Beat the Drums Slowly (5 page)

‘You, of course, have an excellent seat, Captain Wickham.’ Williams envied the smile the girl gave him.

Wickham looked directly at her. ‘I can ride hard and fast and always last till the end.’ He paused. ‘There is the whip if I need it.’

Jane blushed, and Williams was not quite sure of the cause, but felt a flash of anger at Wickham.

‘And yet I fear your sword was not called upon to do any work.’ Williams tried and failed to make the statement sound innocent. Wickham kept his gaze on the girl.

‘I do not consider pride in killing appropriate. I’ll do my duty, and stand shot’ – Williams was sceptical about both claims – ‘but if it can be avoided I shall be glad never to shed blood.’

‘A strangely gentle philosophy for a soldier,’ said Jane in quick response.

‘The only fitting one for a gentleman,’ was the equally prompt reply. He was still studying her closely, his eyes wandering far beyond her face. Williams struggled with a most ungenteel desire to tip the man off his horse into the grubby snow.

‘Good day to you, Captain Wickham, Mr Williams.’ Mrs MacAndrews was tall, dark haired and still striking although now comfortably into middle age. She spoke in the formal drawl of the Carolinas – indeed, seemed at this moment to be exaggerating it.

They replied to her greetings. Williams found the formidable wife of his commanding officer as unsettling as her daughter, if in a different way. He also liked her, and was slowly becoming used to her barbed humour.

‘I have liniment in my baggage if you are uncomfortable after your journey, Mr Williams,’ she offered. ‘It rubs on.

‘Captain Wickham, it is good to see you. I saw a shawl in Salamanca that I am sure your wife would adore.’ Esther MacAndrews had obviously noticed the attention the captain had being paying to her daughter. ‘Be sure to extend our best wishes to her when next you write. I trust that she is well?’

‘When last I heard,’ Wickham confirmed.

‘I am most pleased to hear it. Come, Jane, the regiment is here and we ought to rejoin them, otherwise your father will make a mess of things when billets are assigned. Will you ride with us, Mr Williams? Or should your prefer to walk?’

He shrugged. ‘I fear walking is all that I am capable of at present.’

‘Then we will bid you good day. Come, Jane!’ Mrs MacAndrews set off at a canter. Her daughter smiled down at Williams, then glanced with a lesser, markedly nervous smile at Wickham, before following her mother.

Williams led Bobbie along beside the road. Neither he nor Wickham had felt the need for any acknowledgement as they parted. The ensign stared wistfully at the rapidly diminishing figures of the ladies.

‘Bills, you old rogue!’ Pringle’s animated greeting interrupted his thoughts. ‘Glad to see you brought her back in one piece!’ The 106th were passing, and the Grenadier Company in their place at the head of the battalion.

The bespectacled Pringle was an inch or so shorter than Williams, but thickset and inclined to plumpness, which the rigours of campaigning had so far not in any way diminished. He came over and nuzzled Bobbie, who responded by snapping at him. ‘Ah, your usual friendly self, my darling,’ he continued, having just dodged her yellow teeth. ‘Hmm, I am sure she had two eyes before I was generous enough to lend her to a friend. How did she do?’

‘Fine, but I see what you mean about her gait.’

‘Ah well, she is more suited to someone with an elegant figure resembling my own.’ Pringle reached back to pat his behind. ‘Helps to pad things. I was going to ask you to ride to the rear and check on the stragglers.’

‘I’ll walk,’ said Williams firmly.

‘Don’t blame you!’

Williams strolled happily past the battalion’s column. He knew all the men of the Grenadier Company. Dobson, the old veteran who had taught him so much about soldiering, had nodded as he passed. Williams knew all the officers of the regiment, and there were plenty of men in the other companies whose faces were familiar. Even after less than a day away, it was good to be among the 106th.

At the rear of the battalion a row of ox-carts carried the heavy baggage piled high. Sitting on top of the mounds were many of the wives and children who followed their men to war. Sally Dobson waved when she saw him and prodded her daughter Jenny, who had been looking the other way. There was a cluster of wives from the grenadiers on the leading cart, since apparently they had insisted on their seniority. In a moment all of them were waving or blowing him kisses.

