Once out of sight and sound of this relaxation, Jeremy called a halt. Two food wagons were brought from the back of the column and rations were handed round. It was time the men had a break, past time. They had marched far enough today, but his orders were so vague that he had little idea what to do next. There was still gunfire over the hill. It was no place to linger, this, for they were exposed on two sides, and there was little natural cover. Nor was there a stream, as there had been a mile or so back, where the men could refill their water bottles. He did not want to push on too far and blunder into the French.
The guardsman in the cabriolet had clearly had no such apprehensions.
John Peters came up and squatted beside him.
‘Permission to speak, sir,’ he said with a grin.
‘So long as it’s sensible, John. I know you’d rather be back in Brussels with Marita.’
‘Well, this grub’s not quite up to La Belle Epoque.’
‘What are the lads saying?’ Jeremy asked. ‘That we should have stopped by the estaminet?’
‘One or two rolled an eye, I can tell you. But by and large, them having marched so far today, they’d like to see a bit of fighting before the day’s out. You’ve got a tough lot, Jeremy, and they don’t like to see men running away.’
‘The day is nearly out,’ Jeremy said, squinting at the last glints of the sun. ‘Well, I’ll give ’em another fifteen minutes and then we’ll move on.’
The fifteen minutes was almost up when a horseman came galloping over the hill from the direction of the fighting. He reined in before Jeremy but did not dismount.
‘There’s been the very devil of a scrap just in the next valley, place called Quatre Bras. The Duke of Brunswick has been bad wounded and a lot of his men turned tail and ran for their lives. But we’ve drove the Frenchies back!’
There was no means of telling the rank or regiment of this solitary horseman because he was wearing a suit of embroidered royal-blue velvet and white pantaloons, and his shoes were dancing shoes. Presumably he had had no time to change since the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. His horse was dead tired and hanging its head.
‘Poldark,’ said Jeremy. ‘Captain, 52nd Oxfordshires. Major Cartaret is in command but I have not seen him for an hour.’
‘Longland,’ said the young man. ‘Aide-de-camp to the Duke. The fighting’s dyin’ down now but it’s been the very devil of a scrap. I doubt if there’ll be much more till dawn. If your major don’t turn up I’d advise you to make for Quatre Bras – that’s the crossroads; you can’t miss it, and bivouac in any convenient field you can find this side of it. There’ll be more fun in the mornin’, depend on it.’ He gently tugged his horse’s tired head up and went on his way.
II
So they marched on to the battlefield. A cluster of houses at the crossroads, and there was still some fighting in and out of these. All sorts of noises echoed in the hot evening air, cries of men in pain, the blowing of bugles, the neighing of horses, the crack of muskets, the whistle of bullets overhead, the distant boom of cannons and the explosions of shell. Great clouds of smoke rose from the thick woods beyond, and frightened birds were wheeling and crying. As they skirted the wood to approach the crossroads, they stumbled over corpses hidden in the tall grass. Groups of soldiers moved around the farmhouses, but there seemed no enemy among them now. A troop of cavalry about a hundred strong galloped suddenly across the fields and into the next wood.
Jeremy called a halt and rode on ahead. It was now half dark, with the moon out, and there seemed to be no one in charge, but as he reached the crossroads he could see what carnage there had been. Dead horses, dead men were piled in heaps everywhere. The farmhouses were blasted and pitted with shot. The wounded men for the most part were lying untended where they had fallen or where they had crawled to. A cavalry officer suddenly appeared from the door of one of the houses, unlooped the reins of his horse and began to issue orders. As Jeremy came up to him he realized he was a major-general. Jeremy waited his turn, then saluted and reported.
‘Poldark?’ said the major-general. ‘A Cornishman? This has been something of a scrap, by God. You just come? Yes, water your horses and men – there’s a well in the courtyard, though you’ll have to wait your turn. Bivouac where you’ve the fancy; I do not think there will be a night attack, but post sentries.’
