Watson looked up grinning as he approached, saying, “It’s a Dutch oven, sir and that woman is baking real bread, so she says! Lovely smell, ain’t it, sir?”
Graham sniffed the pleasant, satisfying odor and was reminded of the vast kitchens of Addington Court, so that for a moment he knew homesickness. He noticed that a fire burned in a little hollow immediately beneath a carefully placed cairn of stones and that the men were feeding it lovingly with small chips of pinewood. In the last moment of light he looked back the way they had come and saw Gwyneth handing Curle his brandy ration and waiting with arms akimbo as the boy lifted the cup to his mouth. She overlooks nothing! he thought and picked up his valise, carrying it to the wagon farthest from the group and looking over the tops of the young trees to the ledge where they had found the crucified Frenchman.
He was still musing there when Watson approached, holding a pine branch as a torch and carrying an assortment of papers, some rumpled and torn but others comparatively well-preserved.
“I collected this lot from them bodies, sir,” he said diffidently. “The big Swede reckons I ought to ’and ’em to you, as none of us can’t read wot’s writ on account o’ their lingo, sir.” He did not add that the papers would have been equally incomprehensible had they been written in English, but grinned like a begrimed, impudent schoolboy confiding in a friendly teacher.
Graham took the papers, but when Watson saw Graham trying to spread the sheets on his knee he plunged his hand into his breeches pocket and pulled out about an inch of tallow candle, which he lit and set down on the wagon seat.
“There was a lot more of it,” he said apologetically, “but I ’ad a bite or two of it when I was feelin’ ’oller inside, after that fight we ’ad back at the church. Keeps a man goin’, it do, but it’s ’eavy on the stummick!”
Graham made a pretense of studying the papers. There were several personal letters and two parade states* marked with the imperial “N” sandwiched between laurel leaves. In the space marked “Designation” he made out the words “14e de la ligne, Deuxième Corps” and in heavier type “Situation des présents sous les armes” and a handwritten list of names with various annotations, above the signature “M. Darrieu, capitaine.” He could make nothing of the letters. He had been taught French at school, but not well enough to enable him to translate pages of crabbed handwriting in the light of a stub of candle.
”You did right to bring them,” he said to Watson, who was still hovering close by, and once again Graham was aware of a feeling of personal inadequacy. A trained officer who had kept his wits about him, he reflected, might have been able to extract some useful information from such a find.
“They don’t give us no idea where our regiment is, sir?” asked Watson hopefully, and Graham told him they were purely personal letters but added that he was hopeful of making contact with the irregulars in the morning and that doubtless they would provide a guide as far as the British lines. He knew that Watson would at once relay this to the others and strengthen the impression that he had the situation in hand.
He sat there a long time after Watson had returned to the fire, watching the rim of silver moonlight spread across the valley from behind the great bulk of the peak. The men seemed to have been sobered by their experiences during the day, for they conversed in low tones and there was no singing. Presently, because he felt no inclination to sleep, he took advantage of the improved light to wander along the track to the boy Curle, who saluted smartly as Graham approached.
“Go back and tell the others I’m relieving you,” he told the boy, “and get all the sleep you can.”
“Yessir,” Curle replied briskly, and Graham smiled at the child’s eagerness to pass as a man. As Curle sheathed his enormous saber he added, “We shall get clear of this in a day or so and when we get back I shall recommend you for courage. You have set a good example to the others, Curle.”
The boy seemed to enlarge in stature and Graham heard him hiss with pleasure. Then, with another salute, Curle marched back to the fire, but Graham felt no answering satisfaction, only a nag of depression centered not so much in his feeling of helplessness as in an awareness of the uselessness of a war fought on behalf of bigoted peasants who answered cruelty with cruelty, so that the wheel of horror turned faster and faster in and about their bleak, savage mountains.
As he thought back on what he had seen, despondency pressed down on him like an immense weight, like the stone on the breast of the peasant, so that he leaned heavily on a single pine that sprouted on the edge of the clearing, where his wandering steps had led him, a hundred yards or more beyond the glow of the campfire. He was standing there, feeling utterly desolate, when he heard the soft swish of the woman’s gown and saw her step into a patch of moonlight, holding herself erect with her strange dignified posture that was something between the walk of the eternal peasant and the tread of a wild creature of the uplands.
She said, in her musical, singsong accents, “You must put it all from your mind, Mr. Graham! Only this way can you play a man’s part in our business, for, see now, it is not good to change places with the dead in your thoughts. That way is death itself, but before that, madness, you understand?”
Her words, spoken almost in his ear, brought instant relief, as though he had been struggling in storm-tossed water and had been lifted by a wave so that he could see the lights of the harbor. He realized that this was exactly what he was doing, enlisting with the dead, with the man under the rock and the officer nailed to the tree, and that this way lay failure to justify himself as a man and a leader of men. He was aware of this even as she spoke, but he knew also that words of encouragement were not enough, that what he needed at this moment was the sure, physical contact of her body. Yet it was not easy to leap the barriers of his background and training, of his status as an officer or his shyness of a youth without experience of women, so he remained tense, his fingers pressed against the rough bark of the tree. When she put up her hand and touched his he shivered like a man with a fever.
