Run Them Ashore by Adrian Goldsworthy Read Free Book Online

balance what they have done, so I am happy enough to be friends with the English.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Pringle said. ‘We are most glad to hear it.’
    Carlos sighed. ‘The “good” Sinclair never comes out of Murcia so I have not met him,’ he explained. ‘Your friend Sinclair is a strange man. My cousin does not trust him.’
    ‘He is a British officer,’ Hanley said.
    ‘He is, but he has poor choice in the men he helps. Smugglers like those he had with him, and even worse, bandits and murderers like Pedro the Wolf.’
    ‘I have not heard of him,’ Hanley said.
    ‘Then you are fortunate. He likes to call himself El Lobo, and I do not know his real name, but he has plagued this country for years. Before the war he robbed and murdered, killing for sport and to make his name feared. Now he does the same, and sometimes he probably kills Frenchmen, but more often Spanish.There are plenty of bandits like that around, and your friend Sinclair gives them guns and powder.’ He spat angrily. ‘Scum. The pigs should all be strung up from the nearest trees.’
    ‘Although Major Sinclair belongs to the same army, neither of us had met him before we landed, and I must emphasise that our orders come from Lord Wellington and have nothing to do with the major.’
    ‘Good,’ the guerrilla said, ‘then we may well get on and do each other some good. Now, let us eat and drink.’ His face had hardened once again, but changed as they watched him. Carlos laughed and cheered with the others as they took food and wine, and then came truly alive when a couple of the men began to play guitars. Others danced, and then after many pleas the leader began to play and sing. He had a good voice, and, although Pringle could understand little of the verses, which seemed to be in a dialect or were simply too fast for him to follow, even so he found it deeply moving.
    ‘They are love songs, I am guessing,’ he said quietly to Hanley, ‘but what do they say?’
    His friend did not answer for a while, but looked more deeply moved than he had seen him for a long time. Hanley had black hair and a dark complexion, and after the years he had spent in Spain before the invasion and since then the rigours of campaigning, he looked more Spanish than English. Pringle could not help thinking that he seemed more comfortable here, surrounded by these lean, unmilitary and yet dangerous-looking fighters.
    ‘They are love songs,’ he said eventually. ‘Beautiful and sad.’ His voice sounded wistful, and although it may just have been the firelight, his eyes looked moist. That seemed to be it, until he added so quietly that he may not have realised that he spoke, ‘I do love these people, and I do so love this country.’ Pringle expected his friend to break into a smile and look embarrassed, but instead Hanley just kept staring into the fire. Well, his friend was always something of an odd fish.
    Carlos finished and then embarked on another song, which was clearly more comic than sentimental. Billy Pringle found hismind wandering and began thinking about women, a wonderful, all-encompassing and familiar preoccupation which seemed simpler than concern for countries and causes. He began to smile to himself but did not care, and quickly the image of Miss Williams came to his mind. Anne was the oldest of Williams’ three sisters, and, like his comrade, she was tall, fair haired and blue eyed. There was something of Williams’ primness about her, certainly much of his earnest nature, and yet also that same surprisingly practical – at times even earthy – ability to confront life. Apart from the colouring, there was little resemblance between the pair, and he guessed Williams’ face and build owed more to his Welsh father than his finely featured Scottish mother.
    Pringle had met Anne Williams nearly a year earlier, on a brief visit to the family home in Bristol, and now they engaged in an occasional correspondence. Sometimes he wondered whether if