Текст книги "Kings and Emperors"
Автор книги: Dewey Lambdin
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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 26 страниц)
“Aye, sor,” Desmond agreed. “Fortified walls right down to th’ docks. Like they don’t much care f’r visitors.”
“Might be pretty, in Summer,” Lewrie speculated.
“If ye like rocks, sor,” Desmond slyly teased.
The foul weather might have moderated, as the Sailing Master had said, but Corunna, its harbour, and the surrounding country was bleak, and very rocky; it was no wonder that the Spanish called this part of Galicia the “Coast of Death.” The long fortifications that ran from the Citadel in the upper town down to Santa Lucía were grim, grime-streaked pale tan, seated atop darker brown and massive slabs of stone, fouled with dead seaweed at low tide, green with a mossy ocean growth. Beyond and over those fortified walls, several ranges of hills rose to the West and South, all of them strewn with large boulders. What trees there were were dead Winter grey and bare, or the darkest, dullest green pine groves. Beyond those hills lay the formidable mountains of inner Spain, as stony and steep and impressive as any he’d seen at Cape Town two years before. And over all were grey and threatening cloud banks scudding low over those hills. Lewrie had never seen such a depressing place in his life!
Once he set foot atop the quays he became even more depressed. There were still wounded men laid out on carrying boards and their own blankets awaiting treatment aboard the transports. Beside the obvious combat wounds, there were fellows without shoes or boots, or wool stockings, their toes blackened by frostbite; those who had lacked gloves or mittens showed fingers or whole hands turned blue-black as well, and sure to suffer amputations before the poisons of their frostbite killed them. Once back in England, the army would discharge them with pittances for pensions, where, unable to work to support themselves, they might starve to death in a year.
“You, sir! You, there! Do you have a hospital ship for my wounded?” an army surgeon demanded as he came up to Lewrie.
“I’ve a transport, sir, not a hospital ship,” Lewrie had to tell him, doffing his hat in salute despite the fellow’s rudeness. “My own Ship’s Surgeon and his Mates can be sent aboard her to aid you, but…” He had to end with a helpless shrug.
“Well, Goddamnit!” the peppery little fellow swore. “I’ve done the best I could for them, God witness. There wasn’t much fighting, and those wounds I’ve treated, and those poor fellows that lived to this point only need rest. The exposure cases, though … yes, do send me your man. I fear there will be quite a number of amputations before the day’s done.”
“All these are from your regiment, sir?” Lewrie asked. “We’ve been told t’keep ’em together. Good. Mister Hillhouse?” he called out to his senior Midshipman. “Let’s get all the wounded in this lot into the boats, then make for the Prosperity transport.”
“Aye, sir,” Hillhouse replied, looking round, appalled for a moment before springing into action.
“You’ve attendants t’care for ’em aboard the ship, sir?” Lewrie asked the surgeon.
“Yes, a dozen bandsmen, they’ll help with the loading, and tend to them,” the army surgeon told him. “The rest of the battalion is still up in the hills, yonder, with Hope’s Division.”
“Is there anyone I could speak to who knows what’s going on?” Lewrie asked him. “Some staff officers, or…?”
“My dear sir, nobody knows what’s going on here, or has since we began our bloody retreat!” the surgeon snarled, then turned away.
“Carry on, Mister Hillhouse,” Lewrie called over his shoulder. “I’ll remain ashore for a while and see if I can find anyone who can make sense of this mess.”
“Aye, sir,” Hillhouse said, then paused. “Ehm, if Prosperity isn’t full, do we ferry un-wounded troops out to her?”
“Fill her to capacity, then begin on the next ship, the Blue Bonnet,” Lewrie told him. “Ah, and here come boats from Undaunted, and our brig-sloops. And Captain Chalmers appears just as curious as I am,” he added as he spotted that worthy in the lead cutter’s sternsheets, already standing and impatient to set foot ashore. He waited for Chalmers to make his way to the top of the long quay, then greeted him.
