Send Me Safely Back Again (8 page)

Williams thought, and Wickham noticed that he had the uncouth habit of pressing his tongue against the inside of his cheek as he did so. ‘Well, the bulk of his force was at sea on the expedition to the south. I would guess at some three or four thousand. Perhaps double that if the expedition is included.’

D’Urban nodded. ‘A good guess. Yet perhaps it would surprise you to learn that many Spaniards, including a good few of their senior generals and politicians, fervently believe that we have ten times as many in Portugal. And they cannot understand why so strong a force has not marched to the aid of their beleaguered armies.’

Baynes took a deep breath. ‘It makes them believe that we have ambitions of our own, and are willing to let Spain’s armies bleed to boost our own power. The recent offer of installing the expeditionary force as a garrison of Cadiz was both naively concocted and clumsily made.’

‘Many of the Spanish do not trust the British,’ concluded D’Urban.

Baynes shrugged. ‘Which given our government’s habit of fomenting dissent in their American colonies and the enthusiasm of our men of commerce for bullying their way into the most profitable of Spain’s markets seems unduly suspicious of them.’

D’Urban ignored his companion’s cheerful sarcasm. ‘Certain information of what is happening is vital. Much of it will concern the little things – numbers and names of regiments, the quality of roads and bridges or the availability of forage. We need to learn about everything to understand the war and wage it better. Both we and our allies must understand the true strength of the other, and we must be doubly sure of the enemy’s dispositions and their intentions.

‘The Doña Margarita became caught up in the fight against the French at Saragossa last year. Now she travels speedily and often, in spite of her condition. She carries such knowledge and helps to gather more. Others do the same, and in time they may help us to pierce through the mists and see clearly what on earth is going on. After that, we might stop making such a hash of everything and start winning.’

Williams was a good soldier and Colonel D’Urban a man in authority. When given orders Williams obeyed, but tried to do so shrewdly rather than blindly. That was something he had learnt from Dobson, back when he was still a volunteer and served as the veteran’s ‘rear rank man’ in the company’s formation. He was glad that D’Urban and Baynes had explained something of the wider situation, and as they travelled the next day Williams took Dobson into his confidence. The corporal had not been included in the previous night’s conference.

The veteran listened without betraying any opinion until the ensign had finished.

‘So are we supposed to pass as dagoes, sir?’ he asked sceptically. Williams was blond, and both men bigger and thicker set than was common in Spain.

The coach was moving quickly again, bringing its cooling
wind at the price of making the two seats on the rear of the carriage far too precarious for safety. Instead Williams and Dobson stood, so that their heads and shoulders looked to the front over the top of the car, and they held on to the rails designed for that purpose. Wickham in his priest’s garb travelled inside the carriage as the lady’s confessor.

‘No, thankfully.’ Williams laughed and then coughed as dust from the road caught in his throat. ‘The Doña Margarita returned from Mexico last year after many years in the country,’ he continued after he had recovered. ‘So we are her American servants. What Frenchman is likely to recognise the differences of speech?’

‘Yes, sir, very good, sir,’ replied Dobson, a master of the old soldier’s art of expressing contemptuous disbelief while avoiding punishment. ‘And do you reckon any Crapaud with eyes in his head won’t spot himself as a soldier?’ The veteran jabbed his thumb towards Ramón, the former hussar who drove the carriage. ‘Or us for that matter?’ Dobson had replaced his shako with a brown felt hat in the broad-brimmed, Spanish style. Their muskets, equipment and Williams’ and Wickham’s swords were hidden in a box under the carriage. A wide-mouthed blunderbuss was clipped to a notched bar on the roof within Dobson’s easy reach and another lay beside the driver. Williams and Dobson each had a heavy horse pistol tucked through their belts, and the officer had another to hand.

‘No law against being an old soldier,’ said Williams blithely, although without much conviction. It was true, there was simply something about the way a soldier stood that got into the blood.

‘No law against getting killed either, sir. That’s if the buggers don’t try to recruit us.’

