Страница 35 из 91
“First off, ye can tell my man here, Pettus, where he can find a reliable laundry,” Lewrie told him with a grin.
“There’s a very good one that I use, quite near my residence,” Mountjoy told him. “It’s not too far uphill. Let us go there.”
“Ehm, shouldn’t I be calling upon Sir Hew Dalrymple, first?” Lewrie asked as they set off.
“I very much doubt it he can spare you the time,” Mountjoy told him. “Just send round one of those new carte de visites with a short note. He’s much too busy, of late, hunting down foreign spies and enemy agents.”
“A lot of those around, are there?” Lewrie wondered aloud.
“Strong rumours, as far as I can determine,” Mountjoy imparted, “but nothing solid, and no names named. Anonymous tips about French or Spanish agents scouting the defences, some dis-affected Irish officers plotting to raise a mutiny and hand the Rock over to the Spanish, and of course, our anomymous tipsters will have us believe that there’s a cabal of Jews at the bottom of it. Pure balderdash. The worst problem are the traders who’d sell grain and foodstuffs to the Spanish, who aren’t eating all that well, these days, with the government in Madrid sending so much off to support Napoleon’s larders.”
“It’s like a foreign town,” Pettus said, gawking as they made their way uphill along a narrow stone street lined with stone-front and stuccoed houses, shops, and lodgings, with stout wood doors set into the fronts atop narrow stone stoops, and the windows mounted high and rather small, iron-barred for security, and fitted with wood shutters inside. “There’s little English about it.”
“Well, it was Spanish for hundreds of years, and Moorish long before that, Mister Pettus,” Mountjoy explained. “We’ve owned it for only a bit beyond an hundred years. You’ll hear the difference, too. There are only a little over three thousand male inhabitants on the Rock, and only about eight hundred of them are British. Maybe nine hundred from neutral countries, and over sixteen hundred are registered as citizens of enemy nations!
“Add to that, there’s another two thousand or so foreign traders allowed to buy and sell here, with purchased three-month passes to let them do so … unmolested, mind,” Mountjoy went on. “You’ll hear every language of Europe, with Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian predominant. I even thought I heard some Russian, the other day.”
“Hmm, sounds t’me as if Dalrymple might have cause t’worry,” Lewrie said. “I’d think that you’d find it worrying, in your line of work.”
In answer, Mountjoy laid a finger against his lips and made a boyish “Sshh!”
* * *
Thomas Mountjoy kept lodgings on the top floor of a stout and old house, which allowed him access to a rooftop garden area with an awning rigged over it for coolness and shade. There were slat-wood chairs and settees, and Moorish-looking pottery urns for side-tables with wood tops, and a wrought-iron metal table. Most prominent was a large brass telescope mounted on a tripod.
“Should anyone wish to do me in, I’m harder to reach up here,” Mountjoy said in seeming seriousness as he invited Lewrie to “take a pew” and cool off from the exertion of walking so far uphill. “There are several very stout doors to get through, first, and by then I’m awake and well-armed. When needed, I putter with all my flowers and plants, and … keep an eye on Spain. See my telescope?”
There were indeed lots of potted greenery, and so many blossoms that the air was sweet with their aromas. Lewrie went to the telescope and bent down to peer through it. “Aha!” he said.
Mountjoy’s aerie was high-enough up the hills that he could see over the British Lines right across the wide swath of neutral ground at the narrow neck to the matching line of fortifications on the Spanish side. Mountjoy’s telescope was huge, and strong, good enough to serve an astronomer, and fill its entire ocular with the moon in all its details. He could even make out Spanish sentries pacing along at the top of the Spanish works, slouching, smoking, or yawning!
“Nice view of the harbour, too,” Mountjoy told him, “and what’s acting on the Spanish side of the bay, at Algeciras. Quite useful, my English eccentricities, do you not think? To all casual observers I’m in the grain trade, and keep an office in the South end of town … where people who report to me can come and go. Sir Hew allows me and mine to do some smuggling, in a small way, which gives my men in the field good reason to travel in Spain.”
“And you keep him informed on who the real smugglers are, I take it?” Lewrie asked, swivelling the telescope to seek out his ship to see what was going on there. He stood erect and looked South and could look right cross the straits to the other rocky headland, and the massive Spanish fort at Ceuta. It was more than twelve miles off, but the powerful telescope could fetch up a decent image, even so.
“When I come across one arranging a huge shipment,” Mountjoy said. “If I kept up with all of them, I’d have no time for my real tasks.”
“The one that Peel wants me to help with,” Lewrie said. “Before I sailed, I wrote him and told him that my ship’s too big and deep-draughted t’do you much good close inshore, but I never heard back. Now that I’m here, just what is it that you need from me?’ And just what is your main task?”
“London has charged me with turning the Spanish against the French, and getting them out of the war, perhaps even gaining them as an ally,” Mountjoy baldly told him.
“You’re joking,” Lewrie said, gawping.
“With the carrot, and the stick,” Mountjoy added, looking sly again. “Sweet talk and sympathy on the one hand, and promises of free trade, and on the other hand, making the lives of everyone from here to the French border miserable, with chaos and mayhem.”
“And my part is…?” Lewrie posed.
“The chaos and mayhem,” Mountjoy said with a chuckle.
“Hmm,” Lewrie said, with a shrug. “I can do chaos and mayhem … I’ve been dined out on it for years. Landings and raids, I’d suppose? Bring all Spanish coasting trade to a stop?”
“Sink, take, or burn everything that floats, yes,” Mountjoy agreed. “And quick cut-and-thrust raids on coastal ports and villages. Along the way, to and from, I’ll also need you to drop off some of my field agents, now and again. Picking them up and fetching them back may be too much to hope for, but I have managed to put together a few ways for their reports and informations to reach me, somewhat timely. It would really help, though, if, upon your first venture, you could obtain for me a small coasting vessel or fishing boat.”
“Steal you a boat, right,” Lewrie said. “Simple enough.”
“Something dowdy and un-remarkable, and easily ma
“Something that could be handled by a Midshipman and seven or eight men,” Lewrie schemed. “All of whom can speak decent Spanish, I suppose? I can get you some sort of boat, but…”
“I’ve a man coming to do the talking, if it comes to it,” Mountjoy promised quickly. “In the Andalusian dialect, and high Castilian to boot … with lisp and all!”
“Even so, it might be best did Sapphire see your new boat near where you wish to land or recover agents, but stay safely offshore,” Lewrie told him, going to one of the chairs and sitting down on a faded green cushion. “Best that we’re not seen too close together.”