Hervey 07 - An Act Of Courage (40 page)

Then he sealed the letter, addressed it, and poured more wine. He was not diverted by any book, even Folque’s, for without the password to encode it was the dullest volume in the world. Instead he drew close to the fire, wrapping his cloak about his shoulders and giving his wine-warmed thoughts over to the course he would set – the course for Georgiana.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

VEILED SPEECH

Next day

‘But how, Major Hervey? Why?’ Dr Sanchez was despairing: he had been given the new password and had come at once.

Hervey shook his head, trying not to betray the despair to which
he
was tending. ‘I don’t know. They came this morning, shortly after breakfast. They’ve never searched before. They took every book – sparing my Prayer Book, that is. They had that long enough before.’

‘I will go at once to speak with the captain.’

Hervey sat down. His boots wanted polish, the silver and brass about his tunic was dull, and his shirt was no longer white. These things he had attended to as best he could, but he was daily more conscious of the decline. That the means of his deliverance should be plucked from him now, so close to his triumph, was a cruel blow: the sea of despair was once more stretching before him – perhaps even wider than before.

But he would fight it. So close . . . there must be a way! ‘I’ve been trying to imagine what they might make of Folque’s signalbook – if they’ve found it. Would it be apparent what I was about? I think not.’

‘It might raise a suspicion, not least because it’s part-written in English. But see, when I go to the captain, if the books are simply collected, without examination, I can secrete your book and return with it.’

Hervey was fighting despair, but he kept his reason: if the authorities had grounds to remove his books, they would be suspicious of any ‘friend’ of his. And if they discovered him with the book, the game would be truly up. ‘Easier said than done, I think, doctor. But what agitates me as much is the thought they might stop the correspondence with Elvas.’

‘Exactly so. I will go at once.’

Hervey held his cloak for him. ‘What
is
the parole?’

Sanchez glanced at the door. ‘Napoleon,’ he whispered.

Hervey sighed. ‘It is all the more dismaying for its being so simple. I suspect it might even be in Folque’s vocabulary – no need to spell it out at all. Concealment would have been easy.’

‘Vexing in the extreme.’ Sanchez put on his hat and turned to go, but then he changed his mind. ‘See, Major Hervey, might you not be able to convey the word in another way? So singular a name is surely susceptible to allusion?’

The same thought had just occurred to Hervey; also the peril. ‘I could veil my words, yes; but the consequences of conveying the wrong meaning would be disastrous.’

Sanchez looked disappointed. ‘I see the danger perfectly; I had not thought—’

‘
No
, wait!’ said Hervey, his face now animated, and happily. ‘
Laming
– I do believe that self-regarding scholar may be our deliverance! Doctor, you recall I spoke of cornets trading epigrams?’

‘I do.’

‘Well, one of those – and deuced clever – conveys exactly the parole, no doubting it! Laming will not have forgotten, for it was his own.’ He sat down and snatched up a pen. ‘Doctor, go to the authorities, if you will, and ask if they will take a letter on the usual terms. Do not trouble them for the return of any book: it could only rouse suspicion, and we have no need of Folque now.’

Sanchez needed no urging. He clapped a hand on Hervey’s shoulder, as much to reinforce his own resolve as his friend’s. ‘Very well! We
shall
succeed!’

When Sanchez had gone, Hervey began to write. He had said it, and he was as sure of it as may be: Laming, even after so long a time, would not have forgotten such an intriguing acrostic. It remained only to insert the obviously contrived phrase.

He did not have to ponder long: Joshua would serve him. He smiled at the thought of the great spy-master continuing his work here. Joshua would not bring down the walls of a fortress, but he might yet ‘let him down by a rope’!

My dear Laming
,

How very good it was to learn that you are here, to pursue some classical purpose – study of the Roman bridge at Elvas, perhaps? Or is it something of greater antiquity in the bishop’s library? I myself had not the time when of late in the palace, but then my Greek, as you may imagine, is now very poor. Do you recall our efforts when we were younger? I try, however
.

