Hostile Shores (25 page)

Once the salutations had been rendered, one of
Diadem
’s officers showed Lewrie aft to the Commodore’s great-cabins, where he was announced.

“Lewrie! My Lord, you’re a sight for sore eyes!” Commodore Sir Home Riggs Popham happily exclaimed as a cabin servant took his hat and sword. “You didn’t bring along any of those damned torpedoes, did you? Good riddance to bad rubbish, hah hah! Those infernal engines, I mean, not Lewrie! Come, sir! Have a glass of Rhenish, and allow me to name to you the others.”

Sir Home Riggs Popham was ebullience itself, but of course, in Lewrie’s brief experience with him, he always was the epitome of good cheer even in adversity. Popham was considered dashingly handsome by many, with a high, intelligent brow, pleasant eyes, good cheekbones, and a firm, clefted chin, and was possessed of a slim but solid build. In the latest mode, Popham wore his thick blond hair without even a sprig of an old-time sailors’ queue, and long sideburns below the lobes of his ears. Perhaps his only mar was a long and pointed nose with an up-tilt. Popham was garbed in his best, and costly, uniform coat which also bore the star of the Order of The Bath.

The others of whom Popham spoke were senior Army officers in command of the five thousand or so soldiers sent to take the Cape of Good Hope, a General Sir David Baird, and his second-in-command, Brigadier-General Sir William Beresford. Baird seemed a gruff and capable sort to Lewrie, though Beresford struck him as overly mild. Beresford had thick hair brushed back over his ears on the sides of his head, but was as bald as an egg above, and the fellow almost had pop-eyes.

There were some aides-de-camp with them, to whom Lewrie was named but they made little impression; he was sure that he would not have much to do with them once the army was set ashore.

“Besides the most welcome mail from home, what else did you bring us, Lewrie?” Commodore Popham asked.

“Two troops of the Thirty-fourth Light Dragoons, sir,” Lewrie told him, dreading the coming announcement. He brought the newspaper he had gotten at Madeira from a side pocket of his coat.

“Oh Lord, Colonel Laird!” General Baird said with a sniff. “One
does
hope he’s pleased, at long last.”

“I obtained these papers at Funchal, sir,” Lewrie said, holding them out for Popham to take. “I don’t know if you’ve had word of the battle off Cádiz, and Cape Trafalgar, yet. Nelson—”

“Caught up with Villeneuve at last, did he?” Popham exclaimed, beaming with pleasure and anticipation.

“He did, sir, the combined French and Spanish fleets,” Lewrie went on. “The foe were utterly defeated, and upwards of twenty ships were taken as prize, but … Admiral Lord Nelson was slain, sir. So soon after, and by word of mouth to Lisbon and Oporto, I expect the details are half rumour, half wild speculation, but—”

“Good God! Nelson, dead?” Popham yelped, taken all aback and suddenly “in-irons” at the news. “That is simply impossible to imagine! Why, even credible
London
papers had Nelson meeting Villeneuve half a dozen times, and all of the accounts pure fantasy. How much faith may be put in Portuguese scribblers?” he scoffed.

“The English language paper from Oporto tells the same story, sir,” Lewrie pointed out, “as did our Consul at Funchal, Gilbao? At any rate, it appears there
was
a battle, and a victory.”

“If true, such a victory would be England’s salvation from the fear of French invasion, at last,” General Beresford hesitantly said, “though at much too high a cost. What joyous celebrations our nation will hold would be tempered by the sense of loss, and grief.”

“Doubt there will ever be another quite like him,” General Baird gruffly said.

“Oh, I don’t know about that, Sir David,” Popham said with a brief smile, almost a sly look. “Nelson was a product of our Navy, and our Fleet will produce a worthy replacement, eventually. The nation may grieve for a time, but … when they hear of our success at Cape Town? And a success it will be, hey? New heroes will arise.”

“I thought it best to inform you at once, sir,” Lewrie said, “and allow you to decide whether the news should be passed on to our sailors right off, or you wish to wait ’til there is solid confirmation.”

“Quite right, Lewrie, aye,” Popham said, nodding. “It might be best to pass the word that Nelson smashed the Frogs and Dons, but hold off on the details ’til we truly
do
have confirmation.
That’ll
put a fire in their bellies, and make them eager to succeed. Well, sirs, shall we dine?”

At least I didn’t have t’fetch him a chicken,
Lewrie wryly told himself;
I don’t think
admirals
live this well at sea!

