Rumours Of War

‘Yes?’ she whispered back.

‘Do you think the tiradores would open fire if I told them?’

‘Do you mean would they be afraid?’

‘No. I mean . . . These are their countrymen after all.’

‘I do not know. That is the question, is it not?’

She put it plainly. It was the question the Horse Guards, and Mr Canning himself, ought to ask.

‘Very well. Please tell the serjeant that I shall want him to dispose his men to rake the plaza.’

‘Rake?’

‘To fire along its length.’

Isabella translated his instructions.

The serjeant answered simply: ‘Sim, senhor major.’

He sounded sure and capable. Hervey was encouraged. ‘Buono, serjente,’ he tried. ‘When it is a little lighter.’

Isabella, interpretress, obliged again.

And then they waited.

A quarter of an hour passed without anyone speaking. There were two more fusillades, and every so often a single shot. Hervey looked at his watch, and then went back to the window. The sky was lightening. ‘Vamos embora, serjente!’

Outside, while the serjeant spoke to his men, Hervey sent Wainwright to tell Johnson what was happening. The atiradores were standing exactly as posted. Hervey smiled grimly; he could not have expected better from British riflemen. Perhaps not even as much, for it was perishing cold.

Isabella touched his arm. ‘Major Hervey?’

‘Senhora, I think it better if you go back inside.’

‘You will have no need to speak to the serjeant any more?’

Hervey hesitated. ‘You would risk yourself?’

Isabella smiled, though Hervey could not see it. ‘Someone must.’

Indeed. He was only surprised it should come to this – an Englishman, a widow and a dozen Portuguese sharpshooters in the same British slop-clothes of nearly two decades past. After all that had gone between then and now, he was back in the country he had started in. And, like the Peninsular cornet again, he was casting about in the dark with a handful of men and doubts about who and where was the enemy.

He smiled to himself. ‘The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me.’

‘I did not hear rightly, Major Hervey.’

She had not been meant to hear at all.

‘The Song of Solomon,’ he whispered. And he sighed inwardly: how well he had known his Scripture all those years past. But he didn’t suppose Isabella read her bible in English. Little did he these days.

He braced himself. ‘Pronto, serjente?’

‘Sim, senhor.’

Hervey glanced at each of the atiradores. As far as he could make out they did indeed look ready. But he could not know how willing.

Corporal Wainwright slipped silently to his side, sabre drawn, pistol in hand.

Hervey was especially glad of it. ‘And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.’

Isabella did not hear him this time, for he barely whispered it. Would she have understood if she had done so? He would now put the loyalty of General d’Olivenza’s men to the test. There would be time at length to speak of it.

‘Senhora, would you tell the serjeant I would have five rounds, at my command, fired above the heads of the rebels – or revellers, if that is the more apt name. I want to see what is the response.’

‘Do you want me to tell him that too?’

He thought for a moment. ‘No; just tell him five rounds above their heads. But at my command.’

Again she obliged.

Hervey watched closely for any sign of dissent, but the serjeant was prompt with his order, and his men likewise to the response.

‘Very well.’ He stepped out into the plaza, followed by the atiradores.

None of the revellers saw. Hervey was astounded by their dereliction. Unless they had their own sharpshooters covering them, from an upper window, perhaps, or the roof of the church. There was no way of knowing until the first shot. What option had he anyway in order to make a demonstration? Besides, any sharpshooter worth his salt would have put a bullet into one of them by now.

‘Ready? Pronto, serjente? Fogo!’

Volley-fire was not the business of atiradores. Theirs was single, aimed shots, like British riflemen. But they volleyed well all the same – a good noise, a cloud of smoke, and the whizz of bullets above the revellers’ heads.

Hervey strained to see before the smoke engulfed them. He would know one way or another in a matter of seconds.

There was shouting, like orders, the men in the plaza trying to form line.

There was his answer!

The atiradores’ second rank stepped through the first and beyond the smoke. There was no need to tell them to change their aim. ‘Fogo!’

Half a dozen rifles blazed. As many of the rebels fell. The rest broke, dropping their muskets and racing for the far side of the plaza.

Hervey drew his sword. ‘Advance!’

The gesture was sufficient, even had the word of command not been understood. Arms at the high port, while the second rank continued reloading, the atiradores struck off as if they had been at a Shorncliffe drill.

‘Double march!’

He remembered Isabella, and he glanced back. But there she was, with the serjeant, holding up her skirts with one hand as she ran, like the Spanish guerrilla women he had so admired all those years past.

He checked his pace a fraction as they reached the far side; here, if anywhere, would be the sortie or the rearguard volley. But no, just the litter of the hasty retreat – of rout, no less. How far should he pursue? The rebels must surely make a stand somewhere? Probably with the main body; they couldn’t be a great distance off, perhaps just outside the walls. Even now they might be rallying; and turning.

It was getting lighter. He could just see into the street the rebels had bolted down. It looked empty. By rights he should send the atiradores in. Their business was to skirmish, and they would make easy work of it. But he couldn’t risk it, even now. They would follow, he trusted, but sending them forward was another matter.

He held up his hand, beckoned slowly, indicating the change of pace, then began advancing with his back close to the walls. Wainwright followed at sword’s length, and a little behind him the atiradores on either side of the street, rifles at the ready, with Johnson and Isabella behind them.

The street ran downhill slightly, towards the curtain walls, two hundred yards. It took them ten minutes to reach the west gate; the shadows and alleys all needed searching. Hervey was taken aback to see the gate was open. Isabella said the arch had been widened since the war to permit wheels to pass in both directions at once. There was still no sign of the rebels, or the picket.

Hervey cursed. Had the rebels joined up with other parties in the town and circled behind them? He could not imagine they had been shooting in the plaza without any supports at hand.

Hooves on cobbles beyond the arch startled him. ‘Take cover!’ he shouted, waving his pistol.

The atiradores did not need Isabella to translate. They pressed themselves into every recess, doorway or buttress, rifles ready.

Hervey now had a taste of the infantryman’s peculiar fear of cavalry at night, the noise amplified, numbing. In