Kings and Emperors (22 page)

“What's more intriguing are the reports I've gotten concerning the Spanish people, themselves,” Mountjoy gleefully related. “Oh, my manners. Deacon? Fetch us all some wine, will you? That tangy and sparkly white? Thank you.”

“What
about
the Spanish people?” Lewrie had to ask.

“There are bands of men in the back country who have taken up what arms they own,” Mountjoy said, practically bubbling over with delight. “They're ambushing despatch riders and small foraging parties where they can, slitting French throats, and taking
their
arms and ammunition to use against them. They gallop in, kill or capture the French soldiers, loot them, then gallop away, quick as you can say ‘knife,' and disappear into the hills and woods, and I've word that the French are tearing their hair out, unable to chase them very far, or in units small enough to pursue quickly … too many of those have been ambushed and murdered, themselves. Heard of Zaragosa?”

“Went down with the Spanish Armada, didn't he?” Lewrie japed. “Ye know I haven't.”

“It's a city, capital of Aragon,” Mountjoy said, casting his head over to one side and making a face at Lewrie's idea of wit. “It is under siege, after the citizens rose up and slaughtered the occupying French garrison. Spanish troops marched in to aid them, and the city's holding out, just laying Frenchmen dead in windrows when they try to break in. I've sent a letter about it to London, with a drawing … invented here by an artist with the
Chronicle
 … about a heroine, a girl named Augustina, whom the Spanish report defended her own burned-out house with a sabre, dressed in pantaloons.
She's
real enough, even if the drawing's not. It's sure to make all the London papers. War by the press, hah hah!”

“Well, that's all fine…,” Lewrie began to say, but Deacon showed up with a bottle of wine and three glasses.

“Best news of all, Lewrie,” Mountjoy said with a twinkle in his eyes, “the latest mail packet in from England bore word that the peace treaty with Spain has been
signed,
she's a British ally, now! We're united against the French!”

“Well, no wonder they didn't shoot at me when I sailed in,” Lewrie replied, with less enthusiasm than Mountjoy might have wished. “Aye, that's toppin' fine. You pulled it off. Congratulations.”

“A deed that can't be celebrated often enough, Captain Lewrie,” Deacon said, baring a rare smile as he poured the wine for them.

After drinking half his glass, clinking with the others to celebrate, Lewrie leaned back in his chair and asked, “Now that the Dons are allies, what did you have in mind for me to do?”

“Hmm,” Mountjoy paused, frowning in puzzlement. “Haven't given it a thought, since you sailed off with Spencer's convoy. I didn't know if I'd get you back.”

“There's the arms, sir,” Deacon suggested. “A lot more than John Cummings's coastal trader can carry at one go.”

“He's still alive?” Lewrie blurted. “
There's
a wonder.”

“Alive, and thriving,” Mountjoy said with a laugh, “though he
still
avoids Estepona. Yes, do you recall early on last Summer, that some of our sources on the Andalusian coast requested arms to counter the French invaders? Good. We've managed to assemble five thousand muskets, with bayonets and accoutrements, and half a million pre-made cartridges. The requests have come, again, but I have no way to get them where they're needed.”

Of course, John Cummings, who posed as Vicente Rodríguez, had to avoid Estepona; it was the home port of that dowdy coaster that Lewrie had taken for espionage use the last Summer, and he would've been lynched or garrotted had he sailed her in there.

“Does Dalrymple know of the arms?” Lewrie asked, wondering if Mountjoy was playing a double game. “After we landed Spencer at Ayamonte, he gave all his spare weapons to the Spanish, but he could only arm about half of 'em, and that was about all that Dalrymple could spare, either, for Spencer,
or
Castaños. And just where did ye think t'land 'em?”

“Let's just say that my superiors sent the arms along in case I
could
get them to the Spanish,” Mountjoy said, going cat-sly as he did so, “and foment an uprising before the real thing happened.”

“Málaga's forts are still occupied by a French garrison,” Mr. Deacon informed him, “but the
junta
at Granada could use them. The closest place along the coast would be Salobreña.”

Christ!
Lewrie thought;
Where we got our noses bloodied last year. What sort o' welcome would we have after killin' Spanish troops?

