02 - Keane's Challenge (6 page)

Keane thought for a moment. ‘It’s possible. Yes. Perhaps.’

Or might it be something else? he thought. The questions came fast. Was it possible that there was another spy? Could he have done this? Or was Pritchard dead at all? What proof did they have that this was him?

Morris was searching among the debris, looking for further clues. At length he called, ‘James, I think you should see this.’

Keane walked over to him and saw that he held in his hands a sword. It was curved, not unlike Keane’s own blade, which he had acquired in Egypt as a young subaltern. But instead of the white mother-of-pearl hilt of his own sword, it was fitted with a grip of black onyx.

Morris held it out towards him. ‘It belonged to Pritchard.’

Keane took the sword, whose blade had been twisted by the force of the explosion, and stared at it. Morris must be right. But it was still not conclusive proof that the man who had owned it lay among the rubble of the building.

He shook his head. ‘How can we be sure?’

‘James, surely.’

‘No. It’s not enough.’

It was a desolate scene and Keane was desperate to leave as
quickly as possible. Surely, he thought, this place would yield no more secrets.

Morris gave a shout. ‘Christ almighty! James, come here.’

Keane picked his way through the stones and found his friend standing over all that was left of a man. The head had gone and the right arm – presumably the one they had already – but the torso remained intact, though blackened by flames. Morris was pointing down at it and Keane followed his gaze to the dead man’s hand. Keane could see that the little finger bore a gold ring engraved with a crest.

Morris spoke again. ‘There’s your proof, James. That’s Pritchard. No doubt.’

Keane, though nauseous at the sight, stooped and lifted the hand. He shuddered. It was still warm from the explosion, in a mockery of life. Then, carefully, he grasped the ring and eased it off the finger. ‘This will do as proof for Grant. Well done, Tom.’ It was enough for Grant, he thought, but it still did not tell them who had set the explosion. The business was far from concluded.

Placing the signet ring in his pocket, Keane turned and with Morris walked carefully through the ruin and into the street, which was alive with people. They stood, dazed and deafened by the explosion, some of them nursing wounds from blast fragments. One woman was wailing and running from house to house and person to person, screaming someone’s name, a husband or a child unaccounted for. The blast had travelled upward and sideways, ripping a hole through the two houses to the left of Pritchard’s dwelling, with the bizarre random ill fortune that typified such explosions. And thus a device intended to kill one man had brought death and suffering to a neighbourhood.

Keane thought for a moment and, as they walked, turned
to Morris. ‘Have you realized, Tom, that had we been but two minutes earlier, we too might have ended up like Pritchard?’

Morris blanched. ‘No, I had not. You don’t suppose it was intended for us?’

‘Not for a moment. But what luck.’ Though, for an instant, Keane half wondered whether Morris might have been right. They stood together in the street and, as the dust cleared, Keane saw bodies lying closer to the house. A woman lay in the gutter, much of her head taken away, and beside her one of the urchin children, half eviscerated.

Morris shook his head. ‘No matter how long I serve in the army, James, I cannot countenance the death of the innocent. Yet the longer this war continues the more civilians seem to die. Is that to be the future of all war, d’you suppose? That all should die? Not merely soldiers such as you and I, but entire peoples.’

‘That has always been the way, Tom, you know that. The innocent have always suffered in war. War has no favourites. Singles out none for its special attention.’

‘Yes, but this war, James, is somehow different. These people. It has become a way of life for them. Why should they die?’

It was a thought, he knew, that had often troubled his friend, as it did Keane himself and many others, but he had not heard Morris speak with such passion about it before. This war might be different, but there was something about his friend which was different also. It worried him and he wondered if he was witnessing a change in Morris’s temperament that had not been there previously.

‘They all fight now, Tom. You know what the guerrillas say: this is a war to free their country. These people – women, children – are simply justified casualties in the struggle. Just as any soldiers might be.’

Morris nodded at the mangled corpses. ‘Yes, but they didn’t deserve to die like that.’

