The French Admiral (25 page)

“Mornin', Mister Lewrie, sir,” Knatchbull the quarter-gunner said as he emerged from the dugout.

“Morning, Knatchbull. How do the hands keep?”

“Damp right through, sir,” the man replied, knuckling his forehead in rough salute. “We could use some sailcloth er tarpaulin, sir, ta kivver up the sleepin' spaces.”

“I shall request of some after breakfast,” Alan said, studying the small tents the Jagers and the army artillerists had erected. “Perhaps some tents would keep the rain off. How about our guns?”

“I'm that worried 'bout the breechin' ropes, sir,” Knatch-bull said. “Iffen ya could take a squint, sir. Them posts we sunk ta serve ta attach the breechin' ropes an' side tackles an' sich're in mud now.”

“Are they shifting?”

“Not so's ya'd notice, Mister Lewrie, but they will iffen ya sets light ta a powder charge ta fire a gun.”

“I doubt if we could find a dry cartridge this morning, anyway.”

“Aye, sir, sich a day it is.”

“Guten morgen, herr mittschiffesmann Lew-rie,” van Muecke dribbled. “Eine schreckliche tag, nicht wahr?”

“It is when I have to decipher that,” Alan mumbled under his breath, but saying out loud, “Good morning to you, Mister von Mooka.”

“Muecke,” the soldier corrected. “Fon Mehr-keh, verstehe?”

“Whatever.” Alan shrugged and waved it off with a hopeless grin. “Any sign of the enemy this fine morning?”

“Nein, mein herr. Ich habe . . . I have der scouts aus also.”

“Powder dry?”

“Jah, oder zuh primings sind . . . sput!”

If he does that one more time he'll hit my coffee, Alan thought, protecting his mug from the small shower of spit that had accompanied the sound effect of a squibbed priming.

“My hammock man Cony has a rabbit for us to share, Mister . . . Fon Mee-key. We shall have a decent breakfast, at any rate.”

“Ah, eine rappit? Eine hase? Wunderbar!”

Alan wandered off to the forward artillery piece of the redan to look over the bleak countryside, shivering slightly. It had seemed like summer over the last week, not as fierce as the Indies, but warm enough during the days. Now, with the rain coming down as though it would never cease and the fogs blanketing those sharp hills and tree tops, it felt more like true autumn, more seasonal for the last of September. It also made those far hills and trees seem more forbidding than before, more wild and uncivilized. Every good Englishman that got a plot of ground, an estate, or a farm spent countless hours shaping and weeding, cutting back thickets and removing underbrush, reforming Nature into gentle and civilized gardens and fields as orderly as a Roman villa. It was Man in charge of Nature, announcing his sovereignty and superiority over the dumb beasts and the wildness. But here, there was so much Nature, it was inconceivable that anyone could even begin to make a dent on it, and it made Alan feel puny and insignificant. And there were thousands of miles of this sort of wilderness stretching off to the Piedmont and beyond, into God knew what sort of savage remoteness, a country that might just stretch to Asia; limitless as a map of Russia, as wide as the mighty Atlantic Ocean and just as trackless and harsh, deluding the traveler with its lush or rugged beauties, just as the sea deluded the unwary.

“God, get me out of this beastly place!” Alan softly said. “It's driven the Rebels mad, every one of 'em, and it's out t'get me!”

After half the hare for breakfast, Alan had his mount saddled and took a long ride to the north to seek out supplies for his battery.

He came down off the front slope and rode at the edge of the hill line into the next cul-de-sac north, perhaps a quarter mile, seeking the small draw at its north end for passage through the convoluted terrain.

“Halt, who goes thar?” a voice challenged from the mists.

“A damned wet sailor!” he called back, after he had gotten over his sudden fright. Under his tarpaulin coat he had his pair of pistols, the ones bought nearly two years before in Portsmouth, but they had lain unused except for a cleaning and oiling; midshipmen could not wear their own iron except for a useless dirk, and once battle was joined he had never had a chance to go below for them. They were still next to useless under the folds of the tarred coat, but he had reached for them.

“Watch wot yer adoin' with yer hands, thar, sailor,” the invisible watcher shouted back. “Ride up an' be reco'nized!”

“Ride up where, damn you?” he said. In reply, a soldier got to his feet from the bushes not thirty paces away to his right, holding a rifle at full cock and ready to fire.

How can a man in a red coat be so invisible? Alan marveled, reining his horse about to walk up near the man. He thought that he recognized the uniform. “North Carolina Volunteers?”

“That we are. Now, what in hell're you?”

“Midshipman Alan Lewrie, from the redan to the south.”

“Open that coat an' let's see yer true colors.”

Alan unlaced the coat and pulled it back to reveal the navy uniform, the white collar tabs of a midshipman and the anchored buttons.

“Guess yer wot ya say ya are. Where ya agoin'?”

“To find some tents for my men and tarps for my guns.”

“Gonna ride through that thar draw, wuz ya?”

“I am an officer,” Alan reminded the man, stretching his rank, and snippish at the casual affront to his “dignity.”

“I kin see that.” The man nodded in agreement, lowering his rifle and taking it off cock. He began to wrap an oily handkerchief about the firelock and frizzen to keep his priming dry. “But ya ride up thar an' somebody'd put a ball in yer boudin's afore ya could say Jack Sauce!”

“Then how am I to get through the draw . . . private?” Alan asked, his blood rising.

“Get on down an' I'll lead off.”

Alan had to dismount and squelch through the wet grass and mud behind the soldier, who did not give him a backward glance until they were almost in the notch of the draw.

“Corp'ral o' the guard, thar! Gotta horse an' rider with me!”

More men popped up from the thickets and Alan was waved on past.

“Mister Lewrie,” someone called. “Come to accept our invitation?”

