02 - Keane's Challenge

by Iain Gale

  ‘Some dream. You chose to gamble your life against the guerrillas.’

  The man shrugged. ‘If you like.’

  ‘You know what they do?’

  The man’s face grew pale. ‘I’ve heard.’

  ‘That dream must really matter to you then.’

  ‘When you’ve come through all we’ve come through you would understand, captain. I was born into war. It’s all that I know.’

  Keane smiled at him. ‘Then we have something in common, don’t we? Captain… what did you say your name was?’

  ‘I didn’t, but it’s Henri. Jules Henri.’

  ‘So, Captain Henri, do you now suppose, as I have done you a favour in saving your life from both the guerrillas and our German friends over there, that you might find it in yourself to tell me who gave you the papers and to whom you were taking them?’

  The man looked at him and Keane could see the despair and the resignation. ‘My general gave them to me.’

  ‘And who might he be?’ Keane knew that he might find this out by simply looking at the letters, but he wanted the boy to crack, to become his. Then who knew what other information he might give up. It was all part of the game that he had perfected while interrogating couriers over the past year.

  The boy said nothing for a few moments. Keane waited, knowing what was likely to happen. Then at last the Frenchman spoke. ‘You said you had been born into war. Like me.’

  ‘And so I was. It seems so at least. For I have been a soldier these twenty years.’

  ‘And I was born twenty years ago. In the Revolution.’

  Keane laughed. ‘Ah, the Revolution. That was the start of France’s trouble. And the start of all this. How many men has your country lost since then, do you suppose? In the name of liberty and then in the name of the emperor?’

  The boy stared at him and said again, ‘You said that you were born to war. Where did you fight?’

  Keane smiled. ‘In Alexandria, in the desert against your general Napoleon, as he was then. And in Flanders, before that. You beat us then.’ The Frenchman smiled. Keane continued. ‘But not since.’

  ‘Corunna. You were beaten then. We drove you into the sea.’

  Keane shook his head. ‘No. We escaped across the sea. There is a difference, and now we’re back. And you are here as my guest, for as long as I can keep you safe from the guerrillas. We deal with them constantly.’

  The veiled threat was not lost on the boy. Keane looked at him and saw that his spirit was beginning to break. ‘More water, Captain Henri? Or a little wine perhaps?’

  The captain shook his head. ‘No. No, thank you. I truly am most grateful, captain, that you took me prisoner.’ He seemed about to say more and then looked down at his feet and said nothing for a long minute. Then he looked up and said, ‘Perhaps I will accept your offer. A little wine might be nice.’

  Walking over to his horse, Keane unslung a flask from his saddlebag and returned, offering it to the captain, who, having taken a long draught, continued. ‘I am carrying papers from Marshal Massena to our army in the field. Of course you would have learned as much just by looking at them.’

  ‘Nevertheless, thank you for telling me. You will travel with us back to our lines. And I promise you that neither the guerrillas nor the Germans over there will harm you. You have my word, captain.’

  *

  They camped for the night on a plateau high above the hills. It was a place they had first found some two months ago and Keane had marked it on his master map for future use. Mapping out the country was just one of his many tasks. The place had the advantage of being sufficiently hidden in a dip to allow the flames of their campfires to go unnoticed. Keane made sure that the French captain messed with him and his men, away from the Hanoverians.

  Silver and Gabriella had cooked up a stew of sorts from rice, tomatoes and salt beef in the big Flanders kettle that she carried slung across her mule. Even Keane admitted that it didn’t taste half bad and their French prisoner seemed perfectly happy with his supper. The man had accepted some more wine with his dinner and had begun to speak volubly, as Keane had hoped he would.

  There was not much of use as yet. Mostly he waffled on about his home in the Auvergne and the family he had not seen for two years, but occasionally he would drop in something that made Keane sit up: the fact that many of the animals in the artillery gun teams had become sick or the aside that Marshal Massena had a passion for peaches.

