Death to the French (aka Rifleman Dodd) (5 page)

They were Portuguese peasants, he could see-friends, that was to say. He walked along the crest to where they were gathered round the helpless dragoon. At sight of him they seized their weapons and rushed towards him. Some of them had pikes, two or three of them had muskets, one of them with a bayonet fixed, and apparently with every intention of using it.

'Inglez,' said Dodd hastily, as they came running up- that green uniform of his made this explanation necessary. The Portuguese always expected to find an Englishman in a red coat.

They looked their unbelief until their leader pushed past them and inspected him.

'Sim, Inglez,' he decided, and turned to pour out a torrent of rapid explanation to his followers.

Then he turned back to Dodd and said something which Dodd could not understand. He repeated the phrase, and then, seeing that it meant nothing to Dodd, he reached forward and shook Dodd's rifle.

'Espingarda raiada,' he repeated impatiently.

'Rifle,' said Dodd.

'Rye-full,' said the other. 'Sim, sim, espingarda raiada.'

To his friends he repeated the word along with more explanation and a vivid bit of pantomime illustrating the rotation of a rifle bullet in flight. Clearly he was a Portuguese of more than average intelligence.

The party drifted back to where the wretched dragoon lay among the rocks, his hands behind his back and a cord round his ankles. His face lit up with hope when he caught sight of Dodd's uniform. The Portuguese leader kicked him in the face as he came up, and then, as he fell back among the stones, kicked him in the belly so that he moaned and doubled up in agony. That was enormously amusing; all the Portuguese hooted with joy as he writhed, and when he turned over on his stomach one of them stuck the point of his pike into the seat of his breeches so that he cried out again with pain and writhed over again on to his back, enabling them to kick him again where it hurt most, amid shrieks of laughter.

It was more than Dodd could stand. He pushed forward like the chivalrous hero of some boys' book of adventure, and cleared the brutes away from the prostrate man.

'Prisoner,' he said, and then, in the instinctive belief that they would understand him better if he shouted and if he spoke ungrammatically he continued in a louder tone, pointing to the captive. 'Prisoner. He prisoner. He not to be hurt.'

Looking round at the lowering expressions of the Portuguese, he realized that they still did not understand, and he tried to make use of what he knew of Spanish and Portuguese grammatical constructions.

'Prisonerado,' he said. 'Captivado. Nao damagado.'

The leader nodded. Clearly he had heard somewhere or other of some silly convention that prisoners were not to be tortured. He broke into rapid speech. Two of his men under his instructions hoisted the dragoon to his feet so that he stood swaying between them. And then, under his further instructions, before Dodd could interfere, three more of his men lowered their pikes and thrust them into his body. The Frenchman, mercifully, was not long dying then, while Dodd looked on horrified and the others grinned at each other.

When he was dead they tore his bloodstained clothes from his corpse; one man put on the blue tunic with the red shoulder-knots, while another pulled on the white breeches. Stained as they were, they were better garments than those discarded in their favour. Then they made ready to move on. The leader tapped Dodd on the shoulder and by his gestures clearly indicated that they expected him to accompany them. 'Inglezes?' demanded Dodd, pointing.

The leader shook his head and pointed in nearly the opposite direction, and once more insisted in pantomime on his accompanying them. His verbal explanation included the word 'Franceses'; obviously he was trying to tell Dodd what he knew already, that the whole French army lay between him and the English. Dodd pointed to himself and then south-eastwards.

'Tejo,' he said. 'Alhandra. Lisboa.'

The leader nodded and shrugged. He had heard vaguely of the Tagus and of Lisbon, but the river was full fifty miles away and the city a hundred; he had no real belief in their existence. He sloped his musket and signed to Dodd to come with them. The southerly route they seemed determined upon was not far out of his way, so that he joined them in their march without misgiving.

