Whose Business Is to Die (44 page)

‘It is all right, lad,’ MacAndrews said, appearing from nowhere. ‘Take the lieutenant to the surgeons,’ he said to a couple of the men, who helped Derryck away. The last of the sergeants with the party took charge of the King’s Colour.

‘Are you hurt, Mr Williams?’

The Welshman stood up. ‘I have a small piece of shell casing in the behind,’ he said. He thought how Pringle would laugh when he heard, and then he remembered poor Truscott. It would all be so absurd if it was not at the same time so heartbreakingly sad.

‘That seems careless. Are you fit enough to continue in command of the battalion?’

‘As long as I do not sit down, sir.’

‘Splendid. The brigade will halt here. Call the roll and we can begin to take more thought for the wounded.’ MacAndrews began to stride away, but then turned. ‘And Mr Williams, please tell the men that I have never in my life seen such gallant conduct.’

At two o’clock Hanley’s luck ran out. Every time he and the German hussar had tried to find a way around the French they met up with a patrol. Twice they were chased, the second time by a dozen dragoons. His horse was struggling, for it was not in
the best of condition, and he wished that he was still on one of his own mounts. The hussar pulled ahead, but looked back, and the man was clearly wondering whether to turn. It could not be anything more than a gesture, for two men on weary horses had no hope against twelve.

‘Go on!’ he shouted. ‘Leave me and take word back!’

The German nodded and then found some reserves of strength in his horse because he pulled away. Almost immediately the animal Hanley was riding gave a shudder. He whipped it on, still hoping for some miraculous escape, but then it shuddered again and stopped. Its breath was laboured and it sank down to its knees.

Hanley sprang off, landing badly and hurting his ankle. When he stood it was more painful than his wounded arm.

‘I surrender.’ He raised his hands, but the leading French dragoon had his sword up and cut as he passed. Hanley dodged out of the way, but the second man thrust and gave a deep graze to his side.

‘I am an English officer and I surrender.’ There was an officer with the patrol and when Hanley repeated his words in French the man barked at the dragoons to stop. Hanley offered the man his sword.

His horse rolled over on to its side. Hanley felt a brief pang of guilt for riding it into the ground, but for the moment was more worried about what would happen to him.

‘Your name, sir?’ the man said as he took the sword. At the present there was no offer of parole.

‘I am Captain Hamish Williams of the Fourth Dragoons, and I am your prisoner, sir.’ Hanley hoped that Baynes’ subterfuge would work, but for the moment there was nothing else he could do. An exploring officer would be a great prize for the French, and so he had chosen this false identity in the hope of being able to escape. With luck Sinclair was finished, but he could not be sure. There was no knowing where Dalmas was or whether the cuirassier would be able to recognise him. Hanley did not believe anyone else would know who he was.

An hour later he was herded along with hundreds of other prisoners, most of them British and many of them wounded. They limped and staggered along as the French army retreated. It seemed from what the prisoners said that the Allies had won the battle. As Hanley struggled along the muddy track, his ankle very painful, he did not feel that it looked much like victory.

EPILOGUE

W
illiams’ command of the battalion lasted for barely three hours, but long enough for the rumble of cannon fire to fade away. The French guns had deployed on the far bank of the Nogales stream and fired with such speed and accuracy that the Allies gave up the pursuit. It was five in the afternoon, and the rolling fields around Albuera had gone quiet save for the soft moaning of thousands of wounded men, the buzzing of countless flies and the ecstatic crowing of the carrion birds.

Pringle returned, his leg bound and walking with the aid of a stick.

‘Oh no,’ Williams said, and grinned in relief to see that his friend was not badly hurt.

‘I regret that your elevation proved so temporary,’ Billy said. ‘Next time I shall try to suffer a more serious wound. That way your ambitions will be given free rein and I shall spend weeks in idleness.’

‘Lazy devil.’

Major MacAndrews remained in charge of the brigade, although it was unlikely to be permanent.

‘Colonel FitzWilliam is seriously hurt, but they hope for recovery,’ Pringle told him. ‘They say Myers has little chance, poor fellow.’

‘Truscott?’

Pringle shook his head. ‘It is bad.’

