Send Me Safely Back Again (35 page)

Williams did not go far. The French gave ground a little. Skirmishers fired on both sides and bullets thumped into the many vines and cork trees, which gave both sides good cover. Few men fell on either side. Patterson of the Highlanders had the tip of his nose torn off by a ball just as he turned to talk to his rear rank man. He screamed a stream of Gaelic oaths at the French, and at his comrades, many of whom could not resist laughing.

‘Always sticking your nose in the wrong place, Pat!’ called one.

The enemy were far from beaten and kept up a steady fire, but had not been reinforced. The British were able to recover the packs and muskets abandoned in the camp and pick up most of their wounded. Then they began to withdraw.

A somewhat chagrined brigade major ordered Williams back to his battalion. ‘Leave the riflemen to cover with the Forty-fifth as supports,’ he said. ‘And well done, old boy. Pity I didn’t see what you saw.’

The Light Company marched back and found Pritchard Jones forming the other companies in column at half-distance. Williams brought his men into their correct position at the rear. They
swaggered into the formation, conscious that they were the only ones to stand their ground and hold the enemy back.

Sergeant Major Fisher stamped to attention and reported to the colonel that five men from a water-carrying party were missing, presumed taken, one dead and seven wounded. A dozen casualties was much less than in the three corps that had taken the brunt of the attack. Few French had come near the 3rd Battalion of Detachments, but the officers and men had fallen into confusion anyway and fled with the rest.

‘Bloody shambles,’ said Pringle in the brief moment he and Williams had to talk. ‘Never seen anything like it.’ All of the grenadiers had kept their muskets, even during the flight, but the battalion had gone back four or five hundred yards before anyone could get them to stop. ‘Wellesley himself galloped up to rally us. We were all trying to show we didn’t need his help and had it all in hand. Hanley was with him, so at least he managed not to get captured this time!’

Sergeant Major Fisher raised his voice. ‘’Talion, ’shun!’

Williams and Pringle dashed back to their companies, the grenadiers at the front and the lights at the rear of the column.

‘Forward march!’

The 3rd Battalion of Detachments and the rest of the Third Division marched back towards the town in sullen silence, ashamed of the suddenness with which they had collapsed.

One of the Highlanders started to whistle a Scottish air. It was a familiar tune, and soon all the Light Company joined in, even Private Patterson, with a bandage tied around his face and over his nose. The other companies strode on silently through the dry grass and scrub.

23

T
his time it was the Spanish who ran. A whole brigade of some two thousand men lined an earthwork built to extend the stone-walled gardens outside Talavera. Then they saw some French cavalrymen more than half a mile away. There were little puffs of white smoke as the dragoons popped away with their pistols.

‘Firing at the snakes?’ wondered Hanley aloud.

‘Or testing the Dons’ discipline?’ suggested Murray.

It was an absurd, impossible range for a musket, and yet one Spanish infantryman raised his firelock to his shoulders, took no sort of aim and fired. The dull boom shattered the evening’s peace and then another man fired and another. Two thousand men pulled their triggers in a drumming thunder of noise, flames and smoke. Half the men had been with the army for only a few short weeks. None had ever heard so loud and so terrible a noise. More regiments farther down the line poured a volley at the horizon as the firing rolled along over the mile or so held by Cuesta’s army.

‘If they will fire so well tomorrow, the day is ours,’ said Sir Arthur Wellesley to the Spanish general beside him. His face was amused, his beak-like nose casting a long shadow across his face in the light of the early evening sun. ‘But as there is nobody to fire at just now, I wish you would stop it.’

‘Well, that has revealed the position,’ said Murray drily.

‘Treason!’ shouted a voice. Hanley could not see who called out. Just like the contagious first shot, others swiftly joined in until it became a great chant. ‘Treason!’, ‘Treason!’

Two thousand men dropped their muskets and fled from the noise of their own shooting and from an enemy too far away even to know what was happening. They pushed at each other to force their way through the press, tearing off their packs and throwing down anything that would slow them. Their faces looked blank and unnaturally pale, eyes staring at nothing, and arms pumping as they ran.

