Whose Business Is to Die (11 page)

‘We had better go,’ Billy said. ‘Though I notice that you have not answered my question. Is it fair for a soldier to marry when he might any day be killed?’

‘Or maimed …’ Truscott’s voice was sad. ‘Lately, with the boy
come to join the battalion, I have come to know what it means to worry. The fear that he will fail, for I do not believe him to be robust or quick witted. Will he become a laughing stock, or still worse be disgraced? And yet most of all I dread having to write home and tell our parents that he has fallen. I suspect they naively believe that I can keep him safe.’

‘You will do all that can be done, and your friends will help,’ Pringle said, aware that it was little consolation.

They walked in silence, and were about to part to go to their companies when Truscott whispered, ‘I know that I have not answered you, my dear Pringle. It is because I do not know what the answer is.’

Formed up on the road in open column, the 106th stepped off at the stentorian command of the sergeant major. They marched for another five hours, stopping for breaks after each hour, and twice more held up by regiments ahead of them. It rained a few times, if never again the deluge of the early morning. The showers fed the already deep mud on the road, and by the time they reached Campo Major every man’s white trousers were covered in filth. The 106th had come out to Gibraltar with new uniforms, and had spent months in garrison. Even so the brief campaign of Barrosa and the march from Lisbon had already begun to take their toll. Pringle noticed that several of his grenadiers had the soles of their boots flapping as they walked, and made a note to have that attended to when they stopped.

As they marched past the town the sun dipped beneath the frayed canopy of clouds and bathed the world in light. It had little warmth, but Pringle felt cheered. The sky to the west was a glorious canvas of pinks and gold, and he felt that no one could see such a sight and not feel hope growing within him.

The battalion was led by a guide to a field beside the road and ordered to bivouac for the night. There was something very familiar and comforting about the routine of the camp, even if for the first time in weeks they were not alone, but had battalions all around them. It was the Grenadier Company’s turn to provide pickets so it would be a while before he had leisure
to rest. Doing the rounds he passed an open space to the left of the camp, and noticed some of the subalterns staring at scattered white boulders. Spotting the diminutive shape of Samuel Truscott, distinctive in his immense hat, Pringle wandered over to see what they were looking at.

Young Sam suddenly leaned over and Billy heard the sound of retching.

‘Oh, Truscott, you have covered my boots!’ squealed one of the others.

The boulders were corpses, stripped naked before they were cold, the way he had seen the dead on so many fields. Coming closer he saw the pale bodies rent about the head and arms with dreadful cuts, the blood looking black in the fading light.

‘This was where the light dragoons broke the French,’ Derryck told him. They had heard rumours ever since they approached the town, accounts of a heroic charge and of bungling by generals.

Samuel Truscott stood up, looking paler than the bodies, but then sight or smell struck him again and prompted another loud burst of vomiting. The boy sank down on to all fours.

‘That one is the French colonel.’ Derryck gestured at a body with its head terribly mutilated. ‘They say an officer came across with a flag of truce to find him and then wept by his side. It was his brother, do you see. Poor fellow.’ The sympathy was brief, and in a moment Derryck’s usual exuberance returned. ‘Come on, you fellows, enough of this ghoulish interest. There is a bottle or two waiting and food as well, so come along. Help Truscott up if he cannot stand.’

Brothers were a concern, thought Pringle. He had heard that the Second Division were here as well as the Portuguese and their own Fourth Division, so he might be able to find Williams, and perhaps even learn what damage Ned had wrought on his friend’s hopes.

The sun went down, not with the slow grandeur of home, but still moving enough in its way. Pringle sighed and made up his mind.

8

‘W
ell, at least we know that they are up to something,’ Baynes concluded after listening to Hanley’s story and questioning many of the details. ‘From what I am told of his activities in the south, Sinclair is fond of besieging fortresses with gold. Which reminds me.’ The merchant fished in his pockets for a note. ‘That ship your friend Williams helped capture last year, the gold found in it is confirmed as lawful prize and will be distributed. This is the sum your friend is due.’

