02 - Keane's Challenge (29 page)

*

They rode in silence, or as close as they could get to it, with their swords wrapped in leather covers and no noise save for the rattle of the cartwheels, the jangle of the harness and the sound of the horses.

Up in a tree a night owl hooted and Martin looked up, reminded not for the first time of his home on the family farm in County Down. A home he had left after getting a maid pregnant. It had been his choice to leave. His father had said that it was of no great consequence. That many of his friends’ sons had made the same mistake. That the girl could marry their gardener,
who was keen enough to have her. And Martin had agreed. But his conscience was pricked. He was not like those others. Never had been and, waking one morning, he had decided that if he were to live a life that was not a lie, he must leave. And so he had taken his dearest possessions and crept out of the house, not looking back.

He thought now of his father out on the estate. Of partridge shooting and the talks on nature and farming which had fuelled his boyhood imagination and he wondered how the old man was. He had not written since breaking the news of his enlisting. Perhaps one day, he thought, he would return. When all this was over and old Boney dead and buried.

The owl flew off, beating the night air with its wings, its silhouette a black shape against black. Garland, edgy and unhappy to be out in the jet-black darkness of the country at night, jumped. ‘What was that?’

Martin laughed. ‘An owl, you doxie. Just an owl.’

Midnight came and went and by four in the morning they had reached Alvesco and Keane was impatient to be off. But first he donned his disguise. Gilpin, the brilliant scrounger, had done them proud and Keane had opted for a broad-brimmed hat with a red handkerchief tied beneath it, a waistcoat and a pair of red trousers and short boots. He had not shaved and his face, already weather-beaten from campaigning, looked as leathery as any swarthy Spaniard. Gilpin himself wore a straw hat, a waistcoat and cropped trousers over espadrilles. Having the same swarthy look but lacking Keane’s massive frame and stature, looked a natural for his assistant in the roles they were about to play.

Garland had guffawed at them. ‘You look even better than you did at Oporto, sir.’ Even Archer had managed a quip. ‘If I
didn’t know better, sir, I’d take you for one of Sanchez’s men.’

They left Garland and Martin in a coppice outside the village before setting off again, Keane riding on the cart with Archer, Silver and Gilpin.

They knew this road well, having retreated along the same route just five weeks before and the wreckage of that withdrawal lay all around them on either side: packs, hats, a broken cart and the other detritus of an army on the move, papers, ruined shoes, bottles, cups and broken clay pipes.

*

They entered the gorge of the Côa and climbed up the road towards the bridge, whose high arc spanned the ravine.

He had half expected a French picket to be posted there. But there was none and he realized that Massena must now feel completely confident in his possession of this hard-fought territory.

As they crossed the bridge Keane recalled the French assault: the colonel shot, falling arms outstretched into the gorge. He supposed his body might yet be down there or had been swept into the river to be washed out into the Atlantic.

Two hours more and dawn was coming up now, scouring the sky of darkness. The little group rattled along the dust road towards the entrance to the town and Keane felt helplessly exposed. He hoped that their disguise, which had seemed so convincing to the others, would actually persuade the French that they were who they pretended to be. But he was not reassured.

He knew that there would be no cover from now on, as for around a mile around the ramparts which surrounded the town the trees had been cleared in all directions centuries earlier, another defensive measure.

The second support post was the deserted convent at Barca and here Archer and Silver settled themselves in the bell tower,
from where they could survey the surrounding countryside without fear of being seen. The horses they hid with Keane’s own mare in the old refectory and barred the door from within before climbing the tower. Silver watched the little cart shudder off down the road towards Almeida, which lay before them like some star that had fallen to earth, illuminated by the first rays of the morning sun.

He spoke low, though no one could have heard them in their eyrie.

‘I hope Mister Keane knows what he’s doing. Right into the lion’s lair he’s going. He’s a bold one.’

Now Keane and Gilpin sat together on the long seat at the front of the cart as Gilpin urged the horse on with his whip and spoke gently to her in Spanish.

