The Baltic Gambit l-15 Read online

  "They don't have one," an Army officer in mufti rejoined.

  "Well, they should," the civilian fellow reiterated. "And that King Christian of Denmark's not a whit better. How else explain why the Danes joined Russia in this pact?"

  "Same as the Swedes, old man," said another near the head of the long table. "It's fear of what Russia would do, did they not sign on."

  "King Christian's in Bedlam, of a sorts, already," the Army officer snickered. "Called his royal apartments. Soon as the Danes ousted King George's sister, Caroline Matilda, and chopped the head off her lover… what the Devil was his name, their Prime Minister, then?"

  "Struensee," a much older gentleman told them between bites of his meal, "Johann Friedrich Struensee, and one of the biggest fools of the age. I remember it well. A feather-brained German, besotted with Voltaire, Rousseau, and all those pagan French reformers. Turned all Denmark inside-out before they did for him and his cronies. Imagine, a commoner German running an entire country, and fathering bastards on a queen! He'd all but buried King Christian in a dungeon before he was deposed. Mind now, the Danish king needed to be put in a dungeon, for he was a vicious lunatick."

  "So their Crown Prince, the Regent, is really Struensee's illegitimate 'git'?" a member asked. "Egad!"

  "They say not, but he ain't insane like the old king, so…," the old gentleman lasciviously hinted. "They shuffled off the little princess… They were sure Struensee quickened her, and Crown Prince Frederick was the only male heir."

  "The Swedes, though," Lewrie posed.

  "Beaten to a pulp by Russia, their northern empire lost back in the seventeen-twenties," the Army fellow offered. "Swedish Pomerania gone, Polish provinces, and Finland, too. Fear, again, sir. Why they even attempted to fight the Russians again in '87 is beyond me."

  "But what about Prussia signing on?" another asked.

  "Fear of Russia, again," the Army officer said with a shrug. "Perhaps a fear of France, too, after Napoleon gave them a drubbing. Better to crouch in Russia's shadow than stand out in the open, alone. And, since, as Captain Lewrie here will tell you, the Prussians don't have much of a navy, nor much of a merchant marine, either, it's no skin off their nose. Ain't that right, sir?"

  "Nothing to lose at sea if we retaliate, for certain," Lewrie agreed as he broke open a fresh hot roll and buttered it.

  "All those ships confiscated, put out of business," the investor in naval stores bemoaned. "It's an outrage, a violation of a solemn treaty! And the embargo they threaten on their goods will cripple our navy. Pine mast stocks, tar, pitch, turpentine, and resin… hemp for sails and rope rigging…"

  "Well, there's Nova Scotia and the Maritime provinces, there's Wilmington, North Carolina," Lewrie suggested. "Much the same available in New England… Vermont, New Hampshire, and such?"

  "Longer voyages, higher prices," the sad investor grumbled.

  "Aye, trust the Yankee skin-flints to take quick advantage of us, and wring every penny they can from our lacks," another said.

  "Do they not embargo us, as well," a very gloomy cynic down the table posed. "There's no love lost, 'twixt them and England since the Revolution ended, and despite that little 'not-quite-war' they had in '98, the United States still thinks the French hung the very moon!"

  "Demned war's gone on long enough," someone said.

  "Oh I say now!" several cried.

  "We've not a single ally left, Bonaparte's driven Naples out of the war and beaten the Austrians so badly at Marengo and just last month at Hohenlinden, they've sued for peace, too," the doubter retorted. "Seven years of war worldwide, millions of pounds spent to prop up so-called allies… none of them faithful… the Treasury reduced to issuing paper fiat money, prices five times what they were in '93, and all these horrendous, crushing taxes. And what have we to show for it, I ask you, gentlemen? A few conquests in the West Indies, more lands for rich sugar planters, and nigh fifty thousand of our lads dead, mostly of tropical fevers. Consider the very bread we eat today, sirs… rye, or barley, not wheat, and-"

  "Oh dear, there goes the price o' beer and ale!" a younger wag said, sniggering, which at least gave most of them a relieving laugh.

  "Staple of your common Englishman, indeed, young sir," Doubting Thomas quickly said, "and, as you say, becoming dearer by the minute, as are all foodstuffs and goods. Yet, do our common Englishman's wages increase in like measure? They do not, and this war is pinching the very souls of the people."

