Seven Men of Gascony

by R. F Delderfield

  “I shall give you one minute to hand over the guide who led my detachment across the mountain path!” he said. “If, at the end of that minute, he is not delivered up to me I shall shoot all the men present, one after another, until there is no male Spaniard in the square!”

  He took out his watch, a handsome silver timepiece which Gabriel had often seen before, and held it steadily in the palm of his hand. The torches guttered in the stiff breeze. Somewhere at the back of the crowd a woman began sobbing. Men shuffled their feet in the thick dust. The minute seemed endless.

  Vidal brought the period to an abrupt close. He drew out a heavy, brass-mounted pistol, cocked it and, pointing it directly at the Spaniard’s head, pulled the trigger. The report shattered the silence like a salvo of siege guns and the man dropped dead at the captain’s feet. A half-naked woman flung herself out of the crowd and across the twitching body of the Spaniard. Vidal recharged his pistol and barked an order at Old Jean to marshal the firing-squad.

  Gabriel hung back and Old Jean did not look in his direction, choosing instead Nicholas and five other veterans of the company. They formed up in front of the storehouse steps, other voltigeurs seizing and pushing forward three more men, two graybeards and one hardly more than a boy. The latter fell on his knees and began to pray.

  The square began to seethe. At several points little isolated struggles commenced, where voltigeurs held back men and women who tried to writhe out of the circle of torchlight. Some of the children, sick with the terror they read in the eyes of their parents, became hysterical and added their cries to the maddeningly insistent lament of the woman kneeling over the corpse.

  Gabriel’s senses reeled with the horror of the scene. The whole agony of the human race seemed to rise from the little mob enclosed in the hollow square. Vidal, calmly priming his pistol, looked like a uniformed demon.

  As the first wave of horror passed, Gabriel felt curiously alive to the ghastly symbolism of the picture—a whole people crucified, nailed, like Manny, to a tree in a wilderness. He looked left and right for some answering feeling in the eyes of his comrades, but found none. Claude, holding a guttering torch, with his musket crooked under his right armpit, met his glance and his eyes seemed to say: “What’s wrong with it? They crucified Manny, didn’t they?” Gabriel sought out Old Jean, standing with the firing-squad. The sergeant’s face was expressionless. This was not new to him, a man who had witnessed the sack of a dozen towns and fished for dead Mamelukes in the Nile. Dominique, his bayonet at the back of a bowed peasant of more than eighty, was actually grinning, as though taking part in a hideous game played out under the portals of hell. Louis, beside him, looked solemn enough. Perhaps his love of horses lent him some compassion for the human sheep they were slaughtering, or perhaps, like Claude, he was remembering Manny’s grin. Nicholas stood beside Old Jean, his musket levelled at the boy on his knees in the dust. Gabriel had sometimes heard Nicholas recite from the Iliad, on Lobau, after Dominique had put away his fiddle and only Gabriel remained awake round the camp-fire. He wondered how it was that a man like that, who had known culture and came from a respectable bourgeois family, could stand there in a ring of torchlight and shoot a grovelling boy scarcely older than those he had once taught in school.

  Gabriel’s thoughts were cut short by the volley. The two men dropped, but the boy, apparently only wounded, suddenly leaped to his feet and sped across the square, bursting through the ranks of the villagers and disappearing into the shadows beyond.

  The boy’s action seemed to snap the spell. The crowd became unmanageable and surged to and fro, breaking on the steps of the storehouse, where Gabriel caught a final glimpse of Vidal laying about him with his sabre, shouting to the men to use their bayonets. Few did. Perhaps they had sickened of slaughter, or perhaps they were merely dazed by the uproar and confused in the unsteady light. In less than a minute the square was clear of civilians, but one side of the wretched street was ablaze and the voltigeurs had rallied round the store. Vidal, stabbed in the side, was being supported by two men. Gabriel felt Jean plucking at his sleeve.

  “March,” he hissed, “before the fire brings in the guerrillas.”

  They began to retreat towards the open country. They had gone barely a league when sharpshooters began to fire on the column from the rocks on each side of the track. They lost four men, including Vidal, shot through the head, and carried away three others lightly wounded. By dawn they were within sight of a main camp.