*

They were coming in from the west side of the town and Gilpin turned to Keane. ‘Sir, just a thought, if I may. Shouldn’t we go round the ramparts and come in from the north. We’re meant to be travelling down from Madrid. Won’t they think it strange, sir?’

Keane shook his head. ‘I had thought that, but the fact of the matter is, if we come in from this side, where the explosion did its worst, then we probably won’t encounter much of a sentry post. Once we’re in it won’t matter which direction we’ve come from.’

To their right and left lay the French army, the occasional campfire lit for the sentries, stretched out across the plain, awaiting the order to advance. Keane felt their brooding presence like a great leviathan ready to spring from sleep and strike.

Almeida loomed before them, huge and forbidding. As they approached the ramparts Keane looked up at their sheer scale and thanked God that he would not be leading a forlorn hope
or a storming party up their steeply angled stone walls. A voice inside him, though, reminded him that this was a foolish thought. That if they survived this mad undertaking it would certainly be to fight again, and that part of that fighting, if they were to finally push the French from Spain, would surely involve just such an attack on such a fortress. He shuddered.

He was aware too now of the debris surrounding the ramparts that had been thrown from the citadel by the force of the explosion. Gun carriages lay strewn like children’s toys, with their great bronze cannon ripped from their mountings. Huge blocks of stone lay everywhere, blackened with scorch marks and among them piles of nameless, shapeless things which might just once have been parts of a human being.

The French, however, had improvised road blocks at the places where gates and guard posts had been blown away.

As they came within sight of any watchers on the walls, Keane turned to Gilpin. ‘Just act naturally.’ Their story was simple. They were two wine sellers. Keane the boss, delivering wine for the marshal, sent from Madrid by King Joseph, the brother of the emperor himself. They were also, though, searching for a loved one who had met his end in the explosion. Keane’s character’s brother a servant for the British when they had been here. In Keane’s mind his character had no love for the British, blamed them for all that was wrong in the peninsula and would offer his services to the French if they paid him.

Gilpin nodded, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘And for heavens sake don’t call me sir again. I’m Alfonso. Remember, you’re Manuel? And you are my assistant in the wine trade.’

They arrived at the outer ravelins and made their way up the scarred and pockmarked entrance drive which only a few weeks
before would have been impassable for being under cannon fire. Now it was silent and all around it was evidence of the effect of the huge blast. They passed more of the wreckage of huge siege guns that had been tossed from their bastions, the metal of the barrels twisted by the force into unimaginable shapes. The earth was cracked and burnt and raw, and stones of all sizes and varieties lay scattered at random. Trotting the cart slowly up the incline, they found themselves rising until they were on top of the outer bastions. Before them they saw all that remained of the west gate. Two ragged stumps of stone. As Keane had predicted, the old permanent guard house had gone with the gate, but the French had rigged a temporary structure with trees and stones and at this stood two infantrymen, their muskets at the high porte.

Keane whispered to Gilpin, ‘Steady. Remember: Manuel and Alfonso. From Madrid.’

They reached the sentries and Keane went first, explaining in his best Spanish that they were wine sellers from Madrid and came with a present for the marshal, from His Highness King Joseph himself.

The sentries walked round to the rear of the cart and looked at the boxes. He prodded one and pointed to it. ‘Open up. Let us see.’

Keane jumped down from the cart and, using a bar that was in the cart for this purpose, levered off the lid of one of the boxes. To his relief inside was a layer of three bottles of wine. The sentry picked up one of the bottles and looked at it. He shouted to his colleague, ‘Looks like the right stuff. He’s telling the truth. Let them in.’

Gilpin had said nothing but now, in impeccable Spanish muttered a thank you. The guard smiled at him and nodded him
on his way as Keane leapt back up on to the seat. The little cart rattled over the grille that was all that remained of the gate and into the town.

Keane turned to Gilpin once they were out of earshot of the sentries. ‘Well done. Nice touch. We should be on the London stage.’

‘At least we’re in, sir.’

