Second day on the march

"He seems alright, but I don't really know him well enough to say what's he's like wi' regard to summat like this." He glanced around, checking they woudn't be overheard. "He knows me and my men have done some errands and suchlike for Major Hogan, but I haven't told him what, 'cause I don't know him well enough to say. I should think he can be trusted, though; he's a proper gentleman who seems to understand things well enough. An' he's got a brain, which is more'n I can say for some folks who wear an officer's uniform."

"He does that. I am concerned with how much he plans to use it." Stephen saw some of Sharpe's riflemen, who had cleared the crest of the hill. "Goodbye, Richard. Good luck, with whatever you might have to do."

"I wouldn't worry. I reckon he pans on usin' to beat the French." He smiled. "Goodbye, an'... look after Jonathan for me, won't you?"

He saw a party of Riflemen coming over the brow of the hill and his face grew dark at the anticipation of what lay ahead in the next hour or so. "I'm sorry, I have to go," he said, and turned to meet them.

"I will. Believe me, Richard, I will," said Stephen, with a brief smile. "I must go also - farewell, now."

Stephen made a painful way to Wellesley. "Come now, General - we ought to be leaving. If you are ready," he barely remembered.

Right at that moment the General would very happily have boxed the little man's ears. He turned and scowled.

"I assume from your suggestion that you have seen all you need to see?" he asked, somewhat testily. Damn impudent little man, even if he was a physician!

Stephen recognised the General's tone, being intimately familiar with it from a wide variety of people, and ignored it. "Indeed - I can think of no further information to be gleaned. I do think, however, that your presence will place an unnecessary burden on the burial team, and they have no need of added burdens, considering the task ahead of them."

Edrington stood by Bauer, waiting for the doctor. He spoke first with Sharpe, and then with Sir Arthur. Neither conversation seemed to be without heat. Sharpe had said somethng to upset him, and now the General seemed to be taking out his bad temper on the poor man. Poor man? He was an enigma, but - despite his small stature and unkempt appearance - not an insignificant person. Waldegrave had seen him as a threat of real violence. Edrington saw him as a formidable intelligence. Probably both were true.

Wellesley's blood rose. Had Maturin not been under the protection of the Admiralty and had not Wellesley forbidden duelling in his army, he would have been sorely tempted to call the doctor out there and then. Instead he shot the man a poisonous look.

"Well then," His voice was thick with sarcasm. "I should hate to be a burden to anyone. And I take it I have your permission to return to my army now, doctor?"

He did not wait for the doctor's reply, but turned his back and swiftly mounted Hercules, kicking his heels back and heading off alone back towards the column.

"Dr Maturin," Edrington said softly, not liking the man's expression as the General rode off without showing any courtesy to either of them. "Shall we go?"

Dropsical puffed-up assuming arrogant Ascendant, Stephen thought as he walked back to Bethany, wincing now, but not without a certain vicious satisfaction. Wellesley had no right to demand deference from him, and damned if he was going to give it.

He noted with surprise that Edrington had waited for him all this while - he had thought that he would have gone with the General, if he had not left already. "We shall, sir - I regret extremely that I kept you waiting. You should have gone ahead."

Edrington swung up onto the horse's back. "I think it is just a reaction to what we have here, and there is no lingering danger, but I find the idea of allowing a civilian to wander alone in these hills disquieting. And you are not familiar with this area, after all."

Stephen searched the man's tone for a hidden meaning, but the man had kept both his face and voice blank. Impressive. "Well, that is very thoughtful of you, sir; very kind indeed." He grasped the pommel and rather gracelessly pulled himself into the saddle. "I am obliged to you."

Edrington brought his horse to walk with Maturin's, as they turned to head back towards the column. "I think we are obliged to you, Dr Maturin. Your expertise has been most useful in decyphering the scene back there. We have I think delayed you, if you are planning to return to Lisbon today." He stopped studying the roan's ears and looked at the doctor. "I hope you will find Captain Padstowe improved when you return. It is disturbing to think that an officer is not safe, even in a friendly city."

"As do I," said Stephen, warmed by the Colonel's concern for his friend. "And it has been no delay, not really - this poor dear would have needed a rest in any case." He affectionately stroked Bethany's ears. "I am only glad that I was of any use at all; if there is nothing more that I can do for those men than tell their captain of their fate, then it is my duty to do so."

Raoul would have to learn of the fate of his men, that was true, and this doctor seemed to appreciate that sometimes the whole truth need not be told. But to avoid future complications, it would probably be best if he explained rather more where his interest lay. It could prove awkward if Maturin found out later - from Padstowe or from Raoul - of his friendship with the latter, and thought he had concealed the fact. If he had been interpreting correctly some of what he had heard today, including Wellesley's attitude to his 'physician', Maturin was involved in more than just medicine.