  Keane encouraged it. It was just the sort of stuff that Wellington wanted. And it had been on just such a night that he had learned that Marshal Ney was moving across the Peninsula with half the French army. Another courier had spoken then, taken into confidence and in his cups. And so the boy went on and the fire crackled, and the wine flowed, although Keane was aware that while the flames would not be seen, the smoke would give them away. The last thing that he wanted was to attract the attention of an inquisitive band of guerrillas.

  So he let the Frenchman prattle away and refilled his cup while the men spoke among themselves. He had ordered no singing this night, from the Germans too, lest they be heard from far off in the stillness that hung about the mountains of the high sierra. Instead the men told stories to each other or tried to grab some sleep.

  Sitting close to Keane, Sergeant Ross was midway through a story about a witch who had terrorized south-west Scotland in the seventeenth century, holding the men spellbound, as he always did. Gabriella shook her head and muttered something in Portuguese.

  Martin stared at Ross. ‘Did they really have witches in the Scottish Highlands, sergeant?’

  Gilpin laughed. ‘Don’t pay any heed to him, Martin. It’s all talk.’

  Ross shook his head and continued. ‘Still do, boy. Just as they do where you come from, in Ireland. Brimful of witches, Ireland is. Didn’t your mother never tell you that?’

  ‘No, sergeant.’

  ‘Well, that’s what it is. Full of them. And if, like me, you had the second sight, you’d be able to tell just who might be a witch. Now take yon woman over there.’ He pointed to Gabriella, who had walked off to stir her stewpot.

  ‘She’s not a witch, is she?’

  Ross smiled. ‘Well, laddie, what do you think? Do you think she might have a bit of the witch in her?’

  Martin stared at Gabriella. ‘Do you really think so?’

  Ross laughed. ‘No, laddie. She’s no witch, though she’s a magical way with a stew, wouldn’t you say?’

  The others laughed, as did Keane. He was well aware that Ross was from Glasgow and had no more of the Highlander in him than himself. And as for ‘the second sight’…

  Silver, who had seated himself beside Keane, spoke, quietly. ‘Those Germans get on my wick, sir. Can’t stomach them for all their preening and fancy ways.’

  ‘But they’re not bad in a fight, Silver.’

  ‘True, but I’d rather be shot of them, sir. We can handle ourselves all right, sir, can’t we?’

  ‘Of course we can, Silver. But we must have someone to do the dirty work, mustn’t we?’

  Silver laughed. ‘That’s one way of putting it, sir. Yes, I like that. Doing the dirty work. I’ll tell the wife that. She can’t stand them neither.’

  ‘She’s had no trouble from them?’

  ‘No, sir. Nothing like that. It’s just they seem to treat her like their own skivvy.’

  ‘And she’s your skivvy, is that it, Silver?’

  The man smiled. ‘You might say so, sir. Well, she’s my wife at least, ain’t she?’

  ‘You haven’t married her yet, though, have you?’

  ‘Not proper, sir, not church-married. With a priest. But we’re army married, if you understand what I mean, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I understand.’

  Keane understood.

  Like those of so many of the men who made up Wellington’s army, Silver’s marriage was by common law. When husbands were killed or died of disease their wives would take a new man, often within days. It was
a matter of survival, particularly if children were involved. It was not an ideal situation and the unscrupulous could exploit it – on both sides. But it was the way that the army did things. Had always done things. And that, Keane knew, could not be changed. Even though other things might.

  *

  Plucked from his company in the Inniskilling Fusiliers, a distinguished infantry regiment from his homeland of Ireland, Keane had in the past year been propelled into a type of soldiering he had never known in twenty years with the colours in Flanders, Egypt and the Peninsula.

  He had become what they politely termed an ‘exploring’ or ‘observing’ officer for the newly created general Wellington, his fellow Irishman, Arthur Wellesley. In effect Keane was a spy. One of a select group of officers who had been singled out to go either alone or with parties of chosen men behind enemy lines and liaise with the guerrillas to gather information on the movements of the French. Wellington wanted to know everything, it seemed, from the size of the French armies and their whereabouts, to what their commanders had for breakfast. Keane had not been enthusiastic. But he had warmed to his task and now took pride in his new-found ability.