They continued along the main street from the west, just as if they knew exactly where they were headed, an old escape technique that Gilpin had taught Keane, learned in his days as a petty thief and housebreaker in London.

They found themselves on a wide street which before the blast would have been the main thoroughfare at the west end of the town and a fashionable district. Now, though, it was no more than two rows of empty and shattered single-storey houses, their upper floors having been sliced off like the top layer of a cake. Looking in as they rumbled past, Keane was aware of the poignant rubbish, a tumbled jumble of desks and wardrobes, beds, chairs, clothes, papers and ornaments. It was the stuff of life. The possessions that had once meant something to someone. And occasionally he would glimpse something more horrific. Some physical trace of the people who had owned them. An arm or a leg, seared to the bone, an immolated carcass and, once at least, a grinning skull. Nothing or very little seemed to have been done to get rid of the corpses and as they walked on further the stench became oppressive.

Gilpin turned to Keane. ‘Blimey, sir – sorry, Alfonso. This place gives me the willies. I don’t like it.’

Keane could not help but agree. The town was far worse than he had imagined it might be. Although the terrible explosion had happened more than two weeks before, the place still held the
stench of death. ‘Yes, I know. It’s not good. You would have thought that the French would have buried the dead. It will breed disease ere long.’

They were passing the castle now or all that remained of it. The foundations were still there in the plan of the towers that had stood for so long. But of the rest of it there was nothing. Here surely must have been the epicentre of the blast. And he realized that the powder had been stored in the crypts beneath the cathedral. It must have been as Leech had said. In carrying powder out of the magazine, something, perhaps a lucky shot, had ignited a barrel and that had sparked the chain reaction which had resulted in the explosion. Simple and deadly.

As they drew closer to the centre of the town and away from the blast zone, they began to see more evidence of human life. There were people on the streets and shops and cantinas. But there was little of the gaiety or bonhomie they had come to expect from a Spanish town. The townspeople looked sullen and preoccupied, as if something was preying upon their minds. The place was full of French soldiers. All types, from hussars to common infantrymen, had been admitted on passes from the surrounding camps to drink and whore. As Keane and Gilpin drove the cart further into the town they tried to avoid eye contact with anyone, but soon, Keane knew, some drunken private or sergeant would spot them and cut up rough.

He spoke quietly to Gilpin. ‘We need to find Massena’s headquarters. Any bright ideas?’

‘If I was a French marshal, I’d make my billet where the British general had his.’ He was about to add ‘sir’ but managed to bite his tongue.

‘Good thinking. And Governor Cox’s house would be where, do you suppose?’

‘Somewhere salubrious. Keep driving, as if we know where we’re going.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘I suppose we could follow some of the French. I’ll look for the highest-ranking officers I can see.’

Gilpin shook his head. ‘Yes, but what then? What do we do to get in and then to get to him?’

‘Something will present itself.’

They took the cart further in, constantly changing direction as the road became too narrow. Generally, though, they managed to head to what they took to be the direction of the centre and eventually found themselves in a large plaza.

This surely, thought Keane, would be their opportunity to find the calibre of officer he wanted. He searched for a French staff officer and eventually found what he was looking for.

Two French officers, both of them with long moustaches and smoking cheroots, stood talking outside a cantina. Keane recognized the uniform of the general staff. Navy blue coats with a light blue front.

He muttered to Gilpin, ‘There, over there, look.’ They both stared. ‘Staff officers. They’re sure to be heading towards the HQ, eventually.’

They stopped the cart and Keane prayed that the officers would move off before anyone came to ask what was in the cart and what they were doing there. Keane jumped down, bought a piece of meat from a passing vendor and ate it, pretending to pass the time in much the same way as a number of other peasants who were in the square. Secretly, of course, he was keeping an eye on the officers.

At length, when they had finished their cigars, they left, by the north corner of the square, and he and Gilpin followed.
The men walked fast and with some purpose and eventually emerged into another plaza. An entire side of the square was occupied by a single building, a huge palace of a place which had been hung with tricolour flags. Keane took it to be the headquarters building. When the two officers entered, it confirmed his hunch.