‘No, no one deserves such a fate. And of course they didn’t. But you must agree that their death and that of the provost in there are but a small price to pay for our being rid of the spy. Who knows how many lives Pritchard’s death today has saved?’

‘Yes, put like that, I can see there must be a greater purpose to it, although my mind still has so many questions left unanswered.’

Keane nodded. ‘Mine too, dear friend. And chief among them now is, who it was killed Colonel Pritchard?’

Keane drew the spyglass from his saddlebag and clicked it open before putting it to his eye to survey the plains of León. The landscape stretched away from him – parched midsummer fields under a blazing sky – and there, rising in the middle distance, the city of Ciudad Rodrigo: isolated, helpless and besieged.

Keane stared at it through the glass and considered the situation. The city of ten thousand souls, with a garrison half that number, had been invested since the end of April, almost two months, and for half that time had been under constant bombardment from some two hundred French guns.

Keane knew how that must feel – the constant whine of the incoming rounds of shell and ball shot which smashed into the masonry or exploded high above your head, raining down death and lethal shards of red-hot metal upon anyone below: soldier and civilian alike. He thought for a moment of the two bodies at the wreckage of Pritchard’s house. His mind was filled with the image of the woman and child, innocent victims, caught in the bomb blast, lying in the gutter in Celorico, and he amplified it a thousand times. This then would be the extent of the
human catastrophe that was about to unfold here, at Ciudad. And he was powerless to prevent it.

It was relentless, although Keane knew too that General Herrasti must still hold out hope that Wellington would march to lift the siege. But if what Wellington had told them was to be believed, those hopes would soon be dashed. Keane slid the glass together and replaced it in his bags, then looked at the surrounding countryside. León was as flat as any place he had ever seen, even the deserts of Egypt. It would have been suicide for Wellington, with his inferior numbers, attempt to relieve the place. It was precisely what Massena would have wanted. The ground was perfect for his large, mobile army and for the French tactics. The British and their Portuguese allies would have been swallowed up and run down by Massena’s cavalry, arguably the finest in the world.

No. It was impossible to think that Wellington would come. He would sacrifice the city and its inhabitants to safeguard his army. There were times, thought Keane, when the end justified the means. And times when he thanked God that he was not in the general’s place.

He thought of the people of Ciudad, the women and children, and recalled not only Celorico now but what he had witnessed the previous year at Oporto, when the army had liberated the city after it had been ravaged by the French. Eight thousand people, they said, had been butchered, the women raped, the houses ransacked. He had no doubt that the same must happen in Ciudad. And then the name of the British would be cried out by the dying and a curse called down upon the name of Wellington.

*

He and his men, together with the German hussars, were based at the town of Gallegos, some three miles distant from his current
position overlooking Ciudad. This morning he had taken a small patrol out to the hill. Just six of them, all his own men. His boys.

There was, though, one man missing. He had left Morris at Celorico. The excuse had been that, even with the death of Pritchard, he had things to resolve about the spy. Paperwork which must be completed and allegations to be addressed in order at last to secure Heredia’s lasting innocence.

But Keane knew that there was more to his absence. He had seen it at the blast site. Something in Morris’s eyes that he had not seen before and which troubled him. Something hidden and new.

In fact, he felt, with no little guilt, glad that his friend was not here. There would have been nothing worse than having to deal with Morris’s lack of faith in their mission and their command in the open, before the men.

*

They were under orders to observe and, if he saw an opportunity, seize information. But in the ten days he had been here no such opportunity had arisen. Keane had watched the French from the rear as they went about their business. Today was no different, he thought. Some time soon, surely, the place would fall. But not today.

Sam Gilpin was beside him. The gutter thief he had liberated from jail and whose talent at mimicry had already been used to good effect as a spy.

‘Queer, ain’t it, sir, how we can’t do nothing to help them. Makes you feel useless as a whore’s rosary.’

‘Yes, Gilpin, I know exactly what you mean. If only there was some means of aiding them. But all we can do is sit here and watch. And we know what must happen in the end.’