“Lord, what a shambles, Captain Lewrie,” Chalmers said as they exchanged salutes.
“’Deed it is, sir,” Lewrie agreed, wishing he could stuff a handkerchief to his nose to stifle the stench of gangrenous wounds. “I’m going to find someone in authority. Care to join me?”
“Delighted, sir,” Captain Chalmers eagerly said back.
They made their way through the pallets and litters bearing wounded men, and worked their way into the village of Santa Lucía, in a seemingly aimless mob of ragged soldiers. Abandoned mansions and storehouses had been requisitioned for barracks, with cryptic chalk marks on the doors, like 20/Ist Co./1/29, which meant that twenty men of the Number One company of the First Battalion of the 29th Regiment of Foot would be billeted there. The doors stood open and men lounged about on the steps or stoops, wrapped in new blankets, smoking pipes or chewing tobacco quids. Smoke plumed from chimneys, giving the first real warmth to soldiers who had nigh-frozen to death in the Spanish mountains. Looted tubs and cauldrons steamed outside over large fires made of smashed furniture and ripped-down wall panelling, some of it quite fine. Even whole paintings were being ripped apart so the gilt frames could be used for firewood, and the paintings, rolled up like logs, burned well, too. Shirts and under-drawers, stockings and small-clothes were being washed for the first time in weeks, and over some fires, wool uniform coats and trousers were being given a smoking to drive out the lice, fleas, and other pests. Some of the soldiers waiting for their cleaned clothes looked so riddled with wee red bite marks that Lewrie at first suspected them stricken with the measles!
“Seems there is some order about, after all, Captain Lewrie,” Chalmers pointed out, extending an arm to several companies of Highlanders practicing close-order drill, with their Sergeants and Corporals scurrying about them and barking orders like so many terriers. Further on, several companies of green-jacketed Rifles were marching and counter-marching under arms.
“Like the Admiral told us,” Lewrie commented, “discipline fell apart on the retreat. If the French arrive before we get ’em all off, they’ll have t’fight. Is that a Colonel, yonder?”
“A Major, I think,” Chalmers said with a shrug. “Think we can question him?”
“Aye, let’s try,” Lewrie agreed, increasing his pace. “Sir!” he called out. “Major? Could you talk to us?”
“Hmpf? What?” the stout fellow asked with a snort as he turned about to see who was calling him. “Ah, the Navy’s here, is it? At last … even if it is in mere dribs and drabs, so far.”
Lewrie was quick to assure him that Admiral Hood and nigh one hundred transports were coming from Vigo, and asked if he knew the dispositions of the army, and the location of the French. He took time to introduce himself as Major Phillpot, of General Sir David Baird’s staff, before explaining things to the naval officers.
“The last of our troops crossed the Mero River, and we demolished the only bridge, so that will slow the damned French down,” he said. “It’s beyond the second range of hills, the Peñasquedos, yonder. We don’t have enough troops to hold those hills, but we do have cavalry vedettes out to keep watch. The nearest range of hills, there, is the Monte Mero, rocky as anything, with so many large standing boulders that it might as well be fortified. General Hope’s Division is on the left, Sir David Baird’s Division holds the centre, near a village called Elvina, and the Guards hold their right flank. General Edward Paget is near Santa Lucía in reserve, and Frasier’s Division is posted on the road to Vigo and Santiago de Compostela on the far right.”
“The French?” Lewrie asked.
“No idea yet, sir,” Phillpot replied with a toothy leer. “As bad as we had it, the French must have had a worse time, for once we left any town through which we marched, there wasn’t a crumb, or a flagon of wine, left, hah hah! Shameful looting and in-discipline, our men got to, burning anything to keep warm, no matter how grand. Pianos, harps, bed-steads, God knows what all. The weather, and the roads, my word! One-lane bridges slick with thick ice, and hardly any kerbings. Why, it’s a wonder any of our carts and waggons survived. And, you ought to see some of the mountain villages we went through … lanes so narrow, and winding at odd angles, bound in by stone walls that hand-carts had to be un-loaded and stood on their sides to get them through!
