He climbed into the wagon, where they were screened from the file by the canvas curtains. She said earnestly, “Listen, now, I know these people. One and all they are brigands and there is hardly a soldier among them! There are several caçadores yonder, but the fact that they are loose in the mountains means that they are nothing more than deserters. To get help from them you must impress them with your authority, you are someone of importance, you understand?”
“They will believe anything I tell them?”
“If you believe it yourself, Mr. Graham! It would be very foolish to admit the truth, to say we are stragglers cut off crossing the Mondego. You must think of something better or they will take our muskets and cartridges and go.”
“What else can I tell them?” he demanded, his elation ebbing, but she made a gesture of impatience and went on. “You are behind the lines on the orders of General Crauford and are here for the purpose of estimating the enemy’s strength. You have completed your mission and all you need from them is a guide or a route to the Tagus, where you have a rendezvous with the gunboats. If you do not report in three days, then your kinsman Crauford will send out a strong force of cavalry to search for you.”
”My kinsman? Is General Crauford my kinsman? Why should I stop at Crauford? Why am I not a favorite nephew of the Commander in Chief?” he said, smiling.
She shook her head and said seriously, “If they were persuaded you were a relative of Beaky they would probably sell you to the French. Now go and be high-handed. These people expect harshness from men of rank.”
She half pushed him from the wagon and he sauntered over to the men, who were looking with considerable curiosity at a bizarre cavalcade approaching the bivouac from the easterly bend in the track.
“Eyes front!” he snapped and Watson almost let fall his firelock, but the habit of obedience brought them all stiffly to attention and Graham stared fixedly at the line of scarecrows, checking an impulse to laugh as the first of the Portuguese approached, the man he had first observed on the rock.
“Inglesi?” the man demanded, and Graham gave a stiff little bow, at the same time raising his hand as if he were greeting the emissary of an unpredictable tribe.
“Ensign Graham of the Fifty-first Regiment of Foot, at present detached from the brigade of Lieutenant General Crauford,” he said, trying to give his voice a parade-ground ring, but the partisan did not seem impressed and walked slowly along the rank, sniffing, one hand on the hilt of his sword-bayonet and the other industriously engaged in picking his nose.
Graham at once took exception to the way in which he looked at the file, as though he were inspecting a batch of newly arrived slaves and assessing the profits it represented, but the file did not seem to resent his scrutiny. Watson smirked and the mouth of Strawbridge split in a broad, gap-toothed grin. Then some of the other partisans approached, chattering and gesticulating in a way that further irritated Graham, who had the traditional British contempt for foreigners.
He said roughly, “Where is your captain?” When the scout shrugged, Graham barked, “El supremo! Capitano!” Whereupon the man pointed casually at the swart potbellied individual whom Graham had also seen on the rock. He turned to this man and bowed stiffly, repeating, “Ensign Graham of the Fifty-first Regiment of Foot. I am in need of a guide as far as the Tagus, where I have a rendezvous with His Majesty’s gunboat Panther!”
As he heard himself uttering this rigamarole his temper cooled and he was conscious of a certain degree of embarrassment not altogether devoid of amusement. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Watson blink rapidly, as though amazed by such reassuring information, but the fat man only yawned, and as he did so Graham was assailed by a strong whiff of garlic which increased his distaste for the group.
At last the man transferred his attention from the file to Graham and said, in almost perfect English, “Are the British mad? Seven of you, twelve leagues inside the French lines? If you had passed this way two days ago they would have marched over your bodies!” Then, as though such trivialities bored him, “Where is the woman?”
Graham, who was already beginning to regret that they had met the irregulars, replied coldly, “The woman is the wife of one of our officers, sir! She was sick and left behind at Coimbra. I expect her to be accorded the same courtesy as myself by a representative of the Portuguese Government!”