Sir Home Riggs Popham’s great-cabins fair-screamed money, and extreme good taste, worlds beyond the bare-bones spartan quarters the Navy approved of from its officers, no matter how senior, or wealthy. Lewrie’s own tastes, and comforts, had been sniffed at by dis-approving seniors in the past, deemed almost sybaritic, but his could not hold a candle to Popham’s. Atop the usual black-and-white chequered canvas deck cloth which emulated tilework, the figured carpets were thick enough to trip over, or sink into at each step. Polished brass or coin-silver lanthorns hung from the painted or polished overhead deck beams in profusion, the chairs, settees, wine-cabinets, the wash-hand stand, and Popham’s desk gleamed, and the aroma of bees’ wax polish was everywhere. Popham’s sleeping space, chart cubby, and the dining coach were partitioned off with half-louvred panels made from polished oak, not the usual deal-and-canvas temporary walls. In the dining coach there was a table which could seat twelve, covered with a glaringly clean and white tablecloth, with pitchers, bowls and candelabras down the centre all in shining coin-silver, with even more pieces resting atop the magnificent sideboard. Once inside and seated, the partitions were chair-railed and wainscotted below, the upper parts painted light canary yellow, picked out with white trim.

I’d
heard
he’d deliberately married for money,
Lewrie scoffed to himself;
and it appears he gained a
barge-load
of “tin” from the bargain! There’s enough candles lit t’light a bloody ballroom!

The soup course was “portable”, the usual boiled dry and pressed into cakes vegetable soup so beloved of the Navy Victualling Board, though made more palatable with shredded bacon bits and tangy spices, served with white-bread baked rolls, globs of “fresh-ish” butter, and a sprightly German Riesling.

“Do you believe the accounts, Captain Lewrie?” General Beresford gloomily enquired after a slurp or two.

“I fear that I do, sir,” Lewrie admitted. “Lord Nelson pursued Villeneuve so hotly, there is no way that he would
not
bring him to battle, once Villeneuve returned to Europe from his jaunt to the West Indies. If the French put into Cádiz, as is reported, and sailed out with his Spanish ally, Nelson would have been there, right off shore, and
thirsting
for a fight. My main fear is for my youngest son, Hugh, who is aboard the
Pegasus
seventy-four, under an old friend of mine, Captain Thomas Charlton.”

“Charlton!” Popham cried in delight. “A damned good man, is Thom Charlton, and a fine sailor. Straight as a die, and as smart as paint. You chose well for your son’s first captain. Where did you serve with him?”

“He commanded a small squadron in the Adriatic, sir, about the time of Napoleon’s first invasion of Italy, and I had
Jester,
a French
corvette
that we took just after the evacuation of Toulon,” Lewrie gladly told him. “Aye, salt of the earth is Charlton, though never the life of the party.”

General Sir David Baird then spoke highly of the soup, sharing an account of how Napoleon fed his armies fresh soup and gravies, put up in magnum-sized champagne bottles and carefully sealed to remain fresh and edible for months on end. “Naturally, Horse Guards will
not
follow suit,” Baird grumbled. “The French thought of it first.”

“If our Army won’t, then I most certainly shall!” Commodore Popham declared. “If only for my own use. How dearly a
consommé
or a broth, or a good, thick gravy, is desired at sea!”

The soup was followed by individual bantam chickens, and Lewrie could boast of his fast-growing quail and rabbits kept in his frigate’s forecastle manger, and Popham swore that when dined aboard
Reliant
off Calais, before their failed expedition with torpedoes and fireships at the tail-end of 1804, Lewrie had been his own inspiration for the keeping of bantams.

“I found a whole new flock of bantams when we put into San Salvador,” Popham told them. “Pigeons and doves are also toothsome, and reproduce in sufficient abundance. When I dined with the Prime Minister in London before receiving this appointment, the high point of our supper, beyond the excellence of the beef roast, was a pigeon pie, hah hah! A pity, though, that, one good omelet is the destruction of one’s pigeon flock for the next six months!”

Just how well-connected is he? I wonder,
Lewrie asked himself, noticing the faintest pauses and disguised sniffs from the Army officers. It appeared that Baird and Beresford had heard Popham’s casual mentions of his ties to the high-placed and powerful men in the government once
too
often. Then, during the next course, a roast pork loin gone “shares” with
Diadem
’s captain and officers’ wardroom, when Popham spoke of his connexions to the former First Lord of the Admiralty, Henry, Lord Melville, even Lewrie had to hide a snort, for Lord Melville had been turfed out in disgrace for being so corrupt that even the other crooks had noticed.

