CHAPTER SEVEN
The Convent
They had watched the drowning of Croyde from the rock basin that marked the western approach to the bridgehead, and when they were sure they would not recover his body they reassembled there, each reluctant to comment upon a fate that might have overtaken any of them during the last hour.
At length Lockhart said, “Well, if any man died on account o’ gold, then he did, the blamed vool!”
Watson added callously, “If we could ha’ got his corp ashore, then the boy could have ’ad one of his brogues. That was in my mind all along, for the boy’s in rare need o’ shoe leather!”
The woman said resignedly, “I’d as lief Croyde went as anyone. He was a better man than his comrade, but not much!”
Graham said nothing, for the sense of failure had come down on him again, making nonsense of his unspoken boasts to get home without losing another man. No matter how savagely he reminded himself that it was the man’s own greed, hesitancy and crass stupidity that had caused his death, the black mood of the earlier stages of the march pressed on him like a cloud, blotting out the prospect of the distant woods and imagined safety and filling the vacuum of his stomach with bile.
He turned aside, snarling a curse at the boy who trotted forward with pale, eager face, and without waiting to make sure that they had repossessed themselves of their boots and accouterments he strode over the rim of the basin to look across the marshland that lay between the river and the woods. He stood there some twenty yards in advance of the others, ostensibly surveying the route but in fact trying with all his might to put Croyde’s death out of mind.
Suddenly he was conscious of a swirl of movement in the reeds, a wide ripple such as might preface the upsurge of wild geese. Yet no bird soared from the riverside growth and for a brief moment he forgot both Croyde and route, wheeling around on the group as they emerged from the hollow, with a cry of warning on his lips.
It was cut short by a sharp exclamation from Lockhart, and Graham saw him bring his musket to his shoulder and lay his face to the barrel, but before he could pull the trigger there was a single report from a patch of reeds on Graham’s left and miraculously the marsh was alive with uniformed men, converging on them from all points of the compass. Graham had no opportunity at all to draw his sword or even think of doing so, for the nearest man was less than ten yards distant when he first saw him and within a matter of seconds they were all around him, their weapons advanced, as still more men poured into the rock basin and swarmed over the bedraggled file. As they advanced they laughed and shouted and encouraged one another, like a mob of boys on a playing field. Then somebody took away his sword and another plucked at the pistol in his belt, and behind him, only a yard or so distant, he saw Lockhart on his hands and knees in the marsh with his head bowed and blood pouring from a wound in his leg.
Graham had thought of the appearance of the French hussars as a miracle, the final thrust of the demons who had plagued and persecuted them since the very beginning of the march, now doling out small slices of luck, now pouncing down on them with teeth and claws as their confidence rose a point or two. It had been like this all the way from the big river: the finding of the forest track that led directly to the lancers, the seeming deliverance by partisans who had murdered Strawbridge for his musket, the finding of the bell rope that had destroyed Croyde and led them straight into a French ambush. Yet the presence of a hundred dismounted hussars in the tall reeds beside the river was not a miracle but merely the result of military prescience on the part of an Irish mercenary in command of a French flying column exploring the western bank of the river before marching on Abrantes, farther south.
The French army had crossed Graham’s river on hastily built bridges and had done so less than half a day’s march above the point where the file had anchored their rope. The main body had then marched directly south to Santarém, but forage was running out at an alarming rate and the infantry, prevented from scattering to search for food because of the density of partisans in the mountains, were already reduced to two biscuits a day and that with the certainty of a siege directly ahead. Once across the river, a trivial obstacle to a man of Masséna’s ability, the Commander in Chief had dispatched columns in every direction, equipping them with wagons to convey anything they found to a central depot at Santarém. It was one such column, commanded by Colonel Michael Dillon, that had emerged from the woods that morning and pushed scouts to within a kilometer of the river. It was no miracle that had filled the marsh with dismounted hussars but rather the prosaic report of a sharp-eyed troop sergeant who had seen half-clad figures running along the riverbank and had deduced from this that there must be a village close by. As a village meant, or might mean, mules, pigs, grain or even vegetables, he lost no time in reporting the presence of the file to his colonel.
Dillon was an experienced soldier whose presence in Portugal led all the way back to the abortive Irish rebellion of ’98 when, as a lively young patriot, he had escaped from Kerry with a price on his head and enlisted in the French Army as a sublieutenant of light cavalry. The son, grandson and great-grandson of professional soldiers, he had made rapid progress during the wars of the Empire, and at the age of 35 there was nothing capable of surprising him. He had fought under Masséna in the Zurich and Genoa campaigns, had been taken prisoner by the Austrians and freed under the peace terms, had marched down into Bohemia to be present at Austerlitz and afterward across Prussia and Poland to fight at Jena, Eylau and Friedland. Two years ago he had gone down into Portugal with Junot and now he was making his third Peninsula campaign. Because of his experience down here he knew what his French Emperor did not know, the hopelessness of waging war in the Spanish Peninsula with armies of more than a few thousand men, for where a division could barely exist a corps began to starve in two weeks and most armies began to disintegrate a few days after they left their base. Yet Dillon’s Irish sense of humor made him a good commander of light cavalry, and somehow, by exercising ingenuity and forethought, he had kept his men moving and his horses shod. An optimist by nature, he looked forward to the inevitable withdrawal into Spain and perhaps his ultimate posting out of this pestilential country to the more congenial atmosphere of Germany, Italy or, with a great deal of luck, a French training depot. He was a softly spoken man, with a lean sunburned face and a dark cavalry moustache that bristled below a pair of sparkling black eyes, giving him the appearance of a man who found it difficult to take war seriously.
