Much Ado About Lewrie Read online

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  To George and Olga Webster, my long-ago agents who took a chance on an Un-published writer back in 1988, liked what they read, and offered representation … which caused me to get “over-served”

  BOOK ONE

  On me the tempest falls. It does not

  make me tremble. O holy Mother Earth,

  O Air and Sun, behold me. I am wronged.

  AESCHYLUS, PROMETHEUS

  BOUND, 1089

  CHAPTER ONE

  I s’pose they call this a black study, Captain Sir Alan Lewrie thought as he slowly paced the length of HMS Vigilance’s poop deck; Or is it a bleak study? he wondered.

  His hands were clasped in the small of his back, and he found the toes of his freshly-blackened boots of more interest than the sights of the anchorage in which his 64-gun ship, and the transports of his wee squadron lay. He clewed to a single deck plank, sanded to pale white, one foot after another ’til he fetched up at the flag lockers and the taffrails and looked down over the stern, the windows at the rear of his great-cabins, and his ornately railed gallery. At present it was awash in bed linens and some of his linen shirts airing in the sun after a wash in fresh water brought from shore.

  Lewrie slumped on the taffrails most lubberly and lifted his gaze at last to the middle distance, up to the Nor’east. Somewhere out there a traitor rested on the seabed, anchored by chains round his ankles, bobbing perhaps, with arms upraised, for the fish to nibble on. Lewrie thought that too quick a death. Had he gotten hold of that arch-criminal, that mercenary back-stabber who’d cost the lives of some of his sailors and Marines, whose betrayal had decimated the troops of the 94th Regiment of Foot, Don Julio Caesare’s death would not have been so quick. One hundred lashes of the cat o’ nine tails, with salt and lemon juice smeared on his ravaged back; keel-hauling along Vigilance’s bottom and the razor-sharp barnacles that she had acquired since her last dockyard refit.

  His end? Lewrie’s hands tightened on the taffrails, wishing that he could have strangled the bastard, not once but several times ’til the light left his eyes at last.

  But no, Lewrie had been denied that pleasure. Don Julio had been a greedy tyrant, a bully to his own subordinates, who had doled out the least of the profits of their criminal enterprises that he would grudgingly spare, and it was his greed—and perhaps his dealings with the French—that had pushed Caesare’s capos to do away with him, at last.

  “Boat ahoy!” a Midshipman of the Watch cried.

  “Pusser’s boat … returnin’!” the bow man of the 29-foot barge shouted back. “’E’ll need a workin’ party!”

  Lewrie stepped to the larboard bulwarks to look out and down at the approaching boat, noting the heaps of sacks and the bushel baskets piled deep along the centerline of the barge. Mr. Blundell sat aft by the barge’s Cox’n, looking quite pleased with his shopping trip to the markets of Milazzo, up the peninsula.

  Once anchored and back from their latest, disastrous raid on the Calabrian coast, after the dead they had managed to recover had been buried alongside the Army’s small cemetery ashore, and the men who had been wounded had been seen to at the large tent hospital at the 94th Regiment’s camp, Lewrie had at last declared a Make And Mend Day, today, and it was a very reluctant batch of sailors who answered the summons to fetch the Purser’s goods aboard.

  Lewrie paced forward to the larboard ladderway of the poop, looming above the quarterdeck, waist, and sail-tending gangways, which spurred a few more hands to rise from their amusements and go to the larboard entry-port under his stern gaze.

  “Lemons and oranges, lads!” Mr. Blundell hallooed to encourage them, “Figs and dates for your duffs! Fresh bread and butter, onions and scallions, hard sausages and fresh cheeses!” Blundell tried to sound “matey,” but it was a waste of time on his part, for a “Nip-Cheese,” a Purser, was never loved in the Royal Navy, nor rarely trusted, either. Even in the officers’ mess, he sold needful things and desirable items to his fellow wardroom members and his prices were always suspect.

  “Not a morsel of it to be issued free,” someone on the quarterdeck below sourly commented, “th’ money-grubbin’ bashtit.”

