Whose Business Is to Die (30 page)

‘Why?’ Williams realised that his tone was impertinent from a lieutenant to a captain, let alone should the colonel feel that the question was directed at him. ‘Forgive me, I am a little surprised, sir. Are we simply to occupy the higher ground or have we more to do?’

Colborne said nothing, so after a moment Dunbar replied. ‘All we have been told so far is to take position where we can see the French and they can see us.’

‘They have a lot of cavalry and half a dozen light guns, but as yet I have only seen a single infantry brigade advancing,’ Williams said.

Dunbar grinned. ‘Then we ought to give them a nasty surprise.’

The three horsemen were now close enough to see over the crest and were soon at its top. More French cavalry had appeared, but Williams could still see no more than five battalions of infantry, the leading units stationary and in line with their guns.

‘Perhaps it is hoped that this display of our might will deter the enemy.’ Colborne’s tone was flat, not bitter but akin to that
of a parent speaking with disappointment of a child. ‘I am not sure that we are resolved to fight if it can be avoided.’

If it was a bluff then Williams doubted that it would work. His experience told him that the French never readily gave up a purpose, and he was sure that veterans like Colborne and Dunbar had just as much respect for their enemy.

The whole line crested the ridge and then orders were shouted for them to halt. Williams could see small groups of cavalry chasing the last of the Polish lancers back across the river before retiring to rally on their supports. More French cavalry, including several regiments of dragoons, had appeared and were formed on the far bank. Then he spotted a second brigade of infantry on the highway. It did not look as if Marshal Soult was ready to turn around and retire.

A row of puffs of smoke appeared, blotting out the French gun line, and a few seconds later they heard the dull reports. They were firing at the village. A few moments later the Royal Horse Artillery supporting the cavalry began to reply. Between their own brigade and the nearest Spanish, the guns attached to the Second Division moved forward to deploy. Before they were ready the French guns fired again. One of their infantry columns sent out skirmishers, who advanced towards the bridges.

‘I do not believe that the enemy is deterred,’ Lieutenant Colonel Colborne said with more than a hint of satisfaction, and Williams wondered whether it was pleasure in being proved right or at the prospect of commanding a brigade in a major field action.

23

H
anley started in the saddle when he heard the guns fire, and then told himself that he was a fool as the sound was from miles away. He was no longer sure that this was such a good idea and wished that Williams was with him, or even Sergeant Dobson. Rank mattered little to Hanley, and he would happily have let his friend or the veteran NCO decide how to do this. Pringle would have been a comfort, but the other two were what Baynes liked to call killers, and they understood fighting better than he ever would. They were also very good at it.

The high walls of the convent were ahead of him, a good three hundred yards away, looming up on the hilltop. Sinclair might be waiting there. Hanley remembered how the Irishman had tried to ambush him once before, with Brandt and his rifle lurking in the tower of a church. Yet that was when he had still believed Sinclair to be a British officer, so Hanley had gone to meet him and might well have died or been taken if he had not been warned.

Hanley was determined not to go inside the convent in case the enemy was waiting. Stay outside, he told himself, and he and the others would have a chance to move around, seek cover, or even escape. Would Sinclair think the same? There were trees on either side of the track, quite close on his left, and a hundred yards away to the right. On the right there was also a brook sunk into a little gully, and nearer to the convent a couple of low stone sheds with crumbling animal pens around them.

‘Come on,’ he said to the hussar riding behind him, and gestured for them to go forward. He nudged his horse, and then
kicked harder and flicked it with his crop when the beast did not move. The animal’s ears were flicking backwards and forwards.

It was about eight o’clock, the time Baynes had arranged for the meeting. Hanley’s horse stopped again. Cannon rumbled on faintly in the distance. He scanned the trees to the right, and the nearest low wall, for it seemed to be something over there that was troubling the horse.

Hanley could not see anything wrong, and so made the horse walk on, the hussar following him. The corporal and the other two hussars were somewhere, scouting to make sure that there was no strong force of enemy near by. They had sent no word, and nor had he heard shots, so they had probably found nothing. Perhaps Sinclair was not coming, even if he was still alive.

