Death to the French (aka Rifleman Dodd) (10 page)

'Meanwhile my Captain Gauthier will escort you back to the high road just in case you are thinking of looking for another way into my territory after leaving us. Good day to you, captain.'

All that the company could do was to march back with their tails between their legs, while oaths rippled along the ranks- oaths which were re-echoed when the rest of the battalion in the village turned out to welcome them on their return and heard the news that they had come back empty- handed. They saw the captain after making his report ride off on the colonel's horse- the only animal the battalion possessed- and they saw him come back late in the day dejected and unhappy. Headquarters had confirmed the order regarding the foraging area allotted to the fourth battalion of the Forty Sixth.

Still, there remained the mountain by the river for them to seek food upon-not a very hopeful prospect, apparently, at sight of the rocks and gullies which was all it seemed to consist of. Next morning four companies were paraded to search the mountain. There were little, straggling paths winding here and there up the mountain side, goat tracks where men could walk in single file. 'We ought to find goats up here,' grumbled Lebrun, slipping and stumbling as he made his way up the path behind Godinot. 'They are the only creatures who could live here.'

'Goats will be good enough for me,' said Bernhard the optimist. 'A nice collop of goat, with onions.'

'The people we chased away when we first came here must be somewhere near,' said Dubois, joining in the conversation. 'And their sheep and their cattle. I would rather have a beefsteak than any collop of goat.'

'Beefsteak! Listen to the man!' said Lebrun. 'Served on silver, I suppose, by attentive naked damsels?'

'That would be better,' agreed Dubois.

Somewhere ahead they heard a musket shot, beyond the head of the long, straggling column.

'That's one of Dubois' damsels,' said Lebrun. 'Out with her blunderbuss. She wants a collop of Frenchman for dinner to-day.'

The column still pushed on up the path. Occasionally a shot or two sounded at the head of the column. After a while they passed a dead man lying at the side of the path-a dead Frenchman, with a blue hole in his forehead and his brains running out on to the heather. Lebrun made no joke about him. Then word was passed down the line for Sergeant Godinot's section to take the path to the right, and the order had no sooner reached them than they reached the path named- another goat track diverging from the one up which the company was advancing. Godinot led his twenty men up the path. Away to their left they could hear the rest of the company still stumbling and climbing up the slope, but they had not gone twenty yards before they could no longer see them, so broken was the hillside and so thick the undergrowth.

'I was right about my goats,' muttered Lebrun, pointing to the ground. 'Goats be damned!' said Fournier. 'That's sheep, man. Sheep! Stewed mutton for dinner!'

There were sheep's footprints and sheep's dung all along the path, and the men pressed forward eagerly.

There was more firing away to the left. Godinot strove to see what was happening there, but he could see nothing at all. Then a shot or two were heard to the right; clearly the battalion was extended over the hill, but still they could see nothing, neither friends nor enemies. Now the path through the bushes began to descend. It was no fortuitous dip, either: the descent was too prolonged and too steep for that. At one corner they had a glimpse of the wide, green Tagus below them, before a turn in the path hid it again from view. Then they went on down the descent until the river came in view again, closer this time. And in the end the path ceased abruptly at the water's edge, and Godinot and his men looked at each other.

'The sheep seem to have found another way round, sergeant,' said Fournier.

'We'll find them all the same,' said Godinot. 'Up this path, boys.' They turned their backs on the river and plunged up the hill again. Right ahead of them they heard more firing.

Godinot halted his men and listened carefully. It seemed as if they must have penetrated the enemy's skirmishing line by some unguarded gap. They must be in the rear of the Portuguese. Then they heard a shot from close ahead. Godinot beckoned to Fournier and Bernhard and the three of them crept cautiously forward, leaving the others behind.

They tried to move silently up the stony path and through the thorny undergrowth. They heard something moving ahead of them, and crouched silently by the path. Then someone came running down towards them. Godinot gathered his limbs under him and sprang, and he and the man upon whom he had leaped fell with a crash on the path.

Fournier and Bernhard came up to them and helped secure the prisoner-an old Portuguese peasant, very old, very wrinkled. His face was like an old potato, brown and lumpy.

And it was as expressionless as a potato too. He crouched while the Frenchmen stood round him, gazing before him without moving a feature. They dragged him back to where the rest of the section awaited them.

'Get out and scout,' said Godinot. 'You, and you, and you.'

Three of the men seized their muskets and plunged up and down the path to guard against surprise while Godinot turned to the prisoner, raking through his mind for the few words of Portuguese which he had picked up. He wanted to ask for food, for sheep, for cattle, for corn.

'Alimento,' said Godinot, bending over the prisoner. 'Ovelha. Gado. Garo.' The prisoner said nothing; he merely sat on his haunches gazing out into infinity. Godinot repeated himself; still the prisoner said nothing. Godinot set his teeth and cocked his musket, and thrust the muzzle against the peasant's ear.

'Alimento,' said Godinot.

The prisoner drew a long shuddering breath, but otherwise he made no sound. 'Alimento,' said Godinot again, jogging the man's head with his musket barrel, but it was still unavailing.

'Here,' said somebody. 'I'll do it, sergeant. Where are those sheep, curse you?' The man's bayonet was fixed; he stuck an inch of the point into the peasant's arm and twisted it. This time a groan escaped the prisoner's lips, but he said nothing articulate.

'That's enough,' snapped Godinot, his gorge rising. 'We'll take him back with us. Bring him along.'

