A Mild Case of Indigestion

by Geoffrey Watson

  Vere saw his opportunity of convincing the provost that he was outranked, both militarily and socially. “You haven’t mentioned your name, Major, but allow me to name my commanding officer, Colonel Welbeloved, the Earl of Alba and his Countess. I am Captain Lord George Vere. The scalawags you mentioned are known in Spain as Los Avispónes Morenos or the Brown Hornets.”

  He had deliberately given the Spanish name, as by now there was quite a crowd of interested spectators gathered to watch the entertainment. The revelation was picked up immediately by the Spaniards in the crowd, who started to shout and cheer.

  When people have been made to look foolish, they tend to react in different ways. The three most common are; losing their temper completely; trying to ignore the situation and walking away; or shrugging good-naturedly and accepting any olive branch that is held out.

  It looked very much as if the major was about to choose the first option, when typically, the Condesa took it upon herself to intervene. She dismounted gracefully, startling him even more by bringing her Ferguson into the crook of her left arm. Stepping forward, smiling sweetly and holding out her right hand, she said. “I am so pleased to meet someone who I am sure will be able to direct us. I am the Countess of Alba and we really do need to speak to Sir Arthur Wellesley rather urgently.”

  He clutched at the opportunity offered and bowed over her hand. “Provost Major Brock, My Lady. I cannot say that I have ever heard of the unit your colleague mentioned, but the local population seem to have accepted you with a deal of enthusiasm.”

  The crowd was indeed cheering and shouting, making conversation difficult. Welbeloved dismounted and cradled his Ferguson in the same disconcerting manner. “Yew may not have heard of us, Major, but the French have, to their sorrow, which explains the appreciation of the locals. We have been fighting against the men of Soult’s and Ney’s armies in the north, for the last two months and have two priorities.

  Firstly, we wish to spend tonight under a roof for the first time in weeks. Secondly, and most importantly, we must locate Sir Arthur Wellesley and hand over the various despatches that we have captured from the enemy. Would we be imposing on yew for help in realising both ambitions?”

  Realisation came to Major Brock. In spite of all indications to the contrary, he was dealing with a senior officer and at least three titled aristocrats. Truculence turned to co-operation with a salute to Welbeloved, although he couldn’t resist a touch of irony. “You must forgive me for not recognising the eminence of your party, My Lord–”

  “Belay the My Lord, Major. Colonel will do, or even Sir.”

  “Very well, Colonel. The town is not too crowded and if you wish to go to the castle I would hazard that General Herresi, the Spanish Governor, will be willing to accommodate you. As for General Wellesley, you will find him with his army, which mostly entered Spain following the valley of the river Tagus, about sixty to seventy miles south of here across the Sierra de Gata. There was talk of them trying to link up with the Spanish Army of Estremadura, somewhere along the same river towards Madrid, but I wouldn’t want to rely on that. Perhaps the Governor will be able to give you more accurate information, but count on two or three days ride across the sierras before you find him.”

  The Governor was slightly better informed than the provost, but not necessarily about Sir Arthur and the British Army. It helped in that he had known Mercedes’s father and had avidly been following all the stories that had been filtering through about the successes of the Hornets and the adventures of the old count’s daughter.

  The bad news he gave them was that the new French court in Madrid had confiscated all her estates and handed them over to a distant but pro-French cousin, together with the title of Conde de Alba. “Of course, none of the true nobility recognises him privately,” he said, “but there are many who keep very quiet about their anti-French sentiments for fear of losing everything that their families have held for centuries.”

  Mercedes merely shrugged. “I can understand that, if the holders of the titles are too old to fight, but for the rest of them it is craven surrender and a tacit declaration that they accept that Spain will forever be a province of the French Empire.”

  She smiled coldly. “Let me prophesy. Within three years I will have my patrimony returned and my son will be the next Conde de Alba y Hachenburg.”

  The conversation was in Spanish and Welbeloved had been following it with little difficulty, but he blinked hard when he had mentally translated the last sentence. “Yor son, did yew say, my dear?”

  There was nothing cold about her smile now. “When two people are married, my love, they are enjoined to have children and I do recall that we have not been neglecting the preliminaries to that blissful state. I am not yet entirely certain and would have waited a week or so before I told you, but you heard what the General said and that effete nincompoop, Cousin Alfonso, will inherit the title anyway if I am childless.”

  Welbeloved had already experienced fatherhood; an interlude that had ended tragically with the death of his wife and daughter at the hands of the French. His memories of that time caused his immediate reaction to be more of calculation than concern. He had never seriously considered the possibility, even when he and Mercedes had been enthusiastically celebrating those delightful preliminaries that she had mentioned.

  For certain, war-torn Spain was not the place for a pregnant wife to be dashing about shooting French soldiers. By the end of the year he would have to be thinking about sending her back to England, well before her possible confinement. In the next few months however, the fight against the French must go on, regardless of everything.

  His obviously preoccupied reaction to her news was not at all what she had been expecting and caused her bitter disappointment. He reached out and embraced her warmly, murmuring, “we must discuss what we must do as soon as we are alone. Meanwhile, do try and find out all he knows about Wellesley’s movements and where this Army of Estremadura is at the moment.”

