“I hear it was horrid,” Lewrie lamely said.
“You don’t know the half of it, Alan,” Stangbourne mournfully said. “I’ve lost a third of my regiment, and a quarter of my horses! No grain, thank the bloody Spanish very much! No grass for them to eat, no rations for my troopers, damn Spanish promises, again! There were steep places where the ice was so thick that the horses couldn’t even stay on all four hooves, fell, broke their legs and had to be put down … fell off the sides of the damned arched bridges into the ravines, horse and trooper together, or grew so weak that they just lay down and died. Damn, but half-cooked horse meat is just foul, an abomination to every good Englishman.”
“Well, we’ll get your sick and wounded out to the Boniface and let them heal up,” Lewrie promised. “Warm, dry berths, hot food and drink?”
“We’ve tried to salvage as much of our saddlery as we could. I hope there’s room for that,” Stangbourne demanded, waving at carts filled with sabres, carbines, broad saddle-cloths with the regimental badge embroidered upon them, and heaps of leather goods.
“I’m sure there’ll be room in the holds,” Lewrie said to assure him. Now that Percy’s regiment was no longer Stangbourne’s Horse but officially on Army List, anything lost would be made good by the Government; it wouldn’t come out of Percy’s purse. He’d lavished thousands to raise, equip, mount, and train his Dragoons in 1804, so many thousands of pounds that Lydia had feared that he would squander his wealth on it … that, or his penchant for gambling deep.
“They’re holding the cavalry ashore, for now,” Percy went on. “If the French get here before enough transports arrive…”
Lewrie assured him that over an hundred ships were coming, and that the Navy would do its best to get everyone off before the French arrived in force.
“Horse transports?” Stangbourne pointedly asked.
“Ah … that I don’t know, Percy,” Lewrie had to admit. “We don’t have any among the ships we brought from Gibraltar. But surely, that’ll have been thought of, by Admiral de Courcy, Admiral Hood, and London.”
“Well, just Merry bloody Christmas, and Happy Fucking New Year!” Percy exclaimed, quite out of character from the proper fellow that Lewrie had known before. “Haven’t we left enough behind, already? Guns, carriages, waggons, even the pay chests that got tossed into the steep ravines! Come Spring, some damned Spaniards might find them and make themselves rich! Then maybe the bastards will offer us even the slightest bit of aid!”
“Ready, sir,” one of Stangbourne’s officers interrupted.
“Right, coming. Excuse me for a bit, Alan,” he said, stomping off, and leaving the reins of his horse to a trooper.
“No help from the Spanish, I take it, sir?” Lewrie asked the junior officer.
“Those pusillanimous bastards, sir?” that worthy spat, brows up in surprise at the question. “Not a morsel. There was only one Spanish general willing to come join us, if we could feed, arm, and clothe his soldiers for a Winter campaign! All that talk of proud, armed civilian bands defending their own blasted country is just so much moonshine. Every village or town we came to, the Spanish had packed up and carted everything away, leaving us scraps, offering us nothing! Well, they left the wines. Benavente, Astorga … Bembibre was the worst. Rum stores, wine vats, got staved in and it ran in the filthy streets like floodwater, and our poor fellows scooped it up, dirt, mud, animal waste and all, and drunk themselves simply hoggish. Even flogging couldn’t control them. It was abominable. You ask me, sir, Spain and its idle people aren’t worth the effort to save, for they won’t save themselves.”
Percy came back to rejoin them as the last of his wounded and sick men were laid out on the stone quays. At least the depot that General Sir David Baird had established could provide them blankets, replacement greatcoats, and capes.
“I thought to send out for kettles, to brew up tea or soup,” Lewrie said as Percy took back his horse’s reins, and stroked its nose and muzzle.
“Ah, thankee, Alan, but I’ve already seen to that,” Percy told him, gesturing to some troopers removing kettles from the hand-carts and passing among the sick and wounded with tin mugs. “The depot has lashings of rum that will most-like be burned up or dumped into the harbour, so they’ll all get a portion in their tea, orders and regulations be-damned. They’ve more than earned the wee comfort, the poor devils. Like my horse, do you, Alan?”
“Aye, he looks a go-er,” Lewrie agreed, appraising the grey gelding.
“Thunder, here, is a stout and brave beast,” Percy said, stroking his horse’s neck. “He’s the last of mine that still has shoes. Another of our torments, that … the farrier waggons lost, no nails or horseshoes, along with no grain and no grass to graze. We simply had to shoot the lame ones.
“I started with a string of five in Portugal,” Percy went on, fondling his mount’s forehead and muzzle, “and now I’ve two left, and my mare is lame, and without shoes, so I suppose it’s be kindest to shoot her, too, but…” He broke off and buried his face against his horse’s neck.
“The depot, surely…,” Lewrie tried to encourage.
“They’ve no grain,” Percy told him, leaning back. “We were told the Spanish would provide, and I doubt they could shoe no more than a single squadron before running out, and most of the farriers marched with the army, anyway … dead back in those damned mountains,” he said as he waved towards the far, forbidding heights.
“The big convoy’s due any hour,” Lewrie promised, hoping that there were horse transports; he was an Englishman, a horse-lover from birth, and despised the thought of Percy’s magnificent horse being shot to keep it from the French, or to keep it from starving.
“I must get back to my post,” Percy announced, after a grim look-over the so-far-empty harbour. “We’re brigaded with Fraser’s Division, to defend the open country and the road from Vigo. That’s about the only place where French cavalry could attack. I’d offer you a supper in our regimental mess, but I doubt you’d care for oat meal and hard bisquit.”
“I get enough o’ that aboard ship,” Lewrie said with a little stab at humour, then offered his hand. “You take care, now, Percy. We’ll do what we can to save you and your men.”
“I count on it, Alan,” Percy replied, shaking hands strongly. “I wonder … if anything does happen to me, would you see to…?” He reached inside his ornately trimmed tunic and withdrew a packet of wax-sealed letters, bound in a short stack with ominously black ribbon.
“Christ, Percy, how would I know when t’mail ’em, not knowin’ whether you’re alive, or fallen?” Lewrie exclaimed. “I might frighten Eudoxia and Lydia to death with false news!”
“Nothing that grim, no, Alan!” Percy told him with his first sign of good humour. “Merely last expressions of love, just in case. I didn’t write me will, for God’s sake, no ‘by the time you get this’ nonsense!”
“Alright, then,” Lewrie promised, taking the packet and putting the letters in a side pocket of his coat. “Though, you’ll be on some transport, and I don’t know where I’m goin’ from here, but I’ll post ’em for you.”
“That’s true, but mail them anyway,” Percy told him, stepping back near his horse’s saddle and gathering up the reins. “I suppose this will be the last chance to see each other, as you say, so … do you take care, yourself, Alan.”
“If the French come, give ’em Hell,” Lewrie replied.
“We’ve already done a good job of that, and I intend to if they dare. Goodbye, old son,” Percy said as he mounted. “And, I think my sister a damned fool for her choices.”