Run Them Ashore (29 page)

In the event it was difficult to see very much, as low cloud came in from the sea, bringing showers of rain. An elderly Spanish lady and her companion invited Miss MacAndrews to share the canopy erected by her servants, and the two officers stood near by. It was in a little depression, which offered protection from the wind at the expense of a significantly worse view. They could hear the muffled sound of the guns, with now and then the deeper booms of the bomb ships’ great mortars. Yet the low gunboats were hard to see at a distance in such conditions, even with the aid of a glass.

For an hour and a half the action went on without their becoming any the wiser as to its course. Hanley wondered whether he was being unfair. Pringle joked and flirted with enthusiasm, much in the manner of his younger brother. Perhaps such conduct was unusual in a widower who had had so little time to mourn, but was it possible that he and the girl sought each other’s company because they found comfort in someone who had also experienced a great loss. Hanley thought that there was more on Pringle’s part, the hint of a harder, desperate edge behind his flirting. He could not tell whether Miss MacAndrews wanted more than mere friendship.

‘Captain Pringle is to escort me to the New Year’s Day races on the Isla, Captain Hanley,’ she said once it was clear that the action was over. ‘Would you care to join us?’

He was not sure what answer Miss MacAndrews hoped to receive, but suspected that events would intrude whatever he said. ‘If my duties permit, it would be an honour and a pleasure.’

With two hours to spare before he was due to meet Wharton, he asked to walk with them to the young lady’s home. ‘I would
like to give the greetings of the season to your mother,’ he said, ‘and to young Jacob.’ Edward Pringle excused himself, saying that he was sure he could entrust the lady’s protection to this escort, but when they parted he held Miss MacAndrews’ hand just a little longer than was necessary. The girl said little to Hanley on the walk back.

‘Twelve,’ Wharton told him happily when he reported aboard the flagship. ‘Twelve gunboats or other small vessels sunk or burned, and with little loss to us. Sir Richard is confident that they will not risk putting out into the bay in force, still less chance any attempt to land troops on the Isla or the city itself.

‘For the moment we are safe, unless Bonaparte risks all and lets his fleet out of Toulon. He’d need to be lucky, but no blockade can overcome tide and weather so fully as to be complete, and he could get out, and could reach here and attack from the sea. For the moment that is the only serious threat to Cadiz, and it is a distant one. And much as the Regency Council and the new Cortes bicker, they are too busy passing laws banning ladies from wearing short sleeves or white shoes to think of talking to the French.’

‘Have you discovered the story behind the gold captured at Las Arenas?’

‘In part, although it is so difficult to be sure since it was taken by us and so not used by the enemy. There is something larger and darker at work. I have little doubt that it was intended to persuade notable men here in Cadiz to offer allegiance to King Joseph. We have a fair suspicion as to who they are, but they are unlikely to move through spontaneous enthusiasm or on mere promise of reward.

‘I do wonder if Soult’s attention is shifting away from us, and his money may well precede his army if it marches in another direction. He could go east and smash Blake, overrunning Murcia and so bringing even more of Spain under French control. In truth that would leave very little free and might make many lose heart. But it is more likely that he will go west and do something to aid Massena. We have captured dispatches from Napoleon
telling Soult and the other marshals to do everything they can to aid the invasion of Portugal – and also to do everything they can elsewhere. It is our good fortune that Bonaparte does not return to Spain, for from such a distance his orders lack their usual ruthless concentration.’

‘The frontier fortresses?’

‘Perhaps,’ Wharton said. ‘Assuming that it is not all a bluff and he is hoping to lure an expedition out from Cadiz so that he can destroy it and break the will of the Spanish government. There is some game at work, I do not doubt, and we must hope to see it before it does real harm.’

‘The attacks on the guerrilleros do hint at greater knowledge than in the past,’ Hanley said, voicing a concern which had grown stronger and stronger. ‘They know more, which suggests someone has been telling them more.’

Wharton rubbed his chin. ‘Yes, that is the most likely answer. It may be gained from prisoners, but if so it has come remarkably quickly and in a manner which seems too convenient. Such men rarely tell you all you would wish to know.’

‘A traitor – or several of them.’ Hanley did not make it a question.

‘It fits best. All sorts of men end up with the partisans, and since some have changed sides they would know more than the French, but it seems they are gaining more information all the time, and so someone is still at work. He could be Spanish, but we should not consider all of our own officers as entirely above suspicion.’

So open a statement surprised Hanley, and then he instantly felt disappointed in himself for the implied greater confidence in one nation over another. He did not like to think that he was so innately patriotic.

‘Some of the officers with the partisans appeared early on in the war, and we really know so little about them.’

