Kings and Emperors (33 page)

Beauchamp led them on into the plain and the army encampment.

“Up yonder, sirs,” the Army officer said, pointing to the North. “There were steep hills, with deep gullies between, and a rough stone wall laid all along the tops of the hills, an incredibly strong position, yet…!” he enthused, “we went at them like lions, steep as it was, and threw them off and sent them swarming down into the plain, here. Three guns were captured, and an host of prisoners taken. But for a lack of cavalry, we could have pursued their broken ranks out onto the plain. The French had
swarms
of cavalry.”

“So, the French were beaten,” Lewrie stated with delight.

“Decisively, sir,” Beauchamp hooted. “Decisively! Now, they're South of us, and to the East of us. There's perhaps nine thousand under a chap named Loisin, coming West from Abrantes, and Delaborde still lurks down that way. The General fully expects that there will be a bigger battle to come, and soon. We're told that we're to be re-enforced with another four thousand men, when General Sir Harry Burrard and his convoy show up in the bay.”

“He's senior to Wellesley,” Lewrie said. “He'll take over?”

“God, I
hope
not, sir!” Beauchamp said, grimacing. “We're doing just fine with Sir Arthur. General Burrard has not seen action since the Dutch expedition in Ninety-Eight, and made no grand show of his abilities, then. He's over seventy years old!”

“Those are Portuguese carts and waggons yonder?” Westcott asked as they drew near a rather large conglomeration.

“Army Commissariat, Portuguese we've hired,” Beauchamp told him, “with solid silver shillings, not chits, too. The rest are Irish, if you can believe it. The General hired them before we sailed here. He told my Colonel that he'd learned in India that arrangements for a big commissary train are absolutely necessary. Not that Horse Guards will believe that, though.”

“Those casualties we saw last night,” Lewrie pressed. “Was it dearly won?”

“Oh no, sir!” Beauchamp said; he was irrepressibly cheerful. “We lost about four hundred and eighty, and the French lost nigh five hundred, plus the prisoners we took. Not bad at all, really. Aha! We're coming to the Portuguese lines.
Do
keep a hand on your purses, sirs. They're nowhere near so bad as Irish regiments, yet…! They are light infantry, called
Caçadores.
Quite good, really, under one of ours, Colonel Trant.”

“Their Portuguese officers ain't up to snuff?” Lewrie asked as he took in the foreign troops, mostly uniformed in brown coats.

“From what I've heard, they're
miles
better at their trade than the Spanish,” Beauchamp told him with a deprecating laugh, “but, over our long, good relations with Portugal, many British officers served in their army. Trant, now, sirs. He's most capable and aggressive, but the General
was
heard to say that he's a very good officer, but as drunken a dog as ever lived, hah hah! Uh-oh!” Beauchamp sobred quickly and put on a stern face as they rode deeper into the encampment, making a great display of pointing things out to Lewrie and Westcott.

There was a rider approaching with a pack of hounds scouting at his mount's flanks and rear, a grim-visaged fellow wearing an un-adorned bicorne hat and a long-skirted dark grey coat, with only a gilt-edged belt at his waist, and a sword upon his left hip, to denote him as an officer of some kind.

Lt. Beauchamp doffed his hat to the fellow, and Lewrie thought it a good idea to do the same, and throw in a “Good morning to you, sir” for good measure, which earned him a scowl and a brisk nod of his head, which, admittedly, gave Lewrie a faint chill. The man was thin-lipped, haughty, his eyes cold and contempuous beneath a set of full brows, and that nose! It was a prominent hawk's beak.

“Who was that?” Lewrie asked, turning to look astern from his saddle once they had passed.

“That was Sir Arthur Wellesley, sir,” Lt. Beauchamp said with a sigh of relief that he had escaped the Presence without a tongue-lashing for idling about, far from his battalion lines, and playing tour guide to a pair of idle sailors.

“A
stern
damned fellow,” Lt. Westcott commented in a low voice.

“Oh, indeed, sirs,” Beauchamp agreed with a shiver.

“He didn't look particularly happy to see us,” Lewrie said.

“Well, we
are
taking a tour, sir,” Westcott said.

