They were still more than a mile distant and he was certain they could not have seen him, but he was alarmed for the woman, who at any moment might emerge from the tunnel, climb the bank and cross the road in full view of them. At that moment, as he crouched under the wall, he saw a pair of herons soar up from the point where the culvert entered the tunnel and he knew instinctively that they had been disturbed by her approach. For a few seconds he dithered, wondering whether to leap into the grain pit or run across the road and warn her, and then he realized that if he did the patrol would be sure to see him on the way back, for the distance between them and where he stood was narrowing and they seemed to be advancing at a fast trot. The early-morning sun flashed on their casques and breastplates and at once he identified them as cuirassiers, who did not move at the speed of the light cavalry, and the memory of this decided him. He left Gwyneth to take care of herself and leaped into the pit, dragging Curle to his feet and shouting, “We gotter run for it, son, we gotter get out o’ here!” When the boy sagged Watson gasped with dismay, realizing that Curle did not possess the strength to climb out of the pit.
In that moment he thought with rage of Strawbridge’s slow, ponderous strength and how his file mate would have lifted Curle like a small portmanteau and hoisted himself into the open, across the road and into the safety of the tunnel. He reckoned that he had perhaps two minutes before the cuirassiers came within pistol range and in that period he had somehow to get Curle out of the pit and across the road, drop into the culvert and seek help from the woman. He was a very small man, not much taller or broader than the boy, but the urgency of the situation gave him a measure of ingenuity as well as an access of physical strength. He jerked Curle to his feet, scrambled out of the pit without releasing his hold on the boy’s collar, shifted his grip to the armpits and dragged the drummer into the open like a man extracting a ten peg from a bed of clay. As soon as Curle was clear he snatched his crossbelts and began lacing the boy’s wrists and ankles to the bean post, and as he worked at feverish speed he cocked an ear for the rattle of hoofs on the road. What he heard first, however, was Gwyneth’s shout as she rushed across the road and appeared on the wall of the cottage. When he glanced over his shoulder and saw her standing there in mudspattered corset and drawers, the incongruity of her sudden appearance made him pause in his work and gape with astonishment, for she did not look like a woman at all but like a bedraggled fury, her matted hair half obscuring her face, and her mouth wide open in a shout of warning. Then she was down beside him and he did not have to explain to her why Curle was lying at their feet like a trussed fowl, for at once she grabbed the end of the pole nearest the boy’s feet as he seized the other end, and between them they set off at a stumbling run, mounting the broken wall and scrambling down onto the road in a matter of seconds.
They were only just in time. The leading file of cuirassiers was about a hundred meters down the road, and the moment they appeared, dashing across the road and up the bank that enclosed the culvert, the leading horsemen bellowed a view-halloo and urged their horses into a canter. Their outcry was taken up by the files in their rear and the column bunched a moment before rushing down on the cottage in a body.
Watson got no more than a fleeting glimpse of the charge before he was down the bank and into the culvert, and after that he had no inclination to look over his shoulder at the men who came pouring over the bank in pursuit, yelling like excited huntsmen within a few strides of the death.
What saved the quarry was not speed and agility on the part of Watson and the woman but the collapse of the bank under the weight of the horses. The second of them became involved in a miniature landslide of mud and stones, and for a few vital moments the narrow stream bed was blocked by a confused mass of slithering horses and cursing men, all getting in one another’s way as the troopers struck at the horses with their long, straight swords. In the brief interval that it took the leaders to fight clear of the melee Watson and Gwyneth reached the tunnel, where the water rose to their waists and no horse could follow them. The leading cuirassier, who had not been involved in the struggle, thundered along the culvert, swung himself out of the saddle and entered the tunnel, but he was hopelessly handicapped by his heavy topboots and spurs and after a few strides turned and groped his way back to the culvert to assist his comrades in getting their excited horses back onto firmer ground.
The tunnel seemed endless. With the pole resting across their shoulders they just managed to keep the boy clear of the water, but it was as much as they could do to maintain a footing on the slime-covered floor. Neither of them spoke as they struggled toward the exit, but when at last they struggled out onto the beach Gwyneth gasped, “If the cavalry find a way down to the beach we’re done for, Watson! Stay here with the boy and I’ll show myself. We’ve nothing to lose now. It rests on how quick they are with the boat.”
“We should ha’ kept ’id an’ let the bleeders go past,” he grunted, but she was already running along the shingle to the knoll, where she could keep road and river under observation. The sloop was there, broadside on to the tide. As she watched, the longboat cast off, its crew pulling aslant the current and heading directly for the tunnel mouth. A moment later she saw the cuirassiers, cavorting about on the marshy strip bordering the road but unable, it seemed, to approach the river directly because of the waterlogged ground. She thought for a moment of the soggy roll of papers in her moleskin bag and wondered whether to throw them away, for she was under no illusion as to what would happen to her if she was caught and searched, but a glance at the river showed her that the boat was now more than halfway to the shore and she ran down from the hillock shouting and waving and along the beach to where Watson waited with the boy.
