The Invasion Year

And off this “Vesuvius”! Lewrie determined.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

It was another of those fine Summer sunsets, the wind from off the North Sea just cool enough to rid the great-cabins of the warmth of the day as it wafted down through the opened windows in the coach-top overhead and through the half-opened sash-windows in the transom.

It was two days since Lewrie had discovered Fusee and her lethal cargo, and one day after Mr. MacTavish and Lt. Johns had briefed Reliant’s officers and Midshipmen. That had seemed to go well; did one consider “struck dumb” and “appalled” proper reactions. Lt. Merriman and Lt. Westcott had shared stunned looks, but would “soldier” along; Lt. Spendlove, Reliant’s Second Officer, though, had expressed his distaste for the torpedoes, calling them “infernal machines” and unworthy of a gentleman-warrior. “If they’re to revolutionise warfare at sea, sir, it will be a brute form of revolution. Does this war go on long enough, we’ll be shelling enemy cities, next,” he’d said, shaking his head in sadness. Oh, Lt. Spendlove would carry out his duties to the Tee, he’d quickly assured Lewrie, but he’d rather hoped that MacTavish and his torpedoes would prove a failure. Close blockade was the very thing, to Spendlove’s mind, just as the former First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl St. Vincent, had determined.

This evening, Lewrie would not be dining in Lt. Johns, MacTavish, or McCloud, nor any of his own people, either. He and the cats dined alone, Toulon and Chalky atop his table with their separate bowls of victuals. With no one to impress, Lewrie could dress comfortably in an old pair of slop-trousers, old buckled shoes and cotton stockings, and just his shirt and loosened neck-stock. Once Pettus removed his soup and began to fill a plate with the entree, Lewrie could take the note from Lydia Stangbourne from a pocket and unfold it to read once more.

She hoped that his assignment in Channel waters for the rest of the year would allow them to see each other again, more often, and even very often! Should he be called to London, that would be grand, and it would not involve round after round of gaming clubs; should he be back in port long enough, he must write her at once, and she would coach down so that they-

Thud! went his Marine sentry’s musket on the deck. “Midshipman Warburton… sah!”

“Enter,” Lewrie answered with a frustrated growl. There were a few times when solitude was welcome, and this was one of them!

“Mister Houghton’s duty, sir, and I’m to tell you that there is a boat hailing us, with a visitor,” Warburton announced.

“From Fusee?” Lewrie asked, scowling.

“From shore, sir… he appears to be a civilian,” Mr. Warburton told him.

Percy, come t’have my guts for toppin’ his sister? Lewrie wondered. No matter. “I’ll be on deck directly. Thankee, Mister Warburton.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Lewrie frowned, dabbed his mouth, and rose from the table, hiding Lydia’s note in a trouser pocket once more, silently damning all callers who’d disturb his supper, or ruin his good mood.

“Good God!” Lewrie said, though, once his visitor had boarded. “Where the Devil did you spring from? Hallo, Peel.”

“Sir Alan Lewrie, sir!” Mr. Peel-“ ’tis Peel, James Peel”-replied, doffing his fashionable thimble-shaped hat and bowing as grandly as he would at Court; laughing, though. “I bow to your grandeur! I’ll even kow- tow at your magnificence!”

“Now that’d be a sight,” Lewrie barked, laughing back and going to shake hands. “The last I heard from you two years ago was a letter from somewhere in the Germanies.”

“Well, soon as the war began again, things got a bit hot for me and my line of work, so the Foreign Office found something else for me to do closer to home. Damn my eyes, Lewrie, how do you keep?”

“Main-well, considerin’,” Lewrie replied. “Care for a bite or two of something? Or would ye care t’watch me eat while you sip a bit of brandy?”

“Just a dab or two of what you’re having… and the brandy!” Mr. Peel japed.

* * *

When Lewrie had first met James Peel in the Italics in 1795 or so, he had first taken him for a side of beef sent to bodyguard that old cut-throat from the Foreign Office’s Secret Branch, Mr. Zachariah Twigg. Peel was big enough for that duty; he was not quite six feet tall and “beef to the heel,” all of it lean muscle. And he could certainly look threatening with his very dark brown hair and eyes, a pair of strong hands, wide shoulders, deep chest, with the lean hips of a panther. A brainless bully-buck Peel was most certainly not, though, for he’d come from a distinguished family of the landed gentry, had a quick and clever mind, and at one time, before his cheating at cards in his regimental mess had caught up with him and forced his resignation, Peel had been a Captain of Household Cavalry-though even the Curraissiers thought that he “rode heavy.” Peel had been Twigg’s man in the West Indies during the slave rebellion on Saint Domingue/Haiti, and had aided Lewrie against the Creole rebel pirates in Louisiana, and again during the Franco-American Quasi-War of 1798-99.

“A growin’ lad needs his tucker,” Lewrie commented, watching the fellow eat part of his own supper and empty half the fresh-baked rolls in the bread barge.

“Ehm… you aren’t come from Mister Twigg with another of his harum-scarums, are you?” The fingers of his left hand were crossed to ward off that very occurrence, under the tablecloth.

“No, the old fellow’s done with spy-craft, and we’re the worse off for it, but… it comes to us all, sooner or later,” Peel said.

“Fading, is he?” Lewrie replied. “I recall my father mentioning he’d had a bad Winter, but when that was…?” He shrugged.

“Had several bad Winters,” Peel said between bites of pork chops. “His physicians finally told him to avoid London and its air like the plague, and Winter at his country estate in Hampstead. Oh, he’ll come down to London in the Spring, when the coal smoke’s not as heavy, but for the most part, he’s up at ‘Spyglass Bungalow’ spoiling his grand-children something sinful.”

“Thank God,” Lewrie commented, letting out a pent breath and un-crossing his fingers. “If he had wished to rope me in, I’m spoken for anyway. Something just as lunatick as any Twigg dreamt up.”

“You mean your cask torpedoes?” Peel asked with a sly smirk.

“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, and besides…” Lewrie tried to wave off; with a fork full of mashed potatoes, in fact.

“Lewrie… recall! I’m Secret Branch?” Peel japed. “We know all about them, and I wish you the best of good fortune with them.”

“You’re here to check up on them?” Lewrie asked.

“God, no, not me!” Peel said, laughing. “That would be some anxious Admiralty sort, and he won’t pester you ’til you’ve had at least a few trials. No… I was making the rounds with Admiral Cornwallis of Channel Fleet, Admiral Lord Keith’s squadrons in The Downs, and one or two others, regarding the estimated numbers, types, and strengths of the invasion fleet Bonaparte’s building. Uhm, might I get a top-up of this excellent… whatever it is?”

“A single-chateau bordeaux, sir,” Pettus informed him as he did the duty. “The Captain brought several back from the Gironde.”

“You’ve numbers?” Lewrie asked. When he’d called upon the Admiralty in London, they’d given him the descriptions and some sketches of what they thought the various French invasion vessels looked like… but no idea of how they were armed, or how many he would face.