“The French will have it just as bad,” Phillpot prophesied, “and struggle, as we did, along the same routes, through the snow, ice, and mud, perhaps all three conditions in the same day in those mountains, their own supplies far behind and starving, and every hamlet plucked as clean as a chicken. Damn them all, they are welcome to it!”
“So, you believe the army can hold for a while?” Captain Chalmers asked him.
“Frankly, sir?” Phillpot posed with a scowl, thinking that over. “For one day, perhaps, after the French catch us up. After that? Well, the Navy will just have to get us off or the entire army’s lost, what’s left of it.”
Major Phillpot offered them a tour of the defences up on the Monte Mero, though the retreat had cost so many horses that they would have to accompany him on foot while he rode his own worn-out prad; he was seeing a column of hand-carts up with fresh ammunition from the depot. They both decided not to.
“Save a place for me in one of your boats, will you, sirs?” Phillpot asked, and it was not in a parting jest. “Good day.”
“And good luck,” Lewrie bade him. Under his breath to Chalmers, he added, “I think they’re going to need all the luck in the world.”
As he and Captain Chalmers made their way back to the quays it began to drizzle an icy rain, quickly turning to sleet, then just as quickly to another bout of snow that began to blanket the ground, which had already been whitened, then churned to a slushy, muddy, muck by the thousands of soldiers. They passed a narrow church, where soldiers were quartered, and paused as they heard a flute and fiddle playing a tune inside.
“What’s that?” Lewrie asked.
“I think it’s ‘Over the Hills and Far Away,’” Chalmers said as he cocked an ear. “It’s from The Beggar’s Opera, as I recall.” As the tune continued, Chalmers “um-tiddlied”’til he got to a part he recalled. “‘And I would love you all the day, all the night we’d laugh and play, if to me you would fondly say, over the hills and far away.’”
“I wager that’s their fondest wish, right now,” Lewrie wryly said, “for them to be ‘over the hills and far away’ from here!”
He recalled that he had heard it long before, when he had had the Proteus frigate, escorting a convoy of “John Company” ships, and the ship that carried Daniel Wigmore’s Circus/Menagerie/Theatrical troupe that had attached itself as far as Cape Town. They had staged a performance of The Beggar’s Opera when they broke their passage at St. Helena Island, and Eudoxia Durschkeno had sung it as part of the chorus, back when she’d been enamoured of him, and long before she’d discovered that he was married.
The quays were empty when they arrived, and a gaggle of rowing boats were scuttling out into the harbour bearing the last of that surgeon’s regimental wounded.
“Mister Hillhouse,” Lewrie said, tapping the finger of his right hand on his hat by way of casual salute. “Last of ’em off, I see?”
“Aye, sir,” Midshipman Hillhouse replied, doffing his hat in reply. “I was told by an army officer that there are more wounded men coming to be got off. The Prosperity and the Blue Bonnet are now full, so when the boats return, I thought to send the new batch out to the Boniface, if you think that right, sir.”
“Quite so, Mister Hillhouse,” Lewrie said with a nod of agreement, then looked about to determine the arrangements that the Army might have made for their soldiers. “Damme, but it’s cold. Perhaps we should fetch pots, firewood, and tea leaves ashore after our boats make their first run out to Boniface. It’s shameful t’let the poor devils lay here and shiver in the open, in this snow.”
“Perhaps ‘portable soup’ might be more welcome, sir,” Captain Chalmers suggested. “One would think that the army would see to such. Aha, here comes the next batch.”
Lewrie turned about to see wounded men being brought to the quays, some being trundled in hand-carts, but most, those called the “walking wounded,” astride horses, some clinging to healthy men.
“Cavalry, aha!” Chalmers said. “With all their saddles and such. I suppose we must attempt to salvage all that,” he added with a frown, and a sigh.