Hanley took the proffered note, read the columns and was suitably impressed. They had found half a dozen chests hidden beneath a cargo of cotton bales. All had contained gold, and it was suspected that the money was intended to be used to bribe prominent men to accept Joseph Bonaparte as their king. The discovery had been kept secret in the hope of catching some of those involved.

‘It will be paid before the year is out, and perhaps sooner,’ Baynes continued, ‘so our young friend may have less need to continue his career of brigandage, though some would say that the best way to remain rich is to spend only when absolutely unavoidable. You may tell him or not, as you wish.’ He took the note back.

The merchant sat down and poured them each a glass of port. He tasted it, winced. ‘Heaven knows how I sell this muck,’ he muttered, and drained the glass. ‘Now then, what do you think is afoot?’

‘It looks very much as if Soult has sent Dalmas and Sinclair to gain more
afrancesados
whether in Spain or Portugal or both,’
Hanley suggested. ‘They would either pass the money over directly, or more likely provide it to pay agents who would suborn others. It may be simply to win over as many influential men as possible to supporting France, or they may have some specific end in mind.’ He sipped the port, found that it was very good and let the warmth spread from his throat to his chest. It had been a long day. ‘Do we know of any agent living in Campo Major or near by?’

‘No one we thought was important, and the only other one was arrested and taken to Elvas weeks ago. There may be others. There are men willing to turn traitor for pay in every place and every country. I have little doubt that there are plenty of them in London, Lisbon, Cadiz or anywhere else you care to name.

‘So we will leave aside the question of why here for the moment. What of Bertrand?’ Baynes refilled his own glass and topped up Hanley’s. The room was lit by a large fire and a couple of candles. They were in one of the houses near the walls. Owned by a haulier known to Baynes, the place was empty apart from a couple of servants.

‘He was an engineer – quite a good one by the sound of it – so he may simply have come to direct the siege. He was at Ciudad Rodrigo helping to lay out the batteries last year.’

‘Odd to bring his mistress.’ Baynes produced a loaf and some cheese.

‘Yes. That may have been the reason he was ordered here, but there must be more to it. He had debts, very large debts. It appears that he hoped to recover his situation by selling information to us. Perhaps he guessed what Miss Dobson has been doing, or she may have encouraged him.’

Baynes smiled. ‘Miss Dobson – how very proper that sounds. Though is she not really the widow Mrs Hanks?’

Hanley could barely remember the big, quiet, rather dull grenadier Jenny had married. A match arranged by her formidable father when it was widely believed that she was already pregnant by someone else. He could not remember telling Baynes about that, although perhaps he had years ago. ‘Either, as you like. But I
am sure she encouraged him. She says that he had papers, listing the strengths and disposition of all three corps in the south.’

‘Useful,’ Baynes said, ‘if unlikely to make us willing to pay off “very large debts”. I sometimes suspect that we are almost as well informed of such things as Marshal Soult himself.’

‘The most valuable material was supposed to be in his head,’ Hanley explained. ‘At least that is what she says.’

‘Unfortunate. Most unfortunate, since his head has such a large hole in it. And does she know what he was holding back?’

‘No, she says that she does not. Nor is she sure whether he planned to desert or to send her across to us and commence negotiations.’

‘Bertrand appears to have been a cautious man,’ Baynes said with a measure of respect.

‘Not cautious enough, though. Dalmas appeared suddenly – though she does not admit it I am sure Miss Dobson and he know each other – and from then on never left his side. Brandt stayed with them as well. They were not formally under arrest. That was why he made a run for it when he saw the chance.’

‘Well, forget him, forget the girl too if you can, at least for the moment. Would you care for cheese? No. Saving yourself, eh? You will find what you asked for in the basket over there, and in the bag. That is for later. As I say, for the moment forget them. In my case I wish that I could forget the execrable dinner provided by Marshal Beresford. Not an experience I can recommend, so perhaps it is all to the good that he rarely issues invitations. However, perhaps I should be grateful for the chance of witnessing the true artistry of his cook – it must take considerable care to ensure that half the food is too hot and half too cold, while at the same time presenting the burnt and the raw in the same dish.