  Trudging along beside Gabriel, Louis said: “I wonder if Manny had any money on him.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  On the twenty-third of September, 1810, the French army halted in the valley of the Mondego, beneath the towering escarpment of Busaco. Between them and their goal, Lisbon, lay the British army and its allies, Portuguese militia who had yet to smell powder.

  Massena’s army, wasted by sickness and thinned by the siege of Almeida and the garrisoning of towns en route, was reduced to something under sixty thousand men. Morale was exceptionally bad. Endless marching, dwindling rations, and the relentless hostility of the countryside had done less to sap the confidence of men who had won victories for nearly twenty years than the opinions expressed by veterans in the ranks, men like Old Jean who were the barometers of the battalions and who now distrusted their commanders. It was common knowledge in the army that Massena was at loggerheads with his lieutenants, Ney, Reynier, Foy and Junot. Rumours of furious quarrels trickled down to the ranks through the gossip of staff orderlies and headquarters guards. Ney was said to have insulted Massena’s mistress in front of junior staff officers.

  When the retreating British made a desperate stand, the French bivouacked at the foot of their precipitous position. Rumour went round that there would be a battle in the morning, but Jean scoffed at the idea. A frontal attack on a lofty ridge held by an unbeaten enemy would be suicidal, he declared.

  In spite of Jean’s denial, there was battle in the morning. Without any effort to turn the enemy’s flank, as Jean said they must if they were to continue the pursuit, the French corps were flung headlong up the slopes of Busaco ridge, right onto the bayonets of the redcoats and caçadores defending the summit.

  The result was precisely as Jean predicted. All the dash of the French sharpshooters and all the dogged courage of the massed columns of Ney and Reynier proved only a prelude to a bloody repulse.

  Fighting in the van of the Sixth Corps, urged on by Marshal Ney himself, hatless and clambering from rock to rock as the voltigeurs prised the British riflemen from the hillside, Jean, Nicholas, Dominique and Gabriel gained the summit, only to receive the full blast of a point-blank volley fired by English guards who rose up from ambush immediately in front of them.

  The head of the French column withered away under a deadly and accurate fire. Jean got a ball through the fleshy part of the thigh, and Nicholas, flinging his musket to Gabriel, carried the sergeant down the steep slope on his back, rolling him behind a boulder in the valley and returning to keep the cautious pursuit away from close range.

  At midday the attack was called off. The French army crawled back from the dry stream-bed, leaving over five thousand killed and wounded out on the sunny slopes.

  Jean they dragged back to the lines, and Louis, who could vet men as well as dogs and horses, heated a knife and dug out the ball from the sinews of his leg, Gabriel giving the veteran a scarf upon which to bite whilst the clumsy operation was in progress. After that they poured brandy into his wound and mouth, and the sergeant, his lean face waxen under its mahogany tan, went into an exhausted sleep under an awning of greatcoats rigged up to keep off the afternoon sun.

  The men sat around and talked gloomily. Louis, who had gone back to the cavalry lines for water, returned with more bad news. Nicholette had struggled into camp, but one of her horses had broken a leg on the last incline. Unless they could find a replacement not only would the wagon have to be abandoned, but Jean’s chances of survival were negligible. The British we
re already striking camp and continuing their march. If the French went in pursuit what would happen to the canteen and to Jean?

  After dark they held a conference. Jean was lifted into the wagon and Nicholette joined them in bivouac. Over on the right Montbrun’s cavalry reserve was already breaking camp, to lead the way round the left flank of the British through a pass that had been found after the useless slaughter of the frontal attack.

  “What in the name of God is the matter with them?” growled Nicholas, after a lieutenant had passed on orders to prepare to resume the march in the morning. “What’s to be done with the wounded in this desert?”

  They soon learned of headquarters’ plans regarding the wounded. All those too sick to be moved were to be abandoned, without a guard.

  “I’ll see them in hell first,” said Louis, glancing towards the wagon, where Dominique and Gabriel were raising the haggard Jean and coaxing him to drink the broth they had made from a ration of horseflesh.

  “We’ve got to get hold of another horse or a mule,” said Nicholas.

