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, Lewrie 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.
Copyright © 2019 by Dewey Lambdin
