by Gale, Iain
Then he had spoken. Had shouted for the guard. Had shrieked that he was being robbed. And that was that.
Nothing that Heredia could say or might have said had made any difference to his plight. Indeed, it had only made things worse to have suggested that a British colonel might be a French spy. No one had questioned the officer’s word. How could they? He was a gentleman, wasn’t he? Instead, Heredia was taken in disgrace to his own lines. There he had been interrogated. His story, though, was useless. He was a poor man. The money obviously had been the attraction. His excuse was pathetic. And then the decision had been taken to hand him over to the British. A gesture between the two armies. He was being used as a pawn, a sacrifice to cement their alliance. This was war. Life was cheap and the honour of the two armies must be seen to be respected.
He laughed to himself. Honour? If only they knew the truth; could bear to know it. The fact that a British staff officer was giving information to the enemy. But he would take that secret to his grave. It was too late now. He took another sip from tbe spoon and imagined he was in a grand restaurant in the centre of the city. It was then that the door opened and the jailer entered, accompanied by General Fonseca’s aide Hernandez and two British officers.
Heredia did not rise.
Hernandez barked at him, ‘Officers present. Stand up, sergente.’
He sloped to his feet and only then put the spoon down on the table. What was this now, he wondered. More questions. Another game. When would they give up and let him die?
One of the British officers, the one in the bright-red coat rather than the blue, spoke. ‘Sergente Heredia, we have come to take you to Coimbra.’
Heredia laughed.
‘What? Am I now to be permitted to die among my own people? You want to hang me yourselves?’
‘No, on the contrary, we are come to save you from the noose, sergente. We have need of you.’
Heredia looked at the aide with a questioning expression. ‘Are they lying?’
Hernandez shook his head and shrugged. ‘Why should they lie? It’s true. You’re free to go. By order of their commanding general. God alone knows why.’
Heredia sat down in the chair and buried his head in his hands on the table. Someone somewhere had answered his prayers. He shook his head, lifted it and looked into the eyes of the redcoat officer.
Keane gazed back. Saw the tears and the strain. ‘Come on, sergente. We have much to do. Are you ready?’
Heredia nodded.
‘Where is your kit?’
‘Kit? I have no kit. I have nothing. But now, I have everything. Thank you, captain. How will I ever repay you?’
Keane smiled. ‘I’m sure you’ll find a way.’
3
The road back to Coimbra was long. Longer, it seemed to Keane, than it had been on the journey down. The air was balmy and hot for late April, with a sweetness that rose from the aromatic plants growing at the roadside. Aside from the jingle of the harnesses and the clip-clopping of the hooves, there was no noise save for that of the martins circling and swooping above them and the sound of a brook a hundred feet below, running westwards at the foot of the drop on the left of the uneven, heavily rutted road. The way was crowded with soldiers – blue-coated Portuguese reinforcements moving northwards, up the line to join the army for the great offensive that they all knew must soon come. The dust cloud rising up from the road announced their presence more readily even than the cacophony of a column on the march, and had any French scouts been on patrol this far west they would have been in little doubt as to what was happening. But Keane knew that the French would not reconnoitre here. They were still close to the Spanish border, probing all the time of course, but hopefully unaware of the British manoeuvrings.
Had he but been taken into the confidence of his newest recruit, however, he might have thought differently. For Jesus Heredia knew that the French did not need to send their spies this far west. They had all the information they needed, supplied by a man in Coimbra. But Heredia said nothing and rode along in apparent contentment at the rear of their little column, happy to follow where his new captain took him. At least as far as Coimbra and the prospect of finding Colonel Pritchard.
Keane for his part had been pleased with Heredia’s readiness to join them. He had explained the reason for his release and the man had seemed to warm to his new incarnation as a spy for the British. For the second time Keane surprised himself. He had not been prepared for this new role as a saviour of the fallen and he found it curiously satisfying to give these men a second chance and a new life. Once again he pondered Heredia’s guilt and resolved to speak to him about the whole affair when a moment presented itself.
