Текст книги "Kings and Emperors"
Автор книги: Dewey Lambdin
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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 26 страниц)
“The French will be back in strength in the Spring, is that what you’re saying?” Westcott asked, equally gloomy. “‘Boney’ has untold thousands of fresh troops available, his own, and thousands of troops from the other countries he’s conquered. He has to come back and finish off the Spanish for good.”
“Then, God help the Spanish,” Lewrie gravelled, “even if they can’t seem t’help themselves.”
“And God help our armies, if they cross the border, trusting the Spanish,” Westcott sorrowfully agreed.
“Hmm, well,” Lewrie summed up, pushing his empty plate aside. “What’s it t’be, Mountjoy? A tour of fabled Lisbon, or will you go see General Beresford or Moore?”
“You weesh zhe grand tour, senhores?” Marsh offered, tittering and off in one of his guises, again. “I am expert guide!”
“Only if you can steer Westcott to the prettier whores, sir,” Lewrie said with a snigger.
“No, dear as I wish,” Mountjoy said, torn between finally seeing Lisbon’s impressive attractions, and duty, “I must go talk with our generals, first. A tour, later, if you’re still offfering, Romney.”
“My delight,” Marsh agreed, beaming.
“I suppose we should get back to the ship,” Lewrie told his First Officer. “Will you be staying on, Mountjoy, or should we wait for you and carry you back to Gibraltar?”
“Let you know later,” Mountjoy said, digging coins out to pay the reckoning. “I may only need to stay a day or two.”
* * *
“You’ll not be haring off to see another battle ashore, will you, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked as they made their way back downhill to the seafront.
“Too far inland for me, if one comes, no, Geoffrey,” Lewrie scoffed. “I’ve seen my share, and those are enough.”
“If half of what Marsh says is true, I’d not wish to go off with our soldiers, either,” Westcott said, displaying a deep scowl that made some Libson passersby duck away from him, in fear of the Evil Eye. “Maybe General Moore should wait ’til Spring.”
“But, the French will be back by Spring,” Lewrie pointed out.
“Marsh,” Westcott mused aloud, still scowling, “do you really think he murdered that French officer as he claims?”
“We’ve only his word for that,” Lewrie replied, shrugging. “I always thought he was much like a half-insane version of Mountjoy, an inoffensive sort who perhaps enjoyed playing some great, dangerous game a tad too much, but … now I wonder if he is indeed capable of violence, like that old spy-master, Zachariah Twigg, who’d cut your throat just t’watch you bleed. You saw that look he gave you when you remarked about his clothes?”
“Aye, I did, sir,” Westcott heartily agreed, “and it made me wonder if there’s a knife in my back, in future.”
“Tortas, senhores?” an old woman in widow’s black weeds cried from a pastelaria set between two tumbledown houses. “Tortas laranja, de Viana, tortas de limao?”
“Tarts!” Lewrie enthused. “Orange, lemon, and I think some with jam fillings. We didn’t have dessert, did we, Geoffrey? Ah, senhora, queria dois, dois, and dois,” he said pointing to each variety in turn. “Quanto custa?”
“Eh … vinte centimos, senhor,” the old lady dared ask, not sure if that was too much in these troubled times.
“Twenty of their pence, is it?” Lewrie said, digging out his wash-leather coin purse; he had no Portuguese coin, but he did have two six-pence silver British coins, and handed them over. The sight of silver almost made the old lady faint.
“Aqui esta, senhor, bom apetite!” she exclaimed, wrapping his selections in a sheet of newspaper.
“Obrigada, senhora,” Lewrie replied, “thankee kindly.”
“Viva Inglaterra!” she shouted in departure.
“I say, these are tangy,” Westcott said as he bit into one of the orange-flavoured tarts as they resumed their downhill stroll for the docks. “But, just when did you become fluent in Portuguese, sir?”
“Fluent, me?” Lewrie laughed off. “Not a bit of it, Geoffrey, ye know how lame I am at languages. But, the best place to learn a tongue, even a little, is with the help of a bidding girl.”
