Carr turned slightly.
“They won’t find a single stick left in the place that’ll give any kind of fire, but good luck anyway.”
He looked up at Tavender, still mounted.
“Now. Shall we?”
Tavender dismounted, gave his reins to Baxter and then followed Carr over the wide street. Carr held up his arm for Tavender to stop as Carr peered around the stones steps. He then placed his foot on the first and began to ascend.
“All’s well.”
He mounted the steps and Tavender followed, whilst looking across to the distant fields. Once at the window both used their telescopes, but Carr gave the verdict.
“Still there, as per this morning, but I’d say fewer. It seems that they are on the move and this is the last of them. If they continue to take their leave of us, then Erskine wants to know, so send back a messenger, in fact send one every half hour. This is critical.”
He paused.
“You are clear?”
Tavender nodded, but then Carr stood facing him, for some long moments, looking directly into his eyes. It was time for some plain speaking,
“I’m told that you arrived uninvited at my wedding! Never had you down as that much of a bad loser. You could have wrecked Jane’s day entirely. If you’d all got into the Church!”
Tavender gave no answer. He knew that this was ground for an argument on which he was certain to lose. Carr waited, whilst Tavender stared back, but, when nothing came, he moved on.
“It would seem, Lucius, that there exists some kind of issue between us. If there is, then it needs to be resolved. One way or the other.”
Tavender met his gaze.
“You mean a duel?”
“It may come to that, but it would ruin us both for the Army. You know Wellington’s orders about duelling.”
“If not that, then what? Some kind of brawl?”
“I’ll meet you in the ring, if needs be.”
“It should be an honourable and properly conducted duel, Carr, but judging by what I hear from Templemere, any kind of contest with you, ends up as a brawl fit only for the gutter.”
Carr was not drawn, but his temper did surface.
“Templemere found out, as you will, if you choose, that when I’m in a fight, I fight! I’m an Infantry Officer, Tavender, and that’s how it has to be when you’re stood toe to toe and you want to stay alive! So, he has no cause for complaint, he knew who he was taking on.”
He paused.
“So, if you consider that there is something between us that needs to be settled, let me know. Spain’s a big place, we can find somewhere, but we’d need to be alone. No Seconds, none of the ritual. Just a fight! Me and thee! Right up close!”
He paused, but then spoke in a quieter tone.
“On the other hand, you may see fit to consign all to the past, and keep it there, whatever it is that’s stuck in your throat. That’ll suit me just as well, I’m a married man now and I want to get home and spend a life with my family.”
He turned for the door, but half turned as he walked on.
“I’ve no problem with you as a more than halfway decent Officer.”
With that he left and hurried back through the streets now crowded with 16th Troopers. Somehow he felt very much at peace.
oOo
Carr was dozing contentedly in Jane’s arms, when the arms suddenly became very masculine and violent and he awoke to find Captain Lord Carravoy bending over him, shaking him awake.
“Henry, we’re moving forward.”
“Charles! Thought I’d gone to Heaven, then I woke up sure I’d died, to find myself in the Other Place!”
Carravoy ignored the sarcasm.
“The Peer’s sending the whole of Spencer’s forward, around Sobral.”
Carr sat up and reached for his sword.
“And the French beyond Sobral?”
“Gone. A message has come back from Tavender.”
“Tavender! Then it must be true!”
Carravoy ignored that sarcasm as well.
“Spencer is sending the whole of Erskine’s down the road.”
Carr stood to buckle on his sword.
“Who told you this?”
“Major O’Hare, who sent me to wake you.”
“Right, so Wellington’s finally decided to push onto the French, even though they began their retreat yesterday! We’ve been on a one hour alert for God knows how many days and so now we’re finally going to use it.”
“So it would seem.”
Carr nodded, but did not leave the billet just yet. Instead he took the time to face him.
“Charles! I’ve never properly thanked you for telling it straight at that enquiry. You played a straight bat and I’m grateful.”
