The King's Marauder (29 page)

“Well, don’t look longingly at me!” Lewrie said with a laugh. “I can’t speak for Admiralty, either.”

For a moment, Mountjoy
had
looked at Lewrie with a gleam of inspiration in his eyes, just as quickly dashed.

“I’ll have another go at it, then,” Lewrie promised. “Take on stores, re-victual, and give my crew a day of liberty, and I’ll head out to sea, again.
El diablo negro
might find better pickings further East, nearer Cartagena, Valencia, maybe even Barcelona.”

“
El diablo negro?
” Mountjoy asked.

“That’s what the people in the last vessel I burned called us,” Lewrie said, tossing the last of his wine to “heel-taps” and getting to his feet. “I’d best go see Captain Middleton at the dockyard, too, and see how he’s coming with my boats and nets.”

“Rock Soup,” Mountjoy glumly mused, then got to his feet to see Lewrie down to the street. “I suppose I should go to my offices, too.”

*   *   *

When first Lewrie spoke with Captain Robert Middleton about his boats, he had requested them to be over thirty feet long, more like his launch, or the wider-bodied 32-foot barges that he’d used in the Channel in 1804 when experimenting with “catamaran torpedoes”, and which he had kept (since HM Dockyards had never officially asked for them to be returned!) and used on raids along the coast of Spanish Florida in 1805, and to ferry Marines and sailors ashore at Cape Town and Buenos Aires the year before.

To get soldiers out of the boats and onto the beach quickly, he had wondered if there might be some way to square off the bows and make some sort of ramps, but Middleton and his shipwrights had laughed that to scorn. The sketches that Lewrie and Geoffrey Westcott, a dab-hand artist in his own right, brought which limned boats with high gunn’ls behind which the oarsmen would row through square ports, like ancient Greek or Roman ships, with ramps like gangways that could be extended over the bows, had made the shipwrights shiver in dread of even trying to build boats which could drown everyone aboard in a twinkling.

Of the six boats he’d requested, Lewrie found only two skeletons begun, their keels, stem posts, and stern posts and frames resting on baulks of scrap timber, with none of the planking started. They were, he was told, to be thirty-six feet in length, and very beamy. Middleton was of the opinion that if Lewrie could not employ them, they would make fine gunboats to protect shipping in the bay.

At least his sets of scrambling nets had been completed; other than that, Lewrie had been badly gulled, and all he could do was stomp off in high dudgeon!

All that was left for him to do ashore was to find some place to dine, sulk, and fume, and take a glass or two more than necessary aboard, even if he had to be hauled back onto
Sapphire
in a Bosun’s chair!

*   *   *

A few streets up from the quayside, nearer to Dalrymple’s headquarters in the Convent and the parade grounds, he discovered a chophouse that advertised itself with a large swinging signboard sporting a red lobster on yellow, by name of Pescador’s, a two-storied establishment with a tavern and common rooms below, and a roofed and trellised upper dining room which faced the harbour and provided an airy, cool respite from the mid-day heat.

A young fellow led Lewrie upstairs to that dining room, seated him at a table for two, and referred him to a large chalkboard menu on the back wall which featured standard fare in yellow chalk and daily specials in white.

“Do you have any ale?” Lewrie asked.

“Oh, yayss,
señor
!” the young fellow assured him. “We have the deep, cool cellars, and have several favourite English ales, porters, and stouts. The owner is the retired Sergeant-Major from Chelmsford, himself, Mister Chumley, and he always say that without English beers, he would be out of business, hah hah!”

“I’ll have a tall, pale Bass,” Lewrie decided.

“Waiter will be right with you,
señor
!” the lad promised.

The open-sided dining room was much of a piece with Mountjoy’s rooftop gallery, Lewrie thought, for it was awash in potted greenery, with hanging baskets of flowers round the outer balconies, and a cool tiled floor. White wood-slat chairs and tables with gay red tablecloths abounded, only partially filled with diners at that hour of the day; Army officers for most part, with a smattering of civilian men … and women.

The waiter, a swarthy fellow who looked vaguely Moorish, but who spoke in a British accent reminiscent of Lewrie’s neighbours in Surrey and Anglesgreen, brought him a pint of ale and took his order for the
fritura mixta,
which he rapturously described as a combination of mussels, crab, and sardines in a wine and chili sauce, with a few slivers of anchovies, fried fish, and a grilled lobster tail, which of course came with white wheat rolls, butter, and steamed asparagus. He recommended a nice Italian white
pinot
to accompany the meal.

