Desmond conned the cutter alongside a large floating catamaran landing stage. Starboard side oars were tossed, the new bow man, Deavers, got his gaff hooked to a bollard, and the cutter glided to a stop alongside the landing stage. Desmond whipped a light line round a second bollard near the stern, and Lewrie and Pettus prepared to dis-embark.
“You first, lad,” Lewrie had to prompt his cabin-steward. He had mostly gotten used to the Navy’s ways, but needed reminding that senior officers were “first in, last out”.
There was a wide gangway leading to the top of the stone quay, but it was immediately swarmed by several men and women, all shouting their wares, some in broken English or heavy foreign accents, as bad as the London barkers who stood outside their masters’ shops to hawk their goods.
“Vino! Blackstrap, two pence a pint!”
“Preeties’ girl een town, all kind! Young, clean!”
“Orange, leemon, pomegraneta, fresh from Tetuán!”
“Scatter, you! Keep the gangway clear, there!” a Sergeant of the Provosts bellowed, waving his halberd to shoo the hawkers off.
“Two pence th’ pint, arrah, Liam!” Furfy chortled.
“Sorry, lads, back to the ship,” Lewrie told them. “I’ll take a bum-boat back, later. But, there will be shore liberty!”
That mollified them, somewhat.
“I’d best ask that Sergeant if he knows a good laundry, sir,” Pettus decided.
“Aye, do so,” Lewrie agreed.
“Captain Lewrie!” someone called from the head of the gangway. “Hallo to you, sir!”
“Mister Mountjoy!” Lewrie replied, looking up and recognising his old clerk. “Have you come to collect me, right off?”
Lewrie shooed Pettus up the gangway, quickly following, to take Mountjoy’s outstretched hand.
“Thought it best, sir,” Mountjoy said. “My word, but it’s good to see you, again. It’s been what, six years, since I saw you off to the Baltic, at Great Yarmouth?”
“About that, aye,” Lewrie said, recalling how Mountjoy had saddled him with those two Russian aristocrats to be landed as near to St. Petersburg as possible, after scouting the thickness and breadth of the winter ice in Swedish and Russian naval harbours before Admirals Sir Hyde Parker and Horatio Nelson sailed for Denmark, and the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. The mad Tsar Paul had pressured Sweden and Denmark into his bellicose League of Armed Neutrality, ready to close the Baltic to British trade, seizing hundreds of British merchant ships and marching their crews off to Siberia. It could not be stood while England was still at war with France and her allies, resulting in a massive naval expedition to destroy the League’s navies, hopefully one at a time before the ice melted.
That arrogant, skeletal sneerer, Zachariah Twigg, had been in charge of Secret Branch then, and the nobles had been sent on with a hope that they could aid the rumoured assassination plot against the Tsar. They arrived in St. Petersburg a touch too late to take part, and the youngest one had tried to have Lewrie killed, all for the affections of a Panton Street whore.
“Now, what may I help you with, sir?” Mountjoy offered.
“First off, ye can tell my man here, Pettus, where he can find a reliable laundry,” Lewrie told him with a grin.
“There’s a very good one that I use, quite near my residence,” Mountjoy told him. “It’s not too far uphill. Let us go there.”
“Ehm, shouldn’t I be calling upon Sir Hew Dalrymple, first?” Lewrie asked as they set off.
“I very much doubt it he can spare you the time,” Mountjoy told him. “Just send round one of those new carte de visites with a short note. He’s much too busy, of late, hunting down foreign spies and enemy agents.”
“A lot of those around, are there?” Lewrie wondered aloud.
“Strong rumours, as far as I can determine,” Mountjoy imparted, “but nothing solid, and no names named. Anonymous tips about French or Spanish agents scouting the defences, some dis-affected Irish officers plotting to raise a mutiny and hand the Rock over to the Spanish, and of course, our anomymous tipsters will have us believe that there’s a cabal of Jews at the bottom of it. Pure balderdash. The worst problem are the traders who’d sell grain and foodstuffs to the Spanish, who aren’t eating all that well, these days, with the government in Madrid sending so much off to support Napoleon’s larders.”
“It’s like a foreign town,” Pettus said, gawking as they made their way uphill along a narrow stone street lined with stone-front and stuccoed houses, shops, and lodgings, with stout wood doors set into the fronts atop narrow stone stoops, and the windows mounted high and rather small, iron-barred for security, and fitted with wood shutters inside. “There’s little English about it.”
“Well, it was Spanish for hundreds of years, and Moorish long before that, Mister Pettus,” Mountjoy explained. “We’ve owned it for only a bit beyond an hundred years. You’ll hear the difference, too. There are only a little over three thousand male inhabitants on the Rock, and only about eight hundred of them are British. Maybe nine hundred from neutral countries, and over sixteen hundred are registered as citizens of enemy nations!
“Add to that, there’s another two thousand or so foreign traders allowed to buy and sell here, with purchased three-month passes to let them do so … unmolested, mind,” Mountjoy went on. “You’ll hear every language of Europe, with Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian predominant. I even thought I heard some Russian, the other day.”
“Hmm, sounds t’me as if Dalrymple might have cause t’worry,” Lewrie said. “I’d think that you’d find it worrying, in your line of work.”
In answer, Mountjoy laid a finger against his lips and made a boyish “Sshh!”
* * *
Thomas Mountjoy kept lodgings on the top floor of a stout and old house, which allowed him access to a rooftop garden area with an awning rigged over it for coolness and shade. There were slat-wood chairs and settees, and Moorish-looking pottery urns for side-tables with wood tops, and a wrought-iron metal table. Most prominent was a large brass telescope mounted on a tripod.
“Should anyone wish to do me in, I’m harder to reach up here,” Mountjoy said in seeming seriousness as he invited Lewrie to “take a pew” and cool off from the exertion of walking so far uphill. “There are several very stout doors to get through, first, and by then I’m awake and well-armed. When needed, I putter with all my flowers and plants, and … keep an eye on Spain. See my telescope?”
There were indeed lots of potted greenery, and so many blossoms that the air was sweet with their aromas. Lewrie went to the telescope and bent down to peer through it. “Aha!” he said.
Mountjoy’s aerie was high-enough up the hills that he could see over the British Lines right across the wide swath of neutral ground at the narrow neck to the matching line of fortifications on the Spanish side. Mountjoy’s telescope was huge, and strong, good enough to serve an astronomer, and fill its entire ocular with the moon in all its details. He could even make out Spanish sentries pacing along at the top of the Spanish works, slouching, smoking, or yawning!
“Nice view of the harbour, too,” Mountjoy told him, “and what’s acting on the Spanish side of the bay, at Algeciras. Quite useful, my English eccentricities, do you not think? To all casual observers I’m in the grain trade, and keep an office in the South end of town … where people who report to me can come and go. Sir Hew allows me and mine to do some smuggling, in a small way, which gives my men in the field good reason to travel in Spain.”
“And you keep him informed on who the real smugglers are, I take it?” Lewrie asked, swivelling the telescope to seek out his ship to see what was going on there. He stood erect and looked South and could look right cross the straits to the other rocky headland, and the massive Spanish fort at Ceuta. It was more than twelve miles off, but the powerful telescope could fetch up a decent image, even so.
“When I come across one arranging a huge shipment,” Mountjoy said. “If I kept up with all of them, I’d have no time for my real tasks.”