The Twisted Sword: A Novel of Cornwall 1815

by Winston Graham

  Soon after the Duke had left, the artillery found a better range on the 52nd Oxfordshires. John Peters was cut in half by a cannon-ball, and almost immediately afterwards a huge shell landed just in front of Jeremy. His horse reared and saved his life but at the expense of its own. Seventeen other men were killed or wounded by the blast.

  About three there was a brief lull, even in the attacks on Hougoumont. Since early morning the 52nd had had nothing to eat or drink, but now some wagons came up with a cask of water and a tub of gin. All the men rushed for the water, but most took a swig of gin after and then hastened back to the line.

  At four the Duke returned, his entourage reduced to one aide but himself miraculously unwounded. Jeremy was with his commanding officer when Wellington rode up.

  ‘Well, Cartaret, how do you get on?’

  ‘As you see, my lord. We are badly cut about and have been in action all day. A relief even for an hour would be a godsend.’

  The Duke made a wry face. ‘God may send it, Colonel, but alas I cannot. We are stretched to the limits, as you can see. All our reserves are committed.’

  Cartaret rubbed a spot of blood off his hand. ‘Well then, my lord, we must stand until the last man falls.’

  Soon after he had gone, erect and calm on his horse among the hail of shot and shell, the French cavalry launched another attack, but this time the Life Guards swept out from the rear and met them in a head-on clash. It was like a giant blacksmith’s shop, Jeremy thought, the clanking of steel against steel, horses snorting and whinnying and falling. Close to the defensive square one guardsman struck his opponent with such force that head and helmet went flying, and the horse leapt away with the headless rider still sitting upright and the blood spurting from the arteries.

  As the cavalry retreated the infantry came on again. Rum-a-dum-dum, rum-a-dum-dum: it beat in time with the soldiers’ steps. Lieutenant Bates, kneeling beside Jeremy, was shot in the jaw. Jeremy detailed Sanders to help him back to a cowman’s hut where most of the wounded had been taken. Numbers were now so far depleted that Major Cartaret ordered the few men left to form line four deep. Again the wave approached and again it was thrust back. Then, mercifully, a lull. Such was the smoke that it was impossible to see how the battle as a whole was faring. Cartaret ordered a muster to be taken. Captain Allison had been killed early on, and not one officer of the second company remained in the field. Jeremy, Michael Underwood and the major were the only three officers left. There were three sergeants, including Evans, and about a hundred men fit to return to the battle.

  Then a rider came past to say that La Haye Sainte had at last fallen. Defended to the bitterest end by a regiment of the King’s German Legion, it had been evacuated with scarcely more than two score survivors. The centre of the Allied line was crumbling.

  Major Cartaret looked up from behind the bank where most of his remaining troops were crouching and saw that in manoeuvring to attack the Guards the French infantry had exposed their flank. He wiped the blood from his face and stood up.

  ‘Come on, you men of the 52nd!’ he shouted hoarsely at the top of his voice. ‘Now’s the time to show ’em what we’re made of! Remember Badajoz!’ He raised his sword, leaped the bank and stormed towards the enemy. His troops, without food all day and exhausted beyond endurance, rose slowly and then, gathering momentum, stumbled after him.

  Under this sudden attack the French wilted and broke, but then the attackers came under a sudden cross-fire from a hitherto unseen company of tirailleurs, appearing from behind the smouldering château. Cartaret was shot twice in the head and died instantly. Evans was wounded in the leg. Jeremy was shot in the back and side and fell flat beside a horse that had both its back legs blown off. The horse was struggling to get to its feet, dragging itself away on its stomach. Jeremy lost consciousness.

  V

  He half woke to find someone kneeling beside him. He must have been dragged back because he was in some sort of shelter. This man was kneeling beside him. Then he knew he was delirious.

  ‘Father.’

  ‘Jeremy…’

  The man was ragged and bloodstained and had a week’s growth of beard. But he wore no hat and that made him unmistakable.

