When his aide had left him Arthur again surveyed the lines of his men, and once more he recalled the ground he had seen late in the afternoon, when he had ridden forward in a plain brown coat and broad-brimmed hat to inspect the lie of the land. Leaving his small escort out of sight in a small grove of olive trees he had approached the bank of the river and casually trotted along its length to the junction with the Tagus. The French sentries on the far side had watched him, but paid no great attention to the lone horseman. Once he had identified the location of some of the fords, as well as the best routes to approach them without being detected, Arthur returned to the army and drew up his plan of attack.

Now, in the cool night air, all was calm and still. It was hard to believe that nearly twenty thousand men were poised to fight. At the moment they would be sitting in their companies, with their unloaded muskets at their sides. There was no talking as the order had been given for them to wait in complete silence so as not to alert the enemy as to their presence. The corporals and sergeants paced quietly up and down the lines ready to pounce on any man who uttered a word. Elsewhere the cavalry would be standing by their mounts, and aside from the odd scuffle of hooves and faint whinny, they too waited in quiet anticipation. The gunners, still hot and sweaty from their effort to wheel the guns into place as noiselessly as they could manage, stacked their ammunition a short distance from their cannon and carefully loaded the first round. Most men found the waiting intolerable, as every faint sound and movement of a shadow seemed threatening, and wore away at their nerves. Only a handful of fatalistic veterans, and a small number of men who had managed to suppress their nerves through surreptitious consumption of spirits, waited calmly.

Half an hour had passed when Arthur next checked his watch. With a click of his tongue he turned his horse to his right flank and made his way down the line, pausing every so often to exchange a quiet greeting with one of his officers and offer them a few words of encouragement. There was still no sign of the orderly who had been sent to find General Cuesta by the time Arthur reached the end of his battle line. He stopped his horse and strained his eyes to try to detect any sign of movement from the direction of Salcidas, but there was not enough light to make out anything more than the vaguest detail.

‘Damn, where is he?’ Arthur muttered. ‘Has the fool lost his way, I wonder?’