02 - Keane's Challenge

by Iain Gale

  ‘You plan to torture him?’

  ‘I will interrogate him.’

  ‘I know what that means. I’ve seen your countrymen too many times.’

  Keane found himself floundering. He knew that Don Sanchez was a vital ally to Wellington and had already sacrificed much to keep him. But his conscience refused to coerce in barbarity. Nevertheless, where before swift action and brute force had sufficed to save the skins of French prisoners, this time he knew that such tactics would not work. He could not lift his hand against this man.

  Sanchez looked at him. ‘You are weak, captain. You don’t approve of our methods. But they work.’

  Keane said nothing, then, ‘Give him a choice.’

  One of Sanchez’s officers spoke. A neatly scrubbed moustachioed young man in red breeches and on his head a French lancer’s czapka. ‘What? He’s a prisoner. He deserves no choice. I say we strip him and use the knife.’

  Sanchez waved him down. ‘No, wait. Captain, what do you mean?’

  ‘By all means strip him, but do no more. It’s my bet that he will be so terrified that if you give him the option of talking to me or submitting to you, he will choose the former. Try it. What do you have to lose? If he refuses then he’s yours and God have mercy on him.’

  At least I have tried, thought Keane. It was all he could do.

  *

  Sanchez nodded to one of his men and while two of them held down the French major, another man ripped his clothes from him until he stood before them naked. He spat on the ground and cursed them, but Keane could see the terror in his eyes. The men bound the major’s hands tightly behind him and led him across to Don Sanchez.

  The Frenchman stared at Keane, trying to work out what his uniform might mean, with its Portuguese brown tunic and British light cavalry helmet. He spoke. ‘English?’ Keane nodded. ‘Help me.’

  Don Sanchez spoke. ‘There is no help for you. But I, Don Sanchez da Estrella, I will give you a choice. I am a man of peace and mercy. To prove that, I am willing to let you choose your fate. We need to know what plans your marshal has. You can tell the captain here and we will not harm you. If you choose not to do so, then my men will make you talk. Either way you will tell us in the end. But I have decided to give you the chance to avoid the agony of torture. You see, I am a most thoughtful and intelligent man.’

  Keane smiled at the way in which Don Sanchez had used his offer. The Frenchman said nothing. Don Sanchez spoke again.

  ‘Well, what’s it to be? Will you talk or would you have me hand you over to them?’ He pointed to his men, who were waiting close by. One of them, the giant who had presided over the shooting competition, was holding a length of rope, another a long knife.

  ‘Oh, very well, you may have him.’

  Suddenly the Frenchman began to speak. At such a rate that neither Keane nor any of the others could make out what he was trying to say.

  Keane said, ‘Begin again,’ and the major began to talk more slowly now.

  Twenty minutes later, Keane covered him with a blanket and left him to sob. He went across to Don Sanchez.

  ‘He says that they have a plan to outflank your General Craufurd.’

  ‘You have a map?’

  Keane took the map from his valise and laid it out across a flat rock, Ross helping him weigh it down with stones.

  Sanchez pondered it for a moment and then pointed and spoke.

  ‘He says they will move here. To this bridge.’

  ‘We can do something about this. Have you any explosive?’

  Sanchez looked at him. ‘Of course.’

  Keane addressed Ross. ‘Find Leech and send him to me.’

  Don Sanchez looked intent, ‘What do you intend to do, captain?’

  ‘I intend to blow the bridge. To stop the French getting across.’

  ‘It’s a good idea. Can you do it?’

  ‘I have an expert in such things.’

  ‘Your men have many talents, captain.’

  ‘That’s why I chose them, colonel.’

  Ross brought Leech, and Keane briefed him quickly.

  ‘We will patrol by the river. Leech, you’re to take two men of the hussars and destroy the bridge at Nava d’Aver. There. Across the Duas Casas river. That at least will prevent the French from crossing and taking General Craufurd in the flank.’

  ‘The explosive, sir?’

