A final interview with Malta’s sole British consul assured Lewrie that he’d not have to make a port call at Palermo on Sicily’s Northern coast; that was civil government’s seat, whilst British military command, and a Foreign Office representative, could be found at Messina.
Not wishing to sail his three un-armed transports into reach of French warships and gunboats, and the remnants of the Neapolitan navy in the narrows of the Straits of Messina, with only Vigilance as their escort, Lewrie decided to shape a course along Sicily’s Southern coast, round the Western end, then passing Palermo and the Tyrrhenian shores, where many promising practice beaches lay, then to stand out to sea by Capo d’Orlando and get a glimpse of the fabled Aeolian Islands of Greek myth, finally coming to anchor East of Milazzo, near the West side of the peninsula on which Messina sat.
A last practice landing of troops was staged, and the 94th was allowed off the ships for a period of rest, setting up a tent camp and cooking facilities above a wide beach, in the shade of olive groves, and immediately swarmed by urchins, farmers with produce and livestock to sell, hand-carts loaded with barricoes and ankers of rough wine, and the inevitable whores.
Lewrie found horses for him and Deavers, and rode into Messina to find someone in charge who might direct him to potential targets for raids, and someone from Foreign Office Secret Branch who could supply information. It did not go well.
Lewrie’s familiarity with Italy was limited to brief stays in Genoa, Naples, and Leghorn, where there had always been someone who understood perfectly good English, or made sense of his stab at signing what he wanted, and no one would ever declare Lewrie as a man skilled in foreign languages; French and Greek at his various schools, Hindee in the Far East, Portuguese or Spanish the last few years, they were all beyond him. And it did not help that Messina was, for all of its mythic fame, rather squalid, and simply teeming with suspicious-looking … foreigners packed elbow-to-arsehole, stirring about as busy as a whole herd of shipboard rats, slanging away in a loud, angry babble, with their hands flying about in accompaniment. It was only when he finally came across some off-duty British soldiers, as drunk as Davy’s Sow, that he could barely gather from their drink-slurred Cockney accents where to find Army headquarters.
* * *
That did not go well, either.
“What? Mean t’say you’ve only four hundred or so effectives?” a Brigadier finally sent down to deal with him scoffed. “Pinpricks, a flea bite, by God! An experiment, is it? It is the principal intent of the Army on Sicily to hold the island, for the first part, sir, and in future, any planned thrusts cross the Straits will require a re-enforcement of massive proportions by at least two or three times the current size of the garrison. I doubt, sir, if your paltry four hundred or so could make the slightest contribution to that in the face of the fifty thousand or so French soldiers, and allied troops, that Marshal Murat has over there,” the Brigadier simpered.
“Aye, I see that, sir,” Lewrie replied, getting hot under the collar to be lectured and dismissed, “but surely you have made up a list of places to be probed, attacked in quick in-and-out raids that keep the French on their toes. Small fishing ports, gatherings of coastal trading ships that could support another French landing here? Watch towers, semaphore chains, small strongholds?”
“To what end, Captain Lewrie?” the Brigadier scoffed, amused. “Were plans in hand to stage such raids, they would envisage brigade-sized forays, perhaps division-level incursions, much like Stuart’s at Maida. But then … that would require the full co-operation of the Navy, with a fleet of transports, a protective squadron, and the ability to land substantial cavalry and artillery to support and screen the infantry, artillery especially, since the French seem so fond of it and must be countered in matching strength. You have the ability to land cavalry, do you, sir? Your troops have any artillery?”
“We have the guns of my ship, Brigadier,” Lewrie sullenly shot back. “And we don’t plan to go much beyond their range.”
“Pinpricks and flea bites, as I said, Captain,” that officer waved away with a languid hand like shooing flies. “A nip from a wee terrier, at best, I’m afraid, which contributes nothing to the effort to expel the French from Naples and Italy, and might only serve to alert them to strengthen their coast defences.”
“Leaving the partisans inland to have a freer hand, perhaps, sir?” Lewrie said hopefully.
“Partisans?” the Army officer gawped with a laugh. “If there are Italians who emulate the Spanish and Portuguese, it’s the first that I have heard of it, sir! I fear that if you truly wish to conduct your, ah … experiment, the Army here on Sicily has no suggestions, or encouragement, to give you. You must operate on your own.”
