Rumours Of War h-6

by Allan Mallinson

  Johnson came forward a little, and to a flank so as to have a clear shot if the man proved false.

  The serjeant saluted. ‘Senhor major . . .’

  Isabella translated as he spoke. ‘He says this man is the foreman of the town watch. They are in a house round the corner. They have a good view of where the shooting is coming from.’

  ‘Ask the foreman how many men they can see, and what they do.’

  Isabella pressed the foreman on several particulars. ‘He says twenty, perhaps thirty. All they do is fire in the air from the place in front of the church of the Virgin.’

  ‘In the air?’

  ‘I asked him twice, and he said they just fire in the air. They have been there half an hour and more.’

  ‘Are they drunk? Why does he not arrest them?’

  Isabella put it to the man.

  ‘Não, senhor . . .’

  ‘The watch has only six men there. The master of the watch has gone with the picket-lieutenant to the west gate in case more should try to join those in the square.’

  Hervey was puzzled. A couple of dozen riotous soldiers, and very likely drunk: a serjeant-major and a resolute quarter-guard would be all that was needed to disarm them. But whatever their game, twenty riotous men with muskets could do mischief enough. ‘I’d like to look for myself. Will the foreman take me?’

  ‘Sim, sim, senhor.’

  Hervey turned to Johnson again. ‘Come up with the tiradores to the corner yonder.’ He nodded to where the foreman had come from. ‘I’ll go on with Corporal Wainwright and the serjeant.’

  He might have added ‘and the senhora’, for Isabella stuck close.

  It was still very black, though Hervey reckoned that dawn could not be more than an hour away. They edged round a corner until they were in a little courtyard, and then inside a house by the rear door, a good-size house. Candles burned in wall sconces, the windows shuttered, but there was no sign of the regular occupants. The foreman went up the stairs. Hervey hesitated, but it was too late now; and he had his pistol.

  There was another fusillade – not a volley but a roll of musketry, or pistols perhaps. He reckoned twenty, give or take; and from the front of the house.

  He half stumbled to the top of the stairs, his eyes not yet accustomed to the light. He glanced back just the once to see Isabella safe. Then he was in a long gallery of sorts, dark, with the shutters of a window open, so that he could see the stars.

  ‘Senhor!’ The whisper was insistent.

  He moved to the window.

  ‘Olha, senhor!’

  He could see very well. There were two braziers in the plaza, both burning bright. Around each stood a dozen men, in uniform of sorts, perhaps in shakos, even, loading muskets in a leisurely manner. Hervey winced: it was unmilitary and hazardous, no matter how little powder they carried, cold morning or not.

  He stepped back from the window. What real threat did these men pose? They were scarcely hostile. It looked like a business for the provost men. And yet there had been a picket in the road leading to the square. Why would an undisciplined rabble of soldiers post a lookout, and then make noise enough to rouse the whole garrison? It might just be the confusion of soldiers no longer under discipline. But that was an easy answer. Whose soldiers? Had no one at the citadel any knowledge of men absent from their quarters?

  He looked at his watch. Almost six – it would indeed be getting light soon. If he wanted to slip away it were better done now.

  ‘Isabella.’

  ‘Yes?’ she whispered back.

  ‘Do you think the tiradores would open fire if I told them?’

  ‘Do you mean would they be afraid?’

  ‘No. I mean . . . These are their countrymen after all.’

  ‘I do not know. That is the question, is it not?’

  She put it plainly. It was the question the Horse Guards, and Mr Canning himself, ought to ask.

  ‘Very well. Please tell the serjeant that I shall want him to dispose his men to rake the plaza.’

  ‘Rake?’

  ‘To fire along its length.’

  Isabella translated his instructions.

  The serjeant answered simply: ‘Sim, senhor major.’

  He sounded sure and capable. Hervey was encouraged. ‘Buono, serjente,’ he tried. ‘When it is a little lighter.’

  Isabella, interpretress, obliged again.

  And then they waited.

  A quarter of an hour passed without anyone speaking. There were two more fusillades, and every so often a single shot. Hervey looked at his watch, and then went back to the window. The sky was lightening. ‘Vamos embora, serjente!’