  ‘A present here, from Colonel Sanchez. Just make sure that you blow it. And then return.’

  It was simple, flawless.

  Leech looked at the map and turned to Sanchez. ‘You know this bridge, sir?’

  ‘Yes, it’s not big, but the French could use it well enough.’

  ‘How big, sir?’

  ‘Three spans, maybe twenty feet high at most and three files wide.’

  Leech thought for a moment. ‘How much black powder do you have?’

  ‘Enough. We took it from the French.’

  ‘I’ll need fifty pounds of it. You’re sure you have enough, colonel?’

  Sanchez nodded. ‘Yes, that’s not a problem.’

  ‘And could I prevail upon you for a cart, sir?’

  Sanchez nodded and called to one of his men.

  Leech turned to Keane. ‘That’s all I need, sir. That and a linen tube to act as a fuse. But I’ll make that from sacking. Shall I find the Germans?’

  ‘No, I’ll ask Captain von Krokenburgh to select them. I’ll get you a driver too. You load up the powder. Good luck.’

  Within half an hour Leech had gone, with his small escort, the explosive loaded on to a wagon driven by another of the hussars.

  Keane paced around Sanchez’s camp, talking to Ross. ‘I can’t help thinking that we might all have gone with him.’

  ‘Sir, it’s a simple enough exercise. Leech said so himself. He’ll blow the bridge and then return. The French are miles away. He has plenty of time. Better to go fast and not be burdened with too many men.’

  ‘Yes, sarn’t, I know you’re right. But it’s me who will take the blame if anything happens to him.’

  ‘Always is, sir. You’re the officer.’

  ‘Yes, Ross, you’re right. I’m a captain now. Though when the bloody paperwork will come through from Horse Guards to confirm it, God only knows.’

  ‘That’s the army for you. Happy to march us all ragged but won’t do nothing it doesn’t want to do any faster than dead slow.’

  The evening was coming in now and even up here above the river plain the mosquitoes were gathering in the lights of the campfires.

  Sanchez wandered over to them. ‘Come and eat with us, captain, and your men too. And don’t worry about your man. He will be back soon. Maybe tomorrow. Come and I will tell you a story of the old Spain. Before any of this happened. And maybe then you will understand more of my people.’ And Keane allowed himself to submit, and under the stars at the campfire, with Sanchez’s stories and the sound of guitars in his ears, he thought that he was perhaps starting to understand.

  6

  Keane wondered how long it could take to demolish a bridge. It had been three days since Leech had left with the demolition party. He was never content when he had to split his small force and he cursed himself for not having sent a larger escort to accompany the artilleryman. For his part, the days had been spent watching for the French, expecting a party of dragoons to come upon them at any moment. But at heart Keane knew that his men had the upper hand. They were the army’s eyes and ears and a damned sight better than any Frenchman. Besides, the guerrillas travelled with them.

  He shot a sideways glance at Sanchez, who was riding alongside him at the head of the column of their combined forces. The guerrilla had left most of his men in the camp at San Pedro, but the small number he had brought with them bolstered Keane’s command. Keane had deliberately left von Krokenburgh back at the Spanish camp with most of the Hanoverians and taken only a single troop of the hussars as escort.

  He had thought it politic, for there was a hierarchy to
any column of march, just as there was to a line of battle. Don Sanchez, with his grandiose ideas, demanded a position for his men close to the front, where Keane, as de facto commander, had naturally placed himself. To have posted the Hanoverians further back along the column to bring up the rear would not have not gone down well with von Krokenburgh. As it was, to place the single troop of hussars behind Sanchez was less of an affront to German honour.

  He turned in the saddle and watched the little column as it snaked through the defile which led from the citadel town towards the river. Behind his men came the first of Sanchez’s cavalry: twenty lancers, dressed in the uniforms of captured or killed French and Polish cavalry, but with the eagles either removed from their czapkas or reversed, like that of their commander. Their fluttering pennons of red and yellow, the national colours of Spain, had replaced those of white and red which had previously adorned the original owners’ lances. Behind them came Sanchez’s hussars, as motley a crew as Keane had ever seen, again in captured uniforms but in a rainbow of colours which reflected the regiments of that arm who served Bonaparte in the Peninsula. Then came the Germans, under the command of a young, recently commissioned cornet by the name of von Cramm.