The man darted a shrewd glance at him, contracting his black brows and running a pudgy forefinger up and down his nose. Then, as though to reassure his visitors, he smiled, put out his hand and administered a series of short pats on Graham’s shoulder, saying very affably, “It is most fortunate you met us, my friend, the more so as I exercise some kind of authority over this rabble. Permit me to introduce myself, Hervé de Dieu Castobert, related by marriage to the best blood in France, to the Rohans of Villeneuve-St.-Bar and to the Rochefoucaulds of Amand-sur-Mer, in Brittany. I tell you this without pride, however, for most of my kinsmen are at present enjoying the hospitality of your King whilst I, at an age when most men look for slippered ease, have elected to carry the fight against the Corsican and the regicides into this Godforsaken country!” And having thus delivered himself, the renegade embraced Graham, favoring him with two more whiffs of garlic, this time at distressingly close range.
Hervé de Dieu Castobert had explained his presence in the Peninsula to so many chance acquaintances during the last two years that he had long since convinced himself that he spoke no more than the truth when he claimed that he alone among his family upheld the honor of the exiles by his presence in the theater of war. He was that kind of man, half buffoon, half adventurer, with a dash of the buccaneer and the medieval mercenary complicating an already complex character. Liar, boaster and gambler, he incorporated within him most of the vices of the French feudal families whose degeneracy had brought France about their ears, but he possessed also a redeeming streak of obstinacy that had kept him in the field when most of his relatives had scampered abroad. It was in the reeking villages of La Vendée that Castobert had learned the art of irregular warfare. Long before the cruelties of the Peninsular War became a byword in Europe, Hervé de Dieu Castobert had been roasting French republicans alive and pegging out prisoners for the birds and wild dogs that followed the path of the Vendéans and their equally savage opponents. He had played a part in the futile Quiberon expedition and afterward emigrated to Boston, but when the imperial armies had crossed into Spain he had at once returned from America to offer his services to the Spanish junta. After the collapse of the regular Spanish armies he took to the mountains as a guerilla under Mina of Navarre, from whom he learned fresh techniques of harrying enemy columns as well as several refinements in the art of torture. The withdrawal of Wellington’s army in the autumn of 1810 gave him an opportunity to enroll in the regular Portuguese forces, but he was not a man who took kindly to disciplined warfare, where commanders expected him to follow a predetermined strategic plan, and preferred to operate as a partisan, swooping on small, slow-moving transport columns and undermanned garrison posts. He was already hated and feared by the French, who had put an outrageously high price on his head and promised themselves the pleasure of flaying him alive if and when he fell into their hands, but his standing among the irregular bands operating between the lines of Torres Vedras and the seat of the French government in Spain was high, for he was a bold and cunning tactician and his personal courage was beyond dispute. He had on occasion liaised with high-ranking British officers who found him useful in enforcing their strategy of stripping the country bare of supplies and population.
His gluttony at table and vicious mode of life had aged him in appearance, but the grossness of his figure had done nothing to diminish his furious energy. During spells of inaction he was restless.
Within an hour of meeting Castobert the Englishmen were astonished by the energy of so gross a man. Hour after hour, with scarcely a halt, he led them up steep mountain paths and across roaring torrents to his headquarters behind
the lower peaks of the Sierra, and Graham felt that his heart would burst in an effort to maintain the rate of progress. Watson, gasping at the tail of the column, was wishing himself dead, and Croyde, weighed down by his belt, silently cursed his late comrade for encumbering himself with the belt. Yet they kept on, slipping, staggering and cursing, with only the less burdened woman marching erect behind the chattering Portuguese.
At length, to Graham’s relief, they topped a narrow ridge between two faces of rock where they could look down on a little valley five hundred feet below. A group of huts and smoking camp-fires marked the semipermanent headquarters of Castobert’s band.
Graham, too exhausted to comment, sank down on a rock and looked down on the encampment with foreboding while his guide, sweating freely but otherwise undismayed by their exertions, swept his hand in a half circle and vouchsafed a little information regarding the future of the file.
