Whose Business Is to Die (15 page)

‘Dear God,’ Captain Dunbar said. ‘That’s a whole troop of cavalry gone.’

Colborne sat in silence on the camp chair, staring up at the roof of their tent.

‘So soon after Campo Major, as well,’ Dunbar went on, ‘when the same regiment put the fear of the Lord into the French. All those men, and all those horses.’ The captain’s lip curled. ‘Notice they did not take that ugly brute of yours, though!’

‘I did not wait around to present them with the opportunity,’
Williams said, knowing the mockery was well intended. He thought back to the night and the desperate ride to escape. ‘The situation was hopeless, and it seemed the best thing to raise the alarm, and especially to warn Villa Real. It was no more than half a mile away, with no troops in between.’

Dunbar gave a low whistle. ‘What a chance the French missed there. They could have snapped up Marshal Beresford and half the senior officers of the army.’

‘It may not have been too great a loss.’ The colonel spoke in a whisper, probably unaware that he had voiced the sentiment.

Dunbar looked embarrassed. ‘Who is to blame?’ he said to Williams. ‘That is what I should like to know.’

‘The Thirteenth thought that they were screened by the Portuguese cavalry, but there was a big gap in the line of vedettes,’ Williams explained. He and the dragoon lieutenant had given the alarm in Villa Real, and then watched as various senior officers and staff men ran about half clad and shouting. It took a good twenty minutes to achieve any sort of order. Marshal Beresford’s hulking figure was in the middle of it all, and he gave Williams a splenetic glare when he recognised him. Later, as things grew calm, the marshal was moderately civil when he asked the two lieutenants to report.

‘Well, sirs, you have done well,’ he told them in a gruff voice.

Williams had waited in the village until dawn, with little to do. He saw Hanley and was able to tell him that he had seen Dalmas before his friend was summoned away. Later, as the sun rose, Baynes passed, bid him good morning, and then hinted that the senior officers were now busy blaming each other. ‘You may as well go,’ he suggested. ‘This is probably not the best place to be at the moment.’

Williams took his advice, having already found out where his brigade was encamped, a spot almost four miles from the site chosen the day before. On the way he roused the sergeant and the mule train and led them back as well.

The brigade had no orders to move today, so he had found
the colonel and the captain taking breakfast. That was half an hour ago, and a warm welcome was followed by many questions.

‘A blunder, a truly bad blunder,’ Dunbar concluded.

‘The fault is not with the men,’ Colonel Colborne spoke aloud this time, looking at each of his companions in turn, ‘but the higher powers who gave poor instructions and then did not go to confirm that all was in order. And so the army is humiliated – a whole troop taken without a fight. ‘That is why we must never neglect the least thing. Never.’ There was silence for a while.

‘You know, Williams, my dear fellow,’ Dunbar said, ‘you do appear to have the knack of finding trouble!’

‘That is no bad thing for a soldier, no bad thing at all.’ Colborne gave a thin smile. ‘Now, you look all in and are no use to anyone half asleep. Your tent is not set up, but I have no need of this. Dunbar and I are going to visit the picket line.’ Unseen by the colonel, Dunbar grimaced. ‘Sleep, Mr Williams. I shall not require you until noon. Make use of my camp bed.’

After they had gone Williams lay down. The letter from Miss MacAndrews was in his hands, still unopened, and he stared at it as he lay there, suddenly overwhelmed with weariness. His eyes clouded, and the letter dropped to the floor as he went into a deep sleep.

11

T
he yellow-brown walls of Olivenza looked almost as old as Major Alasdair MacAndrews felt as the noon sun blazed down on him. His throat was as dry as sandpaper, and thanks to a ball from a French sharpshooter up on the battlements he had nothing to drink. Obviously it was better to have a shattered flask than shattered bones, but it was certainly a nuisance. To cap it all the young pup of an ensign did not seem to understand that he had done anything wrong.

Another ball smacked into the boulder above them, flicking up a puff of pale dust. Samuel Truscott moved to look over the edge of their little hole in the ground and the major grabbed him firmly by the shoulder. An officer was not supposed to manhandle another, even one so junior, but there were moments when convention could go and hang itself.

