True Soldier Gentlemen

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  ‘No dogs,’ whispered Dobson to Williams. ‘If there’s no dogs at a farm then there’s no people either. Leastaways not those with a right to be there.’

  Maria either did not hear or ignored him as she continued her description. ‘There are two doors to the house. The main one is at the front, and a small side door to the kitchen at the right end of the rear wall. In the old days they would not be bolted, but today . . . ’ There was more than a hint of bitterness as she added, ‘My family kept the place better.’

  Two of Mata’s men returned from a wide circle of the buildings. They had seen nothing. Williams was close enough to sense Dobson’s contempt. ‘They’re just young ’uns. Don’t know they’re born, let alone how to fight,’ he whispered. ‘Best way in is from the top down. Daft buggers never guard the top floor properly. Look.’ He pointed. ‘See the far wall. There’s just a single window at the top. Force the shutters and in that way.’

  Williams was tempted to ask him how he knew so much about housebreaking, but realised this was not the time and was not sure he would like the answer. He crouched as he went along the wall to join Pringle and Truscott and explained Dobson’s suggestion.

  Truscott was unimpressed. ‘How the hell do we get up there?’ They were soon joined by Mata and Hanley, and there was a long whispered conference. In the end they formed a plan. Two of Mata’s men went to watch the entrance to the lane. They were to fire if either Denilov or any French approached and then run back to the house, which by then the others should have secured. Mata and four men would go in through the front door, while the British officers used the kitchen door. Williams and Dobson were allowed to try to force their way in through the upper window if they could. When the plan was explained to Maria, she baulked and refused to be left behind and this led to more discussion. Finally she agreed to follow at a distance behind the three British officers and wait for the signal to join them.

  When the two main groups moved off, Dobson grabbed Williams’ shoulder and held him back.

  ‘Wait,’ he whispered. ‘After that parish meeting the whole bloody world must know we’re coming.’

  ‘If anyone is there.’

  ‘You’re a soldier, Pug. Always expect the worst. Now wait.’

  Williams could see the five Portuguese walk slowly up the path to the farm’s main entrance. His friends swung wide to the side of the house, Maria just a few paces behind them. All of them cast long shadows and looked conspicuous in the moonlight. He tensed, waiting for the sudden flames and noise of shots.

  Nothing happened. Mata reached the main door. He crouched and two of his men presented their muskets and aimed at the big shuttered windows on either side of the door. The other two closed up on the officer.

  Pringle and the others had vanished around the side of the house. Mata waited to give them time to reach the kitchen door. Sword held in his right hand, with his left he grasped the large iron ring of the door and tried to turn it. To his surprise it moved and he felt the catch lift. As gently as he could, he pushed the door inwards, wincing when the hinges creaked so loudly that he thought the whole world must hear.

  The kitchen door was also open. Pringle turned the handle and then slammed his shoulder against the door, flinging it open and half falling into the room. Truscott and Hanley both pointed their pistols through the open doorway. There was no one in the kitchen. Pringle had fallen against a high-backed wooden chair, one of three placed around a heavy wooden table. There were plates and pots on it, and more hanging from the walls and around the fireplace. The room smelt faintly of rotting meat.

  Mata heard the bang as Pringle forced his way into the house, and pushed the main door harder. It was very dark inside and for a moment he could see nothing. He took a pace in, his sword held out before him. There was another door a yard or so in front of him and a second one to his right.

  ‘Bugger,’ hissed Dobson as he saw movement in an upper window just above the main door. Williams saw a tiny red spark fall through the air. One of the Portuguese soldiers felt something heavy strike his shoulder and thud into the dirt beside him. He looked down and saw a small sphere no bigger than a child’s ball. A fuse burned in it.

  The explosion was thunderous, the red flame sudden and blinding. The two Portuguese soldiers covering the lower windows died instantly as the sharp fragments of metal smashed into their bodies. More jagged pieces scythed through the air to strike the men next to Mata, knocking them down. The lieutenant himself was unscathed, but left stunned by the noise. The doors opened and, before he could parry the blows, bayonets reached out andstabbed him. Hissing with pain, he dropped his sword and slumped down.

