He did not have to ponder long: Joshua would serve him. He smiled at the thought of the great spy-master continuing his work here. Joshua would not bring down the walls of a fortress, but he might yet ‘let him down by a rope’!
My dear Laming,
How very good it was to learn that you are here, to pursue some classical purpose – study of the Roman bridge at Elvas, perhaps? Or is it something of greater antiquity in the bishop’s library? I myself had not the time when of late in the palace, but then my Greek, as you may imagine, is now very poor. Do you recall our efforts when we were younger? I try, however.
I am very well treated here and await my release agreeably, although I am not able to read and write as I should wish. Nevertheless, I content myself with the recollection of our former studies, and believe I may give you my word in this. I have been reading so much of the Book of Joshua, whom you will know to be a childhood hero of mine, perhaps as much to me as to the people of Israel. Indeed, to those who know, the word is thus: with but one remove, Joshua, the destroyer of whole cities, was the lion of his people . . .
He filled two pages with thoughts on Joshua, with emphatic underlinings in insignificant places, so that the pertinent phrase did not stand out by its curious sense. He was especially careful not to refer to Jericho, or indeed to any other city which a sharp-eyed censor might connect with Badajoz. It would be a cruel irony, he mused, to have the letter withheld for an unintended parallel.
When it was finished, he asked the guard for the letter to be conveyed to the castle authorities, as usual. The guard took it without hesitation, as he had the others; and Hervey breathed a silent sigh of relief.
It was much troubling Dom Mateo that the Spanish were being so punctilious in maintaining the posts and couriers. Colonel Laming was less inclined to puzzle over it since the French border had remained open in the days before Waterloo, and the mails had moved freely between Paris and Brussels. Closing a border was no small thing, he declared. As often as not it was prelude to a formal declaration of war. Were Spain to do so, it could only be regarded by Lisbon – and now London – as a hostile act.
‘I pray you are right,’ said Dom Mateo. ‘I fear, though, that the present arrangements greatly favour the Miguelistas.’
‘They favour us too, General; at least in respect of Major Hervey.’
Dom Mateo nodded. ‘Indeed, they do, Colonel. But, I hope, for not very much longer: not half of one hour more, I think.’ The semaphore had already signalled the crossing of the Badajoz courier.
Dom Mateo picked up his copy of the code-book and turned its pages. He looked pleased with himself, at last. They had been dark days since the taking-prisoner of Hervey. He had seen off the Miguelistas’ half-hearted attempt to overawe the garrison at Elvas. It had been extraordinarily easy, indeed: no more than a display of the gunpowder at his disposal – proving the guns in the bastions, and feux de joie from the walls by the pé do castelo. The Miguelistas and their Spanish friends had not stayed long after that. They had had no siege train: had they truly believed the garrison would desert to them as soon as they showed themselves? Dom Mateo’s chief of staff believed it to have been only a reconnaissance in force, but Dom Mateo himself was more sanguine: he was sure their ruse de guerre, although it had been exposed as one (and Hervey was paying the price), had fatally unnerved the invader. And now that British troops were actually making their way here, he was certain there could be no usurpation from within Elvas or from without. He would have Hervey back in the fortress by the time they arrived, and there would be no diplomatic embarrassment, for the Spaniards could hardly protest against the rescue of a British officer taken on Portuguese soil. Not that he cared one jot about ruffling the feathers of diplomatists; but he did care for the reputation of his friend.
Dom Mateo felt content as he turned the pages of General Folque’s manual. It had been great good fortune indeed that he and Hervey had spent the morning together, a month past, with the Corpo Telegráfico. But then, he had always been of a mind that good soldiers made their own fortune.
When he read the courier’s despatch, half an hour later, Dom Mateo was at once bewildered. Indeed, he was quite dismayed, throwing his arms about in extravagant gestures. ‘There is nothing – nothing but a page observing the habits of the birds in the garden at Badajoz! Is Hervey suffering some derangement, you suppose? Where is the parole? He says nothing at all!’
