Beat the Drums Slowly

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  With a boldness he had never dreamed he possessed, Williams leaned down and kissed Jane on the lips. He felt her tremble faintly – or was that him? Did she push him away for a moment, or was that also his imagination? It did not matter because then she was kissing back. The jacket fell and her arms clasped him, just as his own pulled her tightly to him.

  They kissed hungrily, mouths beginning to part, and Williams lifted her in his arms until her booted feet were in the air and her face level with his. For a moment their lips separated and Jane sighed her affection as he kissed her cheek and neck devouringly, until she turned her head and forced their mouths back together.

  He set her down, and one hand ran through her curls. Jane’s hair was long and thick. In the last week it had been drenched by river and storm, had rested as she slept on dirt floors in smoke-filled rooms. Williams had never felt anything so soft, unless it was her skin.

  ‘Jane, I love you, Jane,’ he whispered in a brief pause between kisses.

  His chin felt rough to her, rubbing against her own face. His fine hair had begun to create a thin stubble after days without shaving. She did not care, and her hands grabbed either side of his head, as if she could somehow pull them even closer together. She moaned softly.

  Williams’ other hand ran down the small of her back, feeling the rigid stays, until it was lower, touching soft flesh beneath the layers of fabric. It all seemed so easy, so very natural. Memory led him to the ivory buttons on the shoulder of her dress, and this time they slid from their places so very easily.

  Jane hesitated, pulling away from his kiss, but not the embrace.

  ‘I think I love …’ she whispered, and neither was sure who moved so that their lips were together again.

  He unfastened the first of the hooks at the rear of the dress. At the second it noticeably slackened its grip around her. When the third was open he slid his hand beneath, feeling the laces of her stays. His other hand began to gather a bunch of her skirt, clasping her leg through it and lifting.

  Jacob woke and screamed, bawling out his protest at a world where he was not granted instant food and attention.

  Williams felt the change. The girl no longer met his kisses, and a slight shift made their embrace no longer so natural.

  Little Jacob cried. Miss MacAndrews pushed gently. Williams leaned forward to kiss her closed lips, desperate to preserve the moment. Miss MacAndrews became more forceful. He let go of her leg, and then his other hand came away. He could not bring himself to step back.

  She looked at him, head leaning slightly to one side, then moved away, and her loosened dress began to fall from her shoulders until she grabbed it and held it in place. Trying to do up the hooks at the back, the girl went over to the baby. She picked the boy up, cradling him and crooning softly.

  ‘Get some milk.’

  Williams obeyed, although all of his movements felt sluggish. They said nothing else for the rest of the evening. Miss MacAndrews’ expression made it very clear that the earlier incident was not to be repeated. After a while, with Jacob at peace again, they lay down with the baby between them. Williams slept little. His mind was still exhilarated and reeling from the ecstasy of holding the girl, of feeling her lips on his, her warmth, her softness. He did not know how far ardent passion would have carried them. The honourable, God-fearing and decent gentleman he hoped himself to be knew he should feel guilt for his own loss of control, and assured him that it was as well the interruption had come. He had been given a taste of the true bliss he could expect if ever he proved so fortunate as to make Miss MacAndrews his wife, and that in itself was a wonderful thing, and more than sufficient. Another, regrettably persistent voice cursed the infant for choosing such an untimely moment to wake. All of him, noble and ignoble alike, tried to preserve every memory and every sensation of those few brief minutes.

  Miss MacAndrews seemed especially distant the next morning, and Williams also struggled to converse easily. The pair avoided each other’s gaze. They spoke only when the situation required, usually about the baby. Jane was worried that he had developed a temperature. Williams did not think the child’s forehead felt any different, but the concern began to nag at him as they followed the track.

  ‘I wonder what has become of Mrs Hanks?’ Miss MacAndrews asked after a particularly long spell of silence. In spite of her coarseness and outright vulgarity, Jane had rather liked the other girl. It troubled her to think that she had really abandoned her child.