I am very well treated here and await my release agreeably, although I am not able to read and write as I should wish. Nevertheless, I content myself with the recollection of our former studies, and believe
I may give you my word
in this. I have been reading so much of the Book of Joshua, whom you will know to be a childhood hero of mine, perhaps as much to me as to the people of Israel. Indeed, to those who know, the
word is thus
: with but one remove, Joshua, the destroyer of whole cities, was the lion of his people
. . .

He filled two pages with thoughts on Joshua, with emphatic underlinings in insignificant places, so that the pertinent phrase did not stand out by its curious sense. He was especially careful not to refer to Jericho, or indeed to any other city which a sharp-eyed censor might connect with Badajoz. It would be a cruel irony, he mused, to have the letter withheld for an unintended parallel.

When it was finished, he asked the guard for the letter to be conveyed to the castle authorities, as usual. The guard took it without hesitation, as he had the others; and Hervey breathed a silent sigh of relief.

It was much troubling Dom Mateo that the Spanish were being so punctilious in maintaining the posts and couriers. Colonel Laming was less inclined to puzzle over it since the French border had remained open in the days before Waterloo, and the mails had moved freely between Paris and Brussels. Closing a border was no small thing, he declared. As often as not it was prelude to a formal declaration of war. Were Spain to do so, it could only be regarded by Lisbon – and now London – as a hostile act.

‘I pray you are right,’ said Dom Mateo. ‘I fear, though, that the present arrangements greatly favour the Miguelistas.’

‘They favour us too, General; at least in respect of Major Hervey.’

Dom Mateo nodded. ‘Indeed, they do, Colonel. But, I hope, for not very much longer: not half of one hour more, I think.’ The semaphore had already signalled the crossing of the Badajoz courier.

Dom Mateo picked up his copy of the code-book and turned its pages. He looked pleased with himself, at last. They had been dark days since the taking-prisoner of Hervey. He had seen off the Miguelistas’ half-hearted attempt to overawe the garrison at Elvas. It had been extraordinarily easy, indeed: no more than a display of the gunpowder at his disposal – proving the guns in the bastions, and
feux de joie
from the walls by the
pé do castelo
. The Miguelistas and their Spanish friends had not stayed long after that. They had had no siege train: had they truly believed the garrison would desert to them as soon as they showed themselves? Dom Mateo’s chief of staff believed it to have been only a reconnaissance in force, but Dom Mateo himself was more sanguine: he was sure their
ruse de guerre
, although it had been exposed as one (and Hervey was paying the price), had fatally unnerved the invader. And now that British troops were actually making their way here, he was certain there could be no usurpation from within Elvas or from without. He would have Hervey back in the fortress by the time they arrived, and there would be no diplomatic embarrassment, for the Spaniards could hardly protest against the rescue of a British officer taken on Portuguese soil. Not that he cared one jot about ruffling the feathers of diplomatists; but he did care for the reputation of his friend.

Dom Mateo felt content as he turned the pages of General Folque’s manual. It had been great good fortune indeed that he and Hervey had spent the morning together, a month past, with the Corpo Telegráfico. But then, he had always been of a mind that good soldiers made their own fortune.

When he read the courier’s despatch, half an hour later, Dom Mateo was at once bewildered. Indeed, he was quite dismayed, throwing his arms about in extravagant gestures. ‘There is
nothing
– nothing but a page observing the habits of the birds in the garden at Badajoz! Is Hervey suffering some derangement, you suppose? Where is the parole? He says nothing at all!’

Laming was engrossed in his own letter.

‘What say you, Colonel?’

‘I . . . I beg your pardon, General: I did not hear.’

‘I said, why is there no parole? No code, nothing!’

Laming smiled wryly. ‘Then his letter to me is all the clearer. Hear, General: he writes, “I am very well treated here and await my release agreeably, although I am not able to read and write as I should wish.” Evidently the code-book has been taken from him.’

‘Then how are we to learn the parole?’

‘Hervey tells me, General. And unless the censor in Badajoz has both a perfect grasp of English
and
Greek, then he tells me in a code every bit as clever as Folque’s. The password is Napoleon.’

