by Gale, Iain
‘I’m no Highlander. Thought you knew that, sir. I’m from Glasgow and before that my mother was Irish. You of all people know that, sir.’
‘I was merely jesting with you. There is a propensity in our army to pass off any Scot as a wild Highlander. It is part of the idea of Romance. Have you heard of that, sarn’t?’
‘Can’t say I have, sir. All I know is that I’m as much a Highlander as Martin is, or Garland there. I only joined the regiment for the King’s shilling and for the kilt. Gets the lassies, sir.’
‘That’s what I meant, sarn’t. Romance. You do understand.’
‘If it’s to do with making the lassies turn their heads, then yes I do understand, sir. But I’m still no Highlander and I still feel out of sorts in these hills.’
As they neared the river, Keane held up his hand. ‘Halt. We’ll stop here. Ten minutes. Water the horses. Then we’re going north.’ He pointed to the left and towards the mountains. ‘That’s our road.’
They dismounted and led the horses towards the riverbank. A bridge ran across to Amarante, but the men walked the horses down the shallow slope beside it, letting them go into the river. Keane and Morris watched them and each took out a flask and drank a short mouthful of water. Gabriella and Silver were splashing each other with water like two children, while Ross had taken off his tunic and rolled up his sleeves to bathe his face and arms.
Morris plugged the top back into his water bottle. ‘They’re a good lot, James, don’t you think? You chose well.’
‘We chose well, Tom.’
‘I feel that somehow we’ve given them all a new life.’
‘I would like to think so. I’m not so sure about a couple of them. Heredia worries me. But yes, I do think we have done some good.’
That wasn’t something he often felt. It wasn’t something any soldier was ever likely to say. Doing good was hardly part of their craft. But as he watched Silver and his woman at ease in the sunshine and the others laughing as the horses frolicked in the water, he had a sense that something was right. He caught himself and shouted to them. ‘Remount. We’re moving on.’
Turning to the north, away from the town and the river, they took a narrower road which almost as soon as they turned onto it began to climb.
Keane had studied the map before they left and had seen that the road they were now on, although marked by the engineers, appeared to peter out after some distance. He had hoped that this was not the case and could see that beyond where it stopped three towns in the hills were marked which must surely be connected by road. After ten miles they came to the first of these. Keane signalled to halt, but still in the saddle he unbuttoned his valise and withdrew the map. Taking out a pencil, he carefully marked in the continuation of the road and confirmed the town’s existence. The place was quiet, but seeing a man look out from his doorway, Keane called across in Spanish. ‘Señor, what is the name of this place?’
The man looked startled and for a moment did not speak. Heredia called out in Portuguese the same question. The man replied. Heredia turned to Keane. ‘He says it’s called Freixim, sir.’
‘Thank you, Heredia.’
Keane marked it down and they carried on through the town and past the terrified man.
From the village they climbed again and began to toil up a steep incline. According to the map they must now, thought Keane, be on the very top of the Sierra Cabrera. But still the road climbed up. Then, just as they seemed to be reaching into the very clouds, it levelled out again and they found themselves passing through the mountains in a narrow gorge.
Almost immediately, Keane began to share Ross’s sense of apprehension. He reassured himself that the guerrillas were on their side, but the soldier within him kept his eyes scanning the tops of the cliffs that rose up a good fifty feet on either side of them.
Martin called out from the rear of the column. ‘Did you see that, sir? Over there on the left. Something shiny, sir. Metal. Might be a musket.’
Keane looked to his left and saw nothing, but then, as they went on deeper into the gorge, something caught his eye. A flash of the sun reflected on silver. He froze and then called out. ‘Halt. Draw carbines.’
They reined in, but hardly had they done so when a shot rang out. It echoed off the sides of the gorge, almost deafening them. All as one, save Gabriella, pulled the carbines from their holsters on the saddles. Keane looked around them. Surely this could not be the French? They could not possibly have negotiated this road, he reasoned. Not with wagons, and this was no place for artillery, either. He scoured the cliffs but in his heart he knew what and who it was that was observing them and had them at its mercy. Then to confirm his suspicions a voice rang out – in Spanish.