Laming was engrossed in his own letter.
‘What say you, Colonel?’
‘I . . . I beg your pardon, General: I did not hear.’
‘I said, why is there no parole? No code, nothing!’
Laming smiled wryly. ‘Then his letter to me is all the clearer. Hear, General: he writes, “I am very well treated here and await my release agreeably, although I am not able to read and write as I should wish.” Evidently the code-book has been taken from him.’
‘Then how are we to learn the parole?’
‘Hervey tells me, General. And unless the censor in Badajoz has both a perfect grasp of English and Greek, then he tells me in a code every bit as clever as Folque’s. The password is Napoleon.’
‘Here, let me see.’ Dom Mateo almost seized the letter. He read, his brow furrowing deeper with every line. ‘Where? Where is this code?’
‘There, General,’ replied Laming, pointing to the sentence, and smiling still.
‘ “The word is thus: with but one remove, Joshua, the destroyer of whole cities, was the lion of his people”. What is Joshua to do with it?’
Laming shook his head. ‘Joshua is merely the . . . decoy. You understand “decoy”, General?’
‘Yes, yes, I understand the word right enough. But how is it decoy here?’
‘General, remember that Hervey had to write in such a way as not to arouse suspicion. Talking of Joshua is commonplace enough, I surmise. The code is an acrostic – the term, I imagine, is the same in Portuguese? When we were cornets, we played these games. The true phrase is “Napoleon, the destroyer of whole cities, was the lion of his people”. When Hervey writes “with but one remove, Joshua” he means me to substitute Napoleon for Joshua!’
‘You are certain of this?’
‘I am, General.’
‘But how do you know it is Napoleon who replaces Joshua? I have never read of it! Whose is the saying?’
‘General, I beg your pardon. I did not say: it is a clever play on Greek words.’ He picked up a pen and wrote carefully. ‘Here, sir. You see, by writing “Napoleon”, and then removing the initial letter for each successive word, the sentence is made: Napoleon, the destroyer of whole cities, was the lion of his people.’
NAΠOΛEΩN AΠΛEΩN ΠOΛEΩN OΛEΩN AEΩN EΩN ΩN
Dom Mateo shook his head, quite diverted by the acrostic’s simplicity. A man did not have to be a Greek scholar to appreciate it. ‘Ingenious, Colonel Laming; quite ingenious. My compliments to you, and of course to Major Hervey.’
‘It is schoolboy conceit, General; but then, we were very lately out of school.’ Laming paused, and then pressed home. ‘It is settled, then? Two of your men, Dona Isabella, the corporal and me.’
Dom Mateo looked more resigned than content. ‘It goes hard with me, Colonel Laming, but I must concede you are right. It would indeed be an embarrassment for your government as well as mine if I were discovered in Spain. You will have one of my couriers, and a captain of my own regiment – he was with the Corps of Guides, a proud, excellent fellow.’
Laming was relieved. In truth, the embarrassment might be the greater if he himself were to be discovered, but although he would own that he knew the country not one tenth as well as did Dom Mateo, he still fancied he knew better how to spirit his old friend from the castle at Badajoz. That had been the way of things in the Sixth. ‘Very well, General. And you will give me a man who knows the unguarded crossing?’
‘You may depend on it, Colonel. It is little more than a mule track. We use it frequently. The Spanish cannot watch ever
y mile of the border, even if they have a mind to. The road has never been used by them.’
‘And the courier’s papers are all that will be needed to pass within the town?’
‘I am assured of it. And Dona Isabella has Spanish enough to deal with any official. You will be especially careful of her safety?’
‘I shall have the very highest regard for her safety, General. I should not for one moment contemplate her accompanying us if I believed we might do this without her.’
‘I understand perfectly, Colonel. The Spaniards will be disarmed by her sex, for all that their experience ought to put them on their guard instead.’
‘Deo volente.’
Dom Mateo nodded, and made the sign of the Cross. ‘Deo volente.’