  ‘Grenade,’ said Dobson. Nominally they were grenadiers, but Williams had never seen one of the old-fashioned weapons for they were erratic and almost as much a danger to the man throwing them as to his target. The British Army had stopped using them regularly more than fifty years earlier.

  The sound was muffled in the kitchen. Truscott and Hanley were at the inner door, which was locked. Maria had already followed them into the room and helped Pringle to his feet.

  ‘Sounds like a war,’ muttered Pringle. Truscott pulled back a pace or two to charge the door. Maria screamed when a figure appeared at the outer door and slammed it shut. Glass in the nearby window shattered as it was hit with a club. Then a round object was thrown into the room. A burning fuse flared as the iron grenade clattered on to the floor and began to spin wildly.

  ‘The table,’ yelled Pringle. He began to lift the nearest leg. Truscott joined him while Hanley flung himself at Maria and used his good arm to drag the girl down behind them. Grunting, the two lieutenants managed to tip the heavy timbered table on to its side and ducked behind it.

  There was a pause that seemed to last forever and then an explosion louder and more appalling than anything they had heard in the battle. They felt the solid table shake with the impact of wickedly sharp shards of the grenade’s casing. Some pattered into the plaster wall behind them. Both doors were flung open and soldiers came through them with levelled bayonets. Truscott was swaying from the shock of the blast, but managed to fire, and the man coming through the outer door grunted and slumped to the ground. Pringle and Hanley turned to face the inner door and pulled the triggers on their pistols at almost the same instant, so that the reports merged into one. Both shots missed.

  Behind the soldier came Denilov, the twin barrels of his pistol aimed squarely at Maria. He glanced at the others.

  ‘The same fools,’ the Russian officer said with contempt.

  31

  Williams pulled himself up on to the wall when he heard t

  he second muffled explosion. Dobson grabbed his legs and dragged the volunteer back with all his strength. The two men fell, locked together, but the older man’s strength was greater. They rolled and Dobson was left on top. One hand clamped tight across Williams’ mouth.

  ‘Quiet, you stupid bastard,’ he hissed. Williams struggled and suddenly he felt the cold touch of a blade on his throat. Somehow Dobson had drawn a knife without letting go of his grip. For a moment the image of Redman’s corpse flashed through the volunteer’s mind.

  ‘Quiet and let the buggers think they’ve won.’ Dobson spoke softly as if reassuring a child. ‘We can’t help them at the moment. If we rush in we’ll just die as well.’ Williams stopped struggling. The veteran waited for a moment and then took the knife and then the hand away.

  ‘What if they are being killed now?’ Hamish managed to keep his voice low.

  ‘Then there ain’t a goddamned thing we can do about it. It’s not about dying, Pug. It’s about winning. So now we wait and keep quiet and let them think the danger has gone.’

  ‘What about the two Portuguese?’

  ‘Forget ’em. We can’t talk t devils anyway. They’re just children. If they run then they don’t matter and if they come back and fight on their own then they get killed.’ The veteran spoke brutally. ‘Now we wait.’

  *
r />   The three British officers kneeled on the floor with their hands tied behind their back. Hanley was in agony as their captors had torn off his sling and bent his wounded arm back in spite of his hisses of pain. Mata was in a worse state; stabbed in the right arm, stomach and thigh, he lay on the stone floor of the farm’s main room. When they had been brought into the room, Maria had dragged herself free of the Russian soldier who held her, and run to help him. She tore her scarf into strips and bound up the young officer’s leg and arm. The Russians let her, and watched as the girl searched for something to bandage the much bigger wound to his belly. Denilov had gone to post two of his men as sentries. His sergeant was dead, killed by Truscott’s lucky shot, but the latter had not yet had time to take in the thought that he had actually killed for the first time. The Russian soldiers were puzzled by the death, for the one-eyed NCO had seemed indestructible. They were not disconcerted. Death was part of a soldier’s lot, and they were all still breathing, which was the main thing.

  The room contained little. There was a small round table, two stools and an elderly rocking chair. Candles and an oil lamp on the table gave some illumination, but there was no fire in the grand fireplace.

