Flashman's Escape (16 page)

Chapter 16

I did not see Campbell again until some three days after the assault. He had managed to stay on the glacis and get messages back to Wellington. He actually seemed jealous of the fact that I had inadvertently joined the attack, despite me describing the horror of the ditch. He hinted that he thought I had jumped in deliberately and so we went up to the glacis again in daylight. There we could both see how it had happened. The glacis was not a straight line but zigzagged to match the bastions in the city wall behind. It was clear that in the darkness he had run up a zig, while I had blundered straight off the edge of a zag.

The place had been bad enough at night, but the weak winter sun revealed the devastation and slaughter everywhere. The flooded ditch was packed with British dead, many of whom had started to swell in the water. The crater, where the massive mine had exploded, was still black with dried blood and body parts, while the slope to the breach itself remained thickly carpeted with red-jacketed corpses. For the British, the casualties had been even higher than at Albuera at nearly five thousand men. But instead of being spread over a large battlefield, here they lay in massive mounds where they fell.

“Did you know,” said Campbell as we surveyed the scene, “that Wellington actually wept when he stood here the morning after the battle?”

“He is such a cold fish,” I replied, “that I don’t think I have ever seen him show much emotion. You don’t think he will start to lose his nerve, do you?”

“Oh no, he is already planning to divide the army, leaving a garrison here and taking the rest to attack Marmont. The good marshal was marching to help relieve the city and Wellington hopes he can take the French by surprise. Getting the army out of the city will also help re-establish order.”

“Well, I will not be sorry to leave here. It always has seemed a grim and forbidding place, but now it stinks of death and decay.”

“What about your little nun?” Campbell grinned. “Does she not offer some compensation?”

“She did, but now there is order on the streets again she has decided to return to the convent. No, the sooner we leave, the better for me.”

The army started its march north two days later and I made myself look busy tooling up and down the column, but actually doing very little. I tried to avoid Wellington and had not spoken to him since my ride with despatches. I had long since learned that contact with our general invariably resulted in me being dropped into danger. With another battle on the horizon, a very low profile seemed the way to go. But you can’t hide from fate and on the third day of the march I received an early-morning summons to report to his tent.

From extensive experience I can tell you that when you get an urgent summons to a general’s quarters, it is rarely good news. I speculated on the cause as I hurried across the camp ground. There was no attack imminent, Soult was still in Seville and Marmont was miles away with various exploring officers keeping tabs on him. With no obvious reason to throw Flashy into jeopardy, I wondered if it was a reprimand. Had Francesca’s mother superior complained about my behaviour? The young ‘bride of Christ’ was likely to find our Lord a disappointing companion after demonstrating a growing enthusiasm for the type of protection I could offer. Or was it Grant, had he made a formal complaint? After the liniment incident I had been expecting him to exact some sort of revenge when the opportunity arose. My worst fears seemed to have been confirmed by Wellington’s opening words.

“Ah, Flashman, good to see you. I want to talk to you about Major Grant.”

“I don’t know what he has told you, sir, but I can assure you that I had nothing to do with it.”

“What
are
you talking about? Of course you have had nothing to do with it. We think he has been captured.”

“Captured, sir?” I asked, quickly taking in this change of events and thinking that good news might come from this type of meeting after all. “That is very unfortunate, sir.”

“It is more than bloody unfortunate. He has a huge amount of information about our army and he knows we are marching to try to trap Marmont against the river Agueda. If the French find out, they will slip away and this march will have been for nothing.”

“Perhaps he has got lost or is just injured somewhere.”

“You may be right, which is why I have sent for you. He was last heard of near Alcantara; you know the area from your time there in ’oh-nine. I want you to go up there and see if you can find out what has happened to him.”

“Are the French still in the vicinity?”

“No, they have pulled back; you should be quite safe. I don’t want to risk losing another man who knows about our attack. Come back as soon as you know what has happened to Grant.”

I was stunned: no reprimand, my nemesis probably dead or captured and a mission that did not appear to involve any danger at all. I struggled to stop a big grin crossing my face. “I will do my best, sir.”

“I am sure you will,” agreed Wellington. He appeared about to dismiss me and then hesitated. “You know Flashman, if you had wanted to join the attack on Badajoz, you had only to ask. I heard about you
accidentally
falling into the ditch and then risking your life to save a young nun.” He grinned. “It is just the sort of thing I would expect from you. Campbell was quite cross when he found you had gone into the city without him. The pair of you are as brave as lions, even though you sometimes try to hide it with these ridiculous stories.” I opened my mouth to protest, but then shut it again. What could I say without ruining my credit?

“But,” Wellington continued, holding up a finger in warning, “this time I do want you to be really careful Flashman. No unnecessary risks, do ye hear? I cannot afford to lose another man to the French who knows about our plans.” He paused, considering. “It is a sad thing but I would rather Grant be dead than captured.”

I was not entirely sure, but that last remark seemed to be a hint to kill Grant if the opportunity arose and I could not bring him back alive. While I could not stand the pompous little bastard, I was not sure I hated him enough to kill him in cold blood, especially after what I had already done to him. But this was one occasion when I could give Wellington a truly honest reply. “Don’t worry, sir,” I told him. “I give you my word that I will do everything in my power to come back in one piece.”

