Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey)

by Allan Mallinson

  ‘Well it’s a deuced mountain in such a place. An arch would have been enough – and in the village rather than where the fighting was.’

  ‘And a statue of the duke atop – the “Arch-Duke”?’

  ‘Don’t try me. Besides, here he’s Prince of Waterloo.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  Hervey smiled ironically. ‘You should make careful study of these things.’

  ‘Come, you know I don’t make light of the battle.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And, you know,’ continued Fairbrother, now more solemnly, ‘it’s shrewd of the king – the Dutch king – to build such a monument, for otherwise it’s only the duke’s battle, or Blücher’s, which hardly serves to fortify his dominion over the Belgics. And if the place of that mound is where the crown prince shed blood – he did shed blood, did he not? – then it’s a sort of hallowing.’

  Hervey frowned.

  Fairbrother knew why. ‘Oh, I know it’s all nonsense if you care to examine it as would a scientific, but that’s not the way with these people, is it? We’ve seen for ourselves how wary they are still. This has been the cockpit of Europe for three hundred years, has it not? I fancy William is ever mindful of that.’

  ‘Indeed I suppose he must be. You yourself are ever thoughtful in these matters.’

  ‘Perhaps only because I have the time.’

  ‘Ha! Time – the only supply that Bonaparte refused his generals.’

  ‘He was not always wrong.’

  ‘Now you do try me!’

  They trotted on in amused silence until coming on the Prussians beyond the crossroads above La Haye Sainte – three squadrons of the ‘Death’s Head Hussars’. They’d messed together in the week before (and woken next morning with, said the wags, heads like death), and so Hervey was able to pass the time of day with their colonel without formality, though he was a Prussian of decidedly less warmth than old Prince Blücher, before saying he wanted to show his friend the left-most extent of the line at Mont St Jean ‘before you came to our relief that day’.

  Calculated flattery, but harmless, he reckoned. And, indeed, whatever now the recollections of that day – the duke’s own recollections, he’d heard tell – the coming of the Prussians hadn’t been a moment too soon.

  And so after a rather formal acceptance of schnapps, talk of ‘La Belle Alliance’ and more saluting, they took their leave.

  ‘You know,’ said Fairbrother, as they kicked into a trot and put confidential distance between them and the ‘Death Heads’, ‘for my own part I count this adventure worthwhile purely to meet the Prussian. What a singular race.’

  ‘Better an ally than an enemy, I should hazard,’ said Hervey. ‘By the bye, I think yon oberst was perplexed by your appearance.’

  ‘My complexion or my coat?’

  ‘I’ve no notion what he makes of your complexion, only your coat.’

  ‘As I’ve said before, to wear a captain’s coat would confuse matters. And a black one was good enough for the duke that day.’

  ‘I can’t deny it, but …’ His thoughts were interrupted by the sudden appearance of rooftops. ‘Now, see there.’

  They pulled up half a mile on, opposite the hamlets of Papelotte and La Haye a few hundred yards across the valley to the right. Hervey pointed.

  ‘The left flank?’

  ‘I think it was here exactly. We’d come up in column from the other side of the crossroads – there were so many men that morning, and so few marks to go by – and I recall how we executed a very smart turn from column into line – really, it was as if on parade – and we came to a halt on this slope facing across the valley with the sun on our faces. My troop was in the second line forming the support to “B”, and Edward Lankester called me forward and asked if I supposed this was where the duke intended.’

  ‘Because you’d ridden with the duke on his exploration.’

  ‘Just so.’ Hervey had a moment’s recollection of Lankester, the finest of men, who would have become Kezia’s brother-in-law had he lived; and of his brother, Ivo, killed at the head of the regiment too, ten years on – men whose boots he now filled … ‘And I pointed out the scattering of farms below us – mark the roofs yonder, just as they were – where he’d placed the Nassauers. And the farm at La Haye Sainte below the crossroads, over on the right – which you may just see if you stand in your stirrups: he’d garrisoned it with some of the German Legion and the Rifles. We can’t see the château at Hougoumont from here, for it’s a mile beyond the farm – you saw its roof when we rode the ridge this morning: he put four companies of the Guards there. And, here, look …’ (he took out the sketch map from that day, which he’d made after the ride with the duke and preserved all these years in an oilskin): ‘there’s nothing to our east but the Forest of Ohain, and then a couple of leagues or so beyond the forest were the Prussians.’

