02 - Keane's Challenge (25 page)

Napier whistled and shook his head. ‘That’s it then. Portugal open to Massena. This is not what the duke wanted at all, is it?’

‘No,’ mused Keane, ‘not at all.’

Keane’s bivouac lay close to those of the cacadores and to his relief all of his men seemed to have assembled there.

Keane turned to Ross and Silver. ‘Thank God you’re all here. You felt that explosion?’

Ross replied for them all. ‘Yes, sir. What the hell was it?

‘You don’t know then? That was Almeida. The magazine blew up, we think. Half the place is gone – the castle, the cathedral too, and I imagine half the people and the garrison. All the country round about is crevassed. Think what the French must have felt in their trenches.’

Garland laughed. ‘They’ll be stone deaf, sir.’

Martin shuddered. ‘And shaking. Out of their wits.’

Keane looked thoughtful. For a few moments he said nothing, and then. ‘That they will, Martin, and we can use that to our advantage.’

‘We can, sir?’

Keane smiled. ‘Don’t you see? The French will be as shocked as we are. More so, being closer. They will have been taken unawares and some of them will have been actually physically injured. Others will be so shaken they won’t be able to fight. So we can take our chance and go in and take one of them.’

Gilpin asked, ‘A prisoner, sir?’

‘Yes, but think what we might do. If we succeed in getting as far as possible into their lines, as, say, a forward command position, who might we find there?’

Martin answered. ‘An officer, sir. Maybe a colonel.’

Keane shook his head. ‘What if I were to say a general, perhaps? What of that? Think big, lads.’

Silver shook his head. ‘Are you serious, sir? You can’t be. Surely.’

‘Quite serious, Silver. We can do it, if anyone can. But we need to act instantly. Get your kit, all of you, and come with me. We leave in five minutes. No more.’

It did not take long for them to assemble and soon, leaving just Heredia and Leech with the Ordenanza, they were off and
back down the hill, travelling towards Almeida and the French lines.

As they rode, Silver turned to Ross and spoke quietly. ‘He’s finally gone one step too far. Don’t you think? This is mad.’

‘It may be mad, lad, but we’re doing it all the same.’

‘But to take a general! He must have lost his mind, sarn’t.’

‘He lost his mind a good long while ago, Silver. Didn’t you know that. That’s what he’s doing with all of us.’

It was dark as they rode down through the vineyards and emerged back at the bridge over the Côa. It shone pale in the moonlight and for a moment Keane thought that he could make out figures on it. But it was only shadows. Perhaps because they had lost so many men there the French had not posted a guard, and certainly it had a curious atmosphere about it, as all battlefields do after nightfall. A chill in the air.

They rode fast over the river.

The flames curled upward from the city and it seemed to Keane as if the very ground around him still bore the shock of the explosion.

Archer, whose opinion he had come to value increasingly as that of an educated man, was riding a few paces behind him.

Keane pulled back a little and spoke as they rode. ‘If you were a French general, where would you place your forward command post?’

‘Somewhere from where I could see the objective but which was not excessively close to the enemy so as to make it hazardous.’

‘So we are looking for somewhere on high ground just within artillery range.’

He pulled out his sketchbook from his valise and began to draw a simple plan. ‘Here’s the town and here the ramparts.
And here are the French trenches. Their forward positions. They follow the ramparts in a semicircle, so. I would put myself, just… here.’

He stabbed with the pencil a little off to the left of the French position and to the ear of the trenches and siege-works. ‘Now where would you say we are now?’

‘By my reckoning, sir, if our camp is here –’ he pointed – ‘then we must be around here.’

Keane nodded. ‘Yes, I think you’re right. So, in theory, if we take ourselves as close as we can safely get to the French lines and then say three hundred yards to the north and strike in here, we should find our general.’

They set off at a slow trot, strung out in single file. After a hundred yards, Keane signalled them to dismount. They left the horses with Garland and set off again on foot, swords drawn, fanned out in an arc, all of them vaguely aware of Keane’s hastily drawn plan. After about another hundred yards they heard voices. They sounded agitated and they were speaking in French.