In the end they did not, for after watering their horses and feeding themselves from the wagons and what they carried in their pouches, they lay down in the long grass, surrounded at no great distance by great companies of men who were doing likewise; and presently, tired out, fell asleep. Just before he went off, listening to the muttering and murmuring of voices around him, Jeremy thought to himself, was ever a man or men in such a strange situation? Here we are, lying down in the warm cloudy moonlight in the very middle of a battlefield in which we have taken no part! Not fired a solitary shot. Quite nearby there are heaps of dead and many wounded, some dying. A few surgeons and medical orderlies are working through the night but their numbers are woefully small. A good man would go and join them, try to succour the casualties. He had heard at the well that the Gordon Highlanders had had a hand to hand confrontation with massed French infantry under Marshal Ney himself, and each side had fought the other to a standstill. There had been no ground given, no quarter asked, until the French had retreated with the fall of night. A good man would get up and try to help those who had fallen. But this good man, though not yet into the conflict, and with only one wounded of those under his command, was yet so exhausted with almost a day and a half of travel and the tension of his new command, that he put his head down on the dewy grass, thought of Cuby for a moment, and then fell asleep.
III
At six o’clock on the following morning with sultry clouds blocking out the rising sun, a group of senior officers were breakfasting in a draughty hut at a crossroads just south of Genappe, and waiting for news of the Prussians. A long table was covered with a white cloth; silver glinting in the morning light; the smell of bacon frying; of coffee; champagne bottles open among the crockery and the maps. The Duke of Wellington was at the centre of the table, other notable and noble figures gathered around him, and indeed there were so many that the numbers overflowed into the yard outside. The Duke’s entourage had now increased to about forty men, including his own eight aides-de-camp and numerous staff officers such as Colonel Augustus Fraser, the commander of the Horse Artillery, Colonel Sir William de Lancey, his American-born Chief of Staff and Lord Fitzroy Somerset. Added to them was Baron von Müffling, the Prussian liaison officer, Count Carlo Pozzo, representing the Russians, Baron Vincent for the Austrians, General Miguel de Alava, his old friend from Spain, and a half-dozen assorted English aristocrats, ready to fight if necessary but belonging to no unit, here to see the fray and all of them with too much influence in England to be summarily dismissed from the scene.
On this group came a young staff officer who murmured something to the Commander-in-Chief.
Wellington nodded. ‘Send him in.’
A tall gaunt ragged middle-aged man limped in.
‘Sir Ross,’ said Wellington, ‘so you have safely arrived!’
‘Poldark!’ exclaimed Lord Fitzroy Somerset, getting up and clasping his hand. ‘I am relieved to see you. Welcome!’
‘Thank you.’ Ross smiled. With noticeably less of a smile he added: ‘Your Grace.’
‘You were not unexpected,’ said the Duke, ‘so you will have guessed that Colonel Grant has preceded you.’
‘I’m glad to know it, sir.’
‘But by only a few hours. Six, in fact. He arrived at midnight with information which I would have given a brigade of infantry to have known twenty-four hours earlier. Now it is too late.’
‘Too late, sir?’
‘Too late to choose more suitable ground before the River Sambre. We must fight where we find ourselves, here among the rye fields.’
‘Colonel Grant – he is well?’ Ross said.
‘Except for a natural chagrin that his message did not get through – which we all share.’
‘I shall not need this, then, sir.’ Ross took the original message from his belt and put it on the table.
Fitzroy Somerset was at the open end of the improvised shelter. ‘Grant said you could muster no more than a pony. If that’s your mount outside it looks a very handsome pony!’
Ross’s lips tightened. ‘My pony was hit by a stray bullet yesterday. I found this horse riderless near Frasnes. It seems that it belonged to a French cavalry officer called Pelet who was under General Kellerman’s command.’
Wellington said: ‘Have you eaten?’
‘Not since yesterday.’