She was in no way rebuffed by his withdrawal.
“You must not be afeared of me, Mr. Graham,” she counseled earnestly. “It is to make you a man fit to lead that I can do, for now you are a boy like the little drummer yonder. If you take me you will feel yourself a man, and think of better things than a man nailed to the tree. I tell you this, Mr. Graham, because you must think a man’s thoughts if you are to lead us to Lisbon!”
Her voice, he thought, was like the murmur of a mountain rivulet laving his self-doubts and misgivings. He lifted his right hand and touched her wrist, finding it cool and firm under the tatters of the sleeve.
The touch of her flesh had an immediate effect upon him, releasing him instantly from the bonds of diffidence that had restrained him. He swung around to face her and then, pushing himself from the tree, he lifted her clear of the ground, his mouth seeking her tumbled hair and his eager hands slipping from shoulders to breasts and then, as she writhed in his grasp, to her broad hips and buttocks. He was checked for a moment by her unexpected resistance, but before rage could rise in him she flung back her head and cried, “No, no, there’s no joy in it that way!” And she broke free and drew him across the glade to a spot where the moonlight was cut off by the towering rocks and where ferns sprouted waist-high in the thin soil washed down by the rains.
He was astounded by her deliberation, so much so that he willingly surrendered the initiative, and when they were lying on the ground under the shoulder of the buttress she drew his head down upon her breast and pressed it there, her hands stroking his hair and cheeks. He wondered briefly about the men around the fire that he could see winking in the distance and then forgot them and with them all else in the comfort of her soft breasts and the infinitely soothing caress of her hands.
For what seemed to Graham a long time they remained like this, his impatience spent, yet within him a deep yearning for fulfillment, so that presently, growing bolder, he reached up and touched her bre
ast, exploring the hard nipple with tremulous wonder and turning his head slightly to kiss it through the threadbare material of her dress. The kiss was an act of homage, yet somehow, and perhaps because this was his first positive act since she had drawn him there, it adjusted the balance between them and she said, unemotionally, “Ah so, you shall be master now if you are quiet inside. I am not to be taken roughly, you understand?” And with the same air of purposefulness she extricated herself from his embrace and unhooked the tattered dress, spreading it between them with unhurried movements, then slipping out of the cotton drawers he had given her on the night they escaped from the church. Everything she did was deliberate and methodical, even her tacit instruction of their consummation, and although in different circumstances he might have found her ascendancy shaming, this was far from being so, for he came to her like a supplicant seeking a blessing and the act itself was gentle and infinitely sweet, without trace of impatience on her part and without vice or clumsiness on his. He was glad then that he had been afraid to visit the Lisbon brothels or buy the raddled women who plied their trade outside the Sussex training depot, for this was a richer beginning than was vouchsafed most men in that he possessed her as a person and not an instrument.
She did not signify the completion of such possession by disengaging herself and donning her discarded garments.
Instead, she reverted to the mood of their first embrace, holding him in her arms and letting her hand run down his face from temple to chin, over and over again until a drowsiness stole over him, and it was he who put a term to the occasion by rising to his knees and gazing down at the outline of her round face framed in wildly disordered hair and saying gently, “You are good to me, Gwyneth, good and kind and beautiful, so beautiful that I will never forget, you hear me?” He wished that the moonlight would reveal more of her that he might worship her with his eyes, and the ache to do this was so strong that he went on hurriedly, “This place we are in, it was hell before you came, but now it is as beautiful as your body!”
He could not see her answering smile, but he knew that he had pleased her by the compliment.
“Ah so, it is just as I said,” she told him lightly, “you are thinking a man’s thoughts and you will never be a boy again. In the morning when it is light you will know what is best for us all and the men will know that you have changed!”
He felt a tremor of shame and said quickly, “They know you are here, that we are making love?”
She laughed softly but without derision, saying, “They would be boys themselves if they did not, Mr. Graham! Perhaps the drummer thinks we are gathering wood for the fire, but the others, they will see the difference in you and it will be good for them, because we are a small band with less than a hundred cartridges between us and have many leagues to march before we are safe again.”
She rose and picked up her dress, slipping it over her shoulders and stepping into her incongruous drawers. Suddenly, with the drawing on of her shabby clothes, she became a camp follower again, obsessed once more with the serious aspects of life, keeping watch and remembering perhaps the bread baking in her improvised oven.
“I will send Lockhart to stand sentry and you can sleep in one of the wagons. I must attend to the baking now!” And as if dismissing him from her mind she turned and walked into the moonlit glade and down the track toward the fire.
