Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War (22 page)

Hervey watched closely for any sign of dissent, but the serjeant was prompt with his order, and his men likewise to the response.

‘Very well.’ He stepped out into the plaza, followed by the
atiradores.

None of the revellers saw. Hervey was astounded by their dereliction. Unless they had their own sharpshooters covering them, from an upper window, perhaps, or the roof of the church. There was no way of knowing until the first shot. What option had he anyway in order to make a demonstration? Besides, any sharpshooter worth his salt would have put a bullet into one of them by now.

‘Ready?
Pronto, serjente
?
Fogo!
’

Volley-fire was not the business of
atiradores.
Theirs was single, aimed shots, like British riflemen. But they volleyed well all the same – a good noise, a cloud of smoke, and the whizz of bullets above the revellers’ heads.

Hervey strained to see before the smoke engulfed them. He would know one way or another in a matter of seconds.

There was shouting, like orders, the men in the plaza trying to form line.

There was his answer!

The
atiradores’
second rank stepped through the first and beyond the smoke. There was no need to tell them to change their aim. ‘
Fogo!
’

Half a dozen rifles blazed. As many of the rebels fell. The rest broke, dropping their muskets and racing for the far side of the plaza.

Hervey drew his sword. ‘Advance!’

The gesture was sufficient, even had the word of command not been understood. Arms at the high port, while the second rank continued reloading, the
atiradores
struck off as if they had been at a Shorncliffe drill.

‘Double march!’

He remembered Isabella, and he glanced back. But there she was, with the serjeant, holding up her skirts with one hand as she ran, like the Spanish guerrilla women he had so admired all those years past.

He checked his pace a fraction as they reached the far side; here, if anywhere, would be the sortie or the rearguard volley. But no, just the litter of the hasty retreat – of rout, no less. How far should he pursue? The rebels must surely make a stand somewhere? Probably with the main body; they couldn’t be a great distance off, perhaps just outside the walls. Even now they might be rallying; and turning.

It was getting lighter. He could just see into the street the rebels had bolted down. It looked empty. By rights he should send the
atiradores
in. Their business was to skirmish, and they would make easy work of it. But he couldn’t risk it, even now. They would follow, he trusted, but sending them forward was another matter.

He held up his hand, beckoned slowly, indicating the change of pace, then began advancing with his back close to the walls. Wainwright followed at sword’s length, and a little behind him the
atiradores
on either side of the street, rifles at the ready, with Johnson and Isabella behind them.

The street ran downhill slightly, towards the curtain walls, two hundred yards. It took them ten minutes to reach the west gate; the shadows and alleys all needed searching. Hervey was taken aback to see the gate was open. Isabella said the arch had been widened since the war to permit wheels to pass in both directions at once. There was still no sign of the rebels, or the picket.

Hervey cursed. Had the rebels joined up with other parties in the town and circled behind them? He could not imagine they had been shooting in the plaza without
any
supports at hand.

Hooves on cobbles beyond the arch startled him. ‘Take cover!’ he shouted, waving his pistol.

The
atiradores
did not need Isabella to translate. They pressed themselves into every recess, doorway or buttress, rifles ready.

Hervey now had a taste of the infantryman’s peculiar fear of cavalry at night, the noise amplified, numbing. In the pitch dark, alone with his worst imaginings, a sentry might become terrified and quit his post. But the advantage here lay with the riflemen: aimed shots against cavalry in a street, they unable to manoeuvre, and torches burning at the gate. It only took nerve. He prayed these men would hold to their posts.

Two dozen horses surged three abreast through the gate, like a tidal bore. Hervey tensed to give the order.

And then the great wave checked, as if another had met it head on – the vision of the narrow streets.

Hervey brought his pistol to the aim, trusting that a dozen rifles did likewise.

Isabella called out, ‘Dom Mateo!’

The cavalry captain, alarmed, swung his pistol round and peered into the street.

Isabella rushed past the
atiradores.
‘Dom Mateo, it is I, Dona Isabella Delgado!’

