Run Them Ashore (33 page)

Puffs of powder smoke sprouted from the line of trees, and one of the horses reared, screaming in pain. A dragoon following behind was plucked from the saddle, dark blood on the yellow front of his jacket. Another shot followed, flicked Williams’ sleeve and gouged Carlos Velasco’s side. The former doctor was spun round, a puzzled look on his face. Williams went back to him, raising his musket up to his shoulders. The threat and the presence of who knew how many more enemies in the trees was enough to make the dragoons retreat. One lingered to fire a pistol at an absurdly long range.

Carlos’ hand was red as he felt his side just below the ribcage. He glared angrily back at the French and then at Williams. Guadalupe ran to help him, but he pushed her away and lurched forward.

‘It’s nothing,’ he hissed.

The three of them staggered on towards the trees.

‘Fire, damn you, fire!’ A shrill voice was calling from somewhere in the shadow of the wood, yelling out in English. Williams knew the voice from somewhere, but could not place it. ‘Shoot them, you bloody fools, shoot them!’ The man was almost shrieking.

Another voice, louder and deeper, shouted over the first, and then blue-uniformed soldiers appeared, and one of them was calling to him.

‘Lieutenant Williams!’ The man had white chevrons on his right sleeve and Williams recognised the face a moment before the name came to him.

‘Sergeant Mueller.’

The German nodded, and barked an order for two of his
men to help cover them as they came in. It must have been the sergeant who had ordered the outpost to stop firing.

‘We fetch the dead man when French are gone,’ the sergeant explained, nodding in the direction of the corpse of their guide.

They walked into the shadow of the trees, Carlos striding more confidently and still refusing any aid. The two chasseurs stood with levelled rifles to deter any renewed enthusiasm on the part of the dragoons. No Frenchman appeared.

An officer stood under the trees, in shadow until they were close.

‘Well, you have turned up after all,’ he sniffed.

It was Hatch. Williams caught a tremor in the usually supercilious voice, and in an instant he knew that the swine had wanted to kill them. The lieutenant scratched at the broad scar across his face, and held a rifle low in his other hand, as if pretending that it was not there. Williams was sure the bullet that had hit Carlos had been aimed at him and fired by Hatch, and perhaps too it was the lieutenant who had tried to kill him at Fuengirola.

Without conscious thought, the Welshman realised that he had twitched the muzzle of his musket up to point at the lieutenant’s belly.

Hatch licked his lips. ‘We had heard that you were with the irregulars, but were not expecting you to appear. If it was not for your red coat we might have shot you all down.’ He was talking much faster than was natural.

Williams stared at him. Carlos looked puzzled, and then ignored them as he dropped his carbine and used both hands to examine his side.

‘Hanley told us, d’ye see. Or at least he wrote to MacAndrews, who told us. You were toasted in the mess.’ The lieutenant kept talking.

Williams brimmed over with hatred and contempt and said nothing.

‘He’s back, you know. In charge of a flank battalion with the army come from Cadiz.’

Guadalupe stood beside him, and he remembered that she had
not seen her sister’s attacker, so did not know who this was. She had sheathed her sabre, and stuck the pistol back into her sash.

Hatch kept rubbing his scar. ‘General Graham has come here with an army, only the Dons have not arrived yet and so he waits and hopes that they will turn up.’

Williams wondered what to do. His musket was in his hands and it was loaded, and that offered the simplest of all solutions. He remembered how close he had come to killing Brandt and the others; how easy it would have been to snuff them out. He had not done it, and the corporal had escaped to join the enemy and commit who knew what viciousness in the future.

‘Well, I suspect it’s his fault for trusting in our glorious allies. You remember Talavera, and how they ran and left our wounded behind? I only just got away thanks to some friends.’ There was rebuke in the last few words, a trace of the old scorn. Williams’ own friends had been carried away in a carriage, but there had been no room for Hatch.

Williams took a pace forward and then stopped as fear flickered in the lieutenant’s eyes. The muzzle of his musket was no more than a yard away from the man’s stomach. Or the Welshman could strike him, laying down a challenge which Hatch must accept or live with the shame.

‘You have missed a lot,’ Hatch went on, the malice growing in his words. ‘I do hear old Pringle’s brother is now engaged to Miss MacAndrews. There’s a peach for you – and rich as well as comely.’

The Welshman did not move and said nothing.

‘Wouldn’t mind being in his shoes. I’ll wager you would too – but then of course you tried and didn’t get anywhere.’ The old Hatch was back, sly and full of mockery.

Williams made up his mind and lowered his musket.

