Flashman's Escape (13 page)

I quietly took in a deep breath and, holding tight to the trunk, I slowly slipped my face underwater without making a splash so that I was completely submerged. I could not see the dog now but I could see its shadow as it walked further along the trunk. It stopped directly above me and I imagined it standing there, smelling the branches and deciding if its prey was near. I lay frozen with fear beneath it. I could hear men’s voices on the near bank now, but the gurgling water made it impossible to make out the words. Finally, with infinite slowness, the shadow began to move back up the trunk and out of sight. I made myself count slowly to ten before I brought my face quietly out of the water and opened my mouth wide to take in big, silent gulps of air. Then I twisted my head slightly to bring one ear out of the river so that I could hear the men walking nearby.

“How much further do you think he could get?” asked a man; I was pretty sure it was tavern keeper.

“I’ll follow that bastard to the gates of hell itself to get my hands on him,” growled the smith.

“But he told me he had a wounded leg; he can’t have got that much further.”

“He told me a lot of things too,” snarled the smith. “And right now I don’t believe any of them.”

“He could have doubled back towards the village when he reached the river, I suppose,” mused the innkeeper. “Possibly walking up one of the side streams into the hills.”

I could not hear the smith’s response as the men continued out of earshot. After all was quiet I slowly sat up in the water and looked about. In the distance I could see the groups of men walking on both banks, all armed and with the dogs bounding in front of them.

I sat on that log in the damn river for the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. I knew that sooner or later they would come back and I did not want to get out on the bank and leave the dogs with a new trail to follow. Eventually I heard them returning and slipped quietly back into the water. This time they were all on the far bank and seemed to be too busy arguing about how I had given them the slip to take much notice of the ground that they had already covered. Once they were well past I hauled myself up onto the grass bank. I brought the satchel up with me. I was hungry but the bread had been ruined by its long immersion. My feet and fingers were wrinkled from spending too long in the water and I was shivering. But a spell lying in the late-afternoon sun put warmth back in my bones, while a rub from the liniment helped soothe my aching leg.

In case the search party had roused nearby farmers to look for the British ‘seducer’ I waited until evening to make my move and kept my distinctive soldier’s coat in the satchel until it was too dark to make out the colour. I must have made ten miles that night, stopping only to steal some vegetables growing in a cottage garden. The next morning, after a brief sleep under a hedge, I set off again in the same manner. I had planned to march east until I found some unit of the British army, but in the event the army found me.

“That is an officer’s coat, English boots too. So how did you get those, my bucko?”

I came to from a doze by the side of the road to find a red-faced British dragoon leaning over me and pulling my jacket from the satchel. “Been thieving from British soldiers, have you?” He looked inside the jacket at the name embroidered inside by my tailor. “So what have you done with Captain… Flashman then, eh?”

I could understand his mistake: I had not shaved for two days, I was wearing the smith’s mud-stained shirt and British officers do not normally sleep in ditches. “I am Captain Flashman, damn you,” I told him and watched the astonishment cross his face. “And I would be obliged if you would direct me to your commanding officer.”

Captain Jennings greeted me warmly. He only had one arm and his hussar uniform was as ragged as mine but he offered his remaining hand to shake. “Captain Flashman, is it? Well, what the devil are you doing out here?”

“I was with an earlier convoy of wounded,” I told him, gesturing to the wagon train of injured men that Jennings was escorting. “I was not sure I would survive the journey so I got off and rested up at a nearby town. I am now trying to re-join the army.” I stared at the wounded men in the wagons. They looked just as pitiful as the men I had travelled with before, but they all seemed to be wearing cavalry uniforms. “Are these men from Albuera too or has there been another battle?”

“It wasn’t so much of a battle as a disaster. A half blind, mad catastrophe called General Sir William Erskine. Do ye know the man?”

“I had heard that he was insane, but I have never met him and did not know he was half blind as well.”

“He is so short-sighted he can barely see beyond his horse’s arse. He nearly wiped out my regiment and he cost me an arm.” Jennings waved the stump before adding, “At least it is not my sword arm. When we get to Lisbon I am going to have a hook made to hold the reins of my horse.”

“What happened?”

“The damned idiot advanced us in fog until we found ourselves slap in front of a French division deployed in line with artillery. There were only a hundred yards off but still he could not see them. The adjutant spurred forward and grabbed hold of the bridle of Erskine’s horse and started to drag it round while shouting at the rest of us to about-face and withdraw. As the French opened fire the fool was still squinting about him and shouting, ‘What are you doing, Partridge? The French are nearby; I can hear them.’”

“What did Partridge do?” I asked.

“Oh, his name wasn’t Partridge; Erskine called nearly everybody Partridge. I gather it was the name of his first adjutant and he just stuck with it. The adjutant’s name was Major Smiley, but he wasn’t smiling then; he was beside himself with exasperation. You hear people say that they have ‘had kittens’ over some crisis; well, if Smiley had told me he had shat a cat at that moment I would have believed him.”

“What happened next?” I asked.

