‘Well, gentlemen, there is the question of what we should do,’ Captain Burlton said to the others. As captain of the Rodney he was now the senior naval officer, taking over from Captain Hope, just as MacAndrews was the senior soldier – the Navy apparently assuming that the colonel of a Spanish regiment must rank lower than a British major. ‘Circe is in sight, and so we are stronger than ever before, at least at sea.’ The additional thirty-two-gun frigate, which was supposed to have joined the squadron before it sailed, had at last arrived.
Captain Hope lived up to his name with one last attempt at optimism. ‘The main French force is here.’ Lookouts had reported the approach of several hundred cavalry, followed by a strong body of infantry. ‘If Sebastiani is here, then even in these light airs we could reach Malaga and take the place half a day before he could return.’
The sailors looked at MacAndrews. He did not think that either of the captains felt real conviction in favour of the proposal. Perhaps they wanted a soldier to confirm the ruined condition of all of the brigade apart from the 106th, or perhaps they simply wanted someone else to state the impossibility of continuing with the plan and to take the blame if there were need. Either way it did not really matter.
‘Perhaps we could take it, but I doubt very much that we could hold it,’ he said, and only a fool would have given another opinion. ‘I can only rely on my own battalion – and of course on the marines and sailors,’ he added, both because it was true and because few compliments were ever wasted. ‘The other soldiers are spent, at least for the moment, and in no condition to fight. As importantly, the commander of the expedition is lost.’ MacAndrews did not add that it would be presumptuous for a mere major to assume a general officer’s command and initiate a new landing, for surely that was obvious – though he would not have hesitated to do so if there was value in the operation and a decent prospect of success. In this case there was neither.
The sailors raised no more objections. Both their ships were crammed with soldiers, and it would take time to ferry them to the transports, but for the moment the crews were busy working the guns. Burlton had already ordered food to be served to them before they left.
A little after five o’clock the bombardment stopped when lookouts spotted a white flag raised and men in red walking on the rampart of the castle. A close inspection through telescopes revealed that one of the redcoats was Lord Turney himself. A Polish emissary appeared on the beach, and when a boat was sent in he presented a list of the officers taken prisoner and instructions for the general’s baggage to be carried ashore. This last request had been anticipated and the impedimenta was waiting in the cutter. Williams was not on the list of prisoners, and as yet had not been found among the men brought off the beach.
At five thirty Captain Burlton ordered the Rodney to weigh anchor and the whole squadron stood out to sea. Boats began ferrying all save the wounded back to the transport ships. With such high losses, there was plenty of room and so the flank companies of the 106th went to a vessel called the Waltington. The rest of the battalion would be taken from the Spanish two-decker and sent to this and another merchantman in the morning.
‘Better to have our only fresh regiment in ships which do not require towing,’ Burlton said, and MacAndrews was glad of the decision.
For two days they cruised off the coast, moving slowly in the light airs and coming abreast of Malaga. There was no attempt to revive the idea of landing, and it seemed no more than a gesture to worry the French and to postpone the inevitable.
The next day the squadron split, with Topaze and some of the smaller naval ships escorting the transports back to the Straits of Gibraltar. The Rodney set off to tow El Vencedor to Port Mahon in Minorca, although Captain Burlton was doubtful that even the yards there would be equal to the task of rendering her genuinely seaworthy.
As the convoy neared Gibraltar, MacAndrews felt a brief yearning for a longer voyage to spare him and the 106th a return to the monotony of garrison duty on the Rock. There was so little for the soldiers to do apart from drink, and he began to think of ways of creating interest in sport and exercises in the hope of distracting his men. He wondered whether Esther and Jane would come to join him now that Lord Turney was gone. The prospect was an exceedingly happy one, but that only reminded him of an unpleasant duty he had yet to complete.