‘Sergeant Mueller.’

‘Sir.’ The German stiffened to attention, although the stamp of his foot was quiet against the sodden ground.

‘The lieutenant is relieved of duty, pending court martial for an assault on a woman.’ Williams had no idea whether or not
he had the authority to do this. He did his best to sound as if he had not the slightest doubt that his order would be obeyed.

‘Sir?’

‘The attack happened at Fuengirola, on the lady we had rescued from Brandt and his companions.’

Carlos looked up, frowning. Mueller kept at attention, his eyes flicking from one officer to the other.

‘That’s a damned lie!’ Hatch had gone pale. ‘You might have done it. What proof do you have?’

‘The lady has written a statement.’ That was certainly a lie, a bare-faced lie, although Williams hoped that Paula Velasco would supply one in due course. ‘And this young lady is her sister and will also testify.’

‘Bastard!’ Horrible realisation was dawning on Carlos Velasco’s face. His hand reached for his knife and found that it was no longer there, no doubt dropped during their flight. His eyes flicked to the carbine lying beside him.

‘He will swing for it, I promise you,’ Williams said, trying to calm him, and then he spoke quickly in Spanish to Guadalupe, telling her who this was. The girl walked forward, face rigid, and went right up to Hatch. He was not a big man, and so it was an easy matter for her to spit in his face. Carlos asked her whether it was true and her expression told him everything he needed to know.

‘Bastard,’ he said again, and added more in his own language.

‘She is a witness,’ Williams said, once again bending the truth, but doing his best to sound confident and fully in control. He needed to have Hatch placed in custody now. If nothing was done then the matter might be forgotten or postponed. It needed to start now.

Rifle shots shattered the peace. There were shouts from over to the left, and then more shots.

‘French!’ Mueller called out, and pointed to the nearest chasseurs, gesturing for them to run in the direction of the noise. ‘I must go, sir,’ he said, and beckoned the remaining men to come with him.

‘I will guard the prisoner, Sergeant,’ Williams told him. The Welshman hefted his musket once more, and felt to check that it was still cocked.

Guadalupe’s hand moved quickly, whipping the clasp knife from her sash and flicking the blade open with the same motion. She slashed from left to right, slicing through Hatch’s neck just above the stiff collar. Blood gushed on to his jacket and sprayed over her face and body.

Hatch’s eyes opened wide and then started to flicker, as his head dropped to an unnatural angle, and he folded down on himself, slumping on to the wet ground.

Mueller swore a long oath in German, but then barked at the chasseurs to follow him into the trees, for shouts and more shooting kept coming from further along the outpost line. The men gaped at the dead officer and the bloodstained girl, and the sergeant had to bellow again before they went with him, faces pale. They vanished into the wood, and there were a few more shots before it went quiet once more.

The girl wiped the blade with the loose tail of her sash and then flicked it shut.

‘Good,’ Carlos said.

‘He should have hanged.’ Williams stared down at the lieutenant lying in a pool of his own blood and struggled to take it in. Guadalupe wiped a hand across her face, smearing the blood as it began to dry.

‘Waste of rope,’ the surgeon concluded. ‘If she had not killed him then I would have done it.’

It was over, and not in the way he had hoped, but Williams felt more sad than satisfied. Guadalupe prodded the corpse with her boot and then spat on its face.

She looked at Carlos. ‘We should go.’

He nodded and they walked away, heading back towards the enemy outposts.

‘Goodbye, Englishman,’ Carlos said, but the girl was silent and did not even look at him.

‘You should stay,’ Williams called. They did not answer and kept walking. ‘At least let a surgeon take a look at your wound.’

Carlos stopped for a moment and grinned. ‘One of those butchers – certainly not!’ He spread his fingers over the wound and when they came away there was no fresh blood. ‘It is nothing, just a scratch. Goodbye, my friend.’

The two guerrilleros walked on. Williams could see no sign of the dragoons, but even so he feared they were walking to their deaths.

‘Lupe.’ It was the first time Williams had used the diminutive. ‘Wait.’

They stopped and she turned.

‘Stay here where it’s safe.’

The girl started walking again. Carlos shrugged and gave a smile. ‘I do not think this is a matter for discussion. We will be fine.’ He waved a hand and hurried to catch up with her.

Williams watched for a moment and felt his eyes glazing over.

‘Lupe,’ he called after the young woman, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and the pathetic, indulgent uselessness of the words had him despising himself once again.

She did not look back, nor did either of them stop. Williams scanned the ridge ahead of them and could not see any sign of the enemy. It was hard to tell how many dragoons were out there or what they would do. He had the loaded musket in his hands, but the thought of using it to stop the partisans never occurred to him.

