Fortune's Bride (31 page)

A short while later the result Sir Arthur had foreseen came
about. The overenthusiastic troopers were checked by a stone wall on the hill
and simultaneously charged by two fresh regiments of French horse, which had
been kept in reserve. Sir Arthur disliked and distrusted cavalry regiments,
having said more than once that they were never properly disciplined and got
carried away, thereby turning a victory into a defeat.

Robert had to admit that the charge had been carried far
beyond reason. The end result, which he learned about the next day, was,
however, not quite disastrous, for by some miracle the overexcited troopers
were not annihilated.

Actually at the moment the action was taking place, Sir
Arthur had essentially lost interest in it. He had mentally given up the
Twentieth for lost. Moreover, a muted roar had come down from the slopes north
of the Maceira, which could only have been produced by a full regimental
volley. That meant the troops Junot had sent north to flank the British had
finally come into contact with the forces Wellesley had set up to oppose them.
Sir Arthur politely lifted his hat to Sir Harry, who was still contemplating
the headlong rush of the Twentieth, and spurred his horse away in the direction
of the new fighting, with his staff streaming along behind him.

They splashed through the tributary of the Maceira. The
small valley was noisy now and littered with dead and wounded among whom unhurt
and lightly wounded moved, some looting the dead bodies and others giving what
assistance they could to those hurt worse than themselves. There was, at least,
a fine impartiality about both activities, the French wounded receiving as much
assistance as the British and the British dead being looted about equally with
the French.

Despite the noise and confusion in the area, Robert’s eye
was drawn inexorably to Jupiter’s body, and he gave it a long, regretful look
as they passed. Sir Arthur rode north along the ridge where British troops were
pursuing the remnants of some French columns. The troops were moving in good
order, pausing periodically to fire another volley into the fleeting French.
Then, near three abandoned French guns, the Seventy-first and Eighty-second
halted to rest and re-form their ranks. General Nightingale, who was moving
forward with the Twenty-ninth, which had been in the second line, saw Sir
Arthur and rode back to him.

“There are more French somewhere,” he said. “They came to
the edge of that ravine just below my position and then went on farther north
until we lost sight of them completely.”

“Do you have any idea how large the force is?” Sir Arthur
asked.

Before Nightingale could reply, the question answered
itself. From the summit of the heights above the plateau on which the
Thirty-sixth and Fortieth regiments were driving the French northwest, four
battalions of infantry and two squadrons of dragoons poured down. The British
regiments reeled back in disorder, abandoning the captured guns. With an oath of
dismay, General Nightingale charged, calling orders toward the Twenty-ninth,
which had paused uncertainly. Tactfully Sir Arthur halted. He was not in the
least discomposed by the setback. Bowes’s division was at hand and had not yet
fired a shot. Caitlin Crawfurd and the Portuguese—for whatever good they would
be—were about a mile away, near enough to lend a hand if necessary.

It was not necessary. In a very short time the new French
attack was broken. The three guns were again in British hands, together with
three more that the new French battalions had carried with them. Sir Arthur did
not stay to see the end of the action. He instructed Lord Burghersh to give his
compliments to Generals Ferguson and Nightingale upon their handling of the
situation and the behavior of their men, and rode hastily back in the direction
from which he had come.

The battle of Vimeiro was won, and Robert realized Sir
Arthur believed that the French army of Portugal could be utterly destroyed if
action were taken quickly, before Junot could reorganize or call in reserves.
Unfortunately, Robert knew that Sir Arthur did not have the authority to
initiate that action. Burrard had given his permission for Wellesley to
complete the battle he had started, but that could not be stretched to include
the pursuit of Junot’s broken force.

But Sir Arthur hoped that in the first heat of real victory
over the “undefeatable” French army, Sir Harry’s supine nature might be roused
to action—or, at least, to permitting Sir Arthur to take action. Sir Arthur
rode up to Burrard, waving his hat and crying, “Sir Harry, now is your time to
advance. The enemy is completely beaten, and we shall be in Lisbon in three
days.”