“It may be that he expected that General Burrard had come into the bay, and that you were part of the convoy escort, sir,” Beauchamp dared speculate. “That's where he was riding, to the river mouth, to see if Burrard had arrived.”

“Well, no wonder he gave us the cold-eye,” Lewrie said. “In his place, I'd've stuck my tongue out at us, too.”

That tongue-in-cheek statement gave the young Army officer such a pause that he burst out laughing, amazed that a senior officer of a high rank could be so droll.

“What about Marshal Junot and the rest of his hundred thousand Frogs, though, Mister Beauchamp?” Lewrie asked, using the naval parlance. “When and if General Burrard arrives, you'll have how many men against all of Junot's?”

“Oh, about sixteen thousand British, two thousand Portuguese, altogether, sir,” Beauchamp told him, looking off to the far distance to do his sums in his head, “but, we've information that the bulk of Marshal Junot's forces are still far South, round Lisbon and Torres Vedras … just
miles
away! We would have been much nearer to Torres Vedras ourselves, but for the word of General Burrard's arrival here in Maceira Bay. The General marched us over to the coast to cover the landings, pick up the re-enforcements and more guns and cavalry, before resuming our march on Lisbon.”

“General Sir Hew Dalrymple's coming, too,” Lewrie said with a scowl of dis-approval. “He's to take supreme command over Wellesley
and
Burrard, God help you. He's known as the Dowager.”

“That's not good, either, I may take it, sir?” Beauchamp said with a visible wince.

“Not good at all, sir,” Lewrie gloomily told him.

They were in the middle of the British lines by then, surrounded by tents, and soldiers in all manner of un-dress, and the aromas of unwashed bodies; horse, mule, and oxen manure; the sour reek of campfires burning green wood; salt-beef or salt-pork cooking; and a tang of illicit rum or locally-procured wine. Soldiers' wives sat and sewed or idled, some with pipes or
cigarros
in their mouths. The few children allowed along with each regiment were whooping, running, and playing round between the tents and along the lanes between the tent lines, as ragged a bunch as their fathers, and just as rough.

Lewrie looked South to scan the prospects, taking in the plain that stretched from Óbidos and Roliça, and the line of hills that lay beyond, to the Sou'east.

“What's beyond those hills?” he asked, pulling his telescope from a side pocket of his coat for a better look.

“Some scattered villages and hamlets, sir,” Lt. Beauchamp told him, squinting to recall them all. “There's a Toledo, a Porto Novo on the coast, a wee place called Fentanell, and the village of Vimeiro. Some cavalry videttes have scouted down yonder, and I heard that it's pretty broken country, and that the road's horrid. But then,
every
road we've seen so far has been horrid. It's getting on for tea time. Might you gentlemen care to partake at my regimental mess?”

“Thankee, no, Mister Beauchamp,” Lewrie said, shaking his head as he lowered his telescope, “but I think that Mister Westcott and I will return to our ship. We might have to shift
Sapphire
out of the way of the arriving convoy and its escort. I'm grateful for your taking the time to show us round.”

“Very well, sirs,” Beauchamp said with a grin, doffing his hat to them in parting salute. “Leave the horses at the remount station. Don't know if they'll be available, later, but, if you wish to come ashore and witness the battle to come, the best of luck to you.”

Lt. Beauchamp put his mount to a stride and headed off for his mess, and his tea, whilst Lewrie and Westcott turned theirs round and ambled back to the beach at a slow walk.

“At least
he
seems confident, sir,” Westcott commented after a long, quiet moment. “But, he
is
a younker. All flags and bands, and glory.”

“Aye, we know better by now, don't we,” Lewrie cynically agreed. “But, ye know … I think I
would
like to see how this army does when the time comes.”

“I would, too, sir,” Westcott strongly hinted. “If only to relieve the boredom. We've spent too long at escort-work, with nary one sight of an enemy sail, or the prospect of a fight. I fear that you have spoiled me, and our crew, you know.”

“We
have
had a good run at it, haven't we, Geoffrey?” Lewrie mused. “Until the French went missish, and lurk in port, scared to risk themselves at sea any longer.”

“Five whole years of excitement,” Westcott summed up with a longing sigh. “God, it's so dull, we might as well be at
peace
!”