“In that case, sir,” Lewrie said, ready to strangle the simpering buffoon, “is there anyone from the Foreign Office in Messina who deals with intelligence-gathering cross the Straits? Might you steer me to him?”
“What, sir?” the Brigadier exclaimed, shocked. “You would base your operations on rumour-mongerers and smugglers, haw haw? Well, on your head be it, and God help you.”
* * *
“If ya don’t mind, sir, I’m thinking we should make an open show of our pistols. This looks more like a lawless London stew.”
“Aye, it does,” Lewrie agreed as they reined their horses to a stop in the middle of a teeming harbourside street reeking of pitch, tar, and fish where that fool Brigadier had directed them to the lodgings and offices of a Foreign Office representative. He looked at the storefronts and signs above the warehouses and chandleries for a familiar Falmouth Import & Export Company sign, but evidently that cover identity had become too well-known, or was only used at Gibraltar, Lisbon, and Cádiz. There was a solid block of stone houses or office buildings in the middle of the street on the shore side. The middle edifice had a Sicilian version of an open-air tavern, either side of which were elevated doorways above grimy stone stoops. Beside each, wooden signs had been screwed to the walls, listing the offices within, and Lewrie kneed his horse closer to try and read them.
No, nothing in English at all, he thought, taking off his hat to swipe a sleeve over his brow; all Sicilian businesses. He reined his horse past the tavern to the next, very aware of the fierce and threatening glares of its patrons, who looked like a parcel of off-duty pirates who’d drunk up or whored away the last of their booty who contemplated how much the horses, saddles, clothing, and shoes of these interlopers might go for.
The new sign he discovered listed peoples’ names, with numbers of their spaces, and, wonder of wonders, there was one English name, a Mr. Nicholas Quill, Esq.
Can’t be a British lawyer, Lewrie thought; he’d starve to death on a practice here! He has t’be our local spy!
Lewrie swung down, looking for a place to lash his horse’s reins but there was nothing. Deavers alit and took both reins. As they both dithered as to what to do, a boy came out of the doorway.
“I say there, lad,” Lewrie began with a grin, “Does Signore Quill live here? The British fellow?”
“Scusa, signore?” the lad asked, “Signore Quill, si si” followed by a flood of utterly incomprehensible Italian, though it sounded helpful. “Numero quattro,” he said, pointing inwards and upwards. “Something something stalla something cavallos?” he asked, pointing to a narrow alley at the end of the building that might lead to stables, or a slash cross the throat.
“Think he means stables, sir,” Deavers intuited.
“You show?” Lewrie asked, pointing in that direction, then at their horses, which elicited a broad grin, a vociferous “Si si, signore!” and a reach for the reins. “Go with him, Deavers,” Lewrie ordered.
“Can I write my will first, sir?” Deavers said, sounding as if he wasn’t joshing, but followed the boy down the alley. Both were back in five minutes. “Proper stables for the lodgers, sir,” Deavers informed Lewrie, “and there’s a great brute with a fowling piece who’ll stand guard over them. I slipped him six pence, so they might be there when we leave.”
“Right, then,” Lewrie said, promising to re-imburse Deavers once inside, “he’s in number four. Let’s see if he’s in.”
“Ehm, what if he’s not, sir?” Deavers asked.
“Then we’ll look like bloody fools,” Lewrie told him. “Lad, is Signore Quill at home, uh … in his … casa?” he said, hoping that the Spanish word would translate to Italian.
“Ah, si, signore,” the lad said, bobbing his head, “a casa, adopera la casa come unufficio.”
Whatever the Devil that means! Lewrie thought.
The boy led them up a dark, grimy stairwell and knocked on a door which was slowly opened in a cautious manner. A muttered conversation took place, at the end of which the occupant opened the door wider and peered out, putting Lewrie in mind of a mole who’d accidentally broken through a lawn into sunlight.
“Mister Quill, I take it?” Lewrie said. “I am Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, and I dearly wish to speak with you, concerning doings over on the mainland.”
“Ah, Captain Lewrie, Sir Alan, rather,” Quill said, acting as if he had expected French grenadiers had come to bayonet him, and much relieved to find that his visitors were British. “Come in, sir, you and your man, come in!”
He thanked the lad for his assistance, gave him a pat on his head, then securely locked and bolted the door before he steered his visitors to seats, or offered tea or wine.
Mr. Nicholas Quill was a tall, slim, and slightly built fellow who more resembled a university drone who spent his life in libraries, with a long, sorrowful face and a Cornish hook of a nose, and a first appearance that did not fill Lewrie with confidence.