‘Here, let me see.’ Dom Mateo almost seized the letter. He read, his brow furrowing deeper with every line. ‘Where? Where is this code?’

‘There, General,’ replied Laming, pointing to the sentence, and smiling still.

‘ “The word is thus: with but one remove, Joshua, the destroyer of whole cities, was the lion of his people”. What is Joshua to do with it?’

Laming shook his head. ‘Joshua is merely the . . . decoy. You understand “decoy”, General?’

‘Yes, yes, I understand the word right enough. But how is it decoy here?’

‘General, remember that Hervey had to write in such a way as not to arouse suspicion. Talking of Joshua is commonplace enough, I surmise. The code is an acrostic – the term, I imagine, is the same in Portuguese? When we were cornets, we played these games. The true phrase is “
Napoleon
, the destroyer of whole cities, was the lion of his people”. When Hervey writes “with but one remove, Joshua” he means me to substitute Napoleon for Joshua!’

‘You are certain of this?’

‘I am, General.’

‘But how do you know it is Napoleon who replaces Joshua? I have never read of it! Whose is the saying?’

‘General, I beg your pardon. I did not say: it is a clever play on Greek words.’ He picked up a pen and wrote carefully. ‘Here, sir. You see, by writing “Napoleon”, and then removing the initial letter for each successive word, the sentence is made: Napoleon, the destroyer of whole cities, was the lion of his people.’

NAΠOΛEΩN AΠΛEΩN ΠOΛEΩN OΛEΩN AEΩN EΩN ΩN

Dom Mateo shook his head, quite diverted by the acrostic’s simplicity. A man did not have to be a Greek scholar to appreciate it. ‘Ingenious, Colonel Laming; quite ingenious. My compliments to you, and of course to Major Hervey.’

‘It is schoolboy conceit, General; but then, we were very lately out of school.’ Laming paused, and then pressed home. ‘It is settled, then? Two of your men, Dona Isabella, the corporal and me.’

Dom Mateo looked more resigned than content. ‘It goes hard with me, Colonel Laming, but I must concede you are right. It would indeed be an embarrassment for your government as well as mine if I were discovered in Spain. You will have one of my couriers, and a captain of my own regiment – he was with the Corps of Guides, a proud, excellent fellow.’

Laming was relieved. In truth, the embarrassment might be the greater if he himself were to be discovered, but although he would own that he knew the country not one tenth as well as did Dom Mateo, he still fancied he knew better how to spirit his old friend from the castle at Badajoz. That had been the way of things in the Sixth. ‘Very well, General. And you will give me a man who knows the unguarded crossing?’

‘You may depend on it, Colonel. It is little more than a mule track. We use it frequently. The Spanish cannot watch every mile of the border, even if they have a mind to. The road has never been used by them.’

‘And the courier’s papers are all that will be needed to pass within the town?’

‘I am assured of it. And Dona Isabella has Spanish enough to deal with any official. You will be especially careful of her safety?’

‘I shall have the very highest regard for her safety, General. I should not for one moment contemplate her accompanying us if I believed we might do this without her.’

‘I understand perfectly, Colonel. The Spaniards will be disarmed by her sex, for all that their experience ought to put them on their guard instead.’

‘
Deo volente
.’

Dom Mateo nodded, and made the sign of the Cross. ‘
Deo volente
.’

They assembled at two o’clock. Laming was by no means certain that the plan could work
with
Isabella, let alone without her. There were just too many points at which they could be challenged, and at any one, despite official papers and Isabella’s Spanish, there would be no escape following discovery – not without a deal of bloodshed at least. And if they had to negotiate all these points of challenge on the way to Hervey’s quarters, they would have to do so by return –
and
with a fugitive. They had their diplomatic papers, and they travelled in plain clothes (borrowed, and strangelooking as these were), but at root it was a plan reliant as much on Spanish ineptness as clever Greek wordplay; Laming had seen enough in the Peninsula to know that ineptness was not a quality which could be relied on. But he perforce wore the mask of command, and he now smiled and waved confidently as they rode out of the headquarters.