Fortune's Bride (5 page)

In the small boat being rowed out to the berth of the fast
cruiser
Crocodile
in the harbor of Corunna, Robert Moreton and Fitzroy
Somerset sat still and silent. Usually Sir Arthur’s relations with the young
men of his staff were very friendly, but Wellesley, who was sitting across from
them, had a ferocious temper, which had been severely tried by the gentlemen of
the revolutionary junta. Under the circumstances, Robert and his fellow
aide-de-camp neither spoke nor fidgeted, either being likely to bring down on
his head the wrath of his superior officer.

Sir Arthur was not particularly generous with information,
but the young men had easily discovered for themselves that, although British
money and supplies were welcome to the Spanish, the British army was not. The
elaborate welcome Sir Arthur had received did not include an offer of a landing
site for the troops following in slower transports. In fact, nothing beyond
high-sounding phrases had been provided, and the sincerity of those was
becoming rapidly more questionable as facts were wrenched with considerable
difficulty from the officials of the junta.

The Spanish officials had, for example, initially told Sir
Arthur that their General Blake had gained a great victory over the French,
although he had failed to complete the work by destroying the enemy. But Robert
and another ADC, John Fane, Lord Burghersh, had picked up rumors around the
city that hinted at a different story. Robert could not be entirely sure of
what he had heard. He knew a little Portuguese, which he had learned in India
during the treaty negotiations in Bassein but Portuguese and Spanish were not
the same.

Nonetheless, he had mentioned the less favorable rumors to
Sir Arthur, who in turn had pressed the Spanish for more information.

They had continued to insist that Blake had been victorious
but admitted that the general had thought it wiser to withdraw. Alerted by the
inconsistency, Wellesley asked more questions, whereupon it appeared that
“perhaps” Blake had really suffered a slight check. Worse yet, no junta officials
to whom Wellesley spoke seemed to have the slightest idea about what was going
on in the rest of the country or at least none would tell Sir Arthur.

“We will try Portugal,” Sir Arthur said suddenly to his ADCs
in the boat, without a hint of anger in his voice.

“I hope they are more welcoming, and more truthful,”
Somerset remarked.

Sir Arthur smiled without amusement. “One should not expect
truth from native allies. I learned that lesson in India.” He paused, then went
on dispassionately, “But I must confess that I was somewhat disappointed to
learn it to be equally true of European allies.”

“Do you think the Spanish were lying about anything else,
sir?” Robert asked. “I don’t think the people in the town know any more, but
surely the officials have better sources?”

“It’s very hard to say,” Sir Arthur replied. “If the unrest
in the country is as great as reported, there may be confusion about who
is
an official. In addition, the French move very fast. And then, there is always
the possibility of interregional jealousies. In that case, they wouldn’t tell
each other the truth any more than they would tell it to us.”

“Then all we have done is waste two days,” Somerset
commented angrily.

“No, I wouldn’t say that.” Sir Arthur smiled again. “There
is considerable value in having learned that we cannot rely too firmly on any
intelligence supplied by the Spanish or at least not on that supplied by
official sources.” He looked out past Somerset in the direction of the
Crocodile
,
but he was not seeing the ship. “Knowing what
not
to do is worthwhile.”

The
Crocodile
made quick work of the sail around the
northwest coast of Spain and on July 24 landed in Oporto, Portugal. Here the
situation was somewhat more hopeful. Antonio José de Castro, Bishop of Oporto,
head of the local insurgent junta, had convinced a few hundred ragged
Portuguese regulars and a crowd of peasants armed with pitchforks to drive out
the French. Moreover, the information that the whole country north of the Tagus
River was free of French and that General Andoche Junot and what was left of
his army were confined to the area around Lisbon seemed to be true.

Neither the bishop nor General Bernadim Freire, who was in
charge of the remnants of the Portuguese army in Oporto, voiced any active
objection to a British landing, but Sir Arthur knew that it was not practical
to bring troops ashore so far from the enemy. It would be best to land
somewhere along the Tagus estuary, however there was little possibility of
that. Junot was said to have about twenty-six thousand men, and even if that
was an exaggeration, the French marshal was far too experienced to leave the
sea gate to Lisbon open to the British.

