“Nonsense! As far as I can see you have only made one real mistake – and that is in remaining here in Lisbon. If you take my advice, you will leave as soon as you can. Go and sleep on the mountains with the men and the officers! You will not understand them until you do. Talk to them. Spend your days with them in the deserted villages beyond the Lines. They will soon love you for it. They are the best fellows in the world.”

“Really? It was reported in London that Wellington had called them the scum of the earth.”

Briscall laughed as if being the scum of the earth were a very minor sort of indiscretion and indeed a large part of the Army’s charm. This was, thought Strange, an odd position for a clergyman to take.

“Which are they?” he asked.

“They are both, Mr Strange. They are both. Well, what do you say? Will you go?”

Strange frowned. “I do not know. It is not that I fear hardship and discomfort, you understand. I believe I can endure as much of that sort of thing as most men. But I know no one there. I seem to have been in every body’s way since I arrived and without friends to go to …”

“Oh! That is easily remedied! This is not London or Bath where one needs letters of introduction. Take a barrel of brandy – and a case or two of Champagne if your servant can carry them. You will soon have a very wide acquaintance among the officers if you have brandy and Champagne to spare.”

“Really? It is as simple as that, is it?”

“Oh, to be sure! But do not trouble to take any red wine. They have plenty of that already.”

A few days later Strange and Jeremy Johns left Lisbon for the country beyond the Lines. The British officers and men were a little surprized to find a magician in their midst. They wrote letters home to their friends describing him in a variety of uncomplimentary ways and wondering what in the world he was doing there. But Strange did as Mr Briscall had advised. Every officer he met was invited to come and drink Champagne with him that evening after dinner. They soon excused him the eccentricity of his profession. What mattered was that one could always meet with some very jolly fellows at Strange’s bivouack and something decent to drink.

Strange also took up smoking. It had never really appealed to him as a pastime before, but he discovered that a ready supply of tobacco was quite invaluable for striking up conversations with the enlisted men.

It was an odd sort of life and an eerie sort of landscape. The villages beyond the Lines had all been emptied of inhabitants on Lord Wellington’s instructions and the crops burnt. The soldiers of both armies went down to the deserted villages and helped themselves to whatever looked useful. On the British side it was not unusual to come upon sophas, wardrobes, beds, chairs and tables standing on a hillside or in a woodland glade. Occasionally one would find whole bed-chambers or drawing-rooms, complete with shaving equipment, books and lamps, but minus the impediment of walls and ceiling.