“So I’ve always thought,” Westcott said with a smug leer.
“Viva inglese, viva Inglaterra!” a pack of street urchins began to chant, skipping and prancing behind them, and begging for centimos.
“It appears we’ve made some Portuguese happy,” Lt. Westcott said, looking over his shoulder at them.
“For now, at least, Geoffrey … for now,” Lewrie mused.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“All this will fill the cisterns, sir,” Pettus commented as he came back into the great-cabins from the stern gallery, where he had been trying to dry some washing in the narrow, dry overhang of the poop deck above. “Still damp, sorry,” he said of Lewrie’s under-drawers and shirts.
“Well, hang them up in here, then,” Lewrie told him, looking up from his reading, “and we’ll hope for the best.” When last the planking seams of the poop deck had been stuffed with oakum and paid over with hot tar with loggerheads, some wee gaps had been missed, so spare pots and wooden pails stood here and there on the deck chequer, and the good carpets had been rolled up, to catch the dripping, and save expensive Turkey or Axminster rugs. He looked upwards as the incessant Winter rain increased and began to seethe on deck. It was December at Gibraltar, nigh Christmas, which usually had a mild Winter, but this year was damper, and colder, than what he’d experienced last year.
It wasn’t raw or chilly enough to wish for a Franklin-pattern coal stove to heat his cabins, but Lewrie did his reading fully dressed, less uniform coat, and with a loose-sleeved, ankle-length robe made from a wool blanket. It was white wool with red and green stripes at both ends, and upon first exposure to cabin visitors, Lt. Westcott had japed that he looked like an Indian who’d swapped furs for a Hudson’s Bay Company blanket.
The weather at sea had delayed many ships’ arrival, but Royal Mail packets had managed to come in, bringing him letters from home, most of which were pleasant, and some outright delightful.
Both James Peel at Foreign Office Secret Branch, and his old school chum, Peter Rushton, had written of the scandal, and the court of enquiry, into that disastrous Convention of Cintra. Dalrymple had been removed from command in Spain and Portugal, his career at an end, and General Burrard had been reduced to domestic duties only, never to serve abroad again. Wellesley was the only one of them who had gotten off rather mildly, and the papers championed the real victor, claiming that Dalrymple and Burrard had ordered and brow-beaten him to sign the damned thing. He was idle in Dublin, with no real harm done to him.
Both of his sons were well. Sewallis was still on the Brest blockade, bored to tears with the incessant plodding in-line-ahead for months on end, standing off-and-on the French coast with no sign that the enemy would ever come out to challenge them, with only the rare week or so in an English port to re-provision and have a run ashore where, admittedly, he had taken strong drink aboard and attended some lively subscription balls; he boasted that he was one of the best dancers aboard, had instructed the younger Mids in his mess in the art, and had been quite taken by more than a few pretty girls.
His younger son, Hugh, was still in the Mediterranean aboard a frigate, and as he described it, a taut and happy ship led by an energetic and daring captain. They had done some cutting-out raids in Genoese harbours and had seized merchant prizes right from under the noses of the French and their grudging Italian allies, had made chase of several others off Malta, taken two more, and had fought a spirited action with a French corvette, made prize of her, and Hugh suggested that his father should look into the latest issues of the Naval Chronicle in which Midshipman Hugh Lewrie was mentioned by his captain as having shown pluck, courage, and skill!
There’s one that didn’t fall far from the tree! Lewrie told himself with rightful pride.
There was a letter from his father, more an advertisment for the new plays, symphonies, and entertainments of the season. There was one from his former ward, Sophie de Maubeuge, now married to his old First Officer in the Proteus frigate, Anthony Langlie, with the thrilling news that her husband had been “made Post” and awarded the command of a Sixth Rate frigate, and would be home for a couple of months as she recruited and outfitted, after nigh a year of separation and anxiety.
