‘He seems a contrary man, even to the last,’ Williams said. ‘Perhaps it was unwise to take him up on to the wall in the middle of a bombardment?’ The irony was heavy.
‘My fault – my theatrical nature!’ Hanley laughed. ‘It seemed a reasonable idea. The man was dangerous, and I wanted to confront him in a place where he could not get away or do mischief. I also wanted to rattle him. Thought he might blurt something out or at least be so sure that he was doomed that he might be willing to talk later. It still seems reasonable,’ he finished somewhat defensively.
‘And you are sure he was working for the French?’
‘Oh yes, since soon after Talavera, and he had not changed his mind.’
‘So tell me how you fell in with the fellow, and came up with this imaginative plan – that is if you can explain such things to a simple soldier!’ Williams sensed his friend wanted to talk. He was tired, but he liked Hanley a good deal and also sensed that the whole tale might be as extraordinary as the finale. There was little entertainment to pass the evenings in Ciudad Rodrigo.
Hanley did not disappoint. He began with Baynes.
‘A wily old fox,’ Williams said in a tone where distaste matched admiration.
Then Hanley spoke of his visits to Ciudad Rodrigo, the contacts in Salamanca, and of Jenny Dobson. ‘It was Jenny who made it possible,’ he said.
‘Odd, isn’t it, how we still think of her as Jenny Dobson,’ Williams interjected. ‘Suppose she is still really Mrs Hanks.’
‘I reckon she’s a Dobson. Too much of her father’s steel in her to be anything else.’ Hanley smiled. ‘She is a cool hand. Easy to forget she is still so young.’
‘Sadly, in some ways I doubt she was ever that young.’ Williams disapproved of Jenny’s morals – she had gone with officers even while with the regiment and he could not understand anyone abandoning a child – and yet he had always liked her.
‘For my sake I am glad. She was already providing us with information. At a price, of course, but the same is true of many a source, and consorting with an engineer officer gave her access to some excellent and most specific details.’ Hanley spoke of them at some length, and then told Williams of meeting Jenny, and asking her about Velarde. ‘Or Espinosa, as he was calling himself. And then fate and Jenny Dobson took charge. An old “acquaintance” of hers, a Captain Dalmas, appears.’
‘Dalmas?’
Hanley was intrigued. ‘You know him?’
‘I fought an officer of that name last January, and saw him again recently. He was tough.’
‘Clever?’
‘He’s a cavalryman.’ Williams grinned out of sheer habit. ‘But yes, he thought about what he did.’
‘Well, this Dalmas was given the task of helping Velarde and looking for me, and wanted to kill two birds with one stone. He wanted Jenny to amuse him and send a message to me, offering Velarde as bait. Dalmas reckoned Jenny must be reporting to us somehow. You have to admire the man.’
‘And yet I am guessing he misjudged.’
‘Both of them, in fact. Velarde wanted to do things without Dalmas breathing down his neck and asked for her help. She told me about the whole thing by a separate message to La Doña Margarita, and then sent the one they wanted, trusting that I would do something about it.’ He explained the rest of the story, surprising himself at how long it took.
At the end Williams whistled through his teeth. ‘All too complicated for me. Is Jenny in danger now?’
Surprised, Hanley took a moment to answer. ‘I cannot see why she should be. She did everything they asked. Their aim was to get Velarde inside Ciudad Rodrigo. Now it rather looks as if he will never leave. No, she should be fine. I did say that I would give her greetings to her father. Am not sure how he will take it.’
‘Well, I suspect. You’ll never shock old Dob. And besides, in her way, she is fighting the French.’
‘For money.’
‘Haven’t noticed you turning the King’s shillings down of late. When we get them, that is.’ Williams looked intently at his friend. ‘And what happens now? Will the plotters still strike?’
Hanley rubbed his chin, shaved just a few hours ago and yet already starting to roughen again. ‘No, I do not think so. They will be waiting to be contacted with King Joseph’s promises. I doubt the French have another agent as senior as Velarde, certainly not here. Perhaps one will be able to let them know that he is dead. I doubt it, though. All that was easier before the siege lines closed around the town.’