‘Good promotion prospects in the French Army,’ Williams grinned. ‘No flogging either.’

‘Too much garlic in the food.’

‘Then let us hope that we do not meet them.’ If he had permitted himself to believe in superstition, Williams would
have regretted saying that thought aloud as making it inevitable that it would come true.

An hour before sunset half a dozen chasseurs in green jackets and dust-covered shakos stood their horses on the road ahead of them. Two more closed in on the carriage from each side. Such a fine vehicle was a rare sight. Even more unusual were the six well-matched grey horses drawing the coach. Only the very wealthy could afford horses rather than mules.

Ramón halted the team impeccably, looped the reins over a hook and raised his hands. Williams and Dobson did the same. The grey-haired sergeant in charge of the piquet had a scar running from his right ear to his mouth, gold rings in his ears and looked capable of any villainy.

Wickham leaned out of the window, and in French so rapid that Williams struggled to follow introduced himself as Father O’Hara, priest of the daughter-in-law of the Conde de Madrigal de las Altas Torres, and demanded that they be escorted to his superior officer.

‘He’s plausible, I’ll give him that,’ whispered Dobson, who grasped the sense if not the precise meaning of the little speech.

The sergeant was not a man to take unnecessary responsibility if there was an officer close enough to take any blame. Four chasseurs took them down a side track to a walled farm where the main body of the chasseur company was settling for the night. A lieutenant, whose furious desire to grow a bushier moustache continued to be frustrated, at first looked with suspicion at the priest, and at Dobson and Williams with downright hostility.

‘They’re Americans,’ said Wickham, as if that explained everything. ‘Ugly, aren’t they, although of course all God’s children.’

The lieutenant laughed, and began to warm to the charming priest, and was suitably impressed when he saw the pass signed by King Joseph. When the carriage door was opened again and he was presented to the Doña Margarita, he bowed low. She gave him a smile which won his heart. Her mantilla had slipped back a
little to show her round, pretty face and the coils of her long black hair fastened up in braids. Although the black dress of mourning was modest, it nevertheless betrayed the line of a full bosom.

Her French was also excellent and completed her overwhelming conquest of the light cavalry officer’s admiration. She spoke lightly of the savages of the new world, and presented him with a little leather pouch, decorated with beadwork.

‘The women of the tribes make them for the bravest warriors to carry their musket balls,’ she explained.

After twenty minutes they left, and were escorted by a dozen chasseurs until they reached the inn two leagues away.

‘That lady’s a cool one,’ said Dobson as the carriage sped along at a good trot. ‘Pretty too.’

‘And you a newly married man!’ joked Williams, who suspected that the veteran was right, although he had yet to enjoy a very clear view of La Doña Margarita. At least her condition ought to prevent any misbehaviour by Wickham.

‘Don’t mean you stop looking.’ Dobson’s wife of many years had died at Christmas, crushed underneath the wheels of a wagon during the retreat. For a while the veteran had been shattered. Williams did not see it, but Hanley and Pringle had a haunted look when they told him of what had happened. Yet he recovered, and in the army way had taken a new bride when they were on board ship sailing away from Spain. The new Mrs Dobson was herself the widow of a sergeant, and a very religious and proper woman. It was an unlikely combination, and yet they seemed happy. The veteran had quit drinking on his new wife’s insistence. In the past, he had been repeatedly promoted and broken for drunkenness. Pringle had risked raising him to corporal immediately, and Williams suspected that sergeant’s rank would soon follow. No man was more capable when sober.

‘No, she’s a good lass.’ Williams assumed Dobson still meant the Spanish aristocrat. ‘Wouldn’t trust her an inch,’ he added. ‘Nor our major, of course, or them other two that sent us off.’

‘I see no reason to doubt Colonel D’Urban as anything other than a gallant officer,’ said the shocked Williams.

‘They can be the worst, sir.’ The veteran laughed. ‘But if this cart is carrying only news then I’m a Dutchman. Look how low it hangs on the springs.’