He returned to looking forward and said: "Captain Padstowe allowed me to visit the French Captain - des Sablières - before we left Lisbon. I knew him from England, you see."

Stephen made a subtle show of reaching both understanding and thus a deep sympathy; though the emotion was not fictitious, only delayed in its expression. "In England? A French Captain of Hussars? I suppose it is not so very uncommon though - there was much communication during the Peace. I went to France myself; a botanical expedition to Porquerolles."

Edrington glanced sideways at Maturin, a quick look to see the expected expression, and then back to staring forward. The horses moved easily side by side. "He was not a Captain then - he was a child when I first knew him - and still very young when he returned to France. His parents were émigrés, but went back in 1802. He is not that old, even now." He smiled at the thought and continued quickly: "You will at least have no difficulty talking to him. His English is very good."

Stephen nodded. "That is a relief. If is difficult enough to give bad news without worrying about misinterpretations or differences in translation, or even a slow, careful, mistake-riddled conversation. It is unpleasant enough with trivialities; with news such as this it would be unendurable. The poor young man."

Edrington imagined such a conversation. "At least then you would have an excuse not to give all the details. It would be difficult to do so with a limited vocabulary." He added with a sudden burst of anger. "How do we keep our hands clean if we accept such things..." He stopped and looked again at Maturin. "You say I should understand, if it were England that had been invaded. I think I hate that idea more than anything."

"We - or I, as I am the only person I can speak for - do not accept them, save in that they are a fact, and as such much be accepted in that limited definition of being held as true." Stephen looked out across the hills. "What idea do you hate? The thought of England being invaded? Your countrymen doing what we have just seen to the invader? Or the idea that you would be brought to understanding?"

That brought Edrington's head round to gaze at Maturin. Perceptive. "I meant - the second. I do what I can to stop Bonaparte and his army invading England. Holding them here might do it, if they cannot fight on all fronts at once. And there is the Navy. But if it came to it, then we would fight - or those that are still in England would fight. But I would have them fight cleanly, in so far as you can against an invader. That was not clean, it did nothing to help the men who carried it out to defeat the French. It did not even terrorise them, since it was done behind our lines, not the French lines. Gratuitous violence is - gratuitous. If I knew who they were I should hunt them down as murderers." He went back to looking at Bauer's ears, but continued, more softly. "And, though I did not intend to say it, I would loathe the man I would have become if I could condone such acts."

Stephen had seen in Spain, and even in Ireland, what this man was seeing now in Portugal. He had thought that he might grow numb after a time, but he had only grown more raw, and better at hiding it. He listened to the colonel working through his systematic, methodical train of thought; almost innocent in its lack of subtlety, but that was something Stephen admired, in cases such as this; through to an honest and heartfelt conclusion, one he could entirely sympathise with. His respect for the man grew.

"It was revenge, it seems. A revenge is a purpose unto itself."

"Revenge?" Edrington swung round, bringing his horse almost across the track, in front of Maturin's Bethany. "Why would anyone want revenge on a scouting party?" Anger touched his voice and eyes before he turned the horse away, averting his eyes. "If that is what you are saying."

Bethany skittered, and trod the ground nervously; Stephen ran his hand down the crest of her neck and an attempt to soothe her.

"You saw the man's chest, sir - Padre Miguel. 'Padre' is the Portuguese for Father. In a Catholic country, an invading army will often target the clergy - look to your own in Ireland - for they are often seen as spreading subversion. Yet apart from that, in a small village, the priest may be the healer, the teacher, the judge and the diplomat, as well as celebrant, confessor and representative of God. There are few better targets, if one has the intent of immediately striking fear into the heart of the civilian population."

Stephen held up his hand, as a calmed Bethany fell back in step with Edrington's horse. "I am not saying that it was the actions of these particular Frenchmen that precipitated the attack - they may have just been unfortunate enough to scout in an area grieving their priest, and any Frenchman would have satisfied those wishing to exact a cruel and gruesome revenge. In the wrong place, at the wrong time."

It was rather more complicated than that. Edrington recognized that his anger was not directed at Maturin specifically, but at the blanket of lies and denial that sought to keep the truth from him. From Raoul, from Padstowe and now from Maturin. But that anger had pushed him and then Maturin into a position where further questions would be equivalent to an accusation of lying. He was not prepared to go that far.

"Yes, as you say, the wrong time and the wrong place." He threaded the reins through his fingers before adding. "I must apologize, I think, even for things that I have not done." He had recognized the accent, but not given thought to similarities between the situation of Portugal and that of Ireland. That there were also great differences was not a point that should be raised now.