02 - Keane's Challenge (17 page)

Grant smiled knowingly. ‘That you may, Keane, that you may.’

Grant showed him out, closing the door carefully behind him, but Keane had not gone more than a few paces and was about to descend the staircase when he was startled by a cough from his left. A figure in a red coat came from the shadows.

‘Major Keane?’ Major Cavanagh smiled at him.

‘Captain Keane, sir.’

‘Of course. I was forgetting myself. Or should I say, perhaps, anticipating the future.’

Keane was unimpressed by the clumsy manoeuvre, intended to woo him over to the opposition camp.

‘You have not had any opportunity as yet to draw the enemy into battle?’

‘No, sir. But please be assured that it is paramount in my mind.’

Cavanagh gave him a fatherly pat on the shoulder. ‘I shall rest in that knowledge, Captain Keane, just as you may rest in the assurance of advancement when that day comes. We need a battle, Keane. Now.’

With that, Cavanagh turned and walked towards the doors to Wellington’s rooms. Keane turned back to the staircase and walked from the building.

He made his way back through the village, his mind in turmoil. Cavanagh had not upset him. The man was a buffoon, and now Keane knew that his future, if he had one, lay with Wellington. Rather, he pondered the situation with the Portuguese. It was bad enough that they could do nothing about the villagers. But now to be told that he must personally supervise further operations against the peasants? It was too much. Of course he deplored anything that would bring innocent people to penury. But that was not his worry. What really concerned him was that it would be British soldiers, his own men included, who would suffer on account of the policy. He did not believe that Wellington or his staff had any real understanding of what was happening out in the countryside. He had seen it. Had seen the expressions on the faces of the villagers. He knew just how desperate they were and what they would do about it; and what revenge meant in this country of saints and shrines and superstition and vendetta. Before long it might lead to a fullscale rebellion, and then where would the army be? Fighting the French on one side and its erstwhile allies on the other.

Other thoughts preyed upon his mind. There was Pritchard.
Of course he had discovered no more about him, and now all the facts seemed to indicate that the man was dead. But Keane was still no clearer as to why, nor who might have killed him. Grant and Wellington seemed to have bought into the story that he had blown himself up, and perhaps that was what Morris had told them. Who knew? He might be right. And why tell them so if he was not certain. Which brought him to Tom Morris.

This was the real worry. More than anything else. He could not dislodge the spark of doubt that was now lit in his mind against the man who for years he had counted as his best friend. But there it was. Nagging away like an old sore. How could Morris be sure that Pritchard had blown himself up? They had not properly discussed it, and that in itself was strange. He wondered if the time he had spent alone had changed his friend. Certainly, he told himself, Morris was no traitor. He was as loyal as he to the Crown and the army. But what did he know that Keane did not. There was something, some secret Morris had not told him and that he knew he must find out.

It struck him that it might have to do with whatever it was he was doing in Lisbon. His friend had never before spoken of having any business interests in Portugal. Keane wondered what it might be.

The evening air was growing cold as he entered the house which had been their billet previously. To his delight he learnt that the men had found it empty and reoccupied it as if it were their own.

They had got a fire going in the grate and were cooking something over it in a huge pot. Whatever it was, it smelt palatable enough and Keane guessed that it might be Gabriella’s work. She was sitting close to the fire warming her hands and he noticed, not for the first time in recent days, that her face
looked drawn and she did not greet him with her usual smile. He guessed that it must have something to do with recent events. She came from peasant stock and he knew that she had reacted badly to the deaths of the villagers and their taking the prisoners to Celorico for trial. Thinking that perhaps it might change her mood, he spoke to her quietly. ‘The villagers will not stand trial.’

‘No trial?’

She looked alarmed and Keane realized why. ‘No, no, don’t worry. They will be set free. Very soon.’

She looked up at him and smiled. ‘Thank you. Thank you, captain. I am sorry for this. It is a bad business for us.’

Keane, not wishing to disabuse her of the idea that their freedom had been his doing, merely nodded and placed a hand upon her shoulder. He wondered whether any of the others had heard and hoped they had not. Archer was sitting in a far corner close to Leech, who was lying on a makeshift camp bed, covered with a blanket. Keane walked across.

‘I have no wish to offend you or to cast doubt upon your skills as a physician, Archer, but are you sure he would not be better cared for in the hospital?’

