Rumours Of War h-6

by Allan Mallinson

  Your most affectionate friend,

  Kat.

  She held it until the ink was perfectly dry, satisfied with both its economy and purpose. She folded the sheet, put it in an envelope, sealed it with wax, and impressed her seal. Then she rang the bell to tell her maid to summon an express boy.

  At Belem, the other side of the city, in the Rua Vieira Portuense, Isabella Delgado removed her mask and lay down her foil. ‘Merci, maître,’ she said, slightly breathless and with a flush to her face.

  ‘Dona Isabella,’ replied the fencing master in native French, bowing, ‘it is I who should thank you, for you attack with such subtleness.’

  ‘In all things,’ said the Barão de Santarem, with a smile both rueful and proud. ‘You will stay for some refreshment, Capitaine Senac?’

  ‘I thank you, no, Barão. I must attend on Ministro Saldanha before noon.’

  ‘Senhor Saldanha? Yes, indeed. I fear he will have need of you, rather than my daughter’s mere want for recreation. A brave man.’

  The fencing master took his leave, and a lady’s maid began unfastening Isabella’s padded doublet.

  ‘It is many years since I practised the fence, my dear,’ said the barão. ‘But I too may recognize your skill. I am certain Major Hervey would say the same were he here.’

  Isabella blushed. ‘Major Hervey’s experience with the sabre is too real for him to have any regard for my sport, father.’

  The barão smiled kindly. ‘I think in that you are wrong, my dear. Quite wrong indeed. I have observed that Major Hervey is an admirer of spirit in a woman. And he is already disposed to admire you.’

  Isabella blushed the more, and lowered her eyes. The maid began unhitching the hem of her skirt, which was gathered up by hooks and eyes just below the knee.

  The barão smiled again, then shuffled off to his library.

  Isabella unfastened her hair and let it fall to her shoulders. That was something Major Hervey would never see her do, whether he were to watch her at fence or not.

  But she was hot, despite the coolness of the season; and her last riposte, with its ringing acclamation from the fencing master, exhilarated. She shook her hair loose, unfastened the top of her bodice, threw her head back and breathed deeply. And for an instant, very secretly, she imagined Matthew Hervey was there.

  The great bailey, dank and sunless, was a gloomy place except for a few hours of a summer day. The walls, fifty feet high closest to the magazine, to protect it from all but the lucky plunging shot from mortar and howitzer, put its cobbles into a semi-permanent shade, so that moss grew unchecked, and lichens turned the walls a pallid green. The parade square was momentarily silent but for Hervey’s mare pawing the cobbles.

  Dom Mateo shifted in the saddle, then nodded.

  Hervey gave the sign.

  ‘Battalion, att-e-enshun!’

  Corporal Wainwright, with four chevrons and a crown on his sleeve, took the four hundred redcoats through their arms drill. They had been proficients when he began, two days before, but not to English words of command. Now they looked to be. And at a distance of a dozen yards even a practised eye would be unlikely to notice a deception. With the Union flag and what passed for regimental colours, the masquerade was complete. Even Hervey wore red, and the plumed hat of a general officer.

  ‘Shall we see how they go, General?’

  Dom Mateo nodded, looking content. ‘Yes, indeed. They are more compelling than ever I imagined.’

  Hervey nodded to Wainwright again.

  ‘Battalion will move to the right in threes: ri-i-ight turn!’

  The movement was smartly done, the ‘colour party’ taking post in front of the first company. Hervey and Dom Mateo took post at the head of the column.

  Dom Mateo glanced over his shoulder, then gave the order. ‘Battalion will advance. By the left, quick march!’

  An Elvas jury would decide if these men could indeed pass muster as British redcoats.

  There were but a few moments of doubt: the fraction of time in which disbelief at seeing a red coat in Elvas again turned into certainty that eyes did not deceive. Red was red, after all, and none but the British wore it. There was the Union flag, unmistakable; even a fife band.

  The people of Elvas gave their verdict: ‘Viva os Ingleses! Viva os Ingleses!’

