Kings and Emperors (47 page)

“Honoured t'make yours, Captain Chalmers,” Lewrie said back, “and from what I've read of your exploits in my son's letters, a man after my own heart.”

Hugh called him a high-minded sort, too,
Lewrie recalled;
whatever that means. Here comes the embarrassin' part.

He turned to include Maddalena, plastering a grin on his phyz and striving to make a bold showing.

“Captain Chalmers, son, allow me to name to you Miss Maddalena Covilh
ā
,” he began. “Miss Covilh
ā
, allow me to name to you Captain Richard Chalmers, of the
Undaunted
frigate, and my son, Midshipman Hugh Lewrie, also of the
Undaunted
.”

That's enough, no explanations,
he thought, waiting for the reaction.

Before they had attended the supper ball to welcome General Sir John Moore to Gibraltar the year before, Maddalena had fretted over her social graces, and had sought out a tutor. Her curtsies, and her address to them were perfectly refined. “Captain Chalmers, Midshipman Lewrie, I am pleased to make your acquaintances, gentlemen, though I fear it will be of a brief nature, given the urgent matter which brings you to Gibraltar.”

Captain Chalmers tried to hide a scandalised frown, looking as if he knew for certain what Maddalena was, and did not appreciate being introduced to a doxy. Hugh stood and nodded with his mouth open, an uncertain smile on his face.

What, she's a cundum stuck to her hair?
Lewrie groused to himself;
Are my breeches buttons undone? Aye, he's high-minded for sure!

“Miss Covilh
ā
,” Hugh hesitantly responded, doffing his hat to her in involuntary courtesy. “You … ehm … are…?”

“Portuguese, young sir,” Maddalena said with a sweet and disarming smile. “There are many of us here at Gibraltar, who fled the French invasion.”

“Ah, Portuguese, aye,” Hugh flummoxed, casting a startled look at his father.

“But, I delay you gentlemen,” Maddalena went on, bestowing one more smile on one and all. “You must prepare to sail to rescue brave General Sir John Moore and his gallant army, and there is no time for the social niceties. With your permission, I will take my leave of you,
sim
?”

By God, an
English
girl presented at Court couldn't do that better!
Lewrie thought with pride, and surprise of her diplomatic skills.

“Miss Covilh
ā
,” Lewrie said, sweeping off his hat and laying it upon his chest as he made a leg to her.
“Meu amor,”
he silently mouthed to her, though, with a brief, impish smile. His bow prompted the others to follow suit, no matter what they thought of her.

“Gentlemen, Captain Lewrie,” Maddalena said, dipping them all a departure curtsy, low, long, and with a graceful incline of her head. As she looked up at last, she mouthed
“Fofa”
to Lewrie in a shared jest; “Sweetie!”

“Well, what's first on the menu, sir?” Lewrie asked Chalmers in a sudden, business-like tone. “Firewood and water, provisions from the dockyards, or will you wish to speak with General Drummond to be apprised of the latest information regarding the mess the Army's got itself into?”

“Saving the Army, is it?” Chalmers gruffly asked with a confused look on his face. “I was only told that a convoy forming here was in need of additional escorts, and my Commodore offered my ship for the task. Frankly, I'd hoped I'd be bound for England, but…”

“You heard that we have two armies in Spain, sir?” Lewrie asked him. “Good. Well, so do the Frogs, and Napoleon
himself
is over the border with nigh a quarter-million troops. We've less than thirty thousand,
somewhere
round Salamanca, we
think,
smack in the middle of the Spanish mountains in Midwinter, runnin' for Vigo or Corunna, we
hope
, t'get taken off before ‘Boney' catches up with 'em. We've sixteen troop ships, and have t'get 'em North as soon as dammit, or we lose the whole army. London's sendin' more, but how soon they arrive is anyone's guess. And, welcome to Gibraltar, by the way,” he concluded with a cynical grin.

“Egad!” was Chalmers's drawn-out, stunned comment. “Then, it appears that we must be about it, what?”

“Amen!” Hugh Lewrie whispered, though still looking off to follow Maddalena's receding figure. To Lewrie's eyes, the lad didn't look disappointed in his sire, but … appreciative.

“Let's get on to the Convent, then,” Lewrie suggested, “and let General Drummond fill you in. There's little he can do to help, from here, and explainin' it to you will make him feel better, I'm sure.” He led off but Chalmers paused long enough to send Hugh back to the boat, and back to the ship.