‘Sinclair?’ Hanley said. ‘There is something odd about that man.’ He felt foolish for saying that, since everyone – including
himself and this outwardly simple parson – involved in such work tended to be peculiar.

‘It may be unfair, but there is a natural tendency to suspect an Irishman. After all, many of Tone’s men were true believers in their cause, and such belief can well survive the worst of defeats. But it could as easily be someone else, and dealing with him could just as easily distract us from the real source. We do not know enough to act, so keep your eyes open.’

‘When do I go?’

‘You will sail on the twenty-eighth. Come again tomorrow at this time and I will provide you with any new information.’

Hanley stood up. There was little chance of Edward Pringle being in Cadiz for New Year, and he decided against calling on the MacAndrews family for another uncomfortable half-hour.

‘Oh, I had forgotten, there is a report via Gibraltar of yet another injured English officer being hidden by the partisans. This time with El Blanco. I thought that I would tell you in case it is your missing friend.’

Hanley felt himself reconciled to Williams’ death, although deep down he knew that he was not. Spending so much time away from the battalion, it was easier to forget and pretend that his friend was still there, awaiting his return with Billy Pringle and Truscott and the others. Wharton’s news forced him to think and brought gloom rather than optimism. Every rational part of him was convinced that his friend was gone for ever.

‘Thank you,’ he said flatly. ‘We can still hope.’

‘Sir Richard has ensured that his name will remain among those to receive prize money for Las Arenas in spite of the agent’s eagerness to strike him from the list.’

‘Thank you,’ Hanley said again, and left the cabin.

22

T
he man winced as he dropped the roughly fashioned crutch and let some of his weight rest on his left leg. That weight was a good deal less than it had been, for he had lost two and half stone in the long weeks of fever, but his frame was large and he was a tall man. He hissed again as he shifted more and more of the burden until he was standing naturally. There were a few flecks of sleet amid the rain, but he did not feel the cold as it soaked into his shirt.

He stepped forward with his right leg, the good one, but that meant that all his weight fell on the left and the pain seared him almost as if the surgeon was once again probing for the ball that had buried itself near his hip. Somehow it had missed the blood vessels, and not done any real harm to the bone, but then the wound had been sewn up to heal and a week later it had gone bad. It had taken the doctor a long time to find the distorted ball and remove it, and then check nothing else was buried inside him. He had never known such agony, and would have screamed and screamed had the girl not held his arms, all the while speaking to him as if he were a child, soothing and calming. It did not take the pain away, and he did not know whether it was calming or whether foolish pride in front of a kind and attractive woman had kept him from crying out.

‘Oh, damn,’ the man said under his breath, ‘damn, damn, damn.’ He brought his hurt leg forward and then stopped. His shirt was clinging to him and he wished that he had worn jacket or cloak, but was not about to run and fetch them. He shivered and the hot wind of earlier months no longer seemed so oppressive.

The man walked on again.

‘Dear God,’ he said, but forced himself to go on even though his left hip screamed in angry protest. The scar on his head throbbed in sympathy and he felt giddy. A bullet had left a bloody welt across one side of his head and made a little notch at the top of his ear. At the time it had bled profusely and knocked him out, and even half an inch closer and it would have killed him, but since then it had given little trouble. The surgeon had felt his skull, but found no sign of fracture or depression and declared himself unconcerned. Three months on, the scar was fading.

Another step and another, each one as agonising as the last, and he told himself that this was good because it was not getting worse, and forced himself on. Then his right boot slipped on the wet grass and he fell forward, just managing to turn so that he dropped on to his right side, but still the jet of pain was savage in its intensity. The man screamed, a long cry without words, but he did not pass out.

When he had been wounded he had woken and then crawled because he knew that he had been left behind and did not want to be a prisoner. He had crawled and crawled and the sun had gone down and come up again and still he had dragged himself onward, fainting time and again from the pain. Later they told him that he had gone for two miles, but at the time it had seemed more like two hundred, as he went up and down the rolling hills, avoiding the village and heading for the convent he had never seen. He was almost there when the peasants found him and took him in. Tired, covered in filth which had got into his wound, the man had been aware of very little and soon fell into a fever. He was ill a long time.

Once again the woman was beside him, one hand slipping underneath his head and the other holding one of his. She kissed him on the cheek, the touch delicate, and he went quiet.

‘You will die,’ she said. ‘The wound will open and turn bad and then you will die.’ There was sadness in her voice, a deep sadness of past hurts, and also rebuke because he was reawakening the memories. Without her care he doubted that he would
have lived, for the fever had been a bad one and yet she had stayed, mopping his brow, holding his hand. More than once he would have given up, for he felt so weary and so hopeless that it seemed too much effort to cling on, but she was there, a desperate longing in her eyes. It would have hurt her if he had died, and looking back he was sure that only the horror of causing her more suffering had pulled him through.

