H.M.S. COCKEREL

Hurtful as his losses were, the one that really stung was that, for all his vows to keep his sailors alive, come what may, he'd lost some of them-he'd failed. And, for the first time in his career, he had lost a ship.

Chapter 10

'Charles,' Lewrie muttered, standing over the despondent Lieutenant de Crillart. 'We have to get moving. We stay on this beach, we'll freeze to death. It looks as if we could climb up to the Hieres road and march to St. Margaret. That's what, 'bout half a mile?'

'Oui, Alain,' de Crillart nodded slowly, getting to his feet as creakily as a doddering ancient. Lewrie offered him a hand up. 'All zose hommes splendides. Moi… my men!'

'I know. Mine, too, Charles. Mister Scott…' Lewrie replied.

'Sir!' Bosun Porter shouted in alarm suddenly. 'Riders comin'!'

Spilling down from the gentlest slope above the beach, just west of where the French field guns had fired, were a knot of horsemen, men in oversized shakos, bearing lances. Blue uniforms, green uniforms all sprigged in red braiding. And the lances bore small, burgee-cut pennons of blue-white-red, the Tricolour. They were French. About twenty cavalrymen, followed by officers in cocked hats.

'Well, shit,' Lewrie sighed as the leading horsemen curvetted all about them, brandishing lance points or sabres. 'Stand fast, lads! Stay calm. Stand fast!'

It was all they could do. To run… well, there'd be no running, not shoeless on shingle, no escape from a lance tip in the back. They were already disarmed, except for Admiralty-pattern sheath knives, and Captain Braxton had made sure the points had been blunted long before.

'Silly-lookin' bashtids,' Landsman Preston grumbled. Some of the cavalrymen wore braids in their hair, pigtails on either side of their faces, with the rest long and loose-flowing as women, or shorn peasant-short in Republican, revolutionary style. Tall dragoon boots above the knee, Republican trousers instead of breeches, gaudy new and unfamiliar uniforms. Not a queue, not a powdered head in sight. And they were a scruffy-looking lot, too, as if their new rags had been sewn up from a set of old rags. And they stank. Lord, how they stank, bad as rotting meat, their horses galled raw by hard service!

' 'Oo eez een charge?' a cavalry officer asked, one of the riders in green and red, with the ridiculous pigtails beside his cheeks.

'I am,' Lewrie spat, disgusted at being captured, and so easily.

The cavalry officer extended his heavy sabre, blade inverted and point down, inches from Alan's nose, with a triumphant smirk on his face. 'Parlez-vous francais, m'sieur?' he sneered.

'Ah, foutre, non,' Lewrie said with a sad shrug. 'Je ne parle pas.'

'Espece de salaud!' the officer barked, making his horse rear and slash with its hooves, baring yellow teeth. 'Je demande qu'est-ce que votre nom, vous fumier!'

'Lieutenant Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy,' he replied proudly, refusing to give horse or rider an inch, prickly with pride-the only item he had left in any abundance. 'Captain of the Zele, floating battery.' He pointed over his shoulder to the wreck. 'Parlez-vous anglais?'

'Oui,' the officer barked, not sounding very happy about speaking the language of an ancient foe. 'You 'ear me speak eet. Lieutenant, or capitaine… w'eech are you?'

'Both,' Lewrie grinned, happy to have confused him.

'Et Zйlй? Zat eez francais.'

'Captured. French ship, British crew, m'sieur. Why she sank so quick. French,' Alan said with another expressive shrug.

'You mak' ze leetle joke, m'sieur, hein?' the cavalryman grinned without mirth.

'Oui, I make the little joke, m'sieur.'

The rider clucked and kneed his mount to take a step forward, and Alan had to give ground at last. The sword point touched his chest and began to dig into his breastbone.

'Mais, ve sink you, an' votre ship… so 'oo is laugh, now, hein, petit merdeux!' The rider laughed, and swung his arm back for a cut.

