Beat the Drums Slowly Read online

  To Bill Massey and Carole Divall, with thanks

  BEAT THE

  DRUMS SLOWLY

  Adrian Goldsworthy

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Historical Note

  Also by Adrian Goldsworthy

  Copyright

  As I was a-walking down by the Lock Hospital

  Dark was the morning and cold was the day

  When who should I spy but one of my comrades,

  Draped in a blanket and cold as the clay.

  Then beat the drums slowly and play the fifes lowly

  Sound the ‘Dead March’ as you carry me along

  And fire your muskets right over my coffin,

  For I’m a young soldier cut down in his prime.

  Got six of my comrades to carry my coffin,

  Six of my comrades to carry me high,

  And each of them carry a bunch of white roses,

  So no one may smell me as we pass them by.

  • • •

  Lyrics, c. 1780, to an old tune probably now most familiar as the ‘Streets of Laredo’. There are many variations on the lyrics.

  1

  The first horseman splashed through the ford with barely a check, cloak drawn tightly around his neck against the night’s chill. A glance behind showed that his companion was having difficulty with his borrowed mount.

  ‘Come on, Williams,’ the man called back, trying to sound friendly even though it dismayed him that a fellow officer was so lacking in this essential accomplishment of a gentleman. ‘Not far now.’ His encouraging smile was lost in the shadow of his cocked hat and the gloom of the night. Cloud for the moment masked the bright moon, leaving only a faint glow off the snow-covered fields.

  ‘Doing my best,’ replied Ensign Williams, for although he disliked Captain Wickham and resented his condescension, he was obliged to respect his superior rank.

  ‘Go on, Bobbie! Go on, girl,’ he added more quietly. The mare flicked her head up, then tugged at the reins and took a couple of paces backwards. She did not like the look of the fast-flowing water, or perhaps it was the rushing noise and the clicks and reflections from the chunks of ice that had come from the mountains not many miles away. Williams prodded his heels against her side once again. Ears twitching, the horse began to turn away.

  ‘Get on with it!’ The impatience was obvious in Captain Wickham’s tone, his consciously suave demeanour beginning to crack. ‘We must not keep Lord Paget waiting.’

  They were riding to join Lieutenant General Lord Paget, eldest son and heir of the Earl of Uxbridge and the commander of the cavalry forming the vanguard of the British Army. Wickham obviously relished using the title, and had already done his best to imply a degree of familiarity. Although belonging to the same regiment, the 106th Foot, the captain had been given a staff appointment back in August, secured through the offices of powerful friends. Williams had often wondered whether these knew or cared anything about the actual talents and character of the man whose advancement they fostered. Personally, he had seen enough of Wickham to despise him both as a soldier and as a man.

  ‘Use your whip, damn it!’

  Williams had no whip, as indeed he had no spurs, although since he instinctively felt the latter to be cruel this caused no regret. His boots were the same as those issued to the ordinary redcoats of the regiment, as were his gaiters.

  An ensign was the most junior of commissioned ranks in the British Army and Williams had been an officer for barely four months. Before that he was a Gentleman Volunteer, a man without friends to secure him a commission or the money to purchase one. A volunteer marched in the ranks, carrying a musket, wearing the uniform and doing the duty of an ordinary soldier. All the while he lived with the officers of the regiment, waiting until battle created a vacancy and he had shown sufficient courage to deserve it. Back in August he had fought the French in Portugal and both of those things had occurred. Not only that, but he had survived to receive the promotion.

  Now it was just a few days short of Christmas in the year of Our Lord 1808, and the British Army had marched from Portugal into Spain. They were riding to join the foremost vanguard of that army, although Wickham had still not told him why he had been summoned from his battalion.

  Pulling on the reins, Williams tried to guide the mare back towards the ford. Suddenly she went sharply in that direction, turning full circle.

  ‘Damn it, Bobbie,’ he muttered. ‘It’s only water.’ A religious man, who often seemed rather sombre when he was not with his few close friends, Williams rarely swore, but had always found that riding encouraged the practice. His friend Pringle had bought the bay mare from among the horses captured from the French at Vimeiro. It was a scrawny beast, for French dragoons took poor care of their mounts, and her left eye had been lost long ago to infection, leaving a gaping, empty socket. Yet she was normally willing, if insanitary in her habits – ‘likes pissing on her own hay’, was Billy Pringle’s verdict. He had christened her Roberta, but quickly shortened it to the less respectable Bobbie or even Bob.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ hissed Wickham. Waiting on the far bank, he was beginning to feel the deep cold of the night, and tugged his heavy boat cloak even closer around him. Williams wore nothing over his red jacket, with its ensign’s epaulettes and shoulder wings marking him out as a member of a flank company. Ensigns in the rest of the battalion wore only a single epaulette on the right shoulder. He possessed no cloak, and although his soldier’s greatcoat was warm enough, it was far too awkward to wear on horseback.

