Flashman's Escape (11 page)

“Why do you ask?” enquired Guthrie as he efficiently examined my injuries.

“I saw him being operated on. The orderlies with me had to help hold him down.”

“Ahh.” Guthrie grinned. “Bit shocking when you first see that one, isn’t it?” Without waiting for an answer he continued: “That is Cartwright’s kidney stone patient.”

“Kidney stones. Are they fatal?” I asked.

“Not immediately, but they are very painful.” His keen eyes looked into mine. “If you are alert enough to be interested in such things then I think you are ready to be moved to Lisbon. You can complete your recuperation there.”

Three days later I was loaded onto a wagon train for Lisbon. By then Cartwright’s patient had died of infection and I had made a decision: if I ever suffer from kidney stones, I will wait until the pain becomes unbearable and then, rather than submit to that surgery, I will blow my brains out with a pistol.

Chapter 11

The passage to Lisbon would have been torture for a fit man, never mind one who had already been injured. I joined another one hundred and seventy wounded men in a convoy of ramshackle bullock carts. The only reason I survived that journey was because I was able to walk some of the way. It was the most miserable expedition I ever endured. The worst cases were laid in the bottom of the carts where their groans and wails as the vehicles bumped over the pitted roads, jarring wounds and fractures, were only partly drowned out by the continuous screech of badly greased wheels. Others, like me, were put on stretchers laid over the sides of the cart. This gave some protection from the jolting but left us exposed to the baking sun. Every so often the end of a stretcher would vibrate its way off the edge of the cart and drop us onto the wounded below.

I was one of the fortunate ones in that I had some mobility and tried to walk a mile or so each day to strengthen my weakened thigh muscles, which gradually started to improve. My head wound was healing nicely but the hole in my chest still seeped blood. It gave me the most pain, particularly when the cart bounced over deep ruts.

Each morning the carts would be searched and invariably there would be half a dozen bodies to bury before we got going. After enduring this for a week I began to wonder if there would be any of us left alive by the time we reached Lisbon. I still had some gold sewn into my belt and decided that I would do better recuperating in some quiet Portuguese town on my own. What clinched it was the sight of pretty young thing passing round a jug of cold well water at one town we stopped at.

“Would you like to earn some gold?” I asked her in Spanish.

“How would I do that,
señor
?” she asked, passing an appraising eye over me. Dirty and unshaven, I was not at my best, but I flatter myself that she saw the potential. There was certainly a flicker of interest in that knowing smile she shot back.

But then some grizzled old man was at her shoulder, asking her what she was about. He glared angrily between the girl and me. “What do you want with my daughter?” he growled. Then his eyes saw the three gold coins in my hand and his expression darkened even further. “Do you think my girl is some common whore that you can buy, you dog?” he roared at me, lunging forward and grabbing hold of my shirt.

“No,” I shouted back in Spanish. “Look at me, I am in no state to enjoy a woman.” The fist he had swung back hesitated as he surveyed my blood-stained shirt with the bloodier bandage underneath and the cloth tied around my leg. “I am going to die if I stay jolting on this cart,” I explained. “I want somewhere I can stay for a month to recover in peace and quiet.”

His eyes swung between my imploring face, the coins in my palm, his daughter and then back to me. He licked his lips as he weighed up the risk of letting a strange wounded man under the same roof as his precious daughter and what he could buy with the gold. “One month,
señor
, and then you go,” he declared finally. I nodded and he held out a hand for the coins. Once he had them, he reached into the cart and picked me up as easily as a mother taking a babe from a cot. Only then did I realise the huge strength of the man. I was thin, having lost a lot of weight while ill, but he carried me with no effort at all. Given his initial suspicions, I decided against demonstrating that I could walk a short distance without undue difficulty.