  He was amazed when she shot him a look of pure venom, but obediently turned back and started to question the Governor further. He, poor fellow, had watched as a light-hearted exchange in English had turned strangely acrimonious, but he answered her questions as well as he was able. As they were many days ride away from the scenes he was describing, he begged her to assume that all the information would be at least a week old.

  He had heard that the Army of Estremadura under General Cuesta was on the river Tajo - the Tagus when it flowed into Portugal - near a town called Talavera. There were over thirty thousand men in this army, but it was led by seventy-year old general who was notable for having fought many battles and for losing them all. General Wellesley with a British army was said to be marching to join Cuesta, hoping to be able to support him against Marshal Victor and his army, who were occupying the town at the moment.

  He apologised profusely for the poor quality of his information but was mollified when Welbeloved assured him that it was all he needed to know for the present. Indeed this was quite true. After his amazing victory over Soult at Oporto, Wellesley seemed more than capable of looking after himself and his army, even if his Spanish allies were to be thrashed again.

  He only had a small army though, unless they had been massively reinforced, which was unlikely. Wellesley had to be warned that King Joseph was putting pressure on Soult to move south across his escape route to Portugal. He must be told that Soult now commanded a fully fit force of over thirty thousand and not just the beaten and tattered remnants that had escaped over the border into Galicia.

  Lord George Vere was summoned and sent off to find Wellesley as quickly as he could ride. He took a couple of the veteran Hornets with him and three spare horses. The rest of the men would make for the Tajo and ride on towards Talavera at a good speed. Vere could meet them again if he rode downstream after delivering his news.

  Welbeloved and Mercedes spent their first night for two months in a bed, under a roof and it was not the joyous occasion
that they had both been looking forward to with such anticipation.

  For the first time since he had known her, the self possessed, hardy and determined young aristocrat wept tears of grief and disappointment, amid accusations that he didn’t want the child-to-be, that he didn’t care for her any longer and any other hurtful claim that she could dream up.

  He did his best to understand her quite; to his way of thinking; illogical outbursts. To no avail. It was in the early hours, when worn out, she finally insisted that he prove his devotion with a frantic bout of love making, before falling asleep. She nevertheless left him in no doubt that, whatever his plans, her baby would be born in Spain, preferably in her own home on her now confiscated estates.

  CHAPTER 13

  Acting-Sergeant Hickson sat back against a rock with his belly full of hot food, a tin mug of four-water grog in his left hand and his right arm around the small but wondrously curvaceous form of Isabella. She also had eaten well of her own cooking and the mug of local wine that she had drunk made her more tolerant of the wandering right hand, even when it strayed into softer and more intimate areas. It certainly had no right to be so impertinent until they were properly married, but then, that was not far off, even though she had so far neglected to tell Ramon. For the moment, both of them were quietly content.

  Content may possibly have been an understatement to describe the mood Hickson was in. he knew the task entrusted to him had been little more than routine, but everyone had to start somewhere and this had been his first independent action in command of his small platoon. Not only that, but it had gone flawlessly from the start. His own men, the new Hornets and the partisans had done as well as could be expected, with all the new boys gaining in experience merely by copying the veterans.

  The bridge had succumbed to the first charges of gunpowder when the road was empty. The first convoy of wagons afterwards had stopped in confusion when they found the road blocked and had surrendered meekly when the officer and sergeant in charge of the small escort had been shot out of their saddles. The French had been so obliging in fact, that he had allowed them to retain their breeches and boots for the long march back to safety.

  The convoy had been stuffed with grain, rations and fodder in addition to replacement harness and horseshoes. The latter items were hidden where they could be retrieved at need. Everything else was lashed to their own or captured draught horses and the excess dumped in the river to spoil.

  What had been planned as a three-day operation had been completed successfully in less than two. This was just as well, because Antonio Gomez came riding into camp the following morning with a message from MacKay.

  Before midday, all the fit Hornets and the girls were following Gomez to join MacKay and by the late afternoon, El Martillo himself led out about fifty guerrilleros, leaving barely enough to defend their new fortress, even considering the new menacing three-pounders.

  ***

  MacKay hadn’t been fighting for and with Welbeloved for ten years without absorbing a great many of his characteristics: those that he admired most, at any rate, which effectively meant nearly all of them. The controversial area was his insatiable curiosity, which MacKay sometimes thought he carried to excess, but which very rarely found him lacking information on which to base his decisions.

  Now, it was a similar curiosity that was consuming MacKay. When he saw Major Rabuteau; or Commandant or Chef de Bataillon in the French style; he thought immediately of the despatches they had captured before and wondered what fresh information was contained in his new sabretache.

  He had dallied with the idea of finding him in his lodgings in the town but dismissed the idea as impractical once he’d spoken to the blacksmith. Now he had two days to wait for his reinforcements and Rabuteau would be riding on early in the morning.

  As soon as he got back to camp from the town he had everybody saddle up and was off down the road to the east, looking for a suitable place to attempt to renew his acquaintance with the peacock hussar.