  The acclamation continued as they marched from the citadel through the narrow streets and out of the east bastion gate. In a mile or so they would come to the ground that Dom Mateo and Hervey had chosen for their stand against the invader.

  The morning was cold, colder now for being on the open road; the horses’ breath told of it. Hervey felt his toes numbing, the old Peninsular cramps. There were seven more days to Christmas, but, mercifully, no snow yet. He could not help but shiver, however, at the remembrance of that first Christmas, and how much easier their ordeal would have been if it had not been snowing. He had been so much younger then, his blood not yet thinned by the climate of the east. Was that how he had borne it, yet felt the cold so much now?

  ‘Hervey?’

  He woke. ‘Dom Mateo, I’m sorry; I was some miles away.’

  ‘I said would you ask your excellent man if he would drill the battalion in its battle place.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I want myself to dispose the cavalry and the caçadores meanwhile. In the manner we spoke of.’

  They drilled for an hour. Hervey and Dom Mateo were well pleased with what they saw, trusting that any Miguelista spies would carry back the dread news that a battalion of English Line would oppose them if they crossed the frontier.

  ‘I think we may retire to Elvas now, my friend,’ said Dom Mateo, closing his telescope. ‘Our redcoats will have good appetites.’

  ‘Beef?’

  ‘Bacalhau, I imagine.’

  ‘That would give the game away for sure!’

  Dom Mateo smiled (for all his appearance of confidence perhaps he welcomed the diversion, thought Hervey). ‘Indeed. But come now, my friend, you were telling me of the battle. You said that you saw the very moment of Sir John Moore’s falling?’

  ‘Yes, I did. But as I told you, it was so sudden a thing. I saw him thrown from his horse like . . . It was the strangest thing; a very shocking thing. I have seen the like many times since, I’m afraid to say, but still the remembrance of that moment chills me to the bone.’

  Dom Mateo rode on a little in silence.

  ‘But you did not witness his burial?’

  ‘No. It was done, as I recall, just after we stood down from arms the following morning. At the time, I was making for a ship with the others of the regiment who had not yet got aboard.’

  Dom Mateo nodded slowly, as if conjuring the scene. ‘I wish I had been there. So very fine a thing. “Not a drum was heard.” ’

  ‘Indeed. I fear we had probably lost them all by then.’

  Dom Mateo chose to ignore the remark. ‘But you were telling me, Hervey: you quit that village with the French on your heels, and made your way to the town, and then you plunged into the waves to save this villain of a serjeant?’

  To save him for the provost marshal’s men, Hervey supposed. But as best he could remember, it was merely the impulse of a man who saw another dying needlessly. It almost cost him his Reddel sabre, too, as he recalled: he’d unbuckled his swordbelt and thrown it not quite dry as he dashed through the cold spray. A bigger wave had broken square in his breast, picking him up, almost knocking him over, but he pushed through and into the swell beyond, shouting to the redcoats to help the man. One of the sailors jumped from the cutter. Some of the redcoats were hanging on to the side, out of their depth now as the oars worked against the onshore wind to keep out of the breakers, the boat altering position even as Hervey and Armstrong began ducking beneath the surface to find their man. Two redcoats lost their footing, shouting desperately, for neither could swim. Hervey and the others struggled hard to seize and pitch them into the cutter.

  It seemed an age before the
bluejacket shouted, ‘Here!’

  Hervey, Armstrong and a big Irishman who had been carrying the others’ muskets swam ten yards against the rising swell to close with him.

  ‘He’s too ’eavy for me!’

  It took three of them to hold his head above water. Sodden uniform and equipment, Hervey supposed.

  The cutter at last managed to steer to them, and then there were red and blue sleeves hauling Ellis aboard.

  ‘He’s stone dead! What to do, sir?’ shouted one of the bluejackets.

  The midshipman, a face younger even than Hervey’s, did not balk. ‘We take him to his ship like the others!’ And he turned back to the half dozen still in the water. ‘There’s room for every man, but hasten yourselves or the boat will fetch up ashore!’