  Keane turned to Sanchez. ‘Is it much further? It’s hard to tell from my map.’

  Sanchez laughed. ‘Your map. You British. You place so much faith in your maps but they tell you nothing. You should just take some of my men with you wherever you go. It will take us another hour before we come in sight of the bridge, if it is still there. Then another half-hour before we come to the village. I’m sure that your men will be in one of those places, captain. My scouts say that the French have not yet begun to advance against the bridge. They will be fine.’

  But there was something about his voice which did not convince Keane that he was as certain as he appeared.

  They had emerged from the hills now and on to the plain which led down to the river. Away to either side it stretched, dotted by occasional farms, and for the first time, as they rode on, Keane noticed the change in the landscape. Fields which at this time of year should have been billowing with waving crops of barley and maize now lay barren, their crops burnt down to blackened stumps. This was Wellington’s doing. His policy of a ‘scorched earth’, denying everything to the enemy. It was as if some great fire god had passed over the countryside, razing everything that would yield food and succour to the French. At the same time he knew that it would make the peasantry resentful. He knew farmers. Had grown up on a farm himself and knew too the nature of tenants and those who depended for their lives on reaping a meagre income or subsisting from the land.

  He spoke to Silver. ‘Have you noticed the fields, Silver? What’s happened to them.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sad, ain’t it.’

  ‘Worse to know it was our own men that did it. You can’t help feeling sorry for the poor buggers who make their living from the land. What will they do now, do you suppose?’

  ‘Can’t say, sir. But it’ll be hard for them. Damned hard. Bound to be. It’s all they’ve got. But if it stops the Frenchies and leaves them blue bastards with their bellies hanging out, then it’s got to be worth it, ain’t it, sir?’

  Keane supposed that it was. Like anything in war it had to be weighed on the scales of what was right and what was wrong. What made any war ‘just’? Was the decision to sacrifice the livelihood of thousands of people justified if it confounded the enemy’s strategy and forced him to retire through lack of supply? Military thought dictated that it was. Even if humanity was outraged and babies starved. He wondered whether he could have done it, had the decision been up to him, and doubted it. He had seen too much as a boy: babies dead in their mother’s arms and men driven mad by loss and famine, railing against their plantation-owning masters. No, he thought, it would not have been his way.

  Descending a slight incline among the ravaged fields, they came in sight of the crossing place. Even from a distance it was not hard to see that the bridge had gone. Heartened, Keane spurred on and hurried down towards the river.

  The bridge was no more, but of Leech and the two hussars there was also no sign. Nor could they see the cart or the horses. Keane rode up to the river and dismounted, followed by Ross and Silver, who was the first to speak.

  ‘What d’you make of it, sir? Where’s Leech?’

  ‘I don’t know, Silver. It’s very strange. By the look of it, he’s most definitely finished the job. No one could attempt to cross that.’

  He looked towards the space where the bridge had stood for the past two hundred years. All that now remained of it were the end piers on both sides, sticking up like great, jagged teeth; of the two central supporting arches there was nothing but four stone stumps barely visible beneath the water. Rubble had been thrown either side of where the span had been, as far as thirty feet in all directions, and Keane imagined that it had gone up with a huge explosion.

  It was as good a job as he could have wished for. But where the devil was Leech?

  Ross spoke. ‘Must have been a hell of a bang, sir. Perhaps they were caught in the blast. Hurt bad, I mean. Killed even.’

  Silver was down by the water’s edge now, kneeling down. He called back to Keane. ‘Look, sir. There’s cart tracks here, leading back up to the road.’