‘Don’t worry, Englishmen. We are friends. Don’t shoot at us and we will not kill you.’
Above them on all sides the tops of the cliffs were filled with scores of men. Some wore the uniform of Spain; others, most of them, civilian clothes. All were armed, most with muskets. Keane tried to identify where the voice had come from and then saw its owner. The man descended the gorge quickly and nimbly, jumping from rock to rock like an animal. He was followed by his men, and by the time he reached them at the bottom he had fifty on his heels. He walked up to Keane and smiled. ‘They call me Cuevillas. You are looking for me?’
‘Yes, Captain Cuevillas. My name is Keane. Captain James Keane. I come from our general, General Wellesley.’
Cuevillas looked at the men standing behind Keane. ‘Your general does not send me many of you. Are there more?’
‘No, captain. We are not here to fight with you. We are guides. We gather intelligence. That is our purpose in seeking you, captain.’
Cuevillas nodded. ‘Yes, I knew that. I just thought that perhaps you might bring men, or money. That is what we need. Not giving intelligence.
10
Cuevillas led them up a track which even Keane had to admit he would not have detected. It climbed to the top of the gorge and there on a flat plateau lay the camp. It was remarkably similar to Morillo’s and it seemed to Keane that the guerrillas, like the British army, had brought their entire families with them on campaign. A pig dangled from a tree, roasting slowly over a fire. He surveyed the group and saw the same mixture of partly uniformed ex-soldiers and peasants. There were priests too: two young men, minor clergy, in black cassocks, one of whom was playing a game of tig with one of the children.
It seemed a slightly more civilized set-up than Morillo’s, and even without properly making the man’s acquaintance Keane felt that he might be beginning to warm to Cuevillas when, looking directly to his left, he saw that they had a prisoner.
The man sported a flamboyant moustache, and long braided pigtails hung from the sides of his hair. He was dressed in the gaudy uniform of a French hussar: a sky-blue dolman and breeches with a red-and-white barrel sash and tassled Hungarian boots. His arms were bound tightly at the wrists and it was evident that he had been beaten, for his left eye was half shut and there was blood streaked across his forehead.
‘You have a prisoner, Captain Cuevillas.’
Cuevillas laughed and pointed to the hussar. ‘Him? Yes. We ran into him at Miserela only yesterday. He was hiding beneath the bridge. He carries papers to Marshal Soult. Interesting papers. Perhaps you would like to look at them later, captain?’
‘Thank you, I shall, but tell me, where are you taking him?’
Keane knew the reply before it was uttered.
‘Take him? We don’t take him anywhere. We are going to kill him, captain. When the moment takes us. When we grow bored of his pleasant company.’
Keane was not surprised, after all. For all its bucolic appearance, Cuevillas’s camp and its inhabitants were equipped with the same morals as Morillo. But this time he was damned if he was going to let them do to this man what Morillo and his men had done to their prisoner. Or even get close to it. He decided to play for time.
‘May I talk to your prisoner, captain? Interrogate him?’
‘I don’t see why not. You can try. We haven’t begun to do that yet. Not properly.’ Keane looked at the Frenchman and saw the blood on his face. Morris whispered to him. ‘Not properly, James. You and I know what that means.’
Cuevillas continued. ‘We have his papers. I’ve seen them. I don’t think he will tell us much more. But we will give him the chance, captain, when the time comes. We have our methods.’
‘Let’s see if my methods work better than yours, shall we? And might I also now take a look at the papers?’
‘Of course, captain. But I don’t think you’ll see anything that I have not.’
Cuevillas snapped his fingers and one of the guerrillas, whom Keane presumed must be his chief of staff – a ruddy-faced man wearing a tall hat and a handkerchief beneath it – appeared with a valise, from which he drew out the Frenchman’s letters.