  Somebody wiped the corner of his mouth. The battle was still raging but seemed more distant. In a corner Sergeant Evans was trying to staunch the blood from his leg. It was very dark.

  ‘This – a dream?’

  ‘No. Can you drink this?’

  Blessed water. But it didn’t seem to go farther than his throat.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I escaped from Verdun. I would have been with you earlier but my horse was killed. Jeremy, lie still.’

  ‘No choice,’ said Jeremy. ‘Is the battle…?’

  ‘Still close. But the Imperial Guard have been broken. They came in a great mass and have broken, have given way. And they say the Prussians are in sight.’

  ‘Lost a lot,’ said Jeremy with a sigh, ‘of my friends.’

  ‘By God, I can’t find a surgeon!’ said Ross, speaking into the air. ‘Jeremy, my son, lie quiet. Can you take some more water?’ He wiped the blood again from the corner of Jeremy’s mouth.

  ‘These horses,’ said Jeremy. ‘They should never be in war. If men have to fight – let ’em fight on foot.’

  ‘I will see if I can find someone,’ Ross said, his voice unrecognizable even to himself.

  ‘Don’t go … Is it night yet?’

  ‘No, about eight, I think. I cannot tell you for my watch is broke.’

  Jeremy saw now there were a couple of dozen men in the hut. All must be in great pain, but no one was groaning – only the occasional sigh and grunt.

  ‘Father…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘My love to mother.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell her…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No matter. I wanted to tell her – something. Perhaps I left it too late. But I have written.’

  Ross felt the tears running down his face. He bent to wipe the blood once again from Jeremy’s mouth.

  ‘Perhaps the next war,’ said Jeremy, ‘will be fought with steam engines.’

  Evans was dragging himself towards the door. He knew if he could not get help soon he would bleed to death.

  ‘Father,’ said Jeremy.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Look after Cuby…’

  ‘Of course. I promise.’

  ‘That’, said Jeremy, ‘is the hardest part of all.’

  And then he died.

  BOOK THREE

  Chapter One

  I

  Letter from Ross Poldark to his wife, dated Brussels, 22nd June 1815.

  Demelza,

  I have to tell you that Jeremy is dead. I cannot bring myself to write the words, but there is no way I know of breaking this to you gently. He fell nobly and bravely in the great battle just fought in the area south of the village of Waterloo, about twelve miles from this city and won by the British and their Allies in a decisive manner that must finally and forever settle Bonaparte’s fate.

  I do not know, my dearest, how to begin to tell you what it has been like. In early June I escaped from internment in Verdun and tried to make my way towards Brussels. The difficulty of this journey, though little more than 150 miles, was far greater than the mere distance because between me and whatever troops defended Brussels lay the whole of the French army of the west – some 120,000 men. I was vastly lucky to avoid capture and probably would not have succeeded but for the help of a Colonel Colquhoun Grant, a British officer who was acting as a spy for Wellington, and between us, though we eventually travelled separately, we arrived at Wellington’s headquarters as the main battle was about to begin. For the duration of the battle Grant became one of the Duke’s aides-de-camp and I was invited to fulfil a similar function. Naturally I tried to make contact with Jeremy’s regiment, but was sent first with a message which took half the day, partly because my horse was s
hot from under me, though I escaped with a bruising.

  The carnage on both sides was appalling. I have never seen such ferocity in attack or such utter relentless courage in defence. Just around the farmhouse of Hougoumont, which was where Jeremy was stationed, over two thousand men were killed. In total we are thought to have lost 20,000 men, the Prussians about 7,000, the French about 30,000. Geoffrey Charles survived like me, and did not even suffer a scratch, although he was in the forefront of the fight throughout. All Wellington’s main aides were killed or wounded – in total fifteen. Fitzroy Somerset lost his right arm. Sir William de Lancey, the Chief of Staff, was gravely wounded and is not likely to recover. Adjutant General Barnes and his deputy were both wounded. Colonel Gordon and Colonel Canning both died. In the battle the Duke of Brunswick died early, and Lord Picton was killed on Sunday. Two of Jeremy’s closest friends were killed, and one wounded. Young Christopher Havergal, who made such a fuss of Bella, has lost a leg. I have also just heard that Brigadier Gaston Rougiet, who visited me in internment and gave me a greater liberty which enabled me to escape, was killed at the very last, fighting the Prussians.