There was nothing from his daughter, Charlotte, but, by then, he had no expectations that she would ever write him. Oddly, there was nothing about her from his former brother-in-law, Governour Chiswick’s, latest letter, but then, Governour was all about himself and his new prospects; old Uncle Phineas Chiswick had finally died, and he’d left all of his estate to Governour, elevating him from a much-put-upon estate manager to master of all he surveyed, a wealthy man with thousands of acres. Old Sir Romney Embleton had also passed in the Autumn, so his son, Harry, was now Sir Harry, Colonel of the Yeomanry militia, and the borough’s nigh-permanent representative in the House of Commons, for the very good reason that no one would dare run against him. With Harry so busy, Governour had been asked to be the local Magistrate in Harry’s place, too.
God help Anglesgreen, then, Lewrie thought with a scowl, in need of a brandy to wash the sudden sour taste from his mouth; That brayin’ bastard’ll run his court like Tsar Ivan the Terrible!
The read and discarded letters were piling up beside Lewrie on the settee cushions, they were crinkly, daubed with patches of sealing wax, and … chewy. Chalky made a prodigious, tail-wiggling leap from the brass tray table to the pile like diving into a snow heap and pawed right and left, unsure which he’d shred first.
“Those ain’t good eatin’, Chalky,” Lewrie chid him, “better ye come here and keep me warm.”
Chalky would have none of it. The lure of wagging fingers to tempt him only prompted the cat to plop on his back and wriggle atop the letters, paws out to bat at him, his tail thumping on the papers.
“Have it your own way, then,” Lewrie said, opening the last of his personal correspondence. “Well, just damn my eyes!” he had to exclaim once he had opened it.
Percy, Viscount Stangbourne, had written him to announce that his self-raised light dragoon regiment had been selected to be part of General Sir David Baird’s army, selected personally by Lord Henry Paget, one of England’s most distinguished cavalry commanders, to be in his two-thousand-man brigade! He’d written from shipboard, just hours from sailing, about a fortnight before.
He’s probably already ashore, Lewrie thought.
Percy and his troopers were to land at Corunna in Northwest Spain, and march upon Salamanca, unless there was a change of plans, he’d penned; he was bursting with pride for his unit to be selected, to be given the chance to prove their worth, and his own, upon the field of battle, and meet the much-vaunted French cavalry, sabre to sabre! What a chance for glory had been missed, he thought, that at Roliça and Vimeiro, General Wellesley had had so little cavalry, else the battle would have been a clean sweep, and a joyous rout of the defeated French, and that ridiculous Convention of Cintra would not have even been contemplated!
Percy was now the proud father of two fine sons, Eudoxia was well and happy, his father-in-law, Arslan Artimovich Durschenko, was staying in England to recruit remounts to be shipped to Spain later, and that Horse Guards had seen fit to take his regiment into full military service, allowed its own home barracks and second battalion cadre to form a full-strength replacement unit recruited from the Reading and Henley-on-Thames region. He couldn’t be prouder that his patriotic efforts, and his great fortune he’d used to raise, mount, arm and equip his regiment, had finally borne fruit!
By the way, he wrote, we’re no longer Stangbourne’s Horse but the 38th Light Dragoons. Oh, and Lydia is well and content living in the country, with all her childhood friends and their children to spoil, and her good works. She would have come to Spain, but …
Hmm, Lewrie thought at the mention of his former lover’s name; I don’t feel even the slightest twinge.
He had, at the time, been extremely fond of her, almost at the verge of real love, and even at the moment in that bleak Winter garden when she had rejected him and vowed to live alone, and safe, the rest of her life—the moment that he’d recklessly proposed marriage—had experienced the stumbling of his heart, the sinking of his stomach so keenly that he’d thought he would sicken of his loss.
Months later, after taking command of Sapphire and returning to the sea and an active commission, the pangs would disturb him … yet now? Lewrie glanced at Percy’s letter once more, and found that Lydia had asked him to express her fond regards.
Fond regards, and it don’t hurt. Well! he mused. All he did was shrug. Chalky, tired of scattering paper, crawled into his lap with some mews for attention, and a Mrrk or two, and settled down to be stroked and petted, slowly beginning to rumble and go slit-eyed.