  Big flakes of snow began to tumble lazily through the air. Even though the savage wind had gone, the night was still bitterly cold. Williams had always thought of Spain as a land where a tyrannical sun baked the earth in endless summer. Portugal had in truth been hotter even than that imagining. Yet the regiment had marched into Spain to face weeks of torrential rain, and now the temperature had fallen and the rain turned to sleet and snow.

  Desperate, Williams reached back and slapped the mare’s rump. She protested, tossing her head, but still shot forward so sharply that he almost lost his balance. Then they were in the ford, icy water spraying up and drenching his trousers. She almost stumbled on the rutted slope at the far bank, but recovered and then was out.

  ‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ said Williams softly, patting the mare’s neck.

  Wickham set off at a brisk trot as soon as Williams joined him on the other side, for it was better to be moving than standing in the cold. Even so, the chill seeped into the ensign’s soaked lower half. Soon Wickham’s affability was restored. He did not much care for his fellow officer, thinking him rather a dull clod of a man, somewhat inclined to surliness, and also knowing him to lack any useful connection. Yet it was always simpler to be on easy terms with people, and he avoided unpleasantness whenever possible. Wickham knew himself to be good at being pl
easant. He dropped back a pace to be beside the ensign, and grinned.

  ‘Not as warm as Roliça, eh? Or as hot as the drubbing we gave the French that day?’

  ‘That was hot work,’ replied Williams flatly. That had been the regiment’s first action, a bitter scrambling fight up a warren of rocky gullies. Their colonel had been killed early on, along with several other officers, and more were wounded or captured. In spite of this they had taken the hill and held it, but little thanks to Wickham. The captain had been drunk by the time the advance began, and lay insensible before the battle was finished. Worse still, Williams had seen him murder a French officer who had surrendered. ‘A grim day,’ he added.

  ‘But glorious.’ In truth the captain remembered almost nothing of the battle, and was puzzled at his companion’s lack of enthusiasm. He changed the subject.

  ‘How are my grenadiers?’ Wickham had for a time commanded the Grenadier Company in which Williams had served as a volunteer and now as an officer. The grenadiers were the biggest soldiers in a battalion, awarded the place of honour on the right of its line. Wickham was a little above average height, and the straightness of his carriage and the skill of his tailor always made him seem taller again. Williams was a big man, more than an inch over six foot and broad shouldered. At the moment he was also very cold, and sore from riding for the first time in months. He merely confirmed that the company flourished, now led by Pringle.

  ‘Good old Billy,’ said Wickham, realising that he would have to labour at this conversation. ‘I do miss him and the other fellows. By the sound of it you should have Hanley back with you soon.’

  That was good news, for along with Pringle, Lieutenant Hanley was Williams’ closest remaining friend in the regiment – poor Truscott still being in hospital at Lisbon after losing his arm. Williams nodded, but said nothing, and once again Wickham was forced to continue.

  ‘Hanley is a lucky fellow, doing duty with Colonel Graham.’ If Wickham had less esteem for a senior officer who was not a lord then he did not show it. After all, everyone knew that the elderly Graham had been wealthy enough to raise his own regiment. His rank was a courtesy, but his talent for diplomacy and ability to speak half a dozen languages had made him indispensable as the army had driven into Spain. Very few British officers spoke Spanish – or indeed any language apart from their own. Hanley was fluent, having lived for some years in Madrid, trying and failing to establish himself as an artist before poverty and the French invasion forced him to leave. Wickham had remembered this, and recommended him when the army commander was searching for Spanish-speakers. It had enhanced his own reputation as a man well suited to providing practical answers to a problem. Now he hoped to repeat the success.

  ‘It is quite remarkable to have two linguists in the same company,’ he said. ‘It rather belies the opinion of the rest of the army that we grenadiers are conspicuous for the size of our bodies rather than our brains.’

  Williams was baffled. ‘Two, sir?’

  ‘No need to be modest. Hanley may be more accomplished from living over here, but I remember you embarked on a serious study of Spanish on the voyage from England, and no doubt have improved with experience. So when I discovered that Lord Paget had need of an interpreter, I could not help thinking of you. It will be no bad thing for your career to become known to such a distinguished officer.’

  Dread flooded over the ensign. It was true that he had got hold of a Spanish grammar, and sought instruction from Hanley, and endeavoured to practise. So far his efforts had been rewarded with little progress.

  ‘Do you know what his Lordship requires me to do?’ It was a struggle to keep his voice level.

  ‘No idea,’ said Wickham blithely. ‘Don’t worry, old fellow. I am sure you will serve most handsomely. Don’t Billy and the others call you “Jack the interpreter”?’

  Williams’ already flimsy confidence collapsed, and he silently cursed his friend’s sense of fun. The day after Vimeiro, in the full flush of excitement on gaining his commission, he had offered his services to a baffled official from the commissariat department, the civilian clerks who ran the army’s supply system. The man was trying and failing to explain to some local muleteers that he needed them to gather early the next morning with their animals. In his mind, Williams constructed a flawless instruction, perhaps a little more Spanish than Portuguese, but he felt that an appropriate accent would make the difference. According to Pringle – and Williams was convinced that his friend embellished the story on each of the many occasions since then that he had told it – he produced the following confident oration.