“Light Dragoons,” Lewrie noted aloud, taking in the fur-topped leather helmets, short jackets, Paget-model carbines, and sabres the healthy troopers wore. “Aye, I suppose we must get all their gear off, though God knows if we’ve any horse transports, and they may … Percy? Percy Stangbourne?” he shouted as he recognised the officer leading the column.
Colonel Percy, Viscount Stangbourne, looked up from his dour and weary musings, startled, looked about, then spotted him.
“Alan? Alan Lewrie?” he perked up. “Where the Devil did you spring from? Here to get us off, are you? Thank God!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Believe it or not, I was just thinking of you, Percy,” Lewrie told him after Stangbourne had sprung from his saddle and had come to not only shake hands warmly, but thump him on the back in a bear-hug.
Well, yer better half, really, Lewrie thought.
“What? Why?” Percy asked, head cocked over in puzzlement.
“That tune,” Lewrie told him. “I remember Eudoxia singin’ it, on the way to Cape Town. How is she?”
“Safe in the country, thank God,” Percy answered. “Oh, she was of a mind to take the field with me, same as Lydia, but in her condition … we’re due another child, perhaps even now, so far as I know … and her father and I talked her out of it, again thank God!”
“And Lydia?” Lewrie asked of his former lover, thankful that he no longer felt a twinge in doing so, surprised again that mention or thought of her no longer caused a lurch in his innards.
“She’s well,” Stangbourne said, half his attention on his restless mount that was butting its head on his back. “Hunting and shooting round the estate, by herself if she can’t convince anyone else to join her. Horses and dogs, and her new hobbies … church work, ministering to the wives and children of the regiment who didn’t get to come along to Portugal, raising funds and such for the needy.”
Just as I thought, Lewrie told himself; it’ll be missionary work and soup kitchens in the stews, you just watch!
“That’s good, I suppose,” Lewrie opined.
“Yes, well,” Percy agreed, with a roll of his eyes.
“Boats are coming for your wounded men. Have many, do you?” Lewrie asked, peering at the men being lowered from horses, or borne out of the hand-carts.
“We’ve more sick than wounded,” Stangbourne told him with a bleak expression. “The badly wounded, and the very ill, died along the way, or had to be left behind in the villages we passed through. And, there were some who got so drunk off looted wine stores that we just had to leave them where they lay! Oh, the damned French loved that! We could hear them, when we stood as the rear-guard, butchering them without an ounce of mercy!”
“Good Lord!” Lewrie exclaimed.
“Laughing their evil heads off as they did it, too,” Viscount Percy spat, “my troopers, soldiers, and the women and children with the army, too, all murdered. Now and then, though, we caught them at their games, and made them pay, blood for blood,” Percy vowed, in such heat that made Lewrie re-consider his opinion of Percy. He was not a rich and idle dilettante playing at soldiering any longer, but a blooded veteran.
“I hear it was horrid,” Lewrie lamely said.
“You don’t know the half of it, Alan,” Stangbourne mournfully said. “I’ve lost a third of my regiment, and a quarter of my horses! No grain, thank the bloody Spanish very much! No grass for them to eat, no rations for my troopers, damn Spanish promises, again! There were steep places where the ice was so thick that the horses couldn’t even stay on all four hooves, fell, broke their legs and had to be put down … fell off the sides of the damned arched bridges into the ravines, horse and trooper together, or grew so weak that they just lay down and died. Damn, but half-cooked horse meat is just foul, an abomination to every good Englishman.”
“Well, we’ll get your sick and wounded out to the Boniface and let them heal up,” Lewrie promised. “Warm, dry berths, hot food and drink?”
“We’ve tried to salvage as much of our saddlery as we could. I hope there’s room for that,” Stangbourne demanded, waving at carts filled with sabres, carbines, broad saddle-cloths with the regimental badge embroidered upon them, and heaps of leather goods.