There was a rap of a musket butt on the deck, the stamp of the Marine sentry’s boots, and a shout to announce Yeovill, his cook.
“Enter!” Lewrie called back, not rising.
Yeovill came in, shaking water from his tarred sailor’s hat and dripping raindrops from his tarpaulin coat. Chalky perked up in a trice, uttered a glad mew of welcome, and went dashing to Yeovill; Yeovill was food, and good smells.
“Fickle,” Lewrie chid him after the cat leapt away. “What is it, Yeovill?”
“Ah, I was wondering about the holidays, sir,” Yeovill began, “and what you might have in mind to serve to dine in our officers and such, sir. With the trade cross the Lines so free, now, I can find almost anything you wish … hams, geese, ducks, even turkeys.”
“Hmm,” Lewrie happily pondered for a moment, “smoked Spanish hams are always fine, but … a really big Christmas goose’d go down well. Devil with it, you might as well pick up one of everything, and we’ll have a two-day feast!”
“Ehm, I was also wondering if we could do something special for the ship’s people, too, sir,” Yeovill went on with his eyebrows up in hope. “A goose or turkey for each eight-man mess, perhaps, with shore bread, puddings or duffs, and fresh vegetables?”
“Good Lord, how would Tanner ever cook all that?” Lewrie jeered. “The only method that one-legged twit knows is ‘boil,’ and boiled goose is worse than cold, boiled mutton!”
“I was thinking I could find someplace ashore, sir, to roast whatever I could find, and have it rowed out,” Yeovill went on.
“Hmm,” Lewrie pondered, again, considering the drawbacks of that. On the days that salt-pork or salt-beef was issued to the hands, it came in the form of eight-pound chunks or joints chosen by weekly-appointed messmen from every eight-man dining arrangement. Once chosen, the meat went into that mess’s string bag with a numbered brass tab to identify it, and once boiled to a fare-thee-well, it and the accompanying bread or bisquit, duffs or hard puddings, soup, beans or pease, were hand-carried from the galley to the messes. The meat was sliced into roughly one-pound portions—less all the bone and gristle that the crooked jobbers left on—and doled out.
“’Oo shall ’ave this’un, then?” Lewrie said, chuckling, in an approximation of lower-deck accents. “Only two legs on a duck or goose, Yeovill, and everyone’ll want one. Then there’s the problem of how they’d deal with the carving, and what you’d do with the left-overs.”
“Well, perhaps they’d stuff themselves so full, there wouldn’t be any, sir,” Yeovill suggested, “and if they slice it off in slabs, they could reach over for seconds.”
“I don’t know…,” Lewrie fretted, stroking his chin. “Sailors are a conservative lot, and not exactly welcoming to new foods, as we have learned, hey?”
When his old frigate, Reliant, had been off the American coast, the crew had turned their noses up at plain boiled rice, and now his people aboard Sapphire weren’t fond of couscous, either, and had sent a round letter aft to complain, the spokesmen’s names arranged in a circle round the margins of the paper so no one could be singled out as the instigator.
And when it came to drink, well! The Navy could substitute wine in foreign waters for their rum, but to do that too often could result in loose cannon balls rolling over the lower decks, an ancient precursor to out-right mutiny. No, Jack Tar would have his rum and his small beer, and all else was so much foreign fiddle-faddle!
“Ah, well, sir, it was only an idea,” Yeovill said, slumping.
“Fresh-slaughtered bullocks’d be best for the holidays, shore bread, and sweet duffs … and of course we could ‘splice the mainbrace’ for the rum issue on Christmas Day,” Lewrie decided.
“Real ale with the meal, sir, not small beer,” Yeovill suggested quickly, “a pint apiece with no ‘sippers’ or ‘gulpers,’ and that might make them happy. There’s pasta available by the bushel, too, and I doubt Tanner could ruin big pots of cheesy pasta. I could see to the melting of the cheese, as a side dish.”
