“A chicken-nabob’,” Lewrie said with a smirk. “Must not have been tryin’. A full ‘nabob’ comes home with over an hundred.”
“Don’t I wish!” Mountjoy said with a sigh. “Anyway, Sir Arthur and his family are Irish peers, don’t ye know, so they have to grub harder than English peers. He got elected to Parliament for a time, voting with Pitt, then Grenville, was Secretary-General for Ireland ’til Grenville lost office and Portland took over. He was in command at Copenhagen last year when we had to bombard the city to convince the Danes to surrender their fleet before Napoleon could get hold of it, and did the job very well, so … he’s in favour at the moment, and was fortunate that he and an army were at Cork, waiting to sail to take Venezuela from Spain. Ever heard of a Colonel Miranda?”
“That gad-fly who wants a United States of South America?” Lewrie said with a loud groan. “He was the drivin’ force that put a flea in Commodore Popham’s ear that sent us from Capetown to Buenos Aires, and that series of disasters! The worthless shit-stirrer.”
“I’m sure that the Wellesley family had a lot to do with his appointment for that, and for the expedition to Portugal, too. The senior brother, Lord Mornington, is a pretentious seeker of higher grandeur,” Mountjoy relished in the telling, “more and greater titles, more land, more esteem. Oh! Here’s a tangy tidbit about Sir Arthur … when he was younger and poorer in prospects, he fell in love with one of the most beautiful young ladies in Ireland, Kitty Packenham. Her daddy was immensely rich, mind, and Arthur’s suit was refused, especially by Kitty’s brother, Edward, or ‘Ned.’
“He goes off for years, wins his spurs in India, and has one more go at marrying her, sight unseen,” Mountjoy said, almost tittering with amusement. “This time, he’s rich, knighted, and famous, and Edward Packenham, a soldier himself, agrees. Down the church aisle the bride comes, and Sir Arthur asks Edward, ‘Good God, who’s that ugly brute?’, or something like that, and Edward says ‘It’s Kitty!’ ‘She’s grown damned ugly, by Jove’ says Sir Arthur, but honour demands, and he marries her in spite of her looks. Pig in a poke, what? The years weren’t kind to her, and it’s rumoured that Kitty had turned stiffly religious, to boot, so it’s no wonder that Sir Arthur developed a strong lust for pretty young ladies. Not quite as bad as his brother, who should have been castrated at birth, for his own good, but, he will dally at the drop of a hat, hah!”
“So, he’s senior to other choices, as you said?” Lewrie had to ask as he poured himself another glass, and topped up Mountjoy’s.
“Lord, no! Interest and influence won out, again!” Mountjoy said with a hoot. “There’s dozens of senior Generals on Army List grinding their teeth in rage over it! With any luck, he knows how to soldier. He’s won all his battles before, so … we’ll see.”
“Just how d’ye know all this, his private life and all?” Lewrie groused. “Get it from The Tatler, did ye?”
“Lewrie,” Mountjoy said with an arch grin, “you should know by now that Secret Branch knows everyone, and everything, that matters.”
“Keep a file on me, do ye?” Lewrie asked with an accusing scowl.
“Pages and pages,” Mountjoy said with a laugh.
“Secret Branch keeps lists of useful idiots?” Lewrie gloomed up.
“Old Zachariah Twigg always thought well of you, and said so in his notes,” Mountjoy told him. “That arch manner of his, his biting banter, were just his way with everyone from senior ministers to the footmen. He had no patience for anyone who wasn’t as clever or intelligent as he was. He treated Peel, me, and you the same. What mattered to him was results, and if you got the job done, that was the main thing. He did not praise, ever!”
“You speak of him like he’s dead,” Lewrie joshed.
“I didn’t tell you?” Mountjoy replied, cocking his head over. “He is. Passed away at his country house just after the New Year … pity, ’cause he’d finally been knighted for his long, distinguished service to Crown and Country a bit before Christmas. How remiss of me, not to tell you.”
So, the old cut-throat’s gone, Lewrie thought, and wondered if he felt mournful, or should.
“I’ll wager the announcement was bland and murky,” Mountjoy went on, “and made him sound like a long-serving clerk or barrister!”
Lewrie did feel mournful, after all. Twigg had been a part of half his life, and his conniving had driven Lewrie into some of the grandest neck-or-nothing adventures he’d experienced. Twigg’s demise was a wrenching reminder of his own mortality, and the fact that those experiences were long gone, never to be re-lived.
“To Sir Zachariah Twigg,” Lewrie said of a sudden, raising his glass, “and thanks that we survived his doings.”
“Yes, to Sir Zachariah, the greatest of them all,” Mountjoy agreed, clinking glasses with Lewrie’s.
CHAPTER TWELVE
At least somebody speaks well of me, Lewrie thought as he read the latest edition of the Gibraltar Chronicle, which featured a brief description of Sapphire’s raid and the captured dhows. The newspaper was a thin one, and only came out weekly, sometimes twice a month if short of ink or newsprint paper.
“Here, Maddalena, have ye seen this?” he asked her.
“The Chronicle? Pooh,” she said with a dismissive laugh. “It reprints what it gets from English papers, and never says much of what happens here that is important. I think the Army tells them what not to say. I like the imported papers. What is in it?”
Lewrie had purchased some used wooden furniture for the balcony overlooking the harbour, some slatted chairs and a low table, and Maddalena had made some colourful pads for them. That was where he sat at that moment, whilst Maddalena was puttering round her warbler’s cage, which she had brought out to let the bird have some fresh air and sunlight.
“An account of my raid, a bit more dramatic than my report to Admiralty, really,” Lewrie told her. “And, they’re calling it a deed of remarkable pluck and daring.”
“Hmm, let me read it, then,” she said, sitting down opposite him. “Well, I must cut this out and save it. Bonito,” she said to the bird, “you will have a thinner lining of your cage. No droppings on this. I do not recall any articles of your other raids last Summer, though.”
Lewrie was about to blurt out that they had been Secret Branch doings, but said instead, “I imagine that the authorities feared the Spanish would get hold of a copy and find a way to stop my business. The Governor’s got spies on the brain, and he’s probably right in his suspicions. Too many foreigners on the Rock … present company excepted,” he added, blowing her a kiss.
He was having a very pleasant morning, at his ease in shirtsleeves, with his neck-stock undone. The town, fortifications, and the harbour lay in a cool shade from the heights of the Rock that towered over all, with a light wind wafting, and it would be late afternoon before the sun’s glare made the balcony uncomfortable. Maddalena was dressed down, too, in a white blouse, a colourful woven peasant skirt, and leather sandals, clothing she owned when she’d lived in Oporto and brought with her to Gibraltar years before.
She tapped the side of the coffee pot on the table to see if it was still hot enough, and poured herself a fresh cup, silently offering Lewrie a refill with a tilt of the pot.
“I believe I will, thankee, uhm … obrigado,” he replied.
“I am a woman, Alan. It’s obrigada,” she teased.
“Why, so you are!” he teased back. “That’s handy, by God!”
He stirred sugar into his cup, wishing that Gibraltar had any dairy cows, even nanny goats, for a splash of milk. Maddalena leaned back in her chair; she’d taken charge of the Chronicle for now, and it was pleasing to watch her reactions to the articles. She’d flash a quick smile, furrow her brow, or move her lips to silently sound out un-familiar words. She suddenly lowered the paper to her lap.