Williams was not on any of the ships and was not among the French prisoners. Perhaps he had escaped somehow and found refuge with the partisans, but it was equally possible that he was dead. MacAndrews liked the young lieutenant, who reminded him a good deal of his own younger self. Williams was a good soldier, and had skill and luck far beyond the ordinary, so that he seemed invulnerable, able to triumph whatever the odds. MacAndrews had known a few men like that before. They were rare, and some were decidedly odd, but they won battles for you, and you came to believe that they could never fail and never be touched. For one or two it was actually true, and they received never a scratch and lived on to the ripest old age. The rest lived as if this were true, and then just died, at the hands of the enemy or sometimes disease or simple accident. It never quite seemed real, but it happened all the same and they did not come back. The character of a whole company or regiment could change when they were lost, and never be quite as good again.
Williams was gone, and he did not know whether he would come back. He had begun a letter to tell his wife and daughter the news, but after a few simple statements to say that he was well, he had found the words drying up. Simply saying that the young officer had vanished did not seem enough. From all Esther had said, his daughter’s affection for the lieutenant had grown far beyond mere friendship. He would be the first to confess that the emotions of both mother and daughter often baffled him, but would swiftly add that it did not matter what he thought for they would do what they damned well pleased regardless of his wishes. Yet the growing bond between Jane and Williams had somehow turned into something which felt natural and permanent, indeed almost inevitable. He could not remember when he had suddenly taken to thinking of it in that way, but it was at least a year ago, and now it might well be over.
MacAndrews did not know what to say to make it less painful, so wrote little more and resolved to send the letter on with Hanley when he was carried to Cadiz in the Sparrowhawk. What was there to say save that it was war, and terrible senseless things happened without rhyme or reason? The day after the 106th landed in Gibraltar word reached him that El Vencedor had come adrift in a storm and sunk with all hands. He thought of its elderly captain doing his best, and of the welcome given to the regiment by its overworked and willing crew, and it was very hard to believe that they were gone. On land, battalions suffered losses, but some were wounded and plenty of men survived. At sea a few moments could snuff out the lives of hundreds. Weather and wave, as well as war, made no sense, and it was folly to expect otherwise.
20
‘Nothing is certain,’ Hanley said, knowing that he was repeating himself. ‘He has vanished and that could mean several things.’
Miss MacAndrews looked at him with her big blue-grey eyes. Her expression was impassive and he could not read her thoughts, which only made him more awkward. Hanley wished that Pringle were here with him to take the lead. Pringle had sisters, and was more at ease in company in general. For all his bluff, cheerful manner, Billy would have known what to say. Instead Hanley sat alone with the girl in the room she and her mother used as a parlour, and he felt out of his depth.
‘Do you think he is dead?’ she said at last, her voice clear and flat.
‘I do not know.’ That was the truth, and for once reason failed to provide him with a clear answer to a question. Hanley felt himself to be a clever man, fond of toying with ideas and arguments. Soldiering itself still held many mysteries for him, but he revelled in the deception and intrigue of gathering information, finding out what the enemy was planning while confusing him as to your own intentions. It was a game, a dangerous and intoxicating game, where the stak
es were infinitely higher than at the richest table, which only added to the thrill. He had not always won, but did more often than not, and was confident in his facility for guessing the truth from poor or misleading reports, and yet he was not sure what to think.
‘I do not know,’ he repeated when the young lady said nothing and simply stared at him, no doubt trying to read his expression. ‘The French say they do not have him. Two soldiers from the foreign corps report seeing a British officer shot down, and I suspect that it was Williams.’
He had not meant to say that. It was only a guess on his part, but as far as he could tell there was unlikely to have been another officer in a red coat on that part of the hillside. Was he trying to convince himself that his friend was truly gone, and that as a rational man he should accept the truth no matter how unpleasant? Williams was an odd fish, but he was Hanley’s friend. Along with Billy Pringle and old Truscott back with the 106th, the serious-minded Welshman had become closer to him than anyone else. He felt at ease in their company, enjoying not just the conversation, but a kinship that was odd because each of them was so different. In part it was reliance, a knowledge that they would risk their lives for him and that he would do the same for them.
