02 - Keane's Challenge (3 page)

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.

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.’

Wellington looked Grant hard in the eyes. ‘We all have much to lose. You know the situation, Grant. If we are driven from the Peninsula, then Bonaparte has all of Europe at his feet. And through Spain and Portugal he will have land in the Americas. We may rule the waves at present, but should he sign a treaty with the Americans, what then?’

‘Yes, sir. It is very grave.’

‘It all devolves upon us, Grant. The fate of the civilized world.
If Marshal Massena can beat us here –’ in emphasis he pointed to the map of Portugal – ‘if he can invade Portugal with success and make a stand and keep to it, then we must leave. From the south of Spain this time. That is to be our route of escape. From here, by way of Cadiz. We shall embark in boats for the fleet. Just as we did at Corunna.’

He gazed at the map again. ‘And the Portuguese will away to the Brazils. Those are the orders. The Cabinet believes that we cannot hold. What say you, Grant?’

‘I am with you, Your Grace. I believe we can do it.’

‘Yes, I too. I’m damned if they will make of me another Sir John Moore, God rest his soul. We merely need to make sure of certain things and then we can beat them. We must train up the Portuguese. I will not fight alongside the Spanish. Not any more, not after Talavera. The men are of good quality, sure enough, but their generals are impossible. General Cuesta in particular. Second, we must hold on to the key forts of Elvas, here –’ again he pointed to the map – ‘and Almeida, here. And finally we must make for ourselves a fortified camp. The whole of this benighted country, the entire Portuguese frontier, must become a fortress from which we can then take the initiative – to sally forth and beat the French. When the time comes. The autumn, Grant. That will do.’

Grant nodded. ‘Colonel Fletcher and the engineers have the project of the defences advancing by the day, Your Grace. The lines are rising, from the Tagus to the sea.’

‘And all that is secret, is it not? Nothing is known to the French?’

‘Nor even to our own government in London, Your Grace. Just as you instructed.’

‘Pray God then that the press in London do not get hold of it.
They are Bonaparte’s chief source and my hidden enemy. Those gentlemen do me more harm than ten thousand of Bonaparte’s sons.’

He muttered something that Grant could not make out and stared at the map for a few moments, before going on. ‘You said that Keane was on his way?’