“Oh, there were all sorts of trumpets of alarm from the French and their cannon opened fire, but the barrels were cold and the first salvo largely missed. The second didn’t, though,” he said, gesturing to his missing arm. “Did I not see the stupid bastard,” he added, “ride past me as the cannon balls came whistling through our ranks, shouting, ‘There you are, Partridge. I told you the French were close by.’ Bah, Smiley should have just shot him. None of us would have reported it and Wellington would have probably given him a promotion.”

Jennings was happy for me to join the convoy and get a lift to Lisbon. Of course such is my luck that my new companions were set to drive straight through the town of Arraiolos, the last place I wanted to be.

“There has been a bit of a misunderstanding over a girl in the town,” I was forced to explain to my new friend, who was greatly amused.

“Ah, that explains why you were not wearing your coat when my men found you,” he laughed. “Don’t worry, I have had one of those ‘misunderstandings’ myself. We will hide you in one of the carts when we get close to the town.”

The next day I was lying on the bottom of a cart covered by blankets and greatcoats as it squeaked and bumped its way through Arraiolos. Through a gap between the planks that made up its side I caught a glimpse of the familiar tavern and standing in front of it was a group of very angry men. In the middle of them was the smith, with a face like thunder.

Chapter 13

January 1812

I won’t bore you with too many details of the remainder of 1811 for in truth not a lot happened. I reached Lisbon without any further incident and continued my recuperation. There had been so many officer casualties at Albuera and at Fuentes de Oñoro that there were vacancies again amongst Wellington’s staff officers. I think my friend Campbell engineered it for me, but I was invited by Wellington to return to his headquarters. I tooled up there late in the autumn and made a point of leaning heavily on my stick and wincing sometimes as I held my chest to remind people of my wounds. The last thing I wanted was to be declared fit for any exertions.

In truth my injuries were healing well but I quickly discovered that there was no great appetite for an attack amongst the British then. The French had three hundred and fifty thousand men in Spain, to subdue the whole country. That was roughly seven times the British force, but events were happening many miles away that would alter the balance of power. There had been growing friction between Napoleon and the tsar of Russia, and now Bonaparte resolved to put his Russian rival in his place. Troops were withdrawn from all over the French empire, including Spain, to produce a
Grande Armée
for the invasion of Russia. At the same time Napoleon was getting frustrated by the lack of action by his generals in Spain. Massena was replaced by Marshal Marmont, and despite reducing their numbers, the French emperor ordered his armies in Spain to go on the offensive.

As the cold winter approached, the French turned their attention first to the guerrillas and then other Spanish forces operating behind their lines. Daily reports would come in on the movements of French armies and that is when I became aware again of the work of Colquhoun Grant. He was now well established as one of Wellington’s best exploring officers. These were a group of men who monitored the enemy while dressed in British uniform, relying on a fast horse for a quick escape. I saw several of Grant’s reports written in his meticulous neat hand and they were full of details including numbers of men and guns, routes of march; one even had a report on French morale. Even I had to grudgingly admit that it seemed competent work.

Normally neither side campaigned during the harsh Spanish winters. The roads were often boggy and impassable and the mountain passes were blocked with snow. But Wellington planned to take the French by surprise. They had been concentrating on subduing the city of Valencia and several of their armies had been moved to free up reinforcements for that attack. Reports from partisans and the exploring officers indicated that the two French-held fortresses guarding the main routes into Spain were vulnerable. The first of these was Ciudad Rodrigo which Wellington planned to attack in January 1812.

The weather was bitterly cold but Wellington had spent the early part of the winter amassing a large train of siege guns and strengthening the roads to his first target. The siege began on the eighth of January and by the nineteenth the breaches in the city walls were large enough to assault. The plan of attack worked, despite the enemy laying huge mines in the breaches to destroy the brave souls that made up the first storming parties. Most of the officers leading the assault did so from the front and some paid for their bravery. Two major generals were killed in the attack: McKinnon was blown up by a mine and Bob Crauford was shot through the spine. Colborne, my old brigade commander, took a ball through the shoulder.

But while all this shot and shell was flying about, where was the indomitable Flashy? I hear you ask. Well, all that riding about before the attack in the freezing cold had given me pneumonia. I am proud to say that while the assault was underway I was sitting in a hot mustard bath five miles away and feeling a lot better for it. I had been a coward before Albuera; but afterwards, having seen that being wounded was even worse than I imagined, I was more determined than ever to keep my battered carcass in one piece.

There was the usual sacking of Ciudad Rodrigo after its capture. Our soldiery raged through the place, shooting, raping and looting until they had drunk themselves insensible. I waited until all that unpleasantness had died down before, wrapped in blankets, I made my way to the Montarco Palace in the city where Wellington had set up his new headquarters. That was where I met Grant again.

I had been staying in the palace a week by then and, still unwell, had been given a room of my own. One afternoon I returned from a gentle walk around the town to find Grant standing in my room arraying a selection of washcloths and glass bottles around my washstand.