  Fairbrother shook his head. ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive! Oh, to have been with you instead of that fort at Goree!’

  Hervey looked grave. ‘I’m so very glad you were not, for had you been there you might well not have been here now. Edmonds, Lankester … so many good fellows were struck down.’

  For once his friend was moved to silence.

  Hervey sighed. ‘But it’s all in the past. So very much in the past. And so much has been in the years since … Come, we must get back for our prince – indeed, our princess.’

  The landau came on at a good trot with two outriders in Saxon green astride well-matched greys, the same as the coach-horses, four of them – high-stepping, active still after their dozen miles from the outskirts of Brussels where the Princess Augusta had taken up residence for the celebrations.

  Hervey stood with Malet and the regimental serjeant-major at the end of the double line of dragoons drawn up for inspection, behind them their chargers, grooms, orderlies and covermen waiting. Two grooms stood in advance with a handsome little Trakehner, got up with a side-saddle (one of Monsieur Pellier’s new design, with a balance strap and second pommel, the ‘leaping head’) over a regimental shabracque with the colonel’s Bath star atop the crown sewn onto the points. Princess Augusta was to ride with her regiment over the field of Waterloo – at its head, indeed – and Hervey had been determined that she did so duly mounted. Malet had therefore toured the liveries until he found a gelding that looked the part and was schooled to the Pellier saddle, and a second for the lady-in-waiting, and Mr Lincoln had engaged seamstresses and wire-workers in Brussels to make the saddle-cloth.

  The carriage pulled up, footmen alike in Saxon green slipping down gracefully to open the door.

  Hervey and party saluted – and did so in some astonishment, for Princess Augusta wore tunic and shako. How she’d got them, and the Sixth’s crossbelt, all exactly comme il faut, he couldn’t imagine. ‘Good afternoon, Your Highness,’ he said, smiling with the compliment she paid them.

  The princess touched the peak of her shako with her riding whip, evidently instructed in the easy ways of a colonel of cavalry.

  The party was quite transfixed. Indeed Hervey struggled to recollect himself. The Princess Augusta was a strikingly handsome woman, in her late twenties, Kezia’s age, her features angular and her complexion dark for one whose ancestors must have trounced the Romans in the Teutoburgerwald. In court dress, when they’d all been presented in Brussels a few days before, she had dazzled; now, in riding skirt and regimentals, she was truly arresting. Once before had he seen hair gathered up inside a shako – Henrietta’s, when she’d visited him secretly in the night, when the Sixth had been on a scheme in …

  ‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Colonel Hervey, but the prince had affairs of state this morning, evidently.’

  ‘It was no hardship, ma’am.’

  She greeted Malet and the serjeant-major. Her lady-in-waiting curtsied.

  Grooms brought the Trakehners forward, and mounting blocks. Hervey and his party were quick into the saddle – protocol demand
ed they be mounted before the colonel – and quickly formed column of twos for the inspection.

  The princess was all ease and appreciative nods as she rode along the ranks – no Prussian stiffness, no Saxon chill. What an adornment the Sixth had got themselves. In these days of retrenchment still, a word in the King’s ear might be the saving of a troop if it came to further economies; and from such as the Princess Augusta, a word that could scarcely be resisted …

  Up and down the ranks, until Hervey had presented every officer and serjeant-major – she smiling the while, looking each man in the eye, a little Augustan stardust sprinkled on every dragoon, so that the meanest-bred thought himself superior, and the most hardened that he might yet have a soul.

  Armstrong above all, perhaps, had never looked more the part. Every piece of his metal glinted, and his leather shone like washed coal, or else was blanco’d like new-dug chalk, his aspect the personification of hard-won experience and loyalty unto death.