The pair walked on, Guadalupe staring straight ahead, until they disappeared into the woodland on the ridge. Williams watched the girl every step of the way, not really knowing what he felt about anything.

There was the sound of someone pushing past the low branches of the trees.

‘Good God.’ A mounted officer in the dark green uniform of the 95th walked his horse towards the body. ‘What’s happening?’

‘French dragoons. They caught me coming across to our lines. Thankfully our piquet was here.’

The rifleman looked him up and down. He had not shaved for days, and his jacket was patched, repaired and long faded from its original scarlet.

‘I am Lieutenant Williams, One Hundred and Sixth Foot, returned from service with the Spanish irregulars.’

‘Have you, by God.’

Mueller appeared and saluted the officer. He gave a brief report in his stilted English. The dragoons had attacked as Williams and the others came into their lines, but were driven off after a fight. The sergeant looked at each of his men in turn, none of whom showed any inclination to question this version of events.

‘They killed the Spaniard out there and the lieutenant.’ The sergeant did not so much as glance at Williams. The Welshman’s mind went back to Roliça, and Dobson’s wooden expression as he reported that the French had killed Mr Redman.

‘Bad business,’ the rifleman said. He did not sound especially concerned. ‘Mr Williams, I had better take you to the general, and he can decide what to do with you.’

After four months, Williams was back with the army, and from what Hatch had said with the regiment as well – or at least some of it. He had dreamed of this as soon as he recovered from the fever, and at last it had happened.

Hamish Williams felt flat and empty.

26

T
he Spanish were late, and although it was not their fault, Lieutenant General Graham was on edge. The sixty-one-year-old remained unfailingly courteous to all, and frequently genial, but Hanley and the rest of the staff could see the small signs that the Scotsman was worried. There was enough news from further north to dampen anyone’s spirits. Massena clung on in Portugal, and Soult had taken the town of Olivenza and already begun the siege of Badajoz. At the end of January, the Marquis of Romana, commander of the Spanish army supporting the border fortress, had died of a heart attack. Hanley had met the marquis several times, while General Graham had known him quite well, and the news had made the Scotsman aware of his own advancing years. Romana was a cautious, steady fellow, proud of his country, but willing to work with his allies for the common good. To make matters worse, his successor was generally held to be a fool.

It was scarcely encouraging, although it did make the purpose of the expedition all the more important. The British were four days on board ship, and at the end of that could not land where they had intended or with any of their artillery. It took a day’s march over muddy goat tracks barely visible in the driving rain to get the battalions from Algeciras to Tarifa, where there was some shelter and they were at least reunited with their guns. The Spanish were held back by the weather – Hanley learned later that their soldiers had been left on board the uncovered barges for days at the mercy of the storms.

‘They’re tough,’ one of La Peña’s officers told him. ‘They are
used to hardship.’ He supposed the men had to be when their officers treated them in so casual a manner.

Graham had five thousand men and was on his own for four more days, and the old Moorish town of Tarifa was very crowded. Truscott told him that the mess of the 106th had so many guests that they went through two thousand bottles of wine and spirits in less than a week.

‘That seems a good deal, even by my standards,’ Billy Pringle said.

‘Yes, a mere half would be sufficient for your needs,’ Truscott responded with some spleen. As president of the mess he faced the gargantuan task of keeping track of all this.

Hanley enjoyed seeing his friends again, and was even more pleased when Williams had turned up on the second day the army was at Tarifa.

‘You look like Robinson Crusoe’s poorer brother,’ Pringle told him, when the Welshman arrived, long haired, unshaven and covered in grime. ‘If that is what being dead does to a fellow, I cannot see it ever becoming popular.’

Williams looked spent, with no energy to reply, but he insisted on drawing Hanley aside at once.

‘It’s about Major Sinclair,’ he said, and launched into a description of the ambush. ‘He was there, waiting with the French infantry.’ There was a trace of disappointment when Hanley accepted it all so readily.

‘I was already more than half convinced.’ He wondered whether Williams had expected instant action. ‘We have been sending him misleading letters so that he will pass the false information on to his superiors. In a few days that will not matter any more, and I can send word to all the guerrilleros that he works for the French. I imagine they will soon catch him if he keeps trying to ride among them, for he must have guessed that the game is up.’

Williams lingered, and it took a while to coax the rest of the story from him. Hanley heard about Hatch, what he had done at Fuengirola, and how Guadalupe had murdered him.

‘Probably for the best,’ he told the Welshman. ‘I certainly cannot say that I blame her.’