Carr held out his hand and Carravoy took it, but only briefly. Although his face was blank, he did nod an acknowledgment. Carr said no more and hurried out to see the whole of the 105th assembled on the road and what he took to be the whole of the 16th Light Dragoons ahead on the same road but disappearing over the ridge to Sobral. Luckily he soon saw O’Hare.
“I’m told we’re moving up. At last.”
O’Hare nodded.
“Don’t be critical Henry. When you move an army, you need to know where. He’s only just found out, according to Erskine, which road Massena’s on. He’s up for Santarem.”
“And we’re going through Sobral?”
“Yes. Our column straight through, the 50th across the fields to our right, the 92nd to our left.”
“The Rifles?”
“Already through and beyond Sobral. As a screen.”
“Where do you want me?”
“Up ahead, with the Grenadiers.”
Carr immediately thought, ‘I haven’t seen Carravoy in months, now twice in one day’, but this he did not utter, instead he was more concerned with his creature comforts.
“Right, I’ll get my pack and greatcoat.”
He ran back into the billet to see Morrison packing up.
“You’ve heard we’re moving?”
“Yes Sir.”
“Before I did, it would seem.”
“You were fast asleep, Sir. Talking about someone called Jane.”
Carr could not prevent himself from grinning.
“My wife, Morrison. But enough of that, where’s my pack and greatcoat?”
“On the back of the door you just came through, Sir.”
Carr peered behind him to see both.
“Right, yes, well done Morrison. Carry on.”
“Yes Sir.”
Carr had to run to the head of the 105th’s column, which was already moving, and there he found Carravoy and D’Villiers. Whilst buttoning his greatcoat, he turned in greeting.
“Gentlemen. Some events, at last.”
“Sir.”
The greeting came from D’Villiers, but Carravoy said and did nothing. They marched on in silence; Carr speculating on the days ahead, Carravoy and D’Villiers in shock and wonderment at the state of Sobral, even though, as though from the sky above, some of the citizens had returned and had begun the process of clearing up, even repair. It did both Grenadier Officers good to pass the sorry final house and begin the straight road that led Northeast, enabling them to see their brother Battalions on either side, the 50th and the 92nd. Carr was, as usual, thinking military, concluding that there must be good going over the bare fields, because both were keeping pace with the 105th on the easy road. Half a mile on, which confirmed Carr’s reconnaissance, they began to find the detritus of the French retreat, mostly plundered but abandoned items that were either too big or too heavy to carry. It was at the very first hamlet that they came to, Valverde, that it began, the horrors of following a retreating French army. Here, and also on the road after, the 105th encountered dead French soldiers, stragglers picked off and murdered, each with a deep axe wound in their head. When they came up to the next village, Carnota, there were some lucky French still alive, these lucky enough t
o have been overtaken and captured by the single Company of the 60th Rifles. They had been guarded by them until the main column came up and then the Riflemen hurried away to catch up with their comrades now far ahead.
However, in Carnota it was worse, for here the French had found civilians who had made the appalling mistake of returning to their homes, thinking the French were now very much elsewhere. All were dead and many showed the unmistakable signs of torture, obviously inflicted to reveal the whereabouts of food. Here a rest was granted, but many buildings could not be used for any form of shelter for they contained the noisome remains of whole families, their bodies revealing the obvious way that they had been killed, either by a bayonet thrust or their skulls smashed with a heavy musket butt. Whilst the few French prisoners, all near to death, pleaded for food, not one scrap was given. Erskine came to Lacey, as it was his Division that was now all around the village.
“What to do?”
The subject was obvious. Lacey replied, his face grim and ashen.
“Mass grave and mark it to give any left from this tragic place somewhere to mourn? Or put them all in one house and burn it down.”
“That’s quickest. We are in pursuit, after all.”
He paused.
“There’ll be more, Lacey. You know that.”
“Sir. I heard of the same from Major Carr, when we were in Sicily. He was still a Captain then.”
“Can I leave it with you?”
Lacey nodded.
“You can, I’ll get Carr onto it.”