Two months of guerrilla warfare had already taught the Portuguese some elements of military methods. At orders from the leader one man went out far to the right, another to the left, a third ahead. With flank guards and advance guard in this fashion there was small chance of their meeting the enemy unexpectedly. They trooped down the steep slope, and turned their faces up the path. The dead horse lay there, already stripped of everything worth carrying away. Farther back lay the dead Portuguese. Someone waved his hand towards the body and made some remark about Joao. Everybody laughed a little-laughed at the memory of the dead Joao who did not have the sense to take to the rocks when pursued by a horseman. That was all the epitaph Joao received.

Dodd never discovered, to his dying day, what had been going on just before his arrival on the scene of the skirmish- who had been fighting, and in what numbers. He could only guess that some reconnoitring or foraging party of dragoons had collided with some detachment of the irregulars. How the men he was now accompanying came to be in their strategical position overlooking the gorge when clearly there had been hand-to-hand fighting higher up he could not conceive, nor what had happened to the rest of the combatants, nor why his friends displayed no anxiety to rejoin their main body. Portuguese irregulars were not distinguished for the discipline which prevailed, for example, in the Ninety Fifth Foot.

They knew their way about the country. They quitted the good track upon which the march had begun in favour of one much less obvious and practicable, and tramped along without hesitation, up hills and down them, over fords and through forests, the while the sun sank lower and lower. Then they turned into a path which led straight up into the highest hills. It wound round the edge of some precipices and went straight up the face of others, becoming indistinguishable from a dry watercourse in the process. Even the marching powers of a man of the Ninety Fifth were strained to the utmost. Dodd had fed badly for two days now, and he had marched much. His head began to swim and his heart to beat distressfully against his ribs as he toiled along behind the big Portuguese leader. He began to slip and fall at the difficult parts, borne down by the weight of his weapons and pack. When he fell the man behind trod on his feet while the man in front made no attempt to wait for him. Darkness fell, and still they struggled along the stony way, while Dodd felt as though he must soon sink under his fatigue.

What roused him at the end of that nightmare climb was a harsh challenge from the slopes above, which was instantly answered by his party. The pace slackened; they stumbled over a few yards more of rocky path, and round a corner where Dodd had the impression of a vertical drop hundreds of feet high on his right hand. Here there was a clear space- a wide shelf on the mountain side, apparently, where a score of bivouac fires were burning, with little groups seated round them.

The leader tapped Dodd's shoulder and led him forward through the lines of fires to the farthest end of the shelf. Here a corner of the rock made some sort of shallow cave, at the mouth of which a big fire was burning, and where two lanterns on poles shed additional light. Seated by the fire were two priests in their black clothes, and between them a burly man in a shabby blue uniform with faded silver lace at collar and wrists. Dodd's guides approached and made some sort of salute and, as far as Dodd could understand, accounted for Dodd's presence.

'Capitao Mor,' he continued explanatorily to Dodd, and then left him. A Capitao Mor-Great Captain-as Dodd vaguely understood, was a great man in Portugal, something midway between a squire and a Lord-Lieutenant, ex-officio commander of the feudal levies of the district. This one looked Dodd up and down and said something to him in Portuguese.

'Nao comprehend,' said Dodd.

The Capitao Mor tried again, speaking with difficulty in what Dodd guessed must be another language-French, presumably.

'Nao comprehend,' said Dodd.

The Capitao Mor turned to one of the priests at his side, who in turn addressed him in some other language, concluding with the sign of the cross and the gesture of counting his rosary. Dodd guessed what that meant, and hotly denied the imputation.

'Nao, nao, nao,' he said. There were Roman Catholics in his regiment, good enough fellows too, but Dodd's early upbringing had laid so much stress on the wickedness of Popery that even now he felt insulted at being asked if he was a Roman Catholic. He would not put up with being questioned by Papists and Portuguese any longer. He pointed to himself and then out into the night. 'Tejo,' he said. 'Lisboa. Me. Tomorrow.'

The others made no sign of comprehension.