  Maria looked around, but there was no cloth or other material to act as bandage. The girl shrugged and reached back to lift up the tail of her tight jacket. Very deliberately, but without looking at anyone, she unhooked her skirt and eased it slowly downwards. The two Russian soldiers watched appreciatively. One even permitted himself a wicked smile. The Englishmen also watched.

  As the girl lowered her skirt she leaned forward, her long black hair hanging down around her face. Her petticoat was white and seemed very bright in the flickering light. It was also short, falling only a little past her knees, and as Maria bent over, its laced edge rose up at the back and showed her stockinged legs and some of the bare skin above them.

  Pringle was about to comment when he decided that it was better not to break the silence. Then he noticed something glinting next to Mata’s foot. It was a fragment from one of the grenades, presumably caught on the wounded man’s clothing or kicked in here accidentally.

  Maria stepped out of her skirt and dropped it in front of Mata. It covered the jagged shard of the grenade. The Russians watched every motion as she knelt down and took the skirt and with a fierce effort ripped it along the seam, and then tore the pieces again. Mata winced as she raised him to bind the cloth around his stomach, but then managed to apologise and thank her.

  Pringle noticed that the piece of metal had vanished when the girl stood up and walked over to the three kneeling Englishmen. One of the Russians barked an order, but Maria gestured at Hanley and touched her own arm to show that she wanted only to look at the wound. Then she turned her back on the guard and crouched down to tie another strip of her ruined skirt as a fresh dressing on the wound.

  ‘Come a bit forward,’ she said, and Hanley obeyed, shuffling towards her on his knees. Then Maria stepped back, and walked around behind him to see better. As she passed behind Pringle she dropped the piece of grenade casing into the palm of his hand. He felt the sharp metal cut his skin as he tried to shift it and twist with his fingers so that the edge was against the rope binding hiswrists.

  The door opened and the two Russian soldiers instantly took on more alert postures as Denilov came in. He glanced around the room.

  ‘A little obvious, even for you, Maria,’ he said suavely. Then he spat a fierce rebuke at his men. Guessing that something was going on, he paced behind the kneeling British officers. It was chance, for he had not seen anything, but when he was next to Pringle, Denilov suddenly slammed his fist into the side of the Englishman’s neck just above his jacket collar.

  The pain was searing as Pringle was knocked over on his side, gasping for breath. The little shard of metal dropped on the ground. Denilov noticed it, shook his head, and kicked the fragment off into the corner of the room.

  ‘How very tiresome,’ he said as he walked towards the fireplace, and then he slapped Maria hard across the cheek. A trickle of blood came from the corner of her mouth, but the Russian count caught her as she fell and flung her forward against the carved stone fireplace. Truscott and Hanley shouted in protest, until one of the guards clubbed each of them in turn with the butt of his musket. All three Englishmen lay on their sides, struggling to get up.

  ‘Come Maria, you know that you will have to tell me sooner or later. Open the hiding place.’ Denilov slapped her again, this time on the other cheek, knocking her down as she tried to get up. ‘I am losing patience. You will show me in the end. How much do I have to hurt you and these others before that happens?’

  The tall Russian aristocrat looked around the room. ‘As you wish.’ He nodded to one of his men, who promptly kicked Mata in the belly. The former student hissed in agony, but somehow managed to stop himself from yelling out.

  ‘Very brave.’ Denilov’s tone was mocking. He nodded again to his man. This time the soldier jabbed down with the butt of his musket against the wounded man’s thigh and then ground the weapon over the wound.

  Mata screamed in agony.

  Williams staggered from the weight of Dobson standing on his shoulders. Both men were tall, but they were trying to open a window some ten feet above the ground. Lacking a watch, the volunteer did not know how much time had passed since the grenades had gone off. It seemed like an hour, but was maybe only half that. They had seen no sign of Mata’s remaining two men.

  Dobson had led him in a wide circuit to come at the farmhouse from the lee of the barn. That meant they had only a short stretch of open ground to cover, and the veteran reckoned that the enemy would anyway be watching only the approaches to the doorway. Now the old soldier’s boots pressed down hard as Dobson used all his considerable strength to prise open the shutters. Williams felt him sway backwards, as he fought for balance when the left-hand one finally snapped its catch and swung outwards and back.