The captain sprang from the saddle, dropped his reins and took up Isabella’s hand. ‘Dona Isabella! What in the name of Our Lady are you doing abroad at this hour? Your uncle?’

‘He is safe. We heard firing. We came with the guard.’

‘We? The guard?’

Hervey stepped from the doorway, pistol pushed into his belt, sword lowered.

The captain thrust out his sabre.

‘Dom Mateo, this is Major Hervey. He is an envoy of the Duke of Wellington.’

The captain braced, and threw his head back in disbelief. ‘
Sim?
You are English, sir; an envoy of Douro?’ Dom Mateo called the duke by his Portuguese title, the country having made him a marquess long before England had honoured him.

Hervey thought the appellation too exalted, but it was not the time to dispute. ‘
Sim, senhor. Douro.
’

The captain at once relaxed, and saluted. ‘I met the Duke of Wellington at one time,’ he said, his English barely accented. ‘But I knew Lord Beresford better. Captain Mateo de Bragança, at your service, sir.’ He held out his hand.

Hervey took it and returned the smile. ‘Your countrymen have just this minute driven a band of rebels from the city.’ He indicated the
atiradores
emerging from cover. ‘And very resolute they were.’

‘Then we have finished what you began, sir, for we ourselves have just put to flight a campful of them. The remainder of my troop is rounding up the stragglers as we speak. I warned as much, weeks ago, but those old fools would not listen.’ He nodded in the direction of the citadel.

Hervey’s ears pricked; here was a man who could think for himself. ‘We have just come from there, sir. I should say that there is some . . . consternation.’

‘I warned that these Miguelistas would try our strength, try to tempt some of the garrison to throw in with them. But no, all the Estado Mayor de Praça can think about is a general advance, with drums and banners, very obliging, just as the French did twenty years ago. We face deserters, traitors, not an honourable foe. I warned we should close the gates each night at dusk.’

‘I think the past hour or so has demonstrated that it would have been wise to do so, senhor. How was it that you came upon them?’

‘Hah! I have taken out my troop each night and ridden every track between Elvas and the frontier. What else was there to do, senhor?’

Hervey was impressed. He believed that this man might well have the measure of their predicament at Elvas. The rebels played a game of humbug this evening, of hoax and trickery. They appeared to do what the defenders expected they would do
– feared
they would do, no less. That their capability was but nothing took nerve to expose. He would mark this Captain Mateo de Bragança well.

He turned to Isabella. ‘Thank you, senhora. I am very greatly obliged to you.’

CHAPTER TWELVE
REPUTATIONS

Elvas, three days later, 19 October 1826

The more Dom Mateo spoke (and he spoke English well), the higher Hervey’s regard for him rose. As well as an inclination both to think and to act, Captain Mateo de Bragança looked a very soldierly man – no mere
fidalgo
dilettante, prizing nothing so much as the finery of regimentals. There was a way with uniform that spoke, to those who knew, of the wearer’s disposition, especially perhaps in the cavalry. Hervey had taken note at once of the canvas overalls, long in the leg, inners and ankle-band strengthened with kidskin suede, instead of the breeches and jacked boots that looked so good on parade; Dom Mateo’s cross-belt was fitted tight so as not to hang loose in a grappling, and his shako chinstrap was long enough to go
under
the chin rather than on it. These and other little details spoke of a serviceable regular rather than a showy
ordenança,
just as it did with the Line and the yeomanry at home.

Dom Mateo’s uniform was so very like Hervey’s own, indeed, that the two might be taken for one at a distance. Except that the epaulettes were not the Frenchified affairs the Sixth were meant to wear; just a mailed shoulder with a simple fringe. Hervey reckoned that Marshal Beresford had chosen well all those years ago when he had reordered Portugal’s army, for a proud nation would have seen fit to change it otherwise. He could not help but think it a pity they would not welcome Beresford back to take command once more.