Two days later and I was taking in a view that I had last seen nearly three years previously. Then I was newly arrived in Spain and about to take part in an extraordinary action where a few hundred men from the Loyal Lusitanian Legion and some militia from the Idanha a Nova regiment stopped Marshal Victor and an army of ten thousand Frenchmen in its tracks. This was largely achieved when I blew up a span of the old Roman bridge that I now saw stretching out across the gorge in front of me. To my surprise as I looked down on the broken structure I saw a dozen carts and several British officers amongst a group of men that seemed to be working to repair it.

The memories flooded back as I rode down into the valley to speak to the engineers. The French had lined the opposite bank and sent a storm of musket shot across the river, with cannon fire and several assaults across the bridge itself. Things looked different now as I arrived at the end of the bridge. Men were pulling on ropes to manoeuvre a large wooden platform to cover the seventy-five-foot chasm of the missing arch. As I asked for who was in charge, the platform started to teeter on the edge of the existing stone supports. It was a big oak repair that must have weighed tonnes. As it started to tip into the chasm the weight on the ropes increased, dragging the men holding them towards the gap in the bridge. With what seemed infinite slowness the platform fell into the river, to a chorus of shouting and swearing as men tugged on ropes to stop it getting washed away. I looked for the commanding officer and decided that it would not be politic to mention that I was the chap who had blown the bridge up in the first place.

Colonel Sturgeon, who was in charge of the engineers, remembered seeing Grant a week previously. “He passed us on the road here, but there was no reason for him to come to the bridge as he could not get across. He was heading up to Idanha a Nova. He had a guide with him and they seemed to know where they were going.”

The next day I followed Grant’s footsteps into the small town of Idanha a Nova. Most of the houses were gathered around a square which had a large tavern, always the best place to get information. I strode in, nodding in greeting to the dozen patrons that sat on the benches. The conversation that had been going on died away at my arrival. Several of the men there looked awkward and embarrassed. I wondered if they had been part of the militia that had run away during the French attack after their commander was cut in half by a cannon ball. I did not blame them if they were; I was trying to do the same at the time, but my foot had been stuck fast in a rock fall.

“I am trying to track down an Englishman who came this way a week ago,” I announced. “His name was Grant and he had a Spaniard called Leon with him. Do any of you know what happened to them?”

They looked away and shuffled their feet. These men just wanted to farm their land and they had long since learnt that any involvement with men in uniforms invariably brought trouble.

Then one of the men at the back stood up and asked hesitantly, “You are
Señor
Flashman, yes?”

“That’s right. Do I know you?”

“My cousin Jorge and I sheltered with you behind the same rock when the French started shooting at Alcantara.” He looked embarrassed as he added, “We ran away, but you stayed. I heard later that it was you who blew up the bridge.”

I remembered them now, although back then I had been too busy to make a note of faces. There had been three of us huddled together behind a rock while musket balls lashed all around us like horizontal hail. It was just the break I needed to get these men to help me.

“I am glad to see you survived.” I walked towards him, holding out my hand in greeting. “Let me buy you a cup of wine.”

Cups of wine for all present soon loosened their tongues and I swiftly discovered why the men had initially been reluctant to talk. Grant and Leon had been staying in a house on the outskirts of town. They had been captured because someone in the village had betrayed them to the French. When they had gone to bed that night there was not a Frenchman within ten miles of the village, but by dawn they were surrounded.

The French were determined to catch Grant and had thrown a cordon of infantry around the town to stop anyone escaping and more soldiers had systematically searched all the houses. The search had started at the other end of the village, so Grant and Leon had time to mount up and try to charge their way through the cordon. They had managed to burst through the line of troops and were fortunate to escape the shots fired at them. But then their luck ran out as they rode slap into a patrol of French dragoons. Even then they had tried to escape, riding into some trees to the west. But a short while later the dragoons were seen riding back through the village, with Grant in his distinctive red coat amongst them as their prisoner. Of Leon there was no sign.

With the promise of more wine I persuaded the villagers to take me up to the woods where Grant was captured. I thought he might have thrown away notes and maps while he was being pursued, but I also wanted to know what had happened to Leon. If the guide had been wounded then unless he had found some water he would almost certainly be dead now. I organised the men into a line and we stepped through the trees. They were dwarf oaks barely coming up to our heads when we were on foot. Grant, on horseback with his red coat, would have been easy to track.

Half a mile into the woods there was a shout from the other end of the line. When I got there I found the men gathered around a body lying in the dirt. It was Leon. He had been shot in the head and judging from the powder burns on his cheek it was from point-blank range as he lay on the ground. The French had clearly seen him as some valueless servant and had not even bothered to search his body. I did and found a notebook tucked into the waistband of his trousers. Inside the book I found pages of notes and maps, but not in Grant’s neat handwriting. The content seemed familiar and then I found a page on French army morale. I recognised some details that had been quoted in one of the reports from Grant I had seen at Wellington’s headquarters.

All of Grant’s neatly copied reports were taken directly from Leon’s notebook. There was also more valuable information in its pages that for some reason Grant had not seen fit to include, probably because he did not understand its significance. I did not know whether to laugh or cry. The French had summarily executed the finest intelligence officer used by the British army. Instead they had taken Grant, thinking he was the man who helped guide Wellington’s decisions. The irony was that Wellington had been duped like the French, and he had given Grant all the information that the French were seeking.