“I’m sure there’ll be room in the holds,” Lewrie said to assure him. Now that Percy’s regiment was no longer Stangbourne’s Horse but officially on Army List, anything lost would be made good by the Government; it wouldn’t come out of Percy’s purse. He’d lavished thousands to raise, equip, mount, and train his Dragoons in 1804, so many thousands of pounds that Lydia had feared that he would squander his wealth on it … that, or his penchant for gambling deep.
“They’re holding the cavalry ashore, for now,” Percy went on. “If the French get here before enough transports arrive…”
Lewrie assured him that over an hundred ships were coming, and that the Navy would do its best to get everyone off before the French arrived in force.
“Horse transports?” Stangbourne pointedly asked.
“Ah … that I don’t know, Percy,” Lewrie had to admit. “We don’t have any among the ships we brought from Gibraltar. But surely, that’ll have been thought of, by Admiral de Courcy, Admiral Hood, and London.”
“Well, just Merry bloody Christmas, and Happy Fucking New Year!” Percy exclaimed, quite out of character from the proper fellow that Lewrie had known before. “Haven’t we left enough behind, already? Guns, carriages, waggons, even the pay chests that got tossed into the steep ravines! Come Spring, some damned Spaniards might find them and make themselves rich! Then maybe the bastards will offer us even the slightest bit of aid!”
“Ready, sir,” one of Stangbourne’s officers interrupted.
“Right, coming. Excuse me for a bit, Alan,” he said, stomping off, and leaving the reins of his horse to a trooper.
“No help from the Spanish, I take it, sir?” Lewrie asked the junior officer.
“Those pusillanimous bastards, sir?” that worthy spat, brows up in surprise at the question. “Not a morsel. There was only one Spanish general willing to come join us, if we could feed, arm, and clothe his soldiers for a Winter campaign! All that talk of proud, armed civilian bands defending their own blasted country is just so much moonshine. Every village or town we came to, the Spanish had packed up and carted everything away, leaving us scraps, offering us nothing! Well, they left the wines. Benavente, Astorga … Bembibre was the worst. Rum stores, wine vats, got staved in and it ran in the filthy streets like floodwater, and our poor fellows scooped it up, dirt, mud, animal waste and all, and drunk themselves simply hoggish. Even flogging couldn’t control them. It was abominable. You ask me, sir, Spain and its idle people aren’t worth the effort to save, for they won’t save themselves.”
Percy came back to rejoin them as the last of his wounded and sick men were laid out on the stone quays. At least the depot that General Sir David Baird had established could provide them blankets, replacement greatcoats, and capes.
“I thought to send out for kettles, to brew up tea or soup,” Lewrie said as Percy took back his horse’s reins, and stroked its nose and muzzle.
“Ah, thankee, Alan, but I’ve already seen to that,” Percy told him, gesturing to some troopers removing kettles from the hand-carts and passing among the sick and wounded with tin mugs. “The depot has lashings of rum that will most-like be burned up or dumped into the harbour, so they’ll all get a portion in their tea, orders and regulations be-damned. They’ve more than earned the wee comfort, the poor devils. Like my horse, do you, Alan?”
“Aye, he looks a go-er,” Lewrie agreed, appraising the grey gelding.
“Thunder, here, is a stout and brave beast,” Percy said, stroking his horse’s neck. “He’s the last of mine that still has shoes. Another of our torments, that … the farrier waggons lost, no nails or horseshoes, along with no grain and no grass to graze. We simply had to shoot the lame ones.
“I started with a string of five in Portugal,” Percy went on, fondling his mount’s forehead and muzzle, “and now I’ve two left, and my mare is lame, and without shoes, so I suppose it’s be kindest to shoot her, too, but…” He broke off and buried his face against his horse’s neck.
“The depot, surely…,” Lewrie tried to encourage.