The establishment would have offered a fresh green salad, but for the fact that Gibraltar had very little arable land—most of the Rock was vertical!—and what could be traded, or smuggled, across The Lines from Spain could not be counted on, day-to-day.

I think I could like this place,
Lewrie told himself. He was cooler, already, his ale was crisply refreshing, and there were women in the dining room, a rare sight for a sailor; young, pretty, merry women whose scents rivalled the flowers. He rather doubted that they were wives, though. Most of the officers he saw were Lieutenants or Captains, in their late teens to mid-twenties, and men of low rank did not marry so young.

What was it that Burgess once said?
Lewrie tried to dredge up from memory;
Ah!
“
Lieutenants must
never
marry, Captains
could
marry, Majors
should,
and Colonels
must
marry!
”

He realised that these chirpy, cheerful young women must be the junior officers’ girlfriends, or their mistresses. There were very few proper wives of senior military officers or Crown officials who’d risk voyaging to an overseas posting in time of war, who would have to leave their children at public schools, or with relatives, to spare them from foreign diseases. Hence, no respectable matrons present to demand that the “ladies of the evening” be shoved back into brothels, out of sight, out of mind, and be unable to corrupt the morals of the town, and lure their husbands’ subalterns and clerks from the Right And Proper Way.

These alluring young creatures in their finery were likely hired courtesans or high-priced doxies!

And here I sit with all my cundums stowed in my sea-chest!
he sadly throught.

As Lewrie’s first course arrived, along with the Italian
pinot
cool from the deep stone cellar, another Army officer came up from the common rooms, a Captain of some infantry regiment, with a young woman on his arm. He was older than the others, in his late thirties, or so Lewrie judged, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, with reddish-gold hair and long, thick sideburns brushed forward in the latest style, down to the lobes of his ears. It appeared that the semi-tropical sun didn’t agree with his complexion, for he was florid. It appeared that those younger officers didn’t appeal to him, either, for he glared at them with haughty disdain, and he awarded Lewrie a similar glare as he and his companion were seated at a table for two by the balcony railings, an empty table apart from Lewrie’s.

The Captain’s companion, though … Lewrie lifted an appreciative brow as he got a good look at her. The Army Captain’s back was to Lewrie, back and shoulders almost broad enough to block his view, but she seated herself facing Lewrie, with her chair close to the balustrade, so he could get a peek every now and then.

Deliberately?
he hoped.

Compared to the junior officers’ doxies, she was not a superb beauty, nor was her long, dark, almost black hair coiled and roached into an elaborate do, but was worn in a long, gathered mane, parted more to the left than the centre. On the way in, she’d worn a wide straw hat with the ribbons bound under her chin, but as soon as she sat down, she swept it off. Dark eyes, nicely arched, brows, a touch of an olive complexion, a rather fine nose, a very kissable mouth, and a firmly rounded but narrow chin … not beautiful, but more matter-of-factly hellish-handsome, Lewrie determined.

She didn’t look happy, though, he decided; pensive was more like it. Her companion was prattling away, but her attention was on the harbour, the quayside, a hanging flower basket, or a caged bird warbling above their table. She reached up to the cage and a faint smile spread on her face. She looked down, met Lewrie’s eyes, then smiled a bit broader.

“Ah, Miguel!” the Army Captain boomed to the waiter. “A cool ale, t’start with, and a white wine for the lady.”

“Michael, sir,” the waiter said in correction, keeping a bland look on his face, as if he’d done this many times before.

“Yes, yes, so you say,” the officer said, laughing him off. “I will have the roast beef, and she will have the chicken, won’t you, my dear? As you always do, what?”

“I would like…” she said, turning to look at the chalkboard menu on the inner wall, “the
gazpacho,
and the fried fish, this time.”

“Please yourself,” the Army Captain dismissively said, with a harumph of slight irritation thrown in for good measure. “You should know their entire
repertoire
by heart, by now.”

“As often as we dine here,
sim,
I do,” she replied, looking a tad morose. If it was a complaint, it was a weak one.