They assembled at two o’clock. Laming was by no means certain that the plan could work with Isabella, let alone without her. There were just too many points at which they could be challenged, and at any one, despite official papers and Isabella’s Spanish, there would be no escape following discovery – not without a deal of bloodshed at least. And if they had to negotiate all these points of challenge on the way to Hervey’s quarters, they would have to do so by return – and with a fugitive. They had their diplomatic papers, and they travelled in plain clothes (borrowed, and strangelooking as these were), but at root it was a plan reliant as much on Spanish ineptness as clever Greek wordplay; Laming had seen enough in the Peninsula to know that ineptness was not a quality which could be relied on. But he perforce wore the mask of command, and he now smiled and waved confidently as they rode out of the headquarters.
They walked for a quarter of an hour, breaking into a trot once they were out of the east gate of the fortress. Dom Mateo’s captain led, then came Laming with Isabella at his side, then the courier – who did not know of the plan, but who would be recognized by the Spanish authorities and therefore assist their progress – and at the rear Corporal Wainwright led a packhorse, its burden less than it appeared, for the animal was the means by which Hervey was to escape. Laming worried that a suspicious sentry might think it too fine an animal to be bearing a load instead of a rider, and might remove the baggage and see a riding- rather than a packsaddle. But he worried too much, he told himself: why should a sentry be suspicious, for a party of travellers must be accompanied by some baggage, and if they could afford to engage a decent packhorse then why should they not? Indeed, he would tell them that it was a spare riding-horse! These were little things, he knew, but they were of the essence: they properly occupied the mind of a man charged with such an adventure – especially when it had been so many years since he had taken to the field.
But no one spoke. The captain of Dom Mateo’s own regiment had some French but little English, in spite of his proud lineage with the Corps of Guides. The courier had nothing but Portuguese and a little Spanish, and Wainwright waited only to be given an order. Isabella seemed wholly absorbed in thoughts of her own. Laming’s thoughts, left to themselves therefore, were becoming increasingly ill composed. What was troubling him now was moral not physical, and that he always found much the harder. He had considered the question before they set out, but now, alone on the road, the challenge of what had before been merely theoretical was all too concrete. What should be his priority if it came to a fight? Or rather, who should be his priority? The cold fact was that he himself, if he were to fall on the Spanish side, would be the cause of the greatest embarrassment to His Britannic Majesty’s government. But, now committed, he would put himself beyond that calculation: he could not spare himself for the loss of his old friend, and certainly not for the loss of Isabella Delgado. As for the others, the captain was important only until they had succeeded in crossing the border (he was certain he could find his own way back); the courier was of no importance once they had gained entrance to the castle; and Corporal Wainwright . . . a coverman was required not infrequently to cover with his life. Laming balked, however: it had all been so much easier on the battlefield. But, it was better that he had it out now than have to come to a judgement while wielding a sabre. He turned and looked at Isabella. Truly, she was a very handsome woman; and with pluck to admire as much, if not more. She was indispensable, at least until Hervey was sprung; but it was inconceivable that she could be left behind.
So, in their silence, they left the kingdom of Portugal and entered that of Spain. It was easy, save for a little stumbling in single file through a secret, wooded valley, and by four o’clock they had the walls of Badajoz in sight.
Laming was at once filled with dread. It had been nigh fifteen years, but still the walls spoke of death – and failure. Twenty feet high at least, thirty for much of the curtain, and even more in places, they had twice defeated Wellington’s men, and only by unleashing the very hounds of hell had the duke been able to overcome them the third time. He grimaced at the memory. He had played no great part, but he had been witness to it. And to what had followed.
He braced himself. ‘I recall it best from the other direction, Dona Isabella,’ he said, sounding, he hoped, matter-of-fact.
‘When it was in Spanish hands therefore?’ she replied, urging her horse up alongside his.
Laming was gratified by her attention at last. ‘Indeed. The next occasion was bestial. But I would not dwell on it.’
Isabella smiled. ‘Oh, I imagine I know more than you suppose, Colonel Laming.’