  "He's to stand for a seat in Commons, next by-election, or so I heard," the Army officer in civilian suitings whispered to Lewrie.

  "God help us, then," Lewrie muttered back. "Ye'd think he was one of those who cheered the French revolution."

  "I'm sure 'twill be a pretty speech, on the hustings," the Army man hissed behind his hand. "Bloody Liberals."

  After dinner was done, Lewrie took himself upstairs to his rooms for a lie-down. He removed his coat, undid the buttons of his vest, and tugged off his boots. He plumped up the pillows and stretched out on the new-made bed, welcoming his cats, Toulon and Chalky, who awoke from a snooze on the bench before the fireplace and pounced up to join him with glad cries, arch-backed stretches, and playful expressions.

  There was nothing for it but to indulge them, fetch some of their toys from the night-stand, and dangle them by their strings, letting the cats dash and pounce, capture and leap, 'til they were worn out and ready for naps of their own, with Toulon slung against the side of his leg, and Chalky softly purring on a pillow by his head.

  Not in the Baltic, mine arse, Lewrie thought as he tried to go to sleep, yet mulling over all he had heard that morning. Nelson was the very fellow to daunt the Danes, Swedes, and Russians. Did he get a fleet into the Baltic before the ice melted at Copenhagen, Karlskrona, or Reval and Kronstadt-before this new Armed Neutrality could get their fleets to sea and combined-he could crush them as completely as he had the French in Aboukir Bay.

  As odd a bird as Lewrie considered Horatio Nelson to be, he was a man who did nothing by halves. At the Battle of the Saintes in the West Indies in 1782, Admiral Rodney had been satisfied to capture only five French ships of the line, and let the rest slink off. Lewrie had been at the Battle of St. Kitts, and had watched the famous Adm. Hood repulse the French fleet, yet not go after them after they were cut up and damaged. Adm. Hotham in the Mediterranean in '95, whose laziness and caution had nigh-driven Lewrie berserk, thought he'd done very well to capture a mere two! Well, the wind had been scant, yet…

  Cape St. Vincent and Camperdown; Lewrie wore the medals for both great battles, and had seen Adm. Sir John Jervis, "Old Jarvy," and Adm. Duncan in action. Despite their estimable repute as scrappers, Jervis had let the Spanish fleet return to port after taking only a few ships as prize (two of them Nelson's doing, that day) whilst at Camperdown, at least, Duncan had managed to overawe the Dutch and force them to go about and head for port, scotching their hope to link up with a French fleet in the Channel and invade England, firstly; then, herded the foe into the shoal waters of their own coast, strung out in a long line of battle, before driving right into them in several columns at right angles, and shattering them thoroughly, taking most of them as prizes in Nelson-fashion.

  Or, Duncan-fashion, Lewrie thought with a snigger, recalling the wild-haired, towering Duncan, who'd take you on with his fists for the possession of a wheel-barrow, if his blood was up. And, when does the bloody ice melt in the Baltic anyway? he asked himself, wishing he had asked one of the "trading gentlemen" at-table an hour before. Truth to tell, Lewrie had never served in the Baltic, and, in point of fact, had only the foggiest notion where Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia were, much less the location of their naval bases. They all lay to the east, he was pretty sure, t'other side of the North Sea, with Russia the furthest east of them all, where one ran out of sea water.

  Supper, then up early tomorrow, Lewrie ordered himself; Drop by Admiralty… see in what odour I'm held. Then a bookstore or a map maker's. Another good nap aft
er that, then… the theatre, again, or Ranelagh Gardens?

  There would be a grand expositon of new nautical art held there through the Spring, along with a magic lantern slide depiction of the Battle of the Nile, replete with stirring musical accompaniment and a narrator hidden behind a curtain. Lewrie had bought his children one of the smaller magic lanterns at Scott's Shop in the Strand for Christmas, along with Bissinger's chocolates and a new doll for his wee daughter Charlotte; one of the better ones that went for ten guineas. Hopefully, the boys hadn't burned down the house with the oil lamp yet, or broken all the glass slides.

  "Supper scraps suit ye, lads?" Lewrie asked his cats.

  Toulon cocked his rather large head up over his thigh for a second or two, gave out a guttural, close-mouthed Mrr, then lay back down. Chalky stretched out his forepaws to touch Lewrie's head and yawn, all white teeth and pink mouth, before dozing off again, too.