  If there was ever a battle fought as savagely as this, I have never known it or want to hear of it.

  They say that Fitzroy Somerset suffered the amputation of his arm without a murmur and that the next morning was seen to be practising writing with his left hand.

  Dearest, dearest Demelza, I give you all these details not because they can interest you but because they keep me a little longer from the sort of detail that I find it so hard to face. Jeremy died a brave soldier’s death; he led his much-depleted company against a French infantry brigade which outnumbered him ten to one. Because of the loss of my horse I was tardy in returning the message I carried to the Duke – who in extraordinary fashion survived the whole battle unscathed – but as soon as I had done this I hurried down towards where I knew Jeremy’s company had been fighting all day. I arrived just as a Lieutenant Underwood was carrying him back after he had been shot.

  He lived for perhaps half an hour, but did not seem to be in pain. He knew me and sent a loving message to you. That is all I can say.

  That night, the Sunday night, I stayed by him, while the French army finally broke and then was utterly destroyed by the Prussians. I did a little to help some of the wounded but am afraid I was too distracted and distraught to have done all I should. On the Monday morning I was able to find a conveyance of a sort to carry him back to Brussels. The road was almost impassable still, for the wounded, the baggage trains, the commissary wagons, the medical supplies, wandering groups of soldiers trying to regain their units; we went with the majority, but a few vehicles were fighting their way against the tide. The road had almost broken up with the pressure it had been under and in some places was a sea of mud. In one place we were held up for fifteen minutes while vehicles were at a standstill. Then, sitting there as I did helpless upon my horse, I heard a voice cry ‘Captain Poldark!’

  It was Cuby. It seems that Lady de Lancey, Sir William’s wife, hearing that her husband was lying grievously wounded in a cottage in the village of Waterloo, had hired a coach and coachman, and, learning of this, Cuby had asked if she might travel with her to see if she could gain news of Jeremy. It was my appalling duty to give her that news.

  Dearest Demelza, I have never seen a woman more heartbroken than Cuby was when she realized what I was saying – I know of only one who will be more so and she is holding this letter. What can I say to comfort you when there is no comfort? I try to think of the three children we have left and our duty to them not to fall into utter despair. That many a father and mother through the ages have suffered as we suffer now does not make it easier to sustain. Nor the thought of the thousands of other parents who have been bereaved by this battle. Perhaps we have always been too close a family. To feel so deeply about one’s children is a great happiness – and a great danger.

  Jeremy is buried in the Protestant Cemetery of St Josse ten Noode, just on the south side of the Chausée de Louvain. It was a simple ceremony but a dignified one. A stone will be put up.

  I am returning to England tomorrow with Cuby. She rode in front of me to Brussels and I thought every moment she would faint and fall. I will remain a day or two in London before returning to Cornwall. At present she thinks she will stay a little while with her brother Augustus in London. She thinks that returning to Cornwall only seven months after leaving it in such happiness is more than she can face.

  She bears our first grandchild.

  My love, it is only three months since we separated but it is like an age. I long to see you.

  Perhaps we can comfort each other.

  Ross

  II

  When Clowance heard she left a scribbled message on the kitchen table for Stephen – who had still not returned from his foray – and rode across to be with her mother. Verity went with her. Demelza’s two brothers were nearby – Drake at Trenwith, Sam at Pally’s Shop. Dwight and Caroline too. Ben was at the mine and all the miners who had known and liked Jeremy so well. Paul and Daisy Kellow, with Mr and Mrs Kellow in the background; Valentine and Selina, just returned from Cambridge; the villagers from all the hamlets around. Letters began to arrive from as far afield as the Harveys at Hayle. A strange, stilted, troubled one from Cuby’s mother. So many letters from people in the county: the Devorans, the Falmouths, the Trenegloses, the de Dunstanvilles, the Foxes. Even Harriet Warleggan sent a kind little note. Letters, letters; everyone so kind made the heartache worse.

