The King's Marauder (32 page)

“Offensive operations along the coasts may tie down a fair number of Spanish troops,” Lewrie quickly said, “if we hit ’em hard and often enough, sir. They’d have to garrison every little seaside town or fishing port, re-enforce their coastal forts, batteries and semaphore towers, or
erect
batteries. That’d limit the number of troops and guns that the Spanish could muster to lay siege to Gibraltar. Go in for a penny, earn a pound in dividends!”

“Not anywhere near Gibraltar, though, sir!” Mountjoy eagerly added, taking new heart. “We’d strike further afield.”

He’s lookin’ at me like I’m a talkin’ dog,
Lewrie thought;
An idea from the likes o’ me that helps?

“We would do nothing to ruin your fairly cordial relationship with your counterpart, General Castaños,” Mountjoy slyly went on, “from which I am certain that you glean useful information upon the mood of the region. Yet, if Spain and France plan a move against you here, our raids could delay and limit his massing of forces by the Spanish, requiring the French to commit
their
troops, and their march to here would take so long that London would have more than enough time to send you all the re-enforcements you could wish, sir.”

“Perhaps that would end with British armies in Spain, meeting ‘Boney’s’ armies head-on, sir,” Lewrie suggested.

“That would be promising,” Sir Hew said, leaning back to fantasise for a moment. “But, landing British troops against allied Franco-Spanish armies…” He sighed and went gloomy again.

“Well, Sir Hew,” Mountjoy said, with a grin, “it has been our aim all along to break that alliance and get Spain out of the war. Neutral if possible, able to trade with the world again, or as a British ally in the best case.”

“Teeterin’ on the edge, Sir Hew,” Lewrie contributed, and drew a quick under-lid glare from Mountjoy who feared that Dalrymple would mis-interpret on which side Spain
might
teeter.

“Nowhere near Gibraltar, or General Castaños’s military region, d’ye say?” Dalrymple mused, pulling an earlobe again. “In that case, some
limited
offensive raids
might
…” He paused, then reached out to pluck a china bell from his desk-top and ring for an aide. A massive set of old oak doors opened, and an Army Captain entered.

“Sir Hew?” he asked with an eager-to-serve smile.

“Captain Hughes, the troop transports that arrived a few days ago,” Dalrymple enquired. “Of what units do they consist?”

“One squadron of horse, sir, two regiments of foot which will go on to General Fox,” Captain Hughes easily reported off the top of his head, “and several companies of replacements for various regiments.” Hughes had all the regiments’ numbers, and the numbers of troops at the tips of his fingers, the perfect aide.

I
know
this bastard!
Lewrie realised;
He’s that opinionated twit in the seafood chop-house with that girl t’other day!

Up close, and face-on, Captain Hughes was the epitome of a war-like officer, beefy, strong, and wide-shouldered, with a deep voice. His red uniform coat, with gilt lace epaulets, black facings and silver and red button loops, his shirt, neck-stock, and white waist-coat and matching breeches were immaculate and exquisitely tailored. Hughes’s boots were so well-blacked and buffed that they might have been made of patent leather.

Give him a beard and put him in hides, and he’d make a damned fine Viking,
Lewrie thought;
The shitten bulldog!

“Experienced, are they, Hughes?” Damrymple asked. “The replacements?”

“Fresh-trained and sent off from their regiments’ home barracks I believe, Sir Hew,” Hughes said, with a superior smirk. “Newlies.”

“Two companies from the 77th, hey? Hmm,” Dalrymple mused, and drummed his fingers on his desk. “Had their regiment suffered a great many casualties on campaign, I would have thought that their Colonel would have requested more from their home battalion. Perhaps whoever he is, he can soldier on without them, then. Full complement of officers with them, Hughes?”

“Two Captains, two Lieutenants, and two Ensigns, sir,” Hughes rapidly ticked off. “I do not know of their experience or abilities.”

“And have I made you conversant with any plans for offensive, seaborne raids along the coasts, Hughes?” Sir Hew asked further.

“I do believe that I might have come across some mention here and there in the course of sorting your correspondence, Sir Hew,” Hughes hesitantly said, cocking his large head over to one side.

“Allow me to name to you, sir, Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, and Mister Thomas Mountjoy, of the, ah … Foreign Office. Sirs, my aide, Captain Daniel Hughes, seconded from the 53rd Foot,” Dalrymple said, rising to summon them together for the requisite handshakes. “And what did you make of such plans, Captain Hughes, given your scant familiarity with them?” Dalrymple asked him.

“They sound simply capital, Sir Hew,” Hughes replied eagerly. “A topping-fine venture!”

