“That makes sense,” Mountjoy agreed with a nod or two. “Lord, what a poor host I am! I’ve a very nice and light white wine. Smuggling can go both ways, what? It’s a Spanish tempra … tembrani … well, whatever it’s called, it’s quite good.”
Mountjoy went into the bedroom adjoining and fetched a bottle from a dim corner, where he kept a tub of water with which to cool his wine. “Now where’s the bloody cork pull?” he grumbled.
Thomas Mountjoy had been an idle and direction-less young man when he’d been Lewrie’s clerk, a pleasant but callow fellow whom his elder brother, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy of London—Lewrie’s solicitor and prize agent—had foisted upon him when Lewrie had the Jester sloop. It was hard for Lewrie to picture Mountjoy in the same trade as the thoroughly dangerous Zachariah Twigg, or James Peel. Mountjoy just didn’t look the part; he was the epitome of a nice, inoffencive scion from the Squirearchy, who didn’t have to really work at anything.
He was brown-haired and brown-eyed, and his eyes and expression seemed too merry and innocent for skullduggery. He did not give off a sense of being capable of murder, or of being dangerous.
Well, maybe that’s his best asset, Lewrie thought; No one would suspect him of anything. Not strikingly handsome, or remember-able. Christ, is that even a word?
“Deacon?” Mountjoy called out. “Where did I leave the cork pull?”
A well-muscled and craggy-faced man came out of an inner room, a fellow who did look furtive, and very dangerous, from the way that he carried himself. “Here, sir,” he said, handing it over. “You left it on the side-table, from last night’s supper.”
“Daniel Deacon, one of my assistants, and my bodyguard when such is needed,” Mountjoy said, doing the introductions.
“Much danger to you, here on the Rock?” Lewrie asked, “With so many soldiers patrolling the town, I’d expect that it’s better guarded than Saint James’s Palace.”
“With so many foreigners here, sir, and so many traders coming and going with temporary passes, it’s best to be overly cautious,” Mr. Deacon said, most seriously and earnestly, not waiting for his superior to answer the question. He had a way of glaring that could be quite dis-concerting, and held himself like a taut-wound watch spring.
“Daniel’s another one of James Peel’s protégés,” Mountjoy said, “recruited from Twigg’s informal band of Baker Street Irregulars.”
“Formerly a Sergeant in the Foot Guards,” Deacon added.
“Saved my bacon once, the Irregulars did,” Lewrie told Deacon. “A damned efficent group.”
“Thank you, sir,” Deacon said, with a faint hint of a smile. “I will go out and attend to that … other matter?”
“Make it seem casual,” Mountjoy cautioned, and Deacon departed. “A little surveillance on a new-come trader,” he explained to Lewrie. “Now, let’s sample this wine!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“First step, then,” Lewrie summed up, after a convivial, but business-like, half-hour of plotting and savouring the light, fruity Spanish white wine. “I capture you a boat. A large fishing boat will do quite nicely, about fourty or fifty feet overall. She’d be large enough t’live in if the weather goes against you, and would be the sort that ventures further out to sea than the type employed by coastal Spanish fishermen.”
“And, could plausibly explain her presence near any Spanish village along the coast,” Mountjoy happily agreed. “Up by Almeria, we can claim to sail from Málaga, up near Cádiz on the West, we could claim to be from Cartagena … chasing after the herring, or something.”
“Her crew would have to actually put out nets, and have a catch aboard, if they run afoul of a Spanish garda costa,” Lewrie cautioned. “Not that there are too many of those who’d dare set out, these days, with our Navy prowling about.”
“Troops to re-enforce your people,” Mountjoy eagerly prompted, making a list with pencil and paper. “Garrison duty is so hellish-boresome, I’d imagine thousands would volunteer. Though, Sir Hew the Dowager might be loath to give up a corporal’s guard.”
“Perhaps you can sweet-talk him,” Lewrie said, snickering.