  Hervey and Armstrong had already begun making their way back to the beach.

  ‘Bravo, Hervey! You are truly a noble fellow,’ declared Dom Mateo, making to slap him on the back. ‘And that corporal of yours too.’

  Hervey shrugged. ‘You make it sound more than it was.

  Anyway, the serjeant cheated the provost marshal. And do you know why he was such a weight? Every pocket of his coat and the lining itself was crammed with gold. Whether he had ill got it from the Spaniards, or else from the commissaries just as ill, I never knew. But men might have drowned on his account. I confess there were no tears from me.’

  ‘And your regiment was spared, too, its parade before the gallows.’

  ‘Just so. Later we learned he had escaped the provost marshal’s men just before reaching Corunna, and hidden among the lines of red, which must have been quite easy since there was a great mixing up of men.’

  Dom Mateo shook his head. ‘Such events, Hervey! A lifetime’s book-learning in a matter of weeks. I truly envy you.’

  ‘I believe you truly do, Dom Mateo. But events here will soon be instructive, I dare say!’

  Hervey part-shivered: events here would be the undoing of him if the rebels weren’t humbugged. It occurred to him once more that he should count himself very fortunate in having friends at court; in London and Lisbon. He might yet need every one of them.

  ‘I pray they will be instructive, Hervey. But tell me, your horses. Were none saved?’

  ‘No more horses were taken off after that evening, not to my knowledge. Of my own, my groom had taken Stella and sold her, quite contrary to orders, to one of the Spaniards in the town, which did, I confess, please me, for she was too fine an animal to be turned into carrion. She made but a very few dollars, as you may imagine, and I would have been a pauper but for the Mameluke I took at the Esla, as I told you already. The others, I fear, all perished one way or another. We had compensation of twenty-five pounds an animal when we landed, as I recall. A sorry amount.’ He shook his head, sighing. ‘The whole affair was dreadful. Dreadful beyond telling.’

  Dom Mateo looked over his shoulder at his column of tidy, disciplined redcoats. He wondered what reverses and deprivations they might stand before disordering.

  But, he told himself, theirs was not to be a test the like of Sir John Moore’s. All that his men had to do was drill like ‘that finest of instruments, British infantry’.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE RUSE DE GUERRE

  Elvas, the early hours next morning, 18 December 1826

  ‘Alarm!’

  Hervey sprang from his bed. It was the time of night when body and mind had the instincts for flight. Where was Johnson? He remembered, and cursed. The candle was still burning. He groped for his boots, then his sword and his pistols. Outside there were running footsteps on the flagstones, and orders in rapid Portuguese. They might as well have been in Dutch.

  His senses began returning as he buttoned his coat. He composed himself, thankful in a way that the test was come at last. He knew he acted on his own initiative, less and less sure of the licence given him by the chargé. But he knew what Mr Canning desired, for his intention was aptly conveyed in writing. Except that it was expressed in the conditional; the cabinet was not bound by such things, parliament even less so. In any case, he had done all he could; the rest was in the hands of the God of Battle. And in Major Coa’s meticulous staff work.

  The practice of the last week paraded before him, as it had done in the nodding moments before midnight when he had turned in. Every night for a week they had marched to the chosen ground and taken post, by moonlight or none, so that each man might do it now without the need of an order. Yesterday had been the first time in their red. Many a man would think this but another manoeuvre. Until, that is, he received his fifty rounds of ball cartridge.

  And this was no Waterloo humbugging either. The rebels had not stolen a march, as the French had done that night. Neither were Dom Mateo and his officers many miles distant at a ball. His scouts had evidently done their work well, the general’s bold insistence on sending cavalry across the border each night paying exactly the dividend for which he had invested. By all accounts still, the rebels were expecting an unopposed advance on Elvas, no doubt intending to bustle the defenders from the fortress at daybreak. That was what Dom Mateo’s spies told him, and the bishop’s informers.

