Beat the Drums Slowly (30 page)

Hanley remained with the reserve, and tried his best to remember the drills MacAndrews had taught them back in England. It occurred to him that he had never before been required to give an order in battle. At Roliça he had begun the day carrying one of the regiment’s two Colours, and managing the heavy flag as he marched in the centre of the line had kept him too occupied to think much of anyone else. At Vimeiro he had taken station at the rear of the Grenadier Company. Pringle had given the orders, and he had simply obeyed like any other redcoat. Throughout this retreat he had simply followed everyone else, doing what he was told, and in truth too consumed by his own discomfort to think much about anyone else’s.

This was different. Pringle was some way away, and the company not formed up alongside the rest of the battalion and moving in accordance with the mind and instructions of someone in higher authority. His detachment looked impassive, and yet he felt them all watching him, waiting for him to give orders which could mean life or death to any or all of them.

It would have been amusing if it was not so terrifying. They were looking to him to make decisions – to him, William Hanley, unwanted bastard child and failed artist, who had never been responsible for anyone in his life. He was only in the army at all because he had no money and no other opportunity left to him.

‘God help them,’ he said softly to himself as the absurdity of it all grew.

‘Sir?’ asked Sergeant Rawson.

‘Nothing, Sergeant,’ he said, and turned away to stare to the left, so that no one would see the grin he could not suppress. In that direction there was a low hillock, somewhat beyond the farthest pair of grenadiers. Its slopes and top were covered in grey boulders only half hidden by snow. Hanley was looking at the little rise, and then saw a head wearing a shako appear. A musket flamed and then the head was hidden by dirty smoke. Two more shots followed almost immediately, and then a third.

No one was hit, but the pair of grenadiers nearest the hillock were crouching, trying without much success to find cover. One of them fired back. Pringle was at the far end of the line, a high wall, and the uneven ground prevented him from seeing what was happening. Other shots came from across the river, and now one of the grenadiers was down, clutching his shoulder.

A quick hope that someone else would see the threat and respond flickered to life and then died away. There was no one else. Sergeant Rawson’s silence had somehow gained a stronger air of expectation.

Hanley had counted four shots. If the French fought by pairs then that meant eight men. It was important to keep some reserve.

‘Sergeant Rawson.’

‘Sir.’

‘Take sixteen men. A few French have sneaked up on to the rise there. Go on and clear them off.’

‘Sir.’ Rawson raised his powerful voice to give the commands. ‘Eight files on the left will follow me! Fix bayonets.’ Amid the scraping, Hanley noticed Dobson beside him.

‘Mr Hanley, sir, the words “go on” do not become an officer,’ whispered the veteran.

Rawson took his men in line towards the hill. The French noticed the advance, and four muskets flamed. The shots went high, although one clipped the top off the plume on a man’s shako. Hanley watched them, wondering whether even now he should listen to Dobson’s advice and lead the charge himself. It was not fear which had made him send the sergeant, but the thought that he ought to stay and be ready to commit the rest of the reserve if they were needed to shore up another part of the line. He was doing his best to think before he made decisions.

Rawson halted his men.

‘Present!’ The muskets were levelled. ‘Fire!’ The shots came close together, like a brief roll of thunder. ‘Come on, boys!’ and the redcoats surged up the slope. Shots rang out from among the boulders. Hanley saw Rawson stumble, dropping the half-pike he carried as a badge of rank, but it seemed to be just a patch of ice, because the man was up again, not bothering to retrieve his weapon. Then he fell again, and did not get up.

The grenadiers swarmed up around the boulders. A whistle blew, and Hanley realised that Pringle was waving his arm to beckon him forward, and there was no longer any time to think.

‘Follow me!’ he called, and jogged forward the hundred yards to the skirmishing line. Pringle gestured at the men to line a wall. A group of several dozen Frenchmen in dark blue jackets and trousers were splashing across the river.