Hanley had never relied on others since he was a child. Unwanted bastard of an actress and a rich man, he had received a good education, but the only affection came from his grandmother. Friends were few, and came and went without any strong bonds forming. When he was older and discovered love it was an intense fire, burning brightly and briefly, and if he were honest more about his own needs and emotions than the woman’s. Such things soon passed, and most of his time was spent in competition to seem more sensitive and clever than the other would-be artists who formed his circle. With Williams and the other two there was trust and never a hint of rivalry.
‘You think he is gone, do you not, Mr Hanley?’ There was an intensity about Jane MacAndrews’ gaze that had not been there before.
‘I fear it.’ Hanley instantly regretted the words, for the girl seemed to sink, a slight drop of the shoulders the physical expression of some deeply sad and irrevocable shift in her soul. He knew how much this young lady had meant to his friend, watching with some amusement their turbulent courtship and sensing that over time his admiration was returned with growing strength.
‘But I do not know it,’ he added in some haste, although as he spoke he suspected that he really did. ‘There is still hope.’ The words were feeble and it was obvious that she knew it.
‘Thank you for your candour, Mr Hanley.’ The reply was distant and formal, and part of him was angry because she did not call out in despair or collapse into tears. Did he not mean more to her that that? A brave and good man who idolised her, and still felt himself so bound by honour that he must walk away once he learned that the girl had become rich and should not ally herself to a poor subaltern.
Hanley’s despair overwhelmed him, coming in a flood as he knew that he had accepted his friend’s death. If friendship was a recent thing, the grief of loss was newer and raw. Even the loss of his grandmother had not made him feel so low, since a guilty part of him had felt relief that he could set off to study abroad without worrying about the old lady.
He wanted to talk, and wished that Billy or Truscott were here – or Williams, he added to himself, before the absurdity of that thought struck him and the sadness bit all the more deeply. His friend was gone and would not come back, and part of his own life had gone with him. It was real, not imagination or fear, and he would not wake up from a dream to find the world restored. Hanley felt tears pricking at his eyes and wanted to throw off restraint and weep. Was it his imagination or had Miss MacAndrews gone glassy as well? The sight made him realise that he had forgotten her feelings in his own sorrow.
They were saved by the arrival of Mrs MacAndrews, leading in an excited young Jacob.
‘We have seen a cat.’ The lady offered a translation of the enthusiastic squeals and gestures. ‘Good day to you, Mr Hanley, I take it from your expression that there is no good news. Yet I trust there is also no definite bad news?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Well, that is something, and one never knows what will happen.’ She forced a smile and reached down to ruffle the little boy’s hair. ‘After all, today no one would have guessed that we would see anything so wonderful as a tomcat with a bushy tail.’
The sound of the bells was loud, carrying across the red rooftops of Seville, and Marshal Jean Soult gestured to one of his ADCs to close the window and shut out some of the noise. It was Sunday morning, and soon the Marshal of France, Duke of Dalmatia and commander of the French armies in Spain would attend mass at the cathedral with its high tower, dome and ornate decoration where the Moorish elements blended with the more recent Gothic. The draught from the window had provided a pleasant relief in the already hot chamber in the palace, and Capitaine Jean-Baptiste Dalmas had been glad of it. Portugal in November had been cold and wet, but here in Andalusia the summer still seemed to reign.
Dalmas was amused by the willingness of the marshals and generals stationed in Spain or Italy to rediscover the Catholicism they had so publicly rejected during the Revolution. The marshal’s name was really Jean de Dieu, but everyone knew he had pruned it to Jean. Dalmas wondered whether he would begin to employ his former name again, just as he had started going to mass. There were persistent rumours that a year ago the marshal had manoeuvred to have himself declared king of a conquered Portugal. Now he was effectively viceroy in the south of Spain, and relished the role. As they spoke, the grenadier and voltigeur companies of every battalion in the garrison were parading in their finest uniforms, so that they could line the road from this palace to the cathedral. A glittering staff would escort him, followed by the grandees of the city and other important men from throughout Andalusia. Dalmas was unsure whether these men would find the marshal’s piety convincing, but at least these public shows helped to ease their conscience when they supported the rule of Napoleon’s brother and his occupying armies, whose commanders were busy plundering the country. Soult was not the worst of them, but was clearly determined not to return a poorer man when he finally went back home.