  It would be a cold march to their battle positions, and a cold wait. And Hervey knew that doubts were worse when the body shivered.

  The sun came up full in their eyes as the enemy showed themselves, but it was not so strong as to dazzle. And neither did the invader look as numerous as Hervey had supposed. There was not a swarm of cavalry, and no sign of Spanish regulars, unless they, like the Elvas regiment, had exchanged their uniforms for another. The rebels marched in column, French style, so their numbers could not accurately be gauged, but there was nothing like the impression of mass he had had so often in the Peninsula those long years past. The rebel scouts had clashed with Dom Mateo’s pickets just before dawn, and they would be able to see now the long, low ridge on which the defenders had taken post. With the redcoats concealed still, it must to them look weakly held.

  Hervey watched keenly through his telescope as they began deploying into line half a mile away.

  ‘Four battalions, I’d say. Three thousand bayonets. What is behind by way of reserve I can’t say. I imagine they think the position weaker than it is, else they would have deployed more.’

  Dom Mateo looked perfectly composed as he searched with his own telescope. ‘I expect my cavalry to tell us soon. Do you see artillery?’

  ‘That is exactly what I am looking for. I think I have a horse battery, but they don’t seem inclined to come into action at present. Their commander can have a very imperfect idea of what he faces here.’

  Dom Mateo lowered his telescope and looked left and right along the line. There was not much to overawe the enemy, it was true. But they stood along a ridge, as the redcoats had at Busaco, Albuera, Waterloo and a dozen other places, and his men lay concealed on the reverse slope, with just pickets and the odd gun at the crest. So much greater would be the shock at the appearance of the redcoats when the time came.

  In half an hour the enemy was formed up for battle, the infantry in three ranks, a dozen guns (eight-pounders, Hervey reckoned) centre, in a tight battery, with a squadron of cavalry on either flank of the line. There was no knowing what troops remained in column to march on to Elvas once this advance guard had cleared the way, but the ruse de guerre, if it halted one, would halt ten thousand.

  Instead of the cannonade, however, and the drumming infantry advance, there was a quarter of an hour of inactivity.

  ‘Hallo,’ said Dom Mateo abruptly, and intrigued, peering through his telescope again. ‘There comes a parley. Shall we go and meet them?’

  Hervey nodded, and with every good expectation. A parley served their purpose well. They could have the line stand up at a safe moment, and the effect would be complete. ‘I very much think we should, General.’ He beckoned over Corporal Wainwright.

  Wainwright, conscious of his extraordinary local rank, hurried but did not run.

 
‘When you see me signal, have the whole line stand up and advance to the crest, just as we have practised.’

  Wainwright saluted and hurried back. Hervey watched, and counted himself excessively fortunate: there were many capable men in the Sixth, but none save Armstrong, Collins and Wainwright that he could trust with certainty to know what was his mind.

  They rode out to meet the parley, a dozen of them, the same as the enemy.

  Dom Mateo suddenly braced. ‘Their leader, Hervey, a major-general: I know him.’

  Dom Mateo’s face conveyed no dismay, however. Hervey wished they had a little more time; knowing something of the rebel leader might be useful.

  ‘And he knows me. It will be an affair of courtesy at least.’

  Dom Mateo’s prediction was quickly justified. It was an affair of great courtesy, observed Hervey, with much saluting, bowing and raising of hats.

  ‘Dom Mateo,’ began the rebel general, and not insensible of the red coat in the party, ‘I know your forces to be weak. I know that if you defend here then you cannot hold the fortress. I have men enough to overwhelm you here in the field, and then the fortress will be in my hands. Why would you spill our common blood to no effect?’

  Hervey struggled to understand.

  For once, Dom Mateo did not interpret. ‘Dom Jorge, allow me to present Major-General Hervey, who commands the British brigade at Elvas.’

  Dom Jorge de Sabugal looked astonished.

  Hervey saluted and held out his hand.

  Dom Jorge took it hesitantly.