He supposed she did. ‘Hervey had to shoot a man, you know. One of our own men, I mean.’
Isabella looked pained. ‘I did not know that. What a terrible thing to have to do.’
Laming nodded, and he took note of her resolve. Isabella had not recoiled at the revelation: she had presumed it to be necessity – cruel necessity. Truly, she was a woman of uncommon mettle, a silver lining in the great black cloud that was this audacious adventure.
The air was cold and clear, and the prospect of the city now distinct. He recognized the tower of the cathedral, and the Tête du Pont, the fort guarding the bridge across the Guadiana; he could even see the gate at the other end, Las Palmas. He wanted to halt and take out his telescope, as he would have done in 1812, but he was not here as a soldier; he was a diplomatic traveller, said his papers – there was no cause for surveillance. It was perhaps as well, for as they joined the post road which connected Elvas and Badajoz, he saw the alcázabar quite plainly, the castle where Hervey was confined, and looking every bit as formidable as that night of the assault. It chilled him to the marrow, the sight as well as the recollection.
In half an hour more they were close enough to the bridge to make out its traffic. Laming saw that it flowed mainly towards the Las Palmas gate, as he had hoped, since the day was drawing to its close. That worked to their advantage, as he had calculated, but he hoped it would ease by the time they needed to recross. How he wished the approaches were not by bridge at all, or at least not by just the one: when it came to the escape it was this or nothing, for the Guadiana stood between them and Portugal for more miles south than they could ride. Fording it was impossible at this time of year, if at any, and swimming – three hundred yards at the very least – perilous beyond question. Perhaps without Isabella Delgado . . . No, he would not allow himself to think like that. When the time came, no matter if the alarm had been raised, one way or another they must get across that bridge.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
BRAVE HORATIUS
Later
The sun was beginning its evening descent behind them as the little party approached the Tête du Pont. General Phillipon had taken brief refuge nearby when Badajoz had fallen – the Sixth had been close when he surrendered his sword the next day – but Laming could give it barely a passing thought. They were approaching the first of the half-dozen certain occasions for challenge, and therefore exposure. For himself he felt no fear; for his ‘command’, and the enterprise, he was almost contorted by it.
But the guards at the bridge merely returned the courier’s wave as the party clattered onto the cobbled r
amp. They recognized him well enough (his passage was as good as daily). Laming had brought him forward for just this purpose – to reassure if Dom Mateo’s man at point somehow aroused suspicion – but the ease of passing, with no check whatever, surprised him yet. It augured well for their recrossing.
At the other side, at the gate of Las Palmas, it was the same: a wave, no undue interest in any of them, even Isabella (there were several Spanish girls on foot happily distracting the soldiery). And then they were inside the fortress-city itself. No one would challenge them now unless they drew attention to themselves. All they had to do was make their way to the alcázabar, and once inside its walls they would follow the courier, and then Isabella would lead the way to Hervey’s quarters, dealing with the challenges which were sure to come. The courier had told them precisely where he was confined (the Spanish had made no secret of it); it would not be difficult – the third, top, floor of the building overlooking the garden. Laming wondered again if they might not have taken the courier into their confidence; but Dom Mateo had been insistent – he would trust no one but his own, and the man was not even a soldier.
In twenty minutes they were at the gates of the alcázabar. It might have been less, but there were a great many people in the streets. Laming was already worrying about making their way back: if the alarm was raised, there would be a signal, so that the bridges over the Guadiana and the Rivellas would be closed. With a press of people in the streets it could take a half-hour and more. But then, if it took them only five minutes, and the alarm was sounded, they would be just as hoist . . .
The sentry did not recognize the courier. He took his papers and studied them carefully. Then he called for his corporal.
Laming’s heart pounded.
Isabella threw back her hood and rode forward as the corporal came out of the guardhouse.
‘Tio Pepe!’ called the corporal, seeing the courier and slapping the sentry playfully on the back, assuring him that it was only old ‘Tio Pepe’ from Elvas.
Hervey 07 - An Act Of Courage Page 30