‘Then take a seat. Anders will make you some eggs.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Ross brushed some of the dirt off his clothes and took the seat offered him. Until now he had had no time to feel tired. From the conversation as he ate he gathered that Wellington was waiting for the return of an officer called Colonel Gordon who had been sent with a squadron of the 10th Hussars to réconnoitre the situation east towards Sombreffe. The Duke had recalled his advance posts last night on discovering only French and no Prussians on his flank.
‘Poldark,’ said the Duke suddenly, ‘how did you come? Grant took a risk and rode almost directly along the Charleroi road, so he had nothing to report. What was your route?’
‘I kept east of that road, but by how far I don’t know. I stopped at an inn last evening, being almost too thirsty to care, and they were talking of a bitter battle in Ligny in which the Prussians had been driven back.’
‘Defeated?’
‘That was the impression I received, sir.’
‘Blücher must surely send word soon. We are all ready for the French when he tells us he too is ready.’
Ross finished the eggs and bacon and sipped steaming coffee.
The Duke was looking at him again, penetrating eyes over beak nose. But there seemed to be no hostility in his look; any suspicion of the old days appeared to have gone.
‘You have done well to get here, Sir Ross. But you are in effect a non-combatant. You have found your way from Verdun and should now return home.’
‘I should like very much to return home,’ said Ross, ‘once the business here is finished.’
‘You do not need to feel honourably detained.’
‘Nor shall I for a moment, once this business is finished.’
The Duke sipped at his glass.
‘Do you wish to remain as an observer?’
‘I would like to take some more active part than that.’
‘Colonel Grant is remaining on my staff as an additional aide-de-camp. Perhaps you would care to join him.’
‘I’d be honoured, sir.’
‘We should fit you out in better clothes,’ said Fitzroy Somerset after a moment. ‘That’s if you do not mind wearing a uniform that the previous owner has no further use for.’
‘I am not superstitious,’ said Ross.
‘There are two Poldarks in the army already,’ said a red-haired man at the table with the emblems of a colonel on his coat. ‘One’s a major in the 95th Rifles, the other a captain in the 52nd Oxfordshires. Major Poldark’s a veteran from the 43rd. I knew him in Spain.’
‘That must be my cousin, Geoffrey Charles,’ Ross said. ‘I thought he was still in Spain! By God, so he has come back into it again!’ A batman poured him more coffee. ‘The other I don’t know. My son is an ensign, and I think is in the 52nd but perhaps…’
‘J. Poldark,’ said the red-haired colonel. ‘He was promoted last month.’
‘To – captain?’ said Ross in astonishment.
Wellington looked down the table at him. ‘Yes, I observed him myself last month. He has a grasp of things that I find valuable in a junior officer.’
Ross stirred his coffee, the steam drifting before his eyes.
‘I have been interned three months. It might be three years.’
An orderly came in and spoke to Fitzroy Somerset.
‘Colonel Gordon has arrived, sir. He is just coming up the road.’
A thick-set young man presently entered. Ross could see his horse outside sweating and foam splashed. He spoke in an undertone to the Duke, who however soon communicated his news to the men anxiously waiting.
‘Old Blücher has had a damned good licking and retreated to Wavre. That must be all of twenty miles from here. We can expect no help from him today – indeed he is lucky to be alive. So we are on our own, gentlemen, and out on a limb, a promontory, a point, not easily defensible.’
No one spoke. The Duke got up and not for the first time Ross realized he was not a tall man. Only a few inches taller than the great man who opposed him. No one spoke, for they were waiting for the decision which might decide the fate of the battle, the fate of the war.
Wellington said: ‘Gentlemen, we must retreat.’
IV
Jeremy had been dreaming of champagne corks popping, and woke to the reality that it was almost full daylight and that the sounds he heard were muskets firing off in the woods to the right of Quatre Bras. In spite of the warm morning he found himself chilly, and he wrapped his cloak around him as he stood up. Men were sitting up all round him, stirring, yawning, stretching, wondering what the new day would bring. Some had already lit fires and were cooking what little food they had left. Jeremy was ravenously hungry, and while Sanders prepared a bite of breakfast for him he munched the remnants of a cake Cuby had given him. Some men were cleaning their arms, others talking and joking; no one seemed to be taking much notice of the smart skirmish on their right.