‘The governor still gets messages through to Wellington, but it is more difficult.’ Now that Pringle had gone, Williams was sometimes included in the general’s councils. ‘He has lost some of the messengers,’ he said sadly.
‘I did suggest that your company should be sent back to Portugal.’ Hanley sighed. ‘Afraid the general is determined to keep you.’
‘Be hard to leave.’ Williams sounded wistful. ‘Not too keen on becoming a prisoner, though, if the worst comes to the worst.’
‘There will be a way out,’ said Hanley, but his friend did not look confident.
Every day the guns pounded. You could hear them at Fort La Concepción as a low rumble, a little like thunder save that it never moved nearer or further away and went on almost all day. Billy Pringle found himself waking each morning at four o’clock when the French artillerymen fired their first salvo as regularly as clockwork. It was not so much the noise as the predictability that jerked him awake from even the very deepest and most dreamless sleep. He remembered during the years at Magdalen how he had woken each day when the chapel clock chimed seven. This time there was even less choice. His eyes sprang open at the first rolling pops and he could never get back to sleep.
On the first day Lord Wellington was one of the many who came to watch. The general visited Almeida for some time to consult with the governor, but then came to the fort and later went a mile to two more to see the bombardment from a convenient rise. With a decent glass, it was possible even to see individual guns go off in the French batteries or on the walls. Pringle remembered staff officers cheering on the plucky Spanish defenders. At night you could see the glow from the fires burning in Ciudad Rodrigo and it was hard to feel so enthusiastic. Pringle worried about his men left behind in the city.
He could tell that MacAndrews worried too, and there was a growing air of depression as the British mission at the fort was dismantled.
‘I was becoming accustomed to being called colonel,’ the Scotsman said with a grin as they rode out to watch the siege and consult with Brigadier General Craufurd and his staff. The French kept pressing forward, probing the British outpost line and the Spanish supporting them on the flank. While Ciudad Rodrigo was pounded, each day the outlying parties of the field armies fenced with each other.
‘Can’t say I’m becoming accustomed to having a powder keg as a pillow,’ Pringle replied.
‘Think of it this way,’ Colonel MacAndrews suggested. ‘If there ever is a mistake, we shall not know anything about it!’
Fort La Concepción had been repaired a month ago. The Portuguese regulars were called back to Almeida, but in their place had come several companies of redcoats from the 1/45th Foot. Their officers were old friends, for Pringle, along with Williams, Hanley and the others, had served in the same brigade at Talavera. The 45th, with their green facings and Regimental Colour, were a fine, well-drilled battalion, as steady as a rock. MacAndrews had heartily approved, and even cajoled the major in charge into drilling his men a few times so that the Spanish recruits would see that it could all become very easy.
The Spanish recruits were gone now, called back to their army with almost full equipment and rudimentary training. The order recalling them had specified all of the recruits, failing to note that the remainder were in Ciudad Rodrigo. MacAndrews had briefly lost his temper, demanding permission to go and fetch his men out.
There was nothing to be done. All the recruits in the fort had marched away, and a few days later Mori
llo took his staff and the party of NCOs off as well. Pringle had watched MacAndrews and the Spanish captain say goodbye, seeing the mutual regard and respect in their handshake. Neither man had bemoaned his lot, but he could see faint hints of despondency. Grand plans – always overambitious and unrealistic, but worthy enough to make a man want to believe that it was all possible – had come to nothing.
Somehow it all seemed summed up by the change in the fort itself. Captain Burgoyne of the Royal Engineers had spent weeks toiling to repair the damage to the bastion and rampart inflicted by the French back in ’08. Then orders came that Fort La Concepción was not to be defended, since in spite of its strength it was too exposed to be supported and must inevitably fall to starvation. Strings of mules had come delivering barrel after barrel of powder, and now Burgoyne was working to undo all that he had achieved so far, setting mines to reduce the fort to rubble. There was no point handing a viable fortification to the French.
