Flashman in the Peninsula (8 page)

‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Downie. ‘Still, it is worth thinking about.’ As old Peninsular hands know, Downie did more than think about it and he had the money to see it through. This explains why any portraits you see of Downie normally show him looking as though he was a shipmate of Sir Francis Drake, when in fact he was barely older than me.

I saw his famed regiment two years later while still in Spain. Their attire did do wonders for morale; but for the British army rather than the Spanish. The group I was with fell about with mirth when they saw the regiment, and judging from the morose expressions on the faces of Downie’s men, I gathered that this was a common reaction. It was raining at the time and the rest of us were all wrapped up in long greatcoats while the pride of the armada looked frozen in waist length cloaks and stockings up to the thigh. Their conquistador style steel helmets gathered rain water like guttering, and every time they moved their heads water spilled either down their front or their back.

You will not be surprised to learn that their only military action against the French was also a disaster. The French let them get quite close, either because they could not believe their eyes or were too busy laughing to shoot. When they did fire, Downie’s men found that their steel breastplates did little to stop a ball from either a cannon or a musket. Their morale must have been low after being treated as the joke of the army for months and after a few volleys they broke and ran. The Spanish never forgot Downie’s efforts though, and he was given various honours for his service to Spain, ending up governor of the castle in Seville, but all that was to come.

The next morning, after all the talk of partisans, Downie decided to send two men ahead as scouts.

‘Flashman, I would like you to ride as the forward scout,’ he told me as we mounted up. ‘You have your telescope and speak the language, so you are best placed to spot any trouble.’ He grinned, ‘I know your reputation but if you see anything ride straight back. Don’t try to take them on by yourself.’

There was no chance of me taking anyone on if I could help it, but all the talk of partisans the night before had left me feeling edgy as well. I had Doherty as my companion the first day and we found the fork in the road that the priest had predicted and made sure we went to the left. We saw hardly anyone, moving from one near deserted valley to the next. At the end of the day and without finding a village, the awful prospect of eggs and beans loomed again, but as we were setting up camp near a stream a gun shot indicated that we were saved from that once more.

Trooper Chapman was halfway up the hillside with a smoking carbine in his hand and a sheep twitching its death throes just a few yards away.

‘The sheep ’ad a broken leg sir,’ he called to Downie. ‘It would not ’ave survived much longer, so the shepherd can’t complain. It is a kindness to kill it,’ he added. His statement would have been slightly more plausible if there hadn’t been the audible snapping sound of a breaking bone as he stood on the creature’s leg.

Whether Downie heard the bone snap as well I could not say, but if he did he chose to ignore it. The men were ordered to look out for the shepherd so that we could pay him for the sheep, which was soon skinned and roasting over a fire. Eventually a wizened old man in a sheepskin jacket was seen peering down at us from higher up the hillside. Downie called for him to come down and waved a coin at him, but I guessed that men did not get to be wizened and old in these parts by walking unarmed down a hillside towards thirty gun wielding strangers. Downie made a big show of putting a coin on a rock for the shepherd while he watched. The coin had gone by the morning, but I very much doubt that it was the shepherd who took it.

We carried on in this manner for another two days. On the third day Chapman was my companion and I was getting to know some of the troop quite well. Chapman, I was not entirely surprised to discover, was a thief who had joined the army to escape prison or the gallows. As we talked I noticed that the terrain was starting to change. The ground rose up in steep hills often with the lower levels covered in forest. It was cold but dry and the sun was shining as we rode along a valley close to a stream. Looking ahead the valley bent sharply to the right so I signalled, as I had done now many times before, for the troop behind to stop while we went forward to investigate.

The woods came down close to the path, which twisted and turned so that you could not see far ahead. We stood silently watching for a moment and kicked our horses forward to the next bend. Two hundred yards further on, we stopped again at another turn in the path.

‘When I was a burglar,’ muttered Chapman, ‘we ’ad lookouts, crows we called ’em. Sometimes you could feel ’em watching you and I’m getting that same feeling now.’

We had been down several similar valleys but Chapman was right, my danger antennae were twitching too. I took out my telescope and started to study the sides of the valley ahead.

‘We’ll not be able to get the ’orses up there,’ said Chapman. ‘We would ’ave to ride along the valley floor or fight our way up hill on foot.’

He was right, but I could not see anything to confirm my suspicions. I was about to put the glass away and ride further forward when Chapman asked to borrow it. I passed it across.

‘I ’ave never used a glass before,’ he said as he adjusted the tubes. ‘Blimey,’ he added, when he got the focus right, ‘I can see why you officers ’ave these, you could see a flea wipe its arse with this glass.’ He studied the right hand side of the valley while I looked across to the left, content to wait. It was just a split second, but there was a flash of light to the left as though something metal had momentarily caught the sun. Before I could say anything Chapman gave a grunt of satisfaction.

‘There is something to the left,’ I told him, ‘I saw a glint of metal.’