Sir Arthur shook his head slightly, as if disappointed at the behaviour of a hound. ‘Only look at the ugly hole those fellows have left.’ He smiled at the Spanish general and spoke as if asking for the most minor of favours. ‘I wish you would go to the second line and try to fill it up.’

Orders were shouted, and staff officers set off at speed to see them carried out.

‘It took a lot of work to make Cuesta stay and fight,’ said Baynes quietly to Hanley. ‘We had thought them safe behind walls and earth banks.’ The Spanish Army was bigger than the British, but Sir Arthur had arranged with his ally for them to hold little more than a mile of frontage. ‘At least that will permit them to have one or even two lines of reserves. Your Mr Williams should approve!’ Hanley looked baffled. ‘My apologies, I recall a conversation with your friend a long time ago and on a different field.’

‘Then let us hope things go better this time.’

‘Well, they could not go much worse. I just saw the fellow, by the way.’ Hanley looked puzzled. ‘Your earnest Mr Williams,’ explained Baynes. ‘He is helping to build a redoubt, or whatever you military gentlemen call it, near the end of Wellesley’s line.’ The British would hold the rest of the frontage, more than twice as long and with few natural advantages, and that would be the place the French would attack if they had any sense. Even the rawest of Cuesta’s regiments could prove formidable behind walls. The British would mainly fight in the open.

‘We do not need to bother Colonel Murray, I think. He will have plenty to do helping Sir Arthur to organise his army. In fact
I rather suspect Sir Arthur will end up organising Cuesta’s army as well. Can’t blame him after this farce.’

Hanley had told Baynes and Murray of the dead messenger, the lost message, and seeing Velarde.

‘He may be a traitor, but can you be sure it was not the French who killed the courier? Their soldiers were swarming all over that place.’

‘I mean to go to the church,’ said Hanley. ‘The priest may be able to tell me how to reach Espinosa or when the next messenger will come.’

‘Assuming Espinosa knows what has happened so soon.’

‘He seems to know a lot,’ said Hanley, ‘and know it quickly.’

Baynes said nothing for a moment. ‘Yes, so be it. It is not wise to go alone. Talavera will be a shambles with all these stragglers. It will no doubt get even worse when darkness falls. Even if there are no other perils it is better not to be alone.’ The merchant looked suddenly old and very weary, almost sinking down in his saddle.

‘Find out what is happening, William.’ It was the first time he had used Hanley’s Christian name. ‘We must survive and win this next day, and then we must survive the weeks to come. Everything is coming to a head. I sense it somehow.’ He smiled. ‘Forgive an old man his fancies, but we may lose the game in the hours to come – or win it, or perhaps just stay for the next trick.’

‘Where shall I find you?’

‘With Wellesley, and I suspect that for the next hours that will mean with the Spanish Army. I may be of some small use to him.’ Baynes looked the lieutenant in the eyes. ‘Good luck, Hanley. Good luck to all of us.’

Hanley rode to the redoubt and was disappointed by its diminutive size. The land rose so slightly that even with the piled earth its walls were barely at waist height.

‘Where is Billy?’ he asked Williams, after they had expressed mutual pleasure that the other was unscathed.

‘Back with the battalion. There are only two companies of us helping with the work here. They are behind the Guards
Brigade, and were in the second line of our own brigade. Expect he is loafing somewhere while others toil!

‘Yes, typical lazy grenadiers!’

Hanley pressed on, and found Pringle with a fatigue party from the Grenadier Company gathering firewood. ‘Goodness knows what we are going to cook, but I suppose at least we won’t freeze.’

‘May I borrow Dobson?’ said Hanley.

Pringle frowned, pulled off his glasses and wiped them on his sash before putting them back on and replying. ‘Trouble?’

‘There may be.’

‘Is it official?’

‘Almost.’