‘So what you are saying,’ the marshal said impatiently to Major Bertrand, the engineer who had accompanied Dalmas to the city, ‘is that the old smuggler is stuck outside Lisbon and not going anywhere any time soon.’
Bertrand gulped nervously. ‘The Prince of Essling’ – mere majors of engineers did not refer to marshals of France and princes of the empire as old smugglers even if that is what Massena had once been – ‘has pushed the British back to within ten miles of Lisbon and the sea, forcing the enemy to shelter behind a line of fortifications. These are formidable, Your Grace, truly formidable, for apart from the fortified batteries they have blocked all routes through, digging away at cliffs to make them steeper, diverting the course of rivers …’
Soult held up a hand. ‘Yes, yes, but all that just adds up to the fact that he is not moving and not about to move.’ The marshal was forty-one, and the active life of an army commander was now beginning to lose ground to his inclination to plumpness, especially around his neck, which was today constricted by the tight collar of his blue coat. A rich pattern of gold leaf covered the collar and cuffs, and ran in a broad stripe down its front. Soult did not have the face of a strong man, but his thick eyebrows gave a force to his gaze which hinted at the powerful will of one of the ablest of the Emperor’s senior officers. If he commanded little affection there was plenty of respect, and Dalmas believed that it was well deserved.
‘The Prince ordered the army to begin realigning itself around Santarem on the fourteenth of November,’ Bertrand explained.
‘So he has gone backwards.’ Soult did not hide his amusement. The Emperor’s marshals were notorious for their jealous rivalries and hatreds, and Dalmas suspected that this was deliberate, for it did not matter much when Napoleon led them in person and imposed his iron wil
l to quash such petty bickering. With the Emperor in Paris and apparently weary of a war which dragged on interminably in Portugal and Spain, it was a weakness and one that Dalmas hoped would not prove fatal.
‘Oh yes, I know, he remains close to the enemy,’ Soult continued, ignoring the engineer’s stammering justification. ‘And he intends to stay there for weeks or months, but in itself that means nothing. What matters is whether in those weeks and months he can break through those lines and force Milord Wellington to take to his boats and sail away.’ The marshal spoke with the complacency of a man who had chased Sir John Moore’s British army into the sea at Corunna. ‘The English like getting their feet wet, probably because it rains so much in their Goddamned country.’
The marshal’s ADCs smiled dutifully. Their master was a man of few jokes.
‘The fortifications are formidable,’ Bertrand insisted, showing more spine than Dalmas expected, although not quite enough to mention that there had been no such defences at Corunna, or that the marshal’s job had been to catch the English rather than just chase them away. Some of those same soldiers were now back sitting outside Lisbon.
‘Dalmas, give me a soldier’s opinion,’ Soult said impatiently to the cuirassier officer. Even though this was a conference, not a parade, Dalmas was wearing the polished front and back plates of his cuirass. Most men dispensed with the heavy and uncomfortable body armour at any opportunity, but he did not, wearing it as a badge to show that he was a fighting soldier and not some ornamental staff man.
‘If the Prince had enough heavy guns and another thirty thousand men, then he could force the lines and beat the British if they dared to face him.’ Dalmas gave the answer readily, for it was the nub of the whole question. Bertrand looked a little surprised, but did not contradict him, and may have known that Massena had said as much himself. Marshal Ney, on whose staff Dalmas served, had a reputation as one of the boldest of all generals, and even he doubted that they could succeed with anything less. Since he and the Prince of Essling agreed on so little, it was hard to argue against their judgement on this issue.
Run Them Ashore Page 26