‘Aye and there is a bugger in those rocks to the right too. I thought I saw ’im with my eye but he just popped his bleedin’ ’ead up to look when I was using this,’ he passed the glass back to me. I stowed it in my saddlebag, patted both of my coat pockets to check that my pistols were still in them and had a final look round.

‘Let’s go back. This has ambush written all over it.’ Downie had ordered us to come back if we smelt trouble and that was one order I was happy to obey. It was as we started to turn our horses that the first shot rang out from the trees. We could hear men shouting in the hill above us while further down the path in the direction we had been travelling, several armed men spilled onto the road. Another shot was fired and I heard it ricochet off the road nearby. Our red coats were clearly visible, but so was their purpose and it did not leave scope for negotiation. In a moment the scene had changed from an empty valley similar to countless ones we had ridden through, to one of deadly danger. I needed little encouragement to lie low in the saddle and spur the horse back the way we had come. Chapman was alongside doing the same and the horses were quickly at the gallop. But we had only covered a few yards when there was a splintering sound and a tree started to fall across the path ahead, blocking our escape. They had made a trap and we had blundered right into it. There was still a small gap by the edge of the river and both Chapman and I steered our horses towards it. Now we saw that five attackers were tumbling out of the woods by the tree. They were armed with long handled pikes and axes that looked old, but which would still be lethal against horses and men in a confined space. It was a race between us on horseback and these villains on foot to get to the gap by the river first.

The men by the tree had a much shorter distance to travel and, as another ball whined over my head from the slope behind, I looked over my shoulder to see that there were now twenty men running down the path after us.

‘Ride straight through,’ I shouted. We were already outnumbered but if the men behind us caught up we would stand no chance at all. Our only hope was to use the momentum of the horses to push our way past.

I realised that we were going to lose the race with the men by the tree. My horse’s hooves were pounding the loose stones as we sped along but Chapman pulled slightly ahead. I was happy to let him. One of Flashy’s firm principles of warfare is never be first to enter a breach. The first man always attracts the attention of most of the defenders and rarely survives. If Chapman took the brunt of the impact I might be able to slip around. With the horse heading in the right direction I dropped my reins and tried to pull a pistol out of my pocket with my left hand and draw my sword with my right. We were on them in a moment and suddenly everything was chaos and confusion. I had planned to fire my pistol as I approached the gap but the hammer had got caught in the flap of my pocket. By the time I had got the gun clear and thumbed back on the hammer I was at the tree. A man with a pike suddenly appeared to my left with the weapon’s point just a yard away from my side. Without hesitation I pointed the pistol at him and fired. The ball smashed through the lower part of his face and he went down reaching for what was left of his jaw and screaming in pain.

There was another man to my right by the edge of the water but if I kept close to the tree top I would get clear. I had spurred my horse to keep going when Chapman’s mount reared in front of me. The men had thrown a blanket over its head and it was bucking in panic. I heard the men shouting something about the horses and realised that they wanted them alive, but as the man by the river rushed forward with a big old pistol, it was clear that they were not so protective of the riders. With Chapman’s horse wheeling in panic in front of me, my mount was slowing too. My left foot brushed the branches of the fallen tree. Chapman’s horse was turning round to the left, while he swung his sword at the men who reached up for his horse’s bridle. I wanted to go right to get around him and away, but the man with the pistol was now nearly on me. He held the weapon high in his hand at full arms reach. His body was too far away to strike, but I judged that I might just be able to swing my sword down on the weapon to deflect the shot. Sometimes you just act on instinct; my sword arm swung down with all my strength. But as the blade started to swish through the air I had the awful realisation that it would not meet the weapon in time. I saw his knuckle whiten around the trigger and expected the spring loaded flint to crash into the frizzen on the gun creating the spark that would fire a leaden ball of death into my exposed side.

In the heat of battle with so much going on around you, things sometimes seem to happen in slow motion. As I watched that gun fire it seemed to take a lifetime, but then I realised it actually was firing in slow motion. Instead of the spring loaded flint I saw a clamp holding a piece of glowing slow match moving towards the frizzen. It was one of the old wheel lock weapons, probably from early in the last century. It gave me the fraction of a second I needed. The razor sharp blue Damascus steel flashed in the sunlight until there was an explosion of red as it bit into the man’s wrist. I felt the steel jar on bone but the blade kept moving down and suddenly the hand still clutching the pistol was falling to the ground and the man was shrieking as he pulled back, looking at the newly made stump on the end of his limb. Now I could get through and I spurred the horse forward again, but instead of going straight, inexplicably the animal turned into the melee around Chapman. There were still three well-armed men around him and with those odds he was a goner, but if my horse would go straight I could still get clear.

I reached down to grab the reins to pull my horse to the right but the reins were already being stretched to the left. A glance showed that they had become entangled in the tree branches and were pulling the horse in that direction. Frantically I wrenched them free but now my mount had barged into one of the men attacking Chapman, nearly knocking him off his feet. The man turned and glared at me and started to swing round a viciously bladed axe. I stabbed down again with the sword and this time the thin blade went deep into his side, sliding between his ribs to prompt another scream of pain. The man spasmed in agony but my sword was wedged in his ribs and I could not get it back. As he fell the weapon was wrenched from my hand. Then Chapman’s horse swung around as the trooper killed the man holding the blanket over its head.