He told me that the village was called Arraiolos. It was a poor place with a broken-down castle up on a hill. He walked down a side street and put me down on a bench outside a large cottage and went to speak to a woman feeding some chickens in the yard. Looking around, I saw that the house had a forge in an open-sided shed at the end of the building. It seemed that my new host was the village blacksmith. Already I could hear the sound of the cart wheels screeching on to the next stop in their journey and as the sound receded a sense of relaxation spread over my weary bones. I lay back and shut my eyes until I felt the bench shift slightly and creak as someone sat beside me.

“Do you come from Britain?” the daughter asked. “What is it like?”

I smiled at her open curiosity and opened my mouth to reply. But before a sound passed my lips the woman’s voice yelled from the yard beyond. “Maria del Pilar, you come away from that man this instant. You are never to go near him again.”

The girl hesitated just long enough to demonstrate some free will before she obeyed. She smiled at me and whispered as she moved away, “I will see you again soon,
señor
.” I just grinned for at that moment I really did not have the strength for any amorous pursuit.

In any event her hopes of seeing me soon seemed destined to be unfulfilled as the old man came back and scooped me up and carried me into the cottage. We went through the kitchen and then through the room that served as their bedroom into another bedroom beyond. There I was laid on a low, narrow bed that I guessed was the daughter’s. The old man picked up a dresser of clothes and carried that back out of the door to wherever in the cottage the daughter was now going to sleep. It was the first proper bed I had laid on in weeks and within minutes I was asleep.

I stayed tucked up in that bed for two days, interrupted only by the woman with bowls of delicious soup and bread and use of the jakes pot on a chair in the corner. Occasionally I tried to make pictures from the cracks and stains in the low ceiling that hung over the bed, but for the most part I just enjoyed the peace and relaxation. I even managed to sleep through the loud snoring of the couple in the next room each night and the distant clanging of metal sometimes heard during the day.

On the third morning, though, I decided it was time to get up and stretch my legs. After the wife had brought bread for breakfast, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and staggered a little unsteadily to the door. My chest had not bled for a day and was feeling much better, but my legs needed to start regaining their strength. I walked through the empty bedroom next door and into the kitchen. That was also deserted, but I noticed that a bed had been set up in a store room on the other side of the kitchen. Moving to the outside door, I could see the woman and the daughter working in the fields, but a clanging nearby told me that the blacksmith was at work. I walked slowly outside the cottage and round to the forge.

“You can walk then.” The smith nodded at me as he pushed tongs containing some metal back into the glowing coals.

“Yes, I took a lance in the leg at Albuera but it did not break the bone. I was shot through the chest too.”

“You were lucky; two men from the village died there fighting.” He paused, eyeing me over, before he added, “Any man who kills the French is all right by me, provided he keeps his hands off my daughter.”

“I can assure you, sir…” I began, but he cut me off.

“I will only say this once,” he growled. “The girl is innocent and pure and I will not have her corrupted. I will geld any man who lays a finger on her and I will do it with my hammer.” To reinforce the point he plunged his tongs back into the coals and brought out a glowing orange bolt the size of a man’s cock. He put it on the anvil and spoke to me above the sound of the ringing hammer as sparks sprayed from the metal. Clang. “I hope…” Clang. “… we understand…” Clang. “… each other.”

I watched, transfixed, as the glowing metal was slowly flattened from the rhythmic beating. As the size of the metal stretched I felt my manhood shrink. The thought of that hammer and red-hot metal anywhere near me did not bear thinking about. “I can assure you, sir,” I tried again, “that I just want to get well and get back to the army.” I meant it too. I was cut off and alone in that village, and while the girl was pretty, she was not worth the risk.

“Aye, well, just so we are clear. There is a razor and a metal bowl over there,” he said, pointing to the corner of the forge. “You can warm some water in the coals to shave, and if you are fit enough, you can help work the bellows.”

For the next week or so I helped out with some light work in the forge. Mostly I worked the bellows with either my arm or, using a rope loop, with my legs. I liked the old man. It was through him that I learned of the battle between Wellington and Massena at Fuentes de Oñoro. Like Albuera it had been inconclusive, leaving both armies in a state of stalemate on either side of the Portuguese border. The allies held the fortresses on the Portuguese side while the French held the Spanish ones, and neither side seemed to have the will or resources to displace the other. The smith did not care what happened in Spain; he was just concerned that the French would not invade Portugal again. He told me that during the last French occupation of the region he had sent his wife and daughter into the hills, with many of the other women from the town. “The French tortured and hanged plenty of men from here, but they left me alone. I was too useful for repairing weapons and shoeing horses.”