Spanish, is she?
Lewrie asked himself;
Portuguese, or Genoan? None too pleased with him, whatever she is. A kept woman, under his “protection”, most-like. Maybe she’d
like
t’kick over the traces, but can’t afford to? Poor tit.

“Simply can’t fathom how anyone could relish cold soup!” the Army Captain grumped. “The Frogs with their cold potato mess…”

“
Vichyssoise,
” she supplied, absently.

“Know what it’s called,” he snapped. “Had it, and I didn’t think much of it. As silly a notion as tossin’ fruit in a pitcher of wine. The utter ruin of a good wine, and barely makes cheap, sour wine palatable, hah!”

“The
sangria
is refreshing,” she told him, sounding as if she would make a very minor rebellion, with one brow up the only sign of being vexed. “Your English punch…”

“Mother’s Milk, m’dear!” he hooted, “and with champagne in it, the Nectar of The Gods! Can’t beat a good English punch, haw haw!”

She made no reply to that assertion, but faced away and leaned her arm on the balustrade again. Lewrie studied her, now intrigued, and as she turned her face back to her keeper, Lewrie locked eyes with her for a second, tossed off an exaggerated shrug, and pulled a face. He was rewarded with a quick, furtive smile, before the waiter came with their beverages, and Lewrie’s main course, on his tray.

As hungry as he was, and as tasty and toothsome his meal, Lewrie dawdled over his plate, shifting in his chair now and then to get a quick look at the young woman, and was able to share glances with her, which began as shy smiles and proceded to frank, speculative regardings. The bad part of that was haying to listen to her companion monopolise their conversation, him talking and deriding just about everything foreign, and laying out his schemes for winning the war.

Lewrie noted that the other subalterns and their girls sloped off rather quickly, instead of lingering over their drinks and flirting idly. It seemed that Captain “John Bull” had a depressing effect on them, too.

The fellow put down his first pint of ale quickly, and ordered a second, then slurped his way through a whole bottle of claret with his roast beef steak, which only made him louder and more opinionated. By the time Lewrie had finished his meal, topped off with a Spanish
flan
for something sweet, there were very few patrons in the dining room.

At last, there was nothing for it but to summon the waiter and call for his reckoning, leaving a generous tip and making sure that he called him “Michael” as he thanked him and got to his feet.

Standing and gathering up his cocked hat, Lewrie could get a better look at the young woman over the top of “John Bull”, and he liked what he saw. She seemed slim, with a fine bosom, a firm and graceful neck. A wee gilt cross on a thin gilt chain glinted at the base of her throat. At his rising, she looked up, her gaze level and appraising, and he nodded a smile at her, which engendered a fleeting smile and the faintest of nods in reply, with a slow lowering of her lashes.

As Lewrie trotted down the stairs to the common rooms, then to the street, Lewrie could thank her companion for one thing, at least; the Army officer’s loud voice had, in the course of his harangue, declared “Maddalena, m’dear”, so Lewrie had a name, well, part of a name, to conjure with!

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Over the next two months, HMS
Sapphire
spent all but two weeks at sea, still searching for a suitable vessel to serve as a transport. Lewrie took her West to Cape Trafalgar, near Cádiz, not above poaching if he had to in the blockade fleet’s patch, with nothing to show for it. They chased many coasting vessels and sea-going fishing boats, frightened many, and caught and burned several, before returning to Gibraltar to confer with Mountjoy, who swore that he had written to Mr. Peel in London asking for more money, or some influence with the Admiralty Transport Board. So far, there was no joy in that direction.

Sapphire
went back to her old hunting grounds, from Estepona to Valencia, pursuing, taking, and burning what they could, with equally dismal results. In mounting gloom, Lewrie even ordered the ship over to the Balearic Islands, and ravaged the fishermen and small traders of Formentara and Ibiza, and sailed several times round Mallorca and the main port of Palma. He did manage to capture a merchant brig of about 150 tons which at first seemed promising, but proved to be dangerously rotten, her bottom nigh-eaten through by ship worms and rats from the inside, and not even wood-sheathed, much less coppered. Did he send her off to the Prize-Court at Gibraltar with her shoddy load of cargo, he doubted if the meagre prize money would pay half of the Proctor’s fees! Once again, her small crew was allowed to row away just off Palma by a mile or two, and she was set fire, as an example of what happened to Spaniards who dared share the sea with the Royal Navy.