There was just one man left on his feet, but as the blanket slipped from Chapman’s mount the animal skittered away as it regained its bearings. The sole surviving attacker whirled around holding a long bladed weapon on a pole. He glared briefly at both of us and then over the tree to where his comrades were still running down the track towards us. They were only twenty yards off now and their approach seemed to give the man courage. He stepped forward to block my escape, holding his weapon high. Chapman was turning his horse and trying to pull the carbine out of its holster in his saddle but there was no more time. My hand was already dropping to my right coat pocket and closing around the familiar pistol butt. Having no time to draw the weapon and risk it snagging, I thumbed back the hammer and fired it from inside the pocket. I was already spurring my horse forward as the man’s surprised face looked down at the spreading scarlet stain on his greasy shirt front. Another musket ball smacked into the fallen tree a yard off and the leading men were now nearly at its branches behind us.

‘Come on Chapman,’ I shouted as I dug in my heels again to make my escape.

We had only galloped another fifty yards to the bend in the track when we met the twenty-nine remaining dragoons and Downie coming the other way. They were in two columns that charged past on either side of us with Downie at the front waving his sword and shouting the hunting cry of ‘view halloo’ when he spotted the men running down the track after us. Caught in the open, the devils stood no chance and turned to run. Sabres were soon rising and falling with ruthless efficiency. Then as the quickest men tried to reach the safety of the rocks, the dragoons’ carbines were firing at a range where even their doubtful accuracy was effective.

Chapman and I turned our horses about and slowly returned the scene of the attack, with me beating out a small fire in my coat pocket on the way. I was very happy for them to finish off the rest without us and the action was all over by the time we were back at the tree. There were a dozen dead or dying on the track in front of the tree now and a similar number on the lower rocks, although screams, shouts and small rock falls indicated that some had made their way further up the hillside to relative safety. The dragoons had taken no casualties and were searching the bodies, but judging from their looks of disgust, finding little of value. Downie was questioning the man I had left with one hand but after a moment he came over.

‘We heard a crackle of gunfire and thought you might be in trouble,’ he explained, looking very pleased with himself as he wiped his sword blade on a rag. ‘They thought you two were alone, they were not expecting us.’

I knew I would be shaking when the shock of the encounter set in but for the moment I managed a surprised grin. ‘In trouble?’ I queried. ‘We were nothing of the sort, were we Chapman? We had just fought our way clear.’

‘I would ’ave been a dead man if you ’ad not turned back to ’elp me sir. The cap’n could ’ave got clear away sir,’ Chapman explained to Downie, and I thanked my stars that Chapman had not seen me tugging frantically on the reins to do precisely that. ‘Instead sir,’ continued the hapless Chapman, ’e turned around and charged into the men around me, killing two more of ’em. He killed four of ’em in all, I only got one. Proper killing gennelman ’e is,’ he added, with a touch of pride that I was among their number.

I knew an offhand remark would best maintain my reputation as the modest hero, so I grinned and added, ‘I would have left you Chapman but I could not remember if you had returned my telescope.’ They all laughed at that before Sergeant Butterworth walked over to us holding my sword wiped clean of blood and another antique musket. He held the sword up to me smiling. ‘Thought you might want this back sir, it took a good tug to get it out of that pikesman.’ He turned to Downie and held up the musket for him, ‘Would you look at this sir, it must be all of two hundred years old, plenty of weapons here if you want to start that regiment,’ he grinned.

‘Yes,’ said Downie. ‘I was just questioning that man with one hand. He is their leader and admitted that they are bandits and were attacking you for your horses, valuables and weapons as they are in desperate need of all three.’ He looked around sadly, ‘I suppose we will have to retrace our steps and find another valley if this one is full of thieves.’

‘Why can’t we go up this one sir? We know where the bandits are now,’ said Chapman, gesturing up the hill. ‘They won’t be bothering us again for a bit.’

‘There might be another gang further up the valley.’

‘Nah,’ grunted Chapman dismissively. ‘In London you never get two gangs working the same street, they rob each other’s trade.’ He looked at us as though he found our ignorance of the workings of street gangs quite astonishing. ‘They would either fight each other to own the street or join forces to take on bigger marks or gangs.’

‘So you don’t think there will be any more along the valley,’ mused Downie. He was clearly wondering if he could trust London street lore to apply in a Spanish valley.

‘Not a chance,’ said Chapman confidently. ‘That gang was large for a piss poor place like this so I reckon the bandits in this valley joined together and we just beat ’em.’ It turned out he was right. We rode down that valley without any further trouble. We did spot what was presumably the bandit’s encampment half a mile down the track, with some children and an old man watching us warily, but we did not see anyone else. At the end, the countryside opened out again into rolling hills, and I felt much safer as any gang of bandits would now see that we were thirty well-armed soldiers and steer clear. But the priest was wrong; it took us another ten days to reach Alcantara.