The man’s nasal accent and his habit of slurring words and phrases made his conversation almost as difficult to follow as a foreign tongue, but Graham recognized “Vimmyro” as Vimeiro, Wellington’s first victory in the Peninsula, which had resulted in the defeated French being shipped back to France under the terms of the armistice. Graham reflected that there had been an uproar in London when the terms of this agreement were made public. People who had never seen a Frenchman declared that Wellington had won a great battle and thrown its fruits at Bonaparte’s feet.
He said, “Before you were a soldier, what did you do?”
The man looked surprised, as though Graham should surely have known. “I was chimbleysweepin’ down Bermondsey way. That is, the master sweep ’ad ’is place there, but he was sent aht every day, right aht into Kent sometimes, an’ even slep’ aht, so as to start early! There’s a peck o’ chimbleys in some o’ them big places. One of ’em took us near a week, I remember!”
So that explained the ingrained filth in the man’s face. It was soot, grimed into seams and layers in the course of countless scrambles up flues, commencing probably in early childhood. Graham tried to remember if he had ever seen master sweeps and their apprentices at Addington Court, assuming that the chimneys must have been swept from time to time, but realized that until this moment he had never associated the task of cleaning chimneys with a man’s livelihood.
“You actually climbed the chimneys as far as the roof?” he asked, and Watson glanced at him warily as though he had a suspicion that the officer was trying to make a fool of him. He decided that this was not so, that the man did not even realize that chimneys had to be swept.
“’Till you c’d stick a brush out the top,” he confirmed. “The master, ’e waits in the yard to see the brush come out and if ’e don’t it’s a bloody good belting for the ’prentice when he comes dahn out of it! Mind you,” he went on more confidentially, “we sometimes fooled the old bastid wi’ longer rods, pokin’ ’em up from partway up, but you never did that till you was certain sure he’d had his quart o’ four ale and was larkin’ wi’ the wimmin about the place. A sweep’s lucky, yer see, sir, for a sweep don’t never ’ave no trouble gettin’ the wimmin runnin’ after ’im. You’d have ’eard o’ sweeps kissin’ brides at the church gate maybe, sir? Well, that’s the way it is, tho’ some sweeps I know warn’t so lucky after all, not when they lorst ’emselves in chimbleys an’ never found the way out agen. An’ there was others, poor sods, ’oo tried their luck in dead-end flues an’ got stuck and was hoisted out cold an’ blue in the face like!”
As he rambled on, obviously enjoying the recital, Graham was able to visualize the background of Watson. He saw him trudging along behind an equally begrimed master, a man lavish with the use of belt and abuse, who relegated nine tenths of his work to urchin apprentices and sometimes helped to drag them half dead from an airless flue high up in the rafters of some great house. He began to understand the source of this man’s essential cheerfulness and toughness, now that he was released into the comparatively lax discipline of army life and was free to breathe fresh air and feel rain and sun on his face. He thought, No wonder the little rascal enjoys his soldiering! It must be infinitely preferable to the life he had as a child, working all day in dark chimneys, thrashed by some drunken sot of a master, then home to bed in a filthy hovel on an empty stomach! But he did not say as much to Watson, for so far their intimacy was unbalanced, a guarded expansiveness on the ranker’s part and undisguised patronage on the part of Graham. Yet, for all that, Graham’s heart warmed toward him as it had already warmed toward Lockhart and Curle and, to a degree, toward the tight-lipped Sergeant Fox.
He said briskly, “Very good, Watson. Wake Morgan after an hour and then get what sleep you can. We’ve a long march ahead of us tomorrow!” And he handed Watson his watch and went back inside the cave, where Lockhart was already asleep, the skinned and jointed hare soaking in his canteen. In a few minutes Graham had joined him in sleep.
The cattle path found by the sergeant led southwest, climbing the wooded escarpment mile after mile, steep in some places but for the most part a great deal easier to travel than the previous day’s road. About midday the leading pair arrived at a crossing and found a mash of horseshoe scars in the mud of an intersecting path. Fox pronounced the shoes to be French and said that no more than a troop had passed this way within the last forty-eight hours, but Lockhart, who also examined them, declared the marks to be more recent, adding that the shoes were on the small side and were therefore made by light cavalry.