“You will be safe enough from Masséna here, my young friend,” he said. “We have been recruiting in that valley since Junot entered Portugal more than two years ago, and no Frenchman save myself has ever entered this camp except as a prisoner.”
“You keep prisoners down there?” Graham asked in astonishment, but instantly regretted the question, for the renegade uttered a short, neighing laugh and went on, “We keep them a day or two if we are otherwise engaged. Then we dispose of them at our leisure!”
“By torture, I assume,” Graham muttered, and realized how much he already hated this arrogant partisan.
Castobert shrugged, neither offended nor surprised by British squeamishness. “The Portuguese rabble are entitled to their sport,” he said. “If we have plenty of powder we use the stragglers we catch for target practice, but if not there are other ways of demonstrating our loyalty to the old order. Nothing happens down there that did not happen every day in France during the Revolution!”
Graham wished then that he had taken more pains to study the background of his country’s unending war against Napoleon. As a boy he had heard his father deplore the excesses of the French terrorists, but his acquaintance with a representative of the Old Regime made him doubt whether the Bourbons deserved the general sympathy extended to them at home. He said stubbornly, “It is not my intention to remain attached to your band for more than twenty-four hours, m’sieur. It is imperative that I keep my rendezvous with the gunboat Panther on the Tagus. How far is the Tagus from this valley and how best can I approach the river without running into enemy detachments?”
“We will discuss that after we have eaten,” Castobert told him, and with a wave of his hand he set the column in motion again.
As they descended into the valley Graham’s disquiet increased. One or two of the narrow, grass-grown patches they had traversed between the peaks of the Sierra had been pleasant, inviting places, but this was not one of them, perhaps because it was high above sea level where the vegetation was gray and stunted. A stream traversed the encampment and on the eastern side of the valley was a small pinewood crowning an outcrop of rocks, but the rest of the little basin was walled in with naked granite rising steeply to the sky. The mouths of caves showed here and there, but the spot was so remote that the partisans had built themselves cabins and on the open ground campfires were smoking and men and women were moving about preparing the evening meal. Graham looked all around the valley for an alternative exit and at length spotted a zigzag path rising from the rock plateau immediately behind the pines, crawling uncertainly up the steep face to disappear in the canopy of mist that hung low over the valley. Without his understanding why, the path became for him the focal part of the camp and he noted everything about it, its nearness to the largest of the cabins, its tree-masked approach, its steepness and narrowness as it followed the broader contours of the mountain. A column of men, he thought, would be obliged to use such a path in single file and one man might hold off any number of pursuers providing he had ample firepower. It struck him as odd that he should be considering the means of retreat while entering the camp of an ally, but there was something about the place and the men who inhabited it that encouraged him to anticipate the worst.
When the column reached level ground he drew Lockhart aside and said quietly, “Don’t let the file disperse and don’t on any account lay aside your arms!”
Lockhart nodded grimly, as though he shared Graham’s suspicions. Graham then turned to look for Gwyneth, intending to ask her if she had discovered anything useful about the band during the march, but she seemed to have disappeared, so he directed the men to make their own fire on the far side of the shallow stream and bivouac under the lee of the small wood. If they had to leave in a hurry, he decided, it would be better to be stationed near the entrance to the path he had noted.
He had expected that Castobert would invite him to share a meal, but the guerilla chief seemed to have lost interest in his guests. When Graham inquired his whereabouts of the man in the long cloak and sombrero who had first sighted the file from the rock above the track, the man pointed to the largest hut, about a hundred yards down the valley. Before going there Graham walked through the wood and looked at the path. No one was guarding it and it did not seem to be as steep as it had looked from across the valley. He stood pondering a moment and finally made up his mind, recrossing the stream and crossing toward the chief’s headquarters.