“The road from Salobreña to Granada is decent, and direct. The Spanish could cart them on from there.” Mountjoy added, “I know, it cuts rough to go back there, but I'm assured that there are eager volunteers in need of arms.”

“
El Diablo Negro,
returnin' to the scene of the crime?” Lewrie scoffed. That was the sobriquet
Sapphire
had earned during her raiding forays along the Andalusian coast in 1807.

“They
are
our allies,” Mountjoy pointed out.

“Anyone told
them,
yet?” Lewrie countered.

“They'll chair you through the streets, most-like,” Mountjoy cajoled. “Deacon, here, will go along as my representative. He has excellent Spanish.”

“And I don't,” Lewrie said with a grunt.

“Bless me, we're all glad that you can speak
English
!” Mountjoy hooted.

“How soon must they have their guns, then?” Lewrie said, surrendering.

“As soon as you can take them aboard and sail,” Mountjoy told him. “General Castaños is of a mind to try his hand against General Dupont, now at Córdoba, and he'll need all the armed troops that he can muster.”

“A day to take on firewood and water, a day of shore liberty for my crew, a day of lading your arms, and I could be off on the fourth day—,” Lewrie decided.

“Wind and weather permitting!” Mountjoy interrupted, using one of Lewrie's usual qualifiers.

“Aye, wind and weather permitting,” Lewrie agreed.

“Hmm, I fear your crew may have to forgo their liberty for a time,” Mountjoy said upon second reflection. “Getting the arms to the Spanish is paramount. If you could begin taking them aboard as soon as you complete loading your ship's immediate needs, that would be simply topping.”

Damme, he's givin' me outright
orders,
again!
Lewrie thought in a moment of resentment. He knew that he
was
seconded to the young man, but it did rankle, now and then, to be bossed about by civilians.

“Well, if it's that urgent, I s'pose I could,” Lewrie drawled. “What? You want the arms off Gibraltar before Dalrymple knows you have 'em?”

Hah, hit a sore spot there!
Lewrie thought, congratulating himself as he saw Mountjoy's cheek wince;
Well, at least I get
one
day with Maddalena.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY

The sleepy fishing port of Salobreña had not been a victim of HMS
Sapphire
's shore bombardments, none of its fishing boats or coastal trading boats had been burned right in the harbour, but some of the prizes which
Sapphire
had run down, taken, and burned close to shore had surely come from there. Only the semaphore tower high up behind the town had been burned, after a brisk pre-dawn skirmish with Spanish troops who were not supposed to be there, according to Mountjoy's informers, but some Spanish commander had sent them down from Órgiva on a route march to keep them fit, or to punish them, and they
had
been there, sleeping in Salobreña's taverns, when the alarm was raised. For sleepy, half-drunk soldiers, they had put up a decent but brief resistance before breaking and running off into the bracken behind the town.

“That's the semaphore tower, Captain Lewrie?” Mr. Deacon asked as he peered shoreward with his own smaller telescope. “Doesn't look like much to die for.”

“I'm sure those who did, or were crippled for life, thought the same, Mister Deacon,” Lewrie replied.

“They never re-built it, it appears,” Deacon said after a longer perusal. “Mister Mountjoy said that his reports tell much the same tale of the others you burned, and the batteries you blew up or shot to bits.”

“The French drained so much from the Spanish treasury that the whole country's ‘skint,'” Lewrie replied with a shrug. “Now they own Spain as a conquest, it'll be their job t're-build.
Their
soldiers mannin' and guardin' the bloody things. Hmm … if I could round up troops, boats, and a transport or two, we could start maraudin' all over again, against the French this time.”

“If General Dalrymple could spare troops, again, sir, which I doubt,” Deacon told him. “I also doubt the French could man and guard a new line of towers. If the Spanish people are becoming
guerrilleros
, it might take two companies to each tower to protect them.”

“Gueri…?”
Lewrie gawped. “What the Devil's that?”

“Roughly,
guerrilla
comes close to ‘little war,' sir,” Deacon said with a grin, “with irregular fighters, ambushers, throat-slitters, those sort of attacks that Mister Mountjoy was so excited about. The French haven't seen anything like them in any of their other conquered countries, and it'll drive them mad. More like Red Indian warfare on the American frontiers.”