Keane signalled his men to halt and listened. From what he could gather there were two men. Presumably standing guard. One said something along the lines of, ‘I have ringing in my ears.’ The other that he was half deaf too and still shaking. Then the first man said, ‘The poor general. To be thrown from his horse like that. He is shaken. The blast got him too. You know it knocked some of the gunners clean off their feet.’

This was it. Precisely the opportunity for which Keane had been looking. There was no finesse required. No trickery to lie their way in. What was needed here was to be swift, silent and deadly.

He made another signal across to Silver and then, in time
with one another, the two men began to move forward up the slight incline, towards the sentries.

Near the top, both men dropped to the ground and began to crawl. Keane could hear his own breathing, and his heartbeat sounded like a drum. But he knew that both were audible only to him. Reaching the top, they peered over and saw the two sentries. They were still talking, standing almost with their backs to them. A little way off a blue-and-white striped campaign tent suggested that Keane might have been right to suppose this to be a command post.

He looked at Silver and nodded. Then, slowly, each man crept round to the side, Keane to the left, Silver to the right. It took them a long minute to get within striking distance of the sentries. But once they were there, they did not delay.

Keane launched himself at the man on the left, knocking him down and in almost the same instant slitting his throat with the edge of his knife. He was aware of Silver doing the same. Then silence. There had been a clatter of arms, that was all.

Keane looked around. He could hear more voices off to the left and listened again. More French, but they did not seem to have heard and their conversation was all of the explosion. He nodded to Silver and motioned that he should remain standing over the bodies. Then sheathing his knife, he drew a pistol from his belt and, having preloaded it, cocked it before walking slowly towards the tent.

Keane paused only for a moment at the flap and then, with a flick of his hand, flipped it open. Inside stood a tall campaign chest and beside it a table on which was spread a map, weighted down by two carafes of wine, one empty, one full. And beyond the table, over in the corner, on a field bed, lay a French officer, in his forties, his eyes tight shut. Keane moved quickly. For
although the man seemed to be asleep, he could not be sure. He stood over the Frenchman and, noticing the cross of the Légion d’Honneur pinned to his chest, whispered, in French, ‘
Mon général
, how are you feeling?’

Without opening his eyes, the man muttered something, then said more audibly. ‘Go away, Auguste. I have had a nervous shock. My head is ringing with the noise and I ache all over.’

Keane replied, quietly, ‘I’m sorry, sir. But you must come with me.’

The general opened his eyes and seeing Keane closed them again before opening them a second time, this time in horror.

‘Who are you? Where is my servant? And the guards?’

‘They’re dead. I am a British officer and you are now my prisoner. That’s all you need to know, general. And now we must leave.’

‘If you think I’m going anywhere, young man, you’re wrong.’

‘No, general, you are wrong.’

‘I will call the guards.’

He opened his mouth to shout, and as he did so Keane nudged the muzzle of the pistol into his stomach. ‘One sound, just one, and I’ll pull the trigger. It makes no difference to me. The guards will come anyway. But either way, you’ll be dead. Unless you come.’

The general shut his mouth, then looked up. ‘May I at least take my sword?’

Keane shook his head. ‘Please, general. Credit me with more intelligence.’

The general smiled and, with Keane holding the pistol at the small of his back, walked from the tent. Outside, Silver was still standing over the bodies. On seeing them, the general stopped
and stiffened. Keane pressed the gun into his back. ‘Not a sound. Keep walking, sir, if you please.’

It took them less time to reach the horses than when crawling. And they found the others gathered there.

Keane kept the gun pressed hard in the man’s back.

‘Gentlemen, may I present to you. General… Oh, I’m sorry, sir, we were not properly introduced. I am Captain James Keane of the British army and you are… ?’

‘Général de Brigade Mathieu de Labassee.’

‘There we are. I present General Labassee.’

Fully expecting the expedition to be a success, they had thoughtfully brought an extra mount and the general mounted before Keane had Garland tie his hands to the pommel of his saddle. Then they set off, in single file, back to the camp.

*

Archer spoke to him as they left the hill station. ‘A general, sir. That’ll surely please the commander-in-chief.’