  Outside, while the serjeant spoke to his men, Hervey sent Wainwright to tell Johnson what was happening. The atiradores were standing exactly as posted. Hervey smiled grimly; he could not have expected better from British riflemen. Perhaps not even as much, for it was perishing cold.

  Isabella touched his arm. ‘Major Hervey?’

  ‘Senhora, I think it better if you go back inside.’

  ‘You will have no need to speak to the serjeant any more?’

  Hervey hesitated. ‘You would risk yourself?’

  Isabella smiled, though Hervey could not see it. ‘Someone must.’

  Indeed. He was only surprised it should come to this – an Englishman, a widow and a dozen Portuguese sharpshooters in the same British slop-clothes of nearly two decades past. After all that had gone between then and now, he was back in the country he had started in. And, like the Peninsular cornet again, he was casting about in the dark with a handful of men and doubts about who and where was the enemy.

  He smiled to himself. ‘The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me.’

  ‘I did not hear rightly, Major Hervey.’

  She had not been meant to hear at all.

  ‘The Song of Solomon,’ he whispered. And he sighed inwardly: how well he had known his Scripture all those years past. But he didn’t suppose Isabella read her bible in English. Little did he these days.

  He braced himself. ‘Pronto, serjente?’

  ‘Sim, senhor.’

  Hervey glanced at each of the atiradores. As far as he could make out they did indeed look ready. But he could not know how willing.

  Corporal Wainwright slipped silently to his side, sabre drawn, pistol in hand.

  Hervey was especially glad of it. ‘And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.’

  Isabella did not hear him this time, for he barely whispered it. Would she have understood if she had done so? He would now put the loyalty of General d’Olivenza’s men to the test. There would be time at length to speak of it.

  ‘Senhora, would you tell the serjeant I would have five rounds, at my command, fired above the heads of the rebels – or revellers, if that is the more apt name. I want to see what is the response.’

  ‘Do you want me to tell him that too?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘No; just tell him five rounds above their heads. But at my command.’

  Again she obliged.

  Hervey watched closely for any sign of dissent, but the serjeant was prompt with his order, and his men likewise to the response.

  ‘Very well.’ He stepped out into the plaza, followed by the atiradores.

  None of the revellers saw. Hervey was astounded by their dereliction. Unless they had their own sharpshooters covering them, from an upper window, perhaps, or the roof of the church. There was no way of knowing until the first shot. What option had he anyway in order to make a demonstration? Besides, any sharpshooter worth his salt would have put a bullet into one of them by now.

  ‘Ready? Pronto, serjente? Fogo!’

  Volley-fire was not the business of atiradores. Theirs was single, aimed shots, like British riflemen. But they volleyed well all the same – a good noise, a cloud of smoke, and the whizz of bullets above the revellers’ heads.

  Hervey strained to see before the sm
oke engulfed them. He would know one way or another in a matter of seconds.

  There was shouting, like orders, the men in the plaza trying to form line.

  There was his answer!

  The atiradores’ second rank stepped through the first and beyond the smoke. There was no need to tell them to change their aim. ‘Fogo!’

  Half a dozen rifles blazed. As many of the rebels fell. The rest broke, dropping their muskets and racing for the far side of the plaza.

  Hervey drew his sword. ‘Advance!’

  The gesture was sufficient, even had the word of command not been understood. Arms at the high port, while the second rank continued reloading, the atiradores struck off as if they had been at a Shorncliffe drill.

  ‘Double march!’

  He remembered Isabella, and he glanced back. But there she was, with the serjeant, holding up her skirts with one hand as she ran, like the Spanish guerrilla women he had so admired all those years past.

  He checked his pace a fraction as they reached the far side; here, if anywhere, would be the sortie or the rearguard volley. But no, just the litter of the hasty retreat – of rout, no less. How far should he pursue? The rebels must surely make a stand somewhere? Probably with the main body; they couldn’t be a great distance off, perhaps just outside the walls. Even now they might be rallying; and turning.

