02 - Keane's Challenge (23 page)

‘I know they’re black, Archer. The shape, man, the shape. Are they British or Swiss?’

‘They’re straight hats, sir, straight up and down, like stovepipes. Like ours. If you want my opinion, those men over there are our infantry. And they look as if they need help.’

‘It’s the 52nd, by God. They’ll be cut to pieces.’

Keane rode across to where Craufurd was standing on a vantage point, surveying the field. ‘Sir, with respect, may I ask what you intend to do about the 52nd?’

Craufurd stared at him. ‘Captain Keane.’ He shook his head. ‘Again you come to me. What is the problem? Are the 52nd not across the Côa?’

‘They are not, sir. They have not moved from their position.’

Craufurd put a telescope to his eye and looked towards the south. ‘Christ almighty. Ramsay, take a message down to Colonel Beckwith and the 52nd. Over there. Tell him to disengage and pull back. Before he’s overrun.’

The ADC galloped off and Craufurd turned to Keane. ‘Thank you, captain. Indebted to you. They’ll need covering fire. A screen.’

He surveyed the hill above the Côa.

‘Keane, take a message to the 95th. They’ve just cleared off that hillside there. But they will have to retake it immediately. You won’t be the most popular messenger. But it has to be done. Find their colonel if you can. I did hear he’d been hit. They must
do it, Keane, and swiftly, or we shall lose the 52nd. Tell them the order is directly from me.’

With Silver, Ross, Garland, Martin and Archer riding behind him, Keane pushed his horse down the hill and then, taking off across the plain, spurred her on fast towards the 95th on the slope above the river. The Rifles were lying down, their weapons at the ready as always, scattered about the hillside. He found an officer, a captain, he thought, though it was always hard to tell with the greenjackets.

‘Where’s your commander?’

‘Can’t say. He was hit coming up here. He may be dead. He was with number-one company. Who are you?’

A musket round came zinging in and just missed Keane’s head before lodging in the rock behind him.

‘Christ, it’s a bit hot here. Keane, Corps of Guides. I’ve come from the general.’

‘From Black Bob?’

‘Yes. Orders from him: you’re to take back that hill.’ He pointed in the direction from which the Rifles had just pulled back.

‘Are you quite sure? We’ve only just come from there.’

‘Quite sure, captain. Those are the general’s orders. You must take it back in order to allow the 52nd to get away. If you do not, they are sure to be caught and cut to pieces.’

He pointed down into the valley where the 52nd were fighting for their lives. The captain followed his direction and in an instant understood.

‘Yes, I see. Right.’

He called across to one of his men. ‘Sarn’t Jones?’

‘Sah.’

‘Get the men together. We’re going back up that hill.’

Keane and the others moved away, riding back towards
Craufurd, but as they went, Archer called out, ‘Sir. Over there. Look.’

Keane turned to see the line on the hill that had been formed by the 43rd and 95th was under attack from a great column of the French. A swarm of men pushing up the hillside. As he watched, he saw the redcoats fire and then, rather than standing their ground, pull back as the mass of Frenchmen came on. There was no stopping them. Below them, the bridge was still full of traffic: wagons, guns and men squeezed into a tiny funnel were trying to get through and across the river and the French could see it. Massena was determined not to let them escape. Again the French infantry came on and again, after a volley, the 43rd fell back another few yards.

Keane did not wait. He turned to Ross, called, ‘Follow me,’ and rode hard across to the redcoated companies. A captain of the regiment, mounted on a handsome bay horse, was behind them urging them to stand as best he could. Keane pulled up hard beside him. ‘Come on, come with me, sir.’ Keane drew his sword. Then, riding directly in front of the British line and followed by the captain, he halted and stood up in his stirrups. Taking off his helmet he waved it three times in the air.

‘Forty-third, follow me. Send these buggers back to Paris.’

The captain had taken off his cocked hat now and waved it in the air before riding with Keane beside him down towards the French. In front of them lay a mass of blue-coated infantry, their muskets at the present, advancing steadily up the hill. Keane did not look behind him but hoped to God that they were being followed. He yelled to Ross, who with the others had come round before the redcoats. ‘Are they with us, sarn’t?’

