course, strike at Chiclana, but there will be nothing, Sir Thomas, absolutely nothing, to stop the French marching onto our right flank.” He scooped the beans into a small pile to show how the French might overwhelm his attack. “But from the east, from—” He hesitated.
“Barrosa, senor.”
“From Barrosa,” Lapena went on, “we strike their flank. We hit them hard!” He smacked a fist into a palm to show the force with which he envisaged making the attack. “They will still try to march against us, of course, but now their men must get through the town! They will find that hard, and we shall be destroying Victor’s forces while his reinforcements still thread the streets. There! Do I convince you?” He smiled, but Sir Thomas said nothing. It was not that the Scotsman had nothing to say, but he was struggling to say it with even a hint of courtesy. “Besides,” Lapena went on, “I command here, and it is my belief that the victory we both desire is best achieved by marching along the coast. We were not to know that when we embarked on the fleet, but it is the duty of a commander to be flexible, is it not?” He did not wait for a response, but instead tapped the empty chair. “Join us for some chicken, Sir Thomas. Lent starts on Wednesday, and then there’ll be no more chicken till Easter, eh? And Captain Brouard has carved the fowl superbly.”
“Bugger the fowl,” Sir Thomas said in English and turned to his horse.
Lapena watched the Scotsman ride away. He shook his head but said nothing. Captain Brouard, meanwhile, reached over and crushed the bean at Barrosa with his thumb, then smeared the pulp down the shore so that it looked reddish against the map. Blood in the surf. “How very clumsy of me,” Brouard lamented. “I simply meant to remove it.”
Lapena was unworried by the small mess. “It is a pity,” he said, “that God in his wisdom decreed that the English should be our allies. They are”—he paused—“so very uncomfortable.”
“They are blunt creatures,” Captain Brouard sympathized. “They lack the subtlety of the French and the Spanish races. Allow me to give Your Excellency some chicken? Does Your Excellency prefer breast?”
“You are right!” General Lapena was delighted with the Frenchman’s insight. “No subtlety, Captain, no finesse, no”—he paused, seeking the word—“no grace. The breast. How very kind of you. I am obliged.”
And he was also determined. He would take the road that offered the shortest route home to Cadiz. He would march to Conil.
THERE WAS another argument in the afternoon. Lapena wanted to march that night and Sir Thomas protested that they were close to the enemy now, and that the men should come to any encounter with the enemy fresh, not exhausted from a night groping through unfamiliar country. “Then we march this evening”—Lapena generously yielded the point—“and bivouac at midnight. In the dawn, Sir Thomas, we shall be rested. We shall be ready.”
Yet midnight passed, as did the rest of the night, and at dawn they were still marching. The column had become lost again. The troops had stopped, rested, been woken, had marched, stopped again, countermarched, turned around, rested for a few uncomfortable minutes, been woken, and then retraced their footsteps. The men were laden with packs, haversacks, cartridge boxes, and weapons and, when they stopped, they dared not unbuckle their equipment for fear they would be hurried on at any moment. None rested properly so that by dawn they were exhausted. Sir Thomas spurred past his men, his horse kicking up small gouts of sandy soil as he looked for General Lapena. The column had stopped again. The redcoats were sitting by the track and they looked resentfully at the general as though it were his fault that they had been given no rest.
General Lapena and his aides were on a small wooded rise where a dozen civilians were arguing. The Spanish general nodded a distant greeting to Sir Thomas. “They are not sure of the way,” Lapena said, indicating the civilians.
“Who are they?”
“Our guides, of course.”
“And they don’t know the way?”
“They do,” Lapena said, “but they know different ways.” Lapena smiled and shrugged as if to suggest such things were inevitable.
“Where’s the sea?” Sir Thomas demanded. The guides looked solemnly at Sir Thomas and then all pointed westward and agreed that the sea lay that way. “Which would make sense,” Sir Thomas said caustically, nodding toward the east where the sky was suffused with new light, “because the sun has a habit of rising in the east and the sea lies to the west, which means our route to Barrosa lies that way.” He pointed north.
Lapena looked offended. “At night, Sir Thomas, there is no sun to guide us.”
“That’s what happens when you march at night!” Sir Thomas snarled. “You get lost.”
The march began again, now following tracks across an undulating heath dotted with pinewoods. The sea came into sight soon after the sun rose. The track led north above a long sandy beach where the surf broke and seethed before sliding back to meet the next crashing wave. Far out to sea a ship bore southward, only her topsails visible above the horizon. Sir Thomas, riding on the inland flank of his leading brigade, climbed a sandy hill and saw three watchtowers punctuating the coast ahead, relics of the days when Moorish pirates sailed from the Straits of Gibraltar to murder, rob, and enslave. “The nearest, Sir Thomas, is the tower at Puerco,” his liaison officer told him. “Beyond that is the tower of Barrosa, and the furthest is at Bermeja.”
“Where’s Conil?”
“Oh, we skirted Conil in the night,” the liaison officer said. “It is behind us now.”
Sir Thomas glanced at his tired troops who marched with heads down, silent. He looked north again and saw, beyond the tower at Bermeja, the long isthmus leading to Cadiz that was a white blur on the horizon. “We’ve wasted our time, haven’t we?” he said.
“Oh no, Sir Thomas. I am sure General Lapena means to attack.”
“He’s marching for home,” Sir Thomas said wearily, “and you know it.” He leaned forward on his saddle pommel and suddenly felt every one of his sixty-three years. He knew Lapena was hurrying for home now. Dona Manolito had no intention of turning east to attack the French; he just wanted to be in Cadiz where, doubtless, he would boast of having marched across Andalusia in defiance of Marshal Victor.
“Sir Thomas!” Lord William Russell spurred his horse toward the general. “There, sir.”
Lord William was pointing north and east. He gave Sir Thomas a telescope and the general extended the tubes and, using Lord William’s shoulder as a slightly unsteady rest, saw the enemy. Not dragoons this time, but infantry. A mass of infantry half hidden by trees.
“Those are the forces masking Chiclana,” the liaison officer declared confidently.
“Or the forces marching to intercept us?” Sir Thomas suggested.
“We know they have troops at Chiclana,” the liaison officer said.
Sir Thomas could not see whether the distant troops were marching or not. He collapsed the glass. “You will go to General Lapena,” he told the liaison officer, “and give him my compliments, and tell him there is French infantry on our right flank.” The liaison officer turned his horse, but Sir Thomas checked him. The Scotsman was looking ahead and could see a hill just inland of Barrosa, a hill with a ruin on its summit and a place that would offer a position of strength. It was the obvious place to post men if the French were planning an attack. Make Victor’s forces fight uphill, make them die on the slope, and, when they were beaten, march on Chiclana. “Tell the general,” he told the liaison officer, “that we are ready to turn and attack on his orders. Go!”
The liaison officer spurred away. Sir Thomas looked again at the hill above Barrosa and reckoned that the brief and so far disastrous campaign could yet be saved. But then, from far ahead, came the crackle of gunfire. The sound rose and fell in the wind, sometimes almost drowned by the crash of the endless waves, but it was unmistakable, the thorn-burning snap and splintering noise of musket volleys. Sir Thomas stood in his stirrups and stared. He was waiting for the thick smoke of the powder to reveal where the fighting took place, and at last he saw it. It was smearing the beach beyond the third watchtower, but still short of the pontoon bridge that led back to the city. Which meant that the French had already cut them off and were now barring the road to Cadiz and, worse, much worse, were almost certainly advancing from the inland flank. Marshal Victor had the allied force exactly where he wanted it: between his army and the sea. He had them at his mercy.
CHAPTER 10