'Arrкtez!' a voice shouted from up the hill, leaving Alan with a hair's-breadth between life and death as he beheld the weak November sun twinkling on the sabre's fresh-honed edge. He knew he was being a fool, knew his truculence could get him hacked to bits. But he could not help himself.

But the officer balked, looked over his shoulder, and loosened the tension in his sword arm. The sabre came down harmlessly to the rider's side, and he jerked his reins to ride away, to speak with the clutch of officers who had called to him.

'Good God, sir, shouldn't you…?' Spendlove shivered. 'If we get 'em mad enough…'

'Aye, Mister Spendlove, I'll be good, from now on.'

With the officer apart from them, the cavalrymen, the lancers and dragoons dismounted, hemming in the survivors to a tight knot, musketoons or long pistols out and half-cocked, to pat them down for weapons. For anything that struck their fancy, too, it seemed. A sergeant came up to Lewrie's side, turned out his pockets and got a few shillings, began to touch the sword. Alan glared at him and pushed the scabbard behind his thigh. Republican or not, an officer's glare was still useful on a Revolutionary. The sergeant moved his hand and tore his watch away, snarling a garlicky breath through dingy, discoloured teeth. He held up the watch, admiring the blue riband, fouled anchor and crossed cannon fob, done in damascene silver and gold, opened the case and held it to his ear to see if it still ticked. And made off with it, chortling and jeering.

Alan looked to the staff officers up the beach. The cavalry officer was catching pluperfect Hell from the fellow on the dapple grey gelding. He sheathed his sabre, bowed his head and turned red as the froggings on his jacket. Then they were coming down the beach towards Lewrie, the one on the fine dapple grey in the lead, the horse stepping and prancing as head-high as his master. He drew to a halt, tossed the reins without even looking to a lancer on the off side, and swung a leg over the horse's neck to spring lithely down.

Another bloody minikin, Lewrie thought sourly as he studied him; just like that Captain Nelson. And young, too. Christ, he don't look a day over twenty-one!

The officer wore glossy top boots, snug buff trousers and a dark blue, single-breasted uniform coat, cut horizontal across the waist, with vine and leaf pattern embroidery up the front, buttoned up against chilly winds almost to the throat. The stand-and-fall collar was also ornately embroidered with gold lace, very wide and spread halfway to his shoulders. A long burgundy wool sash about his slim waist, a silver-laced black belt over it with a damascened buckle supported the frog for a light-cavalry sabre* Long shirt collar turned up against his neck, wrapped in a silk stock. Plain black beaver cocked hat, big as a watermelon, dressed only with the Tricolour cockade, shadowed his eyes. Eyes, Lewrie noted, that were not young at all; very large, penetrating, studious and sober, and so reserved. Yet darting lazily, taking everything in. Lewrie reassessed his age upwards-maybe mid- twenties, he thought. The cavalry captain was, like all cavalry (English especially), a hoorawing brute, a danger to all, including himself. But this fellow…

'M'sieur, permettez-moi…' the cavalryman said in a gentler and much more polite tone of voice as he did the introductions. '… ze lieutenant colonel, Napoleone Buonaparte, chef d'artillerie, a General Dugommier, commandeur de l'Armee. 'Is aides-de-camp, ze capitaines Marmot et Junot… m'sieurs, ici capitaine Luray, marine royal, de roi britannique, Georges troisieme.'

'Colonel,' Lewrie nodded, laying a hand on his breast to salute with a slight bow.

'Capitaine Luray, enchante,' the little fellow smiled of a sudden, and offered his hand, reeling off a rapid, very fluid French.

'Ze colonel say please to forgive, 'e 'ave no anglais, m'sieur,' the cavalryman translated. 'But 'e eez delight to mak' you' ac… acquaintance. 'E offer 'is congratulation… votre gunnerie… votre courage magnifique. You no strike votre flag, sink viz les canons blaze? Magnifique, tres magnifique!'