Graham realized they were now faced with two choices: to backtrack on the hoofmarks, assuming that the trail would lead to a village where food and perhaps local directions might be found, or take the safer course of pushing on to the top of the escarpment and working around the shoulder of the mountain in the general direction of the big river. This time he did not ask Fox’s advice, and the sergeant offered none. Not only was Graham gaining confidence but the men seemed in far better shape than on the previous day. Lockhart’s hare had provided a modest meal when boiled with the hambone taken from Lickspittle’s haversack, and young Curle was getting along satisfactorily with the aid of a stout ash thumbstick that Straw-bridge had cut for him. Graham gave orders to turn right and follow the horse tracks. The route was a more direct approach to the river, and the chances of finding food higher up the mountain were remote.
They moved cautiously through the brush in the same extended order—Graham and Lockhart as advance guard, the rest of the file in the center and Fox bringing up the rear. Soon the woods fell away, and early in the afternoon they emerged into a little valley where a small town composed of a single street and a square around a church sprawled beside a river running between flat meadows.
They looked down on the huddle of stone buildings from the cover of the last patch of timber. It seemed utterly deserted, but this did not surprise Graham, for they were still less than twenty miles east of the British line of retreat and General Crauford had issued orders that every dwelling over a wide area was to be cleared and anything that might prove of value to the French destroyed. There had been a great deal of resentment of this order among the Portuguese, some of whom preferred to take their chance with Ney’s looters rather than abandon everything they possessed, but the Commander in Chief’s orders had been carried out ruthlessly and this part of Portugal was now little better than a desert. Discounting the lunatics in the jail, Graham had not seen a single civilian for five days.
Fox would have gone on down the dirt road to reconnoiter, but Graham stopped him, preferring to risk one of the others, and it was the Welshman Morgan who made the survey, returning thirty minutes later with the information that the town was empty of inhabitants and had obviously been pillaged by cavalry.
The rain had held off during the day, but now, in the late afternoon, it came on to drizzle and the prospect of bivouacking under a roof was inviting. They moved carefully through the rubble of the single street and reassembled outside the church, an imposing building for so wretched a town and built, Graham would have thought, in the twelfth or thirteenth century as an adjunct of the local monastery, the ruins of which they could see higher up on the southern slope.
They were on the point of dispersing in search of food when they heard a thin, high-pitched wail issue from the dark interior and then, as they swung around cocking their firelocks, a low, sustained howl quite unlike any sound Graham had ever heard, in that it was neither human nor animal yet carried within it a note of lamentation that reminded him vaguely of bagpipes.
The eerie sound alarmed the men more than would have a rattle of musketry. Strawbridge, his eyes rolling, let fall his musket and clutched instinctively at the diminutive Watson, whose tongue shot out as his sharp eyes darted first at Fox and then, almost piteously, at Graham. Graham, himself startled and uncertain, was relieved to see the sergeant smile.
“Yon’s nothing but a keening woman,” he said briefl
y, “and I’ll wager her man is laid dead inside!” And he swung around, hitching his musket on his shoulder, and strode across the threshold into the church. They followed him, first Graham and then, tentatively, the others, crowding between the tall columns of the nave and looking toward the altarpiece, where light entered from the high chancel window.
What they saw surprised even Fox, for immediately below the altar rail was a raised tombstone, a heavy block of stone that had been used to seal the entrance to a vault. The slab had been partially moved aside, revealing a glimpse of the dark interior. Crouching beside it was a young woman aged about twenty-two or -three, with a handsome oval face, fair and very smooth complexion and a mass of reddish-gold hair hanging loosely about her shoulders. Graham realized at once that she was not Portuguese but a camp follower, for her skin was too fair for any woman in this part of Portugal and her eyes were pale blue, quite unlike the metallic blue of some of the women he had seen during his stay in Lisbon. She was wearing a green dress that was obviously looted, for it was made of some rich brocaded material and, although ripped and travel-stained, looked as if it had once been the property of someone of rank. Across her shoulders was the red homespun cloak worn by most of the camp followers at the base and recognized by Graham as a quasi-uniform. Her military status was further revealed by the pipeclayed belt she wore about her waist and the heavy brogues on her feet.