Williams was staring at the ground. ‘I should have stopped her,’ he said at last.

The ‘why’ died on Hanley’s lips as he decided that this was no time for recriminations or the morality of revenge.

‘Well, you didn’t,’ he said brutally. ‘And it is too late now, so the best thing is to forget about it. We are all likely to have enough to concern us in the coming days.’

Hanley was never quite sure what went on in his friend’s head, but this seemed to satisfy him. Before nightfall Williams was snapped up by Major MacAndrews to serve in the Flank Battalion. Smooth chinned, hair cut so that it only just covered the top of his collar, and the man and his clothes cleaned as well as was possible, he went to join the Light Company of the 106th, which was short of officers. Pringle loaned him a cocked hat to replace the one he had lost.

‘You look almost human,’ Billy said, before deciding some qualification was necessary. ‘In a poor light at least.’

Hanley saw little of either of them in the next few days as they waited for the Spanish to arrive. It would have been easy enough for Marshal Victor to bring two or three times their numbers against them, and Tarifa was not a modern fortress but an old Moorish town with decaying walls. It was thus a great relief when Captain General Manuel La Peña and his two Spanish divisions arrived on 27th February and raised the total number of Allied soldiers to more than sixteen thousand. At the very least they should have parity with the French, and perhaps a significant advantage. Victor had three divisions, but Hanley was still unsure how many men were left in each after the detachments were taken by Soult, and then there was the question of how many men would be left behind to guard the siege lines.

The general’s cheerfulness readily spread to his staff and the army as a whole. Even bad news from the north failed to dampen spirits. Yet it was bad enough, for Romana’s successor had risked a battle with the French about a week ago. Thoroughly
outmanoeuvred and out-fought by Soult and his veterans, the Spanish army had been cut to ribbons, and so Badajoz was isolated.

‘All the more cause to press on,’ General Graham told them, and on 28th February the entire army set out, with the Spanish in the lead and the British bringing up the rear. It was chilly, and the waterlogged fields were proof of weeks of wet weather, but they covered twelve miles at a good pace and camped for the night just before the road divided.

‘Medina,’ the general announced when he returned from a conference with La Peña. ‘The coast road would only take us towards the French outposts and to Victor’s main camp at Chiclana. It would invite him to concentrate where he is rather than draw him away from Cadiz. So Don Manuel rightly intends to go north and follow the road to Medina Sidonia.’

As Hanley listened the name sparked a dim memory of a treaty signed in the town, but the details eluded him, and soon he and the other officers were too busy to think of anything save the task in hand. At Tarifa General Graham had divided his force into two brigades under General Dilkes and Colonel Wheatley. His two squadrons of King’s German Legion Hussars were attached to the more numerous Spanish cavalry led by General Whittingham. Hanley was still surprised to find an English officer serving in the Spanish army, but it seemed Whittingham had raised his own regiment and been rewarded with rapid promotion. In return for the hussars, La Peña generously placed two of his own infantry battalions under British command, and Hanley was sent to them to make sure that they understood their orders.

There were about two hours of daylight remaining when the cavalry left camp at five o’clock in the afternoon.

‘The captain general believes a night march will help confuse the enemy as to our intentions,’ Graham informed his staff, and Hanley was unable to read his expression. The opinion of MacAndrews was a good deal more obvious when he encountered the major and his Flank Battalion marching as part of Dilkes’ Brigade.

‘Are they mad?’ The major had his cocked hat tied on tightly with a piece of yarn because a biting easterly wind was gusting over the plain. ‘At this time of year the plain is half under water. We went over it back in January, and even during the day it was none too easy to follow the road and not end up in a bog.’

Given the time the 106th had spent in Tarifa, Hanley suspected the major was speaking the truth, but there was nothing that he could do, and since they were at the very rear of the army it was dark by the time the Flank Battalion moved out. Marching feet, the hoofs of horses and mules, and the wheels of limbers, guns and carts had churned the route into deep mud which sucked at shoes as MacAndrews and his men trudged on their way after the others.

Hanley had the freedom of a staff officer to ride along beside the column, and spent the night going back and forth. More often than not he passed troops who were standing still, hunched against the wind as they waited for some delay further ahead to clear. Each time the column started they went quickly, eager to get warm and frightened of being left behind.