“Ah, Burgess Chiswick!” Alan grinned, happy to see someone that he knew. “On my way past, really.”

“Surely your errand is not so important you could not break your passage, as I believe you sailors say, and have a cup of coffee with us.”

“Real coffee?”

“The genuine article,” Burgess boasted.

“Then I accept, with pleasure.”

He was led into camp behind the draw, where life was lived more openly than in the forward face of the position. Tents were slung under the trees or stretched like awnings over lean-tos for shelter and concealment. Very small fires burned, with a lot less smoke than Alan could credit.

“Brother, look who I found tramping in the woods,” Burgess said as they got near the shelter he shared with his sibling. “I promised him some coffee if he'd bide awhile with us.”

Alan was made welcome under their rude shelter while his mount was led off by an orderly. He shed his tarpaulin coat and sat down on a log before the fire, which was damned welcome after a morning in the cool damp. A large mug of coffee was shoved into his hands and when he took a sip he made the happy discovery that it had been laced liberally with brandy, which made him sigh in pleasure.

While he took his ease, he explained where he was set up, what his errand was, and related his experiences with the Hessians.

“Poor bastards,” the elder Chiswick said. “Sent over here as a ready source of money for their prince or whatever he is, no idea of the country or what the fighting is about. Even have to supply their own rifles.”

“Didn't look like yours,” Alan commented.

“No, it's more like a rifled musket or one of these Rebel Pennsylvania rifles,” Burgess told him, adding a top-up of brandy into the mug. “Poor work, but more serviceable than what the Rebels have.”

“I thought the Rebels had a wickedly good gun.”

“Damned long ranged, and most of 'em can shoot the eyes out of a squirrel at two hundred paces.” Burgess shrugged. “But, it's slow to load because of the rifling in the barrel, a lot slower than a musket, and the stock's too light to melee with hand-to-hand.”

“Won't take any sort of bayonet, either, unless you shove a plug down the barrel,” Governour stuck in. “And then where are you?”

“Then why make them?” Alan asked.

“Because they were light enough to carry in the woods, accurate enough to drop game with one shot when that's all the chance you get to feed your family, and long ranged enough to avoid having to sneak right up on a deer or what have you. It was never meant for a military use. You put a line of Rebel riflemen up against a line of regular infantry and you'll get your much-vaunted riflemen slaughtered every time once the regulars go in with the bayonet,” Governour confidently said. “We and the Jagers can fire three, four times as fast as they . . . and give 'em cold steel after our last volley.”

Governour and his younger brother were good-looking fellows. However, even the younger Burgess had a ruthless look. They both had sandy hair and hazel eyes, but those eyes could glint as hard as agate, so Alan assumed they truly knew the heart of the matter when it came to skewering and slaughtering Rebels.

“So I may depend on the Jagers?” Alan said.

“Absolutely,” Governour assured him. “They're highly disciplined and crack shots, near as good woodsmen as we. And Heros von Muecke can be relied on to stand his ground like Horatius at the Bridge. He's a bit hard to take—thinks he's some German blood royal and can get his back up over the slightest thing—but we've skirmished beside him before, and he and his men have always been bloody marvels.”

“That is reassuring, since I don't know the first thing about land fighting,” Alan said, leaning back on the wall of the lean-to. He described where his battery was and how the redan was laid out, until he began to notice how the Chiswick brothers were both frowning.

“'Tis a bad position,” Burgess said with finality.

“Why?” Alan asked, once more beholden to someone for knowledge and slightly resenting the necessity of it, of being so unprepared for what he was being called upon to do. Damme, I was getting right good at the nautical cant, and here I am an innocent lamb again, he thought.

“We rode over that last week, Alan,” Burgess said. “You only have what . . . a ten-, fifteen-foot rise to your front, and you're set in the open before that last bit of ground. Steep hills on either side, higher than you but not unscalable.”

“A
regular
officer would think unscalable,” Governour spat.

“Rebels'd be all over you like fleas on a dog. Come at night, most like. I would,” Burgess said.

“No way down the back side, and if you do get down, you're stuck on one bank of the creek with no way down, or across,” Governour added.

“Never get your guns out of there if you have to withdraw,” added the younger Chiswick.

“Never get your own arse out of there, either.”

“Well, what about you and your troops, then?” Alan sputtered.

“We cover both sides of the defile in a crossfire, and the front of both little fingers of the ridge.” Governour sketched in the dirt with some kindling from the small fire. “If overwhelmed, we fall back and skirmish to the marshes of the creek to the north-east. We can fall back on the fortified parallel on the river or into either the Star Redoubt or the Fusilier's Redoubt. Really, I don't know what the officer who sited you was thinking of,” he concluded, tossing the stick into the fire. “There is no reason to cover that ground, 'cause no one could ever use it.”

“Because it is too steep and wooded on the east slope, and goes right into the deep ravines of the creek,” Alan said, seeing the sense of it. “They could not bridge it, or find boats to cross it.”

“Exactly.” Governour smiled briefly. “Might find sites for mortar or howitzer batteries in there, but you'd be much better placed up here with us. If they did set up in there, we could butcher their flanks.”

“But the ground is so boggy now, it would take fifty mules to get one gun shifted.” Alan groaned. “Mayhap those army guns could move in all this, but mine would not.”

“We could make a strong-point with our battalion and Lewrie's guns, Governour,” Burgess enthused. “We would not have to fall back as we planned if assaulted. And with von Muecke's Jagers to flesh us out . . .”

“Aye,” Governour said, getting to his feet stiffly. “Do you entertain our naval compatriot while I see Colonel Hamilton about this. He could get the battery resited for us.”

Lieutenant Chiswick shrugged into his coat and squared his hat, then stalked away on his long legs to see their battalion commander while Burgess lifted the lid of a stewpot.