‘Where you been, Mr Williams?’

‘Gone all night, eh! What’s her name?’

‘Been off riding with the cavalry,’ he replied.

‘Bet your arse is sore!’ The laughter doubled.

‘No, my dear ladies, it is very sore.’ There was no malice in their mockery, and its coarseness was unthinking and habitual, and so Williams happily joined in. For a few paces he exaggerated the awkwardness of his walk and the winces each step provoked.

‘Here, what have you done to all my hard work?’ The heavily pregnant Jenny was looking at his jacket, stained from the fall, smeared in one place with blood from the Frenchman he had killed, and with the right shoulder wing broken and half hanging off. ‘You’re not safe to be out. Bloody men! Send it to me later and I’ll sew it back up for you. Ma will give it a clean.’

Jenny was barely sixteen, but her condition had done nothing to diminish her good looks or her readiness to speak to anyone as an equal, officers included. She was married to the taciturn Private Hanks, whose feet were badly blistered, so that he was riding on a donkey behind the cart. Williams asked him how he was, and received the expected brief but optimistic reply. ‘Be all right tomorrow, sir.’

‘Good.’

Williams was glad to be home. An argument broke out among the women, all uniting in mutual hostility to Molly Richards. Williams decided it was time to check that the baggage was stored properly on the other carts.

T
hat evening the newly returned William Hanley sat with Pringle in the small room allocated to the officers of the Grenadier Company. Williams was out checking that the men and their families were settled, had received and consumed their rations, and were neither being mistreated by nor themselves abusing their hosts. Major MacAndrews insisted that his officers visit the men’s quarters twice a day. More often would have given the soldiers no rest. Less would have made it much harder to maintain an acceptable standard of discipline. He knew that other regiments were less strict, but saw that as no reason to change his own regulation. Anyway, standards of internal order appeared to be generally good in the Reserve Division. The grenadiers were in the houses at the far end of the hamlet’s single street. No one seemed to know what it was called, but the entire regiment had somehow been crammed into the forty or so buildings, with the officers allotted space in the only big house in the place, a crumbing villa owned by an obscure member of a very minor aristocratic family.

Only a single servant remained in the place, and he left the barest pause after knocking before opening the door and peering in, apparently in the expectation of catching the two officers mistreating his master’s property. This would not have been easy. Two low stools and a table with one leg markedly shorter than the other three were the only furnishings left in the badly swept room. The British officers had themselves obtained a meagre supply of straw to spread over the cold flagstones. The candle on the table was also their own.

Much to the man’s surprise, Hanley greeted him in Spanish, and listened politely to his praise of Don Carlos, and his confidence that the latter would wish him to extend every hospitality to the English while they visited his home. It was clear from his tone that as far as he was concerned his employer was far too generous for his own good, and that it would have done them all no harm at all if the officers had slept in the snow. Briefly he showed interest when asking whether Hanley was Spanish. Although tall, Hanley’s already dark complexion had tanned strongly during his years living in Spain. If the man was disappointed by the confession that Hanley was in fact English, his demeanour suggested that by habit he both expected and embraced disappointment. The man left, crossing himself absentmindedly.

‘Another warm welcome,’ said Pringle sourly. ‘Sometimes I wonder why I am putting up with such inconveniences to free their country.’

‘The Spanish doubt that they need us. They made a French army surrender at Bailen before we won in Portugal. As far as they are concerned we’re turning up late to join in as they chase the last remnants over the Pyrenees. Anyway,’ he conceded, ‘they are none too fond of soldiers, even their own.’

‘And me so personable! And with this pretty red cockade.’ All of the British troops marching into Spain had been ordered to add a red Spanish cockade to the black one of the House of Hanover which all wore in their hats. Pringle poured some brandy into two pewter cups which formed part of his travelling canteen. ‘So what is the news?’

