Beat the Drums Slowly (15 page)

He lost sight of her as he cut across another bend, and then he was at the bank. Jumping down, he scrambled on to a boulder standing proud of the flood. Again there was a surge of relief as the girl came into sight. She was close, and he hoped that he would have a long enough reach as he lay on the stone and stretched his musket out.

Jane dropped beneath the surface again, then came up spluttering and saw Williams just yards away, his musket extended. With all her strength she reached towards him, struggling against the appalling weight of her waterlogged clothes. Her hands stretched up, and as her arms rose her head again went under the water, but she felt the touch of wood and her fingers closed desperately around it. Then her other hand found the musket’s butt and clung on.

Williams felt himself shifted violently to the side as the girl grabbed hold and was stopped. For a moment he feared that he would slide off the rock and end up in the river with her, drowning or freezing instead of saving. He pulled slowly, terrified that a sudden move would loosen her grip, but she came towards him and her head emerged again. Jane was close enough for him to take one hand off the musket and grab under her arm. He pulled harder now, for the current still dragged the girl away from him. Gloved hands slipped on the soaked wood and Jane lost her hold on the musket, but Williams let the weapon go and it slid into the water. His other hand was now under her other arm and despite all the wet cloth he held her tight, pulling her to the edge of the stone.

It was still a huge effort to lift her out of the water, and Williams would never have believed that the small woman could possibly be so heavy. He lifted her out and knelt, pressing her against him. Jane’s hair looked almost black as it was pasted flat against her head. She was shivering violently, and the skin of her face was icy to the touch.

Williams raised her by the arm, but after a few steps she staggered. He reached down, shifted the weight and lifted her in his arms. Unable to think of a way of getting on to the horse, he managed to loop Bobbie’s reins over a couple of fingers and led the mare as he walked up the hill to the stone hut. Jane’s grey had vanished downstream. There was also no sign of the Poles and he hoped that they had gone, especially since his musket was lost to the river.

For a while Jane clung to him, her shivers shaking him as he walked. Then she passed out and hung limply down. The shivering had stopped and he worried that this was bad sign. As he carried her into the little building her skin looked almost blue in the candlelight. Jenny had already got a fire going, but the chopped straw produced only a modest heat. The pregnant young woman moved surprisingly easily as she came to look at Jane. Jenny touched her cheek.

‘Get her clothes off!’ she ordered.

‘What?’

‘Strip her! She’ll die if you don’t warm her up. Get them clothes off and then hold her close so that she can feel your warmth. I’ll cover you with one of the blankets and that coat of yours.’

‘But …?’ he began.

‘For Gawd’s sake get on with it. I’ll build up the fire.’ She turned away, dismissing him to his task and muttering, ‘I never thought I’d have to persuade a bloody man to do that.’

Williams looked at the unconscious Jane and was no longer sure that she was breathing. He began to fumble at the buttons of her pelisse. The material was sodden, his gloves slippery, so he pulled them off with his teeth and began again. It was still difficult, for there were nine buttons on the jacket and each fitted tightly. Her dress fastened with hooks at the back, and only a few ivory buttons, so was a little easier, although he found it difficult to balance the unconscious girl and go about his task at the same time. At one point Jane stirred, made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a moan. Her eyes opened and a panicking Williams just managed to stop himself from dropping her as he prepared for an outrage which he no doubt deserved, but she did not seem to focus and quickly passed out again.

In the end it was done, and if in private thoughts he had dreamed of such a moment, his imagination had not made it like this. Fear for her safety drowned out all other emotions.

‘Not bad,’ said Jenny. She had stretched a blanket on the bare earth floor and Williams gently laid Jane down on it. Another, and Williams’ greatcoat would go on top of them. He took off his jacket, itself very wet, and then stopped.

‘Might it not be more proper if you …?’

‘Me? I’m about to have a baby in case you hadn’t noticed.’ She shook her head. ‘I’d have thought you’d jump at the chance,’ she added.

Williams got down and pulled the girl to him. There was a faint motion of breathing, but she felt so very cold that his fears for her grew strong again. Jenny covered them.

‘Sleep if you can,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep watch.’ She produced a tiny pistol from the pockets of her skirt. ‘It’s easier for me to sit by the fire than lie down these days.’ She settled down carefully, pulling the remaining blanket around her like a shawl.

Williams pressed Miss MacAndrews to him, and thought he saw the blue tint fade from her skin before he dropped into an exhausted sleep.

H
anley shook his head. A company of green-jacketed riflemen were marching down the street, so Pringle did not try to shout a response, and merely shrugged. In the gap before the next company arrived, he dashed through the mud to join his friend.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘There is no sign of Miss MacAndrews or Bills anywhere in the town. Nor does anyone appear to have seen them.’

They had marched sixteen miles by the end of Christmas Day. It had been hard going, with the road little more than a mass of mud. Time after time they stopped and waited while a bogged-down cart or gun carriage was shifted by brute force. The rain fell with barely a break and the few Spanish they saw stared at them mutely. There were no cheers of welcome for their allies. Very few of the people of Mayorga had waited for their arrival. Many of the houses had been boarded up, but shutters and locked doors had been forced by the men from the other divisions billeted there the night before. Perhaps that was why the locals had fled.

The 106th was one of ten battalions to cram into the three hundred or so little houses, so the officers responsible for quartering had simply divided the streets into ten sectors and given each one to a particular regiment. There were none of the usual chalk marks on doors allocating the place to a set number of men from a company of a particular regiment. Instead as a unit arrived its men piled into the houses twenty or thirty at a time. The heat from the small fires did little to warm them, but in time the warmth of packed bodies made the single room of most houses almost oppressively hot. There was little talk, and scarcely any singing or liveliness as exhausted men steadily consumed their cold rations. Most of the women looked worse, and even the children were subdued, staring mutely at nothing.