  It was getting lighter. He could just see into the street the rebels had bolted down. It looked empty. By rights he should send the atiradores in. Their business was to skirmish, and they would make easy work of it. But he couldn’t risk it, even now. They would follow, he trusted, but sending them forward was another matter.

  He held up his hand, beckoned slowly, indicating the change of pace, then began advancing with his back close to the walls. Wainwright followed at sword’s length, and a little behind him the atiradores on either side of the street, rifles at the ready, with Johnson and Isabella behind them.

  The street ran downhill slightly, towards the curtain walls, two hundred yards. It took them ten minutes to reach the west gate; the shadows and alleys all needed searching. Hervey was taken aback to see the gate was open. Isabella said the arch had been widened since the war to permit wheels to pass in both directions at once. There was still no sign of the rebels, or the picket.

  Hervey cursed. Had the rebels joined up with other parties in the town and circled behind them? He could not imagine they had been shooting in the plaza without any supports at hand.

  Hooves on cobbles beyond the arch startled him. ‘Take cover!’ he shouted, waving his pistol.

  The atiradores did not need Isabella to translate. They pressed themselves into every recess, doorway or buttress, rifles ready.

  Hervey now had a taste of the infantryman’s peculiar fear of cavalry at night, the noise amplified, numbing. In the pitch dark, alone with his worst imaginings, a sentry might become terrified and quit his post. But the advantage here lay with the riflemen: aimed shots against cavalry in a street, they unable to manoeuvre, and torches burning at the gate. It only took nerve. He prayed these men would hold to their posts.

  Two dozen horses surged three abreast through the gate, like a tidal bore. Hervey tensed to give the order.

  And then the great wave checked, as if another had met it head on – the vision of the narrow streets.

  Hervey brought his pistol to the aim, trusting that a dozen rifles did likewise.

  Isabella called out, ‘Dom Mateo!’

  The cavalry captain, alarmed, swung his pistol round and peered into the street.

  Isabella rushed past the atiradores. ‘Dom Mateo, it is I, Dona Isabella Delgado!’

  The captain sprang from the saddle, dropped his reins and took up Isabella’s hand. ‘Dona Isabella! What in the name of Our Lady are you doing abroad at this hour? Your uncle?’

  ‘He is safe. We heard firing. We came with the guard.’

  ‘We? The guard?’

  Hervey stepped from the doorway, pistol pushed into his belt, sword lowered.

  The captain thrust out his sabre.

  ‘Dom Mateo, this is Major Hervey. He is an envoy of the Duke of Wellington.’

  The captain braced, and threw his head back in disbelief. ‘Sim? You are English, sir; an envoy of Douro?’ Dom Mateo called the duke by his Portuguese title, the country having made him a marquess long before England had honoured him.

  Hervey thought the appellation too exalted, but it was not the time to dispute. ‘Sim, senhor. Douro.’

  The captain at once relaxed, and saluted. ‘I met the Duke of Wellington at one time,’ he said, his English barely accented. ‘But I knew Lord Beresford better. Captain Mateo de Bragança, at your service, sir.’ He held out his hand.

  Hervey took it and returned the smile. ‘Your countrymen have just this minute driven a band of rebels from the city.’ He indicated the atiradores emerging from cover. ‘And very resolute they were.’

  ‘Then we have finished what you began, sir, for we ourselves have just put to flight a campful of them. The remainder of my troop is rounding up the stragglers as we speak. I warned as much, weeks ago, but those old fools would not listen.’ He nodded in the direction of the citadel.

  Hervey’s ears pricked; here was a man who could think for himself. ‘We have just come from there, sir. I should say that there is some . . . consternation.’

  ‘I warned that these Miguelistas would try our strength, try to tempt some of the garrison to throw in with them. But no, all the Estado Mayor de Praça can think about is a general advance, with drums and banners, very obliging, just as the French did twenty years ago. We face deserters, traitors, not an honourable foe. I warned we should close the gates each night at dusk.’

  ‘I think the past hour or so has demonstrated that it would have been wise to do so, senhor. How was it that you came upon them?’