Esmeralda had written the letter to the dying soldier’s
wife, with tears streaming down her face. It was mostly of her own composition,
for the man could barely summon strength to whisper the name and address. He
was pathetically grateful for what he believed to be her sympathy, and poor
Esmeralda was racked with guilt although, in truth, her fear for Robert gave
her a poignant understanding of the sorrow of an unknown woman. She even made a
note of the name and address, thinking she might be able some day to assist the
widow if she were worthy and needed help. She felt futile and angry, knowing
there was no way, even with the wealth that would be at her command, that she
could help the womenfolk of all those who died, but the small gesture toward
this one person soothed her a little.

Soon after the letter was finished, the man lapsed into
unconsciousness. Esmeralda looked about vaguely, wondering if it would be very
wrong and cowardly to abandon her self-imposed duty. Before she could decide,
however, she heard her name and saw a familiar face, one of the young officers of
the line who had often stopped to speak to her on the march. She hurried over,
anxiety making her almost forget the danger to which Robert had returned.

Fortunately, in this case the anxiety was largely
unnecessary. The young man had had a ball in the shoulder, but it had been
extracted without difficulty, and his chances for recovery were excellent. In
fact, he intended to return to his company in a day or two. His purpose in
summoning Esmeralda had not been out of a need for assistance but to soothe her,
since he had seen how distressed she was while she wrote.

Half an hour of pleasant talk restored Esmeralda
considerably, particularly since she could not resist mentioning that her
husband had also been wounded but had insisted on returning to Sir Arthur. She
had been assured that he would not be sent out again and that, more likely
still, Sir Arthur would send him home. Thus cheered, Esmeralda went back to the
less pleasant aspects of the task she had undertaken. It was disheartening, for
there was so little she, or even the doctors, could do. Nonetheless, she
persisted, as she assumed Robert would wish her to do, but not for long. She
had barely attended to the wants of two men whose limbs had been amputated when
Carlos’s voice, high and frightened, interrupted her.

Esmeralda rose so abruptly and was so terrified by the fear
Carlos was displaying that she had to catch at the wall for support. Nor could
she call out to the boy, but her movement had caught his eye, and he hurried
over, crying, “Come home,
senhora
, come home.”

“Oh my God,” Esmeralda whispered, “is it your master?”

“He has gone mad,” Carlos breathed, his big, black eyes wide
with fright. “He shouted at me and tried to hit me, and his face was all red.”

Esmeralda’s breath caught as she was torn between relief and
a new fear. At least he was not dead, but… Fever, she thought. It was bad, but
not the worst. He was young and strong, and cinchona was quite effective
against fever. She tore off the bloodied sheet that had partially protected her
gown and ran toward the house in which they had quarters. She could hear
Robert’s voice, hoarse and angry, all the way down in the street. Just outside
the door she hesitated. If he was really out of his head, she would not be
strong enough to control him, and Carlos, frightened out of his wits, poor
child, could be no help.

Esmeralda had turned to send Carlos back to the hospital
area to get Molly, when another voice she recognized—just as furious as
Robert’s—struck her ear, and then a third. She promptly dismissed the notion of
fever. It was rage she heard in all three voices. Could the battle have been
lost? That notion was cast aside with her original idea about delirium. Had the
battle been lost, the French would have been flooding into Vimeiro.

Still Esmeralda hesitated. Although she was no longer
worried about needing to control Robert while he was out of his head, she had
never seen her husband really angry and had no idea how he might react toward
her. In general, Robert had a sunny disposition. He had occasionally displayed
irritation, but it had not lasted long. If he had really tried to strike
Carlos, would he relieve his feelings by beating her? Not, she decided, in the
presence of his friends, and she quickly entered the house and ran up the stairs.

“…have to do it all over again, and God knows whether it
will be possible now that Junot will be better prepared.”

Esmeralda made out the words, but they were uttered in so
fury-choked a voice that she was not sure who was speaking until she was far
enough up the stairs to see that it was Captain Williams. “What has happened?”
she asked, but either no one heard her or all the men were too taken up with
their subject to heed her interruption.