Burgoyne assured them repeatedly that his mines were perfectly safe. ‘Harmless as lambs,’ he was fond of saying. ‘Until I stick in the fuses and apply the match, and then we shall have as fine a display as ever graced Vauxhall Gardens on a summer’s night. Without perhaps the murmurs of passion from the shrubbery, that is.’ The engineer was a cheerful fellow, and like many of his colleagues, Pringle felt he rather courted a reputation for eccentricity.
‘Mad as a March hare,’ MacAndrews muttered. ‘They’re all the same. Minds rattled by too many explosions. I dare say no engineer can look at a church or a pretty cottage without wondering how big a charge they would need to turn it all into matchwood.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘The name is unlucky, though.’
‘Burgoyne?’
‘Makes me think of Gentleman Johnny.’
Pringle found it easy to forget that this was not the first big war for the Scotsman. As a young ensign he had fought in America, ending that unhappy war as an escaped prisoner and acting captain – married as well to an American bride.
‘Were you at Saratoga?’ Pringle asked. MacAndrews rarely talked of the war, and Pringle’s knowledge came from some sketchy reading, but he had heard of that first great defeat, when a British army invading from the north had been forced to surrender by the rebels.
‘No, thank God. I was with Billy Howe at Philadelphia watching his staff stage pageants and hope the rebellion just went away.’ MacAndrews said nothing for a moment, and then surprised Pringle by quoting verse –
‘Sir William he, sung as a flea,
lay all the while a-snoring,
Nor dreamed of harm,
As he lay warm,
In bed with Mrs Loring.’
MacAndrews laughed without any trace of amusement. ‘Didn’t know that that bit of doggerel was still lodged in my mind, although I dare say it would impress my family to hear me quoting any sort of poetry!’
‘Who was Mrs Loring?’
‘Yes, thought that you’d seize on that bit, young Pringle. Still seeing that girl from Fuentes?’
Pringle was surprised MacAndrews knew about Josepha.
‘Got a letter of complaint from her father yesterday,’ the colonel explained.
‘She’s inside Ciudad Rodrigo.’
‘Good,’ MacAndrews said. ‘Probably better to keep it that way. I’ll reply that you have cut your connection with the girl. It would be wise,’ he added. ‘Instead dream of Lizzie Loring, who was a pretty little vixen. She was married to a Tory officer, but he didn’t seem to mind and contented himself with fiddling the books so that the prisoners under his charge starved and he got rich. Hell of a way to fight a war.’ The colonel sighed, and then grinned. ‘If ever you want to learn how not to do something, then read about how we lost the colonies!’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
They rode the next half-mile in silence. ‘The battalion is posted abroad,’ MacAndrews said suddenly. ‘The last batch of letters confirmed it. Gibraltar first, and then perhaps Cadiz or even back here, if Lord Wellington can cling on in Portugal.’
‘Do you think we can, sir?’ Pringle asked.
MacAndrews was a true Highlander, and never answered any question quickly. ‘Maybe,’ he said with similar Caledonian reluctance to commit. ‘The French are obviously so convinced they are going to win that they are dragging their feet. Maybe something can be pulled out of the hat to surprise them.’
‘Are we to rejoin the battalion?’
‘Nothing certain as yet, although the colonel writes to say that he earnestly hopes to arrange this.’
Pringle thought back to Williams telling him of Dobson’s comments all those months ago, and that led him to the fears for his comrades, and the guilt that he was no longer inside the besieged fortress. He had carried the letter from the governor to Celorico, even seen the general read it immediately. Billy Pringle had never for a moment thought that the British commander would march to the town’s relief, and all that El Charro had said had only added to that conviction. It seemed a wasted journey, but now it meant that he was safe and his friends were not.
MacAndrews grunted when they saw a cluster of horsemen on the ridge ahead of them and the two men urged their mounts up the slope to join them. Earlier that morning the companies from the 1/45th had also marched away from Fort La Concepción, going back to the irascible General Picton’s Third Division. Burgoyne was still there, tinkering with his ‘infernal devices’, as MacAndrews called them, and there was usually a corporal’s picket of the KGL Hussars, but otherwise there was simply the Scotsman and his small party of officers and NCOs.