‘No, sir, I am quite sure. He would only catch a pestilence in going into that place. Believe me. He is better with us. Besides, his fever has just abated and his wounds are clean. Better to be struck with rocks than with ball or shot.’

Keane settled himself down in a chair and placed his boots upon a low table set in front of it. ‘I shall need two of you to accompany me to headquarters tomorrow before we leave. I have a package to transport back to the camp.’

Ross spoke. ‘Tomorrow, sir? Then we are not staying any longer?’

‘No, sarn’t, whatever you might have hoped, it’s back to Don Sanchez and the hills for us in the morning. That, it seems, is where we do best. We’re to collect another command.’

‘More men, sir? You’ll need another weight of gold at your shoulder before long.’

‘I shouldn’t get too excited, Ross. My new command is a unit of Ordenanza. The militia. God knows what they’ll look like or how they’ll fight.’ Realizing what he’d said he shot a glance at Gabriella, but she was intent on the cooking.

The others were seated around the large single room that had acted as the principle room of the simple dwelling, whose inhabitants had been a shoemaker and his family.

Silver had discovered the cobbler’s tools and his lasts and was busy investigating how they might best be used. He looked up at Keane. ‘Need your shoes mending, sir? I’m sure I could manage it. Not really much different from working a wood knife.’

Keane had seen Silver’s skill with the wood knife. Before joining the army, he had spent years behind the mast in the Royal Navy, and the long sea journeys had been whiled away in such things. His hands, although they may have looked to most people like shovels, were remarkably sensitive when it came to delicate work.

Keane knew the importance of sound footwear, particularly here in the Peninsula. His own boots he kept in good repair and liked to carry out routine inspection on his men’s footwear. In recent weeks, though, not surprisingly, he had been remiss.

‘That’s a kind offer Horatio, but my own boots are fine. You might ask the others, though. We all need to be well shod.’

Silver called out. ‘Garland, how are your shoes?’

Garland looked up from the carbine which he had been
cleaning for a good twenty minutes. ‘What? What about my shoes? What do you mean, Silver?’

‘How are they?’

‘They fit me, don’t they?’

‘Yes, but how are the soles?’

‘Same as the rest. Made from leather.’

Silver shook his head and laughed. ‘What about you, Will?’

Will Martin shook his head. ‘I had these off a dead man just two weeks back. You recall. That Frenchie we passed lying at the side of the road. You remember. Looked a proper sight. Head half eaten away by crows. Perfect fit they are, and in good fettle.’ He wiggled his feet in proof.

Silver was considering whether he should ask Heredia, when he saw that he had crossed the room towards the fire and was talking to Gabriella. For a moment he stopped fiddling with the cobbler’s knife and watched the two of them talking in the flickering firelight as she continued to stir the stewpot. Heredia was clearly in the middle of some sort of explanation. He was gesticulating with both hands to impress a point on her. Silver stiffened and Keane glimpsed it.

Gabriella responded and lifted her left hand in emphasis. Then Heredia seemed to make another comment and Gabriella replied with a yell, almost spitting into his face. Silver looked up to see Heredia returning the insult and then she was at him, her hands scratching at his face. The trooper went for her and struck her on the cheek, sending her reeling. She rocked on her seat, missing the fire by inches. But Silver was up now and diving across the room towards Heredia.

Keane was suddenly aware that the man still held the cobbler’s razorsharp tool in his hand. He jumped up and tried to interpose himself between Silver and Heredia, but the latter
had already jumped back and was looking for a weapon of his own. He found it in the leg of a chair which one of them had broken up for firewood and brandishing this was ready when Silver struck. The cobbler’s knife flicked through the air and caught Heredia on the hand holding the makeshift bludgeon. He yelled and aimed a blow at Silver’s head that caught him on the shoulder. Silver staggered and Keane took his chance. As the knife came up again, he pushed between the two men, knocking Heredia to the floor with a blow of his arm while at the same time grasping hold of Silver’s rising arm in a vicelike grip. Silver dropped the knife to the floor and Keane could see the fury in his eyes. Heredia pushed himself up from the floor and for a moment Keane thought that he might attack him. But, realizing it was Keane, he stopped himself.