“We won’t be
able
to do it again with that
incompetent, lazy numbskull in charge,” Robert roared. “He’ll have us out in a
flat plain all lined up like a parade to be shot to pieces.”

“Maybe he could have an accident,” Colin Campbell snarled.

Esmeralda shuddered. It was not unheard of for really bad
officers to have “accidents” on the field, and there was a vicious,
uncontrolled note in Campbell’s voice that showed he was not joking.

“I’d help you if I thought he’d ever get close enough to any
action to make it possible,” Williams said bitterly.

“What has Sir Arthur done?” Esmeralda cried.

This time her voice was quite loud. The three men seemed to
be working themselves up to commit an atrocity, and although frightened, she
knew that an interruption and the presence of a witness might induce second
thoughts. For a moment she was afraid that all she had accomplished was to draw
the rage onto herself, for all three turned and glared at her. Instinctively
her hands came up, and she backed away. Meantime, Campbell’s eyes had fallen on
her bloodstained gown, for the sheet she had used as an apron had not protected
her fully, and he jumped forward with a hand out to support her. To Esmeralda
the gesture seemed so threatening that she shrank back still farther, stifling
a cry of fear and wavering on her feet.

“Good God, Mrs. Moreton’s hurt,” Campbell exclaimed.

“How could that happen?” Williams asked simultaneously.

“Merry, what’s the matter?” Robert cried, getting an arm
around her.

The realization that she had completely misunderstood Colin
Campbell’s movement and at the same time accomplished her purpose restored
Esmeralda immediately, however, she did not reject Robert’s support nor
disclaim faintness at once. Quick-witted as she was, she recognized that it
would be best to keep the men’s attention on her for a minute or two until
their tempers cooled.

“I am all right,” she murmured. “The blood is not mine. I
was in the hospital area…”

“God damn it, Merry,” Robert said, “you haven’t the sense of
a three-day-old kitten. It’s one thing to help out but quite another to get so
exhausted you are ready to faint. Come and lie down.”

But Esmeralda had no intention of leaving the three men
alone. She knew that in minutes the discussion they were having would resume
and there was a good possibility that they would work themselves into a rage
all over again. She had no expectation of keeping them off the subject but
hoped that her presence would have an ameliorating effect.

“No,” she protested. “I’m better now, and I am dying for a
cup of tea. Come downstairs with me and tell me what Sir Arthur has done to
make you all so angry.”

Actually Esmeralda now realized that it could not be Sir
Arthur about whom they had been speaking. He did, quite often, infuriate his
ADCs, but even in a blind rage Esmeralda could not imagine one of his staff
calling him lazy, incompetent, or a numbskull. She had introduced his name as
another calming red herring.

Whether it was her presence or the soothing effect of fresh,
strong, hot tea, relative rationality was maintained while Esmeralda learned
how Sir Harry Burrard had managed to snatch defeat right out of the tight claws
of victory. The tale was rather disjointed, since several more of the staff
joined them, and the tellers periodically flew into rages and shouted at her
and each other. However, no one reintroduced the subject of Sir Harry having an
“accident”, so Esmeralda was satisfied.

Actually, it was fortunate that she was not called upon to
voice any opinion because emotionally she was far more in sympathy with Sir
Harry than with the furious young men who castigated him for refusing, despite
Sir Arthur’s lucid reasoning and clear, practical plans, to pursue Junot’s
broken army. Intellectually Esmeralda knew Sir Harry was wrong. Robert said the
French could have been destroyed in Portugal and the war in that country ended
if Junot had been pursued, whereas letting him retreat unmolested would permit
him to rearm, reorganize, and call up reinforcements. Moreover, with the inept
Sir Harry at the helm, the British might be defeated in the next battle. Thus,
in the long run, Sir Harry’s orders to wait until Sir John Moore arrived with
another ten thousand men were stupid and dangerous to the British cause.

Nonetheless, Esmeralda’s heart would not listen to her head.
Her heart only knew that Robert was sitting safe and almost sound beside her
instead of riding off to God knew where on the heels of fleeing men who would
fight desperately to save their lives. In addition, there was some hope that
Sir Arthur would take offense and return to England, in which case his staff
would no doubt go with him and Robert would be safe.

