Beat the Drums Slowly (8 page)

Jane turned, surprised by his sudden appearance and the familiarity of his gaze. Yet several voices sounded in hearty assent, and so she felt obliged to acknowledge the compliment with a thin smile.

‘Do you speak of war as sport, Captain Wickham?’ asked the girl, very aware that he was looking at her intently.

Jane decided it was better to draw others into the conversation. Wickham was a handsome man, with a manner both bold and highly assured. Jane’s heart beat faster with mixed excitement and fear from his obviously predatory intent.

‘Certainly – perhaps the highest field and challenge of all.’ Wickham was closer to her than any of the others, and when he dropped his voice to no more than a murmur only Jane heard him add, ‘save one.’ His gaze, which had been roving over her promiscuously, now fixed on her eyes.

Jane felt herself blush, and was again annoyed at her weakness. She barely listened as the nearest officers spoke enthusiastically of hunting as admirable preparation for warfare.

‘A good officer must naturally be a bold hunter,’ said a major, whose long jaw and yellowing teeth gave his own appearance more than a hint of the equine. ‘Do you ride to hounds, Mr Wickham?’

‘Whenever my duties permit,’ lied Wickham, whose lack of funds had prevented his keeping a stable good enough for him to excel. There was little purpose served by cutting a poor figure, and so he hunted only when an acquaintance could be persuaded to loan him a decent mount.

Wickham had turned to look at the major, but Jane knew that his next words were aimed at her. ‘I do dearly love the chase,’ he said with emphasis. ‘Whatever the distance, whatever the going, once I have a view I am not to be denied.’ He smiled modestly. ‘Although not perhaps on this poor old fellow.’ Wickham patted the gelding on the neck, and slowed its walk, letting others close around Miss MacAndrews just as her mother returned to the girl’s side.

Pleased with the brief conversation, Wickham happily chatted to some other staff men, and affected indifference to the girl’s presence. Without ever catching her eye, he took satisfaction in noticing that Jane glanced in his direction more than any other.

The monks cowered in a way that seemed abject to the French officers, and the leader of the delegation struggled to deliver his petition, making the interpreter’s job more difficult. The grossly fat man kept making obeisance and was so flustered that at one point he actually used the nickname of Malaparte. The interpreter made the appropriate change, but it was clear that the Emperor had heard and was amused by the lapse.

The room was not large, even though it formed the whole first floor of the house. Beneath was the kitchen and a few smaller rooms, and above a single stairway led to two bedrooms, occupied for the moment by the Emperor and the Prince of Neufchâtel. One side of the room was crowded with staff officers, summoned to make reports and receive orders. Two tall men stood near the back, and although neither had met before they were drawn together by the association of their regiments. Each carried a silvered cuirassier’s helmet under his right arm, hand grasping the black fur band and letting the horsehair crest hang down. Their left hands supported the hilts of their long, straight swords, held up awkwardly because they were on foot. Surprisingly one of the men, a little less tall than his colleague, but far broader in the body, also wore the cuirass itself, something which most officers abandoned on all occasions apart from parade and battle. If the man felt its weight and discomfort then he refused to show it.

‘You would never have credited it,’ whispered the taller man to his burly companion. ‘Yesterday they were cursing him with every breath as we slogged up that pass. “Shoot him! Go on, Henri, shoot the old bastard!”, “Kill him, and then we can get some rest!”, “He’s close enough, I couldn’t miss from here!”, “If he doesn’t stop and let us rest, I’ll do it any minute, I swear I will”, on and on as they waded through snow waist deep. The Emperor and Marshal Lannes clustered together with a group of us, heads down and leading them on. Not what you’d expect the master of Europe to be doing.’

‘Only if he were a different man.’

‘That is true. We made it in the end, although for the last patch they put him and most of us on to a gun carriage and dragged us up. The men got billets in the villages, warm beds, food and drink. Today I saw those same soldiers screaming out “Vive l’Empereur!” at the tops of their voices.’