‘The marshal’s headquarters is not a happy place this evening, not at all, save for the delight they took in finding others to blame for all that went wrong. Well, I am no soldier, not at all, but it causes concern. The peer has given the marshal very strict instructions, and I wonder whether they tie his hands too tightly, rather than guiding them to the task. If only Daddy Hill had not
gone home – at the very least I should have got a better dinner!’ Lieutenant General Hill had fallen ill and returned to England back in the autumn, and his command was entrusted to Marshal Beresford. ‘With Hill gone, and Craufurd too – now there is a man who knows a thing or two about bad dinners – we have to make do with men of lesser capabilities, and the peer cannot be everywhere at once.

‘Well, that is something we cannot govern, so perhaps we should turn our minds to what we can achieve. So, what do the French want?’

‘They wanted Lisbon,’ Hanley said.

‘Aye, they did, and they would have taken it last year had it not been for Lord Wellington and the fortifications prepared at such cost and effort.’ Baynes knew that Hanley had been in the south when all this happened. ‘Masséna ran up against them in the autumn and then stopped. He stared at them for months, living in country stripped bare, and stayed far longer than we believed possible, but somehow he managed it. He must have lost twenty thousand men, and most of his animals, and then at long last he went back and has been chased all the way into Spain. He tried his damnedest to stay in Portugal, but the peer forced him out. It should be a few months before his army recovers, although even after all those losses his reinforcements mean that he will still match or even surpass our numbers. It will not be so very long before they could try for Lisbon again.’

‘What of the fortifications?’ Hanley asked. ‘Will not the same thing happen again?’

‘Perhaps, but merely stopping them from taking the city last year cost His Majesty’s Government over nine million pounds. Dear God, nine million! And from all I see this year will be even more expensive. All that to save a tiny piece of Portugal and then evict the French from the country for a while. The Whigs do not like this war – or perhaps it is better to say that they see it as making the government vulnerable, and party advantage counts for more than the benefits to the country, so they rant against it and condemn it at every opportunity. If the Prince Regent
decides to dismiss the government and ask his old friends to form a new one, then Portugal and Spain may well be left to their fate.’

Hanley was surprised by Baynes’ pessimism. ‘Can they not see that defeating the invasion of Portugal was a great victory?’ he asked.

‘Perhaps, but I do not believe they would see that as of any account. A man who lives in Westminster rarely has much sense of the world beyond. Wellington is a Tory and so they detest him, and disbelieve anything to his credit. And there was no great battle. A victory in the field with masses of enemy shot down and enough of our own poor fellows killed to convince them that it was a hard fight – though not enough to upset them or their dear little consciences – would be harder to ignore. Englishmen, whatever their political inclinations, greatly love reading about a moderately bloody victory.’

‘Perhaps we should seek to give them one?’

Baynes beamed. ‘The same reasoning that has led so many Spanish armies to attack the French at the first opportunity. It is also why there are scarcely any Spanish armies still in the field. Come, come, dear boy, you know better than that.’

‘Well, of course, I am a soldier,’ Hanley replied, mocking the merchant’s often repeated claims of military ignorance. ‘Badajoz, then?’

‘If we can, but I dare say the French will not be idle. They have held Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida since last year and so they control the north road from Spain to Portugal. The lands there have been plundered as Masséna passed, but once he has recovered there is little to stop him advancing again by that route. Lord Wellington hopes to blockade Almeida and starve the garrison into submission – he cannot assault without a siege train, especially since the French have repaired the city’s defences.’

‘Which means the enemy hold the north road,’ Hanley said. ‘And in the south we keep Elvas, but they have Badajoz.’ There were only two routes into and out of Portugal usable by an army. On each one Spain and Portugal had constructed their own fortress by the border.

‘That should make it harder for either side to attack in the south,’ he continued. ‘If we can take Badajoz then at least we could seal one road.’

‘Soult surprised us at the start of the year,’ Baynes said, his voice filled with regret, ‘and so I have not been doing my job.’ The admission was painful. ‘It was not that he attacked in the south to support Masséna – the wonder was that he had not done it before – but the speed with which they took Badajoz and the lesser towns along the border – Campo Major scarcely a week ago. Soult’s main force has retired to restore control of Andalusia, but a corps remains here, only half the size of Marshal Beresford’s forces or perhaps a little larger, but directed with clearer purpose. What are their intentions?’