“How are the locals receiving you, sir?” Lewrie pressed, turning to look at Ayamonte’s residents, who were back to their usual routines, now that most of the excitement was over. “I should think they would be thrilled to hear of the uprisings, the Junta’s declaration of war, and all.”
“Cagily!” Spencer said with a contemptuous snort. “Be careful where you camp, don’t pick fruit, don’t cut any olive trees for firewood, don’t look at our women, don’t go inside their churches. The rich ones are haughty, and the rest are scheming for money … as if your average British soldier has any. I’ve had to hire waggons and carts, teams and drivers, to carry all my supplies and ammunition out to the campsite, and pay dearly! The rest of them goggle at us like we’re lepers, and give us what the Sicilians call the ‘Evil Eye.’ Lord, what a country! Poor as church mice, as illiterate as so many goats, as lazy as butchers’ dogs, yet as testy of their honour and pride as mad bulls. Must be some miasma specific to Mediterranean countries, Sicily, Malta, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, they are all alike. They are just not like the English, the Scots, or even the bloody Irish. A bad race to love, or fight for.”
“I was not aware that the transports didn’t bring along any horse or mule teams, or waggons,” Lewrie said with a frown. That was damned poor planning, to his lights.
“The original plan was to land at Cádiz, and garrison in town,” General Spencer continued to grouse. “At any rate, unless we ordered some from Sicily, there were none available at Gibraltar. I’ll write Dalrymple to be sure that the remainder of my troops coming from Sicily fetch some along. If I am finally allowed into Cádiz, I’ll have to march there, by Christ!”
“You’ll go by sea, sir, it’s fastest,” Lewrie assured him.
“If the French do not come to assail me, I may end up crossing the river and marching on Lisbon,” Spencer said, turning to look over the river into Portugal. “Might be good to place a battalion yonder, anyway. Guard the back door, and my arse, hey?”
“I’m sure the toll for the ferry will be steep, sir,” Lewrie said with a wee laugh.
“You do nothing to reassure me, sir,” Spencer bristled again. “And, I do not need reminding about money.”
“Sorry, sir,” Lewrie apologised. “If you need anything, the Navy’s ready to assist you.”
“If I do, you’ll hear of it,” Spencer assured him. “I must be off. Too much to see to before sundown.”
“I’ll take my leave, sir,” Lewrie replied, doffing his hat in parting salute.
He strolled back towards the quays, taking in the town of Ayamonte, and its citizens. They did indeed seem a wary lot, who would not make eye contact. There were some pointing and laughing, though, as a second of Spencer’s battalions marched out of town. They were making fun of the battalion’s camp followers, the soldiers’ wives.
Every British regiment on Army List usually maintained two battalions at permanent home establishments. When a regiment was ordered overseas, one battalion would pack up to go, while the second would remain in barracks to recruit, drill, and train, and flesh out for the day when, after several years, the first battalion would be ordered home, and the second battalion would sail overseas to take their place. If the deployed battalion suffered casualties in action, or decimating diseases, if enough men were crippled for life, the home battalion would send out a trained draught of replacements.
The cruelty of that system was that when a battalion was sent out, only sixty or so of the soldiers’ wives or camp girfriends were allowed to go with them, chosen by drawing straws or marked slips of paper from a shako. The ones left behind might never see their men again, their children would never see their fathers, and the pay of a soldier was never enough, even at home in peacetime, to support those families, and what little a deployed soldier could allot from his pay couldn’t, either.
“Putas, putas!” some Spanish women were accusing, sure that the women were whores, for who else would follow soldiers overseas.
And, the battalion’s wives were a rough lot, poorly dressed, hard-handed, clumsily shod, and could curse like the women mongers at the Billingsgate fish market, or the coarsest sailor. They did present a rather un-appetising picture, with rarely a fetching one in their ranks, carrying packs like any soldier, cooking utensils, haversacks, and jute bags of possessions. On the march, they would help dress wounds, cook their husbands’ rations, do the sewing and mending, tend their children, and even give birth in camp when the time came upon them.
Lewrie had seen them in action after the battle that had broken the Dutch at Cape Town, two years before. They had swarmed over the dead and wounded Dutch to strip them of anything of value like harpies. They would pick fruit trees and berry bushes bare, forage to steal chickens, goats, or piglets, were as eager as their men for spirits, wine, or beer, and would get just as hoggish, screeching drunk as the men. Many of them marched by chewing quids of tobacco, or had fuming pipes in their mouths.
Lewrie doffed his hat to them, saying “Good morning, ladies.”
“Ahn’t he a grand’un!” one crone commented.
“Ladies me arse!” another hooted.
“Ye drop y’or sister one more time, an’ I’ll tan y’or hide!” one stout hag chid a boy carrying a swaddled baby along with a satchel.
“Arr, make ’em bloody damn’ Papists shut th’ fuck up! They’s poorer ’an we are!”
Lord God, who’d be a soldier in our Army? Lewrie thought; Or marry one! Nothing t’look forward to but lice, fleas and sleepin’ rough.
He went back to the boat, where his sailors were talking with some Spaniards, or attempting to. Bottles of local wine were being passed, despite Midshipman Britton’s loudest efforts to prevent it.
“Sir, I think the whole lot should be put on charges,” the Mid cried as Lewrie approached. “The Spanish gave them drink, and I could not stop them. I wasn’t sure whether I should, not entirely, and it got out of hand…”
“Because the Spanish are being friendly, for a change, and you didn’t wish t’turn them against us, Mister Britton?” Lewrie asked.
“That was my thinking, aye, sir, but…,” Britton sputtered.
“Lads!” Lewrie said in a quarterdeck voice. “Leave off, before ye fall down dead drunk. I said a cup or two, not a barrico.”
An unshaven Spaniard came up to Lewrie and offered him a bottle, gabbling happily away in rapid Spanish, and wheezing a foul, garlicky breath on him.
“Oh, Christ,” Lewrie muttered, but plastered a smile on his phyz and took a swig of what tasted as raw and foul as Navy-issued “Black Strap.” He swallowed it manfully, and patted the man on his back, handing the bottle back. “Gracias, mucho gracias,” he said in his little knowledge of Spanish, but that set the fellow off into a fresh bout of incomprehensible lingo.
“Does anyone know what he’s saying, sir?” Britton asked.
“Hell if I know,” Lewrie told him. “Look here. The army is going to march inland to those hills, yonder, and set up a semaphore tower. They’ll have another in the church tower, and I wish to establish a small shore party here at the quays, should they send any messages to us. We’ll keep one of the cutters here day and night, with one Midshipman and a boat crew to fetch off any news. Someone get this oaf off me, hey? Yes, yes! Sí, sí, buenos mañana, buenos dia? Ehm, Adios? Back in the boat, lads, we’re off. Bye bye!”