Williams did not know what to say or think, but experience taught him that the old soldier’s suspicions were usually sound.

Dobson looked around at the French cavalrymen riding as escort. He glanced at Williams and then smiled happily. ‘Still, I will say it makes a change from marching!’

5

H
anley had never seen so much death. For as far as he could see in any direction there were bodies. Last May he had fled the massacre in Madrid. In August he fought at Roliça and Vimeiro and had been spattered with the blood, brains and flesh of men ripped to pieces by cannonballs. During the winter’s retreat he had seen the frozen corpses lying in the snow, many with trickles of wine still dribbling from their lips from when they had drunk themselves senseless and let the cold claim them.

He had seen nothing on this scale.

‘There’s Jacques,’ said a lean-faced hussar with pigtails on either side of his forehead and his dirty brown hair tied back with a black ribbon. ‘He’ll not have to worry about finding wine any more.’ Four troopers in the brown and sky blue of the Chamborant Hussars escorted the thirty prisoners back across the plains of Medellín. A man in the same uniform lay stretched on the ground with a great stain of almost black blood on his chest. His eyes stared blankly up at the evening sky.

The vultures were the worst. Scruffy, thin, and more grey than black, they had come from nowhere and now there seemed to be at least one for every corpse. He had never seen so many birds in one place.

A shot rang out as a French infantryman put a ball into the head of a Spaniard whose innards were spilled on the ground by a great slash across his stomach. The man had been moaning softly, and Hanley thought he could see scars on the pinkish intestines where a vulture had pecked and ripped. The Frenchman jabbed at the bird with his bayonet and screamed in rage. The vulture
flapped its wings and hopped back a few paces until the man lost interest. The birds were already getting fat. Soon they would be fatter. Half an hour ago a sudden musket shot sent clouds of the carrion fowl into the air. They were no longer so easily frightened.

‘Poor Robert. Well, he won’t have to flog that dog of a horse any more.’ They were passing another man in brown and blue, this one with half his face carried away. His horse stood dutifully beside him, cropping the thin grass as if nothing had happened.

‘Take the reins and lead him off,’ ordered the corporal of the hussars.

They passed other Frenchmen. ‘Looks like Philippe has had his last woman.’

There were far, far more Spanish. The dead lay in every posture. Hanley passed men whose faces remained fixed in a rictus of appalling horror, cut down as they fled. Others lay in clusters, shot or hacked down as they stood in a knot and fought to the end. They passed a battery, whose crews had all died around their four guns. There were the shattered corpses of French infantrymen in a swathe of blue ahead of the position to testify to their stubbornness. French gunners were lifting the dead off barrels and carriages, as they prepared to tow the trophies away.

Blades had done most of the work. Half the prisoners marching with him had wounds to the head and shoulders from the French sabres. So had most of the dead. Severed hands and arms were dotted over the ground. So were heads. They passed half a dozen neatly decapitated men whose necks had been sliced evenly through above the collar.

‘That’ll be Sergeant Blanchard of the Tenth Chasseurs,’ said the lean-faced hussar in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Saw him do the same to the Russians at Friedland. He’s a wicked bastard.’

Another trooper looked down approvingly. ‘Knows how to use a sabre, though.’

‘Use the point, lads, not the edge,’ said the corporal out of habit. ‘Always the point.’

They moved on, and still there were more corpses in white, brown, grey and blue coats. In Portugal the peasants and the camp followers had stripped the dead within hours. This did not seem to be happening here, and Hanley wondered whether there were simply too many dead or whether the nearest villagers were too terrified to scavenge. Most of the corpses had their pockets turned out. Papers wafted on the air as the breeze scattered precious letters from mothers, and from wives who were now widows, but did not know it.

Hanley felt alone. There were no officers with the group and the Spanish soldiers treated the foreigner with suspicion. They said little to each other, and nothing to him. It made it worse that as an officer he was permitted to keep his sword according to the usual conventions of war. The Spanish soldiers were unsure which side this tall man was on, with his ragged and unfamiliar uniform.