She had asked if he was married, or had children, and he had told her of Sewallis and Hugh, now both at sea in the Navy, and his daughter, Charlotte, back home at Anglesgreen (the less said about that sullen, spiteful wench the better!) and that his wife had died five years before, leaving the details to her imagination; leaving Maddalena with the notion that “poor, widowed Alan Lewrie” was lonely and alone, and possibly available. He told her of his cat, Chalky, who was good company at sea, and the ship’s silly dog, Bisquit, and how he’d been acquired, pretending to laugh off the idea of his loneliness … upon that head, at least.
Did Hughes’s regiment have a mascot animal, like the “Regimental Ram” of the Light Dragoons he’d escorted to Cape Town? The coat of arms and badge of the 53rd featured a gryphon, but, being mythical, were rather thin on the ground, unfortunately.
All in all, it had been a fine dinner, for Lewrie, at least. And, when Maddalena had glided off to the “necessary” leaving Hughes and himself alone, he had had the wee joy of cautioning Hughes to be careful where, and with whom, he revealed any details of what they were training for.
“Sir Hew’s a bee in his bonnet about spies on every street corner already, and I dare say he may be right, with all the foreigners on Gibraltar,” Lewrie had hinted, “and keepin’ Mister Mountjoy up nights lookin’ for ’em, when he ain’t rootin’ round for what he calls agents provocateurs. I’m sure ye can be somewhat open with Mistress Covilhā, but only in private, hey? ‘Under the rose’, and all that?”
Hughes had grumpily assured him that “the silly baggage” was not a spy, had no maidservant to pick up on careless statements, and did for herself, and in the end had more sense than to blab in the markets. “Women, what?” Hughes had scoffed. “We could most-like include her in the briefings, and she couldn’t make heads or tails of it in the end.”
What a perfect, purblind fool is Hughes, Lewrie thought in smug delight; The bluff bastard doesn’t see her as anything more than a convenient “socket”, and doesn’t know the first bloody thing about keepin’ a woman fond, and it’s God’s own truth that she doesn’t much care for him.
It was the lot of many women in this life to make the best of their shortened circumstances, were they poor, widowed, and had no husband or kinfolk to support them, and it was the rare woman who could follow any sort of trade. The brothels and alleys were full of them, and the prettiest in domestic service were fair game for the masters and the masters’ sons, which usually led to the brothels eventually.
However Maddalena had ended up on Gibraltar, she had had to settle for being a kept woman. Hughes had taken her “under his protection”, as the saying went, the lucky shit, paying for her lodgings and up-keep somewhere here in the town, but was so abstemious that he didn’t provide her with a cook or a single maid-of-all-work when one would be hired so cheap?
Now, what can I make o’ this? Lewrie wondered with a sly grin on his face; Mountjoy’d most-like warn me off t’make sure that Hughes stays agreeable, but … hmm!
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“By the deep, five!” a leadsman in the forechains shouted aft. “Five fathom t’this line!”
“Close enough, I think, Mister Yelland?” Lewrie said to the Sailing Master.
“Aye, sir,” Yelland agreed, sounding a tad eager to bring the ship no closer to the shore. But for a wee glim in the compass binnacle, HMS Sapphire showed no lights of any kind, and Yelland was deprived of a peek into the chartroom to consult the local chart. With its lanthorn unlit, and with no windows or ports, it would have been moot, anyway. All officers had committed the details of the coast to memory, along with the soundings.
“Mister Westcott, fetch her to,” Lewrie ordered. “And if God’s just, we should find ourselves about a half-mile off, by sunrise.”
One Bell was struck up forward at the forecastle belfry as the ship was put about to cock her up into the wind, with the jibs, staysails, and spanker driving her forward and the squares’ls laid aback to retard forward motion. It was half past four in the morning, usually the time that lookouts were posted aloft instead of standing watch on deck, the time for wash-deck pumps to be rigged and swabs and holystones fetched out to scrub the decks. This pre-dawn morning, though, was time for battle. The cutters, launch, and pinnace were being led to their stations alongside both beams, and the scrambling nets were being heaved over. In the waist, Sapphire’s Marines shivered, yawned, and shuffled their feet as they waited to board those boats, wearing full kit, muskets, cartridge pouches, sheathed bayonets, haversacks at their left hips, and full water canteens.
“Show one light to seaward, sir?” Midshipman Kibworth asked.
“Aye,” Lewrie agreed, and a small hooded lanthorn was brought up above the bulwarks and its wee door opened. Everyone on the quarterdeck peered outboard, looking for its mate, and after a long minute, there was a tiny amber glow from the transport, Harmony, announcing her position, and the fact that she, too, was fetched-to and ready to dis-embark her troops.
“Hmm, a bit further out to sea than us, sir, and further from the beach. That will make a longer row for her people,” Lt. Harcourt commented.
“Captain Hedgepeth has a touchy bottom, it appears,” Lt. Elmes quipped. “Afraid of being goosed?”
“The boats are alongside, now, sir, and we’re ready to go any time,” Marine Lieutenant Keane reported from the bottom of the starboard companionway ladder.
“Very well, Mister Keane, you may begin boarding, and the very best of good fortune go with you,” Lewrie allowed.
“Thank you, sir,” Keane replied, returning to his men.
There was a noisy bustle and the drum of boots on the deck as the Marines lined up at the entry-ports and the nets, as the sailors who manned the boats went over the side to lay out their oars ready to hand, and take hold of the bottoms of the nets to make the Marines’ descent easier.
“Once they’re gone, we’ve enough room to play tennis, or bowls,” Midshipman Fywell muttered to Kibworth, and that was true. With over fifty of Sapphire’s people seconded to the transport, the boats’ crews away to get the Marines ashore then stand guard over the beach, and the Marines themselves, the ship’s berthings below were echoingly empty.
Lewrie groped his way to the binnacle cabinet to fetch out one of the night-glasses and returned to the bulwarks to peer shoreward. A telescope for use at night presented an image upside down and backwards in its ocular, which took some getting used to. At full extension, Lewrie could see a few lights. Two were lower in the ocular, and he took those for lanthorns or torches along the stone parapet of the battery. To the left of those, actually to the right of the battery, there was a dim light in the window of a fisherman’s cottage, and one square of vertical grid. What was there?
“Bugger the bloody thing,” Lewrie muttered, lowering the telescope and relying on his eyes. Behind his back, officers and watchstanders grinned.
The grid, he determined, was a wood-shuttered window with a light inside, leaking round all four corners of the badly fitted shutters. Further up the town there were a few more lights, some half-hearted attempts at street lighting, or lanthorns hung outside some taverns or lodging houses for travellers. The windmills, the granary, and the secondary objectives were indistinct black lumps on dark grey. Puerto Banús was deeply asleep, it seemed, and even the fishermen were still a’bed, else the quays and gravelly harbour shores would be lit up with dozens of glims as nets were removed from the drying racks and stowed, rowing boats hauled back into the water, and the larger offshore boats would be hoisting sails already.
“Our boats are away, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported.