Read Online Send Me Safely Back Again by Adrian Goldsworthy - Free Book Online Page A

common in Spain.
    The coach was moving quickly again, bringing its coolingwind at the price of making the two seats on the rear of the carriage far too precarious for safety. Instead Williams and Dobson stood, so that their heads and shoulders looked to the front over the top of the car, and they held on to the rails designed for that purpose. Wickham in his priest’s garb travelled inside the carriage as the lady’s confessor.
    ‘No, thankfully.’ Williams laughed and then coughed as dust from the road caught in his throat. ‘The Doña Margarita returned from Mexico last year after many years in the country,’ he continued after he had recovered. ‘So we are her American servants. What Frenchman is likely to recognise the differences of speech?’
    ‘Yes, sir, very good, sir,’ replied Dobson, a master of the old soldier’s art of expressing contemptuous disbelief while avoiding punishment. ‘And do you reckon any Crapaud with eyes in his head won’t spot himself as a soldier?’ The veteran jabbed his thumb towards Ramón, the former hussar who drove the carriage. ‘Or us for that matter?’ Dobson had replaced his shako with a brown felt hat in the broad-brimmed, Spanish style. Their muskets, equipment and Williams’ and Wickham’s swords were hidden in a box under the carriage. A wide-mouthed blunderbuss was clipped to a notched bar on the roof within Dobson’s easy reach and another lay beside the driver. Williams and Dobson each had a heavy horse pistol tucked through their belts, and the officer had another to hand.
    ‘No law against being an old soldier,’ said Williams blithely, although without much conviction. It was true, there was simply something about the way a soldier stood that got into the blood.
    ‘No law against getting killed either, sir. That’s if the buggers don’t try to recruit us.’
    ‘Good promotion prospects in the French Army,’ Williams grinned. ‘No flogging either.’
    ‘Too much garlic in the food.’
    ‘Then let us hope that we do not meet them.’ If he had permitted himself to believe in superstition, Williams wouldhave regretted saying that thought aloud as making it inevitable that it would come true.
    An hour before sunset half a dozen chasseurs in green jackets and dust-covered shakos stood their horses on the road ahead of them. Two more closed in on the carriage from each side. Such a fine vehicle was a rare sight. Even more unusual were the six well-matched grey horses drawing the coach. Only the very wealthy could afford horses rather than mules.
    Ramón halted the team impeccably, looped the reins over a hook and raised his hands. Williams and Dobson did the same. The grey-haired sergeant in charge of the piquet had a scar running from his right ear to his mouth, gold rings in his ears and looked capable of any villainy.
    Wickham leaned out of the window, and in French so rapid that Williams struggled to follow introduced himself as Father O’Hara, priest of the daughter-in-law of the Conde de Madrigal de las Altas Torres, and demanded that they be escorted to his superior officer.
    ‘He’s plausible, I’ll give him that,’ whispered Dobson, who grasped the sense if not the precise meaning of the little speech.
    The sergeant was not a man to take unnecessary responsibility if there was an officer close enough to take any blame. Four chasseurs took them down a side track to a walled farm where the main body of the chasseur company was settling for the night. A lieutenant, whose furious desire to grow a bushier moustache continued to be frustrated, at first looked with suspicion at the priest, and at Dobson and Williams with downright hostility.
    ‘They’re Americans,’ said Wickham, as if that explained everything. ‘Ugly, aren’t they, although of course all God’s children.’
    The lieutenant laughed, and began to warm to the charming priest, and was suitably impressed when he saw the pass signed by King Joseph. When the carriage door was