‘Sir.’ It was Quack Evans. ‘Major Cartaret is here, with orders for the day.’
Jeremy brushed the crumbs off his uniform and walked across the field to greet his superior, who had just dismounted.
‘Bad news for us, Poldark,’ he said. ‘The Prussians have been heavily defeated and we are isolated here. We must retreat.’
‘Retreat? We have only just arrived, sir!’
‘Colonel Coleborne’s orders. But you have some satisfaction. Your company has been chosen to cover the retreat. You will stay here until all are gone, except G Troop Royal Artillery under Captain Mercer. You will then follow the other troops, and we shall expect you to link up with General Lord Edward Somerset when your task of delaying the enemy is done. His brigade of Guards is at present retreating on Genappe; but failing any later information you must find him as best you can.’
When he was gone Jeremy called his two lieutenants, Bates and Underwood, and the ensigns and the sergeants, and told them their orders.
They were not well received, and he could see the ordinary soldiers reacting in a similar way when the news filtered down. After all, you could see the French camping on the slopes in the distance. What in hell was the good of marching all this way and then not having a go at them? Why, there was a bit of hot work going on in the woods nearby – if the company couldn’t advance this might occupy their time. Grumbling, they disposed themselves in some sort of order and prepared to wait.
Troops began to march past them, rode past them, artillery rumbling away, one regiment gradually appearing to fill the place of the one which had just left, all retreating towards Brussels.
As the living thinned out you could more clearly see the dead, thickly strewn where they had fallen among the flattened rye or been thrown in heaps to clear the roadways. Some were nearly naked, having been stripped in the night by the peasantry; dead horses too robbed of their valuable harness. It was a depressing sight. About a mile away on the brow of a slight hill were G Troop of the artillery, the only troop, apart from Jeremy’s company, who were not moving back. Jeremy wondered if it would be suitable to gallop across and have a word with his friend whom he had last seen on a happier day picnicking in Strytem.
Since leaving Nivelles yesterday, there had been little sign of habitation. The few cottages to be seen were empty and were being
used only as cover for the opposing forces. People had fled; but the presence of looters showed some still lurked, possibly in the woods or the Forest of Soignes.
Just then it began to rain. The clouds had been thickening since dawn, and now a torrential downpour cloaked off the farther hills. Very soon everyone was soaked through and hungry, the light breakfasts they had had long forgotten. When the rain ceased for a few minutes the only troops still in sight, apart from the battery on the hill, were a score of light dragoons trotting from the woods on the left and what looked like a full brigade of hussars moving through Quatre Bras. It was led by the general Jeremy had spoken to last night. Major Cartaret had said his name was Sir Hussey Vivian.
As he came level with the company of infantry he reined in and said to Jeremy: ‘You’re covering the retreat in this area?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He took out his glass and levelled it at the hills behind. Jeremy could see the ominous black patches beginning to move. White smoke was rising through the trees.
Vivian said: ‘That’s the French. Lancers, I think. Supported by massed infantry. It’s time to leave, lad.’
‘Yes, sir.’
At that moment Captain Mercer’s artillery opened fire at the advancing masses on the hillside.
Vivian said to his orderly: ‘That battery has been left with only sufficient ammunition for a token resistance. I saw their wagons on the road an hour ago. Send over and tell them to begin leaving in ten minutes. Polwhele.’
‘Poldark, sir.’
‘Ah yes. You’re one of the North Coast breed. Is it your father who’s MP for Truro?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Thought so. I was born there. Went to the same school as he did – though later. Now look, get your men on the move right away. If the French come within musket shot give ’em a round or two; but no heroics. If you form square you’ll be overwhelmed.’
The Twisted Sword: A Novel of Cornwall 1815 Page 33