‘Stay down, sir, stay down!’ MacAndrews almost spat the words. The hole they were in was none too deep, the stones around the rim on the side closest to the walls smaller than he would have liked. Two more musket balls pinged off them. The French were watching, no doubt mightily amused and taking bets on who would be first to bag a redcoat officer. Shots came back in the other direction from his own men, but he doubted it would be enough to prevent more Frenchmen from having a go at the two British officers cowering in their tiny cover so close to the rampart.

‘Sit still,’ he repeated as the ensign wriggled. ‘We wait for the battery to open up before we move, do you understand.’

‘Yes, sir,’ came a muffled voice. MacAndrews realised that he
was pressing the ensign’s head into the earth, but was not inclined to slacken his grip for the moment.

‘Now, Truscott,’ he said in a gentle tone, as if talking to an infant. ‘We must wait for the great guns to practise on the wall and then we may have the chance to get back to the rest of the men. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ came the faint reply.

‘Well, then, I am going to let you free, but you must not sit up, not even a little. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

MacAndrews let go, and shifted to be more comfortable, head ducked down to his shoulders, and leaning against the largest of the boulders. His hat was gone, somewhere out there, plucked from his head by another shot as he ran to grab the ensign. Exposed, his white hair wafted in the breeze – his wife always claimed that it was like heather, incapable of being tamed by any comb.

Sam Truscott managed to roll over, so that his excited face looked up at the sky. MacAndrews could see that he was itching to move again, and wondered whether to let him go, and see if the fool’s luck held. The boy was sixteen, and to him looked to be more like ten, and still too much of an infant to be away from his mother’s apron strings. MacAndrews was a little younger when he had landed on Long Island back in ’76 – an age ago and only yesterday. He wondered whether the experienced officers had seen him as a mere child and had watched him take absurd risks. There was no memory of having done anything quite so foolish. MacAndrews was sure the boy’s brother was watching through a glass and could only guess at his feelings.

This was the first time the young ensign had really smelt powder. They had been outside the walled town of Olivenza for over a week, watching the small French garrison and waiting for heavy guns to be fetched from Elvas. The rest of the army had gone on further south, and all the land around Badajoz was now in Allied hands, apart from this place. Along with Campo Major the French had taken it in March, and like the other town
Olivenza had only obsolete old walls. Thus it was probably fitting that the Allies had only six obsolete old guns dragged here from Elvas to besiege the place. MacAndrews had seen them arrive on their clumsy carriages, less powerful and twice as heavy to move as modern cannon, so that it took a big team of mules an hour to pull them a mile.

The rest of the army had gone on, and only the Fourth Division been left to take this place. Until the guns came up last night there had been little to do. The other brigades spent the night digging an emplacement for the battery, with the Fusilier Brigade told to prepare to assault the next day. Just before dawn, he was sent forward with the three Light Companies, one from each of the recoated battalions, and an attached company of riflemen from the Brunswick Oels Jaeger. These Germans were a grim bunch, with their dark uniforms and the skull-and-crossbones badge on their French-style shakos, but he was glad to have them, for their short rifles were far more accurate than the smooth-bore muskets everyone else carried.

In the darkness they had crept towards the walls, listening all the time for cries of alarm from the town. MacAndrews had done his best to make sure that the men carried only what they needed. Packs were left, canteens kept full so that they made less noise, and no one was to have a loaded firelock in case they tripped and the weapon went off. Even so the noise seemed deafening, every footfall, every scrape of bayonet scabbard on the ground, every stumble, every muffled curse magnified until he was sure the French must be waiting for them, watching, and letting them come into close range.

There was no challenge, and when he guessed he was one hundred and fifty yards away from the walls, MacAndrews whispered the order to halt. The supports would wait here – there was a convenient gully where they could kneel down in cover until needed. The other half of each company crept forward in pairs, told to find the best shelter as close as possible to the rampart and then wait. He had listened to the little sounds as the men loaded.