  ‘I hope she has better fortune than her foolishness deserves,’ came the reply, and she could not decide whether his mixture of stern judgement and sympathy was admirable or a mark of coldness.

  Not long afterwards, they heard the shouting. Then shots rang out, echoing up from a bend in the valley.

  16

  Bodies lay everywhere. In this alley it was hard to walk and not tread on human flesh. Major MacAndrews wished that his wife had not insisted on coming with him. He could see that she was at least as tired as he was, and a natural protectiveness convinced him that she was less able to bear it. It was also a shame that she should have to see this. There was no reason to expect that they would find any sign of their daughter, or indeed his missing officer. Nevertheless, they both tramped through the streets, as they did at each new town on the road. Behind them came the grenadiers and Number One Company. The rest of the battalion was allocated to clear up different parts of the town.

  There were hundreds stretched in the mud of Bembibre – perhaps even thousands. Most were men, but there were a good number of women and even a few children.

  ‘Good God alive,’ said MacAndrews as he looked down at a child of no more than ten, bare legged and sprawled beside her mother. He could no longer remember a worse New Year.

  ‘Animals.’ It took a good deal to shock his wife. ‘Just animals, or perhaps worse because beasts cannot know right from wrong.’

  Nearly all the men wore filthy and stained red coats. Here and there was the dark blue of an artilleryman or hussar, and just occasionally the green of a rifleman. A few moved, stirring slightly or moaning. The rest lay completely still, snow beginning to gather on them. Everywhere were dark red pools. From many an open mouth a thin stream of thick red liquid trickled.

  ‘Is the whole damned army drunk?’ Esther asked her husband. It was not a joke. In her voice was a doubt he had rarely heard before in all their long years of marriage. Amid such appalling scenes of collapse and disaster, her worst fears no longer seemed impossible. She shook her head, and some of the familiar spirit returned. ‘No wonder you lost America.’

  MacAndrews took her hand, then had to let it go as they stepped around a circle of half a dozen redcoats and a couple of their women, all passed out where they had been licking the same pool of spilled wine. Behind them, the men of the 106th prodded, kicked and yelled at the prostrate figures. A few were already dead from the cold.

  The Grenadier Company worked its way down a section of one of the side streets. Hanley stayed outside, supervising the men as they woke the sleepers in the street and dragged the dead clear of the track, while Pringle led parties of men into the buildings. In one house his grenadiers found a cellar flooded with wine where a row of barrels had been sprung open. Three redcoats floated where they had drowned when they grew insensibly drunk. The air was heavy with the smell of strong wine. Billy Pringle struggled to breathe as he leaned against the wall.

  ‘Waste of good wine,’ he managed to croak, and then with a gesture set the men to work clearing up. There was neither sign nor scent of any corruption, and he wondered whether that was because of the cold or the alcohol. Concentrating on such an unimportant point kept him from facing the full squalor of the scene.

  Hanley watched almost dispassionately as grenadiers came out of the house carrying the sodden corpses and piled them up outside next to the wall. As he had often found since joining the army, the sights of war had an unreality about them. The still, silent stack of bodies added to the impression of some
overly romantic painting of a massacre, although in all those he could remember the corpses were far more decorous. None of the men looked that different from his own soldiers, and he found himself staring at the grenadiers, trying to guess whether they were stirred by disgust or envy at the sights. Then his thoughts were interrupted when Sergeant Rawson growled at two of their men who had lifted the skirts of some drunken women and were comparing observations.

  There was not enough water to waste by pouring it over the prostrate forms. Some could be shaken or struck awake. Murphy and Eyles began lifting men, so that Dobson could slap them with great vigour across the face. It worked in most cases. They even started wondering in jest how many blows from the veteran would be needed. One Highlander took no fewer than six, and as the man staggered off, the bruises were clear on his face. Hanley wondered whether there was a danger of making the victims even more insensible. The 106th were tired, and had hoped for rest once they arrived rather than this arduous duty. He was sure they were beginning to relish the violence, taking out their anger on the men who made this task necessary. Even so, a good third of the drunkards could not be roused, and many more were doubtless concealed in the houses.