She did not appear to notice their entry, but when she turned and saw them she gave them no more than a glance, throwing back her head so that her throat muscles moved as she uttered another long, dolorous cry, at the same time beating a kind of desperate rhythm on the slate cover of the tomb. The file watched, fascinated by the fierce, impersonal grief of the woman’s demonstration, then Fox advanced, touching her shoulders.
“Where’s your man?” he demanded.
She looked at him steadily, standing upright and casually dusting the folds of her dress, at the same time inclining her head toward the far side of the tomb, where the light from the window did not penetrate. Graham walked around her and peered into the dark corner below the altar rail and saw the corpse of a Highlander stretched upon the floor, his eyes closed and his hands folded in the conventional attitude of the dead. He had been a big, raw-boned man and even in death he looked fierce and quarrelsome, the golden stubble of his beard catching a pinpoint or two of light and his mouth set in a savage line as though he had died with hate in his heart. Beside him was his firelock with the bayonet still attached and in a little pile close by were some of his accouterments—a cartridge box marked with the numerals “43,” a black, feathered bonnet and a knapsack made of untanned goatskin.
“Question her,” he told Fox. “Find out if there are any more of the Forty-third in the town!”
The file stood around in a wondering circle as Fox began to interrogate, and after a moment or two she seemed to shed her grief like a garment, answering his questions clearly and willingly in a broad, singsong accent that Graham at once recognized as Welsh, the Welsh of someone to whom English is a secondary tongue but who has no difficulty in using it when necessary. She had a pleasant voice, her words striking the ear like soft chords played at a distance, and when she talked she looked animated and responsive.
Her presence in the church was soon explained. She was the camp wife of a Highlander numbered among a half company sent ahead early in the retreat to clear the town, and the others had moved out two days ago. When they were making ready to leave, she told them, her husband, Donald, had been seized with a kind of fit that set him foaming at the mouth, but this had not dismayed her overmuch, for he was subject to such attacks and carried a cordial in his pack for use in such emergencies. She had administered the cordial, but this time the attack had been fatal, and with the help of another woman, the wife of the sergeant, she had carried him here to lie in hallowed ground. When the others moved on she had remained, “thinking to keen a little for respect” and bury Donald in a tomb where his body would be out of reach of the carrion. The lid of the tomb, however, had proved too heavy for her and she had been able to do no more than shift it slightly. She was on the point of taking his arms and equipment and following the line of retreat when a squadron of French lancers had ridden into the town from the south, cutting off her retreat and bivouacking in the houses for the night. She was under no illusion as to her fate if they found her, so she took refuge in the belfry loft. They had entered the church but had not disturbed her man’s body. Early that day they had left, traveling north, and now she was preparing to follow the tracks of the Highlanders toward the big river.
She told her story in a matter-of-fact way, and it struck Graham that she did not appear to have been dismayed by her husband’s death or the risks she had run by her isolation. She was obviously a woman well accustomed to the hazards of war, the type of camp follower who would soon choose a successor from among her late husband’s comrades and trudge along with him, cooking his meals, mending, washing his clothes and possibly bearing his children until he was killed in action or completed his term of enlistment. Already he was familiar with such women, there were about two to every company of infantry in the British army in the Peninsula, but he had never yet spoken to one. Sometimes, when he had watched them tramping along in the company of the men, he had marveled at their hardihood and the swinging rhythm of their stride while burdened under what seemed to him a monstrously heavy load for a woman to carry over rough ground. He noticed that this particular follower had the same stockiness of build combined with a kind of natural grace when she moved or gestured. She was completely at ease in the presence of men, treating them as a woman at home might regard other women at washtub or stove. He noticed something else too, the freshness and clarity of her complexion, suggesting splendid health and immense vitality.