  Keane joined him. Silver was right. You could see quite clearly where the cart, heavily laden with the powder, had been taken down to the water’s edge and other tracks leading away, less deeply scored after the explosive had been unloaded. The two of them traced the tracks back up on to the road in the direction of the village.

  Silver spoke. ‘Maybe the villagers took care of them.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. We will only discover in the village. I think that we might go there directly, don’t you?’

  He walked back to his horse and said nothing more, although he felt certain that Leech was sufficiently competent an engineer to ensure that neither he nor the other two men would be caught up in the blast. Something was quite clearly not right. And Keane was impatient to find out what.

  Sanchez was standing beside him. ‘He did a good job, your man. No Frenchman will try to get over that.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, colonel. He knows his business. But where do you suppose he is?’

  ‘We will try the village. His job is done, you know. Knowing you British, we will most likely find him sitting in a posada, with a drink in one hand and the other around the waist of a pretty girl.’

  Although he had not known Leech for more than a few weeks, Keane did not think it a likely explanation. But he nodded at the Spaniard and smiled. And kept his worries to himself. They remounted and turned to join the others, riding down to the road, which ran parallel, along the line of the river for the few miles towards the village.

  Nava d’Aver, when they came to it at last, was nothing remarkable. It consisted of a single street ending in a little church, with the usual cluster of houses, the better, bigger ones closest to the house of God. It amused him, this country of Catholics in which the rich, thought Keane, always showed their willingness to buy their way into heaven by making sure they were close to its representative on earth.

  The streets seemed unusually quiet. A wild dog barked at them as they trotted past and a young boy ran across their path, laughing and pointing, causing Silver’s horse to shy. At one of the houses a woman looked out of the door and then shut it abruptly. At another the shutters were being barred as they rode past.

  Keane turned to Silver. ‘That’s curious. They can see we’re friends, so where are they? I don’t like it. There’s something not right here. Not at all.’

  They rode on and Sanchez, who had been riding slightly in front of Keane, dropped back. Instead, though, of the smiling face of earlier, his expression had now grown serious.

  ‘This is very strange. Where are the other people? The French have not been here. The houses are still standing. I don’t understand.’

  They passed a posada, its inn-sign
blowing in the breeze. Sanchez reined in and dismounted. ‘Come on, captain. I think we might look for your men in here.’

  Keane slid his leg across the saddle and jumped down, followed by Silver and Ross, who had motioned to the others to remain with the troop. With his hand on his sword hilt, Don Sanchez pushed open the door and went in, followed by the three others.

  The inn stank of old wine and sweat and the stench of two hundred years of village life. To their astonishment, it was empty. But the half-empty glasses and tankards on the tables made it clear that it not been so for long.

  A fire was still burning in the grate and Sanchez walked over and poked at it, seeming to hope that it might yield evidence of the whereabouts of the population. ‘It is very strange,’ he said quietly. ‘Where are they all?’

  Keane counted the glasses and bottles and estimated that until a short time ago there must have been at least fifty people, no doubt men, sitting there. ‘What do you suppose made them leave in such a hurry? There’s no sign of a struggle.’

  Silver stood staring at the tables, a frown furrowing his face. ‘Have you noticed something else, sir?’ he asked. ‘They even left their hats and coats.’

  He was right. Various items of clothing littered the tables and chairs. It was as if they had rushed out in a moment of madness, forgetting everything else.

  Keane spoke. ‘Yes, but no weapons were left behind.’

  They left the inn and, as they were remounting their animals, Keane heard a shout. It sounded like a cry of jubilation or triumph. He turned to Sanchez. ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘Yes. It sounds at least as if they are enjoying themselves. It must be a fiesta.’

  There was another cry, almost a hurrah.

  ‘Where would that be?’

  ‘Most of these villages have a space set aside for such things, a plaza, away from the centre. We have only to follow the noise. Your men must have got themselves involved in the celebrations. It will be a saint’s day or something like that, I expect.’

  They went in the direction of the shouting, which was louder now, riding in column, and still, despite Sanchez’s relaxed manner, Keane felt uneasy.