“Ah, Flashman,” he sneered, taking in my red nose and watering eyes. “I have just had to open the window to get rid of your infected air.”

“What the devil are you doing in my room? And take all your pots and potions from my washstand. If you think I am sharing a room with you then you can think again.”

He smiled in triumph. “You are not sharing a room with me. Your belongings have been moved to share with some captains upstairs.”

“What the devil…” I began, but then I noticed that Grant was pointing to the second epaulet on his coat: the bastard had been promoted to major!

“Exactly,” declared Grant as he saw the realisation cross my face. “Other majors have been given rooms of their own and I have been given yours. You only had one because you were ill, but now you can share with the other captains. So if you will excuse me, I would like to wash off the dirt from the road.”

I cast around for some retort before I left. “I am glad not to be sharing with you. I have never seen an officer with some many pots and washcloths. This room will soon smell like the boudoir of some painted trollop.”

“Cleanliness is next to godliness, Flashman. You cannot expect me to wash my face with the same cloth as I wash other parts of my body. You may spend your time in filth and squalor but I do not.”

I stormed off at that, not wanting to listen to him prattle on, and at length found myself sharing a freezing-cold attic room with four other captains. But if you think you have got one over on Flashy, you had better watch your back. They say revenge is best served cold, but in this case it was dished with a hot, burning sensation.

It was as I looked at my own paltry collection of toiletries that I got the idea. A washcloth, a toothpick and the old bottle of liniment with just a dribble left in the bottom was not a lot to show for my cleanliness or godliness. But then I remembered that the liniment when splashed onto a more sensitive area of skin burned like an inferno. I waited until the next day when Grant went out riding with Wellington and then slipped down to my old room. There was a clean, soft cloth that I guessed Grant used for his face, but I emptied the last of the liniment onto the other one and folded it so that the thick green ooze could not be seen. Then, to cover the smell, I removed the stopper of one of his bottles of cheap cologne.

Half an hour after Grant had returned to his room nothing had happened and I suspected that my trick had been discovered. Then as Campbell and I were sitting in the officers’ mess drinking brandy an animal bellow rent the air from one of the rooms above.

“What on earth was that?” asked Campbell as I grinned in triumph.

“I have no idea,” I claimed as innocently as I could manage.

I knew from personal experience that after even the smallest splash the heat from that liniment builds longer and much more strongly than you would think possible. Grant did well staying in his room for another minute, making just the odd whimpering groan. Several had started up the stairs to investigate and were knocking on his door when it was thrown open. A wild-eyed and half-naked Grant charged, pushing all in the way aside. Campbell and I stayed in the officers’ mess, but we could hear the cries of those in the corridor outside as Grant pressed through.

“What the devil…”

“Don’t push me, sir…”

“You are improperly dressed… are you insane?”

Grant kept pushing through the throng while emitting a regular panting shriek until he got outside.

“Come to the window,” I called to Campbell. “This is going to be good.”

Campbell got there just in time to see Grant emerge from the front of the building. Still screeching, he ran straight to the nearest horse trough and, to the surprise of two mares drinking from it, threw himself into the icy water.

We joined the throng of officers out in the yard standing around the trough. Grant was only wearing a shirt and was now sitting across the trough with his middle immersed. He was resting there with his eyes shut and ignoring the cacophony of questions that was being directed at him. The water was literally freezing; there were still lumps of ice in it from where the surface had been smashed that morning to allow the horses to drink. Eventually Grant gave a great sigh – the burning sensation must have been extinguished by the icy water – and looked up with still-watering eyes. Someone stepped forward from the group standing around, laughing or exclaiming, and I saw it was Guthrie.

“Come along, old fellow,” he cried soothingly. “Let’s get you back upstairs in the warm. You are clearly not well.”

Grant was pulled out of the trough and an old horse blanket was wrapped around his shoulders. He staggered back towards the headquarters building as though in a daze but as he got near me I could not resist goading him.

“So, Grant,” I murmured quietly, “are you still sure that cleanliness is next to godliness?”

He looked up at that and I watched as realisation of what I had done slowly crossed his face. “You bastard!” he yelled as he lunged towards me. “I will kill you for this.”

Several officers helped Guthrie pull him back.

“What on earth is he talking about?” asked Guthrie.

“He seems to be raving. I don’t think he is right in the head,” I replied as Grant thrashed about and yelled to be released. “I was enjoying a drink with Campbell here when I heard him come down the stairs. I just came outside like everyone else.”

Guthrie was no fool and he gave me a hard look, but then he shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I will need to give him something to calm him down.”

With that Grant was dragged away, still kicking and screaming, and that was the last I saw of him for two months. I don’t know whether it was the icy immersion or sharing my room, but after the opiates Guthrie gave him wore off, Grant came down with pneumonia.

It seemed sensible to not to be in Ciudad Rodrigo when the hapless major recovered. The war was moving on, but the place to which it was moving was the last place I wanted to go. Having captured the fortress guarding the northern road into Spain, Wellington now turned his attention to the one guarding the southern route: Badajoz.