Carr was as livid as anyone at what they had found and simply gave Carravoy the direct order, so that when they marched out of the village, it was through the acrid smoke of a fierce house fire on the furthest edge. Now on the road, no-one felt any sympathy for the murdered French frequently found at the roadside, each with the telltale axe wound in the back of their head. Many took the trouble to spit in their direction.
Sedgwicke and Albright rode their cart, placed between the rear of the 105th column and the Followers, Albright staring at the boards between his feet, mumbling unintelligibly. Sedgwicke looked at him with some concern, the cause of his depression was obvious, but all he could do was explain what they had seen, in the forlorn hope that it would help.
“We’re following a defeated and starving army, Sir. ‘Twas ever thus.”
Albright barely lifted his head.
“But it’s utterly medieval, Private. These are men from our own European civilisation, this is something from another age, from another ……. another……….. way of doing things! These are all God’s Creatures, made in God’s Own Image.”
“You are right, Sir, but as I say, we are following starving and desperate men. The French live off the land, Sir, they don’t get supplied as we do. If civilians cannot provide them with the sustenance they need, then, well, they take revenge. Even if they gave, the French still think they’re holding back.”
Sedgwicke hoped that his explanation would help, but he knew that it was unlikely, especially as he also knew that, inevitably, more was to come, possibly worse. The road they were taking had obviously been used by the French, for it was strewn, not only with abandoned plunder and equipment, but also with the bodies of mules and horses, dead from want of forage. French dead also added to the charnel house they passed through, all with their heads misshapen, speaking the story that they were stragglers who had finally lain down to die, but had been despatched by the local peasants using a large rock. Flocks of crows helped themselves to the dead flesh, both human and animal. Every house and hamlet was destroyed to the point of obliteration, each no more than a collection of wreckage along the way.
It was no better in the next large village, Alenquer, set deep within its river valley. The 16th Light Dragoons, in the lead, had passed straight through, as had The Rifles, leaving Erskine’s Brigade to arrive in the near dark, which was beneficial considering the sights that awaited them there. All around were the dead of two nations; French murdered swiftly, some beaten to death, and with them many murdered Portuguese, most thrown into the deep river bed. Amazingly, in some alleyways were some French soldiers, more dead than alive, which had probably saved them, being too starving and ill to move, they more resembled corpses. These were thrown unceremoniously onto mules, which ended the life of several, but those who survived were laid out before the Town Hall, where Medical Orderlies did just enough to keep them alive, making the attempt if they had a reasonable chance of surviving. The dead civilians were gathered, including those in the river and brought also to the Town Square to be laid out alongside the dying or recovering French. Sedgwicke could not keep Albright away from the harrowing sights, and so, after their evening meal, the Battalion Chaplain toured the rows of dead, his arm raised and outstretched to throw forward the weak and yellow light of the lantern he carried. As he moved he recited in mixed up fashion whichever lines of whichever prayers came to mind. He returned to their cart and immediately found their bottle of rum, intended for warming purposes, but he used it to drink himself into a stupor. With the morning he remained in a catatonic state, unable to rise or walk. Now very anxious, Sedgwicke hurried into the main camp to encounter Major O’Hare.
“Sir, I need your help, please. It’s Chaplain Albright, I fear that he has suffered some kind of breakdown, Sir. Caused by the dreadful things that we have seen on our way here.”
O’Hare frowned.
“What sort of state is he in now, Sedgwicke? Is he still alive?”
Sedgwicke nodded.
“He is, Sir, yes, but he drank a whole bottle of rum last night, but he’s more than ill from just that, Sir.”
“You say! Well, we’re moving out in half an hour, so get him into that cart of yours, get him fed if you can and then hope for the best. What else?”
O’Hare moved on, he had more urgent business, leaving Sedgwicke, in truth, still stood unknowing as to what to do. However, luck was with him when he saw Colour Sergeant Deakin in the distance and so Sedgwicke ran over, but, with him now so breathless, Deakin spoke first.