“Come,” she said, seizing her end of the pole, “we must chance their fire. We are lucky they are cuirassiers, they have no carbines, just pistols.” And together they lifted the drummer and set off to the water’s edge as the boat swung around and shot inshore.
They heard the roar of the guns, and to Gwyneth, slithering across the last few yards of beach toward the knot of sailors, the sound came as the final salute of the campaign. A moment later the seamen had them and Curle had been dragged into the boat, and as the sailors thrust off with their long sweeps she caught a fleeting glimpse of horsemen scattering beyond the rim of the dunes and busied herself unbuckling Curle from the pole, chafing his wrists where the leather had bitten into the flesh.
Watson, watching her with a small, crooked smile, said, “Well, we done it!”
But the boatswain, looking reproachfully in the direction of the sloop, said, “Aaron Gantry has been at the rum again. That grape was ten yards short of the nearest of ’em!”
The lieutenant addressed Graham as he went aft when the shot had scattered the cavalry, but Graham did not hear what he said. He was too intent on the boat as it shot into the current, then spun in a slow circle as the crew bent to their oars, heading for midstream a quarter mile below the sloop. The vessel was pitching violently now and it was impossible to focus the glass on the group huddled in the stern, in addition to which, renewed bustle was taking place about him. A sense of loneliness invaded him, as though, from the deck of an alien vessel, he were watching his homeland recede and rain fall on the last of his kin in the boat astern. For a few moments his sense of time was suspended, past and present merging one with the other as in a dream. He stood quite still, gripping the rail, looking beyond the boat to the flat, featureless shore and the outline of mountains beyond, and as he stood thus the file marched across his memory like a procession of proud beggars who wore their rags like ermine and bore their arms like kings. Morgan and Fox were there, climbing the slopes of the first ravines, and Lickspittle, with his sullen mouth, and Strawbridge with his foolish countryman’s grin. Then Croyde, poised on the rock and looking fearfully at the rope bridge, and last of all Lockhart, with his firelock crooked in his elbow as he marched on ahead, searching out the path they would follow.
They had carried Curle below before anyone noticed Graham stretched unconscious on the deck, but they raised him gently enough and carried him after the boy. The lieutenant watched them go and after them Watson, still able to twist his mouth into a wry grin that was part triumph and part anticipation of a double noggin of Navy rum. Last of all came the woman, treading the decks as one well accustomed to shipboard, and holding the sordid remnants of her incongruous green gown. With more than half his attention on the ship’s way, the lieutenant noticed these things, the helplessness of the ensign and the drummer-boy, the jauntiness of the guttersnipe Watson, but more striking than either of these was the bearing of the half-naked camp drab, and although he had been at sea since he was a child of twelve and was well accustomed to these things the lieutenant knew pity and was ready to recognize and salute the undefeated. As the woman passed down the companionway after the others he said, half to himself and half to Gantry the gunner, “All the way from the Mondego on their flat feet!” He turned to the quartermaster at his elbow, adding, “Feed ’em with the best you have aboard, Marriott, and don’t spare the rum!”
Then he moved aft, lifting his glass and searching for signs of enemy movement among the bluffs beyond the bend.
CHAPTER TEN
Vale
Graham was discharged from the officers’ sick quarters in the Convent da Estrela on the fifth day of December, four weeks to the day after the sloop Prometheus had disembarked the survivors of the file at a ration wharf in Lisbon. They had not waited until he was fit or clearheaded before they set to work to wrest from him a detailed account of the march south and southeast from Coimbra, but had pestered him quite mercilessly with relays of officers, British and Portuguese, who probed his memory, double-checking the almost illegible notes that had been copied out under the supervision of Crauford himself. Presently Crauford called, not to praise or congratulate but to query Graham’s figures regarding the number of mule teams in the transport train of the Second Corps. Only when the somber master of the Light Brigade was on the point of taking his leave did Graham summon enough courage to make two personal pleas, one in respect of the boy Curle, the other concerning Watson, who was back in the bosom of his regiment. It was in pursuance of these two applications that Graham went out into the windswept streets on the fifth day of December and picked his way across the crowded city to the quarters of the Fifty-first, behind the public abattoir, where the men lived in shanties during the rest periods when they were not on duty in the hill forts and outposts of Torres Vedras.
Almost the first man he encountered on entering the stockade was Watson, crouched over a miserable fire, engrossed in the obviously agreeable task of frying salt beef and mashed vegetables in a long-handled pan. The mess in the canteen sizzled and spat. Motioning the Cockney to continue the preparation of his meal Graham sat down on a tub and offered Watson a Brazilian cheroot, one of a box sent out for invalid officers by the ladies of the Peninsular League at home.
Watson seemed fit and cheerful, in no way the worse for an experience that made Graham thankful for the upturned tub after his unsteady walk through the city, and as he watched Watson savor the cigar he reflected that perhaps Gwyneth had been wrong to class the little man as one of the two weakest of the file. Watson looked as if he had already forgotten stumbling marches through the woods and defiles and nights in the open when they had shared a single rabbit snared by Lockhart. His narrow face was still grimed with dirt, through which his brown eyes twinkled with pleasure on noting a lieutenant’s chevrons on Graham’s tunic. He said, with the faintest touch of embarrassment, “Can’t get enough o’ this chow inside me, sir. Been on double rations for the best part of a month, I ’ave! Right careless wi’ their vittles is this lot. Leaves ’em lyin’ around for anyone, they do!” Sniffing appreciatively, he jabbed the pan with the ramrod that he was using as a stir-pot.