There was movement up ahead, figures coming from one of the low sheds. Hanley let his crop hang on the strap around his wrist and drew the pistol tucked into his sash. A figure in black appeared, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, and he recognised the priest from Nogales. Gutiérrez emerged behind him. Neither man looked nervous or moved unnaturally, but that did not mean that there were not concealed enemies pointing guns at them. The convent was still a long musket shot away, a distance at which even a good rifleman like Brandt could not be sure of his mark. That was if they were there and not hidden somewhere else.

The priest waved, and Hanley responded, hoping that the pistol in his hand did not make him appear nervous. He and the hussar kept walking their horses forward. It started to spot with rain, the first drops pattering heavily on his hat.

Hanley was not looking at the two men, but scanning the huts and walls behind them, and happened to be staring directly at one of the pens when a man’s head bobbed up. Three more were beside him in an instant and then they vanished behind dirty smoke.

The hussar gasped as a ball struck him in the chest. Hanley’s horse staggered, then was hit a second time and reared, screaming in agony. He was thrown, landing heavily on his back, hat gone
and the wind knocked from him, and for the moment he could only stare at the sky. The hussar was slumped forward in the saddle as his horse cantered away. Gutiérrez had run back to cover, but the priest was sitting on the grass, hands pressed to the wound in his belly.

Another shot, and there was a fierce stinging and a notch taken off the toe of his boot. Hanley tried to get up, felt the wind of a ball pass his shoulder, so he dived down behind his dying horse, placing a hand on its neck to calm the poor beast and keep it still. A ball smacked into the animal’s flesh just inches from his hand. He felt it shudder at another strike and heard it let out a long sigh.

Hanley waited, trying to press himself as tightly to the ground as he could. He wondered where Corporal Scott and the Brunswick rifleman had got too, and regretted giving them his rifle. The pistol had fallen from his hand and was now several feet away. He stared at it, wondering what good it might do him, but relishing the thought of having some weapon in his hand. There was silence for several minutes, so he pushed himself up and scrabbled for the pistol. A shot came, striking the grass close by, but he had grabbed the pistol and then was turning to dive back into cover when something slammed into his left arm just above the elbow. He fell, managed to roll back behind the dead horse, but as he did so put his weight on the injured arm and felt a wave of pain.

Hanley lay on his back, sobbing in agony and trying to get his breath back.

‘Give yourself up, Hanley,’ a familiar voice called.

He did not answer.

‘You haven’t a chance,’ Sinclair tried again. ‘Give it up, man.’

There was another shot, not far from his holed boot, and Hanley realised that his foot was exposed. He pulled it in and rolled on to his side. Raising his head, he could just see over the dead animal.

‘The father is in a bad way,’ Sinclair shouted. ‘Surrender and we will patch him up.’ The priest was rocking gently back and
forth as he sat on the grass. For a moment the rain hammered down and then as suddenly stopped. Hanley wondered whether the damp would stop the enemy from firing.

The answer came almost instantly as a musket flamed and Hanley ducked down as a ball drove into the side of the dead horse.

‘You still alive, Hanley?’ Sinclair called after a moment.

Hanley moaned, the cry growing stronger until he was sobbing with pain.

Sinclair called an order, but Hanley was pressed against the animal’s corpse and could not see. The wound to his arm throbbed and as he shifted fresh pain shot through him and he cried out.

He heard the crack of a rifle and a grunt. There was a puff of dirty powder smoke on the edge of the wood to the left of the path. Someone screamed and the cry ended with a hiss. Another shot from the wood and then another – that was why he had given Scott his rifle, so that they would have a loaded weapon waiting for use.

Hanley peered out. A soldier in a light green jacket was on the ground, dark blood spreading across his coat’s yellow front. Another was helping a man with a wound in his leg hobble to the animal pen. A fourth was clutching at his throat, his hands red with pumping blood, but the man’s musket with bayonet fixed stuck up from the back of the priest. He could not see Sinclair, but a few minutes later there was another shout.

‘Well, this presents us all with a little problem.’ The Irishman sounded matter-of-fact, as if discussing a minor disagreement at a county fair.

‘Give up!’ Hanley called to him. ‘You will never get away. I have a company of men who will be moving up now that they have heard the shots.’

‘’Tis a terrible thing for a man to lie so.’ Sinclair had deliberately thickened his accent.