‘Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait,’ a captain of the 2/87th said to him as he rode back past the Irish regiment on his way to the Spanish serving under Graham. Hanley grinned at the man, remembering him from Talavera. It was one of the few battalions which had seen any service, and the men in the other units all seemed so very young. A long march in darkness and foul weather was new to them, and although they set to with a spirit, he could see that it was adding to the slow, staccato progress of the column. Officers kept hurrying the lead companies on without giving time for the rest to catch up, so that the ones in the rear ran and stopped, ran and stopped. By the look of them, most of the young soldiers were wearier than they had ever been in their lives.

‘Hurry up and wait!’ the captain yelled after him as the 87th started off at the double. ‘Damned staff officers!’ he added with a cheerful wave.

There was a wide lagoon to the left of the main track, and
rivulets and streams flowed down from the little hillocks to feed it. After all the rain, the lagoon was wider and the watercourses faster and deeper. The wind drove the water across the fields, and it would have been hard in the light of day to tell the difference between an inch or so of puddle over a solid track and pond with several feet of water.

MacAndrews was his usual calm self, keeping the Flank Battalion at a steady pace, and getting Billy Pringle to ride back and forth to make sure that they did not lose contact with the rest of the column. They spent more time waiting than moving, and when Hanley carried an order for them to about-face, the major showed no surprise.

‘Second time in less than an hour,’ he remarked.

‘The guides went astray,’ Hanley explained, ‘and so we must go back on ourselves for half a mile.’

‘Nice change to be in the lead,’ the Scotsman said, and ordered his battalion off. Hanley rode with them for a while, and saw Williams leave the column to walk beside the marching men. The Welshman strode along, a musket on one shoulder and with his few gleaned possessions rolled in a blanket strapped over the other shoulder.

‘Evening …’ Williams raised a hand in greeting as he spoke and then his feet slipped from under him and he slid down two yards of bank to splash into a pool. There was much amusement from the Light Company and anyone else who had seen his rapid descent.

The Welshman emerged, muddy and with water streaming from him as he climbed back up the bank.

‘If my poor mother could see me now!’ he called out, and that produced an even more open roar of laughter. It seemed his friend was settling in with his new company.

The general himself rode back to stop the Flank Battalion when they had gone far enough. Then they stood and gave time for the units ahead to turn around and follow the proper path.

‘Hurry up and wait,’ Hanley said under his breath, ‘hurry up and wait.’

When the sun rose he felt a little more cheerful, although the cold wind robbed it of most of its warmth. At least they could see where they were going a little better, but Hanley was dismayed to realise that they had not even come level with the far end of the lagoon. The column kept going – or at least stopping and starting every ten or twenty minutes.

Hearing that MacAndrews knew the ground, Hanley accompanied the general to see him. It was nearly noon and they had been going for nineteen hours.

‘I reckon about twelve miles, sir,’ the major said when asked how far he thought they had gone. ‘The convent at Casas Viejas must be four or five miles further on, and Medina twelve miles or so beyond that.’

No one had any good maps of the area, but Hanley could tell that the general had expected the answer.

‘Much obliged, MacAndrews,’ he said. ‘Then I had better take a look.’ Graham set off for the head of the column, driving his horse on at such speed that it was a struggle for his two ADCs and Hanley to keep up.

By the time they arrived, the advance guard was a couple of miles past the convent on the road to Medina Sidonia.

‘Generous to march past the garrison of the convent and make it easier for the Frogs to count us,’ one of the aides muttered with ill-concealed contempt. The general was a good deal more tactful, but it took well over an hour to convince the captain general that they should deal with the Frenchmen in the convent. By then almost the entire army had marched on within sight of its walls. MacAndrews was told to select two companies to storm the place, but as soon as the grenadiers and light bobs of the 106th formed up to assault, the defenders bolted from the back gate.

A squadron of German hussars led the chase, and Hanley rode with the flank companies which followed as fast as they could. There were about one hundred and fifty of the enemy, and when their commander saw the horsemen and realised he could not outrun them he formed his men into line.

‘Can see us coming, otherwise he would have gone into square,’ Pringle suggested.

The trumpet sounded the charge, and the KGL hussars went from walk to trot, and then canter, swords raised high ready to lunge. They were close when the French officer gave the order and a volley rippled along the line. A rider was pitched from the saddle, and two horses went down, but the hussars did not stop.

The French dropped their muskets, raising their arms to surrender.

‘They’ve left it too late,’ Pringle said as the German hussars spurred into them, heavy curved sabres chopping down. ‘You can’t shoot a man one minute and expect his friend to spare your life the next. If they wanted to quit they should have done it straight away.’ Hanley watched in horrified fascination as the hussars cut down again and again. The French did not resist other than to cover their heads with their arms. As the survivors were brought back to the convent Hanley thought that he had never seen such ghastly wounds.