‘I am sorry,’ he said, for what else was there to say. He was upsetting her now, and could see the pain in her eyes, but he fretted at the idleness and was determined to recover as fast as he could. He started to push himself up, only just restraining another gasp as his hip complained.

‘No you are not,’ she replied, but still helped him, looking hurt when he gently freed himself from her grip.

‘I must do this alone,’ he said, standing for a moment to steady himself, and then he began to pace once again. With her watching he did not cry out, although his cheek still twitched with every spasm and he was sure she would see it.

The young woman watched him for a while, her black hair plastered down tightly against her head with the rain. It was longer now, covering her ears, and even wet it framed her face. She was very pretty and so very sad, but more often these days there was a new light which brought out her beauty. It was not quite happiness, and though it made his heart leap to see her smile, he was afraid that it would not last and that he might take it away.

‘ ’Amish,’ she said, rolling the first letter and placing all the emphasis on it. ‘Do not stay here too long. You need to rest or you will make yourself ill.’ Guadalupe stood on tiptoes to kiss his cheek again, and Williams felt her brushing against him. Then she was gone through the field gate and back to the shelter of the farmhouse.

He kept walking, and for a long time was so absorbed with thinking about the girl that he barely felt the pain.

The rain stopped in the afternoon, and when the sun went down it left a sky bright with stars. They were up in a little
valley high in the mountains, reached only by a few difficult tracks. The farmer and his family were poor, but kept sheep and goats and somehow eked out a living on land rented from Don Antonio’s family. They had welcomed the British soldier, their landlord’s sister-in-law and the two guerrillerros who escorted them up here ten days ago, and made them as welcome as they could. It had been an excruciating journey for Williams, jolting on a mule over mountain paths, and had left him flat on his back for forty-eight hours. When he woke from an exhausted sleep the girl had once again been by the bedside, waiting and watching.

At noon today El Blanco’s entire band had arrived, and although they posted sentries on the only paths in and out, the rest prepared to mark the coming of the New Year with a great bonfire, food, drink and music. There was no sign of the French near by, but from what Don Antonio said, the enemy had been pressing them for weeks, forcing him to keep moving. They had never been close enough for shots to be fired, but they kept seeing the French, especially one regiment of dragoons who seemed to follow like bloodhounds. They had a leader with them, who wore a much paler green jacket than the cavalrymen and had the shako of an infantry officer with a tall white plume. No one saw him from up close, but when Williams listened it reminded him of a similarly dressed man watching from the shore at Las Arenas.

‘It has been a bad month,’ the guerrilla leader said. ‘Just a week ago Jorge Hernandez and his band were ambushed south of Ronda. He was shot dead by a French marksman, and half of his men killed or taken.’

Don Antonio’s wife was with him, looking very different in a dress rather than her usual trousers and riding boots. The dislocated shoulder had been reset and in the last months her broken arm had healed well. She was still pale, and said little, but gave a faint smile when she saw Williams.

‘It is good to see you well,’ she said, looking at the ground. Her sister appeared, and she had replaced her breeches with a
flowing skirt in bright red which stirred as she walked. Guadalupe embraced Paula, and Williams was close enough to see that both were crying.

‘I am glad that you are recovered,’ Don Antonio said. ‘I owe you more than I can ever repay, but know that you will always have a friend in Don Antonio Velasco.’

‘And in his cousin,’ Carlos added. ‘And not just because it is reassuring for any physician to encounter a patient who remains alive. Now walk for me.’ He watched closely as Williams took a few paces, and saw the obvious pain. ‘There you are, as good as new. Mind you, no dancing tonight!’ He patted the tall officer hard on the shoulders.

As night fell two pigs and a sheep were slaughtered and roasted over the fire.

‘Nothing to the years of peace, but still a feast to enjoy,’ Don Antonio told Williams, who was to sit beside him in a place of honour. There was a little cured ham. ‘You must try it, it is the finest in the world.’ The Welshman was watched closely as took the slice on a piece of bread, and it seemed that all the conversation and laughter around the fire had died down. The taste was rich, the meat tender, although he was not sure there was anything especially remarkable about it.

‘It’s good, isn’t it,’ Carlos said.

‘Very good,’ he replied as they continued to stare at him.

‘The best.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Williams agreed, and that was met with a great cheer. They laughed when he refused wine and continued to drink only water. ‘My stomach,’ he explained, rubbing it. ‘Wine does it no good.’ They roared with laughter, but did not begrudge the foreigner this eccentricity.