“Small beer with the meal,” Lewrie countered. “I’ll not have ’em suckin’ ale down in one go, then turnin’ angry when they don’t have anything more t’drink with their beef. God, next thing ye know, I’d be labelled a ‘Popularity Dick,’ and discipline’d go straight to Hell. By the by, Yeovill, you’ve a cat ready t’climb your leg,” he slyly pointed out.
Yeovill reached down and swooped Chalky up to cradle against his chest, where the cat sniffed eagerly at all the galley aromas on his clothing, then just as quickly tired of being held, and fussed and wiggled to be freed.
“Like I just said, Yeovill … fickle,” Lewrie said, grinning.
“Aye, sir,” Yeovill said with a grin of his own.
“Yes, we’ll think of something t’brighten their lives when the holiday comes round,” Lewrie began to sum up, but stopped and cocked an ear as someone on deck challenged an approaching rowboat, yelling over the loud drumming of the rain, but impossible to make out what was said in the snug great-cabins.
A moment or two later, though, and the Marine sentry was reporting Midshipman Griffin to see the Captain. Lewrie bellowed for him to be admitted, and rose to his feet as the lad came in, dripping even more rainwater from his tarpaulin coat.
“A letter from shore for you, sir,” Griffin announced, handing over a sealed square of paper.
“Thankee, Mister Griffin, you may return to duty,” Lewrie said as he tore it open, “and try not t’drown out there.”
“Aye, sir!” Griffin replied with a laugh.
“Mine arse,” Lewrie said, groaning after he had read it. “Get out my boat cloak, if ye please, Pettus. It seems I’m summoned out in the rain. Pass the word for my boat crew to muster, Yeovill.”
“Yes, sir. Uh … your supper?” Yeovill asked as he threw on his tarpaulins once again.
“Not a clue, sorry,” Lewrie said as he fetched his own coat and donned it, and selected his oldest, foul-weather, cocked hat from the pegs. “If I’m back aboard in time for it, I may have t’draw whatever the crew’s havin’, else I may dine ashore if anyone’s feelin’ charitable after.”
* * *
The summons had come from General Drummond, now the commander of the Gibraltar garrison and defences, for him to attend that worthy at the earliest possible moment. It was a miserable and soggy trip ashore in his cutter with his voluminous boat cloak wrapped round him and covering his thighs; even so, water had trickled down the back of his neck, and when the wind got up in a gust or two, and the rain came half horizontal, almost blinded him and soaked his face and his shirt collars. After that, it was a long, wet plod up to the Convent, almost wading through some patches and puddles as rain sluiced downhill along the steep cross streets.
Wonder what the bloody rush is about? he wondered as he handed his hat and cloak over to an attendant, shooting soggy cuffs and readjusting his neck-stock, and looking round. The army headquarters was as hushed as a church on Monday, not stirring to some alarm over a sudden crisis. His boots rang on the stone flooring, though in point of fact, doing so rather squishily as he approached Drummond’s office doors. Lewrie announced himself to a junior officer in the outer office, and was seen in.
“Ah, Captain Lewrie,” Drummond said, looking up from papers on his desk, and rising to greet him. “So sorry to have sent for you on such a day, but … there it is. Tea, sir?”
“Most welcome, sir, thankee,” Lewrie replied.
Uhoh, Lewrie thought, almost wincing as he spotted Mountjoy and Deacon seated apart from the desk, in front of the large fireplace; it must be something hellish if they’re here, too!
“Afternoon, Captain Lewrie,” Mountjoy said, getting to his feet to come shake hands. “A wet day, even for a sailor, hey?”
“Hallo, Mountjoy. Aye, so wet I could paint you a water colour,” Lewrie rejoined, “Mister Deacon, how d’ye keep?”
“Main-well, Captain Lewrie, sir,” Deacon replied, nodding and beginning to rise ’til Lewrie waved him to stay comfortable.
“So, what’s so important, then?” Lewrie asked, going towards the fireplace. There wasn’t much of a fire laid, more for atmosphere than anything else, but he wished it was roaring—if only to dry his clothes out.