  ‘Hah! I have taken out my troop each night and ridden every track between Elvas and the frontier. What else was there to do, senhor?’

  Hervey was impressed. He believed that this man might well have the measure of their predicament at Elvas. The rebels played a game of humbug this evening, of hoax and trickery. They appeared to do what the defenders expected they would do – feared they would do, no less. That their capability was but nothing took nerve to expose. He would mark this Captain Mateo de Bragança well.

  He turned to Isabella. ‘Thank you, senhora. I am very greatly obliged to you.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  REPUTATIONS

  Elvas, three days later, 19 October 1826

  The more Dom Mateo spoke (and he spoke English well), the higher Hervey’s regard for him rose. As well as an inclination both to think and to act, Captain Mateo de Bragança looked a very soldierly man – no mere fidalgo dilettante, prizing nothing so much as the finery of regimentals. There was a way with uniform that spoke, to those who knew, of the wearer’s disposition, especially perhaps in the cavalry. Hervey had taken note at once of the canvas overalls, long in the leg, inners and ankle-band strengthened with kidskin suede, instead of the breeches and jacked boots that looked so good on parade; Dom Mateo’s cross-belt was fitted tight so as not to hang loose in a grappling, and his shako chinstrap was long enough to go under the chin rather than on it. These and other little details spoke of a serviceable regular rather than a showy ordenança, just as it did with the Line and the yeomanry at home.

  Dom Mateo’s uniform was so very like Hervey’s own, indeed, that the two might be taken for one at a distance. Except that the epaulettes were not the Frenchified affairs the Sixth were meant to wear; just a mailed shoulder with a simple fringe. Hervey reckoned that Marshal Beresford had chosen well all those years ago when he had reordered Portugal’s army, for a proud nation would have seen fit to change it otherwise. He could not help but think it a pity they would not welcome Beresford back to take command once more.

  Hervey would have counted it a queer thing to judge a man by these presents – his uniform – alone, but he judged me
n quickly these days, confident that he could smell a bad one. And if he judged harshly then it were better that way: he was done for ever with trusting merely to a fellow’s rank when promotion was bought so easily. Or even when it was not bought, if the rank seemed ill used. Colonel Norris would have his loyalty for the time being, even if not his respect, for the first was due whereas the second was earned; but there were limits to personal loyalty when that risked what it might now. He had taken his own step down the road to rebellion in writing to Lord John Howard, but it was a step only, easily recovered if Norris would come to his senses quickly enough. There was urgent necessity, therefore, in coming to judgement on Dom Mateo, for he needed an officer of his own mind in order to acquire the necessary intelligence to support his design. Only an extensive reconnaissance, in person, could otherwise yield it, more extensive than he had time for. If he was going to persuade Colonel Norris and Mr Forbes of his design, he needed to know everything there was to know about that porous border, and the men who had crossed into Spain to return in ranked rebellion.

  That Hervey’s regard for Dom Mateo could rise any higher was perhaps surprising, for in the forty-eight hours that had followed the scattering of the rebels in the plaza, they had ridden about the country in pursuit of the rebels’ compatriots, and Hervey had observed that Dom Mateo’s eye for ground, his energy and capability was every bit what the Sixth would call admirable. Dom Mateo was a humane man, too. When prisoners were taken they were disarmed but otherwise unmolested, save for a robust interrogation of those who might yield immediate intelligence. By the evening of the second day, confident the incursion was entirely defeated – the rebels captive, indeed, for the main part – Dom Mateo had posted standing patrols on the main approaches to the city, and then turned back for Elvas.

  ‘There were no Spaniards,’ he said again. ‘Every one a soldier of Portugal.’

  At first Hervey had not known whether this was a cause for relief, albeit tinged with melancholy, or for disappointment. He decided to press him. ‘Did you expect otherwise?’

  ‘I did,’ replied Dom Mateo as they slowed to a walk down one of the steeper hills. ‘But then when it began to occur to me that this affair was . . . how did you say? – a demonstration, a show only, to see what the garrison would do, I thought it unlikely we would see any Spanish troops.’