Текст книги "Kings and Emperors"
Автор книги: Dewey Lambdin
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 26 страниц)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Lewrie had a change of heart and told Lieutenant Westcott to arm himself and go ashore with him, at the last moment. But when the cutter landed them on the North bank of the Maceira River, they had to wander about for a time to find the means to go further. At last, a young infantry officer on a nondescript horse accosted them with a shout and a laugh.
“Halt, who goes there, sirs!” he hoorawed. “What do we have here? Two French officers in blue, and under arms? Never do, sirs!”
“And who might you be, young sir?” Lewrie replied in a like manner, with a grin on his face. “We’ve come ashore from our ship to see what’s happening. Are there any mounts available?”
“Allow me to name myself to you, sirs, Leftenant John Beauchamp, of the First Battalion of the Ninth Foot,” the young officer gaily said, and doffing his bicorne with a bow from the saddle.
“Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, and my First Officer, Lieutenant Geoffrey Westcott,” Lewrie replied, doffing his cocked hat in kind.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintances, sirs,” Beauchamp said. “Horses? Only if you will settle for poor local ‘bone-setters’ like mine, sirs, but I can round a couple up. We’re damned short on cavalry remounts. Follow me, if you will.”
Lewrie and Westcott took station to Beauchamp’s larboard side and strolled along up the river-bank into the draw between the headlands. “We saw wounded coming off last night, sir.” Lewrie asked, “Has there been a fight?”
“Indeed there was, sir, and we sent the French packing in short order!” Beauchamp boasted. “We marched down to a fortified town by name of Óbidos, the French general, Delaborde, didn’t like the odds, and retreated to a line of steep hills South of the town. You’ll see them in a bit, once we’re further inland. Here’s our remount service, such as it is,” he said, making a face and leading them to where some locally commandeered Portuguese saddle horses waited, their forelegs hobbled to keep them from grazing or running off. Several were already saddled, and Beauchamp breezily ordered the grooms to lead out a pair.
“I assume that sailors know how to ride, sirs?” he teased.
“It’ll come back to me,” Lewrie replied as he took the reins of a plain brown horse, hiked a booted leg, and swung up into the saddle.
Beauchamp led them on into the plain and the army encampment.
“Up yonder, sirs,” the Army officer said, pointing to the North. “There were steep hills, with deep gullies between, and a rough stone wall laid all along the tops of the hills, an incredibly strong position, yet…!” he enthused, “we went at them like lions, steep as it was, and threw them off and sent them swarming down into the plain, here. Three guns were captured, and an host of prisoners taken. But for a lack of cavalry, we could have pursued their broken ranks out onto the plain. The French had swarms of cavalry.”
“So, the French were beaten,” Lewrie stated with delight.
“Decisively, sir,” Beauchamp hooted. “Decisively! Now, they’re South of us, and to the East of us. There’s perhaps nine thousand under a chap named Loisin, coming West from Abrantes, and Delaborde still lurks down that way. The General fully expects that there will be a bigger battle to come, and soon. We’re told that we’re to be re-enforced with another four thousand men, when General Sir Harry Burrard and his convoy show up in the bay.”
“He’s senior to Wellesley,” Lewrie said. “He’ll take over?”
“God, I hope not, sir!” Beauchamp said, grimacing. “We’re doing just fine with Sir Arthur. General Burrard has not seen action since the Dutch expedition in Ninety-Eight, and made no grand show of his abilities, then. He’s over seventy years old!”
“Those are Portuguese carts and waggons yonder?” Westcott asked as they drew near a rather large conglomeration.
“Army Commissariat, Portuguese we’ve hired,” Beauchamp told him, “with solid silver shillings, not chits, too. The rest are Irish, if you can believe it. The General hired them before we sailed here. He told my Colonel that he’d learned in India that arrangements for a big commissary train are absolutely necessary. Not that Horse Guards will believe that, though.”
“Those casualties we saw last night,” Lewrie pressed. “Was it dearly won?”