“They’ve no grain,” Percy told him, leaning back. “We were told the Spanish would provide, and I doubt they could shoe no more than a single squadron before running out, and most of the farriers marched with the army, anyway … dead back in those damned mountains,” he said as he waved towards the far, forbidding heights.
“The big convoy’s due any hour,” Lewrie promised, hoping that there were horse transports; he was an Englishman, a horse-lover from birth, and despised the thought of Percy’s magnificent horse being shot to keep it from the French, or to keep it from starving.
“I must get back to my post,” Percy announced, after a grim look-over the so-far-empty harbour. “We’re brigaded with Fraser’s Division, to defend the open country and the road from Vigo. That’s about the only place where French cavalry could attack. I’d offer you a supper in our regimental mess, but I doubt you’d care for oat meal and hard bisquit.”
“I get enough o’ that aboard ship,” Lewrie said with a little stab at humour, then offered his hand. “You take care, now, Percy. We’ll do what we can to save you and your men.”
“I count on it, Alan,” Percy replied, shaking hands strongly. “I wonder … if anything does happen to me, would you see to…?” He reached inside his ornately trimmed tunic and withdrew a packet of wax-sealed letters, bound in a short stack with ominously black ribbon.
“Christ, Percy, how would I know when t’mail ’em, not knowin’ whether you’re alive, or fallen?” Lewrie exclaimed. “I might frighten Eudoxia and Lydia to death with false news!”
“Nothing that grim, no, Alan!” Percy told him with his first sign of good humour. “Merely last expressions of love, just in case. I didn’t write me will, for God’s sake, no ‘by the time you get this’ nonsense!”
“Alright, then,” Lewrie promised, taking the packet and putting the letters in a side pocket of his coat. “Though, you’ll be on some transport, and I don’t know where I’m goin’ from here, but I’ll post ’em for you.”
“That’s true, but mail them anyway,” Percy told him, stepping back near his horse’s saddle and gathering up the reins. “I suppose this will be the last chance to see each other, as you say, so … do you take care, yourself, Alan.”
“If the French come, give ’em Hell,” Lewrie replied.
“We’ve already done a good job of that, and I intend to if they dare. Goodbye, old son,” Percy said as he mounted. “And, I think my sister a damned fool for her choices.”
There was no reply that Lewrie could make to that statement; all he could do was doff his hat as Colonel Percy, Viscount Stangbourne, wheeled his mount about and cantered off.
“Boats are coming back, sir,” Midshipman Hillhouse reported as Lewrie paced to the seaward end of the stone quays. “Fresh oarsmen, it looks like.”
“Excellent,” Lewrie told him, looking over the harbour waters. The snow had stopped, and the scudding clouds appeared higher, and lighter in colour, as if the Winter gloom might abate.
“There, sir!” Captain Chalmers shouted, pointing seaward. “See there, sir! Damme, why did I not bring my glass with me?”
Lewrie went to his side and cupped his hands either side of his eyes. “Yes, by God! Yes, thankee Jesus!”
Admiral Hood’s vast armada of over an hundred transport ships was sailing into sight, sail after sail, mast after mast, stacked up against each other from one end of the vista to the other, and stretching far out to sea as if the on-coming columns of ships would never end. The nearest would come to anchor within two hours, whilst the farthest out to sea might take ’til dusk to get into Corunna.
“Gad, what a magnificent sight!” Chalmers crowed.
“About bloody time,” Lewrie added with less enthusiasm after his initial outburst.
“Oh, surely, Captain Lewrie,” Chalmers countered, “one simply must be awed by such a sight.”
“Oh, I’m awed, no error, Captain Chalmers,” Lewrie said, “but, if the French get here before the army can begin to evacuate, they’ll have to stand under arms, where they are, and perform a fighting withdrawal before we can get ’em into boats and safely aboard all those transports. This ain’t over, not by a long shot.”
“One might think you a pessimist, sir,” Captain Chalmers said rather stiffly.
“Just a simple sailor, me,” Lewrie rejoined with a grin.