The most hopeful site for a landing was at Figueira da Foz
at the mouth of the Mondego River. However, Figueira was still more than one
hundred miles from Lisbon, making necessary overland transport for food, guns,
ammunition, and the other endless materiel of war. A discussion—some of it
acrimonious—about the alternatives ensued among Sir Arthur, the junta, the bishop,
and General Freire. However, the Portuguese were truly enraged by the robbery,
sacrilege, and oppression the French had visited on them and were at least
marginally more interested in driving out General Junot and his army than in
personal glory or aggrandizement. In addition, owing to an avid taste for port
wine and long-standing business dealings, the British were relatively well
liked and trusted at Oporto. Thus, Sir Arthur was able to carry nearly all of
his points.

If it was possible for the fort at Figueira da Foz, which
had been taken from the French by a heroic troop of students from Coimbra, to
be secured by British marines, Sir Arthur would order the troop transports to
Mondego Bay, which was just north of the fort. Wellesley himself would sail
south in the
Crocodile
to consult with Sir Charles Cotton, the admiral
in charge of the ships blockading Lisbon. If Sir Charles agreed with Sir Arthur
that it would be impossible to make a landing nearer Lisbon, the troops would
be brought ashore at Figueira. Meanwhile, the bishop would undertake the task
of gathering up the hundreds of oxen and pack mules necessary for transport,
and General Freire would march those troops he could supply south along the
road to Leiria.

However, although Sir Arthur obtained the agreement of
Bishop Antonio and General Freire, he did not feel any very strong conviction
that the promises they had made would be fulfilled. He hoped, because the
agreement had been relatively voluntary, that at least part of the assistance
offered would actually be provided, but he was much too wise to rest the
success of a military action on the promises of men he could not control.

Sir Arthur felt he could accomplish his purpose even if the
bishop and the general did nothing at all, but he must at least know that no
help would be forthcoming from them. Thus, he assigned Colonel Trant to act as
liaison officer between General Freire and the British forces and left Robert,
who could speak some Portuguese, to assist the bishop. Sir Arthur provided Robert
with a sum of money to be judiciously used for bribery or minimal but tempting
payment to the muleteers and ox drivers. Robert’s instructions were to scour
the countryside himself for transport animals if the bishop grew indifferent or
was too busy.

Neither of Sir Arthur’s fears about Bishop Antonio was true,
but it was obviously not possible for the bishop to go about from village to
village personally. He preached about the coming of the British in Oporto and
instructed his aides and the other members of the junta to spread the word to
the priests and to the
regadors
of the towns to urge compliance.
However, with harvest coming and the countryside already ravaged by the
foraging of the French, it was a bad time to collect draft animals.

On July 25, Sir Arthur left and Robert spent the day
arranging for the quartering and victualing of the animals and drivers that
were collected. With the support of Bishop Antonio and the other members of the
junta, this was easily settled, and there was nothing more Robert could do in
Oporto until the transport animals began to come in. Considering the
circumstances, it seemed wise to him to spend the time out in the countryside
himself, assuring the owners of the oxen and mules that they would be paid for
their time and the use of their animals.

Bishop Antonio agreed heartily to this proposal, saying that
word of actual payment would spread from hamlet to hamlet and do much good, and
he offered a young priest as a guide. Although he was relatively certain of the
genuine goodwill of the bishop, Robert did not propose to go far from the city,
since he was eager to start the animals south toward Figueira da Foz within the
six days stipulated Sir Arthur. However, he decided he could range out about
twenty miles from Oporto, starting northeast early in the morning, going as far
as he could until noon, and making his way back south and west by a different
road, stopping at each town and large village to solicit help and offer
payment. The next day, he would go due east.