“Oh no, sir!” Beauchamp said; he was irrepressibly cheerful. “We lost about four hundred and eighty, and the French lost nigh five hundred, plus the prisoners we took. Not bad at all, really. Aha! We’re coming to the Portuguese lines. Do keep a hand on your purses, sirs. They’re nowhere near so bad as Irish regiments, yet…! They are light infantry, called Caçadores. Quite good, really, under one of ours, Colonel Trant.”
“Their Portuguese officers ain’t up to snuff?” Lewrie asked as he took in the foreign troops, mostly uniformed in brown coats.
“From what I’ve heard, they’re miles better at their trade than the Spanish,” Beauchamp told him with a deprecating laugh, “but, over our long, good relations with Portugal, many British officers served in their army. Trant, now, sirs. He’s most capable and aggressive, but the General was heard to say that he’s a very good officer, but as drunken a dog as ever lived, hah hah! Uh-oh!” Beauchamp sobred quickly and put on a stern face as they rode deeper into the encampment, making a great display of pointing things out to Lewrie and Westcott.
There was a rider approaching with a pack of hounds scouting at his mount’s flanks and rear, a grim-visaged fellow wearing an un-adorned bicorne hat and a long-skirted dark grey coat, with only a gilt-edged belt at his waist, and a sword upon his left hip, to denote him as an officer of some kind.
Lt. Beauchamp doffed his hat to the fellow, and Lewrie thought it a good idea to do the same, and throw in a “Good morning to you, sir” for good measure, which earned him a scowl and a brisk nod of his head, which, admittedly, gave Lewrie a faint chill. The man was thin-lipped, haughty, his eyes cold and contempuous beneath a set of full brows, and that nose! It was a prominent hawk’s beak.
“Who was that?” Lewrie asked, turning to look astern from his saddle once they had passed.
“That was Sir Arthur Wellesley, sir,” Lt. Beauchamp said with a sigh of relief that he had escaped the Presence without a tongue-lashing for idling about, far from his battalion lines, and playing tour guide to a pair of idle sailors.
“A stern damned fellow,” Lt. Westcott commented in a low voice.
“Oh, indeed, sirs,” Beauchamp agreed with a shiver.
“He didn’t look particularly happy to see us,” Lewrie said.
“Well, we are taking a tour, sir,” Westcott said.
“It may be that he expected that General Burrard had come into the bay, and that you were part of the convoy escort, sir,” Beauchamp dared speculate. “That’s where he was riding, to the river mouth, to see if Burrard had arrived.”
“Well, no wonder he gave us the cold-eye,” Lewrie said. “In his place, I’d’ve stuck my tongue out at us, too.”
That tongue-in-cheek statement gave the young Army officer such a pause that he burst out laughing, amazed that a senior officer of a high rank could be so droll.
“What about Marshal Junot and the rest of his hundred thousand Frogs, though, Mister Beauchamp?” Lewrie asked, using the naval parlance. “When and if General Burrard arrives, you’ll have how many men against all of Junot’s?”
“Oh, about sixteen thousand British, two thousand Portuguese, altogether, sir,” Beauchamp told him, looking off to the far distance to do his sums in his head, “but, we’ve information that the bulk of Marshal Junot’s forces are still far South, round Lisbon and Torres Vedras … just miles away! We would have been much nearer to Torres Vedras ourselves, but for the word of General Burrard’s arrival here in Maceira Bay. The General marched us over to the coast to cover the landings, pick up the re-enforcements and more guns and cavalry, before resuming our march on Lisbon.”
“General Sir Hew Dalrymple’s coming, too,” Lewrie said with a scowl of dis-approval. “He’s to take supreme command over Wellesley and Burrard, God help you. He’s known as the Dowager.”
“That’s not good, either, I may take it, sir?” Beauchamp said with a visible wince.
“Not good at all, sir,” Lewrie gloomily told him.
They were in the middle of the British lines by then, surrounded by tents, and soldiers in all manner of un-dress, and the aromas of unwashed bodies; horse, mule, and oxen manure; the sour reek of campfires burning green wood; salt-beef or salt-pork cooking; and a tang of illicit rum or locally-procured wine. Soldiers’ wives sat and sewed or idled, some with pipes or cigarros in their mouths. The few children allowed along with each regiment were whooping, running, and playing round between the tents and along the lanes between the tent lines, as ragged a bunch as their fathers, and just as rough.