  It still amused and surprised him too that he should have gained his new position by default. The only reason that he had come to Wellington’s notice in the first place had been on account of his having killed a brother officer in a duel. What was sure to be his apparent dismissal, or worse, had been commuted by the general to this new role. It did not help that since then he had killed another of his comrades in self-defence, nor that the sister of that dead man was the girl with whom he had fallen in love and who, as far as he was aware, still did not know the truth about her brother’s death.

  These things weighed heavily on Keane’s mind as they had done every day for the last eight months, and he was glad to be out here in the field with his men and away from the questions that were sure in the end to come when at last he returned to Lisbon. He knew too that he commanded as fine a body of men as anyone might wish for. They might have been for the most part the scrapings of Lisbon’s jails, but they had been turned by Keane and his sergeant, in a year’s hard soldiering in the mountains of the high sierra, into a force on which he knew he could rely.

  One of their number, though, was missing, had been missing for the better part of the year. Keane’s closest friend in the army, Tom Morris of the artillery, as far removed from a felon as you could hope to meet, had been one of the first to join his troop and the only officer. But Morris had spent the past few months posted to headquarters, engaged on another matter of espionage.

  Heredia, before he had joined their number, had discovered a French agent on the general staff – a distinguished British officer – and it had fallen to Morris to expose him. However, it was proving more difficult to do so than they had anticipated. Keane was concerned for his friend and intended, once they returned, to have it out with his superiors. Morris had been gone too long. Any longer and he might leave their number.

  Their ranks, though, had been augmented. In the past few months they had been joined by two more men. One a gunner, Israel Leech, who had been recommended to them directly by Morris. Leech was no criminal, but handy with explosives and it was just possible that he might come in useful. He was a cool fellow, thought Keane, and inclined to swings of temper, but the men seemed to have taken to him well enough.

  The other man was newly arrived just before they had set out on their current expedition.

  Jack Archer had come to them expressly on Major Grant’s orders and Keane was still unsure why. Certainly he seemed to satisfy enough of the criteria for their force; he could speak passable Spanish and was a good shot and a fine horseman. Keane supposed that was enough, but he wondered why Grant had been so insistent.

  Keane looked at them all as they laughed together at the conclusion of Ross’s ghost story and he knew they were his men now. Even the newcomers. They would ride on tomorrow, and the next day, he knew, would reach the lines. And then he would hand over the Frenchman to his superiors and learn from them what new task they had dreamt up for him.

  Undoubtedly it would be some form of intelligence gathering. But as to whether he might be sent to persuade a guerrilla captain to aid them or merely to intercept another courier, he did not know. It was not of any great consequence.

  The French were massing for an attack. Not under Napoleon. The sort of fighting they engaged in here was not, Keane supposed, to the liking of a man who had made his name on the plains of central Europe. Instead the Corsican had entrusted the taking of the Peninsula to his great captains, Soult, Ney, Massena. Soon they would come, and it was Keane’s role to discover when and where they would make that attack. It was late June now and the campaigning season had only a few months left to run before the weather closed in and it became impossible for an army to operate effectively, let alone fight and win a battle.

  He had come to relish his role, although at times he longed for the old life and action in line, meeting the enemy in battle.

  The only actions left to him now were those such as today’s – harassing actions and skirmishes. That was all they had seen since Talavera, and Keane presumed it would be all the action he would be destined to see for the foreseeable future. It all depended upon the commander-in-chief and whether or not he should choose to meet the French in battle. The men were keen for it certainly and Keane had heard talk that London was split in two as to what should be done. Some said that Wellington should sail home with his army. Beresford too, and abandon the Portuguese to their fate. Others, though, wanted action. He wondered which side Old Nosey would take in his wisdom.

