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There might be dozens of Spanish greengrocers and fruiterers on their way back across The Lines emulating the American rebel, Paul Revere, shouting, “The British are coming!” he imagined, and a grain merchant or three crying, “Two if by sea!”
Then, for the next two days, all sailors and soldiers were left to idle, only forming up and entering the boats after the nights had fully fallen, with all glims and lanthorns extinguished. That wasn’t to prevent the Spanish seeing them practise, but to get the soldiers used to the drill as if in a moonless, overcast black night at sea.
By then, the men of the 77th could perform the evolutions just as efficiently and quickly as Sapphire’s Marines could, and Lewrie was at last a lot more sanguine of their chances.
It was time to see Mountjoy for a mission.
* * *
“Puerto Banús looks promising,” Mountjoy decided after sifting through his latest reports and agents’ sketches. “Look here, there’s a battery to the left of the harbour entrance, about twenty feet higher than the town itself, on a little pimple of a rise. It’s an open redan, a stone semi-circle mounting only three eighteen-pounders, or the Spanish equivalent, in weight of metal.”
“That’d be about fifty gu
“About what my informer observed, yes,” Mountjoy agreed. They were out on his rooftop gallery, screened by the canvas awning, and enjoying a decent breeze that cut the day’s heat, bent over the iron table before the settee. “Now, there’s a good, broad beach over here to the right of the harbour. Some scattered houses, as you can see, and the report is that small boats are drawn up on the shingle behind it for the night, in the outer part of the harbour. Groves of trees to the right of that, then three windmills to grind grain, and a granary further inland by about an hundred yards. Behind that is the town proper, and the houses are close together. I’m not sure if we should go much beyond the granary.”
“Street fightin’, in the dark, with a surprise round every corner, in every window? Aye, we’ll burn the granary and the mills, and call it a good day’s work. Though I’d like t’spike those guns,” Lewrie said. “Has your informer gotten a good look at the battery?”
“Not too close, no,” Mountjoy said, with a shrug. “But he did see a doorway on the backside of the rise where their powder magazine must be, sunk underneath the battery. His sketch shows a long wooden barracks a little way behind the rise, and an old stone fisherman’s house off to the right of that and a little more inland, where the officers lodge, is my guess.”
“Damme, I could put my Marines to that, arm the men who handle the boats to aid them, and take the place,” Lewrie schemed. “There is a good beach in front of the battery, isn’t there? Damme! Once we surprise the Dons and drive ’em off, loose gunpowder scattered on the guns’ carriages’d set ’em alight and burn ’em up. Hell, we lay a powder train to the magazine, and it’d blow the whole thing sky-high!”
“Hmm,” Mountjoy considered, frowning. “Far be it from me to tell you how to spread the requisite mayhem, but … might that be a tad too enterprising, right off? If they keep a good watch, and there is any sort of moonlight, they’d be ready for you.”
“The most important objective is the battery,” Lewrie countered. “If it’s taken and destroyed, the Spanish will have to waste effort and money replacin’ it … drawin’ troops for a larger garrison, military engineers, and new artillery pieces. Stone workers to lay a stronger, bigger emplacement, hey? No, the battery’s the main course, and the mills and granary are the lagniappe, as they said in Louisiana … the ‘little something extra’. We land everyone against the battery, and deal with the rest after, with any opposition already eliminated.”
“Well, we did promise Sir Hew we’d whittle down any possible re-enforcements sent to General Castaños,” Mountjoy said with a sigh, leaning back into the settee’s cushions. “I’ll put Deacon to copying the sketches so all officers involved can have them. How soon might you need them?”
“No tearing hurry,” Lewrie said. “I’ve let the soldiers ashore to their barracks for a day or two as a reward, and my own people are due shore liberty, by watches. Say, two days from now? We’ll get the officers together for a briefing before we set off. And, I’m in need of fresh laundry. Ehm, you wouldn’t have a second objective in mind fairly close to Puerto Banús, would you?”
“Not right offhand, no,” Mountjoy promised. “I think just the one raid will suffice, for now. Babies must crawl before they learn to walk, after all. Let’s get the rough edges smoothed down before we hit our stride.”
“Meaning, ‘Lewrie, don’t make a muck of it’, hey?” Lewrie asked, with a wry expression.
Mountjoy made no reply, but raised a brow and nodded.
* * *
That’s what comes of bein’ thought an idiot, Lewrie sullenly told himself as he strolled downhill from Mountjoy’s lodgings to the quays; The up-and-comin’ younkers like Mountjoy think they know better than older farts like me. Get a few years on me, and they marvel if I can eat with a knife and fork! Can’t even imagine what the puppies of the 77th make o’ me. Hallo?
He spotted Major Hughes a’stroll along the quays with a woman on his arm, his free hand gesticulating at the harbour, and, from the way his egret-plumed bicorne dipped like a hobby-horse, was happily and boisterously engaged in conversation with her, which conversation seemed to be one-sided, for the woman’s hat and head did not follow his pointing.
Lewrie could only see the couple from behind, but he fancied that she was the intriguing Maddalena. Her dark hair was worn simply in a long fall at the nape of her neck, not teased, roached, or ironed into an intricate updo like most women with pretensions to style wore it, and in comparison to the usual flounces and flummery, her gown was simple, a pale yellow, high-waisted affair trimmed in white. Her up-turned sun bo
Hmm, slimmer than I thought, Lewrie appraised as he neared them, noting that her gown was more a sheath than a loose, bell-shaped thing, a modest muslin or linen instead of richer fabrics.
“… and since our families are closely co
What? Christ on a crutch! Lewrie fumed inside; Takin’ credit for it, are you? And boastin’ that loud where ye shouldn’t?
He’d gotten close enough to overhear that, along with half the dockworkers on Gibraltar, and overtook the pair as they drew to a stop to admire the transport with its waiting landing boats nuzzled alongside.
“Why, Major Hughes, is that you?” Lewrie cheerfully called out, pretending pleasant surprise. “A good mornin’ to ye, sir.”
“Oh, ah!” Hughes replied, turning to regard him with real surprise, his complexion flushing redder. “Ashore for the morning, are you, sir? Well met, Captain Lewrie, well met.”
“And to you, sir,” Lewrie said, doffing his hat.
“I was just telling Maddalena here about the training we have been doing,” Hughes went on. “My pardons. Captain Lewrie, allow me to name to you Mistress Maddalena Covilhā. Maddalena, I name to you Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, of the Royal Navy, and the Captain of the Sapphire, out yonder.”
“Mistress Covilhā, a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said, sweeping his hat onto his chest and making a wee “leg”.
“Captain Lewrie, the delight is mine,” she replied, dropping him a slow curtsy, though keeping her brown eyes on his face, in which there was, alongside a pleased curl of her lips, a glint of amusement.