Early in the evening someone produced a guitar. Carlos played well, and his cousin was skilled with the flute, and as the hours passed most were filled with music. Some of the men sang and others danced on a square of planks laid down outside the barn.

‘Come, sing us something English,’ the guerrilla leader said.

‘I know one.’ Carlos Velasco began to pluck out the tune of ‘Hearts of Oak’. ‘Come cheer up my lads, come cheer up my lads …’ he began, struggling to remember the words. Williams stood, steadied himself and then waited for him to reach the chorus.

‘Hearts of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men
,

we always are ready, steady, boys, steady
.

We’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again.’

He sang all the verses he knew in his deep voice, his Welsh blood coming to the fore as he relished the chance to sing to an audience. The partisans cheered, and began to join in with each ‘steady, boys, steady’, although not always at the appropriate moment. It took little urging for him to give them another, and he soon launched into the ‘Minstrel Boy’, letting Carlos pick up the tune as he went along. Then they tried to teach him some Andalusian songs and there was much merriment at his efforts.

‘Señora, please dance for us.’ The cry began and was soon picked up. ‘Please, señora, please.’

‘Don Antonio’s wife is truly excellent,’ Carlos whispered to Williams. ‘The men love it when he lets her dance for them.’

Paula shook her head and looked uncomfortable.

‘Please, El Blanco, beg your wife this favour.’ The partisans persisted, and the farmer’s wife appeared with a pair of castanets and a tambourine hung with bright ribbons. Don Antonio smiled and whispered to his wife. She shook her head again and whispered something back. The exchange went on for some time, as the men kept calling for her to dance. The partisan chief looked surprised at his wife’s reluctance. ‘Do not make me, I cannot.’ Williams was close enough to hear the whispered words and to see her distress.

The bells on the tambourine rang as it was flipped with great vigour, and then the castanets began to click. There were gasps from all around the great fire.

‘
Jesús, María y Joseph
,’ Carlos said when he saw that Guadalupe stood on the wooden boards, arms raised ready. ‘She has not since …’ He did not finish and simply stared, until the young woman glared at him.

Carlos began to play and the girl began to dance. Her face seemed frozen in terror, some small hint of what this cost her, and at the start her movements were stiff. No one spoke, and there was only the sound of her shoes on the wood, the guitar and the clicks and jingles as her hands twitched. Don Antonio reached for his flute and took up the tune.

Guadalupe danced, a little faster, and a little faster, and all the while the life seemed to grow within her. Her movements took on a grace that had not been there before. Williams did not know this dance, and could not judge the correctness of each step and gesture, but even to his untutored eyes this was something truly special. The partisans were clapping now, that rapid clapping which seemed to come naturally only to the people of the south. The pace changed, slowing and then returning at redoubled speed as her heels pounded the wooden planks. There was an energy, an agility, a grace and passion of a sort he never seen elsewhere. He watched, feeling himself absorbed by each beat. More than at any other time he noticed the fine form of this unhappy young woman. He watched when her skirt flicked up and revealed her shapely legs, watched when she spun, took in the shapely rear, out-thrust bosom, and the proud head and straight back and neck. On and on Guadalupe danced, no longer a person, but part of the music, and Williams felt his pulse racing, and if some of his thoughts were of Miss MacAndrews with her dress flying in the breeze or held tight in his arms, they were driven away by the here and now, by this music and by the lithe figure who stamped and whirled.

The dance rose in a crescendo, the men cheering as well as clapping, and Guadalupe spun and slammed her heels down. Her face was still expressionless, but perhaps this was part of the dance, for when she finished at last she flashed a brief smile at
him as the guerrilleros shouted their praise. Paula Velasco wept, but only Williams and her husband noticed, and Don Antonio embraced her.

‘It is a new year indeed,’ he said to Williams a moment later, as Guadalupe retreated to the house, refusing the pleas to dance again. ‘There may still be hope,’ he added. His wife was shaking as he held her close.

Soon afterwards they too went back to the house. Some of the guerrilleros were already rolled up in their cloaks and sleeping beside the fire. Others drank or ate, or sang softly as Carlos played to them. As far as Williams could judge it was well after two in the morning, and yet he did not feel tired. He sat and listened to the guitar and stared into the flames, struggling to remember his own world, the one outside these mountains. Thoughts came of staying here, of fighting the French by stealth and ambush, with a woman by his side who was beautiful and also a warrior as brave as any man. It was romantic nonsense, fit more for a novel than real life, and he despised himself for entertaining so foolish a dream at all.