There had been more than one unpleasant interview between
Esmeralda and the elder and younger Pedro in the weeks hat followed
Tia
Maria’s first suggestion that Esmeralda marry the headman’s son. Inducements
were offered and then threats, but neither Pedro nor his father had Henry
Talbot’s strength of character. Esmeralda had learned in a hard school how to
resist without infuriating, and she pointed out many difficulties that stood in
the way, even had she been willing. She was not a Catholic, was not willing to
convert, and she would tell that to any priest, who would then certainly refuse
to marry them. Even more important, Esmeralda said most untruthfully, was the
fact that she did not know what arrangements her father had made. He might have
appointed guardians for her who were directed to arrange her marriage and who
might be able to cut her off without a penny if she disobeyed them. The last
argument was particularly telling. It was most reasonable to both Pedros that
no woman should be allowed to pick her own husband.

In addition, the younger Pedro was growing less and less
willing to take to his bosom a woman with so sharp a tongue, which was not even
compensated for by beauty when he knew he could have his pick of the village
maidens or, if he wanted a better dowry, of girls from nearby villages. How did
they know, he asked his father, whether Esmeralda really had any money? The old
man had been very sick and very frightened. Perhaps he had offered most of what
he had, or more than he had in order to buy safety. The refugees’ clothing,
young Pedro pointed out, was not like that of great ones. A fine situation he
would be in, he complained, if the girl’s father had lied and he was trapped in
a marriage with a wife who could not perform the simplest household duties.

Because he was not the one who would have to live with the
plain, sharp-tongued wife, the elder Pedro was unwilling to give up so easily.
He tried repeatedly to pry information from Esmeralda about her late father’s
business and fortune, but she was more than a match for him, partly because of
his total ignorance of the world outside his own immediate surroundings and
partly because he
expected
her to be ignorant of the very facts he was
seeking. Esmeralda did not even have to lie. Old Pedro asked her such things as
whether her jewels and fine clothes had been lost, and she could say, quite
truthfully, that she had no jewels except for the gold locket containing a
miniature of her mother, which she was still wearing, and that her finest
clothes had been two party dresses, which were several years old.

By July 26, when Robert and his guide approached the
village, the headman was almost as sick of Esmeralda as she was of him. Despite
his greed, old Pedro was not bad at heart. Thus, when a shepherd rushed down
from the grazing grounds to give warning that there were riders on the road and
one of them wore a blue coat and a cocked hat, Esmeralda was hustled into the
darkest corner of the hut in which she lived. Robert’s staff uniform, much
plainer and more serviceable than the gaudy full dress of the Fourteenth Light
Dragoons, had been mistaken for that of a French soldier. And, threats or no
threats, old Pedro did not intend to give Esmeralda up to the French.

The young priest rapidly cleared up the misunderstanding and
explained that the English had come to help them drive out the French for good
but that draft and pack animals were needed. Instantly old Pedro began to shake
his head. In his fear that a new wave of foraging would denude the hamlet of what
few animals they had managed to hide from the French, he completely forgot his
other “English problem”. But Robert was accustomed to this reaction. He had met
it in almost every foreign country in which he had served. Before the headman
could maintain that they had no such animals and then perhaps be afraid to
admit later that he had lied, Robert spoke his carefully rehearsed lines
stating that he would buy the animals or hire them and any driver who would
come to Oporto with cart and oxen and serve the British army. Then he took
silver from his pouch, being careful to expose the long-nosed pistols he
carried at the same time.

“We are a small, poor village,” old Pedro said. “If we do
not have oxen for the harvest, we will starve. And much has been stolen from us
already. The few animals we have are worth a great deal to us.”

Although Robert’s Portuguese was not very fluent, he
understood more than he spoke and made out enough of what old Pedro was saying
to recognize a standard gambit for bargaining. Nevertheless, it was plain to
him that what old Pedro had said was true. At most, such a place could supply
no more than one or two mules and one yoke of oxen. He had already arranged for
a dozen mules and four yoke of oxen in somewhat larger villages and did not
think it worth his while to spend an hour bargaining for so small a return. He
shook his head and made another prepared speech.