‘Then I cannot order him, but suspect he will come along. Try not to get him killed. Mrs Dobson would never let me hear the end of it! Do you want anyone else?’

Hanley shook his head.

‘Well, bring him back before it is too late. He has a wife and the girl.’ Dobson’s younger daughter Sal was with the couple. His son was a drummer and with the rest of the 106th back in England, and who knew where Jenny Dobson was now. Hanley wondered for a moment whether she might be just a few miles away, waiting to service French officers in a tent or the bedroom of an inn. He could not help wishing he was one of them.

‘Give them a few hours together, just in case.’ Pringle’s tone was grim.

It was hard for Hanley to imagine anything ever touching the old veteran. Then he remembered how the man had drunkenly wept after his previous wife was killed in the retreat. Reason told him that no one was safe, even if his heart did not want to believe it. Williams has it easy, he thought, with his simple faith in God. Must be nice to be so confident.

‘They say we have two full French army corps up against us,’ said Pringle, interrupting his thoughts.

‘Yes, and some of Joseph’s own regiments.’

‘Then there are at least two of them to every one of us – probably more.’

‘Only if we do not take the Spanish into account. Sir Arthur believes they will fight from behind their defences.’

‘So why should the French attack them?’ Pringle took off his glasses to give them another polish. ‘Oh, I am sure the day will go well. Just wish there was more in my belly! I’ll send for Dobson.’

The lance sergeant arrived and readily agreed.

‘I’ll look after Mr Hanley, don’t you worry, sir,’ he told Pringle.

‘Thank you, Dobson.’ The Grenadier Captain smiled. ‘He may not look much, but I have grown fond of him.’

They walked into town. Hanley had no horse to offer Dobson and so he left his with Pringle. The baggage of the British Army showed all the signs of an orgy of looting. Packs lay with their contents strewn across the ground around them, and officers’ valises had their locks broken and contents stolen or tossed aside. Parties of redcoats and women went about trying to tidy up and find things precious to them. They passed a group of soldiers’ wives doing their best to comfort a sobbing, fair-haired girl whose dress was torn to rags and whose face was bruised.

Truscott nodded to Hanley as he passed. He and a half-company of the 106th were guarding one of the medieval gateways into the town. ‘Sorry to say some of our fellows joined in. Not the battalion, but men from other corps. Watch yourselves,’ he said when Hanley explained that they had business in the town.

Hanley took them through the side streets. Some were untouched. Others showed broken windows and signs of marauders, but they saw no riotous soldiers in any uniform. Then they turned on to one of the main roads for a short distance and saw a well-dressed British officer strolling away from them. It was Wickham. Hanley did not need to see his face to recognise the straight back, right hand pressed just so against his waist, while the left held the hilt of his sword to stop it trailing, and the languid stride which appeared careless, but was surely conscious.
Wickham had style, there was no doubt about that, whatever his personal character.

William Hanley was a gambler by nature. He liked cards, and played well enough to win more hands than he lost, but the thought that he could lose made it all worthwhile. Now he changed his plan and took a chance.

‘Major Wickham!’ he called. The other man turned, and nodded in recognition. ‘May I have a word?’ Hanley was walking quickly to catch up.

‘Certainly, old boy, certainly, although make it quick as I am due to dine with the general. We are all to be fed before we go and join the division up on the big hill.’

‘This should not take long, and I believe it will be in your own interest.’ Hanley’s voice had a hard edge.

Wickham laughed. ‘You sound very solemn, my dear boy, very solemn indeed.’

‘It is a serious matter, I am afraid.’

Wickham’s eyes darted. He saw Dobson behind Hanley, but paid no attention to a common soldier, and instead wondered whether there was anyone who knew him near by. A few civilians walked briskly along, heads down and not wanting to look any soldier in the eye. ‘If it is about the fifty guineas,’ he said, recovering himself and once again with an easy smile, ‘you know that I am good for it. You will have the money as soon as our arrears in pay turn up.’