Beat the Drums Slowly by Adrian Goldsworthy Read Free Book Online Page B

wife’s determined ingenuity had thwarted that hope, when she managed to find passage and follow the army. He was afraid for them both, and especially that Jane might see things no girl of her age should see, let alone that worse might happen to her. Those last thoughts he tried to force from his mind, without much success.
    Yet for all those fears, it was a deep pleasure to have them with him. His hair was white, his career perhaps unlikely to advance, for Brotherton had received a letter from one of the wounded officers left in Madrid which said that he believed Toye would sell out and retire from the army. That meant a new lieutenant colonel would soon buy his way to command of the 106th. Well, that was the future. For the moment MacAndrews led the battalion and had the deep satisfaction of regulating it according to his own theories. He was proud of the result, and confident that they would do well. All of that pleasure was redoubled by the knowledge that he would each day see a daughter of whom he was even more proud, and a wife whose willingness to be with him still caused him the greatest wonder in all the wide world.
    It was with a warm sense of joy that he knocked and then entered their room. Smiles greeted him, at least for a short moment.
    ‘You can take off those damned boots or clean ’em, MacAndrews! Jane and I have not toiled these long hours to have you spreading filth across the floor!’
    Alastair MacAndrews was a very happy man.

4
     
    L ieutenant General Sir John Moore flicked open his handsome new telescope, but even with its excellent lenses he could make out very little of the landscape. The hill they were on was open to pale winter sunlight, but most of the ground beneath them was smothered in thick mist, which was only slowly rising and burning off. There was certainly no obvious trace of the enemy, but Marshal Soult was out there somewhere, his army corps holding the villages around Saladaña and Carrion to the north-east.
    ‘Two divisions and a brigade of cavalry. Perhaps fifteen or sixteen thousand men?’ Colonel Graham knew that the general was running through the calculation one more time and did not require comment. More than a decade older than his forty-seven-year-old commander, he understood when to keep silent. His trust in Moore as a general was absolute, while he still saw himself as no more than an enthusiastic amateur.
    ‘They have not moved,’ the general said very definitely. ‘The prisoners the hussars took confirm that. By the way, did you hear Georgie Napier say how worried he was when he found a cellar full of them last night who seemed to have had no treatment for their wounds? He gave orders for a surgeon along with food to be sent. An hour later he went back and found them playing the fiddle and dancing reels!’ Sir John permitted himself the luxury of laughter. The rest of his staff were out of earshot, and although he was never obsessively serious with them, there was nevertheless a sense of some freedom having only the older Graham beside him.
    ‘Suggests a good spirit at least,’ the colonel commented.
    Moore nodded. Soult was out on a limb. The French marshal must by now be aware that the British were close. He would guess that there was force behind the cavalry attack at Sahagun, although he would probably not know how much. Sir John knew the names of Soult’s divisional commanders and the numbers of their regiments. He also knew that for the last weeks Napoleon had been assuring the recently arrived marshal that the British were fleeing back to Portugal, and that only a few thin remnants of the Spanish armies were in a position to oppose him. Sir John knew this because he had in his sabretache a dispatch, written by Marshal Berthier, the Emperor’s chief of staff, to Marshal Soult – or the Prince of Neufchâtel and the Duke of Dalmatia as they styled themselves, happy recipients of the deluge of titles issuing from the self-proclaimed Emperor. It listed the