So, by the time the orders had been changed, it was almost midday before they marched and now the army was in chaos. It was infuriating. It was incompetence.

Vejer was visible across the plain, a town of white houses atop a sudden hill on the northwestern horizon, yet the guides had begun by marching the army southeast. Sir Thomas had ridden to Lapeña and, at his most diplomatic, had indicated the town and suggested it would be better to head in that direction. After a long consultation, Lapeña had agreed, and so the army had reversed itself, and that took time because the Spanish vanguard had to march back along a road crowded with stalled troops. But at last they had been going in the right direction and now they had stopped again. Just stopped. No one moved. No messages came back down the column explaining the halt. The Spanish soldiers fell out and lit their paper rolls of damp tobacco.

“Bloody man!” Sir Thomas said again as he rode to find General Lapeña. When the halt occurred he had been at the rear of the column because he liked to ride up and down his troops. He could tell a lot about his men from the way they marched, and he was pleased with his small force. They knew they were being ill led, they knew they were in chaos, but their spirits were high. The Cauliflowers were last in the column, more formally known as the second battalion of the 47th Regiment of the line. Their red coats were faced with the white patches that gave them their nickname, though the Cauliflowers’ officers preferred to call the Lancashire men “Wolfe’s Own” to remember the day they had turned the French out of Canada. The Cauliflowers, a staunch battalion from the Cádiz garrison, were reinforced by two companies of the Sweeps, green-jacketed men from the third battalion of the 95th. Sir Thomas raised his hat to the officers, then again to the men of the two Portuguese battalions who had sailed from Cádiz. They grinned at him, and he doffed his hat again and again. He noted approvingly that the Portuguese cacadores, light infantry, were in fine spirits. One of their chaplains, a man in a mud-stained cassock with a musket and a crucifix slung about his neck, demanded to know when they could start killing Frenchmen. “Soon!” Sir Thomas promised, hoping that was true. “Very soon!”

Ahead of the Portuguese was the Gibraltar Flanker battalion. That was a makeshift unit, formed by the light companies and grenadier companies of three battalions from the Gibraltar garrison. Prime troops, all of them. Two companies from the 28th, a Gloucestershire regiment, two from the 82nd, which was from Lancashire, and the two flank companies of the 9th, Norfolk lads and known as the Holy Boys because their shako plates, decorated with a picture of Britannia, was taken by the Spanish as an image of the Virgin Mary. Wherever the Holy Boys marched in Spain, women would genuflect and make the sign of the cross. Beyond the Gibraltar Flankers were the Faughs, the 87th, and Sir Thomas touched his hat in response to Major Gough’s greeting. “It’s chaos, Hugh, chaos,” Sir Thomas admitted.

“We’ll make sense of it, Sir Thomas.”

“Aye, that we will, that we will.”

Ahead of the 87th was the second battalion of the 67th, men from Hampshire, newly come from England, and unblooded until the night they had assailed the fire rafts. A good regiment, Sir Thomas reckoned, as were the remaining eight companies of the 28th who waited in front of them. The 28th was another solid county regiment from the shires. They had come from the Gibraltar garrison and Sir Thomas was pleased to see them because he remembered the men of Gloucestershire from Corunna. They had fought hard that day and had died hard too, belying their nicknames, the Dandies or the Silver Tails. Their officers insisted on wearing extra long tails to their coats, and the coattails were lavishly embroidered with silver. The 28th preferred to be known as the Slashers in solemn memory of the day they had sliced off the ears of an irritating French lawyer in Canada. The Slasher’s lieutenant colonel was talking with Colonel Wheatley, who commanded all the troops on the road behind and Wheatley, seeing Sir Thomas ride by, called for his horse.

Major Duncan and his two batteries of artillery, five guns in each, waited on the road ahead of the Silver Tails. Duncan, resting against a limber, raised his eyebrows as Sir Thomas passed and was rewarded with a quick shrug. “We’ll untangle the mess!” Sir Thomas called, and again hoped he was right.

In front of the guns was his first brigade, and he knew how fortunate he was to have such a unit under his command. It was only two battalions, but each was strong. The rearmost was another composite battalion, this one made up of two companies of Coldstreamers, two more of riflemen, and three companies of the Third Foot Guards. Scotsmen! The only Scottish infantry under his command and Sir Thomas took his hat off to them. With Scotsmen, he reckoned, he could break down the gates of hell, and he had a lump in his throat as he passed the blue-faced redcoats. Sir Thomas was a sentimental man. He loved soldiers. He had once thought all men who wore the red coat were rogues and thieves, the scourings of the gutter, and since he had joined the army he had discovered he was right, but he had also learned to love them. He loved their patience, their ferocity, their endurance, and their bravery. If he should die prematurely, Sir Thomas often thought, and join his Mary in her Scottish heaven, then he wanted to die among these men as Sir John Moore, another Scotsman, had died at Corunna. Sir Thomas kept Moore’s red sash as a memento of that day, the weave stained dark with his hero’s blood. A soldier’s death, he thought, was a happy one, because a man, even in the throes of awful pain, would die in the best company in the world. He twisted in the saddle to look for his nephew. “When I die, John,” he said, “make sure you take my body back to join your Aunt Mary.”

“You won’t be dying, sir.”

“Bury me at Balgowan,” Sir Thomas said, and touched the wedding ring he still wore. “There’s money to pay for the costs of moving my corpse home. You’ll find there’s money enough.” He had to swallow as he rode past the Scotsmen to where the second battalion of the First Foot Guards led his column. The First Footguards! They were called the Coal Heavers because, years before, they had carried coal to warm their officers in a freezing London winter, and the Coal Heavers were as fine a battalion as any that marched the earth. All the Guardsmen were led by Brigadier General Dilkes who touched the tip of his cocked hat and joined Colonel Wheatley to follow Sir Thomas past the Spanish troops to where General Lapeña sat, disconsolate and helpless, in his saddle.

Lapeña looked heavily at Sir Thomas. He sighed as though he had expected the Scotsman’s arrival and thought it a nuisance. He gestured toward distant Vejer, which glowed white on its hill. “Inundación,” Lapeña said slowly and distinctly, then made circling gestures with his hand as if to suggest that all was hopeless. Nothing could be done. Failure had been decreed by fate. It was over.

“The road, Sir Thomas,” the liaison officer translated unnecessarily, “is flooded. The general regrets it, but it is so.” The Spanish general had expressed no such regrets, but the liaison officer thought it prudent to suggest as much. “It is sad, Sir Thomas. Sad.”

General Lapeña stared mournfully at Sir Thomas, something in his expression seeming to suggest it was all the Scotsman’s fault. “Inundación,” he said again, shrugging.

“The road,” Sir Thomas agreed in Spanish, “is indeed flooded.” The drowned stretch was where the road crossed a marsh bordering a lake and, though the road was built on a causeway, the heavy rains had raised the water level so that now the marsh, the causeway, and a quarter mile of the road were underwater. “It is flooded,” Sir Thomas said patiently, “but I dare say, señor, that we shall find it passable.” He did not wait for Lapeña’s response, but spurred his horse onto the causeway. The horse splashed, then waded as the water rose. It grew nervous, tossing its head and rolling its eyes white, but Sir Thomas kept firm control as he followed the line of withies stuck into the causeway’s verges. He curbed the horse halfway through the flood, by which time the water was over his stirrups, and shouted back to the eastern bank in a voice honed by hallooing across windy Scottish hunting fields. “We should keep going! You hear me? Press on!”