'Tejo,' he repeated angrily, pounding on his chest. 'Lisbon. Tejo, Tejo, Tejo.'

The three conferred together.

'Tejo?' said the Capitao Mor to Dodd interrogatively.

'Sim. Tejo, Tejo, Tejo.'

'Bernardino,' said the Capitao Mor, turning to one of the groups at the fires. Someone came over to them. He was in the usual rags, but on his head was an English infantry shako-the regimental figures '43' shone in the firelight. He was only a boy, and he grinned at Dodd in friendly fashion while the Capitao Mor gave his orders. Dodd heard the words 'Tejo' and 'Lisboa'- blessed words. Bernardino nodded and grinned again. Then the Capitao Mor turned to Dodd again with words and gesture of polite dismissal, and Bernardino led him away to another fireside.

Over this fire hung an iron pot from which came a smell of onions which to Dodd's famished interior was utterly heavenly. Bernardino politely made him sit down, found a wooden dish from somewhere, and ladled into it a generous portion of stew from the pot. He brought him a hunk of bread, and, still grinning, invited him to eat-an invitation Dodd did not need to have repeated. He pulled his knife and spoon from his pack and ate like a wolf. Yet even at that moment, dizzy with fatigue, the ruling passion asserted itself.

'Lisboa? Tejo?' he asked of Bernardino.

'Sim. Sim.' Bernardino nodded and said a good deal more, until, realizing that he was quite unintelligible, he fell back on pantomime. It takes much complicated gesture to convey the abstract of 'tomorrow,' but he succeeded at last, and Dodd was satisfied. When he had finished his meal his head began to nod on to his breast. He coiled himself up in his greatcoat and fell asleep, revelling in the delicious warmth of the fire. But he mistrusted the military efficiency of the Portuguese. He took off neither his equipment nor his boots, and he slept with his rifle within reach.

DURING the three days' march that followed Bernardino was almost convinced that this big Englishman whom he had been deputed to guide was slightly mad. He had only one thought-it might be said he had only one word. What he wanted was to reach the Tagus. Nothing else would satisfy him. He would not rest a moment more than necessary; he was always up at the first streak of dawn; he insisted on striding along even when Bernardino was whimpering with fatigue. Bernardino had not heard of the Indian pilgrims whose one wish it was to bathe in the Ganges, but once or twice he had encountered Spaniards or Portuguese who were set on visiting some particular shrine- Santiago di Compostella or some other- and who also were slightly mad, and he came to class Dodd with them in his mind. He explained to everyone they met that he had a mad Englishman in his charge whose one wish in life was to set eyes on the Tagus; in Bernardino's opinion this was just as remarkable as that the long rifle which the Englishman carried would (so he had been assured) kill a man with deadly accuracy at half a mile. Bernardino's ambition was, after having gratified the Englishman's strange passion for the Tagus, to lure him into sight of a Frenchman and then see the feat performed.

There were plenty of people for Bernardino to tell all this to, because the country through which they were passing was not laid waste. The proclamations commanding this to be done had been issued-every priest and every alcalde had one-but the country was not in the direct line of march of the contending armies and Wellington had not been able to come there in person and see his orders carried out. It would take more than a mere proclamation to make a wretched peasant burn his crops and his farm and send his womenfolk to Lisbon while he himself went up into the hills to starve.

Here and there were patches of ruined country where some Capitao Mor of unusual energy had swept the district with his militia, but elsewhere there were flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, and fields under the plough making ready for the winter sowing.

Dodd shook his head at sight of all this; if the French army should come this way they would be able to demonstrate their practice that every village should be able to feed a battalion for a week or a division for a day. He was surly towards the village people on whom Bernardino billeted him each night. He could not even accept the pleasant advances of the women in his billets; the women ran delighted eyes over his burly inches, and would have liked to tell him how much they missed their husbands whom the conscription had swept away, but Dodd turned away from them angrily. Their refusal to destroy all their possessions was imperilling his regiment.