Others were hobbling back to rejoin the battalion, men with minor wounds treated or ones who had gone astray in the confusion. At the end of the fighting Williams reckoned that there were
barely one hundred men around the Colours, the only officers another lieutenant and two ensigns, including Sam Truscott. Now, as he drew up a list of the 106th’s strength for Pringle to take to MacAndrews, he saw that the numbers had grown.

‘One captain – that is poor old Hamilton – killed,’ Williams read from the list, ‘along with a lieutenant, the sergeant major, a sergeant and forty-six men. The colonel, four captains and ten subalterns wounded, along with sixteen sergeants, two drummers and two hundred and sixty-nine men.’

Pringle had taken off his glasses and was rubbing the lenses on his sash. Williams could not bear to look him in the eye and so focused on the paper. ‘Total losses sixteen officers, eighteen sergeants, and three hundred and seventeen other ranks. Fit for duty, twelve officers and about two hundred others.’

‘About?’ Pringle’s tone was harsh.

‘I am sorry, sir, but several of the men report seeing others who have not yet come in.’ Williams stared at the figures. He had a nasty feeling that he had miscalculated.

When he took the list to the acting brigade commander, MacAndrews made it clear that the appalling losses were typical of the brigade.

‘Both of the fusilier battalions have lost at least half their strength,’ the major said. The Portuguese had been less heavily engaged, but by all accounts the Second Division had been hit even harder. ‘I hear the Buffs have barely eighty men left out of more than seven hundred,’ MacAndrews said.

It was easy to believe, for Williams could remember the lancers and hussars riding down the redcoats. The long ridge was strewn with bodies, thousands upon thousands of bodies. Most lay white and pale, stripped of their clothes and anything else of value by looters.

‘Do you need to go back to your brigade, Mr Williams?’ MacAndrews asked.

‘I doubt there is much of it left, and I am needed here.’

‘Better send word or make sure that you have permission, but of course we are glad to have you.’

Williams led Dobson and a party of thirty fit men to search for wounded, and as luck would have it ran into Captain Dunbar. It was clear that the stories the major had heard were not exaggerated.

‘The Buffs are virtually destroyed, and the Forty-eighth and Sixty-sixth not much better. Houghton’s brigade is as bad, and Abercromby’s losses would be called serious on any other day.’

‘The colonel?’ Williams asked.

‘Bearing up. He knows that it was not his orders that led to disaster, but does not know what the world will say. Six Colours taken and three battalions cut to ribbons! Dear God, it could scarcely be worse, and you know how easily great men pass the blame to others.’

Williams did not have the energy to launch into an attack on the army’s commanders. ‘Does he need me to return, sir?’

‘He told me to say that there was no need, for he was sure that you were keeping busy and that your own corps would need you.’ Dunbar looked around at the men lying across the grass. ‘I do not know how we will deal with them all. Well, good day to you, Williams. Do you know it is still the sixteenth of May? It feels like a year has passed.’

Williams and his men began to do what they could for the wounded, carrying back any that could be moved. Yet there were so many, often with terrible wounds. In just five minutes he saw a dozen men missing a leg, three with both legs gone and half a dozen with great gashes to the stomach and their innards showing. The flies were thick in the air, their buzzing a constant hum.

The looters kept their distance, but he was amazed at the speed with which they worked. Some were soldiers, and many more camp followers, often women with children in tow. Even more numerous were the peasants, and he did not know where they had come from because Albuera itself had seemed to be abandoned. They stripped the Allied soldiers as well as the French corpses, but the Spanish and even the dead English were laid out tidily, with hands folded across their chests.

Wounded Frenchmen begged the redcoats to carry them
away and not leave them to the mercy of the Spanish, whether soldiers or civilians. There was little he could do, even though they spotted several bodies of injured enemies who had clearly been stabbed to death where they lay.

‘Is it not wonderful that the enemy trust the British to be merciful and kind,’ he heard an officer with yellow facings say. The man was leading a party from his own regiment on a similar task.

‘Perhaps.’ The speaker was a staff officer in Spanish uniform, but his accent sounded German or Swiss. ‘But what would that same mercy say about you if your homes had been burned by the French, your folk murdered and raped. What would that make you – Christians or unfeeling fiends?’