“Of late, we’ve received some disturbing, possibly some very bad information,” Mountjoy hesitantly began, looking towards General Drummond for permission to speak first.
“Tell him, sir,” Drummond gruffly said with a nod as he came to join them with his own fresh cup of tea. “It was your people who first alerted us.”
“Very well, sir,” Mountjoy said, then turned to Lewrie as he took a seat near the meagre fire. “Our source in Paris—”
“That bitch,” Lewrie growled. “Charité, again?”
“Yes, sir, that … bitch,” Mountjoy said with a wince, and another look to General Drummond. “Captain Lewrie and our agent in Paris have crossed swords, as it were, in the past, do you see. She has sent word that the Emperor Napoleon will not let Spain go quite so easily, and is sending massive re-enforcements over the borders to re-conquer what was recently lost, some sixty thousand, doubling his numbers North of the Ebro River. What’s worse, Napoleon himself is coming South with another hundred thousand, with his best marshals … Lannes, Soult, Ney, Victor and LeFebre, to erase any resistance in Spain, for good. And, might I conjure everyone in this room to ignore Captain Lewrie’s out-burst and forget that our agent’s name was ever uttered?” Mountjoy added, casting a stern look in Lewrie’s direction.
“Sorry … heat of the moment,” Lewrie said, abashed, busying himself with his offered tea, cream and sugar. “Damn my eyes, ‘Old Boney’s’ takin’ the field himself?” he blurted again, suddenly realising the import of that move. “Christ, Moore and his army’ll just be trampled in the rush! Is she … is this confirmed?”
“We’ve agents in Northern Spain, and it is confirmed, sir,” Mountjoy told him, rather severely. “The report from Paris, for once, comes behind the times. The Spanish General, Blake, moved to block the French advance, but his army was nigh-massacred at Durango, and we have it on solid terms that Napoleon is already at Vitoria.”
“See here on the map, sirs,” Drummond said, finishing his tea and leading them to his massive map of Iberia. “We don’t know whether Moore and Baird have united their forces or not, round here at Salamanca, as they had planned. If Napoleon is already at Vitoria, he’ll most likely march on Burgos, next, then right on South to re-take the capital, Madrid. He could, however, move from Burgos to Valladolid to face Moore, first, depending on how threatening he imagines a British army is to him.”
“He may not think much of us, even after Roliça and Vimeiro, are you saying, sir?” Mister Deacon asked sharply.
“Napoleon doesn’t think much of the Spanish, even after the defeat at Bailén, either,” General Drummond gravelled back, appearing miffed by the slur on his service’s record against the French. “It is hoped that he considers Moore a side-show to his need to seize Madrid, and thrash what forces the Spanish have in the field. Way off here,” Drummond said, sweeping a hand to the East, over near Zaragoza, “the Spanish Generals Castaños and Palafax, we believe, managed to extract their armies from the disaster at Durango, and might be able to operate against the French supply lines. A damned desolate and forbidding place for the French to be, in the mountains of central Spain in Midwinter, with nothing coming from France to succour them. Should they make the attempt, successful or not, they might draw Napoleon away just long enough for Moore and Baird to retreat back into Portugal. I sincerely hope that they do so, soonest.”
“Though there’s no way to get a rider to warn them, or order them to retreat,” Lewrie said in a grave tone.
“No, Captain Lewrie, there is not,” Drummond bleakly agreed. “Sir John Moore is senior to me, and Supreme Commander in Portugal and Spain, so I can but advise. Since Moore departed Lisbon I have not heard one word from him.”
“What are these marks, at Lugo and Léon, sir?” Deacon asked.
“Those?” Drummond said with a faint sneer on his face. “Those are two more Spanish armies, one under a General Barclay at Lugo in central Galicia, already defeated and licking their wounds by the way, and the other represents an army under a General de la Romana at Léon.”
“It would seem that they are in as good a position to interdict the French supplies as Castaños and Palafax in the East,” Deacon commented.