Keane took them and turned them over in his hand. There was a letter of introduction for the officer and the usual letters that he might have expected to find in a similar valise from Wellesley to any one of his command. A letter from Soult to other generals in the field. A letter addressed to Marshal Ney and another to the emperor himself, in Paris. This last sent a frisson down Keane’s spine. He marvelled that this was the nearest he might ever get to Napoleon.
But, as Cuevillas had said, there was in none of them anything different from the intelligence they already had. Soult had merely confirmed to Ney that he had been driven out of Oporto and that he would make contact with him in Galicia and mount a joint offensive against Wellesley. At least, he supposed, it confirmed what they had suspected.
He handed the papers back to Cuevillas, thanked him and then, with Morris at his side, walked across to the French hussar. The man, while still looking downcast, seemed a little less terrified to be confronted by two English officers. Here, perhaps, was his last chance of salvation.
Keane spoke to him in French. ‘What is your name?’
‘Fabier. Philippe Fabier, captain, 1st Hussars.’
‘Yes, I noticed your sabretache. A fine regiment. We fought you at Alexandria.’
‘You were there?’
‘Yes.’
The hussar managed a faint smile. ‘Me also.’
‘My name is Keane, captain. Captain James Keane. You know, Captain Fabier, what these men intend to do to you?’
The hussar nodded and shrugged. ‘Yes, of course. We are all warned about what will happen if we are captured in the hills. I know.’
He looked away and Keane could sense the terror and despair in him.
‘Perhaps, captain, there might be a means by which I can save you from that fate.’
‘Sir?
‘Perhaps if you were to tell me what you know then they might let you go.’
‘I don’t think so. They want me for sport. For amusement.’
‘But I am a British officer. Give me what I need to know and I give you my word that I will persuade them.’
‘How can you do that? Why should I believe you?’
‘What other options do you have?’
Fabier thought for a moment. ‘I could say nothing.’
‘You could, and then I would walk away and leave you to them.’
He gestured to the guerrillas, who were drinking from several leather flagons and taking turns to throw rocks at a crow that they had roped to a log and which had already lost one of its legs and half a wing.
‘How will you persuade them?’
‘I have my ways. I have options. Which is something you do not.’
Fabier thought but said nothing for a while. ‘I swore to my general that I would say nothing, even under torture.’
‘That was a foolish oath to take.’
‘I took it to the emperor and to France. I was not so foolish.’
‘I swore an oath to King George when I took his shilling twenty years ago. But I’d break it if I thought it would save me from what they will do to you.’
The hussar looked away again, trying to contemplate it.
Keane seized his moment. ‘You know I did see, not too long ago, what they did to one of your countrymen. First they cut him all over his body. They were flaying him alive and no doubt about to castrate him when I shot him through the head.’
‘You did that?’
‘It’s no more than I would do for any man. Whatever nation he comes from and whatever master he serves. And I would do the same for you. But perhaps I can save you from that … horror.’
The hussar did not speak again. He seemed to go limp, as if all the fight had gone from him. He said nothing and then he looked up at Keane. ‘Very well. What do you want to know?’
‘What can you tell me?’
‘Marshal Soult is leaving Portugal.’
‘Don’t play games with me, captain. Tell me something I do not already know.’
‘He is leaving Portugal and Marshal Victor has abandoned his position at Alcantara.’
This, thought Keane, was good. This was something new.
The man seemed relieved that he had managed to blurt out the secrets. And now there was no stopping him. ‘And there’s something more.’
‘Yes?’
‘Marshal Soult is leaving behind his baggage train. He is destroying everything: supplies, ammunition, weapons. Everything. His men may even kill some of the horses.’
Keane nodded. ‘It’s understandable. You would not want any supplies to fall into enemy hands. Our hands.’
The hussar smiled. ‘Yes, captain, but also within that train is a great deal of money.’
‘Exactly how much? Do you know?’
‘Fifty thousand.’
‘Francs?’
‘No, crowns.’
