Once he calmed himself, all he could say in reply was, “Seen it.”
“Man’s a genius, as is his wife,” Romney Marsh praised.
Lewrie thought that perhaps James Peel hadn’t told Cummings or Marsh all about Lewrie’s past, or his association with Pulteney Plumb during the Peace of Amiens, when he’d somehow insulted Napoleon Bonaparte at a levee in the Tuileries Palace in Paris, and had to flee for his life to Calais, pursued by police agents and soldiers, and it had been that daft fool Plumb and his wife who had spirited Lewrie and his wife clear cross France in a variety of costumes and guises, re-living his younger days of doing the same thing for condemned French aristocrats as part of a larger secret collaboration, and naming himself the “Yellow Tansy”!
Lewrie had to grudgingly admit that Plumb had gotten them to the coast, where a schooner was waiting to bear them to Dover, as it had during The Terror in 1793 for the Yellow Tansy, the Ruby Begonia, or other human smugglers of that coterie. It had only been bad luck that the French had caught up with them as the schooner’s boat was in the surf, just feet from showing the French a clean pair of heels.
Less he knows, and the less said of Plumb, the better, Lewrie thought, almost snarling his displeasure.
“You show a red jib, I chase you out to sea for a ‘rondy’, and if not, I pretend t’chase you. Got it,” Lewrie summed up. “D’ye need chasin’ today?”
“It would not hurt, I suppose,” Cummings said. “We’re bound to Estepona, first, then Almeria, then Málaga, where we land Marsh. The roads are better from there to Madrid.”
“Not Estepona,” Lewrie quickly cautioned. “Your ship’s master and crew I let go free, there, and they’d have you hung for piracy as soon as they recognise her. But, let’s be about it, before someone ashore sees us together.” He set aside his glass of tea and rose to bring matters to a welcome close.
* * *
They saw Cummings/Rodriguez and Romney Marsh/The Multitude off without a side-party or debarking honours, though Lewrie doffed his hat from the lip of the entry-port as they scrambled down the battens to their waiting rowboat, thinking that he might see Cummings again, but Marsh? The odds were definitely against it. There were some people who were just too confident to live!
Oddly, when the boat was about one hundred yards off, Marsh took off his narrow-brimmed hat and waved back at Sapphire, shouting “Floreat Etona!”, for some reason or another.
“We’ve one of his fellow Etonians aboard?” Lt. Harcourt wondered aloud. “Who, I can’t imagine.”
“The Captain, very briefly, before he was expelled,” Westcott informed him from the corner of his mouth in an amused whisper.
“Expelled? For what?” Harcourt asked, surprised.
“You’d have to ask him,” Lt. Westcott said, with a snicker.
“Perish the thought!” Harcourt said with a mock shiver.
“Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie said, returning to the quarterdeck. “You may get us under way, slowly. Once their vessel is around five miles off, we will put about and pretend to chase her past Estepona.”
“Pretend, sir?” Harcourt asked, all a’sea.
“Under-handed, secret Crown doings, sir,” Lewrie sternly told him, “and pray the Good Lord keeps you at arm’s length from such.”
“Aye aye, sir. Get under way, then come about in chase,” Lieutenant Harcourt replied, his curiosity piqued.
“Gallegos, that’s funny,” Midshipman Kibworth said to one of his mates, Midshipman Carey, in a tittery mutter.
“What’s funny, Mister Kibworth?” Lewrie demanded.
“I was told that one of Columbus’s ships was named the Gallegos, sir,” Kibworth cringingly explained. “It means ‘dirty whore’, and to avoid embarassing Queen Isabella, they changed it to Santa Maria.” He could not help blushing red and snickering to dare say a bad word.
“Ah, the further benefits of an education,” Lewrie bemoaned. “I think that’s enough slang Spanish for one day, don’t you?”
“Ehm, aye aye, sir,” Kibworth said, with an audible gulp.
“Carry on, Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie said. “I’ll be aft ’til the change of watch.”
Moppin’ tea off my waist-coat, Lewrie thought; And airin’ the stench o’ spies from my cabins.
BOOK THREE
Be frolic then
Let cannon roar
Frighting the wide heaven.
“TO THE VIRGINIAN VOYAGE”
MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563–1631)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Just where in the bloody world did ye dredge him up?” Lewrie asked Thomas Mountjoy a few days later as they sat in the lush bower of greenery on Mountjoy’s roof gallery.
“It does take all kinds,” Mountjoy said, with a sigh, “doesn’t it? Personally, I don’t think Mister Romney Marsh will last a week on the road to Madrid, but I had no say in it. Cummings, I requested, for I know he’s good, for an amateur ‘yachtsman’. People senior to me and Mister Peel pushed Marsh on me, despite Peel’s misgivings.”
“Dammit, Mountjoy, as soon as the Spanish arrest the fool, the authorities’ll suspect everyone who doesn’t shout praise for France, and start roundin’ them up, too,” Lewrie groused. “They’ll be seein’ British spies in their toilets. And what the hell’s a ‘yachtsman’?”
“Idle rich, and titled dilettantes who muck about in sea-going boats,” Mountjoy explained. “Or race each other in small ones.”
“They go t’sea for fun?” Lewrie gawped in amazement.
“There’s some ‘New Men’ of industry who’d cruise the world if there wasn’t a war on, in their own ships the size of trading brigs or schooners,” Mountjoy went on, finding it amusing, and an example of how people wasted their new-made fortunes. As far as he and Lewrie knew, only the King had an official Royal Yacht, which never left the Thames, and had rarely ever been used.
“Of all people t’give lessons on cloak and dagger play-acting, the Foreign Office chose Pulteney Plumb! Jesus!” Lewrie carped.
“Without Mister Twigg’s cunning, now he’s retired and doesn’t even consult any longer,” Mountjoy said with a glum shrug. “There are all sorts of hen-headed men in charge, who have their own ideas about fieldcraft. At least, Cummings and Marsh also brought along lashings of money for me to work with. Give London long enough, or become too desperate for results, and I expect they’ll be ordering me to dress up in women’s clothing, with lessons on how to flutter a fan!”
“Now there’s an ugly picture!” Lewrie joshed, making a face.
He had a mental image of Thomas Mountjoy in a flounced red gown with tall hair combs, a black lace mantilla, with a rose in his teeth, doing the flamenco all the way to Madrid, and it wasn’t pretty!
Mountjoy had been sprawled on the cushioned settee, wineglass in hand. He sat the glass down and rose to cross the gallery to his telescope, bent, and scanned the harbour.
“Lewrie,” he said over his shoulder, “if all else fails, what does it cost to hire a ship? How does Admiralty do it, and how much might it set me back?”
“Hmm, something large enough for trooping?” Lewrie mused, feet up on a hassock and slumped into a deep padded chair. “They usually run about three hundred fifty tons, and if their bottoms are properly coppered, the Transport Board pays their owners nineteen shillings a month, maybe a full pound per ton, these days. Skin-flint owners try to get by with wood-sheathed bottoms, or no protection at all, and they go for less. But, I wouldn’t recommend ’em. Copper sheathing’s your man, even if they’re hard t’find. Expensive, though.”
“That’s … four thousand two hundred pounds a year,” Mountjoy said with a groan. “Damn! And the upkeep and pay for master and crew atop that? Damn.”