  There was a short silence. Each of the group knew that the acquisition of a horse or a mule was an impossibility. Back at Almeida fantastic prices had been asked for draught animals. Here, where hundreds of officers were numbered among the wounded, the price would soar even higher.

  “The Carolini brothers followed me in!” said Nicholette.

  Nobody made an immediate answer. Each of them knew of the Carolini brothers and of their reputation for sharp practice and hard bargains. The brothers were three Italians who had held a canteen licence for almost as long as Old Carla. They were a tough, hardbitten outfit who were reputed to make immense profits, partly on account of ruthless pricing, and partly because they were never more than half a day’s march behind the army. Their equipment, renewed every year and transported in strongly built wagons pulled by two teams of four mules, enabled them to keep on the tail of the columns as few camp-followers could. Only Old Carla had kept pace with them, and the rivalry between the old woman and the Carolinis was implacable. It had flared into hatred on many a battlefield, where Old Carla had often challenged their prices. On one occasion they had endeavoured to overturn her wagon and drain off her wine. One of them, Gino, still carried a scar from a bullet wound received in this encounter.

  When the old woman had died on Lobau the Carolinis rejoiced. Assuming that the canteen would be sold, they came over to the voltigeurs’ bivouac to make an offer. Nicholette, who had inherited her mother’s hatred of the trio, told them that a hundred times the sum offered would be insufficient to put her out of business, if that meant selling out to the Italians. Gino had grinned, scratched the scar on his check and run his eye over her slight figure.

  “I’ll give you two months,” he told her.

  That was more than a year ago and Nicholette was still trailing the army, often a league or two ahead of the Carolinis, despite their eight mules to her two horses. She had the advantage of a lighter wagon and less personal baggage. The Carolinis travelled in comfort.

  Claude pondered. “How much can we raise?” he asked.

  Gabriel shook out his belt. He had just over a hundred francs in gold. The others pooled two hundred between them. Claude looked at his wife and wondered how much Jean’s life would be worth to her. She said nothing for a few minutes, but Claude guessed that her brain was already a battlefield, avarice struggling with loyalty to her mother’s oldest friend in the regiment.

  “Double it, Nicholette!” he coaxed.

  Nicholette’s eyes flashed, and the others could not miss the scorn in the look that she gave him.

  “Six hundred! Do you think that the Carolinis would part with a mule for six hundred? Are you mad? Are all of you mad?”

  Nobody answered her. All of them felt that the sum she volunteered was her own business. Gabriel glanced towards the wagon. He realized that the sergeant’s life hung on this woman’s whim.

  Nicholette rose and threw a blanket over her shoulders.

  “I’ll offer them two thousand,” she said. “Nicholas, you’d better come along with me.”

  The two of them moved across the rough ground to the Carolinis’ bivouac, where their two wagons stood side by side and their eight mules were tethered in a group round a stunted oak. Nicholette carried a heavy canvas bag over her shoulder. Watching them leave, Claude felt a qualm of jealousy about Nicholas, but it was swamped by wonder at the extent of the girl’s generosity. Two thousand francs! The profit of weeks of hard work! Louis moved over to inform Jean of their decision.

  Gino Carolini saw Nicholette approach and guessed her errand. He had passed and recognized her dead horse on the way up to the ridge. He called to his brothers, Luigi and Aldo, who were sitting in the baggage wagon, finishing their supper. The three of them stood by their fire, grinning.

  “You should feed your horses, Nico,” shouted Gino. “They won’t travel this country on chaff!”

  Nicholas swore softly. He felt an intense desire to seize Gino Carolini by his narrow shoulders and smash his head against the big round boulder beside the lowered shafts. As always when he encountered peddlars, sutlers, hucksters and canteen-men or any of the rabble of camp-followers who drifted along in the wake of the battalions, picking their bones like the carrion birds he had seen squatting near Manny’s cross, a surge of hatred such as he never felt for the enemy rose in his throat and almost choked him. Nicholette must have sensed this, for she gripped his wrist, enjoining silence.

  “I’ll give you two thousand, a third of it in gold, for one of your scarecrows!” she began, nodding towards the mules.