Slowly, as the days passed, I felt my strength coming back. The wife washed my clothes while I borrowed some of her husband’s, and with a daily shave I felt I was on the mend. When you look better you often feel better too. I cut myself a suitable walking stick and took to having an afternoon stroll through the village and a glass of wine at the tavern.

Wherever possible I tried to avoid the daughter, and as her parents were of the same mind it did not prove difficult. For several days she was sent away to visit an aunt. It was the day after she returned that things got more complicated. As I came back from my regular afternoon walk I heard a splashing sound from her little room off the kitchen. Instinctively I turned to look and found her washing with the door open. She still had a shift on but it was wet and stuck to her in all the right places. She gave me a coquettish, knowing smile and I realised that the minx had planned the encounter. My mouth went dry as I looked on and tried to remember when I had last been with a woman. Sally Benton seemed a distant memory and I heard a low growl of desire come from the back of my throat. But my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of dull clanging coming from the forge outside. My ardour cooled like a red-hot rivet being plunged into a bucket of water. “Apologies, ma’am,” I mumbled before turning back out of the door.

My hands were shaking slightly as I reached the well outside for a drink. By God I needed a woman, but not that one. I was fond of my manhood unflattened. There was a wench in the tavern who might oblige and I resolved to ply her with brandy and try her out on my next visit.

I took my supper in my room that evening. If the daughter was willing to play dangerous games like that, I did not want to give the father any grounds for suspicion. I lay awake later that night listening to the old boy snore in the next room, but for me sleep would not come. Every time I tried to doze my mind would conjure the image of the girl with her wet shift clinging to her most delicious breasts.

When I first heard the noise I assumed it was a mouse or rat scurrying above the plastered ceiling. Then I heard the joists creak above me. Someone was in the attic, and as the snoring from the old man and his wife continued, I could guess who it was.

I stared at the now familiar cracks above my head. Candle light started to shine through three of them that made a triangle shape in the ceiling. Then the centre of the triangle moved to create a hole in the roof. The glow from a candle in the attic illuminated a pair of shapely naked legs that dangled through the hole. They were followed by a rope that was slowly lowered to the floor. Maria de Pilar slipped down the rope with practised ease as I swung my legs out of the bed.

“What are you doing?” I whispered hoarsely. It was a stupid question and one that she did not bother answering with words. Her left hand dropped to my shoulder where I still sat on the side of the bed while she bent down and moved her lips down onto mine to still any further enquiries. My body reacted automatically, my left arm around her waist while my right moved up to cup one of those splendid bouncers. Her tongue darted into my mouth, giving further confirmation that the daughter was not nearly as innocent as her father believed. Any lingering doubts were gone a moment later when her right hand disappeared underneath my nightshirt. In a moment she had demonstrated that she certainly knew how to raise more than just my spirits.

I gave a low groan of pleasure and she stopped kissing me long enough to whisper in my ear, “You must not make any noise or my father will hear you.” Those words gave me momentary alarm but a second’s listening proved that the snoring in the next room was just as loud as ever. Whether the briefest thought of her father had caused me to flag I don’t know, but now her mouth moved down my body. Her tongue could do things that would have earned her a fortune in a Parisian brothel and I was left gasping in silent delight.

She was an artisan of lovemaking, such that I had not experienced since my days in India. Just when I thought I could bear it no longer she pushed me back on the bed and climbed astride me. How I did not burst my chest wound stitches in the next few minutes is beyond me. If Albuera had taken me to the seventh pit of hell then Maria del Pilar took me to the seventh circle of ecstasy as compensation. She might have been the daughter of a blacksmith, but she was a master craftswoman in her own right.