“And the French are a very European army,” Lewrie replied with sudden good humour, the opposite of his qualms over how the Spanish would receive their sudden appearance, even if they were bearing them gifts. “God help 'em, then. Saw my share of Indian fighting in Spanish Florida during the Revolution. Brr! Vicious!”

“Seven fathom! Seven fathom t'this line!” one of the leadsmen called back from his post on a foremast chain platform.

“We'll stand on 'til we strike six fathoms, Mister Yelland,” Lewrie called down to the Sailing Master on the quarterdeck.

“Aye, sir, six fathoms, and we round up,” Yelland agreed.

“I think I see Spanish troops on the quays, sir,” Lt. Westcott pointed out. “The
French
wear blue uniforms, mostly, and this lot's white. Do the Frogs wear that colour?”

Lewrie looked to Deacon for an answer; he'd been a soldier in the Guards, and should know, but all he got from that worthy was a shrug and a puzzled face.

“Wish we had a Spanish officer with us, then,” Lewrie said. “I would've thought that Mountjoy could whistle one up from General Castaños' staff.”

“A rush job, Captain Lewrie,” Deacon said, winking. “No time to look for one.”

“Six fathom! Six fathom t'this line!” a leadsman shouted.

“Fetch-to, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie snapped. “Round up into the wind, and ready the best bower.”

“Aye aye, sir!” Westcott called back, then began to bellow orders to steer up into the wind, take in sail, and drop the larboard anchor.

“We'll take the thirty-two-foot pinnace,” Lewrie told Deacon as they descended from the poop deck to the quarterdeck. “It's more impressive than a cutter, and has more room for all.”

*   *   *

They ain't shootin' at us,
yet, Lewrie thought in trepidation as the pinnace came alongside the quays, as the bow man gaffed the piers and sprang to tie off a line to a bollard, as another sailor did the same at the stern.

Deacon plastered a smile on his craggy face and made cordial noises in fluid, fluent Spanish. A Spanish officer came forward to palaver with him. The Spaniard was an odd bird, Lewrie thought, wearing a cocked hat twice as big as any he'd ever seen, with tall dragoon boots with knee-flaps on his legs, and a long smallsword tucked up under his armpit instead of slung on the hip. His mustachio was long, pointed, and looked waxed. The Spanish officer frowned a lot, then broke out in a smile, turned to face the townfolk who had gathered in curiosity, clapped his gloved hands, and began to babble in rapid Spanish. Whatever he'd told them set off tremendous cheers.

“Commandante Azcárte, it means he's a Major, sir, says that we and our arms are more than welcome,” Deacon translated as the fellow turned back to face them. “Someone in contact with Gibraltar alerted them that we would be coming, and Major Azcárte was sent from the Granada
junta
to escort them inland, with waggons, carts, and a strong escort. I'm naming you to him now, sir, though I don't know how to render ‘Baronet' in Spanish.”

“Makes no matter,” Lewrie shrugged off, beaming fit to bust, himself, and nodding pleasantly. He made out
“Capitano”
and
“Caballero,” “la Marina Real Británica,”
but the rest was higgledy-piggledy. When Deacon drew breath, Lewrie doffed his hat and bowed from the waist; there was no way to make a formal “leg” while still standing in the pinnace.

“Honoured to make your acquaintance, Commandante Azcárte,” Lewrie replied. “Uhm, Deacon, ask him if the locals can help get the arms ashore with their boats. It'd take hours, else.”

“I will, sir,” Deacon said, and launched into more gibberish. Major Azcárte nodded vigourously, replied with more smiles, and turned to the citizens of Salobreña to ask them to help, which launched a rush of fishermen to their boats along the quay, to break out oars, and begin to stroke out towards
Sapphire.

Lewrie and Deacon scrambled up atop the quay, and Deacon began to ask many questions anent the local situation, the nearness of the French, and the latest news from Granada. Before he could get any answers, Major Azcárte stepped up to Lewrie, threw his arms round him in a bear hug, and bussed him on both cheeks, babbling away.