  Gino bellowed with laughter. His brothers, small, insignificant men compared with the tall rascal who led them, echoed his laughter as schoolchildren laugh at the jokes of authority.

  Nicholette stopped on the far side of the Italians’ fire.

  “Two and a half?” she said, her voice flat and harsh.

  Gino shook his head.

  “All my mules are good mules,” he said. “Besides, what should I do with a mule short in this purgatory?”

  Nicholette sat down and turned out all her money onto a flat stone.

  “Five thousand. That’s my limit.”

  The smile left Gino’s mouth, but Nicholas saw that it still lurked in his eyes.

  “Not for ten thousand!” he said, and turned away, his brothers following.

  Nicholas felt a void in the pit of his stomach. Resolutely he thrust from his mind the prospect of leaving Jean on the bare hillside when they broke camp in the morning. Nicholette was silent for a moment. Then she jumped to her feet and called: “Gino!” across the fire.

  The big Italian, who had begun to move away, swung round and looked at her. There was hatred in every line of his swarthy face.

  “I’ve got more than eleven thousand with me,” said Nicholette, speaking very slowly and distinctly. “You can have it all and I’ll throw in my stock! I want only the wagon.”

  “No, by God!” shouted Nicholas, and even Gino Carolini opened his mouth in surprise. His brothers looked up at him with the expressions of hopeful curs when promised a particularly large bone. Eleven thousand and the stock for one mule! They felt sure that he would accept.

  Gino came back and sat down on the shafts, looking at the girl steadily. “Not even for that, Nico, not even for that!” Nicholas could hardly believe his ears, but Gino went on. “Suppose I took the money. Suppose I took the stock. A bargain, you’d say, wouldn’t you? Something like fifteen thousand for one mangy mule? Well, so it would be to most people. I’m a bad business man to reject it. But am I? What would you do when we got to Lisbon? You’d get money from somewhere and start up again. You’d hitch one of my mules to your cart and follow me around, year after year, slandering my reputation as your whore of a mother used to, undercutting my prices until I had to lower them below the fair profit line, all because of you and your damned outfit! No, Nico. I’m not a bad business man; I’m a good one. I never choke myse
lf swallowing a tasty morsel. Let us get into Lisbon first. Then maybe I will sell you a mule, if one of mine goes lame!”

  Nicholette and Nicholas saw the futility of further bargaining. They got up, went back to the bivouac and told the others what had occurred, only keeping it from Jean, who seemed to be running a high fever. He tossed about in the wagon and grumbled to himself unceasingly.

  English riflemen, the best marksmen in the world, had been crawling down the slopes and sniping at sleeping men. The sky was overcast and the moon often invisible behind thick banks of cloud. Jean moaned in his crude litter. A sense of oppression hung over the bivouac.

  After the others had lain down to sleep, Nicholas and Nicholette went on talking in low voices.

  Gabriel, relieving Nicholas as guard, noticed that the schoolmaster did not coil himself down with the others when Gabriel took his place by the shafts. Instead he leaned his musket against the wagon and unfixed the bayonet, thrusting the naked blade into his belt. Then he unstrapped his shako and tossed it onto the driving-seat. Nicholette was still astir inside, hunting through one of the lockers for clean bandages. Nicholas said nothing, either to her or to Gabriel. The latter watched him move off into the deep shadows towards the horse lines. He thought, “Nicholas now?” The penalty for stealing a baggage horse was death within one hour of pronouncement of sentence.

  But Nicholas did not approach the horse lines or the artillery park. He turned left when he was fifty yards from the wagon, and crossed the open patch of scrub in the direction of the Carolinis’ bivouac. When he saw the outline of the two wagons he threw himself down in the heather and crawled, an inch at a time, towards the Italians’ dead fire.

  The moon sailed out from behind a cloud to reveal Luigi Carolini, sitting with his back to the big wheel of the larger wagon, smoking a cheroot. The periodical glow of the cigar was the only source of light when a fresh bank of cloud masked the moon. Behind him, Nicholas could hear occasional challenges of the sentries and the restless stamp of cavalry horses tethered in lines. In front, where the canteen mules were tied, it was very quiet. A high-pitched snore, Gino’s or Aldo’s, issued from the wagon.