Someone fastened the man's wrists behind him, and, dragging him with them, they climbed the path. So broken and overgrown was the hillside that they could see nothing of the rest of the battalion, and it was only with difficulty that they found their way over the hill back to the village, where the old man gazed broken-hearted at the ruin the invaders had caused.

The sergeant-major, Adjutant Doguereau, was overjoyed at their appearance.

'A prisoner, sergeant? Excellent! He will tell us where his food is hidden.'

'He would tell me nothing,' said Godinot.

Doguereau glared down at the old man, who had collapsed at Godinot's feet. Blood was still dripping from his sleeve where the bayonet had pricked him. 'Indeed?' said Doguereau. 'I expect he will tell me. Me and Sergeant Minguet.' Adjutant Doguereau had served in Egypt; he knew something about making prisoners talk. His swarthy face was twisted into a bitter smile.

'Bring him along to the prison and then tell Sergeant Minguet to report to me there.'

Sergeant Godinot never knew what Adjutant Doguereau and Sergeant Minguet did to the old man in the cottage room which had been set aside as a prison; nor did anyone else, because Doguereau turned out from it the two soldiers undergoing punishment there before he set to work. But the battalion heard the old man scream pitifully, like a child. And later in the day Doguereau called for Sergeant Godinot and a working party, and came out of the prison dragging the old man with him. The prisoner found difficulty in walking, but he led them out of the village to the fields, and there he indicated a pile of rubbish at one corner.

'Dig here,' said Doguereau.

The working party fell to and swept away the rubbish. Underneath was a board flooring, and when that was pulled up a treasure indeed was revealed. The funnel-shaped silo pit beneath was full of maize, heaps and heaps of it, and when they began to rake that away there were jars of olive oil underneath. 'Take all this to the regimental store,' said Doguereau, rubbing his hands. 'And what about the prisoner, mon adjutant?' asked Godinot. The poor old man was lying by the pit, his face wet with tears. 'Shall we let him go?'

'No, not a bit of it. Take him back to the prison. I expect he will find more yet to tell us later on when I attend to him again.'

But the old man never did reveal any other hidden stores, for he hanged himself in his cell that night.

There was rejoicing in the battalion. Besides the ton of maize which had been found, and the gallons of oil, another section ranging the hillside had found four head of cattle hidden in a gully, although they had not found the person minding them. Altogether there were provisions for the whole five hundred men for nearly a week, and for that it was well worth having a man killed and two wounded in the ambushes on the hill.

DURING the days that followed Adjutant Doguereau had working parties all over the village and the fields looking for further hidden supplies. They pulled every pile of rubbish and rock to pieces, they probed the floors of the cottages and the edges of the fields, they hunted everywhere, but unavailingly. When provisions were beginning to run short again Doguereau issued orders that another prisoner must be taken. Various small expeditions had been pushed across the mountain top, without success. The peasants who had taken shelter there had grown too cunning, apparently; and no one had ever yet succeeded in finding where their central place of concealment might be.

'All that is no use,' said Adjutant Doguereau. 'If we want to catch a man we must employ other methods. I want parties of five or six men to go up to the hill at night, and hide there. When morning comes someone will fall into your hands, mark my words. Act intelligently.'

So that midnight found Sergeant Godinot and a small party creeping up the hill, feeling their way up the path as silently as they might, and hiding in the undergrowth when they had penetrated far into the tangled summit. It rained heavily that night- it always seemed to be raining now- and a cold wind blew. They huddled together in the darkness for warmth, not daring to speak lest someone should overhear them. They were all friends together, these men, Sergeant Godinot and his particular intimates, Fournier and Dubois and Lebrun and Bernhard, and two more from his section, Catrin and Guimblot. When morning came it was, perhaps, inevitable that Godinot should be dissatisfied with the position he had taken up in the darkness. It was not a good ambush: it did not overlook the goat track properly and it did not offer sufficient concealment. What Godinot wanted was some position at an intersection of paths, giving a double chance of making a capture. He got his men together and moved up the path again, every man stooping to keep concealed, and creeping up the stony hill as quietly as they might. They ranged over the hill for some time, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. It was hard to find the perfect ambush. They began to feel that they had been sent out on a fool's errand, although they realized that twenty parties like theirs were out on the hill, and it would be a fortunate chance if in a day one single prisoner were caught. They were only young French soldiers; they had not the patience to lie in the cold rain waiting for their opportunity; they had to move about and seek it.

And the result was perhaps inevitable. There were others on the hill who knew the paths and the contours far better than they, and who could move more silently, and more swiftly. The Frenchmen had come to lay an ambush; instead they walked into one. Sergeant Godinot for the rest of his life felt a feeling of shame when he remembered it-the stupidity with which he had led his party to their death, the panic which overwhelmed him in the moment of danger. A high shelf of rock overlooked the path here, and it was from the shelf that death leaped out at them. There was a crashing, stunning volley and a billow of smoke, and through the smoke the enemy came leaping down at them. Men fell at Godinot's left hand, and at his right. Someone screamed. Two impressions remained printed on Godinot's memory- one of Guimblot coughing up floods of blood at his feet, another of the wild charge of the enemy with the green Englishman at their head, bayonets flashing and smoke eddying. Someone turned and ran, and Godinot ran too, down the path, and as he began to run panic gripped him and he ran faster and ever faster, stumbling over the stones, tearing his clothes on the thorns, running so madly that pursuit dropped behind and in the end he was able to slow down and try to recover his breath and his wits.

Dubois was with him. He was wounded, as he said stupidly over and over again-a bullet had gone through his arm. Fournier came up a moment later brandishing his musket.

'I fired at him again,' said Fournier, 'but I missed him clean. He is hard to hit, that one.'