In point of fact he took his work very seriously indeed, and if his careless approach to soldiering belied this fact the men who served under him, and the countless opponents he had drubbed during the last ten years, could testify to his efficiency.
The moment the troop sergeant reported the presence of civilians he dismounted and accompanied the man to a small reed-crowned knoll about halfway between the trees and the river. Here, using the sergeant’s shoulder as a rest, he ran out his field glass and trained it on the bank, remaining motionless for more than a minute before snapping the glass shut and issuing orders for the horses to be taken back into the woods.
“They are not civilians, Sergeant Lemartine,” he said quietly when the man gaped at this unexpected order.
“That is a British patrol and they must have access to a bridge or they would be on the far side of the river.”
”I could ride over with a troop and cut them down in ten minutes,” said Lemartine, who held the conventional opinion that dismounted operations reduced hussars to the status of sweaty infantry.
“I have no doubt you could, Sergeant,” said Dillon even more mildly, “but I cannot extract information from men you have sabered and ridden over!” He lit his pipe, seating himself tranquilly until such time as men came in from the flanks and he could lead the advance in person.
The ambush was brilliantly executed. Graham was the only member of the file who had so much as a few seconds’ warning of the onrush, and Lockhart, a few paces in his rear, was
the only one to unsling his musket. He was brought down before he could use it, however, and now lay gasping in the mud with blood spurting from a hole in his leg and was likely to bleed to death if someone did not attend to him at once.
Colonel Dillon walked past Graham and glanced at the groaning man. Unable to resist pointing an object lesson to the hussars standing around, he said, “I have always had it in mind to recommend the disuse of firearm slings. Now, if this man had been carrying his musket at the port one of us would be lying alongside him!” Then he saw Gwyneth being escorted over the lip of the basin and added, “Let the woman attend to his wound!” and returned to Graham.
For a moment the two men studied each other, Graham flushed and despairing, the Irishman no more than mildly interested in the bedraggled figure now standing between two grinning hussars. Finally Dillon said, very politely, “You appear to have had a troublesome march, sir. Allow me to offer you some refreshment!” He signed to one of the men, who shouted something to a group of cavalrymen engaged in collecting the British arms and equipment.
A very short hussar came running, carrying a metal flask of the kind Graham had seen strapped to the saddles of hunters when the foxhounds had assembled in his father’s forecourt. Perhaps it was the man’s essential courtesy, or perhaps a bitter consciousness of his own filthy condition, which seemed an affront to the dandified officer in his particolored pantaloons and heavily braided and swinging hussar jacket, but Graham felt a sudden choking sensation in his throat and for one painful moment he thought he would break down and sob like a thwarted child. Their capture had been so sudden and so final. There had been no opportunity to consider the taking of one course or another, simply a general envelopment that made all their strivings over the past ten days futile and ridiculous.
Dillon’s brandy saved him and he was able to say, hoarsely, “My men have eaten nothing for forty-eight hours. It would be a great courtesy on your part to give them a few mouthfuls of bread!” But as he said this he saw that his request had been anticipated, for already Watson and Curle were sitting on the ground looking surprisingly cheerful as they munched away at French hardtack. Lockhart was now sitting with his back against a tree stump and Gwyneth, having cut away his breeches and discarded his leggings, had almost finished her bandaging. Graham looked at the little group with pity and the thought occurred to him that perhaps it was fortunate for them that the end had come at last and that they had fallen into the hands of men who fought without bitterness. He said aloud, “We were nine to begin with, not counting the woman. We crossed the river on a rope taken from the belfry yonder, but the village had been ransacked a dozen times and it is not worth the trouble of a search on your part, Colonel.”
“You are a detachment, just these few?” Dillon asked wonderingly, and Graham sensed that beneath his courteous air the man was putting a shrewd, searching question.
“We were cut off at Coimbra,” he said and the French colonel raised his eyebrows.
“But Coimbra is almost a hundred miles north of here. How in the name of God did you cross our line of march?”
Graham hesitated. Suddenly he remembered the notes he had made on the papers taken from the butchered infantrymen on the far side of the range. Before swimming the river he had stuffed the notes into his boot and they were still there, he could feel them with his great toe, a bulge that would make a long march a painful ordeal.
