Whose Business Is to Die by Adrian Goldsworthy Read Free Book Online Page B

discuss a senior officer, especially one he scarcely knew. He was surprised to learn that Long was a twin. Williams had three sisters, the middle one already married and widowed, but, growing up as the lone male in a female household, he had often felt that a brother would have been welcome company. The idea of a twin was a strange one, a fellow like himself in looks and much of his character. A gloomy thought, probably inspired by his mix of Scots and Welsh blood, made him suspect that the brother would have possessed all the charm, confidence and poise he felt lacking in himself. Bet the swine would have had better luck in love, he thought.
    ‘Are you acquainted with Marshal Beresford?’ Baynes’ question thankfully interrupted the inevitable despair concerning Jane MacAndrews.
    ‘I have not had the good fortune to meet the marshal.’ Beresford was a general in the British Army and a marshal in the Portuguese. Appointed to command Portugal’s land forces, in the last few years he had thoroughly reorganised and retrained them, fighting battle after battle with a sclerotic bureaucracy in a country whose resources had been drained by French invasion. He had brought in officers and sergeants from British regiments, giving some of the latter commissions, and mingled them with the Portuguese. The results were promising indeed. Williams had seen Portuguese infantry fight well alongside their redcoat allies,and had heard of other similar incidents. They were said to have done very well at Busaco the previous year.
    ‘Well,’ Baynes continued after a moment, ‘the marshal has a formidable appearance. He is a big fellow, bigger even than you. One of his eyes no longer works – I believe a shooting accident when he was young, although how anyone could mistake that tower of a man for a pheasant escapes me. Nevertheless, I tell you this for it can be disconcerting when you meet him for the first time. As to the rest, he is not the most mannered of gentlemen, quite the Goth in fact, and no doubt you know about Buenos Aires? No? Well, the marshal captured the place back in ‘06 when we tried to steal the Spanish Americas, and then had to surrender when the Spaniards – rather impudently you might feel – decided they would take the city back. You would know better than I, but such a thing might well prey on a soldier’s mind.’
    The disastrous expeditions to South America were a source of continued shame and anger in the army, not least because they were so woefully mismanaged. Williams knew little of them and had not realised that Beresford was involved.
    There was no time to reply because they were almost there. Closest to them was a squadron of heavy cavalry who sat on their horses and waited, a low murmur of conversation coming from them since they were obviously at ease, swords still in scabbards. Several of the horses were cropping the grass, only half-heartedly restrained by their riders. The men wore red jackets of similar pattern to the infantry, although in this case they were as faded and patched as any he had ever seen. Their collars and cuffs were green, and so these must be the 4th Dragoons, which meant, reasonably enough, that the senior regiment, the 3rd Dragoon Guards, was in the place of seniority over on the right. The 4th had been in Portugal and Spain for years now, and showed every sign of hard service. Most still wore their bicorne hats, but often so misshapen by the weather that they were barely recognisable. The sergeant on the end of the rear rank had a large chunk missing from the front of his hat, the hole ragged where it hadbeen. Beside him was a man in a forage cap, and next to him another with a tall hat more like an infantry shako. Perhaps it was this raggedness, perhaps the reassuring red jackets, but somehow Williams felt more akin to a regiment like this than to the light dragoons or hussars, fine fellows though they were – at least for cavalrymen.
    They rode past the squadrons of the 4th