  The burden slackened and Williams looked up to see that Dobson had grabbed the window ledge with one hand and was pulling himself up. Both men had left their packs, shakos, canteens and haversacks back behind the wall. They kept only their ammunition pouches. Dobson disappeared into the room and then a moment later emerged again and reached downwards. Williams passed up the old soldier’s musket and then his own. Both had their bayonets already fixed. Dobson quickly took off the two musket slings and tied them together. That gave them a cord a good six feet in length. The veteran looped one arm around a beam and held the sling in his other hand, letting it hang from the window.

  Wilms took a few paces back and then ran at the wall, leaping upwards and grabbing at the dangling musket sling. He caught it with his right hand, but nearly lost hold when he slammed against the wall, and only just clung on. A moment later his left hand also found the sling and he began to pull himself up. Hamish had never been much good at climbing, had always watched baffled as others seemed to shoot up the cables like monkeys, but somehow it seemed easier on this night. He managed to push out with his feet and then almost walk up the wall.

  Then the shots came. First there was one, and then two in reply from the front of the house. There were shouts, and after a flare of panic Williams realised that it had nothing to do with their own efforts at breaking in. Whoever it was – and he hoped it was Mata’s men and not a French patrol – then they would keep the Russians busy.

  When he neared the window, Williams’ boots slipped on the stone and he slid hard against the wall. Dobson cursed as the sudden weight yanked at the slings, but then saw that the volunteer had his elbows on the window ledge. The veteran let go of the sling and instead grabbed Williams’ hand. Gasping with effort, Hamish pulled himself into the room. It was long, running the length of the entire floor, and was probably in normal times a storeroom and sleeping quarters for the labourers on the farm. Even in the moonlight, Williams could see that it was now empty save for a few rags.

  ‘You’re getting fat, Pug,’ whispered Do
bson with a grin.

  There was another shot from outside, answered by one that seemed to come from the floor below. They took their muskets and walked as stealthily as they could to the far end of the room, where a staircase led downwards. Williams led the way, and no matter how lightly he trod each step produced what seemed like thunderous moans from the wood.

  When the shooting started, Denilov sent one of his men to the front of the house to see what was happening. Then he went back to his task. Maria had ignored him at first. Then she had cursed him as they repeatedly hit the wounded Mata, whose screams grew fainter with each blow. Then she had sobbed and begged him for mercy.

  Denilov continued to ask the same question over and over again. In the end Mata passed out and could not be revived. Maria continued to weep and to plead.

  The Russian officer drew his double-barrelled pistol and pointed it at the girl. Then, as if on a whim, he turned and walked towards the three British officers. Truscott had somehow managed to get back up on his knees, so Denilov pointed the pistol at his forehead.

  ‘It is up to you, my dear,’ he said to the girl.

  The first Russian ran on to Williams’ bayonet. The volunteer was advancing down into the corridor when the man rushed around a corner, his own firelock held across his body. The bayonet slid easily between the man’s ribs and there was only a short intake of breath before he was dead. Dobson pushed past as Williams struggled to free the blade. In the end he let the body drop and then put his foot on the man and finally dragged it out.

  Dobson was by an open door when there was a shot from inside the room. For a moment a soldier was illuminated by the flame as he fired out of the window. Then Dobson saw little apart from the bright red glow seared into his vision. He squinted and stalked the man, as the Russian mechanically loaded his musket. A musket ball fired from outside whipped past the soldier’s head and instinctively he flinched. As his head moved he caught sight of the veteran. The Russian turned, his ramrod still in the muzzle of his musket, just as Dobson stamped his foot forward and lunged. The man flung his firelock up in a wild defensive sweep which succeeded only in knocking the redcoat’s bayonet higher than he had aimed it. The point drove into the Russian’s throat. He choked, blood jetting out on to his chest. His musket was now on the floor and both hands went up to clutch at the blade. Dobson ripped the blade free and then stabbed again, driving deep into the man’s belly. The Russian writhed for a moment, gurgling horribly, before he finally went still.