Hervey would have counted it a queer thing to judge a man by these presents – his uniform – alone, but he judged men quickly these days, confident that he could smell a bad one. And if he judged harshly then it were better that way: he was done for ever with trusting merely to a fellow’s rank when promotion was bought so easily. Or even when it was not bought, if the rank seemed ill used. Colonel Norris would have his loyalty for the time being, even if not his respect, for the first was due whereas the second was earned; but there were limits to personal loyalty when that risked what it might now. He had taken his own step down the road to rebellion in writing to Lord John Howard, but it was a step only, easily recovered if Norris would come to his senses quickly enough. There was urgent necessity, therefore, in coming to judgement on Dom Mateo, for he needed an officer of his own mind in order to acquire the necessary intelligence to support his design. Only an extensive reconnaissance, in person, could otherwise yield it, more extensive than he had time for. If he was going to persuade Colonel Norris and Mr Forbes of his design, he needed to know everything there was to know about that porous border, and the men who had crossed into Spain to return in ranked rebellion.

That Hervey’s regard for Dom Mateo could rise any higher was perhaps surprising, for in the forty-eight hours that had followed the scattering of the rebels in the plaza, they had ridden about the country in pursuit of the rebels’ compatriots, and Hervey had observed that Dom Mateo’s eye for ground, his energy and capability was every bit what the Sixth would call admirable. Dom Mateo was a humane man, too. When prisoners were taken they were disarmed but otherwise unmolested, save for a robust interrogation of those who might yield immediate intelligence. By the evening of the second day, confident the incursion was entirely defeated – the rebels captive, indeed, for the main part – Dom Mateo had posted standing patrols on the main approaches to the city, and then turned back for Elvas.

‘There were no Spaniards,’ he said again. ‘Every one a soldier of Portugal.’

At first Hervey had not known whether this was a cause for relief, albeit tinged with melancholy, or for disappointment. He decided to press him. ‘Did you expect otherwise?’

‘I did,’ replied Dom Mateo as they slowed to a walk down one of the steeper hills. ‘But then when it began to occur to me that this affair was . . . how did you say? – a
demonstration,
a show only, to see what the garrison would do, I thought it unlikely we would see any Spanish troops.’

‘The Spaniards would not think it their business to test the garrison?’

‘They have too much to lose, I think. If the expedition had been a success, then it would probably have been the signal for them to march.’

‘But the affair in the plaza was a poor show. What have they learned?’

Dom Mateo inclined his head, as if to challenge the assertion. ‘It may have been more clever than you imagine, Major Hervey. Suppose that no one had come to challenge them? It was but chance that you were there, and I arrived with my troop.’

‘They would still have to reduce the citadel even if they gained the walls. A fearsome undertaking, I’d wager.’

Dom Mateo smiled. ‘I was but a youth when last it was done. It was, as you say, a fearsome undertaking.’

Hervey’s Lusitano began jogging again. He sat deep, his legs applied, to drive the mare onto the bit, for she did not respect a looser rein as did Gilbert. ‘You imagined yourself quite secure within the walls?’

Dom Mateo raised a hand, palm upward. ‘We were on the outside, Major Hervey. It was the French who had possession! It was you British who came to their rescue!’

Hervey frowned. ‘After Cintra?’

Dom Mateo frowned too. ‘Yes, Cintra.’

Cintra – as infamous a business as ever there was. It cast a long shadow still. But even at the time, Hervey, mint-new cornet that he had been, comprehended the shame. The Duke of Wellington had beaten the French at Vimeiro (or Vimiera, as the Horse Guards had it) soon after his first-footing, and with great economy, yet the arrival of – by common consent – two old fools, Hew Dalrymple and Harry Burrard, Wellington’s seniors in the gradation list, had deprived him of command. What was worse, when the French sought terms it was Dalrymple and Burrard who treated with them. And what had those two old fools agreed? To allow the French, under arms and with all their loot, safe passage back to France!
And
in ships of the Royal Navy! Hervey could see it now, the redcoats having to escort Junot’s men to the Tagus to protect them from the anger of the good citizens of Lisbon. But he did not know that redcoats had had to
rescue
the French from Elvas!