‘Yes, sir, they’re coming. Don’t worry.’

There was a huge cheer from their rear as the British infantry
poured down the hill with charged bayonets pointed towards the French. Keane found himself looking at a thousand Frenchmen and wondered for a moment what he was doing. But it was clear that the French were even more dumbfounded by what they saw before them.

In an instant their triumphant and irresistible attack which had been pushing back the redcoat line came to a halt, as the enemy inexplicably made a mad charge towards them led by a man in a brown coat and a British officer. Their own officers, equally bewildered, tried to make them advance, but could not. As the men of the 43rd increased their pace behind him, Keane led the others and the captain off to the left of the line.

But before the lines met, the French broke. It began with the skirmishers, the
voltigeurs
, out in front, who began to turn and run back into the ranks. And once that happened, there was no hope. The whole French column just seemed to implode, turning in on itself in panic and scrambling back down the hill and away from the redcoats. It was over in a matter of minutes and Keane and his men stood their ground, as the redcoat came to a halt and presented a firing line, letting off a volley after the departing French.

The captain turned to Keane. ‘Napier, William Napier. Thank you for that. I was almost there myself. But thank you, Captain…’

‘James Keane. And these are my men.’

‘Obliged to all of you, I’m sure.’

He winced and Keane noticed blood on his breeches. ‘You’ve been hit.’

‘Yes, in my hip. Think I’ll live.’

‘I’ll have my man look at it.’

‘You have your own physician?’

‘Yes, Archer’s first class. Medical school.’

As they watched, the 52nd came hurrying back towards the river and now, safe from threat from the advancing French, crossed the bridge quickly and with no loss.

Keane replied. ‘I think it may be our turn to cross now. Captain Napier, after you.’

Once on the far bank of the Côa, Keane found the Ordenanza and regrouped his own command. ‘Sarn’t Ross, what’s the butcher’s bill?’

‘No one hit, sir. Though we seem to have lost three of the Portuguese, sir, missing.’

‘Something of a miracle, sarn’t, I’d say.’

‘Yes, sir, given what we’ve just seen and done. By rights you should be dead, sir. Bloody brave, though.’

‘Thank you, sarn’t. Enough, I think.’

Archer, who had been attending to Napier’s wound, returned in triumph. He held up a misshapen musket ball. ‘Got the little bugger out. The captain was very grateful. Gave me a guinea for my trouble. Told me he couldn’t fathom, though, how a medical man might have ended up with you, sir.’

Keane smiled. ‘We seem to have got away.’

‘By the skin of our teeth, sir.’

‘Yes, Silver. That wasn’t an easy one.’

‘Are they ever easy, sir?’

Archer pointed down the hill. ‘It’s not over yet, sir. Look.’

The last of the redcoats had barely crossed to the other side of the bridge when with a great roar a column of French infantry approached it. Led by a colonel on a magnificent white charger and with the regimental eagle, the French pushed on to the little bridge three abreast and began to cross.

From all around them musketry and rifle fire began to open
up. Keane looked but did not see a single one of the Frenchmen fall. The bullets were missing them by a mile.

‘It’s the trajectory. They can’t get the angle right.’ Of course the muskets had little chance of hitting, but the riflemen and cacadores would have a good chance if only they could work out the angle. The French continued relentlessly across the bridge and for a moment Keane thought that all the bullets in Hell would not stop them. And then it happened. One of the riflemen hit the colonel and he stopped for an instant, then fell off the white horse, slumped on to the parapet of the bridge and disappeared over the edge into the ravine below. There was a cheer from the hillside and the French came on, an officer dragging the colonel’s horse back. Now, though, the Rifles had found their mark. In what was almost a volley both the 95th and the cacadores opened up and a score of Frenchman fell.

Still the French pushed on. Their artillery had set up a little way back and were firing up into the hills, making the occasional hit on the allied lines.

Silver spoke up. ‘It’s a little too hot here, sir, don’t you think?’