Williams did not want to think. Perhaps the years had helped the memory to fade, but even the carnage at Talavera had not seemed so appalling. At least then they had known that they had won, and there was no sense of bungling and mismanagement.

After the third trip he had only a dozen men left.

‘They’re done up, sir,’ Dobson said firmly, as they stood among the other survivors of the 106th. It was not yet sunset, but many slept or sat huddled by fires and did not speak. Women tended to their husbands or wept because they were widows. ‘They’ll fall down if we don’t let them sleep.’

There were simply too many fallen men and not enough fit ones to care for them. Williams could see fewer and fewer men moving across the field to care for the wounded.

‘We will get back to work tomorrow,’ he said. His vision was blurring, not with tears, but sheer exhaustion. ‘Thanks, Dob. I do not know how you keep going.’

‘A few years ago I would have said best brandy, sir. Now I reckon it’s not being bright enough to quit. That and the love of a good woman.’

‘You should find her.’ Mrs Dobson had managed to travel out from England and join the regiment before it left Cadiz.

‘You should get a surgeon to take a look at that, sir.’ The sergeant pointed at Williams’ backside.

‘It only hurts if I sit down,’ he said, his heart not in the joke, and then he saw something and knew that it must be a trick of his drained mind and spirit. He rubbed his eyes, realised that he was smearing dried blood into them and across his face, and so shook his head to clear them.

Then he ran, using his last strength.

‘Well I’m buggered,’ the sergeant said, and then saw and understood. ‘He is a lucky sod and no mistake.’

Miss MacAndrews was walking her horse towards them. There was a whoop of almost boyish joy as the major and his wife met and embraced. A sergeant of heavy dragoons grinned and then led his little party of three away, their escort duties done.

Jane was in a stained riding habit, and she looked tired and very pale, even for someone of such fair skin. Her smile was thin when she saw the lieutenant running towards her. Mother and daughter had seen battlefields before, but the sheer scale of Albuera was new even to old soldiers like Dobson or the major.

‘Mr Williams,’ she said, ‘I am pleased to see that you are unharmed. Do you know where Sergeant Murphy is? He is the father of twins!’

Williams ran on.

‘Mr Williams,’ the girl gasped in surprise as he reached up and grabbed her waist, pulling her from the horse. One boot slipped from the stirrup, but her leg was hooked around the side-saddle’s horn. ‘Please, Mr Williams!’ she cried, losing her balance, and caught between amusement and anger.

He pulled her backwards, but managed to take her in his arms and all would have been well had he not stepped back and lost his footing in a patch of grass wet from rain mingled with blood.

Williams fell heavily on his behind, the girl landing squarely on his lap, until the pain from his wound shot through him. Without thinking he yelled and pushed up, spilling the girl.

‘You fool!’ she yelled angrily. Men began to stir, and some of those around the fires were watching them and laughing.

As so often in his meetings with Miss MacAndrews, Williams found himself apologising. He began to explain that he was
wounded, soon realised that he could scarcely talk about that part of his anatomy and so launched into more apologies.

Williams helped Jane up, managing to tread more mud on to her skirt in the process, but at least realising before he tore it.

Miss MacAndrews laughed, a sound of simple mirth, strange and precious in a place like this. The more he apologised the more she laughed.

‘I really never know what to expect when I meet you, Mr Williams,’ she said, her expression serious for a moment. ‘All I know is that I shall be surprised – and probably mauled and muddied about.’ She laughed again, her joy golden and pure.

Williams did not know what to say, but they were close together, so he took her in his arms, lifting the small young woman off her feet, so that she gasped again and went on laughing. A row of bodies laid out and covered in greatcoats or blankets was only a few yards away. Williams smelt her hair and some faint scent as well as the odour of her wet riding habit, but could not blot out the stench of death.

‘Mother has arranged shelter for the colonel,’ she said, and then said no more because he kissed her and the soreness of his lips did not matter. After a wonderful moment Jane pulled away.

‘You are a fool,’ she said. ‘But I rather think you are my fool.’