  All he knew was that he would take his orders and gather the intelligence that would give Wellington the all-important upper hand when the French push finally came. It was a waiting game they were playing now, and one thing Keane had learned since he had taken on his new role was that waiting gave them time, and while time might be the common soldier’s everyday enemy, for the intelligencer it was the most precious commodity in the world.

  2

  The distinct clatter of spurred riding boots on a marble floor rang out shrilly through the salon of the large house in the town of Celorico that had been recently appropriated as the headquarters of the allied army. Sir Arthur Wellesley, lately created Viscount Wellington of Talavera, was agitated. Placing his hands together behind the small of his back, he turned to the similarly red-coated man who had been standing to one side for the last ten minutes as he had paced the room.

  ‘Grant, I need to know more. Where is Massena and with how many men? I need numbers. Foot, horse ordnance, supplies. And I need to know where he intends to cross from Spain and when.’

  Almost the duke’s equal in height, Major Sir Colquhoun Grant nodded, an engaging smile lighting a fine-boned face whose most prominent feature, though not as distinctive as the duke’s own, was its long aquiline nose. But, despite his amiable countenance, there was a seriousness about Grant’s manner. ‘Yes, sir. We will need to know all of that and more besides, if we are to outwit the fox. But you are aware, Your Grace, that we have the means to do it. Captain Keane is on his way.’

  Wellington nodded. ‘Keane? Is he, by God? Here?’

  Grant nodded.

  ‘Good. I need to hear his report. Don’t let him tarry, though, Grant. I won’t have men of that calibre hanging around headquarters like a pack of lapdogs. We have officers enough, for that, to be sure. All purchase and too little talent. Best to get Captain Keane back into the field, where he’s best used. He, with all the exploring officers in Scovell’s Corps of Guides, are become my eyes and ears now. They are our best weapon.’

  He stared at the map of the Peninsula spread on the table before him and then, apparently absently, traced a line with his finger from the border with France up towards the north and off into the air as if to some other country.

  He sighed. ‘The Corsican wins a battle in Austria and now we must suffer. Our friends the Austrians are, I
suppose, wholly to blame. All that I won at Talavera, the archduke threw away at Wagram. So now Bonaparte has more men to throw at us here. Hundreds of thousands of them, Grant, marching down from the north even as we speak, to “push us into the sea”.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘That’s what he says, is it not, our man in Paris?’ He waved a piece of paper towards Grant. ‘You have seen this, have you not? Look at it. A missive from the French capital. The latest from that man we keep at Bonaparte’s court. I forget his name. How much do we pay him?’

  ‘I’ll enquire, sir. Captain Radlett, as I recollect. He is invaluable.’

  ‘That’s as maybe. But I don’t need a spy to tell me what I know already. Bonaparte says that he will push us back into the sea “as he did before”.’

  He scanned the paper and read from it aloud. ‘The emperor’s order to Marshal Massena read as follows: “The leopard contaminates the land of Spain yet again.”’ Wellington raised an eyebrow. ‘Since when were we a leopard, Grant?’

  ‘I think Bonaparte refers to Britain as such, sir. The image, I think, being that of the lion couchant on His Majesty’s coat of arms.’

  Wellington nodded and grinned. ‘Not a leopard, though, you see. No proper education, Grant. Peasant stock, Bonaparte.’ He spoke the name slowly, as if the very word caused a sour taste in the mouth, then paused and seemed to dwell on the idea of Napoleon and all for which he stood. ‘As I was saying, our agent in Paris writes that “Napoleon” intends to drive us into the sea. He is sending Marshal Massena.’

  ‘I would reckon, sir, that the marshal will bring with him a good one hundred thousand men, now that the Austrians seem to have given up the fight for the present.’

  ‘They have lost the stomach for it, do you suppose?’

  ‘I could not comment on that, sir. But I would very much doubt it. It will surely be merely a temporary defeat. They are his principal enemy in the field, sir, have always been. Do not forget, Your Grace, the French cut off the head of an Austrian princess, their queen. And should Bonaparte prevail, he will seize their country as part of Greater France. They know they have much to lose.’