He was in no hurry to follow her or to sleep, but remained alone in the glade waiting for Lockhart. His thoughts, as she had predicted, were a man’s thoughts and his grasp of the situation was a man’s grasp, a deliberate weighing of risks, an estimation of unpredictables—the weather, the food supply, the likelihood of a French punitive column’s arrival, the nearness and approach-ability of the irregulars. He considered all these things as a soldier and no longer as a panic-stricken youth shrinking from responsibilities that he yearned to put upon other shoulders. The fear had left his belly and the uncertainty his brain. When he thought of the woman now there was an exultation in his heart that communicated itself to his loins, so that already he wanted to possess her again, yet he was able to smile at his impatience. Lockhart found him smiling and handed him a hot flat cake that looked something like the French hardtack that Curle had taken from the lancer’s saddlebag but was very much more pleasant to the taste, although he could detect the bite of the gunpowder Gwyneth had used in order to spare her precious salt. He bit into the cake and pronounced it good.
Lockhart nodded, saying, as to himself, “Arr, it were lucky she crossed our path, she’s a cut above any of the drabs I’ve come acrost in camp!”
Graham wondered briefly if Lockhart envied him his intimacy with the woman, but decided not, for Lockhart was a man who did not concern himself overmuch with women.
“We shall remain here for the day, Lockhart,” he said decisively. “I think the irregulars will make contact with us before the French come back!”
“Aye,” said the gamekeeper grimly, “mebbe we can give it a day if the weather doesna break.” And he cocked a knowing eye at the sky above the peak as Graham hunched his cloak around him and strode back to the bivouac.
* A parade state is a list of available troops and matériel.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Renegade
Graham saw the first of the irregulars a few moments after dawn. Refreshed by the soundest sleep he had enjoyed since the march began, it seemed to him that all his senses were alerted, for although the man on the rock remained quite still and must have been more than a mile from the bivouac, Graham saw him clearly and pointed him out to Lockhart. Soon after, the other men gathered, staring up at the saddle between the two distant peaks, the summits of which were still shrouded in mist.
The air was very keen and there was a dash of sleet in the wind blowing from the southwest, sending great scudding clouds across the serried ranks of pines and carrying with it the tang of the Atlantic. The man on the rock was obviously a sentinel and had probably had their campfire under observation all night. When sighted, however, he made no kind of move to inform his comrades but remained where he stood, leaning on a long-barreled gun, his cloak bellying behind him.
Graham’s first thought was to consult the woman, who was still asleep in one of the wagons, but on second thought he preferred to take the initiative and walked down the track to a point about three hundred meters below the twisting fissure that led up to the irregular’s observation point on the saddle of the rock. Even here he was still too far off to make himself heard, so he stopped and went through an elaborate dumb show aimed at establishing his identity, sweeping his arms in a wide circle to suggest friendship and then pointing with exaggerated emphasis to his scarlet tunic. Presently the man was joined by another, a squat, barrel-chested figure in a full-skirted coat and a wide sombrero, and from where he stood Graham could see the armory of weapons in his belt.
He redoubled his efforts, shouting into the wind, “We are British! We are friends!” But when he realized that his words would not carry the distance he returned along the track toward the bivouac.
He had covered perhaps half the distance when he looked over his shoulder, and what he saw made him whistle with surprise, for the long fissure in the rock, which had been deserted a moment ago, was now strung with climbing men, more than a score of them, descending with the assurance of trained mountaineers, their weapons slung about their shoulders. It was such an unusual spectacle in that lonely corner of the mountains that Graham thought of the illustrations in his father’s edition of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe which he had browsed through on hot summer afternoons during school holidays. The file now descending the rocks looked exactly like a string of pirates depicted in that book, having the same devil-may-care apparel and weapons, knives, swords, blunderbusses and long-barreled pistols hung about them in profusion. He noticed also that at least half the men wore the green uniform of the Portuguese caçadores whom he had watched training under British officers in Lisbon, and this set him wondering whether the men were part of
a body of Allied troops who had been left behind to harass French communications.
Satisfied that they were advancing friends, however, he rejoined the file and told Lockhart to smarten the detachment’s appearance, hoping that this would in some measure make up for their lack of numbers and obvious isolation. During the previous days he had gone to some pains to ensure that the men’s arms were in serviceable condition but had paid no attention at all to their general turnout, and the march through the mountains and ravines had played havoc with their uniforms and equipment. He watched Lockhart parade them in line and then crossed over to the wagon occupied by Gwyneth.
She was sitting on one of the lockers, engaged in the surprisingly feminine task of braiding her hair, and he greeted her cheerfully, saying, “We have made contact with the partisans. They are coming down the mountain at this moment!”
“Yes,” she said, “I saw them and I hope they are local men.”
“What difference is it who they are, so long as they are opposed to the French?”
She gave him a swift sidelong glance, supporting her mass of hair with both hands.
“It matters a great deal, Mr. Graham,” she said, “for if the group is local then you will have the benefit of Beaky’s reputation hereabouts, but if they are men who have hung on the French march all the way from Spain and are led by one of the Navarrese or Castilian guerillas, then you will soon discover that they are interested in nothing but plunder. They would as lief rob you as the French, although they have orders not to kill Englishmen.”
“You are certain of this?” he asked anxiously.
She gave one of her swift rueful smiles and said, “Come into the wagon. It will not be good for the men to know that I give you advice. From this point on, it is you who must give the orders.”
Too Few for Drums Page 10