‘Let ’em have it, lads!’ The grenadiers fired into the enemy, forced to cluster because the ford was narrow. Several were hit, collapsing into icy water. It still surprised Hanley to see a man so animate, running, well balanced and so alive one minute, and then an instant later falling, loose limbed, just like a sack of potatoes.

The light was going, and this seemed to be the signal for the French to give up their efforts at crossing. They had heard the cannon fire again, which suggested an attempt at the bridge, but the lack of any more salvoes suggested that the attack had not come to anything. The British still fired across the river at the least sign of movement.

Sir John Moore and his senior officers and staff rode behind the firing line.

‘They’re like mastiffs,’ Sir Edward Paget said to Moore. ‘Can’t wait to slip the leash and get at ’em.’

The general nodded, but still found it hard to trust the constancy of such enthusiasm. It would anyway be of little avail without discipline to set courage to a proper purpose. He gave orders for the reserve to begin to withdraw, and take the road to Villafranca. The rest of the army should already have marched much earlier in the day. The retreat would continue, and he suspected that the French would dog them all the way. Paget’s mastiffs would have plenty of chance to fight.

As they marched back to rejoin the battalion, the grenadiers were in high spirits. Only one man had been wounded, and even he appeared to have every chance of recovery. Rawson had died on the hill.

‘Shot through the lungs,’ Dobson told Hanley and Pringle. ‘Weren’t your fault, sir.’ The big man looked the lieutenant squarely in the eyes. ‘Just bad luck. Will we catch up with the baggage tonight, sir?’ The question was to Pringle.

‘Of course, his wife. Well, widow, I suppose.’ Pringle did not know the very proper Mrs Rawson well. ‘I am not sure. Perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow.’

‘It’ll hit her hard.’ Dobson spoke from recent experience. ‘Still, she’s a good lass.’

The 106th marched the remaining miles to Villafranca under a cold starlight. Several fires burned in the town, and when they went through the main street everything was bathed in a red glow. A big house was burning, and there were more fires where broken wagons and piles of debris had been set on fire. The dead mules and horses were simply left where they had been slaughtered. Slumped forms of men lay in the alleys. No orders were given to rouse them and the regiments did not trouble to discover whether they were drunk or more permanently at rest. The 106th did not leave behind a single straggler that night, and MacAndrews was reliably informed that the other regiments in the reserve preserved an equal record.

Five miles took them to Villafranca, and then another sixteen beyond that to a cluster of ramshackle houses where they stopped and got a few hours of poor rest. There was salt beef in some quantity, hard and tinged with yellow, but the little biscuit available was worm-infested and sour. Fires were lit to boil water and soften both. Many men were too tired to wait. They ate what little they could and then huddled down to sleep. Mrs Rawson cried softly and let Dobson put his arm around her as she cradled Sal’s head in her lap.

‘P
ong!’ Private Mazey was almost screaming in frustration at the Spaniard’s inability to comprehend his own language. ‘Pong!’ The soldier was barely five foot two, and he stood up on the balls of his feet in an effort to look down on the baffled farmer. The elderly man shook his head. Impatience seethed within the Englishman, causing him to lapse back into his own tongue. ‘We want bread, you damned rogue!’ Another thought struck him. ‘And hogwar.’

Miss MacAndrews pushed her way past the watching soldiers and smiled warmly at the farmer. She had Jacob cradled in her arms. The man’s expression softened. The young woman was pretty, and as the father of six and the grandfather of a dozen or so, he was well disposed to children.

If Jane could not frame an elegant sentence in Spanish, then at least she could pronounce simple words and expressions more clearly than the agitated redcoat. ‘Bread and water,’ she explained. Enlightenment spread quickly across the man’s face, dark from long years of hard toil in the hills. Then he shrugged, doubting that he had enough to satisfy the foreign soldiers, but hoping to avoid trouble.