As this thought crossed her mind, Esmeralda sighed deeply.
She knew she was deluding herself. Although he admired Sir Arthur greatly, it
was the army and, to a certain extent, war itself that Robert loved. He might,
indeed, go back to England with Sir Arthur, but he would stay only long enough
to find a way to get back into the action—and then another thought, so
horrifying that Esmeralda shuddered at it, came into her mind. If they went to
England, Robert would almost certainly leave her there when he returned to the
front.

At this point Lord Burghersh came in. He was late because he
had been ordered to remain on the northern slopes until the end of the action
there. Although calm now, he at first had been as furious and disgusted as the
others. He had seen the Thirty-sixth and Fortieth regiments of Ferguson’s
command pin one of the French brigades into an angle of the hills from which
there was no easy escape. Burghersh had ridden back to Sir Arthur with
Ferguson’s ADC, who carried his general’s request to advance, and had seen Sir
Harry absolutely forbid any further action. The ADC had been stunned
speechless, and Sir Arthur had made one more attempt to convince Sir Harry that
the French could not stand another attack. He pointed out that one good push
would send them in a rout into the rugged spurs of the Sierra da Baragueda
where starvation, hardship, and the Portuguese peasants would likely finish off
those who had not yielded as prisoners.

“Oh, I think the men have done enough for one day,” Sir
Harry had replied.

“But Hill’s division and those of Bowes and Crawfurd have
not even been in action. They are quite fresh,” Sir Arthur countered, his voice
even although it trembled just a little with anger.

But Sir Harry had stuck stubbornly to his decision that
there would be no further advance that day, whereupon Sir Arthur had turned his
horse and said bitterly to those of his staff who were present that they all
might as well go and shoot red-legged partridges.

This report had led to a renewed discussion of the disaster
that would undoubtedly follow Sir Harry’s assumption of command, at which point
Esmeralda, who had hardly listened, consumed as she was by her terror at the
idea of being left in England, sighed and shuddered at her own thoughts.

“We are distressing Mrs. Moreton,” Lord Burghersh said.

“Oh, no,” she protested, “I am not frightened, only sorry
that so many men have been killed and wounded to no purpose.”

However, the worst prognostications of Sir Arthur’s angry
staff were not fulfilled, though this was not immediately apparent as matters
seemed to worsen the next day when Burrard was in turn superseded by Sir Hew
Dalrymple. Sir Arthur had immediately approached Sir Hew with a plan to advance
to Mafra, which would cut Junot off from Lisbon and the heights of Tôrres
Vedras, but Sir Hew was even less accommodating than Sir Harry. Not only would
he not listen to any plan for prosecuting the war, he was less polite about it.

To add to the complications, the army was sullen and
recalcitrant. They wanted, and would take orders only from, their “old
general”, who had led them to victory. How far this spirit of rebellion against
having their glory snatched from them would have gone was never tested, fortunately.
In the afternoon of August 22, General Kellerman, who had led the French
grenadiers who had fought so stubbornly on the outskirts of Vimeiro, arrived
bearing a flag of truce. He had come to negotiate a total French withdrawal
from Portugal.

Again Esmeralda presided over a tea table around which
furious arguments raged. The younger and less experienced ADCs maintained that
Sir Arthur should enter a formal protest and refuse to have anything to do with
the negotiations. Robert and Colin Campbell, although not happy with the
outcome because they knew General Wellesley’s original plans would have done
Bonaparte much more harm, argued that a convention of withdrawal was now the
lesser of the evils they faced.

“For, you know,” Robert said to Esmeralda in the quiet of
their bedchamber after the futile meeting was over, “we have already lost our
chance to cut Junot off from a safe retreat to Lisbon, and it is likely that
with these bunglers in charge, any action would be delayed so long that
reinforcements could be brought in from France. In any case, if we do not agree
to a withdrawal, the war would be greatly protracted, which would mean heavy
casualties, probably the bombardment and destruction of Lisbon and a number of
other Portuguese cities, and possibly the complete ruin of Portugal.”