  ‘Portuguesios, the commissario – wants the mulos – tomorrowo – presto – la, la!’ Pringle accompanied each performance with fervent gestures and forceful expressions. At the time his friend, and the other officers in the group, had laughed so much that Williams doubted the accuracy of their recollection. He did remember the grave disappointment of the commissary, who reasonably enough felt that he could have done as much himself.

  ‘I am not sure my best is very good,’ was all that he thought to say now.

  Wickham silently damned the man for his gloomy disposition, and decided that efforts at genteel conversation were wasted effort. Anyway, the cavalry brigade should not be far away now, and they could see a faint glow reflecting off the clouds from the chimneys of Sahagun up ahead.

  ‘Let’s push on,’ he said, and urged his expensive gelding into a canter. Williams kicked in his heels to follow, but Bobbie stubbornly refused to go faster. He tried again with more force, and the mare lurched, seemed to stagger, and then was running in her fast, jerky motion. The big man stood up in his stirrups to prevent the saddle slamming against him with every beat. Bobbie was awkward, but fast, and soon closed on Wickham.

  They slackened pace when they saw a long dark shadow in the gloom. The moon emerged from behind clouds and they saw that it was made up of many shapes. They walked across some sort of bridge or causeway, and then, without a word, Wickham again surged forward. Williams used more force than before and when the mare took off in pursuit he lost his right stirrup. Fighting for balance as he was pounded by the saddle, he bounced in his seat and swayed from side to side, as they rode alongside the long column of light dragoons in their fur caps. No doubt the cavalrymen were suitably impressed by his horsemanship, but Williams was too concerned with his frantic efforts to stay on to spare this any thought. Somewhere he lost the other stirrup. His legs began to swing wildly.

  Wickham reached the front of the brigade and reported to the general and his staff. A few moments later Williams arrived, sawing desperately on the reins. Bobbie decided to respond abruptly, skidding to a halt in a patch of mud topped by only a thin sliver of ice. Williams lost his balance and tumbled sideways, slumping down into the snow-and mud-filled ditch beside the track. The smell suggested that some of the horses from Lord Paget’s staff had added to the mixture.

  There were sniggers, and a low comment of ‘Who gave you permission to dismount!’ – the ancient rebuke of regimental riding masters dealing with raw recruits unable to stay on a horse.

  Bobbie stood meekly beside Williams, as he pushed himself up, something he did all the more quickly when she began to urinate noisily.

  ‘May I present Mr Williams, my Lord,’ said Wickham, unable to resist exploiting his subordinate’s discomfort. The cavalry officers laughed uproariously, until their commander raised a hand. Lord Paget was a handsome man, a horseman since boyhood, and wore the tight overalls and heavily laced, fur-trimmed jacket of the hussars with a perfection that Beau Brummell could not have surpassed. He was also a serious soldier and widely believed to be the ablest leader of cavalry in the King’s service.

  ‘To what do we owe this honour?’ he asked, the tone a mild rebuke to the effect that Wickham had forgotten his duties and not yet made a formal report.

  ‘General Paget’s compliments, my lord, and he understands that you have need of an officer able to speak Spanish.’ A younger br
other, also a general and as widely respected, commanded the Reserve Division.

  ‘Does he? Well, yesterday you might have been useful, but we have other things to occupy us now. Still, you may as well stay for the dance.’

  It took an effort for Williams not to cry out his joy. Even the shame of falling off his horse in front of the cream of the cavalry’s officers – and no doubt of London society as well – no longer mattered. He would not to be called upon to exercise his supposed talent as a linguist. He hauled himself back up on to the mare.

  Lord Paget was peering at a fob watch, doing his best to read its face in the moonlight. ‘It’s time.’ He looked up at one of his aides. ‘Tom, do me the honour of riding over to General Slade, and remind him that he is to begin the attack from the north-west of the town at six thirty, and drive the enemy towards us.’ He turned to Wickham. ‘Take Mr …?’

  ‘Wickham, my lord.’

  ‘Take Captain Wickham with you. He seems to be well mounted. The other fellow can come with us.’

  The two men rode away, cutting across the fields. ‘And pray God that bungler doesn’t make a hash of it.’ Williams was close enough to Lord Paget to catch his whisper, but did not know whom he meant. As the column moved off, he fell in at the rear of the general’s family of staff officers. A lieutenant with side whiskers almost as luxuriant as the general’s rode beside him and soon proved himself a friendly companion.

  ‘There are French cavalry at Sahagun. Maybe a brigade, but we can’t be sure. Probably foraging, or the far outposts of Marshal Soult’s army. So we’re off to wake them up a bit.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘The Fifteenth Light Dragoons, old boy,’ drawled the staff officer, who then turned to the man riding behind them at the head of a squadron. ‘Nearly as good a regiment as the Tenth Hussars.’ The officer behind them ignored the good-natured provocation.

  ‘The Tenth are my lot. They’re out there somewhere with Old “Black Jack” Slade. They drive the French from cover, and then it’s view halloo and sabres and glory before breakfast. Have you ever been in a cavalry charge, Williams?’