Sharpe's Battle Part 5

Wellington frowned as he read the letter. The General was a handsome man, forty-two years old, but as fit as any in his army. And, Hogan thought, wiser than most. The British army, Hogan knew, had an uncanny knack of finding the least qualified man and promoting him to high command, but somehow the system had gone wrong and Sir Arthur Wellesley, now the Viscount Wellington, had been given command of His Majesty's army in Portugal, thus providing that army with the best possible leadership. At least Hogan thought so, but Michael Hogan allowed that he could be prejudiced in this matter. Wellington, after all, had promoted Hogan's career, making the shrewd Irishman the head of his intelligence department and the result had been a relationship as close as it was fruitful.

The General read the letter again, this time glancing at a translation Hogan had thoughtfully provided. Hogan meanwhile looked about the battlefield where fatigue parties were clearing up the remnants of the skirmish. To the east of the bridge, where the road came delicately down the mountainside in a series of sweeping curves, a dozen work parties were searching the bushes for bodies and abandoned supplies. The French dead were being stripped naked and stacked like cordwood next to a long, shallow grave that a group of diggers was trying to extend. Other men were piling French muskets or else hurling canteens, cartridge boxes, boots and blankets into a cart. Some of the plunder was even more exotic, for the retreating French had weighed themselves down with the loot of a thousand Portuguese villages and Wellington's men were now recovering church vestments, candlesticks and silver plate. "Astonishing what a soldier will carry on a retreat," the General remarked to Hogan. "We found one dead man with a milking stool. A common milking stool! What was he thinking of? Taking it back to France?" He held the letter out to Hogan.

"d.a.m.n," he said mildly, then, more strongly, "G.o.d d.a.m.n!" He waved his aides away, leaving him alone with Hogan. "The more I learn about His Most Catholic

Majesty King Ferdinand VII, Hogan, the more I become convinced that he should have been drowned at birth."

Hogan smiled. "The recognized method, my Lord, is smothering."

"Is it indeed?"

"It is indeed, my Lord, and no one's ever the wiser. The mother simply explains how she rolled over in her sleep and trapped the blessed little creature beneath her body and thus, the holy church explains, another precious angel is born."

"In my family," the General said, "unwanted children get posted into the army."

"It has much the same effect, my Lord, except in the matter of angels."

Wellington gave a brief laugh, then gestured with the letter. "So how did this reach us?"

"The usual way, my Lord. Smuggled out of Valencay by Ferdinand's servants and brought south to the Pyrenees where it was given to partisans for forwarding to us."

"With a copy to London, eh? Any chance of intercepting the London copy?"

"Alas, sir, gone these two weeks. Probably there already."

"h.e.l.l, d.a.m.n and h.e.l.l again. d.a.m.n!" Wellington stared gloomily at the bridge where a sling cart was salvaging the fallen barrel of a dismounted French cannon. "So what to do, eh, Hogan? What to do?"

The problem was simple enough. The letter, copied to the Prince Regent in

London, had come from the exiled King Ferdinand of Spain who was now a prisoner of Napoleon in the French chateau at Valencay. The letter was pleased to announce that His Most Catholic Majesty, in a spirit of cooperation with his cousin of England and in his great desire to drive the French invader from the sacred soil of his kingdom, had directed the Real Compania Irlandesa of

His Most Catholic Majesty's household guard to attach itself to His Britannic

Majesty's forces under the command of the Viscount Wellington. Which gesture, though it sounded generous, was not to the Viscount Wellington's taste. He did not need a stray company of royal palace guards. A battalion of trained infantry with full fighting equipment might have been of some service, but a company of ceremonial troops was about as much use to the Viscount Wellington as a choir of psalm-singing eunuchs.

"And they've already arrived," Hogan said mildly.

"They've what?" Wellington's question could be heard a hundred yards away where a dog, thinking it was being reproved, slunk away from some fly- blackened guts that trailed from the eviscerated body of a French artillery officer. "Where are they?" Wellington asked fiercely.

"Somewhere on the Tagus, my Lord, being barged towards us."

"How the h.e.l.l did they get here?"

"According to my correspondent, my Lord, by ship. Our ships." Hogan put a pinch of snuff on his left hand, then sniffed the powder up each nostril. He paused for a second, his eyes suddenly streaming, then sneezed. His horse's ears flicked back at the noise. "The commander of the Real Compania Irlandesa claims he marched his men to Spain's east coast, my Lord," Hogan went on,

"then took ship to Menorca where our Royal Navy collected them."

Wellington snorted his derision. "And the French just let that happen? King

Joseph just watched half the royal guard march away?" Joseph was Bonaparte's brother and had been elevated to the throne of Spain, though it was taking three hundred thousand French bayonets to keep him there.

"A fifth of the royal guard, my Lord," Hogan gently corrected the General.

"And yes, that's exactly what Lord Kiely says. Kiely, of course, being their comandante."

"Kiely?"

"Irish peer, my Lord."

"d.a.m.n it, Hogan, I know the Irish peerage. Kiely. Earl of Kiely. An exile, right? And his mother, I remember, gave money to Tone back in the nineties."

Wolfe Tone had been an Irish patriot who had tried to raise money and men in

Europe and America to lead a rebellion against the British in his native

Ireland. The rebellion had flared into open war in 1798 when Tone had invaded

Donegal with a small French army that had been roundly defeated and Tone himself had committed suicide in his Dublin prison rather than hang from a

British rope. "I don't suppose Kiely's any better than his mother," Wellington said grimly, "and she's a witch who should have been smothered at birth. Is his Lordship to be trusted, Hogan?"

"So far as I hear, my Lord, he's a drunk and a wastrel," Hogan said. "He was given command of the Real Compania Irlandesa because he's the only Irish aristocrat in Madrid and because his mother had influence over the King. She's dead now, G.o.d rest her soul." He watched a soldier try to fork up the spilt

French officer's intestines with his bayonet. The guts kept slipping off the blade and finally a sergeant yelled at the man to either pick the offal up with his bare hands or else leave it for the crows.

"What has this Irish guard been doing since Ferdinand left Madrid?" Wellington asked.

"Living on sufferance, my Lord. Guarding the Escorial, polishing their boots, staying out of trouble, breeding, whoring, drinking and saluting the French."

"But not fighting the French."

"Indeed not." Hogan paused. "It's all too convenient, my Lord," he went on.

"The Real Compania Irlandesa is permitted to leave Madrid, permitted to take ship, and permitted to come to us, and meanwhile a letter is smuggled out of

France saying the company is a gift to you from His imprisoned Majesty. I smell Frog paws all over it, my Lord."

"So we tell these d.a.m.n guards to go away?"

"I doubt we can. In London the Prince Regent will doubtless be flattered by the gesture and the Foreign Office, you may depend, will consider any slight offered to the Real Compania Irlandesa to be an insult to our Spanish allies, which means, my Lord, that we are stuck with the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

"Are they good for anything?"

"I'm sure they'll be decorative," Hogan allowed dubiously.

"And decoration costs money," Wellington said. "I suppose the King of Spain did not think to send his guard's pay chest?"

"No, my Lord."