Perhaps, he mused, this was what fate had intended for him. He had always seen his prospects as either dying in glory at the head of his own company – or perhaps his own battalion, or if the gods of war were kindly, to live into old age as a general. He was not a godly man. Not in the way that his mother had been godly. He believed as all soldiers did in some greater power which guarded and preserved on the battlefield. But that was really superstition. Luck. In truth, he preferred not to think on it. But whatever power it was that watched over the warrior, it was surely with him now, he thought, as he led his men to the front of the dusty column.
They made a strange party. They travelled in pairs as cavalry did when on the march, Keane at the front of the group and Morris beside him. Behind them rode Silver and the girl, with Ross and Heredia bringing up the rear. He had wondered how they would all fare in the saddle.
His new command was in essence to be mounted, and using the money given him for that purpose by Scovell he had managed to purchase three further horses in the Lisbon market. A mount for Gabriella had been an unexpected expense, but he had settled on a horse rather than a mule in the belief that the animal would be of more use to them. He had taken much the same attitude to the girl herself and congratulated himself on his instinctive decision to take her along. It was just the sort of unorthodox move that he thought would now be expected of him. Besides, who knew when a woman might help them in their subterfuge? And he was sure that one of her profession was doughty enough to deal with most of what their travels might throw at them. She could ride, too, from the look of her. He had half expected her to travel side-saddle, like all ladies of his acquaintance. But he had forgotten her station and had not been too surprised when Gabriella had hitched up her skirts, tucked them into her belt and sat astride the saddle.
Keane himself was a competent horseman, confident and sure-footed, having learnt to ride on the family farm in Ireland at an earlier age than he could recall. Of course, after his father had died, the family had never been able to afford very fine mounts, but Keane knew that any Irish horse was better than those to be had in England. And certainly, he thought as he shifted in the saddle, any of the horses with which he had grown up on the farm would have been an improvement on the nag with which he had been saddled by George Scovell.
The army had a problem with its mounts. Half the cavalry was similarly ill-served, and in their company only Tom Morris, who had brought his own mare from the horse artillery, was well mounted. Keane glanced round at him now and took in his natural ease in the saddle, as if he was somehow fixed in place, sure that nothing the horse might do would shake him. Turning, Keane tried to look back at the others. Sergeant Ross seemed less than happy, tugging and cursing, while the old sailor, Silver, was swaying from side to side as if on a ship. Looking at the two of them, he wondered if they would ever learn how to fight from horseback as well as on foot, using sabres, carbines and pistols.
A little distance behind them, at least Heredia was riding along with confidence, as might be expected from a cavalryman. Keane wondered about him and whether he had been wise to take him into their brethren. But Scovell had been keen, although like Silver, and indeed all of them, Heredia was yet to prove his worth.
They pressed on, pushing the horses as hard as they could. Keane knew that tim
e was of the essence and that he could not spend more than two days in the hundred-mile journey. They passed through Torres Vedras, Roliça and Caldas da Rainha and by the time that dusk was falling had reached Alcobaça, close to the coast. Keane halted the party and saw that the horses were flecked with sweat and the riders themselves in no fit state to go further.
‘Sarn’t Ross, we’ll stop here.’ He swung himself out of the saddle and, leading the horse across to a little inn, tethered it to a post. ‘Sarn’t Ross, Silver, take the horses round to the rear. Find the landlord and get them fed and watered. Then come and do the same for yourselves. All of you.’
Together, he and Morris entered. The barroom was filled with cigar smoke and the smell of wine. Four of the six tables were occupied, all by men, some in Portuguese uniform. Keane and Morris removed their headgear and nodded to the men before sitting down at one of the free tables and calling for wine and food. It came quickly, delivered by an unsmiling woman, in the form of a stone carafe of local rosé, a loaf of brown bread and a single cured sausage. The other inhabitants eyed the newcomers with interest, eager to see what they made of the offering, but as soon as Keane and Morris began to eat, they turned away. Nothing was said.