The noise from the monks subsided, and since his fellow cuirassier seemed disinclined for farther talk, the taller man fell silent. There was still a degree of confusion, but the main plea was for protection for the convent buildings, and security for the relics and treasures kept there. The Emperor confirmed his existing order forbidding all plundering and any mistreatment of the local population as long as they welcomed the French and offered no resistance. He repeated some of his proclamations, reminding them that he wished only the best for the Spanish, that his brother King Joseph brought honest government in the place of corruption and decadence. If they spurned his friendship then they had only themselves to blame for the punishment they received. He even threatened to send his kind brother to another realm and take the crown for himself. The interpreter struggled to convey the menace with which this was delivered, but the suppliants were already sufficiently terrorised, for they had heard so many stories of French atrocities. If some tales had grown in the telling, they were not to know, and in any case the truth was terrible enough.

The monks were ushered out, and the Emperor and Berthier dealt with each of the officers in turn, apart from the two cuirassiers. The Emperor sat on a chair beside a table, on which a map was spread. Far bigger maps, pinned together where they overlapped, covered a good third of the floor. They waited at least five minutes after all had been done before summoning the taller officer and giving him orders to carry. The other man wondered whether he had been forgotten, but simply stood there patiently. There was an even longer pause before the round-faced Prince of Neufchâtel called to him. His uniform was a glorious confection of lace.

‘Capitaine Dalmas.’

The thickset man marched stiffly in his knee-high boots and stamped to attention. ‘Sire!’

The Emperor’s pale eyes looked at him squarely from under that famous lick of hair. As so often he was wearing the dark green undress uniform of the Chasseurs of his Imperial Guard. He pointed. ‘I remember you from Eylau.’ Dalmas nodded. ‘And before that I gave you the cross. That was at Boulogne.’ Another nod. ‘We have travelled a long way since then.’

The Emperor paused, and his chief of staff asked sharply, ‘Where is your squadron?’ It surprised Dalmas when the prince appeared to recognise the name of the village. He had never heard it before in his life until they reached it just before dawn this morning. ‘It is not on this map,’ continued Berthier, ‘but should be about here.’ He pressed his thumb into the paper.

‘Your strength?’

‘My own company, of forty-five men, and another from the Legion of the Visula with seventy-three.’

‘Horses?’

‘As good as any in the army.’ Few cuirassiers had been sent to Spain, for the big horses they rode were too valuable to suffer on the bad roads and eat the poor fodder available.

‘You think your cuirassiers suitable for detached duties?’ the Emperor interrupted. ‘You carry no carbines, so cannot fight on foot.’

‘The legionnaires have them.’ Dalmas’ tone was matter of fact.

‘Yes, the Poles are good men, why not take more of them?’

‘I trust my men. They are the best.’

The Emperor was pleased with such assurance. ‘I asked Marshal Ney for a good man, and he has sent me you.’ Actually he had asked Ney for his best man, not just the prettiest uniform on his staff. ‘I want someone who can fight like a demon and think like a thief. He may well get killed,’ he had warned.

Dalmas managed to conceal his surprise. He was a supernumerary ADC on the marshal’s staff, recommended by a wounded divisional commander unable to serve, and not one of red-faced Ney’s own protégés. Supernumeraries usually got only the difficult jobs, the ones that brought danger with little hope of glory. Silently he wondered whether he was being given a task likely to prove a death warrant.

The Emperor was pleased that his praise had not provoked unnecessary bluster. Ney may have chosen well. ‘I have a task for you …’ He began by explaining the wider situation. With Madrid in French hands, the Spanish armies almost all routed and the British in retreat, the French had been gathering for a new invasion of Portugal and southern Spain. In the last days he had learned that the British were not in retreat, but still moving forward. ‘I do not know whether to call it courage or folly, but either way we have a chance to destroy them. All of the forces near Madrid, including my Guards, are now moving north as fast as they can. Marshal Ney is coming to join us and Soult is already there. Some of Junot’s men, back from Portugal, are on their way to support the drive.