“I hope to dine you and the Commanders off our two other ships aboard this evening, Captain Chalmers,” Lewrie bade, “and I wonder if you might allow my son to come, too. Catch up on old times, and see some of my retinue he knows.”

“It would be grand to see Desmond and Furfy, again,” Hugh said, casting a pleading look at Captain Chalmers.

“Well, somebody has to sit at the bottom of the table and pose the King's Toast, I suppose,” Chalmers relented.

“Chalky'll be glad t'see ye, too, Hugh, him and Bisquit. He was a good companion when I was laid up healin' at Anglesgreen last year,” Lewrie said. “And, you can fill me in on what you've heard from Sewallis, and what he means by claimin' he's become a champion dancer, hah!”

“I look forward to it, sir,” Hugh said, beaming as he doffed his hat to his Captain and his father, and dashed back to the boat.

*   *   *

A whole two minutes passed in silence as Lewrie and Chalmers ascended the cobbled street uphill towards army headquarters.

“I am given to understand that your eldest son is also in the Navy, sir?” Chalmers at last enquired. He didn't sound too pleased.

“He is,” Lewrie had to admit. “He's spent the last five years aboard two-decker seventy-fours. He's twenty-one, now, but lacks the last two years before he can stand for his Lieutenancy. His present ship pays off next year, and I hope he's appointed into a brig-sloop or something below the Rates. I've always thought that smaller ships are the best schools for seamanship.”

“How did he…?” Chalmers asked, curious. In proper British families, it was the younger sons who went off to the Army, Navy, or the Church, sparing the heir and guarantor of the continuance of the family line.

“Sewallis found a way round me and his grandfather, and wrote an old friend of mine, gaining his own berth,” Lewrie sketchily explained, leaving out the lad's forgeries. “He saw us sendin' Hugh off and wanted his own chance to get vengeance against the French for the murder of his mother during the Peace of Amiens. They were shooting at me, but hit her, instead, the bastards.”

“Ah?” Captain Chalmers commented, sounding as if he found the account a bit too
outré.
“I do recall a comment your son, Hugh, said once. Tried to murder you? Who, and why?”

“Napoleon's orders,” Lewrie told him. “Though I still don't know why or how I rowed him at a
levee
at the Tuileries Palace in Paris. He fussed about our keepin' Malta, interferin' in how he was runnin' Switzerland, why we hadn't sent him a proper ambassador yet, and I suspect it was the sword exchange that pissed him in the eye,” Lewrie supposed, explaining how he had swapped half a dozen swords of dead French Captains and officers for the one he'd surrendered to Napoleon the first time he'd met him at Toulon in '94, when he could not give Napoleon his parole and abandon his surviving crew, some of whom were French Royalists, sure to be executed on the spot.

Captain Chalmers followed all that with many a sniff or gasp, as if the tale was just too fabulous to be believed.

“That night, Caroline and I were warned t'flee Paris if we valued our lives, and made it to Calais before they caught up with us,” Lewrie related, leaving out the juicier parts concerning wigs, and costumes, play-acting, and the aid they'd gotten from a man who'd whetted his skills during the Terror of '93, and styled himself the Yellow Tansy; Chalmers already sounded dubious enough.

“Whatever it was I did to set him off,” Lewrie concluded with a grin, “I pissed him in the eye once. With any luck at all, do we pluck our army from his clutches and get 'em clean away, we'll piss him in the eye, again!”

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

When Lewrie's little convoy had at last sailed from Gibraltar, its pace was heart-breakingly slow. It took a few days to breast the in-rushing current through the Strait, short-tacking into the stiff Winter winds, then bashing Westward many leagues to round Cape Finisterre and gain enough sea-room to avoid being blown onto a lee shore.

Once safely far out at sea, the struggling ships should have been able to turn North on a beam wind and rush on to Vigo, where information had it that part of the army was being evacuated, but the prevailing Westerlies turned into one howling gale after another, and the seas were steep, forcing all ships, transports and escorts alike, to reduce sail, brailing up to second or third reef lines, striking top-masts, and slowing them even more, and scattering them wide over many miles of sea. Even stout and slow HMS
Sapphire
, at over 1,100 tons burthen, rolled, pitched, and hobby-horsed like the merest wee gig, pricking every hand's ears in dread to the great groans and moans of her hull timbers and masts, to the thundrous slamming and jerking each time the bows ploughed into the tall, disturbed waves, flinging icy water high over her beakhead rails and forecastle, and anyone in need of the “seats of ease” for their bowel movements risked being flung right off the ship!