‘Dobson and the others have caught up.’ Hanley had seen the veteran in a corner of one of the houses, being looked after by Mrs Rawson.

‘How is he?’

Hanley was not sure. ‘Silent,’ was all that he could think to say at first. There had been something disturbing about the emptiness of his expression. Hanley thought that he had looked so very ancient, like a hollowed-out tree ready to fall. Beside him his son and young Sal kept crying in spite of all that Mrs Rawson and the other women did to calm them. The veteran appeared to take no notice, and had spoken only once, to ask about Jenny. ‘Private Hanks and his wife are not with us,’ Hanley reported. ‘No one seems to have seen them.’

‘Perhaps her time came?’ wondered Pringle.

The thought pleased Hanley. ‘A baby at Christmas. Seems appropriate somehow.’

‘Probably not to be recommended in the circumstances, for the mother or child,’ said Pringle grimly. ‘Well, we must hope that they catch us up soon. For the moment, I’ll not make any mark on the company roster.’ If Hanks remained absent for any length of time, then there would be little choice but to mark him as a deserter, liable to be flogged when he was found. His previously good conduct would count in his favour, but the slightest suspicion of turning his coat and joining the enemy would make the punishment more savage or even place him in front of a firing squad. ‘There is still time. Time for all those left behind to appear.’ His voice was fervent with hope.

‘A hell of a day.’ Hanley sighed.

Pringle clapped him on the shoulder, and suddenly felt happy. ‘Make the most of it, tomorrow might be worse!’ He threw back his head to laugh, and the mood was infectious, because after a moment his friend joined in. Some of the riflemen filing past looked at them strangely, and that only made them roar all the louder.

Mrs MacAndrews did her best to be busy, bringing some organisation to the two-storey house allocated to all the officers of the battalion. She had also been out to many of the other houses, asking after the women of the battalion. It was pleasing to see Mrs Rawson so solicitous for her dead friend’s husband and her children. Esther had realised she was not needed and moved on.

Her husband had done all required of a battalion commander, before setting out to visit the cavalry brigades and light infantry regiments as they closed on the town. At each of the brigade headquarters he asked whether they had seen a young lady mounted on a grey. Often the first answer was a facetious wish that they had as it might have brightened a drab day.

‘No word,’ he told his wife when finally he got back to the billet. ‘No one has seen Jane. Some had seen one or two officers riding on their own, but who knows whether they saw Mr Williams or someone else. Some have duties, and by the sound of things there are already a few stragglers.’

‘Is that what our daughter is?’ Esther almost wanted to make her husband angry, but neither of them was betraying any emotion, still less talking of blame.

‘Williams is a capable young man. If he has found her then he will be well able to look after her.’

‘Not too capable, I trust?’ She tried to lighten the tone.

MacAndrews gave a thin smile, remembering his own flight with Esther so long ago. He doubted they were in any position to judge, until the father in him overruled such weak and indulgent thinking.

‘At least there have been no reports of the French so far,’ he added. ‘If they are lost, then it is to be hoped that they are not at risk from the enemy. They have horses and can go faster than we will march. We may well see them tomorrow.’ The conversation was whispered in a corner of a room they shared with the Kidwells, Brotherton and a few other officers, so he could do no more than take his wife’s hand and stare into her eyes. ‘We will get her back.’

‘Yes,’ said Esther with new resolution. ‘I will not conceive of it otherwise.’

Wickham slept soundly that night. He was tired, but he had increased his acquaintance with many important men during the day and it was to be hoped impressed them with his charm and capacity. He was too fatigued, and the little town too crowded, for him to think of seeking out a meeting with Miss MacAndrews. It was probably better to leave time for the girl to vent her anger. As her rage slipped into puzzlement at why her charms had failed to draw him to their meeting, he could apologise and explain that only his duty to the army had kept him away. Wickham was as happy as a man could be, sharing a tiny and poorly lit room with three other officers from General Paget’s staff.

His good spirits carried him through the next day, when the road was as bad as ever and the rain just as constant. The Reserve Division marched for twenty miles, and Paget and his staff travelled farther, moving up and down past the marching men to keep the pace steady. Wickham guessed that he had ridden twice as far as the soldiers had walked, but consoled himself with the thought that such hardships were the price of staff work, and that in time he might move to higher rank and lighter responsibilities.

In the 106th, Major MacAndrews insisted that all officers remain with their companies unless specifically ordered elsewhere, and so Pringle and Hanley were with the Grenadier Company at the head of the regiment. The major had always emphasised long marches in training and so they were at least as well prepared as any regiment in the army, but that did not make it any more pleasant.

It was still a hard slog. Pringle noticed that quite a few of the grenadiers had toes sticking from holes in their boots, and even more had soles that flapped with each step. Private Hope and little Jackie Richards had their feet wrapped in rags as some protection. Murphy went cheerily barefoot through the mud. One of eleven children on a tiny plot of land in Kerry, he had rarely worn shoes before he joined the army.

The men grumbled as they trudged along. It was surprising how much this helped, and the mood of the company and the battalion as a whole was more resigned and in many ways happier than the day before. Word had spread that they were heading for Benevente, where there were food and stores and even the prospect of turning round and having a go at the French. It gave them an end to anticipate. After a while, the jokes became more rowdy. Hanley was amazed when someone began an ironic rendering of ‘God Rest You Merry Gentlemen!’ and for a while all of the grenadiers were bellowing the words out like a challenge to the weather and the world as a whole. Only Dobson stared blankly ahead, his mouth closed. In the end the rain won, and one by one they sank into a silence, but it still seemed a good deal less melancholy than the previous day. Hanley tried to remember the look of the men and wondered whether he could catch it on paper.