Kings and Emperors

Lewrie trotted up the stairs and went out on the top-floor open-air gallery, where he found Mountjoy in his waistcoat, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, and his neck-stock discarded. He held a smuggled bottle of French champagne.

“We’re celebratin’ something, I trust?” Lewrie asked, pausing by the glazed double doors.

“They’ve done it! The bloody Spanish have at last done it!” Mountjoy whooped in glee. “A week ago … they’re calling it the Tumult of Aranjuez, God knows why … it was too much for ’em, all those bloody French, all the cities taken over.…”

Is he insane, or drunk? Lewrie had to wonder; He’s babblin’!

“The Spanish mobs have risen up, they’ve forced King Carlos to step down, and they’ve put Ferdinand on the throne, and for all that I know, he’s finally arrested the Foreign Minister, Godoy, and named a new one! I fully expect to hear in a few days that that treaty with France is torn to shreds, too. Oh, they’re teetering on the brink of changing sides, maybe raising armies to drive the French back home. Christ Almighty!” he yelled at the sky, and began to whirl about in an impromptu dance, putting Lewrie in mind of an Ottoman dervish. “Have a drink, Captain Lewrie! Have a whole bottle, hah hah!”

“Damned if I won’t!” Lewrie hooted, and went to the iron table before the settee to pour himself a glass from a second open bottle.

Neither Mountjoy or Deacon had taken time to cool the champagne in a water-filled bucket or tub, so Lewrie felt as if his mouth was full of foam as he glugged down a goodly measure. He looked to the West, over towards Algeciras, then North to the Lines, and the Spanish fortifications beyond them.

“Mind if I borrow your telescope?” he asked. Mountjoy paid him no mind; he was still dancing and drinking from his bottle, so Lewrie stepped round him and bent down to see if the Spanish troops on the walls had heard the news, too, and if they had, what was their reaction. It was a fine astronomical telescope, able to fill the ocular with an image of the moon when pointed aloft at night.

Right, no reaction, Lewrie told himself; perhaps their officers haven’t told ’em yet, or they haven’t heard, themselves.

Some sentries under arms were slowly pacing their bounds atop the parapets, but most were leaning on the walls, some smoking their pipes or cigarros, and one un-kempt corporal was picking his nose and puzzling over what he’d gouged out. He slewed the tube over to look at Algeciras, and the mouths of the rivers that fed into the bay; the many Spanish gunboats were sitting empty at their moorings or along the quays beneath the fortifications there, and that enclave looked as somnolent as the Spanish Lines. A downward tilt showed Lewrie a close-up view of one of the British gunboats wheeling itself about in almost its own length as the exercises continued.

“Maybe you should send some letters cross the Lines,” Lewrie told his host. “I don’t see any riots in the Spanish garrisons.”

“They’re military,” Mountjoy gleefully stated. “They aren’t allowed to riot. God, it’d be grand if Madrid sent General Castaños orders to march off and defend their country. Might be hard, though,” Mountjoy said, taking another deep swig from his bottle, and calming down. “I’ve heard that Murat’s sent a small advance party to scout our lines, with lots of money and grain, which the Spanish really need. Who knows who in their army can be bribed to go along with the occupation of their own nation? Castaños may be too closely watched for him to take action on his own. Yet.”

“The Dowager must be over the moon,” Lewrie speculated, going to the settee to have a sit-down, and a refill of his wineglass.

“Damned right he is!” Mountjoy buoyantly said. “He’s still in a quandary whether Gibraltar is threatened, but very pleased with the news. If the revolts spread, as we expect, we may have Spain as an ally, and a British army in Spain to assist them. Not from here, ye see … not ’til we know one way or another what else the Spanish will do … but from England. As soon as the weather at sea is improved, London will be sending an army to re-take Portugal, and you did not hear that from me. Maybe Sir John Moore, again. Or, we might launch ourselves into Southern Spain from here, depending.”

“Well, that’s all grand news,” Lewrie said, scowling in deep thought, “but it don’t signify to me, or Sapphire. That’s soldier’s doings, and I’d still be stuck here at Gibraltar, keepin’ an eye on Ceuta.”

“Grand events, even so, Lewrie,” Mountjoy chortled.

“Aye, fun t’watch unfolding, like watchin’ a play, with no part in it but t’clap and laugh,” Lewrie sourly commented. “Grand, hah!”

“Lord, but you’re a hard man to please!” Mountjoy groused.

“Aye, I s’pose I am,” Lewrie admitted. “Last Summer’s raids … those were just toppin’ fine. We were doing something, killing Dons and smashing things, burning captured ships and semaphore towers. Now, it’s … plodding off-and-on the same bloody headland, days on end.”

“You could be in charge of the gunboats,” Mountjoy pointed out. “Be thankful you’re not. You could be ordered to join Admiral Collingwood’s blockading squadron off Cádiz, Charles Cotton’s off Lisbon, or do your plodding at Marseilles or Toulon as a minor part of the Mediterranean Fleet.”

Lewrie feigned a shiver of loathing for either of those choices. He no longer had a frigate, and would have no freedom of action to probe and raid inshore, and it would be bloody dull sailing in line-ahead behind larger ships of war, continually under the eyes of senior officers and their Flag-Captains. Except for single actions or small squadron actions in the Caribbean or Asian waters, there had been no grand engagements since Trafalgar, now three years before. France, and her puppet ally, the Batavian Dutch Republic, still built warships, but, once built they sat at their moorings, their crews idling, bored to tears with “river discipline” training, which was not the same as the experience gained through long spells at sea. The best of the Spanish navy had been crushed at Trafalgar, and blockaded into ports ever since, and might never dare come out again.

He’d helped in making them fearful a few months back in 1807, when he stumbled across a brace of large Spanish frigates off Cabo de Gata, East of Gibraltar. Fine ships, fine crews, gallant captains … with the gu

The way things are goin’, I may never see an enemy at close broadsides again! he fretted to himself; Twenty-eight years in the Navy, it’s been, and it’s all been shot and powder stink!

He frowned heavily again as he pondered the possibility of Bonaparte’s eventual downfall, and peace. What sort of life would he have, then? A decade or so on half-pay with no new active commission, slowly going up the list of Post-Captains, a meaningless promotion to Rear-Admiral of the Blue, then a slow ascent of that list as elder officers died?

I’ll whore and drink myself to an early grave, damned if I won’t! he thought; Just like my useless father!

“My, sir … so morose of a sudden,” Mountjoy said.

“So bored,” Lewrie amended, “and daunted by the prospects. Is there anything in your line that needs doing?”

“Can’t think of anything off-hand,” Mountjoy told him. “And for now, Sir Hew needs you off Ceuta. You know … the duty you invented for yourself to avoid the gunboat squadron?”

“Ouch!” Lewrie spat, going for the champagne bottle.

“Now, how far afield you carry that task, that may be up to you,” Mountjoy suggested with a sly wink. “You never know, Sir Hew may send you to Tetuán to fetch the garrison an hundred head of cattle.”