Graham said quietly, “As a lieutenant I can have a permanent soldier servant. I came down here to tell you that you can be my servant if you wish. You would have better quarters than this and as much food as you can eat, so long as we are in garrison. I would pay you myself, so there would be no waiting about for arrears as you do now. Does the notion appeal to you, or would you rather remain with your friends?”
Watson licked his lips, forgetting the pan for a moment as he glanced across at the huddle of shanties surrounding the fire. Smoke rose from a hundred fires, and half-dressed men came and went about their routine tasks.
“Friends, you said? I got no friends among this lot, sir. Old Turnip’ead Strawbridge was my real mate and I’m gonner get quits wi’ them murderin’ Portuguese one o’ these days! Turnip’ead, an’ arter him Jimmy Lockhart as we left behind in the clink. As fer this lot”—he jerked his head contemptuously toward the camp—”they’re noo to it, most of ’em, and if they’d ’ave been cut off like we was they would ’ave given up the first day, I reckon. Takes luck to find sodjers like Turnip’ead an’ Jim Lockhart, it do!”
“Then you’ll come?”
“I’d be right glad to, sir, ’specially when we git movin’ again. Yes, sir, I’d be glad to and I’d do me best for you, you c’n lay to that. I’d keep yer clothes smart-like an’ I c’n cook better’n most of ’em. We won’t go short o’ nothin’, not if it’s left lyin’ around, sir!” And he saluted without moving from his seat.
Graham smiled, finding that the sweep’s lively acceptance of the post renewed his faith in the future, inasmuch as it offered some kind of continuity. “Where will I find Curle?” he asked, and noticed that Watson’s face clouded.
“Curle? He’ll never campaign no more, will the boy, sir!” he said resentfully. “He’s still in sick quarters over beyond the slaughterhouse. Seen ’im every so often, I ’ave, an’ took ’im food more’n once, but somehow he don’t put on flesh, not like he should. Mebbe it’s the consumption?”
“Perhaps,” Graham said soberly. “They told me he was ill and I’ve got his discharge papers here. He’s going home soon.”
Watson looked startled. “’Ome? Curle fer ’ome, sir? Wot ’ome’s he got, barrin’ the regiment?”
“My home,” said Graham. Then, because it embarrassed him to pose as a benefactor before this grimy little sparrow, he rose abruptly, adding, “I have quarters close to the Convent da Estrela in the city. Most of the officers of the Fifty-first are thereabouts, so pack your kit and report there tomorrow after reveille. Meantime, take me to Curle.”
They found Curle in a large stable behind the slaughterhouse where the stench reminded Graham of wounds, grease and unburied offal. The stable had been set aside for disabled men who were more or less able to take care of themselves, and noisome as it was it was sanitary compared to the hospital wards in the main building. Here the sick lay in close-packed rows on truckle beds, cared for by three or four elderly nuns, fugitives from a convent in the north, and it seemed to Graham, as he traversed the long building, that most of the patients were beyond hope of recovery.
They found Curle sitting on his palliasse carving a piece of wood, and when he saw Graham and Watson his hollow cheeks flushed with pleasure and he made a show of rising and saluting.
Graham was shocked at the boy’s condition. He was even thinner than he had looked during the march and his huge, melancholy eyes stared back at them with the mute appeal of a sick calf. Two or three crippled men lay close by, engaged in a desultory game of cards, but they were too far gone in boredom to take more than a cursory interest in the visitors. Anger rose in Graham, but he checked it, reminding himself that his resources were limited and that he was not here to crusade for a reorganization of the army hospital service.
He said, with a forced smile, “I would have come before, Curle, but I have been in hospital myself until today. I am getting you out of here very soon!”
The boy’s eyes tormented him and he was grateful to Watson, who sidled forward and said with a swift grin, “Mr. Graham’s got yer discharge, son! Think o’ that, nah! You’re fer the boat!” But the boy looked stunned, laying aside his wood carving and placing his hands protectively on the knapsack that served him as a pillow.
The instinctive action was not lost upon Graham, who said, “I told General Crauford about you, Curle, and he asked for a report on you from the regimental surgeon. After the General told me of this I wrote a letter to my father and asked him to find a place for you at my home. You will live with Rowley, the keeper, and he will teach you to trap like Lockhart. To fish too, perhaps, in the river where Rowley taught me to swim.”
Still the boy did not seem reassured, and Graham realized that he must be more explicit. He sat down on a hogshead beside the pallet, with his back to the men playing cards. “You are not strong enough to follow the regiment when we move out in the spring,” he went on. “You would fall out on the second day’s march, but if you go home to Kent and get strong you can take the shilling again when you are a year or so older. As you are already a veteran, they will surely start you as a sergeant.”
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