The stragglers had almost doubled their numbers and so halved the time it would take for the convoy to devour its own food. On the second day, Williams rode out again and returned with another twenty men left behind by the main army and wandering off into the hills to avoid the French. There were also two women, one of whom was struggling to carry a one-year-old daughter, while a boy only a few years older clung to her filthy skirts. Both women were barefoot and had lost their woollen stockings. Williams had placed each in turn on the horse as they went back to join the others, giving them a little rest. One of the men was virtually blind, another had hands so swollen that he could hold nothing. The blind man still carried his musket, but three of the others had no weapon at all.

Food for so many became a more urgent problem – greater even than keeping the baby supplied with milk. One village was generous, giving them yellow loaves of Indian corn, cheeses and wine. The senior man in another claimed that they had nothing, and simply let them break the ice on the well and draw water. Williams was away, but Groombridge refused to let the men take what was not offered. The straggle of houses looked too poor anyway to offer them much.

On the third day Williams stayed with the convoy. A German from the King’s German Legion Hussars was among the fugitives he had found the previous day. On foot he was short and bow legged, and much darker of hair and skin than he expected a German to be. Johann Brandt spoke English with a thick accent, but seemed to have a good understanding of the language and he struck Williams as a serious soldier. Sitting on Bobbie’s back, the man looked at ease, anticipating the mare’s moods and controlling her with signs that were barely visible. Williams told him to ride towards the grand road and bring back any stragglers. The hussar showed his tobacco-stained teeth as he smiled, saluted and then sent the mare straight into a canter up the gentle slope of the valley.

Groombridge looked doubtful. ‘Do you think he’ll be back, sir?’

‘Did you believe that I would come back that first day?’ asked Williams.

‘You’re an officer, Mr Williams.’ The reply was not necessarily an answer.

They pressed on, with the women in the wagon along with any of the soldiers too weary to walk. One of the draught horses went so badly lame that it was pulled from the traces and had to be shot. The private from the 32nd had been a butcher before he enlisted, although the mess he made of cutting up the carcass suggested to Groombridge that he had not been any great loss to his profession. It still provided them with meat, tough and unappealing, but food none the less. One of the team pulling the wagon suddenly shuddered, and then folded down on its knees, eyes rolled up to show the whites. They unharnessed it and dragged the dead animal free. There were still enough to keep the teams even, but all of the animals were struggling to maintain the pace.

In the early afternoon fifteen redcoats appeared at the crest and marched down to join them. The one at the rear held the reins to a pack mule and they were led by an immense corporal, who topped Williams by several inches. He stamped to attention when he saw the officer, back ramrod straight, and then snapped a salute straight from the manual.

‘Mulligan, sir!’ The report was made in a bellow. ‘First Guards.’ His jacket had the shoulder wings of the Grenadier Company.

‘Oh Gawd,’ came a faint voice from one of the soldiers behind Williams. The officer ignored it. Corporal Mulligan reported that he had been ordered to catch a runaway mule carrying the company records. By the time he had found her, the regiment had gone and even the rearguard was out of sight. Then the French appeared, and he had to shift for himself. He had been cut off for the last three days, but had come across these other men and organised them. Earlier today, they ran into Brandt, who told them about the convoy. The German had ridden on to look for more men.

‘Glad to have you with us, Corporal.’

The men were a mixture. There were two Highlanders from the 71st in ragged tartan trews, a man from the 79th in a kilt, and a smattering of men from other line regiments. One pair at the rear of the little column wore the red facings of the 106th. Williams knew the faces, but it was not until the bigger of the two men spoke that he could place them.

‘Good to see you, Mr Williams, sir.’

‘I am glad to have you, Scammell.’ The reply was not fully sincere, but an instinctive courtesy. Scammell and his usual companion Jenkins were among the incorrigibles of the 106th. Every regiment had such men, whose enlistment was usually an alternative to prison or the gallows. They stole or worse at every opportunity. Scammell had been flogged back in the summer, without in any way altering his character. It struck Williams that many of the men he was collecting may have chosen to leave the army, or fallen out through indiscipline rather than accident.