  "That's what I thought," Lewrie muttered, closing his eyes once more.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lewrie had found himself an atlas, so at least he knew where the possible enemies were; Sayer's amp; Bennett's had Baltic charts and larger-scale charts of their principal naval harbours, so he had a rough idea of how things lay. As for when the ice melted, though, all he'd gotten was a day-long series of shrugs.

  Admiralty had been no better. The infamous Waiting Room was an arseholes-to-elbows chamber of hopefuls, so many of them that the fireplace was almost redundant when it came to heating that large room, as the lucky ones holding active commissions or warrants crowded in for a bit, were ushered abovestairs, then came clattering quickly down with a fresh set of instructions and making hasty departures… not without a smirk or two from some of the cockiest of the lucky at those cooling their heels in hopes of employment.

  A hint of action, the chance of more older warships being fitted out and manned, brought out even the nigh-dead; oh, it was a grim mob that Lewrie beheld. There were grizzled Lieutenants in their fourties, Captains in need of crutches in their sixties, all of whom had been on half-pay since the end of the American Revolution, whose uniforms were ready for museum pieces, all sniffing the air like white-muzzled foxhounds who could barely walk anymore… bleating like ancient sheep, all rheumy-eyed, for just one more shot at sea.

  Christ, is that what I have t'look forward to? Lewrie wondered to himself, appalled. He had sent his name up to the First Secretary, Evan Nepean, 'round ten of the morning. Rather too quickly for belief a silky-smooth young snotty had called out his name and sought him out with a note of reply in hand. For one brief moment, Lewrie had felt a surge of hope. Even through the flunky's smug smirk.

  The First Secretary regrets that pressing matters preclude an interview with you today, Cpt. Lewrie; or in the near future. At any rate, there are no openings in the Fleet at present for a Cpt. of your qualities. Given your single year on the senior Cpt's List and lack of seniority, it may be some time before we may contemplate your active employment.

  Polite way o' sayin' it'll be a cold day in Hell, Lewrie thought as he quickly wadded up the note and jammed it into a side pocket of his uniform coat, his face reddening in embarrassment and anger. And that smooth young flunky was still standing there before him, with a faint smirk on his face.

  "Waitin' for a tip?" Lewrie harshly muttered. "Bugger off!"

  With the eyes of an hundred or more of his contemporaries upon him, Lewrie gathered up his hat and boat-cloak and prepared to depart, his soul smarting… to be gawked at and whispered about behind hands by such a pack of superannuated dodderers and droolers, by failures and drunkards, by fools too lack-wit to pass their Lieutenants' exams, and incompetent twits and no-hopes. Worse yet! To imagine what false sympathy some felt. "Bugger him, more chance for me! Oh, poor fellow… the bastard! Born one, ye know, hee hee!" To be pitied by such a lot!

  "Off to a new ship, are ye, sir?" the garrulous old tiler said as Lewrie stepped through the anteroom for the doors to the walled-off courtyard. "Well, I reckon ye'll give them damned Rooskies a good bash on th' noggin, hey, sir? Make way fer a fightin' captain, ye younkers," the old fellow barked at an incoming pack of Lieutenants and Midshipmen. "Part like the Red Sea fer Moses, there, an' git ye in. There's a mob o' others waitin', so don't git yer hopes too high. Standin' room only, an' don't tread on nobody's boot tips, neither, mind, har har."

  Equally galling were the smiles and appreciative looks from the many civilians 'round the environs of Whitehall. England might be all alone against France, without allies, and threatened by a fresh set of enemies, the war's length and cost might be wearying, yet… the Navy would set things right, the Royal Navy; aye, the Navy and Nelson! The people who doffed their hats, the ladies who inclined their heads with grins, imagined Lewrie off to save them.

  Why else was that naval fellow so grim-faced, and walking quite so quickly? Surely eager to board his ship and fillet anyone who dared challenge Great Britain! Why, the angry stamping of his boots denoted dread determination, egad! See how his hands flex so on the hilt of his sword, and all? Damn my eyes, wasn't he that Lewrie chap, by God? Then God help the Roosians! Maps, and books, just making ready…

  Capt. Alan Lewrie, RN (sure to unemployed 'til the dawn of the next century!) fumed his way back to his rooms, blackly contemplating how he might trail Nepean home some dark night and throttle him for his haughty and brusque dismissal; how he'd go about challenging the next sniggerer or smirker to a duel, and how much pleasure he'd find in the skewering or shooting of the fool!