No matter how tautly the deck seams had been tarred, the upper gun-deck berthing dripped cold water on hammocks, blankets, and wildly swaying men who tried to snatch a few hours' rest from it all. Wood buckets were used for toilets, but no matter how often they were taken to the weather deck, dragged overside to clean them, then hauled back in, the stench became almost unbearable. The sailors who berthed on the lower gun deck might be drier, but their air was even closer, and foetid, to the point that serving watches in the open air, rain and cold and spray, was reckoned refreshing.

Despite tarred tarpaulin over-clothing, everyone's shirts and trousers got soaked when on deck or aloft tending sail, and there was no way to dry anything out below, or in the great-cabins or the officers' wardroom, either, and every morning's sick call featured people with salt-water boils where their salt-crystal laden clothes chafed them raw. Even boiling rations in the swaying, rolling, pitching galley proved extremely risky. Christmas supper was a Banyan Day, with only oatmeal, cheese, hard ship's bisquit, small beer, and a raisin duff for each mess to liven it.

Lewrie was amazed each raw dawn to see that all sixteen of his transports were still with him, and that
Undaunted
,
Peregrine
, and
Blaze
were still with him, dutifully chivvying stragglers back into their columns and urging the more widely scattered ships to rejoin.

They weren't wanted at Vigo, though;
Blaze
had dashed inshore and had returned with word that Admiral de Courcy had been replaced by Admiral Hood, and that Moore would be making for Corunna, where there were yet only about thirty transports awaiting him, and that Hood would be sailing to there with nigh a hundred ships. It had taken
Blaze
a very long and frightful day to beat her way off a lee shore to bear word, and Lewrie had to order his convoy to come into the wind and claw out even more sea-room off the coast of Galicia to get above Cape Fisterra before he'd dare to risk the Costa da Morte, and a run Due East into Corunna.

*   *   *

“It's clearing a bit, sir,” Sailing Master George Yelland said as he sniffed the winds and rubbed his chilled hands. “The wind and sea are almost moderate, thank God.”

“Is that a lighthouse I see on yon headland?” Lewrie asked, his telescope to his eye. “To the left of that inlet?”

“Ah, hmm,” Yelland pondered, employing his own telescope for a long moment. “Aye, it is, sir, the lighthouse at Corunna. The port will be round the other side of the heights. This inlet, Orsan Bay, is a dead-end, don't be fooled by it. We're almost there.”

“At last!” Lewrie breathed with relief that the ship could be brought to anchor, and blessed stillness, after too many days of risk. He had spent so much time on deck that he still felt chilled to the bone, and so in need of missed sleep that he could nod off on his feet and jerk back to wakefulness.

“Hawse bucklers removed, cables seized to the anchors and free to run, sir,” a weary and storm-ravaged First Officer, Lieutenant Westcott, came aft to report. Shaving had been such a deadly endeavour that everyone had given it up, so he looked as if he could have been a bearded courtier to Henry VIII.

“We'll stand off a bit, and let the transports have the best anchorages nearest the town,” Lewrie told him. “Mister Kibworth?” he shouted aft to the Midshipman at the signal halliards. “Bend on a signal hoist for the transports to go in first, and for the escorts to stand in trail of us.”

“Aye aye, sir!” Kibworth shouted back.

Slowly, slowly, the little convoy, with
Sapphire
in the lead, rounded the tall headland and wore away South, standing into the harbour bay, with the escorts swinging wider out into the sheltered bay while the transports angled in round the fortified San Antonio Castle on a small island off the tip of the town.

Corunna was laid out in an
L
, with another fortress, the Citadel, dominating the short leg of the L to the North, and the civilian part of town angling off along the seashore behind tall sea walls to the Southwest. Even further along near the bottom of the harbour, near San Diego Point, was a commercial port of piers and warehouses close to a village of Santa Lucía; and all of it swarming with soldiers, ship's boats beetling back and forth under oars, and anchored troop ships.