At length the door opened and the others entered, Ross reporting to Keane. ‘Horses are stabled out the rear, sir. Seems a good enough place. Landlord says we can have rooms – two of them.’
Keane smiled. ‘Just two rooms, eh? Well then, sarn’t, I’m very much afraid that means that you and Heredia will be sleeping down here.’
Ross smiled. ‘Yes, sir. I guessed as much. All the better then, nice and warm by the fire. Permission to get fed, sir.’
‘Off you go, Sarn’t Ross. General Wellesley’s paying.’
The four of them sat at the other free table and it was not long before they were joined, at Silver’s insistence, by two of the locals.
Morris talked of home. He spoke of a girl and of his mother and all the time Keane, ever the watchful officer, kept one ear trained on the level of conversation at the other table, gauging the atmosphere. For a few minutes Morris’s chat drove his thoughts back to Ireland, and looking across at Silver with his arm around Gabriella he thought what strange things life and war could be. A life where one moment you were awaiting death and the next sitting with friends and your future wife enjoying a drink by a fireside. Morris was a good friend, but always seemed to Keane to have an air of innocence about him. He wondered if he had grown too cynical. He knew that his eyes had been opened by all that he had seen over the last few years. Man’s inhumanity to man. And he half wished that it might not be so. But the thought went as quickly as it had come and Keane knew that deep down he was a better man for it. He knew exactly what he wanted from life and was determined to get it or die in the attempt. Love? That was for fools and idealists like dear Tom. Money? That was essential if you were to get anywhere, be anyone. Fame? That was something to be hoped for. To be talked of in the mess in hushed and reverent tones. Glory? Now that was the prize, he thought. That was what kept him here. He wondered what glory lay in his new appointment. None, he thought, but that which I can make myself. He spoke.
‘Tom, why do you do this? Soldiering, I mean.’
‘James, what a curious question. Why do you? Why does anyone? Because we are soldiers. That’s just it, isn’t it? It’s what we do.’
‘But why do you do it?’
Morris looked at him. ‘Is this the wine talking, James? I swear you’ve become quite the philosopher these last few days. What’s got into you?’
Keane smiled and shook his head. ‘Nothing, merely a notion. Here, let me refill your glass.’
He was pouring the wine when he heard Silver’s voice raised at the other table. He cursed himself for not keeping an ear on the conversation and turned to see what was going on.
One of the local men was talking hotly to Gabriella with Silver pushing in between them. Keane watched. He knew that for him to go in now and try to sort out the situation would be too heavy-handed and that it could easily bring the spark of tension to a flame and an ugly scene. He caught some of the words: ‘Whore’, ‘English’, ‘French’, ‘filth’.
It wasn’t hard to guess what was being said, and he knew that Silver was restraining himself from taking a swing at the villager, who had now been joined by his companion at the table and a third man. As he watched, Heredia walked forward and spoke quietly to the first man, shaking his head. For a moment Keane’s hand was on his sword. Surely, he thought, a Portuguese cavalryman taking issue with a villager would not help things. But to his astonishment the man backed down. Within seconds he was smiling and then he and Silver were clapping each other on the back and drinking together. Keane let his hilt go and turned to Morris.
‘Well, did you see that?’ Heredia had been watching all the while, gauging the moment at which to intervene, and he had timed it perfectly. Whatever he had said to the villager, it had clearly had the right effect. ‘That man is turning out to be a most surprising soldier, Tom. I shall have to keep my eye on him.’
He took a long drink and spoke again. ‘When we reach Coimbra it would be best if we made our bivouac away from the army, don’t you think? I’m sure that we shall attract more than our fair share of comment in the coming weeks. No point in encouraging it before its time.’
Morris nodded. ‘As you think, James. Ours is a curious form of soldiering, isn’t it? Do you suppose Bonaparte has anyone like us?’