Lewrie looked South to scan the prospects, taking in the plain that stretched from Óbidos and Roliça, and the line of hills that lay beyond, to the Sou’east.
“What’s beyond those hills?” he asked, pulling his telescope from a side pocket of his coat for a better look.
“Some scattered villages and hamlets, sir,” Lt. Beauchamp told him, squinting to recall them all. “There’s a Toledo, a Porto Novo on the coast, a wee place called Fentanell, and the village of Vimeiro. Some cavalry videttes have scouted down yonder, and I heard that it’s pretty broken country, and that the road’s horrid. But then, every road we’ve seen so far has been horrid. It’s getting on for tea time. Might you gentlemen care to partake at my regimental mess?”
“Thankee, no, Mister Beauchamp,” Lewrie said, shaking his head as he lowered his telescope, “but I think that Mister Westcott and I will return to our ship. We might have to shift Sapphire out of the way of the arriving convoy and its escort. I’m grateful for your taking the time to show us round.”
“Very well, sirs,” Beauchamp said with a grin, doffing his hat to them in parting salute. “Leave the horses at the remount station. Don’t know if they’ll be available, later, but, if you wish to come ashore and witness the battle to come, the best of luck to you.”
Lt. Beauchamp put his mount to a stride and headed off for his mess, and his tea, whilst Lewrie and Westcott turned theirs round and ambled back to the beach at a slow walk.
“At least he seems confident, sir,” Westcott commented after a long, quiet moment. “But, he is a younker. All flags and bands, and glory.”
“Aye, we know better by now, don’t we,” Lewrie cynically agreed. “But, ye know … I think I would like to see how this army does when the time comes.”
“I would, too, sir,” Westcott strongly hinted. “If only to relieve the boredom. We’ve spent too long at escort-work, with nary one sight of an enemy sail, or the prospect of a fight. I fear that you have spoiled me, and our crew, you know.”
“We have had a good run at it, haven’t we, Geoffrey?” Lewrie mused. “Until the French went missish, and lurk in port, scared to risk themselves at sea any longer.”
“Five whole years of excitement,” Westcott summed up with a longing sigh. “God, it’s so dull, we might as well be at peace!”
After half an hour, they reached the remount station and surrendered their tired mounts, then continued on foot to the banks of the shallow Maceira River.
“There he is, again,” Westcott pointed out as he espied the mounted man they now knew for Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley. He was peering out to sea with his own pocket telescope, looking both intent and angry. His horse had its head up, too, looking seaward, as were the hounds that accompanied him, who sat on their hindquarters with their tongues lolling, panting in perfect patience as if awed by their master’s mood, and barely bothering to scratch at their fleas.
“What’s he looking at?” Westcott wondered aloud, but in a soft voice, as if he was daunted, too.
Lewrie pulled out his glass and had a long look, then handed it to Westcott. “There are dozens of ships out there, Mister Westcott, tops’ls and t’gallants above the horizon. They might be hull-up by mid-afternoon. If it ain’t the French, it’s Burrard and his brigades, come at last.”
“No wonder he looks so black, then,” Westcott said with a wee laugh.
Wellesley heard that, and snapped his head about to glare at them both for a second, his face all “thunder and lightning.” Those thin lips half opened for a hurled curse, then clapped shut just as quickly before he returned his steely gaze to the incoming ships.
“Let’s get back aboard,” Lewrie said, “before he has us flogged at a waggon wheel.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The troop transports, “cavalry ships,” and supply vessels came to anchor off Maceira Bay in droves, with the convoy escorts anchoring further out. HMS Sapphire’s four boats were manned and sent off to aid the dis-embarkation that proceeded throughout the afternoon and long into the night. Lewrie stayed on the poop deck no matter the heat of the day, swivelling his telescope about to take it all in, finding that General Wellesley’s efficiency applied to the new arrivals, too, for the whole bay hummed with activity, and battalions, batteries, and horse troops went ashore with an alacrity rarely seen, making those landings at Blaauberg Bay at the Dutch Cape Colony in 1806 look like a perfect shambles by comparison.