  “Aye, mate,” a compatriot bemoaned, “Wot’s ’e payin’ fer fresh fruit, five pence a peck? ’E’ll flog it t’us fer a penny apiece!”

  Not much had amused Lewrie since their return, but their comments did bring a wee grin to his lips. He leaned his hands on the larboard bulwarks by the top of the quarterdeck ladderway, lifting his eyes to the Army camp, and his grin disappeared.

  There were uniformed soldiers astir ashore, soldiers on parade without arms, performing the jerky slow-step on their way to the cemetery, led by a two-wheeled cart. Even at that distance, Lewrie could recognise Leftenant-Colonel Tarrant and Major Gittings standing near freshly-dug graves with their feathered bicorne hats at their sides. Tarrant’s large, shaggy hound sat at his master’s feet, quiet for a rare once. Two more badly wounded men had passed over, to be added to that grim plot of earth with its flimsy wooden planks that stood in lieu of permanent headstones.

  Lewrie shut his eyes, dreading a summons from his own Ship’s Surgeon, Mr. Woodbury, to conduct yet another funeral for one of his own sailors who did not survive his wounds.

  “Please God, no, not another,” he whispered, for he had read the rites at sea for those whom they had been forced to leave behind, at the entry-port for those who had expired on-passage, and for the men who had died in that ad hoc Army hospital since.

  Lewrie pursed his lips and looked out to sea once again, look anywhere but at yet another funeral. A wee zephyr of a breeze arose for a minute or so, barely rippling the harbour waters and stirring his coat tails, and it had a touch of coolness to it; as it should since it was late Autumn in the Mediterranean, in the year of 1810, though Sicily still looked lush and green. Of a sudden, Lewrie was thirsty, and with a need to go to his quarter gallery and “pump his bilges,” though what he had to do below once after was another onerous duty to be borne. He had not yet finished his report to Admiralty about their latest fight; had not yet found a way to make it sound any less than the monumental cock-up it had been, treachery and betrayal for French gold no matter.

  Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, was not used to failure and defeat. He had always managed to pull his chestnuts from the fire, and turn the tables on his country’s foes, one way or another, and wring out a victory for King and Country. Lewrie heaved a heavy sigh, squared his shoulders, and slowly descended the ladderway to the quarterdeck and the door to his great-cabins, where those grumpy sailors stiffened and doffed their flat, tarred hats, and his Marine sentry stamped his boots and presented his musket in salute.

  “Good eats tonight, lads,” Lewrie said as he entered the door, “even if it costs a penny or two.”

  “Er … aye aye, sir,” one of them dared reply.

  A good long pee, then a tousle with Chalky first, Lewr
ie determined to himself; the cat’s always in need o’ diversion. And so am I.

  * * *

  He played with his cat ’til Chalky wanted lap more than he wanted to chase a wine cork on a ribbon; he dug his latest mail from home from a desk drawer and re-read his wife’s missives, his eyes raised in longing to the portrait of Jessica that French émigré artist, Madame Berenice Pellatan, had done of her.

  Finally, there was nothing for it but to gather his notes about the battle, and start a fresh draft. Once back in port, Lewrie had spoken with Lt. Greenleaf and Marine Captain Whitehead, who had been in command of his ship’s landing force, and Lieutenants Fletcher and Rutland, who had commanded the landing boats and their armed crews from the troop transports, as well as getting Colonel Tarrant’s and Major Gittings’s observations concerning the battle that had broken out just East of Monasterace.

  In the beginning, the landing looked to be a raid on a promising target. The coastal fishing village of Monasterace had not been reported to have a garrison beyond a small company of artificers from the French Commissariat to repair any supply waggons making the long detour cross bad mountain roads from Naples to the towns that French soldiers actually occupied, most especially their main base at Reggio di Calabria. Destroying that stock of wood, iron forges, leather for reins and harnesses, and the vast stockpile of grain and hay for the horses, mules, and oxen would worsen the trouble of supply for the French. And, if they could land pre-dawn, they had hoped to catch several waggon convoys encamped at Monasterace for the night, setting them all on fire, and slaughtering the draught animals, as they had in previous raids. It had sounded a rosy proposal; too rosy, for it was based on Don Julio Caesare’s lies and assurances.