‘No, I shouldn’t think he has. Although he must have spies of a sort. I suppose that’s part of what we’re meant to do. Find them.’
‘How shall we do that?’
‘To tell the truth, Tom, I have no idea. But I’m sure that we shall manage it.’
*
The night was uneventful, save for Morris’s loud snoring, which kept Keane from sleep. In a period of this enforced wakefulness he lay still in the small hours, and his thoughts again turned to Silver. He became impatient to reach the camp.
They rose at dawn and once Keane had paid the landlord they saddled up and rode fast by way of Leiria and Pombal, reaching Coimbra as the sun was lowering in the afternoon sky.
As Keane had proposed to Morris, they made camp away from the inquisitive eyes in that temporary city that was the army’s lines. Remembering a knoll on the road to the north, he led them there and left Morris in charge. The others found what little shelter they could and unrolled their blankets, while Keane set out on a mission that would wait no longer.
He presumed at least that acquiring the next of his recruits would not necessitate such a challenging expedition as that they had just undertaken. No brothels or gouty colonels. Merely a stroll and a conversation with an old friend.
*
The main camp of Wellesley’s army lay a short distance from the town, on rising ground to the west. As Keane approached he was able to gain a better appreciation of the site: a good four acres of grey and white and red shelters. It was a shanty town, no less. The men had made do with what few materials they had to hand, but with precious few tents most of them had simply a blanket on the ground, and with an abundance of rain on every second day even the dry earth of Portugal had turned to mud. The more ingenious had rigged two blankets together over their muskets as a makeshift tent. Others still had contrived to hang their red coats over sticks. It looked to Keane’s eyes as if all the gypsies in the world had arrived in Portugal. For apart from the soldiers, the camp followers – the army’s tail – were here in abundance and the place thronged with women, children and animals of all sorts. To the uninitiated it might have presented an unfathomable puzzle, but it did not take long for Keane’s seasoned eye to find the lines of his old regiment, the 27th Inniskilling Fusiliers. Their colours were crossed in a stand outside the colonel’s tent, the King’s colour of the Union Jack set at diagonals to the other, the regimental colour of yellow silk; both torn and ragged but still as splendid and heart-stopping as the day he had joined, thought Keane.
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He walked past the sentry at the tent entrance and coughed. A voice from within asked him simply to come in.
Colonel Willoughby was some years older than Keane and his curly hair was already showing signs of greying at the temples. As Keane entered his terrier rose from its position by the colonel’s feet and trotted happily towards Keane, recognizing an old friend.
The colonel too was pleased to see him. ‘James, how good to see you. You’ve not come to rejoin us?’
‘No, sir, I’m afraid I have not. I’ve come to plunder the ranks, if I may.’
Willoughby nodded. ‘Yes, I had heard that you were after recruits. Wondered how long it would take you to do that. I’ve heard that you’re to form a new corps.’
‘Hardly a corps, sir. Merely a company, if that. But yes, I am in need of men.’
‘Now let me see, who can I think you have come for? I know. Milligan, the rogue who stole the chickens. He’d suit you very well. Or maybe Flynn. Yes, it’ll be Flynn you want, I’ll wager. He’s not been flogged for a month.’
Keane shook his head ‘No, sir. It’s neither of them, I’m afraid. It’s Martin I want. Will Martin.’
The colonel shook his head. ‘Will Martin. No, James, I’m afraid I can’t allow that. The boy’s too good to lose.’
‘I know, sir. That’s why I want him. He’s bright, he can shoot straight. He’s good with a horse. And he’s got his wits about him.’
Willoughby nodded. ‘Yes. It’s a shame that he ain’t got the funds to go with them, to purchase his rightful rank. But that’s our loss. His background’s quite sound, you know.’
‘Yes, I know where his family farms. His father has ten thousand acres, near Bangor. Good land. That’s why I want him too, sir. Not just for us but to give him a fresh chance. With me he might have the chance for advancement he won’t find in the ranks.’