Keane paused, so great was the amount in question. It came to around £40,000*.
Not betraying his amazement at this revelation, Keane continued to question the hussar. ‘And that he will take with him, no doubt.’
The hussar shook his head and smiled. ‘No, captain, that is it. It is in silver coin. He cannot possibly carry it across the mountains on a cart. It would have to be divided up and taken on horseback. And that also is impossible.’
Keane frowned and stared into the man’s eyes. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because you promised to save me.’
‘I said that I would try. No promises, captain. But why tell me this information? Why me? Do you suppose I will try to grab it myself?’
The hussar shrugged again. ‘I do not know what you will do, captain. All I know is that I tell you because, yes, of course, I do not want French gold to fall into British hands, but even more I do not want it to fall into the hands of the guerrilleros. Can you for a moment imagine what effect that money would have on these bandits? Can you imagine men like that so rich?’
Keane thought of Morillo’s recently acquired fortune and wondered that the French should be carrying so much money with them, when Wellesley’s army was waiting for the payroll. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can.’
Cuevillas crossed over to them. ‘Well,’ he smiled. ‘Did you get anything from the man with your methods?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact I did. It would appear that Marshal Soult is abandoning his supplies and equipment along the route. Specifically, he is leaving a quantity of arms at a particular place, and Captain Fabier has given his word to lead me there.’
Cuevillas spat on the ground. ‘His word? What is the word of a Frenchman worth? Don’t tell me that you believe him?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘But you will not take him?’
‘Of course. What else do you expect me to do?’
‘I expect you to hand him back to me. He is my prisoner.’
‘No. He is now my prisoner. I have given my word to spare his life, in exchange for his leading us to the weapons. And my word, unlike what you believe to be true of that of the French, is my honour. I will not return him to you, captain.’
Cuevillas fumed and stared at Keane. ‘You hav
e no right to do this. He is my prisoner.’
‘I have every right, captain. I am an officer in the British army and I am attached to General Wellesley’s staff. My orders come direct from General Wellesley. If you go against me and attempt to take him back by force of arms, then whatever happens you will have General Wellesley and the British army to answer to.’ He paused until he judged the moment right. ‘Oh, and I’ll take his papers too, if you would.’ He held out his hand.
Cuevillas continued to stare at him but said nothing. Keane did not move and all the time the hussar officer stood slightly behind him, in absolute silence.
Eventually Cuevillas walked closer to Keane, until their faces were so close that Keane could smell the rank stench of his breath. Then he spoke. ‘Very well. Take your lousy piece of French shit. You’re welcome to him.’
Cuevillas pushed the hard leather valise towards Keane with a quick, unexpected action that caught him off guard and made contact with his diaphragm as Cuevillas had intended, with the impact of a punch. The pain seared through him but Keane did not move. He continued staring unblinking into the Spaniard’s eyes, took the valise from him and smiled.
Cuevillas, beaten, backed away, still staring into Keane’s eyes. Then, turning towards Fabier, he spat hard in the hussar’s face, and going towards his men who had been watching the events, he announced what was to happen. There were loud protests from the guerrillas but he held up his hand and quietened them. Then he turned and walked back to Keane.
‘Captain Keane, I suggest that you get on your way. I have agreed to your terms, but my men have not and I doubt whether they would. Go now and take him with you. Go and find your guns.’ Again he turned back to the men.
Keane found Morris, who had been standing nearby, listening. ‘Tom, I think we had better take his advice. Have the men mount up. We’ll ride out of the gorge past the guerrillas. It opens out soon and descends the mountains. Just bluff it out.’
They remounted, and slowly, with Gabriella and the hussar tucked between two files, rode past the guerrillas and through the gorge. Keane did not look back and neither did the others, but at any moment he expected to hear a shot and feel a bullet in his back. None came, though, and at length he breathed again. They rode for another hour and although there was no sound to suggest that they might be being followed, Keane kept going. Night would be upon them soon and he did not want to be anywhere near Cuevillas and his guerrillas when it came.