* * *
He looked back one last time before making his way to the quays the next morning, and Maddalena was standing on her balcony in her dressing gown, sipping coffee. He waved, feeling like a schoolboy, and she blew him a kiss, her smile as wide as his. Waking to snuggle and kiss, tease and chuckle, whispering tentative sweet nothings to each other, well … it had been all that he could do to rise, dress, and depart, wishing that he could take the whole day off, just once.
Damme, I’ve “bought” me a woman! Lewrie marvelled to himself; And it may be the best bargain I’ve made in ages! So passionate and pleasin’! Just some long delays, so I can stay in port a few more days, please Jesus.
His steps were jaunty, even as he realised that the arrangement could not last; such things rarely did. He would be at sea three weeks out of four, so long as they continued raiding the Spanish coast, and seeing to his ship’s needs, and Sapphire’s people’s needs, would take up most of his time in port, leaving little for Maddalena, who would, after a time, surely wish to seek a “cozier” keeper, who would be around more often. Men got bored after a while, which was why they ran out to seek mistresses, after their wives whelped littl’uns, and gave all their affections to the babes, or got porcine in the process. He knew of only one man of his acquaintance, his old school chum, Peter Rushton, now Viscount Draywick, who was still with his mistress, after six years, and that was most-likely due to the nearness of the lodgings he gave her to Parliament, and Peter’s seat in the House of Lords.
Well, Tess was a charming, darling, and lovely creature, passionate—when Lewrie had bedded her—and Peter had told him that she was a “raree”, one of the few young women he knew who had little desire for fripperies, luxuries, or costly things, and was more than happy to be snug, secure, and cared for.
Christ! Lewrie thought; Maddalena’s beginnin’ t’sound like Tess! One from Portuguese peasantry, t’other Bog-Irish poor! I could never take her t’London, but … maybe she is a good, long-term bargain!
BOOK FOUR
And in regions far,
Such heroes bring ye forth
As those from whence we came,
Under that star
Not known unto our North.
“TO THE VIRGINIAN VOYAGE”
MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563–1631)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Minor repairs, re-tarring and slushing, re-roving with fresh rope, some touch-up paint, then re-victualling both ships took three days before the Sapphire’s people were given shore liberty, watch by watch, keeping Lewrie aboard most of the time, with only a few hours ashore from the start of the First Dog Watch ’til midnight. It might have been guilt that he might be abandoning his duties that tore him from Maddalena’s fervent embraces before dawn, and “All Night In” which he really desired. His officers and crew could speculate, but no one knew for sure what drew him ashore so often. Japes were made that he was known in the Fleet as “Ram-Cat” Lewrie, and not for his choice of pets, or his fierceness in battle, either.
* * *
“Your note said you’ve a new objective in mind, Mountjoy?” he asked as he entered that worthy’s lodgings, handing his sword and hat to Deacon, who gave him a knowing nod.
“Ah, Captain Lewrie!” Mountjoy said, springing to his feet in good cheer. “I do, sir, and may I name to you a replacement officer just seconded to us … Captain Richard Pomfret, late of the 16th Regiment of Foot. Captain Pomfret, I name to you Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, of HMS Sapphire.”
“Honoured to make your acquaintance, Sir Alan,” Captain Pomfret said, offering his hand, and a quick jerk of his head.
“As am I t’make yours, Captain Pomfret,” Lewrie replied in kind, sizing him up. Pomfret was tall, nearly six feet, wide-shouldered and slim-waisted, with a hawk’s beak nose, thick dark-blond hair, and pale green eyes, a fellow in his late twenties, Lewrie judged. He looked to be experienced, if the puckered scar on his right cheek meant anything.
“Captain Pomfret was in command of the 16th’s Light Company, d’ye see, Captain Lewrie,” Mountjoy went on, “and is more used to the skirmish than was Major Hughes.” He said that with a wink.
“Mountjoy’s told you of our past operations, and how irregular our tactics have been, then, sir?” Lewrie asked.
“He has, sir, as has General Dalrymple,” Pomfret said with a confident grin. “It’d seem that rapid, assault, and aggressiveness, are your boys in such endeavours, after a stealthy landing and a quiet creep to the objective, of course. Sounds champion! I’m looking forward to the job. Met the other officers, and had a look-in at the 77th’s barracks to introduce myself to the troops. They seem a fine lot.”
“They’ve proven to be, aye,” Lewrie agreed.
“And, here’s Deacon with the wine,” Mountjoy cheerfully said, playing the merry host. “Sit you down, sirs, and I will explain all.”
After one glass of a crisp Portuguese white wine, and several minutes of chitchat by way of introductions, Mountjoy rose and went to fetch his charts and hand-drawn maps, along with the pertinent agents’ reports.
“There are no towns or wee seaports near the objective that I have in mind, sirs,” Mountjoy began, rolling out the chart. “There, at the tip of Cabo de Gata, on some high ground, the Spanish have begun a battery on this out-jutting spur of headland. Further inland, and above it, there already is a semaphore tower, manned by the usual handful of soldiers. The battery, so my reports say, will mount six twenty-four-pounders when completed. As you can see in this sketch, they’ve finished the foundations, and are erecting the stone walls, with a long section with four guns, and two shorter sections either end, angled back and will mount the other two cannon. The ramparts are up level with the flagged floor, now, and work is just started to raise the parapets to the planned height.
“Wooden barracks for the garrison are back here, up the slope,” Mountjoy continued, using a stub of pencil to indicate the details, “and the powder magazine is being dug out here, ’twixt the works and the barracks, very deep … earthen, under a mound of excavated earth. They may flag its floor, just to keep damp out of the powder barrels, but that’s not been done yet.”
Mountjoy went on to explain that the masons and the labourers were drawn from several farming villages that lay inland, the stone brought in from quarries near Almeria by ox-drawn waggons, and the labourers fed and sheltered in a tent camp near the foot of the slope that led up to the semaphore tower.
“They ain’t happy workers, mind,” Mountjoy told them. “Here it is almost harvest season, and most of them have been conscripted for the work, dragooned from their fields, orchards, and flocks, and the pay is very low, and, at the moment, considerably in arrears.”
“Slave labour, you mean,” Captain Pomfret said, with a snort of derision, sitting more erect.
“Pretty much, yes,” Mountjoy agreed, “and dragged away from their women and children, to boot. Oh, there are whores a’plenty at the tent camps, but I doubt if the workers have two centavos to rub together for that, much less enough for a skin of very rough wine, so they’ve little to do after dark beyond grumbling, and trying to run off, so I doubt if the workers will present your men much resistance, Captain Pomfret, when you land. They may help you tear the bloody place down!”
“It’s not so far along that hitting it will delay them much,” Lewrie pointed out, “we could kill the oxen, burn the waggons, burn the semaphore tower, but … if the magazine isn’t finished, there’d be no powder to blow up, and no explosives we could use to destroy the ramparts, unless we haul our own up, and that’d take hundreds of kegs, and hours t’put in place. And, two questions … are the bloody guns already there, and where’s the nearest beach?”