“Good, good, then,” Dalrymple said, beaming. “Glad to hear you find them so. Captain Lewrie has managed to arrange all the necessities with which to put the plans afoot, but for the troops. His complement of Marines aboard his ship will be a part of any landings alongside those two companies of the 77th.”

“How many men in all would that be, Captain Hughes?” Lewrie asked him, sure that he was the sort who would have the numbers.

“Including officers, sergeants, and corporals, that would be one hundred and twelve, Captain Lewrie,” Hughes quickly supplied.

“Just about right,” Lewrie told him. “About as many as the transport can manage. Them, plus my fifty-six…”

“Under a Captain of Marines, sir?” Hughes asked, with a bit of a scowl, as if imagining that Dalrymple might place him in command of the landing party. Hughes looked most eager for a fight.

“A First Leftenant, sir,” Lewrie told him.

“Hughes, as welcome as are your skills as my aide,” Dalrymple said, “still I have felt your desire to command troops again. For this task, I believe I will appoint you to take charge of those two companies of the 77th, and Captain Lewrie’s Marines when sent ashore on any of the raids.”

“I would be
delighted
to serve, sir!” Hughes loudly declared, puffing up his thick chest in pride. “Let us be at ’em, what? Yoicks, and tally ho!”

“And, for this duty, I think advancing you to a Brevet-Majority would not go amiss, either, Hughes,” Dalrymple added.

“You do me too much honour, sir!” Hughes exclaimed. “But thank you for it, all the same!”

“Agreed then, gentlemen?” Dalrymple asked them all.

“Quite,” Mountjoy assured him. “My thanks to you, Sir Hew.”

“With the troops, and Major Hughes’s experience, I am confident we’ll raise chaos and all the mayhem one could ask for,” Lewrie added. “We must fill the Major in on what we intend, and begin the training for the troops as soon as we can.”

“Mind, though, Captain Lewrie,” Hughes cautioned, “one mustn’t expect
too
much of men straight from the parade ground and the firing butts, ha ha! Takes months on campaign to make proper soldiers.”

“Well, then they’ll have less to un-learn,” Lewrie told him in good humour. “We’ll get them their sea legs, first, and their ‘duck feet,’ second. Where t’practice, though. Can’t do it here in the harbour for all the Spanish spies and watchers over in Algeciras t’see. Perpaps down by Europa Point, or a bay on the Eastern side of the Rock.”

“Bring those companies’ officers in to explain what’s needing, too,” Mountjoy suggested. “They won’t be happy with the new task.”

“I’ll see to turning them eager,” Hughes boasted.

“‘Growl they may, but go they must’, is it, sir?” Lewrie asked Hughes. “Just so they come t’see it as an adventure, not an onerous chore. Let us depart and leave Sir Hew be. He’s done us handsomely, and I’m sure he has many other pressing matters on his plate. Thank you, again, Sir Hew. We will keep you apprised of our progress, and of our first choice of objective.”

“And, it will be up to you, Sir Hew, to approve or object to our choices,” Mountjoy added to mollify the fellow.

*   *   *

“Is there a spare office where we can read you in, as it were, Major Hughes?” Lewrie asked the newly-promoted officer.

“I’m sure we can find one,” Hughes said, pulling an expensive-looking pocket watch from a breeches pocket. “Though, hmm. Do you wish to begin at once, this very hour, or might I attend to some other business first, sirs?”

“It is near Noon, aye,” Lewrie said, consulting his own watch. “Let’s say we meet back here in the Convent at one thirty?”

“Capital!” Hughes boomed. “Just topping-tine! I’ve a dinner companion, d’ye see, and can’t wait to give her the news.”

“You’re married, sir?” Mountjoy asked, wondering why a sensible man would bring a wife overseas.

“Not so’s you’d notice, no sir,” Hughes imparted, with a wink and a smirk.

“Don’t share too much,” Lewrie cautioned. “Ye never know who’s listening. Mum’s the word with civilians.”

Hughes gave him a quick scowl as if to say “will you teach my granny how to suck eggs?”, but Lewrie had seen him in action once, and was none too sure that Hughes could contain himself from bragging over his brevet promotion, his new command, and how he would sail off to win the war all by himself … as he’d boasted that day at Pescadore’s.

“One thirty, then, sirs,” Hughes agreed, putting away his watch. “I will meet you here at the appointed time. Good day!”

Hughes sailed back into his anteroom office to fetch his hat, a black beaver fore-and-aft bicorne with heavy gilt tassels to either end, adorned with swept-back egret feathers, and so arced that the tips fell almost level with his nose and his shoulder blades.

“Impressive,” Mountjoy said after he had departed.