He decided that the only way to prevent the French from finding the papers was a show of complete frankness, for they would be more likely to search truculent prisoners and the discovery of the papers could easily lead to all five of them being shot out of hand. With the determination to bluff this suave, gentlemanly captor a little of his courage returned and he said, with a smile, “That was the easiest part of the journey, a great deal easier than our escape from our so-called allies in the mountains! We crossed at night, after the last of your stragglers had gone by.” He went on to give the Irishman a brief account of their adventures, not omitting their brush with the lancers in the village. The man listened, obviously deeply interested, and when Graham had described Croyde’s death an hour or so since he looked at the narrator with respect.
“Eh bien, but you deserved to get through to your lines and I apologize for being the one to end such an odyssey! However, perhaps it will be of some small satisfaction to you to hear that when he learned of your presence from the lancers you fought, General Reynier detached two squadrons of light cavalry to beat up the woods beyond the village. We were under the impression that there was at least a company of the Fifty-first in our rear.” He rose and addressed a blank-faced lieutenant in rapid French. Although Graham failed to understand what was said, it was obvious that he had given orders to fetch the horses and resume the march. “You will give me your parole until we bivouac?” he asked, with a smile.
Graham glanced at Lockhart, still lying with his back to the stump, and then at the boy Curle, around whom two or three hussars were standing as he gnawed at the biscuit. Their attitude was that of men feeding a starving puppy.
“We are in your hands,” he said briefly. “I will give my parole until sunset!”
“A convenient compromise,” Dillon said cheerfully, “for it means you can travel in comfort. The wounded man can go in a wagon and the woman can attend him. She is his wife?”
“No,” Graham told him, “she is the widow of a Highlander we found in a church, but she is as good a soldier as any man in the British Light Brigade, including General Crauford!”
“Ah, Crauford,” Dillon said, with a chuckle. “There is a man who has led us some merry dances all the way from the Spanish frontier. My Lord Wellington will have trouble with that young man, cooped up behind entrenchments all winter! We nearly had him once when he fought with his back to a ravine, but he slipped away. He has the devil’s own luck, almost as much as you, my friend!”
They carried Lockhart across the marsh to the fringe of the wood, where a short string of wagons waited beside the remounted column. Graham addressed his first words to Gwyneth since their capture. “Look after him well,” he said, “and get him something to eat. These people are not savages and I have given my parole until sunset.” He wanted to tell her that the papers were still safe in his boot, but he did not know how to hint at this in the presence of the hovering sergeant.
There was a spare horse for him to ride, and Watson and Curle were mounted behind a couple of troopers. Someone up ahead of the column gave an order and they set out along the edge of the wood, heading south. After they had ridden a mile or so the sergeant trotted up and handed Graham the wing of a fowl, saluting and falling back into line as Dillon edged his horse alongside. He smiled at Graham bit into the meat.
“Eat, my friend,” he said gaily. “It will be a long war, I fear!”
An hour or so after they had skirted the woods and moved out onto the plain beyond, Graham saw another column of troops in the distance. Before long the two columns converged, heading for a large stone building on a low hill about a league ahead. Dillon, who had ridden off to confer with the commander of the second column, returned after an interval and told him that this group had combed all the villages on the far side of the woods without finding a thing to eat or capturing a single civilian.
“This is a new way of making war,” he said glumly, “and only two men as dedicated as Masséna and Wellington could achieve it. When I was down here with General Junot’s expedition two years ago this was a fertile, well-populated country, but now it is nothing but a desert. The entire population appears to have taken to the mountains or moved down into Lisbon!” He glanced at the sun, now sinking over the western plain. “Your time is running out, my young friend, and I have fresh orders to ride on through the night to reach Santarém tomorrow. I shall be obliged to hand you over to Major Fricourt at the convent. You will remain there until orders for your disposal arrive from headquarters. Perhaps you will be summoned for questioning, or perhaps Masséna and Ney have all the in
formation they require. I have given an account of you to Fricourt and the only way I could extend my hospitality to you is if you consented to prolong your parole. In that case you could ride on with me to Santarém.”
“That would entail leaving behind the three men and the woman?”
“Yes indeed. Perhaps prisoners are being assembled at Santarém or Abrantes. I can only tell you we have no arrangements for escorting them back into Spain.” He looked at Graham humorously, his black eyes twinkling, and added, “This campaign has not produced many prisoners so far. I am told we have fewer than a hundred. It will not be long before protests arrive from Paris. His Imperial Majesty sets great store on prisoners.”
“You have been very kind,” Graham said stiffly. “Would it be within the laws of war to ask your advice regarding my decision?”
The Irishman nodded gravely and Graham was suddenly aware of a great liking he had conceived for the man, so great that he felt ashamed of the bulge he could feel in the toe of his boot. It was as though by concealing the papers he was betraying the confidence of an enemy who had become a friend. “In my position, what course would you adopt, sir?”
“As a field officer old enough to understand the absurdity of jingling across a depopulated country, I would be inclined to give my parole and sit out the dance in some tidy provincial town, my friend, but how old are you?”
“Nineteen, and this is my first campaign,” Graham told him.
The Irishman knitted his brows and drew in his cheeks, as though giving the matter serious contemplation. Finally he looked up and smiled. “That alters things. At nineteen I daresay I would withhold my parole and stay with my men!”
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