  The two companies reached one of the main roads, just as Sir John and his staff passed. Hanley watched as the general nodded to Major MacAndrews, and raised his hat courteously to the major’s wife, but the general’s gaze remained high, almost as if he could not bring himself to look at the chaos. Bembibre was in wine country – the 106th had marched past a long succession of well-tended vineyards as they came down into the town. As the leading divisions arrived at the town, soldiers had dispersed in search of the cellars. Some of their officers were too tired to stop them, many more lagging behind exhausted and reaching the town long after the damage had been done. The few that tried succeeded only in preventing some of the redcoats from joining their fellows. When casks were smashed to destroy the contents before harm could be done, soldiers and their women lapped like dogs at the liquid and the mud it had fallen into. The other divisions had marched this morning for Villafranca, leaving behind this debris.

  ‘Infamous, quite infamous.’ Hanley just caught the words as Moore passed.

  Once the general and his staff were gone, the grenadiers hustled the recovered men into the road, and jeered them as they began to stagger off towards the gate and on to the road to follow their regiments. Among the drunks were a few men with bandaged feet, whose exhaustion had made them fall behind. There was some sympathy for their plight, although not as much as Hanley would have liked to see.

  On the whole, the discipline of the 106th held. The entire battalion was quartered in a cavernous church that night. MacAndrews had the Colours stacked on the altar and sentries placed to honour them, and also to prevent the rail and everything else being torn up for firewood. The commissaries had brought them meat from slaughtered oxen. It was tough, but could eventually be boiled so that it was good enough to eat. There was little apart from the meat to add to the stew, until a crate of stale biscuit was discovered and distributed to be added to the liquids boiling in the camp kettles. The grenadiers acquired a couple of sheep, and Hanley guessed that Eyles was capable of other impersonations apart from making chicken noises. There was some wine passed around, but nothing excessive, at least under the gaze of the officers. Dobson had also given loud expression to his enjoyment in hitting drunks, and the big man had made it clear that he stood ready to dole out similar treatment to anyone there.

  Hanley sketched for the first time since the retreat. The light in the church was not good, and he tried to capture the weird shadows, and the ungainly, in some cases almost grotesque, figures of the ragged soldiers and their women. He and Pringle chatted with each other and with some of the other fellows until weariness caught up with them. They slept well, and to everyone’s surprise went undisturbed by any fresh alarms.

  Parade the next morning revealed twenty-eight men absent from the battalion. It was fewer than MacAndrews had feared, although still a shameful enough total. As far as he could tell, the other regiments in the reserve had suffered similar losses. Pringle and Hanley were both relieved to see Dobson in his place beside Rawson on the flank of the company formation. None of the grenadiers was missing, and both officers suspected that this was due in no small measure to the veteran. They hoped that his new-found abstinence would last, as would his determination to impose the same restraint on others. Pringle was sure that one or two of the men had vanished during the night, and had no doubt been out scavenging, breaking into houses, and stealing wine and valuables. The mutton shared with the officers last night was surely only a tiny part of what was taken. Fear of Dobson, more than fear of the sergeants, let alone concern for his and Hanley’s vigilance, had meant that all were back by dawn, and at least fairly sober.

  The battalion soon resumed the task of routing out the drunks and stragglers. It was colder this morning, and the 106th’s enthusiasm for the task had worn thin. It was no longer a game, and the general feeling was that such fools should be left to their fate. A few of their own missing men were found, some emerging sheepishly with bulging packs from houses. MacAndrews had Sergeant Major Fletcher search each one and throw away any likely plunder.

  Few of the drunks could be roused. Those most inclined to recover and press on had mainly been found the day before. Time seemed to have permitted few to sober up. Some may well have done so during the hours of darkness, only to drink themselves into a deeper stupor.