MacAndrews was given this command because he was the
senior major of the brigade. He knew Captain Headley of the 106th’s Light Company well. The other men were strangers, but all seemed capable and the men were experienced. In truth this mattered far more than any orders he had given. When the sun rose the men were in place. He was with the supports, ready to commit them as and when they were needed, but from the gully he could see little red figures crouched behind bushes or in dips of the ground. The Germans were harder to spot in their dark uniforms, and because they were good, and that was encouraging. It ought to be much harder for the French to see them.

The sun rose, setting the cloudy sky aflame in the east – a warning to sailors and shepherds, but he hoped not to soldiers, unless they were French. A shout came from the wall almost immediately, followed a moment later by the first shot. It was answered by the cracks of several rifles, and MacAndrews heard a scream from the ramparts – whether of alarm or pain he could not tell. His men were doing well. Only the few with a clear target and a couple of the more nervous had fired. The rest waited.

MacAndrews saw movement on the wall, soldiers filing to their places, and then more puffs of smoke. His own men replied, the duller booms of muskets mingling with the distinctive snap of rifles. The wall on this side of the town did not have battlements except in a few places, and the embrasures for the light cannon mounted on it were poor. Head and shoulders were in plain sight whenever one of the French soldiers bobbed up to look or to shoot. His own men were better protected, for the fields close to the walls were full of little hollows, stretches of dry-stone wall, gardens, bushes and trees.

They fired for twenty minutes, and even in that time the return fire from the wall slackened. Then MacAndrews stood up on the bank in front of the gully and blew his whistle three times.

‘Cease fire!’ he shouted, waving his cocked hat from side to side. There was another crack and then silence. He saw a Frenchman gingerly peer over the parapet, but at this distance it would
be the worst possible luck to be hit by anyone shooting at him with a musket, and so he stood unconcerned. Thank the Lord that the French were too stubborn to adopt the rifle.

MacAndrews watched the little party ride forward under a flag of truce to summon the French governor to surrender. The man was an infantry colonel, a good soldier by all accounts and from what they had seen of the defence so far, so there was no surprise when he saw them ride back after only the briefest of parleys. A runner reached him just as the batteries opened fire, the great cannon sending out gouts of flame and noise. There were lesser booms from the field pieces mounted in separate positions and aimed at the French guns on the wall.

The major gave a long blast on his whistle and then waved his hat again, this time in a circular motion. His men resumed their fire – a good scatter of shots whenever a target appeared. At first this was often. The French replied manfully, with musket and with the four cannon able to bear on the attackers. They were light pieces in the main, save for a twelve-pounder which could just hit one of the flanking batteries. Both sides spent plenty of powder to little result. None of his men came back wounded, and he saw no corpses. Their own shooting kept the French nervous and seeking cover more than it struck home. Over time the enemy fire slackened.

MacAndrews drew his glass and watched the stretch of wall being pounded by the main breaching battery. Already there was a cloud of dust around the spot, but he thought he could see pieces of stone shattered with each strike of shot. Fire on both sides slowed as the morning drew on. The Allied gunners were growing weary and took longer to reload and point their pieces. The French were nervous of appearing on the wall unless the target was excellent, which in turn meant that his men had fewer good marks.

At eleven o’clock a white flag appeared above the main gate. The Allied guns ceased fire, and MacAndrews gave the same order by whistle and gesture. It took longer this time for his men to understand. He knew that many would be locked in their
own little world, which extended no further than the patch of cover hiding them and the stretch of wall they watched for the chance to strike an enemy and for any risk to themselves. There were several more shots before all was quiet.

Half an hour later the guns resumed, and another runner brought him a message to say that an assault party was forming for the attack. MacAndrews had already heard the drums beating and had guessed as much. Obviously they wanted the French to know what was coming in the hope that this would convince them to surrender even at the last minute. If the plans were serious then everything possible would have been done to conceal the Allies’ purpose.

By now many of his skirmishers were no doubt running low on ammunition, and on top of that it would add to the pressure on the French to see them being reinforced.