General Burrard’s re-enforcement did not extend to many pieces of artillery, though, and Lewrie could count only about 240 cavalry horses to add to the 180 or so that Wellesley had had at the Battle of Roliça. And those poor horses, both the cavalry mounts and the gun-team horses! They had been at sea so long that they seemingly had lost the ability to walk. Once they’d been swum ashore and led to assembly points, it was almost comical to see horses saddled up, cavalry troopers swung up astride, and see the horses just fold their legs up and squat to the ground under the weight!
“Hmm,” Lt. Westcott said, his face contorted by a wince as he witnessed that. “That don’t look promising. That Beauchamp fellow told us this morning that the French had scads more cavalry than we do. What use are those poor prads, if they can’t even stand up? If you do go ashore to see the battle, sir, pray Jesus you don’t get offered one of them!”
“A good clue t’that, Geoffrey,” Lewrie said, shaking his head as he watched, “is that the new-come horses all have docked tails, but the local Portuguese horses we got didn’t.”
“Don’t see the sense of that, sir,” Westcott said. “How else do they keep the flies off them, if they don’t have long tails. Poor beasts. A Hell of a thing our Army does with their horseflesh. Not as bad as the French, I’m told, though. They ride them to death, with open saddle sores so bad that you can smell them coming.”
“S’truth?” Lewrie gawped. “There’s another good reason t’hate the French like the Devil hates Holy Water.”
“At least they leave their tails long,” Westcott agreed. “My word, on the riverbank yonder. Where all the torches are lit? Isn’t that Wellesley getting into that boat?”
Lewrie lifted his glass once more and peered intently at the shore. “Aye, I think it is, by God. ‘Captain Repair On Board,’ and all that, hey? The poor bastard’s on his way t’get his marchin’ orders from Burrard, most-like, gettin’ replaced before he’s fought his battle. I wonder if he’s thinkin’ that he’d’ve done better to march off South without waitin’ for extra troops.”
“Sir?” Midshipman Harvey reported from the bottom of the quarterdeck ladderway. “Our boats are returning from their ferry-work.”
“Very well, Mister Harvey,” Lewrie absently took note. “My compliments to the Purser, Mister Cadrick, and he’s to see that the boat crews get their evening rum issue … them only, mind … and that they are fed their proper rations right after.”
They had rotated the hands who manned the boats right through the start of the First Dog and into the Second Dog, and these last few sailors had been deprived, away from the ship when the evening rum issue was doled out, and the evening meal was served up from the cauldrons.
“I’ll see to it, sir,” Westcott offered.
“Thankee, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said with an incline of his head. He pulled out his pocket watch and studied it in the light from the taffrail lanthorns. “It’s almost time for your supper, and mine. Sure ye aren’t deprivin’ yourself?”
“The wardroom mess can start without me,” Westcott said with a shrug.
“Then I will leave it to you, sir, and go below,” Lewrie said, closing the tubes of his telescope and trotting down the ladderway to the quarterdeck, and the door to his great-cabins.
He barely had time to hang his hat on a peg before his cook, Yeovill, came breezing in with his heavy covered brass barge, and a cheery “Good evening, sir!” and a description of what he had prepared: beef broth with peas, carrots, and onions; a small roast quail done in herbs; salt-pork well-soaked in fresh water to remove the crusted preservative and fried; with a roasted potato, split and drizzled with a cheese and bacon sauce; and green beans.
Of course, there were some shreds of everything for Chalky, along with his usual wee sausages, and Yeovill assured him that the ship’s dog, Bisquit, had already gotten a bowl of broth, rice, and cut-up sausages, too, which he was devouring in his cubby beneath the starboard poop deck ladderway on the quarterdeck … after a foraging journey along both gun decks among his friends in the crew.
There was a very nice Portuguese white wine with the quail, and Lewrie took a whole glass before his first bite, asking for a re-fill.
