Flashman's Escape Read Free Page B

a laundry account from the officers’ mess, but it did have the regimental crest printed at the top and looked official.
    At first Leon just smiled at me. “I think,” he said at last, “that if your general wanted to know this thing, he would just ask my captain.” Then he picked up the document I had placed on the table and grinned. “I was taught English by an Irish monk in a monastery school. I cannot read all of this, but does that not say ‘six shirts’?” He passed the account back before continuing. “My captain warned me about you, Captain Flashman. He thinks you will try to find a way to get out of your wager and he ordered me to tell you nothing. But I have asked other people about you too. They say you are a brave man and that you were the Englishman who charged the French battery at Talavera with General Cuesta, something you did not tell me earlier.”
    I had not mentioned it as I had been screaming in terror at the time, but if the story he had heard was more creditable then I was happy to stay silent while he continued.
    “I will tell you some of what you want to know. At night the French retreat to their camps surrounded by circles of watch fires. They hope that these will illuminate any partisans trying to attack. We know the French are hungry and some of my brothers have used cattle bells and sometimes real sheep and bullocks to tempt the French from their circles at night. At first the hungry soldiers would go to investigate but they never returned. The French always found them dead and mutilated the next morning. When we drove the herds through a big gap between their fire circles, the French must have heard, but none came to intercept us. They have learned now never to leave the circles at night. They will have thought it was a trick until they found the large number of hoof prints this morning.”
    I could easily picture the scene and the frustration that the French must have experienced as the sun rose. With their bellies groaning in hunger, they would have seen how close they had been to plentiful food. They would have felt even worse knowing that the supplies were now in the hands of the British. The French knew we were already well fed and comfortable behind stone forts, while they struggled to survive on land that Wellington had largely stripped of anything that could sustain them.
    Leon and I talked some more after that, but I would be a liar if I claimed I had a clear recollection of what he said. Despite my attempts to get him intoxicated, Leon seemed unaffected, while to me the room seemed as steady as a ship going around Cape Horn in a blow.
    I paid up my wager to Grant and for the rest of the time we spent behind the lines of Torres Vedras he toadied up to Wellington in a way that would sicken an arse-licking tick. As a result he became Wellington’s favourite forward observer. Time and again Grant and Leon went out on reconnaissance rides to see what the French were doing, and most times they came back with useful intelligence. While Grant made sure he got all the credit, I suspected that most of the conclusions drawn from what they had seen were collated by Leon. When the French finally withdrew, you can be sure that Grant was on hand to report on their progress. In contrast I was summoned by Wellington for very different duties.
    “Ah, Flashman,” he greeted me as I stepped into his rooms. “I take it you have heard of the latest Spanish disaster?”
    “If you mean Gebora sir,” I replied, “then yes, I have.”
    The Spanish army had developed a knack of engineering catastrophic defeats from situations that, on paper at least, they should have won. At Gebora they had really excelled themselves. One of the few towns they still held in Spain was the frontier fortress of Badajoz. Marshal Soult had brought his French army to besiege the city. Despite having double the French force, the Spanish army commander sent to lift the siege had withdrawn his men across the large