“I’ve no tea brewed, Sir Alan, but there is a rather nice wine,” Quill offered, “a very fruity white, with a big finish.”
“That’d be grand, Mister Quill,” Lewrie said, and Deavers all but licked his lips to be included in the offer, not dismissed as some officer’s catch-fart. “Ah, that is tasty!” Lewrie said after a first sip.
“May I ask what brings you to my offices and lodgings, sir?” Quill asked after a long sip of his own, and an appreciative Aahh!
“You’re Foreign Office, I trust, sir,” Lewrie began. “I have a small squadron of ships with which I’m charged to conduct boat raids against the French on the mainland, and I’m in need of guidance as to targets, where I can hurt the French the most at the least risk to my small force. I need information, Mister Quill.”
“I am with the Foreign Office, sir,” Quill replied after a long moment of staring. “And, if you are familiar with Secret Branch … but of course you are, sir. My mentor, Mister Zachariah Twigg, recruited me from Trinity College, Cambridge, and he mentioned your name in recounting some of his past exploits. How remiss of me to even ask if you knew anything of Secret Branch, ha ha!”
Quill had a laugh that sounded like hiccups and the inhalations of a half-drowned man, rocking back and forth with a prominent Adam’s apple bobbing in his skinny neck; it was quite off-putting, and Lewrie began to doubt that he’d come to the right source. Even the bland Thomas Mountjoy at Gibraltar looked more like a spy than this’un!
“I, unfortunately, do not take such an active, or exciting, part in intelligence gathering, Sir Alan,” Quill told him with a gloomy look.
Oh, Christ, have I come to the wrong place, again? Lewrie thought.
“I fear that I am not the skulking sort, sir,” Quill said, “no midnight meetings, or letters in invisible ink, ha ha. But my superiors have endowed me with an operating budget with which I have engaged, ah … dare I call them agents, who are willing to share information or gather it, and bring it to me. A most colourful lot they are, too, sir. Smugglers, petty thieves, out-of-work fishermen … Sicilians for the most part, and, when it comes to guile, one cannot do better than a Sicilian. They cost me an horrendous sum in hard currency, but their reports of French troop movements and such I’ve found to be spot-on and truthful for the most part. Though, some will embellish, if you get my meaning, hah?”
“Is that the reason you live down here?” Lewrie asked him. “I’d expect that you’d lodge and keep offices up in the castello.”
“Poor as these rooms are, sir, they are quite handy for meeting with all sorts of suspicious sorts, at all hours of the day or night. And besides,” he added with a rueful look, “in the castello I would be dining with the general staff mess, at greater cost, amid Army officers who have no time for my sort, or the information I could provide them, if they would ever give me the time of day. Rumour-monger, ungentlemanly tradesman, ‘the gullible ghost’ … I’ve been called all those, and more, sir.”
“So, you could introduce me to your ah, agents, so they can begin scouting for me?” Lewrie asked.
“The principal men who call the shots, as it were, are in port even as we speak, sir,” Quill assured him. “I can get a message to them and you could meet them this evening. Here would be best, I think. We can’t have you gallivanting round the quays in full uniform, now can we, sir? That would attract too much attention, and put my people at risk were they seen meeting with you publicly.”
Gawd, that means we’ll have t’sleep over here, Lewrie thought, giving Quill’s squalid lodgings a hard looking-over, a mix of poverty-stricken genteel student’s quarters, and the roughest sort of peasant hut, dreading the possibility of fleas, lice, bed bugs, mice, and, given the closeness of the seafront, wharf rats in the middle of the night. It smelled like a garbage midden, too, and Lewrie wondered what sort of toilet facilities might be available if caught short; a communal bucket in the odd corner, or an empty stall out back in the stables.
“Aye, tonight would be best,” Lewrie grudgingly said, “and we can get back to my ship tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, good, then!” Quill exclaimed. “I’ll whistle up Fiorello … the lad you met? And send him to fetch Caesar. In the meantime, we can send down to the tavern for dinner.”
“Caesar?” Lewrie asked.
“Full pseudonym is Julio Caesare,” Quill said with a cryptic smile. “God knows his real name, I don’t. A thorough scoundrel, but damned good at whatever it is that he does, and does for me.”
“Looking forward to it,” Lewrie lied, plastering a co-operative grin on his phyz.