  The Grenadier Company swept along one of the longer streets, doing what they could to get the stragglers moving. Pringle and Hanley walked side by side, but at first neither had anything to say and they strolled along in silence. Before long parties of hussars began moving back through the town.

  ‘Reckon the French are snapping at our heels,’ said Pringle.

  Hanley was stamping his feet to keep warm. Even with his cloak over his jacket he felt chilled to the bones. ‘About time. I have grown tired of this place.’ For all his fatigue, he was looking forward to the march and the warmth it would bring.

  ‘Yes, the French are welcome to it.’

  ‘I am beginning to feel that way about all of Spain.’ Hanley was obviously in low spirits. As they watched two of the grenadiers lifted one of the prostrate drunks and shook the man. He protested, but slumped to the ground as soon as they let go. They kicked at him and swore at him, smashing the bottle he clutched in his hand. The soldier – his jacket had yellow facings – refused to get up, and so with a final curse they left him.

  Two hussars trotted past. ‘Did I tell you that I had a chat with some of the fellows from the Twenty-eighth yesterday,’ began Billy Pringle. He loved telling a good story and was always eager for the latest gossip in the army. ‘One of their captains has been pretty sick so was travelling stretched out in a cart, rolled up snug and warm and sipping champagne no doubt.’

  ‘Lazy devils, captains,’ muttered Hanley.

  ‘Well, there he is, going on his merry way, when he hears some noise and notices an hussar riding past. “Hey there, dragoon!” our gallant captain calls out. “What news?” Much to his surprise the hussar looked angry. “News, sir? The only news I can give you is that unless you step along like soldiers and don’t wait to pick your steps like bucks in Bond Street of a Sunday with shoes and silk stockings, damn it, you’ll all be prisoners!” ’

  Pringle was already beginning to laugh at what he knew was coming. As usual it was infectious, and his friend could not help grinning in anticipation. ‘“Who the devil are you?” says our hero from his chariot. “I am Lord Paget, sir, and pray who the devil are you?” So the poor unfortunate captain goes white as a sheet and stammers out his name. Then the general makes him get out of his cart and march with the men!’ Billy had gone bright red, his face creased in the deepest amusement. Hanley found this as entertaining as the story itself.

  Ensign Hatch appeared from an alley, leading a file of redcoats from his company.


  ‘Seen anybody we know?’ he asked cheerfully.

  Pringle had not yet recovered himself, so it was Hanley who shook his head, assuming that Hatch was asking after stragglers from the battalion.

  ‘Well, easy enough to understand a fellow deciding that captivity might be a good deal more comfortable than struggling on with the rest of us.’ The ensign was still smiling, but Hanley was not quite sure whether there was an edge to his voice.

  At that moment Brotherton rode past, calling out that the regiment was to muster on the far side of the town. The French were coming and it was time to go. They left the remaining drunks. In spite of all the efforts there still seemed to be hundreds lying unconscious in the streets and houses.

  The 106th had not brought its full band on campaign, but MacAndrews had insisted that a dozen fifers bring their instruments. He formed these up with as many drummers beside the battalion and had them play during the muster. When the division moved off, they marched at the head of the battalion. Hanley had never particularly liked the thin music of these instruments, but had to admit that now he found himself standing tall, and marching with an enthusiasm for more than simply getting warm. The music appeared to call out to the stragglers, and a few dozen swayed to their feet at its call, and trickled out of the town to follow the column as it began to climb the long slope beyond the town.

  Major MacAndrews was on horseback for the moment, and the added height allowed him to see the untidy little procession of the division’s baggage, a mile or so ahead at the crest. He could not single out his wife, but there was reassurance in knowing she was there. Halfway up the slope their brigade was ordered to halt and form up facing back towards Bembibre, covering the last outposts of the cavalry as they pulled back. The French cavalry were already entering the town, prompting the whole place to stir into life like a disturbed anthill. The 106th watched as men and women who had lain like corpses were seized by an instinctive terror of the enemy and sprang to their feet. Hundreds were running.