He found Castobert already at table, sucking his way through a large bowl of stew and attended by a mountainous gray-haired peasant woman whom he addressed as Catrina. The woman was even more grotesque than her master, an absurdly small head topping her enormous bulk, and a pair of dark, furtive eyes set in her face like currants in a wedge of dough. The food, and the wine at his elbow, seemed to have mellowed the renegade somewhat, for he said, between gulps, “She is as ugly as the Devil’s sister, but she cooks like ten thousand angels! Judge for yourself, milord!”
Graham recalled then that every British officer was accorded a title by the Portuguese, but he was aware that Castobert must know better and could only suppose that he used the word ironically. Still uncertain, he sat down opposite the Frenchman as Catrina waddled in with another bowl of stew, in which large pieces of meat were floating. The stew was highly flavored with garlic, and the renegade’s table manners left a great deal to be desired, but notwithstanding this Graham ate ravenously, forcing himself to pay the cook a compliment, which Castobert drove home with a jocular punch as the woman passed within range.
“You hear him?” he said, in the same ironical tone. “Milord is praising your cooking, Catrina! That is a great compliment, you understand? For a long time now Milord has been enjoying the best of everything!” And he tilted his head on one side as though anxious to record his guest’s reaction to the gibe.
Perhaps it was the remark or the man’s studied bestiality, or possibly a sudden quirk of fear amounting almost to panic. Whatever the reason, Graham made his decision. Rising quickly, he pushed aside his plate and said, very deliberately, “I am obliged to you for your hospitality, m’sieu, and if you will lend me a guide as far as the Tagus I shall commend you to General Crauford on my return to Lisbon. In any case, we march at first light, so I bid you good night, sir!”
Castobert was unable to conceal his surprise at this demonstration of firmness, yet he mastered it within seconds, leaning back in his chair and grinning. When he spoke again his tone was conciliatory.
”Listen, my young friend, the Tagus is more than twenty leagues from here and the French have already occupied Santarém on the river. If you keep your rendezvous with the gunboat you have an arduous journey ahead of you, for your only course is to cross the river a safe distance north of Masséna’s pickets. Given luck, such a march will occupy you seven to ten days, depending upon good weather and how capable you may be of steering a course by the stars!”
Something told Graham that in his eagerness to make a fool of him Castobert had inadvertently spoken the truth. He said firmly, “Then it is your duty as a representative of His Majes
ty the King of Portugal to supply me with a map.”
“Perhaps,” said the Frenchman, his unpleasant grin widening as Graham’s cheeks reddened, “but with the best will in the world, milord, I could not help you in that respect. I have not seen a map in two years. If you insist upon continuing your march, then you must smell your way across the mountains as I do. In any case, you will leave the woman behind!”
Graham made a tremendous effort to speak calmly.
“The woman marches with us,” he said, meeting Castobert’s eye and holding it when he failed to stare him down.
After a moment or so the Frenchman conceded the contest and looked down at his plate, his hand rasping slowly across his jowls as though he was weighing his guest as a calculated risk in the same way as he pondered the wisdom of a descent on a French convoy. He did not, however, appear to resent the Englishman’s challenge, but rather balanced it against the known and unknown factors, the younger man’s skill as a swordsman, the chances of being called to account for treating the English as enemies, the gain, if any, in complying with this little gamecock’s demands for assistance. At last he seemed to have made up his mind.
“You are not in a position to bargain,” he said pleasantly. “You are five half-starved men and a boy to my three score cutthroats. I have only to raise my voice and any one of them would tear you in pieces. Yet I would have you believe that I am reluctant to give such a command. My business here is to kill Frenchmen and I would not deprive you of the chance to live, in order that you may kill still more when Masséna is forced to retreat into Spain in the spring. Do not encourage me to overcome this prejudice, my young friend. Camp here tonight and take your five scarecrows over the range at dawn. If the woman is as ripe as she looks, then it is possible that I will be in good humor tomorrow and may be persuaded to give you detailed directions as to your route.”
“The woman marches with us!” Graham repeated, and his hand moved along his sword belt until his thumb rested on the butt of Sergeant Fox’s pistol.
Too Few for Drums Page 11