“Hah!” Drummond said with a derisive toss of his head. “I’ll lay you any odds that they won’t, sir. Barclay’s army, as I said, has been trounced and mauled quite badly, and Romana, so the junta in Madrid informs me, may have, ehm … inflated his numbers just to look good to them. They do that, you know, perhaps to continue receiving the soldiers’ pay! Our military attaché in Madrid writes me that it’s a safe bet that if a Spanish general reports thirty thousand men on hand, he’s more like to only have ten or twelve, and half of them are without proper arms.
“An example, if you will, gentlemen,” Drummond sourly went on. “This year, the returns upon the Spanish cavalry reported a bit over eleven thousand troops … yet they had only a little more than nine thousand mounts! God only knows why my predecessor, General Sir Hew Dalrymple, put so much faith in Spanish promises, for I surely don’t. Neither does London. Moore and Baird were warned not to attach themselves to Spanish armies, or expect too much from them.”
“Anything from Lisbon, Mountjoy?” Lewrie asked the spy-master.
“Hand wringing and fretting, mostly,” Mountjoy told him, “viewing with alarm. They don’t know much more than we do, having gotten the same despatches that we have, and hopefully sending it on to the Army.”
“Napoleon will go after Moore, first,” Lewrie said after a long peer at the large map.
“How come you to that, sir?” General Drummond snapped.
“I’ve met the bastard twice, sir, and he’s all for honour and glory … his, mind,” Lewrie said with a wry smile. “As you say, he’s a very low opinion of Spanish armies, and can trounce them any day of the week. He surely knows Moore’s reputation, though, and is anxious to avenge how a British army embarassed him at Roliça and Vimeiro, and Marshal Junot’s ouster from Portugal. We made him look weak and bad, and that preenin’ coxcomb can’t abide that. He’ll go for Moore with all he’s got.”
“He’s more than enough troops to re-take Madrid and take on Moore, both,” Mountjoy pointed out. “He’ll give that task to another of his Marshals, but, you may be right, Captain Lewrie. The honour of defeating a British army in the field will glitter before him like the biblical Star in the East.”
“One would hope that Sir John is in contact with the Spanish at Lugo and Léon, then,” Deacon said, “and has been informed that the French are in force, and hunting him, before he blunders into them.”
“Amen,” Lewrie seconded. “Ehm, given all this new information, why am I here, then?”
“If given sufficient warning, there is a possibility that Sir John won’t have to retreat over the mountains back into Portugal, but may be able to move from Salamanca, where he expected to link up with General Baird, to Valladolid before the French get there, and get on some halfway passable roads to the Galician ports of either Vigo or Corunna, and be extracted by sea, Captain Lewrie,” General Drummond told him. “I am formulating orders for General Fox on Sicily, and to our garrison at Malta, to send as many troop transports as they have to Gibraltar. I am also sending requests to Admiral Cotton, and Admiral de Courcy off Galicia, to ready themselves for an evacuation. As soon as we have a reasonable number of transports assembled here, along with sufficient escorts, I would wish that you take charge of them and sail to join Admiral deCourcy and place yourself and your transports at his disposal.”
“Aha?” Lewrie said, startled. “Well, there goes our plans for Christmas geese,” which comment forced General Drummond to peer at him in intense scrutiny, as if Lewrie was not of sound mind.
“Game for it, are you, Captain Lewrie?” Drummond demanded.
“At your complete disposal, sir,” Lewrie insisted. “And I shall begin provisioning for a lengthy time at sea, at once.”
And a miserable time it’ll be, Lewrie grimly told himself, for this time of year there would be strong Westerly gales and high seas along the Portuguese and Spanish Western shores, which could drive any number of struggling ships onto the rocks. He recalled a peek he’d had at the sea charts, just a casual glance, really, in quieter times; from Cape Fisterre to Corunna and Ferrol the Spanish called it the Costa da Morte, the Coast of Death! He assumed that the Dons knew what they were talking about!
“Sir Alan won’t let the Army down, sir,” Mountjoy felt need to declare. “He’s game, and more than game, for anything.”
So long as I don’t drown myself, yes, Lewrie thought.