He said suddenly, “Bury her man, put him inside the tomb and then scatter and search the houses for food. We shall bivouac here for the night!”
The woman looked at him curiously and suddenly smiled as though grateful for the command. She walked across to the corner where the Highlander lay and without glancing at him lifted his pack and musket, hitching the weapon to her shoulder as though it weighed a few ounces instead of several pounds, and standing aside while Strawbridge, with a single heave, spun the heavy slab on its stone mountings and revealed a deep aperture in which a coffin was already laid. She watched with interest but not much concern when Lockhart and Morgan, ineffectually assisted by the capering Watson, lifted the dead Highlander and lowered him ungracefully atop the coffin. Watson seemed to find the occasion very diverting, and his half-smothered chuckles irritated Graham. Then, as Strawbridge prepared to replace the slab, Morgan held up his hand and began some kind of chant in a tongue that was foreign to them all save the girl, who glanced up sharply at the first words, then clasped her hands together in a kind of ecstasy that revealed her complete understanding of Morgan’s jargon. A moment later she joined in and Fox, suddenly impatient, made a chopping gesture with his hand, cutting the service short and breaking the brief spell under which the group had fallen. Strawbridge replaced the slab and they drifted back into the open, Graham and the woman remaining on the church steps, the others scattering across the square and using their musket stocks to break open the doors of such of the miserable dwellings as were locked.
The sound of their activities drifted across the squalid little plaza and Graham, alone in the widow’s presence, felt slightly embarrassed. He said gruffly, “You had best join the file until we find a crossing and catch up with the rearguard. We were left behind when the bridge was blown in Coimbra!”
The woman smiled, tolerantly it seemed to Graham, and he noticed her small white teeth and full red lips. She was, he thought, younger than he had first supposed, for nothing else could explain her freshnesss and the suggestion of personal cleanliness belied by her filthy attire and the coating of mud on the expanse of shin revealed by the hitched-up dress.
“Ah, so,” she said softly i
n her melodious voice, “you will be glad of another musket.” She raised her head and sniffed, adding casually, “The French are not far away!”
She said this politely, yet without the tone of respect due to his rank and she did not, he noticed, use the word “sir,” which he would have expected from a private’s drab.
At that precise moment, without the slightest warning, the blow fell on them. Within seconds the little square was full of running, shouting men and the silence shattered by the drumming of hoofs and the rattle of equipment as two compact bodies of horsemen came thundering down the street, heading directly for the scattered redcoats on the far side of the plaza.
Graham was too astounded to do more than leap back into the shelter of the porch. As though he were watching a tableau vivant from a distance he saw what was happening before his eyes, but for a full minute his brain failed to register peril. He saw isolated members of the file emerge from houses and run toward him, moving at what seemed to him incredible speed, their boots raising a flurry of gray dust as the two knots of horsemen raced down on them with leveled lances.
Fox and Watson reached him simultaneously, flinging themselves through the porch and seeming to halt, turn and bring muskets to shoulders in a single, synchronized movement. Then Lockhart rushed in from the left and Strawbridge from the right, and a second later, as the two groups of lancers met and reined back, came Lickspittle and Croyde, with the drummer Curle less than a yard behind.
Only Morgan, the Welshman, remained isolated, and as the file struggled to group and adopt firing positions Graham saw him burst through the milling horsemen in the center of the square and run with long, loping strides toward his comrades. He did not get more than halfway. One of the lancers dragged his horse around in a narrow half circle, crouched low in the saddle and spurred forward, his long weapon entering the infantryman’s back and emerging at the breast so that Graham saw Morgan lifted and hurled forward, pitching on his face as the horseman wheeled and expertly freed his lance. The poor wretch he had so neatly speared half rose, staggered a few steps and then fell on his face not more than a dozen strides from the porch.
Too Few for Drums Page 4