  Back-handed compliment, Lewrie thought with a sniff; we must be a real thorn in the Frogs’ side if they bribed him with ten thousand gold coins.

  Colonel Tarrant had estimated that a French brigade of at least two regiments of infantry, a battery or two of artillery, perhaps twelve pieces in all, and what had appeared to be a full squadron of cavalry had been hidden in the village’s houses, and behind the low ridge back of town by about a mile. Once all his troops were ashore, they had rushed out to form for battle, and the artillery and cavalry had appeared in front of the ridge.

  Lewrie, stuck aboard Vigilance, had loosed his experienced gunners on the village, first, from a quarter-mile offshore, breaking up their initial formations, turning some of his guns upon the Frenchmen attacking his sailors and Marines just West of town, and with aimed fire, with crude sights notched into the muzzles and cascabels of his 18- and 24-pounders, had protected his vastly out-numbered men with a hail of hard iron shot. He had turned his guns onto the right flank of the French troops marching to engage Tarrant and the 94th, decimating them before they got to close range. After that, he could do nothing but pace and fret, unable to see anything in that vast cloud of musket smoke.

  Greenleaf and Whitehead had gotten their sailors and Marines off their beach and back aboard, fetching off their wounded, but had to leave their dead where they lay.

  He did not learn it ’til later, could not see it happening at the time, but Lieutenants Fletcher and Rutland, fearing that the 94th would break and swarm the transports’ barges, and their lightly armed oarsmen, and creating a mass slaughter, had determined to split their two hundred and forty sailors into two units, and had gone inland several hundred yards to form on either flank of the infantry, adding their musket fire to whittle down the French. Lt. Rutland, unable to see what to shoot at, had even led his party out to his left, then straight out at right angles to the French, forcing enemy soldiers to turn about, bunch up, and creep back towards the centre of their lines, which had panicked the French behind them.

  Then, perhaps in desperation, but at the perfect moment, Colonel Tarrant had ordered a bayonet charge over the waist-high stone walls behind which his regiment had formed, and the panic had become general, with French soldiers breaking and running, tossing aside weapons and any item of gear that might slow them down, out of that accursed smoke cloud and into plain view of Lewrie’s guns once more, and despite the lack of explosive shot, it had been the French that had been properly decimated. They had retreated all the way to the long, low, ridge, out of range of Vigilance’s guns, and their cavalry had never tried to engage, for fear of those guns, even after the bayonet charge had ended with panting soldiers scattered Hell-to-breakfast, more intent on looting discarded French packs for money, strong spirits, and souvenirs.

  The enemy remained Quiescent for the better part of two hours as the 94th gathered its Wounded and Weapons, re-formed and in Observation, out of range. Our troops’ Re-embarkation and Departure from the beaches went Un-Interrupted, and no enemy scouting parties dared come down to the shore ’til after all ships had hoisted anchors and had made Sail.

  I Submit, My Lords, that though we were Betrayed, HMS Vigilance, its officers and men, and the men of the 94th Regt. of Foot gave a good Account of themselves in the face of greater Numbers and what should have been overwhelming Force. Had the Enemy Genl. commanding handled his troops better the Outcome might have been much Different.

  I would like to particularly commend …

  Here, Lewrie paused and tapped the wooden end of his steel-nib pen against his teeth in thought. Fletcher and Rutland for joining the fight to such good results, of course he must mention them. From his own ship, Captain Whitehead of the Marines and the Second Officer Mr. Greenleaf, and his much younger brother-in-law, Midshipman Charles Chenery. Lt. Dickson, though … he’d been ashore, and had had the inspiration to take a boat crew and row one of the landing barges offshore, then further up the coast and land her deep on the sands to form a breastwork to protect Whitehead’s and Greenleaf’s left flank.