“Ehm, before ye turn in tonight, Pettus,” Lewrie said after a few spoonfuls of broth, “I’m still of a mind t’go ashore round dawn, t’see what the army’s up to. I wish my over-under pistols and the brace of single-barrel Mantons cleaned and oiled, and my Ferguson rifled musket seen to.”
“Ehm, if there is to be a battle, sir, you’ll be wishing for a silk shirt and silk stockings?” Pettus replied, pausing in the act of pouring that re-fill. “Just in case?”
“Aye,” Lewrie said, ravenously working his way to the bottom of the soup bowl. “And I’ll need some bisquit and cheese, and some of the sausages, too, t’take with me.”
“Fearsome, wot boots’ll do t’yer stockin’s, though, sir,” his cabin servant, Jessop, grumbled. “Darnin’ silk’s impossible.”
“Rouse me at the end of the Middle Watch,” Lewrie instructed, beginning on the quail and the potato and green beans.
“A bowl of porridge before you go, then, sir?” Yeovill asked.
“Aye, that’d do nicely, Yeovill,” Lewrie agreed.
“I’ll send your hanger to the Armourer for a fresh edge, too, sir,” Pettus suggested.
“Oh! See Mister Keane!” Lewrie added. “I’ll have need of one of the Marines’ canteens, for water.”
“I’ll see to it, sir,” Pettus said, though his face wore a wary look, and Lewrie missed the worried expression that Pettus shared with Jessop and Yeovill. Their Captain was off in search of adventure and excitement … again … and was sure to find it, the risk be-damned, and no one with better sense could talk him out of it.
* * *
“Ye have a care, now, sor,” Cox’n Liam Desmond muttered as the cutter grounded on the banks of the Maceira a little past 5 A.M.
“An’ may th’ Good Lord keep ye in His hand, sor,” Pat Furfy added in a solemn voice, crossing himself. “Though, if ya need some stout lads at yer back—”
“I’ve the army, at my front, Furfy, don’t ye worry,” Lewrie said as he waded the last few feet to dry land. “Back to the ship, you lot, and I’ll see you later.”
“Aye, sor,” Desmond said, sounding doubtful.
It was still dark, before pre-dawn, and the warmth of a Portuguese August had evaporated overnight, leaving a dank, clammy, coolness. There was a faint breath of wind off the sea.
Lewrie trudged along the path he had followed the day before, stumbling over rocks in the dark, headed for a series of torches and the faint glows of campfires beyond the gap between the headlands and the banks of the river. He could not see the remount station; it had been moved somewhere further along.
“Damn!” he spat to the dawn. “I’ll be on ‘Shank’s Ponies’ like the poor, bloody infantry! All the way to … where?”
I’m already regrettin’ this, he thought; Maybe I should just find a unit in the rear, and scrounge a mug o’ tea.
He hiked on, tripping and stumbling over tussocks of long grass and nigh-invisible irregularities in the ground, through the gap and out onto the plains, and stopped in shock. Half-seen in the first wee greyness of pre-dawn, the encampment he’d ridden through the morning before was just gone! The long, orderly lines of tents had been struck, the campfires extinguished, and the army had marched off South. What few fires still lit the night were those of the baggage train, and they looked to be ready to trundle off in the army’s wake, with mules and oxen harnessed or yoked, and the waggoners and carters standing round the few fires to gulp down their last morsels of breakfasts, and their lasts swallows of water or tea.
“Hoy, there! Who are ye, an’ what’re ye doin’ here?” A challenge was called out. He heard the clank of a musket cocking.
“Captain Alan Lewrie, HMS Sapphire!” Lewrie shouted back, half-alarmed out of his skin. “Royal Navy?” he added.
“Corp’ral o’ th’ Guard?” that voice bellowed. “Post Two, we’ve got a visitor!”
A lean, fox-faced fellow shambled over from one of the fires with a lanthorn held aloft, had himself a good look, and deliberately spat tobacco juice. “Lor’, ’e is Navy! Wot’re ya doin’ wand’rin’ about this time o’ night, sir?”