“What, the man, or the hat?” Lewrie joshed.

“Well…” Mountjoy replied, puzzled.

“I’d not be one t’look a gift horse in the mouth, Mountjoy, but I’ve seen him before,” Lewrie explained as they made their own way out of the headquarters building to the street, and their own dinner. “Here on Gibraltar, the other day,” he went on, describing his meal at the seafood house, and Hughes’s demeanour with his girl.

“Was she fetching, sir?” Mountjoy asked, looking a tad askance.

“Aye, she definitely was,” Lewrie confessed.

“Perhaps her being with him has prejudiced you against him,” Mountjoy suggested. “A bit of jealousy, what?”

“I’ll allow that that plays a part, but only a wee’un,” Lewrie shrugged off. “Remember the old adage, ‘great talkers do the least, we see’? He’s a
grand
talker, is Brevet-Major Hughes. Why, I wonder, is he seconded to staff work, and not with his regiment?”

“Surplus to requirements?” Mountjoy pondered.

“Tosh!” Lewrie dismissed. “He bought himself a commission for life in the 53rd, and once in, an officer is
always
a member of that regiment ’til he’s too old t’serve and he sells his rank out to the highest bidder, gets crippled or dies, or gets cashiered for conduct un-becoming, or plain stupidity. Most-like, after a few years, the others in his mess couldn’t
stand
the bastard, and when Dalrymple was castin’ about for an aide-de-camp, they saw their chance t’be shot of him!”

“Or, he makes General,” Mountjoy pointed out. “Maybe Captain … Major Hughes, rather … has better connexions than most, and his posting is a way to give him a leg up to a substantive Majority, not a brevet rank. From his uniform and his kit, I’d imagine that he’s a fellow from a wealthy family, eager for his advancement. Money, and ‘interest’, go hand in hand, after all.”

“Perhaps,” Lewrie grudgingly allowed.

“I hope you do not hold anything against him, sir,” Mountjoy said in a soft voice. “Getting him, and those troops, has been as hard as pulling Sir Hew’s teeth … if he had many left. Now we’re on the cusp, I would hate for any grudges to hamper us.”

Damme, he’s all but givin’ me
orders
!
Lewrie thought in shock. Mountjoy had been his clueless, landlubberly, ink-stained
clerk
back in the long-ago, a
lad
more than ten years his
junior,
and it cut rough to be chided, even in the mildest way! He was a bloody civilian, for God’s sake!

“‘Yes sir, no sir, two bags full’,” Lewrie growled, pretending to tug at his forelock like a tenant or day-labourer. “I promise to be good, Daddy.” Which drew a laugh from Mountjoy.

“I wonder where he’s dining,” Mountjoy said. “It is tempting to see if his girl is all that fetching.”

“At Pescadore’s, and she is,” Lewrie told him, providing him a brief description.

“Damned good establishment,” Mountjoy commented once he was done. “It might be fun to simply pop in and…?”

“Temptin’, aye,” Lewrie said, “but … no. We’d best not. If Hughes thinks we’re spyin’ on him, it’d just ruffle his feathers.”

“Well, he has some impressive feathers,” Mountjoy japed.

And an impressive woman,
Lewrie thought, half-wishing that they
could
just happen to amble in so he could get a longer, closer look at Maddalena.
Dammit, I
may
be jealous of him!

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Over the next few days, Lewrie began to suspect that he had mis-judged Major Hughes. He and Mountjoy had Hughes up to Mountjoy’s lodgings so they could lay out the agents’ reports and sketches in greater privacy than they could in a borrowed office in the Convent, and they were amazed how Hughes grasped the possibilities so quickly, and raved over the prospects. They took him out to
Harmony
to tour the troop accommodations, and Hughes was a fount of good suggestions for improvements and tweaks to make the men—his men, now—more comfortable.

On his own, Major Hughes had arranged shore billets for the men of the 77th and their officers, had arranged provisions and cooking facilities for them, and had worked them into the rotation to use the parade ground for close-order drill, and at least a weekly use of the firing range, with ammunition to boot. In all, Hughes was a paragon when it came to working out the niggling details, and carried on in a brash, burly, charge-ahead manner. He also got Lieutenant Keane and Lieutenant Roe and their Marines ashore to participate. The loudest voice on the parade ground was his as he put them through the usual “square-bashing” and mock battle manouevres, with all three companies abreast to make rushes by company, with the others covering them, and even thought to rehearse mock retreats to the “beach” once the raids would be over, either opposed by Spanish forces, or getting off without a shot being fired at them. Major Hughes was most enthusiastic. Unfortunately, that enthusiasm did not extend to the 77th’s officers.