfully agreed.
“Boulogne, though … well, well!” Lewrie whispered, imagining what that would be like, on the day ordained.
Play dumb ’til I’m told the details? Lewrie thought as he went through the ritual of departing honours, I was born t’play dumb! It’s what people expect o’ me!
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
At least it’s a pretty day for it, Alan Lewrie thought as the coast of France loomed up from the southern horizon, as a squadron, of which HMS Reliant was a part, sailed for Boulogne. Lewrie did wonder, though, why the expedition was so small, if the undertaking was of such vital importance to England’s survival.
The squadron was led by Admiral of the Blue Lord Keith in HMS Monarch, a two-decker 74-gunned Third Rate, not the lofty First or Second Rate more suitable to his seniority. With Monarch were two 64-gun two-deckers and two much older Fourth Rate two-decker 50s, a type of warship more commonly seen on convoy duty or troop carrying these days, not in the line of battle. It was smaller ships that made up the bulk of the squadron’s numbers; there were bomb vessels with their big sea-mortars, some older warships converted to fire William Congreve’s infernal rockets, brig-sloops and frigates, and a host of cutters and armed launches … along with at least four fireships and the collier Penarth bearing their catamaran torpedoes.
Lewrie savoured the last few sips of tepid coffee in his pewter mug as he stood by the windward bulwarks of the quarterdeck, slouched a tad, it must be admitted, as he surveyed the lines of warships, the sea and sky. Did the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte wish for fine weather in which to launch his titanic invasion force, he could not ask for a milder day, for the conditions were rarely seen in the Channel in late Autumn, this first day of October of 1804.
The sky above was a soft and milky pale blue, almost completely blanketed by vast swathes of thin cirrus clouds, the sunlight softened and almost shadowless. Further up the Channel nearer to the Straits of Dover, and further down-Channel on the West horizon, there were thicker, taller, and more substantial clouds through which the sun speared down in bright shafts. There were sootier, darker shafts, too, as if there might be rain there, or, as superstitious old salts maintained, the sun was drawing up columns of water for a later deluge.
The waters of the Channel, usually boisterous, cross-chopped and sparkling with white-horses and white-caps, were calmer, too, the waves longer and shallower for once, and the muted sunlight turned the sea’s colour to steely grey-blue close aboard, and a paler blue that mirrored the sky further away. France, off the bows, was a thin smear of dull green and sand, a single coloured pencil-stroke, so far.
The only stark colours were the solidities of the warships, and their hulls and sails; dark brown weathered oak, the shiny black of the painted upperworks or the matte black of tarred wales, and the yellows, reds, ochres, or buffs of their hull stripes, with here and there glints of giltwork on transoms, entry-ports, or carved figureheads. Pale, new white canvas, or aged and weathered buff or parchment tan sails, made a ragged scudding cloudbank above those hulls. Above them all, and aft on wooden staffs, all ships sported Blue Ensigns with vivid red-white-blue Union flags in their cantons … and all flew yards-long commissioning pendants from their main-mast tops, streaming and flickering like snakes’ tongues licking the wind for the taste of prey.
Lewrie finished his cold coffee, set the mug down on the deck, and strolled to the break of the quarterdeck to peer over the hammock stanchions, now full of tightly rolled bedding, down into the waist.
Admiral Lord Keith had not yet ordered the squadron to Quarters, and Lewrie felt it odd to be sailing into action with his crew acting as if it was just another day far out at sea, with their frigate alone and without a threat on the horizons. The ports were still shut, and the great-guns were still snugly bowsed to the gun-port sills, each of them still plugged with red-painted wood tompions in their muzzles. A few men idled round the companionways, but only half the crew, of the starboar
d watch, stood the watch. Well, there were the Marines … if action was expected in an hour or so, Lt. Simcock was going to be ready for it, and properly dressed, too; his men had doffed their everyday slops and had changed into cockaded hats, red coats, white waist-coats and trousers, and black canvas “half-spatterdash” leggings, with all of their martial accoutrements hung about them.
“France … dammit,” Lewrie muttered, as the squadron closed to within six or seven miles of the shore. “Bloody, bloody, France!”
“Well, some of their young ladies are fetching, sir,” Lieutenant Westcott breezily commented near Lewrie’s side. “Recall the fair Madamoiselle Sylvie at Kingston?”
“Oh, is that why you insisted you lead the boats?” Lewrie said with a laugh. “You’ve a taste for French mutton, have you?”
“I rather doubt there’d be any aboard the invasion boats, sir,” Westcott replied, all whimsy. “Though one might hope?”
Lewrie wished to keep Lt. Westcott aboard Reliant should they run into opposition from French gunboats, but Westcott had asked for a private word and had claimed the honour of leading the boats that would tow the torpedoes in; it was the senior lieutenant’s role by right and tradition, and, “How else may I make a name for myself and gain notice for advancement, sir, if I’m held back?” he’d posed with a wry laugh, and Lewrie had acceded to his desire, charging him to look after his Cox’n, Liam Desmond, and Desmond’s long-time mate, Patrick Furfy.
He would send his oldest Midshipmen; he could spare them, and were men to be lost, it was better to lose Mids than officers. That was traditional, too, and after all, Houghton, Entwhistle, and Mister Warburton had as much need of a bit of fame and notice at Admiralty, and in the papers, as any other man; how else might they advance? And, Lewrie grimly considered, even the most seasoned Midshipmen were as hungry for honour and glory as lion cubs!
The Invasion Year Page 36