  The only problem was that Lewrie utterly despised Lieutenant John Dickson, who had been a perfect trial since he had arrived in command of their fourth transport, Coromandel. His ship was the largest, so he assumed that he should be in command over all four transports, instead of Lt. Fletcher who had held that post since the squadron had been formed at Portsmouth. By the time Coromandel had sailed into harbour, Dickson’s haughty sneers at how low and stupid he regarded his crew had dis-affected them all, and he highly resented any officer who came aboard to train his sailors in how to bear, land, and retrieve soldiers, even Lewrie himself! He carped and complained, had tried to toady, and had ended causing a wee dumb-show mutiny that had let slip one of Coromandel’s landing barges in-tow during the night, along with two oars missing from another!

  Lewrie had written Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Charlton, to which his squadron answered, asking if he had the right to remove Dickson from command and replace him with an officer from Vigilance’s wardroom. Charlton wrote back allowing it, for the Good of The Service, even if Lewrie did not fly a Commodore’s broad pendant. Thankfully, Lt. Rutland, the Second Officer, had volunteered, hoping to make a name for himself (he was married with two children and lived mostly on his Navy pay) that would advance him into command of a warship.

  Of course, Lewrie had had to take Dickson aboard as the junior-most officer, for even Lieutenant Grace, risen from Ordinary Seaman during the Nore Mutiny of 1797 to a commission, out-ranked the man, and a most wary eye he had kept on Dickson since, but still couldn’t figure the fellow out. Aboard Vigilance, Dickson was competent but guarded, not making much effort to make any friends, and keeping his arrogant dismissal of the hands under wraps.

  “No, Dickson,” Lewrie decided at last, dipping his pen into the inkbottle, “I’ll pretend you weren’t even there. Take that, ye top-lofty bastard. Think my sailors are the scum of the earth, do you? Take that!”

  He went on to cite other Midshipmen who had stood out, then a list of petty officers and a sailor or Marine or two who had risen to the occasion. Then, sadly, a list of those who had fallen, and those who had expired in hospital since.

  Lewrie leaned back after closing the inkbottle and wiping his pen clean, looking u
p at the deck beams overhead and rolling his neck to ease the stiffness.

  “Something else t’drink, sir?” Deavers, his cabin-steward, asked as he finished folding and stowing away the last of the laundry.

  “Aye, Deavers, I’d admire a pint of ale, if there’s any left,” Lewrie replied, standing up and looking round his cabins, noting that his bed-cot was re-made with fresh linens, his spare sheets stowed, and the stern gallery now clear of drying cloth.

  “I b’lieve there is, sir,” Deavers said, going to the ten-gallon anker stood upright next to the wine cabinet. “Right, you lads. Get on your way. Time for skylarkin’,” and the two young cabin-servants, Tom Dasher and Robert Turnbow, dashed out to the quarterdeck, whooping with glee to have some free hours before supper to play with the other ship’s boys.

  “Deavers, do you ask the Marine sentry to pass word for Sub-Lieutenant Severance,” Lewrie said as Deavers sat a foaming pint of ale on his desk in the day cabin. “Time for him to scribble the fair copy of my report. Once he’s here, he’ll be needin’ a pint, too.”

  “Aye, sir,” Deavers replied.

  Lewrie thought of going over to the starboard side settee and plopping himself on its soft cushions, boots up on the old brass Hindoo tray table, but … those cushions reminded him of Jessica, who had had them made for him before he sailed.

  He sat back down behind his desk, drew out some stationery from a drawer, re-opened the inkbottle, and began to write …

  My Dearest Girl, My Wife,

  By the time you receive this letter, a report from this quarter to Admiralty will have shewn up in the papers, and I would not wish you to be Upset. Firstly, let me say again how much I miss you and long to be with you. Secondly, I am Well and Un-harmed. We did have a Scrape with the French, though, a most Desperate Scrape, from which We, and I, your Brother Charlie, and the 94th Regt. escaped with a fair amount of Credit, even if I do say so myself. Charlie is well, though he was grazed by a musket ball along the side of his head, and is bursting with Pride over his shaved pate and his Turban of a bandage. We were sold out to the French, you see.…