Keane kept watching the French. Again the rifles fired and more Frenchmen fell. The front rank of the column walked over the dead and dying, intent on gaining the other side. At last they were there and half a dozen
voltigeurs
peeled off to find cover on the hillside. But the rifle fire was relentless and within a few moments the head of the column just disintegrated. The enemy stopped on the bridge, pinned down and decimated. The bodies piled up until they were parapet-high and then the
voltigeurs
decided that they should retreat. But that was now impossible. Men poured down the hill as the riflemen continued their massacre.

Ross turned to Keane. ‘This is murder, sir. Just plain bloody murder, what we’re doing.’

Keane shook his head. ‘It may well be murder. But never criticize that which saves your life, sarn’t.’

Cut off from the column by their own dead, three of the
voltigeurs
met their ends on British bayonets, two more with a bullet. The last of them, climbing up the wall of the dead, reached the top, only to be shot down by a Portuguese marksman. He fell, Christ-like, his arms outspread, to join his dead colonel in the valley below. And then the column retreated, leaving the bridge to the dead and the dying.

The British and the Portuguese gave a huge cheer and Keane saw Craufurd, standing high among them, waving his hat in the air for his victory.

He might claim his victory, thought Keane. It was not much though. In fact, he had very nearly lost his command. The Light Division. Not that anyone would ever know that.

Somehow, they had all come through it alive. But Keane knew that this was not the end. That the French would clear the bridge in a day’s time, or two days at the most, and that they would cross it, and that before that happened Craufurd would have taken them all thirty miles back. And Keane and his men would go with him and find a new position to defend, until the French came again.

Keane sighed and, staring down at his dust-covered boots, spat into the dirt the wad of bitter tobacco on which he had been chewing. And then, looking up, wondered if by some miracle he might see Wellington and his staff come cantering over the crest of the hill at the head of the army. But he knew it to be a wish that would never be fulfilled.

Late July had given way to August, and all through the searing summer heat the town of Almeida had lain under siege.

The French guns blasted away at her ramparts, without much impression, while her people cowered in their bomb-proof casemates and shelters and her garrison replied with shot and shell, with which they were amply supplied. And through all that time Craufurd’s men stood by near the little hilltop town of Castello Mendo and watched and waited, and with them stood Keane.

They had pulled back some ten miles immediately after the action on the Côa, along the lower road towards Guarda and Celorico. Keane had, as ordered, maintained a presence at the rear of the division and after a few days had begun to send out patrols.

It had been almost three weeks earlier that the first reports
had come in that the French were beginning siege trenches. Using the remaining telegraph hills that lay between Almeida and the coast, he had signalled his findings to Celorico. Clearly this was the way Massena intended to attack Portugal. He would take Almeida first and then turn on Wellington’s army. The question was, which road would he take. The southern route following the British withdrawal or the northern through Pinhel and Fornos?

There was nothing for them to do but sit back and wait. Keane, though, had unfinished business. Every day Craufurd received a fresh update from the citadel by telegraph. To date the fortifications had held up under the French bombardment and Governor Cox was satisfied that they had more than enough food, supplies and ammunition to hold out for some time, two months at least. Marshal Massena would have a long wait on his hands.

And when, thought Keane, he finally did take the town and march into the countryside into Portugal, the good marshal was in for an unwelcome surprise. For his army of more than one hundred thousand men would be without food or supplies or any means of finding them.

Keane had lost count in his head of the number of mills they had managed to destroy in just two weeks. He had made a note of it, but always it seemed less on paper than it was in his mind. They had grown accustomed to abuse from the peasants, although there had been no opportunity for a repeat of the incident at Nava d’Aver. Besides, Keane now travelled in some force, if not for fear of revenge attacks by the peasants, then on account of the French cavalry patrols that were becoming more audacious by the day.

The escort for the Ordenanza on these expeditions would
generally consist of a party of Sanchez’s lancers, who he knew would have no qualms about pig-sticking the peasants. Heredia of course went with them, and Keane had no doubt about his feelings on the matter.

The Ordenanza, surprisingly perhaps, had risen to their onerous task and developed an aptitude for demolition. But best of all was the fact that Leech had returned, his wounds healed, and taken command of the operation, as Keane had known he would. He had detached a selected party from the Portuguese and trained them up in how it was possible to use just a small amount of powder to destabilize a building and bring it down.