‘Give up!’

‘And that from a fellow with a bullet in him hiding behind a dead horse.’

A flurry of shots slammed into the corpse. Scott and Schwartz both fired, and he heard the sound of a ball striking the stone wall, but there was no cry.

‘We have a prisoner,’ Sinclair shouted. ‘Senor Gutiérrez.’

Hanley did not reply.

‘Be a shame if he came to harm,’ Sinclair continued. Hanley raised his head and saw that one of the soldiers held the Spaniard’s arms behind his back while Sinclair aimed a pistol at his head.

‘You are not that sort of man, Sinclair,’ Hanley shouted.

‘Am I not? And do you think you know me?’ The Irishman made a great show of pulling back the hammer on his pistol.

‘I cannot stop you.’ The habit of secrecy was too ingrained for Hanley to blurt out that he knew Gutiérrez was working for the French, but perhaps that would be some protection for the man.

‘Stopping me is easy. Just give yourself up.’

‘I cannot do that.’

‘Then that’s a shame, a real shame.’ Sinclair straightened his arm and took aim, but then seemed to make a decision. He raised the pistol and slammed the barrel down on the Spaniard’s head. Gutiérrez staggered, but the soldier still held him up. There was a nasty cut on his forehead.

‘There is another way, but it is far less pleasant,’ Sinclair called.

Hanley wished now that he had not told Scott and Schwartz to avoid killing the Irishman if they could. Sinclair was standing in the open gateway, and perhaps the simplest way to deal with this would be to shoot the man.

‘We have the girl, Hanley,’ Sinclair shouted, and then gestured behind him. There was a scream, a piercing and undoubtedly feminine scream.

‘Do you want to see her? Gutiérrez’s little daughter. A pretty thing she is and no mistake. Come on, lass.’ Another of his greencoated soldiers appeared, pulling at the captive. The girl was quite tall, with thick black hair piled high on the top of her head. She wore a dark cloak, and her hands were down low and held together, so Hanley guessed that they must be tied.

‘Is she not the perfect little darling?’ The mock Irish brogue was back again. ‘Be such a shame if she was to come to harm.’

‘You would not!’ Hanley shouted and hoped that he was right.

‘Would I not?’ Sinclair seemed amused. ‘Do you remember Corporal Brandt? Well, Sergeant Brandt he is now, and as fine a son of Hibernia as most of the men in the legion. You know what sort of man he is. Do you remember?’

‘Sinclair, you cannot!’

‘I do not like to lose, Hanley. You had better show yourself, Sergeant. Let the nice gentleman see you.’

Brandt was limping and Hanley realised that he must have been the man wounded in the leg. There was the red stripe of a sergeant on the sleeve of his tunic and he thought that the face was familiar, but could not be sure. There was no doubting the hard look in the man’s eyes, or the sharpness of the slim knife he held.

Shoot now, Hanley thought, as if his men would somehow read his mind. Knock over Sinclair and Brandt and we can rush the others.

Nothing happened, Sinclair jerked his head and the soldier dragged the girl back out of sight. Her father struggled to free himself and the Irishman hit him again with the muzzle of his pistol. Brandt ran a finger along the blade of his knife and then he too went back inside the pen.

‘It is up to you, Captain,’ Sinclair shouted. ‘All you have to do is surrender. Your men can go if they lay down their arms. I do not care about them.’

One of the soldiers returned and held up a dark cloak, draping it over the wall. Gutiérrez struggled again until Sinclair aimed his pistol squarely between the man’s eyes.

‘The sergeant is not a pleasant man, but he does have his uses.’

A scream rent the air and for a moment Hanley forgot the throbbing pain in his arm. ‘God damn you to bloody Irish hell!’ he yelled.

Sinclair smiled. ‘No doubt He will in His good time.’

The girl screamed again.

‘Brandt likes women, although I suspect many of the ladies do not care much for him.’

The soldier returned, and placed a large piece of light-coloured cloth on top of the cloak. Hanley tried to think. The other hussars were out there somewhere, and the noise would surely have carried to them so they must know what was happening. He had told them to come back, but to approach with care. Sinclair might not know about them, but then he might have more of his own men hurrying to join him as soon as they heard the shots.