“Looking for the remount station, for a horse,” Lewrie said in calmer takings, for though the sentry had lowered his musket, it was still fully-cocked, and the bayonet tip flashed in the light from the lanthorn, and they both peered at him as if they’d caught themselves a French spy. “I wish to ride up to the main body of the army.”
“A’ready gone, sir,” the Corporal informed him, “an’ remounts is up with ’em. Fear ya haveta walk all th’ way, or, ya might hitch a ride with th’ baggage train, if yer that eager.”
“A ride’ll do me quite well, Corporal,” Lewrie quickly agreed.
“Pass, then, sir,” the Corporal allowed, waving his lanthorn in invitation to approach the mass of waggons. “Christ! Beggin’ yer pardon, sir, but ya come armed for it,” he said, noting all the weaponry that Lewrie carried stuffed into his coat side pockets, hung from his waist-band, at his hip, and upon his shoulder.
Once Lewrie was far enough off, the Corporal turned to the Private and spat another dollop of tobacco juice. “Bloody, damned officers. Ain’t got a lick o’ sense in their heads. You an’ me, we’ll stick with th’ waggons, an’ stay safe as houses.”
* * *
He’d picked up some Portuguese from Maddalena, but he doubted his ability to converse with any of the hired waggoners, so he went to the Irishmen hired on by General Wellesley, moments before they began to creak and rumble off.
“Could I get a ride?” he called to a burly, beet-faced fellow with a shock of red hair. “I wish to go up to the army.”
“Iff’n ye do, yer outta yer fackin’ mind,” the waggoner shot back with a dis-believing scowl, “but so was I when I signed on fer dis mess. Aye, climb aboard, an’ hang on.”
That took some doing, for the box was high off the ground and hand– and foot-holds took some figuring out before he was seated alongside the waggoner, who pulled a pipe from a coat pocket and lit it off the candle lanthorn hung ahead of him. Satisfied that his pipe was drawing well, he lifted his reins and gave them a shake, calling out to his four-horse team. At once, there came an appalling screeching from un-greased axles and several sideways lurches as the waggon got a way on.
“Told ye t’hang on, sor,” the waggoner grumbled. “It ain’t no coach-an’-four. Iff’n ye wish t’say somethin’, ye’ll haveta shout, for it’s a noisy bashtit, t’boot, har har!”
The whole column of waggons and carts was extremely noisy, loud enough to be heard coming for miles. Oxen bellowed in protest, mules brayed now and then, long whips cracked so often that they sounded like sporadic musket fire, and the carters and waggoners continually cursed their beasts, loud, foul, and inventively.
“Royal Artillery, air ye?” the waggoner asked after the first mile, mistaking Lewrie’s blue coat. “Late t’th’ party if ye air.”
“Navy,” Lewrie told him.
“Den yer daft as bats,” the man said with a sniff, leaning over to larboard to hawk up a load of phlegm, then took time to re-light his pipe. “Ye won’t git me on a ship, again. Sailin’ here was th’ worst time o’ me life. Mind yer fingers,” he cautioned as the waggon gave some more, alarming lurches which made the whole assembly groan as if it would come apart, turning hand-holds into mousetraps as boards worked against each other.
“Rough road,” Lewrie commented.
“What ye say? Rough, de man says! Dey ain’t no roads in dis bloody country, at all. Half de time, we been in dry creek beds when we couldn’t even find th’ roads, e’en when de maps say they’re there!”
“What are you carrying?” Lewrie asked.
“Half a ton o’ bisquit, wot passes fer bread fer the bloody fools who went for soldiers,” the man griped, “an’ dey’re welcome to it. Me an’ me mates, we bake real bread fer ourselves each night. Breast to, ye fackin’ four-legged hoors!” he howled of a sudden and cracked his long whip at his team.
So passed the second mile.