After half an hour, they reached the remount station and surrendered their tired mounts, then continued on foot to the banks of the shallow Maceira River.

“There he is, again,” Westcott pointed out as he espied the mounted man they now knew for Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley. He was peering out to sea with his own pocket telescope, looking both intent and angry. His horse had its head up, too, looking seaward, as were the hounds that accompanied him, who sat on their hindquarters with their tongues lolling, panting in perfect patience as if awed by their master's mood, and barely bothering to scratch at their fleas.

“What's he looking at?” Westcott wondered aloud, but in a soft voice, as if he was daunted, too.

Lewrie pulled out his glass and had a long look, then handed it to Westcott. “There are dozens of ships out there, Mister Westcott, tops'ls and t'gallants above the horizon. They might be hull-up by mid-afternoon. If it ain't the French, it's Burrard and his brigades, come at last.”

“No wonder he looks so black, then,” Westcott said with a wee laugh.

Wellesley heard that, and snapped his head about to glare at them both for a second, his face all “thunder and lightning.” Those thin lips half opened for a hurled curse, then clapped shut just as quickly before he returned his steely gaze to the incoming ships.

“Let's get back aboard,” Lewrie said, “before he has us flogged at a waggon wheel.”

 

CHAPTER THIRTY

The troop transports, “cavalry ships,” and supply vessels came to anchor off Maceira Bay in droves, with the convoy escorts anchoring further out. HMS
Sapphire
's four boats were manned and sent off to aid the dis-embarkation that proceeded throughout the afternoon and long into the night. Lewrie stayed on the poop deck no matter the heat of the day, swivelling his telescope about to take it all in, finding that General Wellesley's efficiency applied to the new arrivals, too, for the whole bay hummed with activity, and battalions, batteries, and horse troops went ashore with an alacrity rarely seen, making those landings at Blaauberg Bay at the Dutch Cape Colony in 1806 look like a perfect shambles by comparison.

General Burrard's re-enforcement did not extend to many pieces of artillery, though, and Lewrie could count only about 240 cavalry horses to add to the 180 or so that Wellesley had had at the Battle of Roliça. And those poor horses, both the cavalry mounts and the gun-team horses! They had been at sea so long that they seemingly had lost the ability to walk. Once they'd been swum ashore and led to assembly points, it was almost comical to see horses saddled up, cavalry troopers swung up astride, and see the horses just fold their legs up and squat to the ground under the weight!

“Hmm,” Lt. Westcott said, his face contorted by a wince as he witnessed that. “
That
don't look promising. That Beauchamp fellow told us this morning that the French had
scads
more cavalry than we do. What use are
those
poor prads, if they can't even stand up? If you
do
go ashore to see the battle, sir, pray Jesus you don't get offered one of
them
!”

“A good clue t'that, Geoffrey,” Lewrie said, shaking his head as he watched, “is that the new-come horses all have docked tails, but the local Portuguese horses we got didn't.”

“Don't see the sense of that, sir,” Westcott said. “How else do they keep the flies off them, if they don't have long tails. Poor beasts. A Hell of a thing our Army does with their horseflesh. Not as bad as the French, I'm told, though. They ride them to death, with open saddle sores so bad that you can smell them coming.”

“S'truth?” Lewrie gawped. “There's another good reason t'hate the French like the Devil hates Holy Water.”

“At least they leave their tails long,” Westcott agreed. “My word, on the riverbank yonder. Where all the torches are lit? Isn't that Wellesley getting into that boat?”

Lewrie lifted his glass once more and peered intently at the shore. “Aye, I think it is, by God. ‘Captain Repair On Board,' and all that, hey? The poor bastard's on his way t'get his marchin' orders from Burrard, most-like, gettin' replaced before he's fought his battle. I wonder if he's thinkin' that he'd've done better to march off South without waitin' for extra troops.”

“Sir?” Midshipman Harvey reported from the bottom of the quarterdeck ladderway. “Our boats are returning from their ferry-work.”

“Very well, Mister Harvey,” Lewrie absently took note. “My compliments to the Purser, Mister Cadrick, and he's to see that the boat crews get their evening rum issue … them only, mind … and that they are fed their proper rations right after.”