  Fifteen miles later; with the sun still making up its mind whether to face another day or not; the valley became narrower and the river ran closer to the road, pushing it towards the more steeply rising foot of the northern hills.

  Patches of trees had established themselves in places between the river and the road with small, pleasant glades spaced among them. There were several places where an ambush could have been prepared, but MacKay was looking for an ideal position where his small mixture of novices, guerrilleros and seasoned Hornets would have an almost unchallengeable advantage.

  He found it after another half-mile, where the northern encroachment into the valley culminated in a small spur around which the road disappeared briefly before curving back to follow the line of the river. The spur itself continued into the river, terminating in a small but steep drop where the river had eroded the tip over the centuries. Scattered trees had filled the area almost up to the road for fifty yards either side of the spur, except for the higher ground of the spur itself.

  It looked to be everything that MacKay needed. They hobbled the horses in a small glade two hundred yards past the spur and returned on foot. Normally he would have left the two girls with the horses, but they were each carrying Fergusons and he might need their firepower to supplement the other six. The Spaniards were all good marksmen within the limitations of their French muskets and in any case he expected any shooting to be at short range.

  He set them all to making a barricade twenty yards past the bend. Two or three stout saplings felled across the road with all their branches would not be a substantial blockage but would deter the horses and riders for as long as necessary. The two girls were placed in position to deal with any adventurous spirit that refused to be deterred.

  The Spaniards were all placed together in hiding among the trees fifty yards before the spur, with strict orders to remain unseen and only shoot at anyone retreating from confrontation with the Hornets. Ryan and the five new Hornets were hidden at nominal five-yard intervals, lining the road up to the spur where MacKay and Garrett, the other veteran, lay either side of the ridge, both in position to cover the road in each direction. Then they waited.

  The sun had come up while they made their preparations and they had time now to relax. If Rabuteau’s despatches were urgent, he would have started at dawn and would be half way along the road by now. If not, he would linger awhile for breakfast and be an hour later. He should still get here before any of the presumably empty wagons of the train des equipages, making their way back to Madrid.

  MacKay strolled up and down the road, making sure that everyone was well hidden, that they all understood exactly what they were to do and that the Spaniards understood that no Frenchman was to be harmed if he was offering to surrender. He emphasised this last point, knowing that their justifiable hatred was otherwise likely to control their feelings.

  As it was, he had to sprint fifty yards back to his position as a low whistle travelled from the Spaniards and along the line, announcing that someone was approaching.

  There were two chasseurs acting as an advance party, cantering along some way in front of the main troop. They slowed to a trot as they passed the hidden Spaniards, their eyes scanning the trees casually without any expectation of trouble. Coming up to the bend round the spur they were walking their mounts and the main party were just slowing to a trot as they passed the Spanish positions.

  Events then moved forward more quickly as the advance party went round the bend and saw the trees blocking the road. They reacted with commendable speed, both men unholstering their carbines and scanning the trees for danger. One of them advanced cautiously to examine the obstacle while the other dashed back round the bend and halted his friends just before they reached the turning.

  During this moment of confusion as the troop came to a halt, MacKay made his dramatic entrance. He could see the hussar a few yards away surrounded by chasseurs. He stepped out of cover with his Ferguson casually cradled in his left arm, fro
m where he could aim and fire in a split second. He used his seaman’s bellow and a mixture of Spanish and French that he had acquired in the last ten years. “Bonjour Monsieur Rabuteau! Will we talk or will you die? Tell your men to drop their weapons and dismount!”

  Fortunately, Rabuteau understood and recognised MacKay. Fortunately he had a loud voice and his bellowed “Stand still!” was obeyed by all except the captain in command, who drew his sabre and made to slash at MacKay, just a few feet away. Garrett shot him from the saddle while his sabre was still raised over his head and MacKay did not move a muscle. He merely raised his voice. “Control your men Commandant! That was an unnecessary death….”

  The remaining chasseur of the vanguard chose to trot back just as his captain fell and immediately turned tail and headed for the tangle of branches, intending to jump through them and escape. It was not a good move. The two girls had been praying for such an opportunity and two bullets took him before he could put his horse to the barrier.

  “…and so was that.” MacKay finished his sentence as the five Spaniards stepped into the road behind the French, with muskets presented and Ryan at their head.

  The nascent retreat intended by some of the French in the rear was stillborn and Rabuteau ordered them all from their saddles and lined them up before turning to MacKay and speaking slowly. “I had hoped that we had seen enough of your Frelons, Monsieur le Lieutenant. Why do you need to attack me again?”

  “Two reasons, Monsieur. Firstly curiosity about what important despatches you carry and secondly, so that you can tell Joseph Bonaparte that Spanish roads are not open to Frenchmen when we choose to deny them.”

  Rabuteau was looking puzzled until Juanita, who had come up behind MacKay, explained in very good french and held her hand out for his sabretache, which he handed over without demur.

  “I fear then, that you have wasted two lives and put me to a great deal of inconvenience for very little return, Monsieur MacKay. The important despatches are all in code and the rest are merely routine requisitions and requests which I volunteered to carry.”