‘Ah, Colonel MacAndrews,’ said Brigadier General Craufurd as they arrived. ‘I understand that you are to be placed under my command for the moment. What is your establishment?’
‘Six officers present, with thirty-six sergeants, corporals and other ranks. One officer and three NCOs are in Ciudad Rodrigo.’ They could see the town clearly from the ridge, and watch the flashes of guns, even though the noise of the shots came only later as an indistinct rumble.
‘Aye, well, I dare say they’re playing their part most gallantly. I have no doubt that we can make use of those of you present.’ The general’s tone was gruff, but practical. His brigade had now become the Light Division, but as yet its regiments were not divided into two or more brigades, and so Black Bob had no subordinate generals and their staffs to help him run things. Pringle suspected that he and the rest of MacAndrews’ little force would soon find themselves running errands and performing all the other little tasks than no one else cared to do. He edged his horse to the fringes of the group of staff officers.
‘Well, Pringle, my dear fellow, what a joy to see you!’ Billy turned, the voice vaguely familiar, but was still surprised to see Lieutenant Garland beaming delightedly and holding out his hand. It was odd to receive such an enthusiastic greeting from a man whom he had shot at their last meeting.
Pringle smiled broadly, took the hand, and made the appropriate noises. ‘I did not know the Fourteenth were up?’
‘Oh, can’t keep the Hawks out of the thick of things,’ said the light dragoon officer with the bounding enthusiasm of a puppy. The 14th Light Dragoons wore the Prussian eagle on the side of their crested Tarleton helmets, an honour bestowed by the Prussian wife of the Duke of York, and had picked up the nickname as a result. ‘I’ve ridden on in advance. Tilney is coming, of course. You really must dine with us when you have a mind.’
The priorities of cavalry officers always baffled Pringle, but after several years in the army he was used to the way they spoke of campaigning as little more than an excursion with friends, and a brief diversion from the serious business of hunting and gaming.
‘Is Mr Williams well, may I ask?’
‘When last I saw him, but he and a small party are inside Ciudad Rodrigo.’
Garland looked shocked for the briefest moment. ‘Ah, can’t keep him out of the thick of things! Doesn’t surprise me.’ He looked more serious, although obviously bursting to speak. ‘
I wonder whether he has heard from home lately?’
Pringle smiled. ‘Sadly, the letters had not arrived before he left, but may I take this opportunity of offering you the heartiest congratulations on the birth of your daughter.’ Anne Williams now wrote regularly to him, but the vagaries of the army’s postal deliveries meant that he had recently received three in one batch, the second telling of the birth. ‘Mrs Garland is doing very well, I hear.’
‘Oh, she’s strong stock,’ the lieutenant said, almost as warmly as he would speak of a pure-bred hunter. ‘And women dearly love having babies,’ he added, confiding all the wisdom of his nineteen years. ‘We have named her Esmerelda Harriet. After my mother and my grandmother respectively.’
‘Very pretty,’ Pringle lied. ‘You must be eager to see her?’
‘Well, duty first. Would not want to miss all this excitement.’
Pringle fought the urge to pat the puppy-like Garland on the head or rub his stomach. The guns rumbled and suddenly there was a great flash. Pringle had not been looking in the right direction, and by the time he turned there was simply a big plume of black smoke coming up from the side of what he guessed was the Great Teson. The general looked amused and his staff were whooping like schoolboys.
‘Must have hit a French magazine,’ he said.
‘Damned good shooting,’ Garland said.
‘Probably luck, but none the worse for that.’
‘I wonder if General Craufurd will attack soon?’ Garland mused. ‘He seems quite a firebrand, although they say he knows his business.’ The outpost line had held for months and not suffered a serious surprise or reverse, so Pringle would not challenge the statement. ‘Did you hear the story about General Craufurd and the commissary, my dear fellow?’
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