“He’s a reasonable-enough old stick,” Mountjoy agreed, again.
“I’ve fifty private Marines, and can put another fifty sailors ashore, without harming the operation of the ship,” Lewrie volunteered. “Can I lay hands on one troop transport, of decent size, she’d be able t’carry about one hundred and fifty soldiers. Any more, and they’d be arseholes to elbows. That’s what, three companies? Light infantry’d be best. Perhaps fewer,” he said, after further musing, “since I would have to put enough sailors aboard her t’man the boats. The average is about three hundred tons, with only fifteen merchant seamen to handle the ship.
“Get them all ashore in one go,” he schemed on, “and more importantly, get them off all together … in, raise Hell, then get out as quick as dammit … I’d need six boats. Barges, or launches, with at least eight men in each to row and steer. Scrambling nets.”
“Beg pardon?” Mountjoy asked, his pencil poised in mid-air.
“Use old, cast-off anti-boarding nets hung down each side of the transport by the chain platforms for all three masts,” Lewrie explained. “A boat waitin’ below each.” Lewrie borrowed a fresh sheet of paper and snatched Mountjoy’s pencil to make a quick sketch. “The soldiers’d climb down the nets into the boats, instead of going down the boarding battens and man-ropes, one at a time, which’d take for-bloody-ever, see?”
“Wouldn’t they be over-loaded, and clumsy, though?” Mountjoy said with a frown. “Laden with all the usual…?”
“Light infantry, like I said,” Lewrie almost boyishly laid out. “There for a quick raid and retreat. They’d need their hangers, their muskets and bayonets, perhaps double the allotment of cartridges, and their canteens. Packs, blanket rolls, cooking gear … all that would be un-necessary. They’re not on campaign, and won’t make camp.”
“Oh, I think I do see,” Mountjoy said.
“Of course, I’d have t’do the same with Sapphire, t’get all my people ashore at the same time,” Lewrie fretted. “The nets, and more ship’s boats than I have at present. Perhaps the dockyard here can cobble me up some more launches or barges.”
“The yard’s very efficient,” Mountjoy assured him, slyly retrieving his pencil. “When Victory put in after the Battle of Trafalgar, rather heavily damaged, she was set to rights and off for England within a week. I’m certain that Captain Middleton will have all the used nets and lumber to satisfy all your wants. Our wants, rather.”
“My orders did not name anyone,” Lewrie said. “I was to report to the senior naval officer present. Middleton, d’ye say? Don’t know him.”
“Robert Gambier Middleton,” Thom Mountjoy expounded. “He has been here for about two years, now. He’s the Naval Commissioner for the dockyard, the storehouses, and oversees the naval hospital. Quite a fine establishment, with one thousand beds available.”
“Well, I shall go and see him, right off,” Lewrie determined. “He’ll have the spare hands I need, too, most-like, perhaps even the transport under his command that I can borrow.”
“Ehm … that’s all that Middleton commands, I’m afraid. Even the defence of the town and the bay are beyond his brief,” Mountjoy told him. “Now, when there’s some ships in to victual or repair…”
“What? He don’t command even a rowboat?” Lewrie goggled, and not merely from the effects of the excellent Spanish wine.
“So far as I know, Captain Lewrie, there never has been a man in command of a squadron permanently assigned to Gibraltar. When I got here, ’bout the same time as Middleton, there was a fellow named Otway, who had the office,” Thom Mountjoy had to inform him, shrugging in wonder why not. “He was more than happy to leave, I gathered, ’cause he was pulled both ways by the needs of the commander of the Mediterranean Fleet and the commander of the fleet blockading Cádiz, and what was left of the combined Franco-Spanish fleet after Trafalgar. But, neither senior officer thought he could spare warships from his command to do the job that the Army’s many artillery batteries do. If a few two-deckers and frigates come in for a few days, then the senior officer among them is temporarily responsible.”