‘Yes, Archer. But I’m not going to let them have him all to themselves.’

‘Sir?’

‘I intend to get my own information from him before he is taken before Wellington. We need to know certain things, and I think it might be best to strike when the iron’s still hot. When the man is still in a daze from the explosion and his abduction. Now’s our chance to get some real information, and I think I know the way to get it.’

They had put their high-ranking guest in a tent of his own, close to that of Black Bob himself, albeit under armed guard and with no recourse to any weapons. Taking with him Archer and one of Don Sanchez’s lancers, Keane chose his moment carefully, timing his visit to the prisoner to shortly after Craufurd
himself had had an interview. He met Craufurd and an ADC as they emerged from General Labassee’s tent.

‘Ah, Keane. Clever thing you did. Damned clever. A brigade general. The duke will be pleased. Don’t see those every day.’

‘Did he tell you anything, sir?’

‘No, not much. Leastways nothing that we didn’t already know. He’s General de Brigade Labassee, veteran of Marengo and Friedland, Commander of the Légion d’Honneur, commander of the second brigade of infantry in Marshal Ney’s 6th Corps.’

‘Let’s hope that I can do better.’

‘Do you think you will? Good luck.’

And with that he was gone. Keane pushed open the tent flap. The general was sitting at a campaign table with a glass of wine. He did not look happy.

‘You.’

‘Sir, it is good to see you again, and my sincere apologies for transporting you here in such an inglorious manner. You have met my colleague, trooper Archer. But I don’t think you have made the acquaintance of our friend Miguel Carrera. He’s one of Don Sanchez’s men. You have heard of Don Julian Sanchez, perhaps?’

The general’s face looked pale and he took a sip of wine. ‘Yes, I know of Sanchez. He is a constant trouble to us. What business does this rogue have in my tent? Get him out.’

‘This rogue, sir, has every right to be in your tent. In fact, you owe him an apology.’

‘I do? The devil I do.’

‘It was your men killed his wife and children last year as they passed through his village. He would like an apology and he would like to know why.’

Labassee stared at the lancer, who gave him a smile that chilled his blood.

‘My men killed his family? You are wrong, captain. If they did, there must have been a reason. They were insurgents. Armed insurgents.’

‘Armed insurgents consisting of a heavily pregnant girl and two boys of two and four?’

The general had begun to sweat now. ‘I refuse to apologize for something that was not my doing.’

‘You do?’

‘I do. Where is General Craufurd?’

‘Oh, we passed him as we came in. He said that he knew you would apologize. Particularly when you knew the alternative.’

‘Alternative?’ Labassee took another sip of wine.

‘Yes. You see, I would like a little more than an apology, general. I would like some information. It is my job to find information. And recently I have not been doing my job very well, which is where you come in.’

‘I am sorry, captain, you have me at a disadvantage. I fail to understand.’

‘Perhaps this will make you understand better. Carrera here wants an apology and I want information, and if we don’t get what we want, I am quite sure that he will be happy to escort you to his commander’s camp in the hills, not so very far from here. When you get there his friends will strip you naked and string you up by your arms and then they will begin to get the information in the best way they know. And believe me, general, after just a few minutes of that, you will be only too happy to tell them. But of course by then it will be too late for you. You will survive for a little longer – a day if you are unlucky – and
when they cut you down maimed and bleeding and crying out for mercy, you will be thankful when they kill you.’

He paused, letting the general’s now trembling hand grasp the goblet and bring it to his dry throat for another gulp of wine.

Keane went on. ‘Or of course you could give us both what we want now and save a great deal of trouble and unpleasantness all round. Although I’m sure that my friend here would be most disappointed.’

*

The general stared into space and finished his wine. He set the goblet down on the table. ‘What is it that you want to know?’

It took half an hour, and by the end General Labassee had loosened his collar and had a fresh glass of wine and Keane had the information he wanted. Only the lancer, Carrera, was left wanting, for he had not been given a French general to torture. But Keane gave him two guineas from his own purse instead, and so even the Spaniard went away happy.