  Demelza took to walking across the beach and back, not to get rid of the deadly sickness and the emptiness and the aching – for there was no way out of that – but simply to tire one’s muscles, to exhaust one’s body, so that something was registered on the mind besides grief. Dwight gave her tincture of laudanum at night, but it always wore off at dawn when life was at its lowest and coldest. Then she would stand by the window and cry alone for the loss of her son.

  Verity did not like walking as far as the Dark Cliffs, but Clowance kept her mother company, most of the way in silence. When it was not Clowance, Drake would go, or sometimes Sam, though he had to be careful not to speak too much of God. Dwight told Demelza to go easy; twice Caroline persuaded her to visit Killewarren and spent part of the day with her.

  It was almost only to Caroline that she found she could talk at all – and sometimes in the evening to Verity.

  All the beauty had gone from Demelza’s face. Perhaps one day it would return, but at present few of her friends in Paris would have taken her for the vivacious, comic, ebullient young woman they had known in February and March.

  ‘Why have I so much cause to be bitter?’ she said to Caroline once. ‘Folk die all the time – babies, old people, even young people like Jeremy. But I am bitter just the same. I don’t want to see anyone, talk to anyone, be friendly with anyone. I just want to be left alone to think – to grieve – to think.’

  ‘My dear, that’ll do you no good. Though I well comprehend—’

  ‘It does good to remember,’ Demelza said. ‘It does good to remember a thousand days of caring…’

  III

  But, returning to the county more quickly than his old enemy, came Sir George Warleggan, full of the greatest satisfaction. For on careful calculation he decided that he had added twenty-four and a half per cent to his fortune. His belief that the Rothschilds would know first, and his commission to Rosehill to keep the closest watch on them and to make all the use he could of his friend in the Rothschild office – this had been triumphantly successful. Hardly eating a proper meal for three days, he had haunted the city and the Exchange. The nervousness of the early part of the week had intensified, and the market was like a sick patient with undulant fever, reacting to the lightest rumour.

  Looking back on the situation as his personal coach carried him the last few miles through the thickly wooded valley towards his own home, he felt a supreme contempt for the way the government of the c
ountry had been run, the singular clumsiness of its communications, its total lack of any attempt to bridge more quickly the distance – at the most two hundred miles – between the House of Commons and the scene of an operation which would decide the fate of the world.

  It seemed that the battle had raged for three days, from the 16th to the 18th June. It seemed that on Tuesday the 20th Mr Nathan Rothschild, by means of his swift-riding and swift-sailing couriers, had learned that there had been a victory for the Allied troops under the Duke of Wellington, and being on terms of the closest friendship with the British Government had informed them of this. The Cabinet, sitting in a sudden emergency session so early in the morning, had discounted the information as unfounded. Their own envoys had just brought them news of Quatre Bras, the British defeat and the retreat on Brussels. This had followed the news of the defeat of Blücher. The general opinion was that all was lost.

  The same day in the afternoon a Mr Sutton, whose vessels plied between Colchester and Ostend, had brought one of his ships back without waiting for passengers because he carried news of a tremendous battle being fought between Bonaparte and Wellington on the Sunday almost at the gates of Brussels. On the Wednesday The Times printed this information and wondered with regret that the Government had not made better arrangements for quicker transmission of the news. Were the Duke of Wellington’s own despatches, the newspaper wondered, to depend upon similar vagaries of commercial patriotism? It was not until Thursday that the official bulletin was issued from Downing Street announcing the victory and calling Wellington the Hero of Britain.