Keane held them apart. ‘What the devil’s going on? Both of you, stop this, now. Heredia, drop that. Silver, if I see you reaching for that knife, I’ll knock you out faster than you can move. What do you think you’re doing? Explain yourselves.’

Silver spoke first. ‘It’s him, sir. He’s always staring at me. And at her. You saw, he hit Gabby. On the face. No one does that to my girl and gets away with it. Bastard.’

Heredia replied, ‘She deserved it. She called me a murderer. Said I had betrayed my own people. She talks shit. She’s from the gutter and she should go back—’

Keane interrupted. ‘Heredia, hold your tongue. That’s no way to speak of anyone’s wife. What did she accuse you of?’

‘She said that I had killed those villagers. The ones who went for Leech. That I shouldn’t have touched them. They were my people. That we were wrong. I only did what I thought was right. They might have been my countrymen, but what they did was wrong. They stained the honour of our country.’

‘So you killed them?’

Heredia nodded.

Keane turned to Silver. ‘I can understand your rage, Silver. I might have done the same. But we are a unit. We must act and fight together. If we begin to fight, to argue, with each other, then we cease to be effective. I cannot have this.’

Gabriella was sitting beside the fire, holding her cheek where Heredia had hit her. Still watchful of the two men, Keane turned to her. ‘What did you say to him?’

She looked up at him with eyes filled with anger. ‘I said that he was a traitor to his country. That he should be ashamed. I know what he was doing in the fields. I saw him return. I know what he did. To do that was wrong. They were poor peasants just trying to defend their rights.’

‘But you must see that to have done what they did – to have executed those men and almost killed Leech – it goes beyond human decency. We cannot allow it. However badly they might feel. If they had a grievance, they should have come to us with it. That is the way. Not taken the law into their own hands. If we all did that, then all would be chaos.’ He realized as he said the words that he himself had taken the law into his own hands by killing the villager, but watched to see if she had understood. She said nothing.

Keane sighed and shook his head. ‘You must resolve this. Now or later. You choose, but the sooner the better. You will not fight a duel. Both of you are too valuable to me to lose one. But you may resolve it by a fight if you wish. Fair and square. A fist fight. Garland can preside. You agree?’

Neither of the men said anything.

‘Agree?’ It was not a question.

They both nodded. This, thought Keane, was the last thing
that he needed. He had suspected that the relationship between the two men had long been strained. Heredia, despite being only a
sergente
of the Portuguese army, still came from a higher class than Silver’s wife, a former prostitute. Such things, Keane knew, from his own background in the class- and religion-ridden mire of Ireland, ran deep. All that it had taken was one event, and the incident at the village had been enough. Now the only way to resolve it and to avoid having one kill the other was to satisfy honour in a fight. He hoped that would suffice.

Silver spoke. ‘Can’t do it here, sir. We might get picked up by the provosts. Best to wait till we’re back at Sanchez’s camp, isn’t it?’

Keane realized that he was right and also that their fight might provide a spectacle for the guerrillas and show them that the army was about more than uniforms and drill. That his men at least were capable of fighting hand to hand and also that they stood by their principles. He knew of course that, given the stance Sanchez and his men had taken at the village, it would not endear them to Heredia. But in truth he expected Silver to win and knew that the cultural differences between the Portuguese trooper and Sanchez’s men were anyway probably too wide to bridge.

‘Yes, Silver, I dare say that you’re right. Heredia, you agree? When we get back to the camp you may have your fight. Until then I wish to hear no more of this.’

Both men nodded and Silver went to attend to Gabriella, while Heredia slunk away into the shadows to nurse his cut hand.

Keane sat down and took a deep breath. He looked across to Silver and Gabriella and suddenly envied their closeness. It
occurred to him that this too might be something which had affected Heredia. Perhaps the man was simply jealous that Silver had found a companion to share his lot. Heredia had always been quiet about his personal life and kept his thoughts to himself. In Keane’s experience those were the ones to watch. The quiet men. The ones who nurtured resentment or whose minds had been addled by what they had seen in battle. He remembered one man when he had been a lieutenant in the Inniskillens. A deeply religious man who would read his prayer book every day. A bible-thumping Ulsterman named Armstrong. He had been a fine fighter in the heat of battle. But when they were out of the line he had retreated into himself.