Kings and Emperors

“And God help our armies, if they cross the border, trusting the Spanish,” Westcott sorrowfully agreed.

“Hmm, well,” Lewrie summed up, pushing his empty plate aside. “What’s it t’be, Mountjoy? A tour of fabled Lisbon, or will you go see General Beresford or Moore?”

“You weesh zhe grand tour, senhores?” Marsh offered, tittering and off in one of his guises, again. “I am expert guide!”

“Only if you can steer Westcott to the prettier whores, sir,” Lewrie said with a snigger.

“No, dear as I wish,” Mountjoy said, torn between finally seeing Lisbon’s impressive attractions, and duty, “I must go talk with our generals, first. A tour, later, if you’re still offfering, Romney.”

“My delight,” Marsh agreed, beaming.

“I suppose we should get back to the ship,” Lewrie told his First Officer. “Will you be staying on, Mountjoy, or should we wait for you and carry you back to Gibraltar?”

“Let you know later,” Mountjoy said, digging coins out to pay the reckoning. “I may only need to stay a day or two.”

*   *   *

“You’ll not be haring off to see another battle ashore, will you, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked as they made their way back downhill to the seafront.

“Too far inland for me, if one comes, no, Geoffrey,” Lewrie scoffed. “I’ve seen my share, and those are enough.”

“If half of what Marsh says is true, I’d not wish to go off with our soldiers, either,” Westcott said, displaying a deep scowl that made some Libson passersby duck away from him, in fear of the Evil Eye. “Maybe General Moore should wait ’til Spring.”

“But, the French will be back by Spring,” Lewrie pointed out.

“Marsh,” Westcott mused aloud, still scowling, “do you really think he murdered that French officer as he claims?”

“We’ve only his word for that,” Lewrie replied, shrugging. “I always thought he was much like a half-insane version of Mountjoy, an inoffensive sort who perhaps enjoyed playing some great, dangerous game a tad too much, but … now I wonder if he is indeed capable of violence, like that old spy-master, Zachariah Twigg, who’d cut your throat just t’watch you bleed. You saw that look he gave you when you remarked about his clothes?”

“Aye, I did, sir,” Westcott heartily agreed, “and it made me wonder if there’s a knife in my back, in future.”

“Tortas, senhores?” an old woman in widow’s black weeds cried from a pastelaria set between two tumbledown houses. “Tortas laranja, de Viana, tortas de limao?”

“Tarts!” Lewrie enthused. “Orange, lemon, and I think some with jam fillings. We didn’t have dessert, did we, Geoffrey? Ah, senhora, queria dois, dois, and dois,” he said pointing to each variety in turn. “Quanto custa?”

“Eh … vinte centimos, senhor,” the old lady dared ask, not sure if that was too much in these troubled times.

“Twenty of their pence, is it?” Lewrie said, digging out his wash-leather coin purse; he had no Portuguese coin, but he did have two six-pence silver British coins, and handed them over. The sight of silver almost made the old lady faint.

“Aqui esta, senhor, bom apetite!” she exclaimed, wrapping his selections in a sheet of newspaper.

“Obrigada, senhora,” Lewrie replied, “thankee kindly.”

“Viva Inglaterra!” she shouted in departure.

“I say, these are tangy,” Westcott said as he bit into one of the orange-flavoured tarts as they resumed their downhill stroll for the docks. “But, just when did you become fluent in Portuguese, sir?”

“Fluent, me?” Lewrie laughed off. “Not a bit of it, Geoffrey, ye know how lame I am at languages. But, the best place to learn a tongue, even a little, is with the help of a bidding girl.”

“So I’ve always thought,” Westcott said with a smug leer.

“Viva inglese, viva Inglaterra!” a pack of street urchins began to chant, skipping and prancing behind them, and begging for centimos.

“It appears we’ve made some Portuguese happy,” Lt. Westcott said, looking over his shoulder at them.

“For now, at least, Geoffrey … for now,” Lewrie mused.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

“All this will fill the cisterns, sir,” Pettus commented as he came back into the great-cabins from the stern gallery, where he had been trying to dry some washing in the narrow, dry overhang of the poop deck above. “Still damp, sorry,” he said of Lewrie’s under-drawers and shirts.

“Well, hang them up in here, then,” Lewrie told him, looking up from his reading, “and we’ll hope for the best.” When last the planking seams of the poop deck had been stuffed with oakum and paid over with hot tar with loggerheads, some wee gaps had been missed, so spare pots and wooden pails stood here and there on the deck chequer, and the good carpets had been rolled up, to catch the dripping, and save expensive Turkey or Axminster rugs. He looked upwards as the incessant Winter rain increased and began to seethe on deck. It was December at Gibraltar, nigh Christmas, which usually had a mild Winter, but this year was damper, and colder, than what he’d experienced last year.

It wasn’t raw or chilly enough to wish for a Franklin-pattern coal stove to heat his cabins, but Lewrie did his reading fully dressed, less uniform coat, and with a loose-sleeved, ankle-length robe made from a wool blanket. It was white wool with red and green stripes at both ends, and upon first exposure to cabin visitors, Lt. Westcott had japed that he looked like an Indian who’d swapped furs for a Hudson’s Bay Company blanket.

The weather at sea had delayed many ships’ arrival, but Royal Mail packets had managed to come in, bringing him letters from home, most of which were pleasant, and some outright delightful.

Both James Peel at Foreign Office Secret Branch, and his old school chum, Peter Rushton, had written of the scandal, and the court of enquiry, into that disastrous Convention of Cintra. Dalrymple had been removed from command in Spain and Portugal, his career at an end, and General Burrard had been reduced to domestic duties only, never to serve abroad again. Wellesley was the only one of them who had gotten off rather mildly, and the papers championed the real victor, claiming that Dalrymple and Burrard had ordered and brow-beaten him to sign the damned thing. He was idle in Dublin, with no real harm done to him.

Both of his sons were well. Sewallis was still on the Brest blockade, bored to tears with the incessant plodding in-line-ahead for months on end, standing off-and-on the French coast with no sign that the enemy would ever come out to challenge them, with only the rare week or so in an English port to re-provision and have a run ashore where, admittedly, he had taken strong drink aboard and attended some lively subscription balls; he boasted that he was one of the best dancers aboard, had instructed the younger Mids in his mess in the art, and had been quite taken by more than a few pretty girls.

His younger son, Hugh, was still in the Mediterranean aboard a frigate, and as he described it, a taut and happy ship led by an energetic and daring captain. They had done some cutting-out raids in Genoese harbours and had seized merchant prizes right from under the noses of the French and their grudging Italian allies, had made chase of several others off Malta, taken two more, and had fought a spirited action with a French corvette, made prize of her, and Hugh suggested that his father should look into the latest issues of the Naval Chronicle in which Midshipman Hugh Lewrie was mentioned by his captain as having shown pluck, courage, and skill!

There’s one that didn’t fall far from the tree! Lewrie told himself with rightful pride.

There was a letter from his father, more an advertisment for the new plays, symphonies, and entertainments of the season. There was one from his former ward, Sophie de Maubeuge, now married to his old First Officer in the Proteus frigate, Anthony Langlie, with the thrilling news that her husband had been “made Post” and awarded the command of a Sixth Rate frigate, and would be home for a couple of months as she recruited and outfitted, after nigh a year of separation and anxiety.