‘Oh, I forgot.’ Hanley rummaged in his valise and produced a folded and rather battered newspaper which he tossed to his friend. Pringle saw that it was
The Times
. ‘It was among the effects of a French staff officer. He rode into a village near Segovia and started ordering people about in an offhand way, so they killed him. Well, as I said, the Spanish aren’t too fond of soldiers. It’s from the start of November.’

Pringle was impressed. ‘I would guess that this is the most recent English paper anywhere in the army.’ He frowned. ‘I suspect there is a moral there somewhere.’

‘Most of it is about Cintra. By the sound of it your fellow has been exercising himself:

Here folly dash’d to earth the victor’s plume
,

For chiefs like ours in vain may laurels bloom
.

He must have sobered up for long enough to get angry.’ They had conflicting opinions of Lord Byron’s merits as a poet.

‘I don’t think Wellesley was to blame,’ ventured Pringle, scanning the pages as well as he could in the poor light. Sir Arthur Wellesley had won the Battle of Vimeiro, but before the day was out had been replaced by an older, more senior general, Sir Harry Burrard. The next day an even more exalted commander had arrived in the shape of Sir Hew Dalrymple. Neither had seen much to be gained by farther attacks on the enemy, and had welcomed a French deputation which had arrived under a flag of truce. Negotiation had led to an agreement to end the hostilities. General Junot’s French army was to be returned to France in British ships and was awarded all the honours of war, keeping their guns, colours and personal possessions, including a good deal of loot. Wellesley had signed the Convention of Cintra, but it was widely held that he had been ordered to do so by his seniors and did not deserve the blame associated with it.

‘All the Spaniards I have met think that it was a good settlement,’ said Hanley.

‘Well, they weren’t the ones who had been robbed and murdered by this particular group of Frenchmen. It got the campaign over quickly, I’ll allow, but you know as well as I do that the Portuguese were none too impressed. Maria gave me hell over it.’

‘I dare say her mood recovered in time.’

‘Oh, indeed yes,’ Pringle smiled at the memory. He thought for a moment. ‘She really is extremely good at what she does.’

‘I know.’

For once Pringle was startled. ‘You do? So, it seems I cannot even trust my friends.’ There was no trace of any annoyance in his voice. ‘At least Bills is too pure of heart. However, she was talking of going to visit Truscott in the hospital. Be rough if after surviving the loss of his arm he succumbed to pleasure!’

‘Does he indulge in such pleasures?’

‘Don’t we all? Well, excepting Bills probably. Truscott is a Cambridge man, though, so you never can tell.’ Pringle had attended Oxford. ‘You know he says that he must have been there at the same time as Wickham, but does not recall ever meeting him.’

‘Have you heard from him?’ asked Hanley.

‘No, not since you left us. The fellow is probably too busy enjoying himself to write to his friends.’ Pringle went back to the paper, skimming quickly through the sheet. ‘I cannot see any mention of the Russians.’

Hanley shook his head. A squadron of Russian warships had been sheltering in the Tagus off Lisbon when the British Army arrived. Russia was allied to France, but not actually in a state of war against England until a few weeks later. By that time, they were included in the Convention and allowed to return to their home ports.

‘The Navy wasn’t about to let the fleet sail away, and Admiral Cotton put up quite a stink.’

‘So what happened?’ asked Pringle.

‘Well, we are English.’

‘So I have been told.’

‘And so there was a compromise. The ships stay, and the Royal Navy will keep them until six months after Russia ends hostilities. All the sailors have already been sent home.’

‘Good riddance,’ said Pringle. He had nothing against Russians in general, but at the height of the summer’s campaign, Maria had ensnared him and the others in a deadly race against a Russian officer and his soldiers. She wanted to beat them to the hiding place of treasure left by her former lover, an aristocrat who had fled to South America. The Russian count had been ruthless and clever, and they were lucky to win in the end. Williams and Dobson had done most of the killing on their side. The old veteran had taken the Russian’s sword and given it to Williams. He had also taken the gold from the man’s purse and shared it with the officers. Pringle had bought the horse with his share, and Williams the basic accoutrements of an officer. Hanley was sad to think that he had gambled away most of his own portion. Truscott was probably using his as they spoke, for the army did not make allowance for provisions for convalescing officers.