“Hello Old Parson, what’s bidding you into a run?”
Sedgwicke took a deep breath.
“It’s Chaplain Albright. He’s suffered a kind of mental collapse. Almost certainly from what we saw here yesterday.”
Deakin frowned.
“And what we’re likely to see today! Where is he?”
“By our cart.”
“Mental collapse you say. Right. There’s nothing for it, but to get him into his cart and get him on the road, with the rest of us. Then pray that the Good Lord will come to his aid.”
He looked around to see the strongest, Saunders and Solomon.
“Zeke. Nat. Go with Parson here. The Chaplain’s in a bad way and needs loadin’ into his cart. Be sharp, we’ll be marchin' in a few minutes. Best take George there, too.”
Sedgwicke was immediately off, followed by the three. They found Albright slumped against a wheel, making inroads into another bottle. Without ceremony, Sedgwicke pulled it out of his hand, just as the three pulled him upright, if not to his feet. Then, with Solomon in the cart to take his arms, he was hauled in, then his legs were bent up and the tailgate closed. Saunders took the bottle from Sedgwicke, took a long pull and then passed it to Solomon, who did the same and then passed it to George Tucker, who imitated the other two before returning it. As they turned to leave, it was Saunders who spoke his thanks, of sorts.
“Handy job that, Parson. If you’ve got any more like that, come to us first.”
With that, Sedgwicke quickly threw into the cart their few camp possessions and harnessed the mules. From the cart there came not a sound, not even as he whipped on the mules to join the end of the 105th column. The square was a sorry sight, the only cause for optimism being the few Portuguese who had come down from the hills, these now preparing the dead for burial. Of the French wounded there was nothing to be seen. Sedgwicke spoke a small prayer and then set the mules for the hill that led out of the
town.
Crauford’s Light Division had arrived into Alenquer at the dead of night and had then moved on after a brief rest. They were to be Wellington’s advance guard and were out on the single road to Santarem long before Spencer’s Division. However, furthest up the road, even beyond them, were the 16th Light Dragoons, on the road but often forced off, such was the clutter and jumble of corpses, abandoned vehicles, some wrecked, and a multiplicity of rubbish. The bodies were now mostly dead Frenchmen, their animals having expired soon after being required to become beasts of burden beyond Sobral. The 16th had ridden through the night to try to make contact and now all the 16th Troopers rode in subdued silence, not just from lack of sleep, but mostly because all had memories too fresh and too harsh for any form of comradely chatter. They had seen Alenquer, but the next settlement, Azambuja, entered at dawn, had been even worse, because of the many dead civilians and the almost complete despoliation of what had been a peaceful and well-appointed town. Now, mid-morning, the 16th were taking their turn as the leading Regiment of Anson’s Cavalry Brigade, with the 1st Hussars KGL immediately behind. Anson rode at the head of the column, with Colonel Withers and Major Johnson in close attendance. Tavender’s Squadron led the Regiment and so he was close behind. After two hours riding, Johnson dropped back.
“Lucius. All the signs are that we are catching up with the French. Not least that we are overtaking many that are more alive than dead. Now we’re coming up to stragglers who simply haven’t been able to keep up, rather than not move at all. Expect yours to be in action first.”
Tavender nodded.
“Thank you, Sir.”
However his thoughts were much less than charitable. ‘What was the point of that? I’m still on the same road, still behind you!’. However, he was wrong. Within five minutes a party of scouts returned and soon after Johnson turned in his saddle.
“Lucius! Take yours off to the right. Keep a close line, but pitch into whatever you see. Vigurs is going off to the left with One.”
Tavender raised his arm and then pointed right, for his Squadron to climb the slope above the road and reach a point of vantage where he could see that the road ahead was indeed populated by French, not a dense column, but more a collection of very mobile marauders and stragglers. Over to his left, beyond the road, was a hamlet of some kind, but Tavender’s duty lay with the loose group on the road, immediately to his front. He turned in his saddle.
The Plains of Talavera Page 69