The sun slowly rose, and the landscape round the column became visible, as did the dust stirred up by thousands of hooves and wheels. The broad valley of the Maceira narrowed as the waggons neared hills, the hills that Lt. Beauchamp had pointed out to Lewrie the day before. The shallow river turned into a creek off to the right where it issued from between the hills, and just ahead sat a lop-angled wood signpost announcing that the village of Vimeiro was ahead on their right.
“Caught up with de bloody army,” the waggoner said, spitting.
Atop the nearest hill, and strung along the others that rose to the East and Northeast, there were soldiers in black shakoes, red coats, and grey trousers, some assembled in formal rank and file near their Regimental and King’s Colours, but most of them on the back slopes of the hills were sprawled or seated at their ease, doing what any soldiers did since Roman times; waiting.
There were more troops in the village of Vimeiro, and what little cavalry was with the army was posted round the village, and Lewrie could spot several dozen horses watering along the northern bank of the Maceira.
“Think I’ll get down here,” Lewrie told the waggoner, “and get a horse from them,” he said, pointing at the remounts.
“Man, ye iver see a battle?” the waggoner gawped, leaning back in astonishment. “Man on a horse, he’s the finest target in de world! Ah, on yer head be it,” he said, drawing rein.
Lewrie clumsily clambered down from the box and headed for the town. He spotted a face he recognised from the remount station, and cajoled the soldier to give him a mount, another of those non-descript locally commandeered Portuguese horses, a dull brown one with black mane and tail, equipped with what looked to be cast-off reins and saddlery, and stirrup straps that looked as if they’d come apart if too much pressure was put upon them.
Leery and cautious, Lewrie swung himself aboard, reined the horse around, and clucked his tongue to get it moving, but no; it took the heels of his boots to encourage it to move, and that only at a sedate walk into the village proper and past a plain two-storey house that, by the presence of so many officers, he took for Wellesley’s headquarters.
Mounted messengers, that the army termed gallopers, were coming and going, young fellows of spirit who could not resist the urge to make a great show of their duties and their temporary importance.
Lewrie drew rein a bit beyond the headquarters house to watch, and turned in the saddle to look astern as bugles and whistles blew, and some troops to the West left their positions and began to march through the village to the East.
“What’s happening?” he asked of a passing mounted officer.
“Change of position,” the officer replied, giving Lewrie a dis-believing look. “French columns have been spotted more to the Southeast, so we’re going up to the next ridge over. What the Devil are you doing here, sir? The ocean’s back that way, hah hah!”
“Curiosity,” Lewrie replied with a grin.
“That killed the cat, don’t ye know,” the fellow cast over his shoulder as he paced along beside his troops.
Lewrie decided to follow the regiment that was passing through Vimeiro. He let his horse have a drink from the Maceira, then forded it and went up the Eastern hills above Vimeiro. Once atop, he found a good view of the countryside, and began to get a grasp of the ground.
Stretching out towards the East and Northeast, there was a long ridge, nearly two miles long, he estimated. The Maceira, now a creek, ran along the ridge’s South foot, below an irregular slope which was rather steep in places, but approachable at most, though he thought anyone climbing up would be out of breath by the time he got to the top. To the South and Southeast there lay a rolling set of hillocks that made a second plain, well-timbered in places, and beyond there, what he took for another drop-off to lower ground, a narrow valley in between yet another row of hills.
There was movement all along the ridge as regiments marched further on to shift the whole army’s positions to counter … something. Lewrie pulled out his smaller pocket telescope and searched for a reason why, and, after a time, found it. There were clouds of dust in the Southeast, and, now and then, glints of morning sunlight off metal, perhaps brass shako plates or bayonets; he did not know, but strongly suspected.
He had loaded and primed all his pistols the night before, but had left the Ferguson un-loaded. Now, he felt the urge to load it. He cranked the long brass trigger guard–hand grip one turn, lowering the sealing screw to expose the breech of the barrel. From the cartridge box on his right hip he withrew a pre-made paper cartridge and bit off one end, using a dribble of powder to prime the pan, then shoved the rest of the cartridge, bullet-end first, into the breech and screwed the weapon shut. A final fiddling with the screw of the dog’s jaw that held the flint tight, and he lay it across the front of the saddle, ready for use.