It’s a bloody shame, sir. And those poor women and wee children in there too.’

‘We have our orders. There is nothing we can do.’

‘The general’s not going to come is he, sir?’

‘No, Gilpin, I don’t think we need have any fear of that.’

*

He was about to turn and head back once again to join the others at Gallegos, when there was a shout from behind him, where Will Martin, keen-eyed as a hawk, had been looking out across the barren landscape.

‘Sir, over there, on the right. In the distance, there. Something’s moving.’

Keane took out the glass again and put it to his eye. A dust cloud was billowing across the plain, suggesting men on the move. The boy was right. From the French lines it appeared that someone or something was moving in their direction. And it was moving fast. He handed the glass to Ross.

‘There, sarn’t. What d’you make of that?’

The Scotsman put the telescope to his eye. ‘Someone’s coming, sir, I’d say so. Horsemen. Quite a few of them too, by the look of it. Can’t see who they are.’

Keane stared at the dust cloud. ‘But I think we might guess. Best not take any chances, eh?’

He took the glass back from Ross and, having stowed it, pulled on the reins and turned his horse. ‘We’ll pull back. We may have been seen.’ He cast a glance behind him and saw that, as he had feared, the dust cloud was drawing ever nearer. He could see horses in it now, and above them something catching the light of the sun which sat high in the sky. Something glistening. A touch of gold.

‘Dragoons. They’re dragoons, lads. Come on.’

The word was enough. They needed no other command. Together the six horsemen dug their spurs into the flanks of their mounts and headed away down the far slope of the slight hill on which they had been standing to observe the city.

They were certainly dragoons, thought Keane, but why the devil would Massena send them out from the French lines?

*

He was well aware that their mounts were not the equal of those ridden by the dragoons. In fact, they were hugely inferior animals and could not hope to outrun the French for long. He prayed that they would make it back to Gallegos and the rest of the force.

They reached the bottom of the slope and rode on, spurring into the flanks of their horses. Though sorely tempted, Keane did not look behind. The slightest delay might cost everything. He wondered why the dragoons were bothering to give chase. Surely Massena would simply want the observing British and Portuguese to be driven off their post overlooking the city?

Then another thought struck him. What if it was not merely the forward positions Massena wanted but the outposts as well. The marshal must know about his and others like it which formed a half-circle around the French lines. If that were the case, then it was possible that not even his full force would be a match for whatever men Massena had despatched to take their post.

He dug his spurs in deeper and urged on his horse. And at last the roofs of Gallegos came into view. Keane overtook the others and as soon as he entered the village pulled up and swung himself out of the saddle. He looked around and at last saw the man he sought.

Von Krokenburgh was leaning against the door of a deserted village house, puffing on a cigar.

‘Keane, what news?’

Keane was breathless. ‘The French… French dragoons… on our tail. They’ll be here in minutes. Stand your men to, quick, man.’

The German needed no retelling. He turned and barked an order to his sergeant major, then, finding a lieutenant, directed him towards his men.

Keane’s men were dismounting now; pulling their carbines from their long leather holsters, they left their horses to one of the German farriers, who led them to the rear with those of his own regiment. This was no work for mounted men.

Ross shouted, ‘Carbines. Draw carbines and form a line across the street, two deep.’

Keane turned to von Krokenburgh and pointed to the first four houses in the street. ‘We need men up in those houses, captain. At the upper windows.’ Unquestioning, the German yelled a command and two of his sergeants ran for the houses, followed by a dozen hussars, carbines in their hands.

This was the sort of fighting Keane knew best. For although he was handy with a sabre, he was no cavalry officer but an infantryman through and through. Twenty years with the colours in the Inniskillens had seen to that. He was never more at his ease than when standing behind a line two deep with muskets levelled at the French. His men, while drawn from various arms, were likewise at their best when used as infantry. Their role was that of skirmishers, though. They were, almost to a man, keen shots, and he often thought that, had they been equipped with the Baker rifles issued to the riflemen of the 95th, they might have accounted for a great deal more of the enemy.