‘This is what will happen.’ The three men knelt on the floor – an awkward posture for Dalmas in his high boots – crawling over the maps as the Emperor explained the choices facing Sir John Moore and his own moves to counter them. The British must retreat. The route to Portugal was closed so they must go to the north-west coast and one of the Spanish ports – probably Corunna or Vigo. His own armies were swinging round in a wide arc, rather than rushing headlong at the enemy. The Emperor talked of the ground, of the few roads able to take an army, the mountains they cut through and the rivers and bridges – especially the rivers and bridges.

‘I may cut off the English at Benevente. The odds are sixty-five to thirty-five in my favour, but much depends on when General Moore realises that I am coming. If we do catch him there then it is probable that you will not have a chance to do very much.’ Dalmas was to take his mixed squadron on an even wider loop to the north-east. He was to avoid any contact with the British, but try to get behind them. Marshal Soult was ordered to give him a company of infantry, a capable engineer and more cavalry squadrons if he wanted them. His force was to get behind the enemy. If possible – and the Emperor believed this to be unlikely, but worth the attempt – get behind their columns and destroy a bridge to slow them down so that they would be caught. More probably, his task would be to find and take a bridge that would allow the French to envelop any position where the English tried to stand. In short, he was to help keep them on the run.

‘It is not a duty for which specific instructions are appropriate. I need a man who can use his judgement.’

‘Sire.’ Again it was pleasing that there were no usual protestations of determination. The captain simply stood up, and nodded.

‘Good. I know that I can trust you. I only wish that the English army was three times the size. If one hundred thousand English mothers had to mourn the loss of their sons then we might have peace at last.’

Dalmas barely remembered a world at peace. He had been a soldier now for ten years, far longer than his spell as a schoolteacher in St-Omer. A conscript like almost everyone else, he had discovered that he liked the army, and thrived on the excitement of war. He had also discovered a talent for the business, and so he had risen through the ranks and become an officer. His anticipation of farther advancement remained fierce. This was an opportunity to win the favour of the Emperor himself, who never failed to reward a good soldier. Dalmas would do his best to win that favour. The prospect of peace could look after itself.

He stood and stamped to attention. Helmet still under his arm, he bowed rather than saluted. As he left, the Emperor was already dictating a new set of orders for one of the marshals in the south of the country.

T
hat evening Williams paid a call on Dobson and his family, as part of his round checking on the company. Dobson and Sally, their children and Hanks, along with Sergeant Rawson and his wife, occupied one of two ground-floor rooms in the little stone house on the edge of the hamlet. The other married grenadiers and their families were in the only other room, which did not have a fireplace, and so the wizened Spanish woman who lived there and her three small children watched the British visitors warily from a corner they maintained as their own.

The veteran sat in some state, bolt upright on a clumsily made wooden chair, smoking his clay pipe. The room was gloomy, and since there was no chimney the air was full of the heavier smoke from the main fire. Only a single candle stub perched in the neck of a bottle gave any addition to the red light.

Williams felt his eyes smarting as soon as he went in. Rawson, always a formal man in spite of his close association with the company officers through his duties, sprang to his feet. His jacket was undone and he began furtive attempts to fasten the buttons. Dobson’s son, a drummer, who wore a white jacket with red cuffs and collar as a distinction, also stood up, although less steadily. His father had let him join him in his daily tipple, as a mark that it was soon to be Christmas, and he was approaching his fifteenth birthday. The rum, combined with the heady atmosphere of the room, had left him more than a little light headed.

Dobson himself made no move, since for the night this was his home and he knew that the officer would not expect formality. He nodded.

‘Good evening, Mr Williams, sir. Welcome to our humble abode.’ When Williams was still a volunteer he had served as Dobson’s rear rank man, standing behind him in formation, loading and firing past his shoulder. Front and rear rank men depended on each other and the veteran had made it clear that he expected his to be up to the mark.