  Damn my eyes, there's going t'be a battle, Lewrie furiously imagined; two or three of 'em, if we can take 'em on separately… and I'll not have a part in 'em? Become one o' those… losers? No, I'll not ever! Mine arse on a band-box if I'll haunt the Admiralty, beggin' for scraps like a… stray cur! Christ on a crutch, I've put in twenty-one years, most of 'em at sea, and miserable, too. They don't want me any longer, well… just bugger 'em! Somethin' t'be said for warm and dry, for a change.

  Thirty-eight wasn't all that old, he could comfort himself to think; there were naval officers who had actually given up active commissions to sit in Parliament, go into business, enter government service… and make a pile of "tin" off the sops and graft that resulted!

  Lewrie imagined that taking Holy Orders was pretty much out for his sort, even a lowly rector's position in a poor parish, with an absent vicar taking the lion's share of the benefice and tithes. Besides, no one would ever believe it of him!

  Trade, and Business? Well, he was a skilled mariner, capable of being a merchant master-was "John Company" still grateful to him for saving that convoy in the South Atlantic last year? Captaining an East Indiaman would be pleasant, and hellish profitable, to boot.

  Or he could live on his invested prize-money, his savings with Coutts' Bank, and his late grandmother's Ј150 annual remittance, keep rooms (at a family discount) at the Madeira Club, and become an idle wastrel about London. Where one could have a drink whenever…

  "Drink, by God," Lewrie muttered under his frost-steaming breath. "I definitely need strong drink… now! Drink, and distraction."

  As soon as he attained his lodgings, Lewrie made haste to strip off his uniform and pack it away in his sea-chest, stow his cocked hat in a japanned wooden box, and change into a tail-coat that was all the "crack"; single-breasted and cut to the waist, with wide lapels and M-shaped collars in a newly fashionable black, over a snug pair of long grey trousers, with plain and unadorned black boots on his feet, minus the gold lace trim and tassels he'd wear with his uniform. To become even more a civilian, his black neck-stock he replaced with a cravat woven in blue, gilt, and cream paisley.

  Walking stick instead of sword; a thimble-shaped black beaver hat with a royal blue band and short, curled brims; a single-breasted overcoat with triple capes, and he was ready for a good, long, and very un-military dinner, a bottle or two of wine, with port and brandy to follow, and while away the rest of the day 'til it was time to toddle off to the theatre or Ranelagh G
ardens.

  With the aforementioned restful nap, of course.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The next week passed in slothful idyll; late risings and lazy days, followed by heady afternoons roaming central London for delightful diversions, followed by even headier evenings. There were public subscription balls, drums and routs, concerts, and even a rare trip to a ballet or opera-all followed, of course, by light midnight cold collations washed down with champagne, and pre-dawn tumbles into bed at the Madeira Club. Not to mention the requisite hangovers.

  And while such a rakehell (partially reformed) as Alan Lewrie might have so far tumbled into bed alone, it was a Devilish close-run thing, for London, the greatest city in the world no matter what Frogs boasted of their own Paris, possessed the most impressive collection of fetching young women of every stripe and grade.

  Actresses, ballet dancers, orange-seller wenches in the aisles, "grass-widows" abandoned by straying or absent husbands still looking for affection, the handsomest, fetchingest young un-married girls down to search for a suitable husband, some of them coyly eager for a "ride" or two, away from their unaware parents… For a stray male, London was a paradise. And that didn't even begin to count the shop girls and house servants out on a spree on their lone days off, or the ones of "the commercial persuasion," who ranged from costly courtesans and mistresses to the over-made, bright-eyed morts available for a "knee-trembler" in a dark doorway.

  Sadly, though, sometimes being regarded as a "hero" played to one's detriment. People simply would regard Lewrie as "high-minded" or even "Respectable", after all the flattering coverage in newspapers and Abolitionist tracts, the past year. He'd be introduced to lovely un-married daughters by beaming Papas and Mamas, but was expected to be the courtly but gruff sea-dog that, it seemed, all England expected. Even though the trial was over, and he could be as beastly as he wished to be once more, still there was that damnably "honest" part to play, and God help him should he step outside it.