The rest of the repast passed pleasantly, right through to the nuts, cheese, and port, with sweet bisquits, and innocuous topics of conversation.

“Well now, Captain Lewrie,” Popham said, peering down the table at him rather sharply, “what brings you to become part of our little expedition?”

“When up to London, sir, I mentioned to the First Secretary that I had spent some time round Cape Town several years ago,” Lewrie told him. “I had no choice, really … a French frigate sneaked up on me in the dark and shot my rudder to bits, had to be towed in, and spent some weeks scrounging up a replacement and getting it fitted. During that time, I hired a local hunter as guide and rode or hunted all over the countryside. Mister Marsden deemed that experience might prove of use to you, sir.”

“And well it might,” General Baird pronounced, thumping a fist on the table top. “Just where, exactly, Captain Lewrie?”

“Aye, let’s bring out the chart one more time,” Popham called out. “Supper is officially over, so there’s no harm discussing ‘shop’. And I’ll request the port decanter, if you will, General Beresford.”

A large chart, more a land map than a sea-chart, was fetched and spread out atop the dining table, the corners weighted down with the cheese plate, the bisquit barge, the nut bowl, and the port decanter.

“We anchored here, sirs, under the guns of the seaward fort, near the town quays,” Lewrie sketched out, pointing his movements during his forced stay. “Our sick and wounded, we placed in a rented cottage a little way up the Lion’s Rump, South of town, where there was a fresh-water well and cool and fresh sea breezes. When it came to the rudder, we put together a train of bullock carts, with native drivers, and trekked down to Simon’s Bay, where an Indiaman had mistaken False Cape for the proper one, and ripped her hull open on the rocks. Fortunately, she was able to beach herself, and there was little loss of life. The locals at Simonstown were scavenging her for her timbers and metal fittings, but they hadn’t gotten round to her rudder, yet. We camped there several days, living off game meat we shot, sleeping rough under canvas, and playing ball in the late afternoons. After we got the rudder replaced, I did ride out as far as the Salt River, to the Nor’east, and North round the shore of Table Bay.”

“As far as Blaauwberg or Saldanha Bays, sir?” General Baird enquired.

“Not quite that far, no, sir,” Lewrie replied. “Once my ship was sea-worthy, a small home-bound ‘John Company’ convoy had come in, and its Commodore requested additional escorts, what with so many Frog raiders working out of the Indian Ocean as far North up the Western coasts of Africa as the Equator. I
might’ve
gone as far as the South end of the beaches of Blaauwberg Bay, but it was only a day ride, and we didn’t find the type of antelope or whatever that my guide, Piet Retief, promised. Some of my sailors, four or five of my Black hands, had run off with a circus’s hunting party, and some had come back badly mauled, so I also had that on my plate to deal—”

“A circus!” General Baird gawped.

“Mister Daniel Wigmore’s Peripatetic Extravaganza, sir. They were after strange, new beasts for their menagerie,” Lewrie explained. “
They
hired the biggest fool in all of Africa for
their
guide, and it was a total disaster. Does a Jan van der Merwe offer you his services, sir, shoot him and run like Hell. He thought that the Cape buffalo would be a good replacement for domestic oxen, and that hyenas could be tamed as guard dogs, and God only
knows
what other foolishness. Baboons as nannies, I expect!”

“Yes, your famous Black sailors,” Popham said with a simpering drawl. “Lewrie was tried and acquitted, don’t you know, sirs, for liberating a round dozen Black slaves on Jamaica, and signing them aboard his ship as free volunteers. ‘Black Alan’ Lewrie? Or, ‘Saint Alan, the Liberator’?”

“Oh yes, I recall hearing of that,” General Beresford said, nodding. “That must have made William Wilberforce and his Abolitionist crowd perfectly giddy.”

“They were, for a
time,
my patrons, sir,” Lewrie had to admit. “Once I was acquitted, though, they found a new’un.”

“That must have been miserable,” General Baird grumbled. “All that tea-slurping and hymn-singing, and deadly-dull earnestness. The lesser races may be taught to make good servants, perhaps even sailors in your case, Captain Lewrie, but, without the firm, guiding hand from a civilised race, they will never amount to much. Pray God that after we take the Cape from the Dutch, we keep it and make it part of our empire forever. Then, you’ll see how much more we English may make of the place than ever the complacent Dutch could.”