  And Collins, too – in his rightful place, with his troop, his character unblemished, his authority undiminished. What a business it had all been. But it mattered not, now, the charges withdrawn. Kat had been as good as her word – evidently; what a deal he owed her … in so many ways.

  But for the meantime he would mutter simply ‘prudential judgement’, and put it all from his mind, as he would too the question of who would replace Mr Rennie …

  The crown prince’s party was approaching. They made back quickly for the front.

  It was a pleasingly modest cortège, observed Hervey – all mounted (no carriages), half a dozen equerries and orderlies, and a lance escort of the same number.

  ‘Leave to carry on, ma’am?’

  As he said it he thought he ought to have expressed himself fully rather than in the abridged terms of the parade ground. However, she smiled and bowed. If she hadn’t any notion of what precisely he was saying, she could reasonably suppose that he himself had.

  He saluted, reined about, trotted front and centre, and drew his sword – the signal that he now took personal command of the parade.

  While the inspection had been taking place, the other two regiments had come up into line. The Sixth were drawn up on the right, with the Dutch 4 Regement Lichte Dragonder in the centre, and the Prussian Leib-Husaren-Regiment 1 on the left, the direction from which they’d arrived on the field at the eleventh hour of that close-run day in 1815. The crown prince slowed his charger to a walk as he came to the Hussars, and having served with the Prussians as a cadet proceeded along their front rank with all his famous affability. Then came his Dragonder, with familiar nods and as many smiles, and then to the Sixth.

  ‘Light Dragoons, Pres-e-e-ent … Arms!’

  Hervey let the words carry towards the prince’s party, the cautionary ‘Light Dragoons’ the privilege of the commanding officer alone. Then, reining left, put his charger into a trot to pay compliments at the junction with the Dutch.

  ‘Good afternoon, Colonel Hervey,’ said the prince, his accent guttural but not pronounced, returning the sword-salute with his hand. ‘It is a fine thing to see your regiment again after so long.’

  Hervey recovered his sword and returned the prince’s warm smile (‘Slender Billy’ might still answer to the name, sitting tall and long in the saddle – Hervey’s own age, but a major general before he was twenty-one). ‘It is a fine thing to be here again, sir.’

  They rode along the front rank, the prince nodding approvingly, with ‘good afternoons’ here and there to officers and dragoons alike. It was, after all, a day simply to ride over old ground, to mark the decade and a half since that day – a decade and a half of peace indeed, for Waterloo had confirmed Vienna, and Vienna had put an end to war.

  ‘Fine men, Colonel Hervey; fine horses too,’ said the prince. ‘I am so very gratified that His Majesty King George has seen fit to send them.’

  Hervey bowed.

  ‘And so we shall now take a little gallop across the field, and yours shall be the directing regiment, Colonel. Our objectif is La Belle Alliance.’

  The right was not always the directing regiment, and Hervey took it as a further compliment: ‘Sir,’ he replied, saluting as the crown prince and his party dispersed to their various posts.

  La Belle Alliance: was there ever a more aptly named rendezvous? – the inn on the Charleroi road where the duke had shaken hands with Prince Blücher after the battle. ‘Alte Vorwärts’ had little French, and the duke no German, so ‘Lieber kamerad’ and ‘Quelle affaire’ was all they could manage.

  And how well did Hervey recall the inn’s shelter that night, when he’d recovered the body of Serjeant Strange, wrapped it in a velvet curtain – blue velvet, the colour that in life had clothed him – lain down in the same room and slept, exhausted, oblivious of all without …

  ‘Colonel Hervey?’

  He woke. ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘You will permit me to ride with you?’

  Hervey tried not to look dismayed. ‘Ma’am, I … But of course. It is your regiment indeed.’

  And if she were to be thrown, and her regiment ride over her … Better not to think on it. ‘Ma’am, I would have my covering serjeant check the girth.’

  Serjeant Acton sprang from the saddle as the princess held up her skirt, and knew at once he’d face a deal of ribaldry at mess that night. He tightened the straps – and then those of the countess’s saddle – with singular despatch.

  ‘Thank you, Serjeant,’ said the princess, as Acton remounted; and then, to Hervey, ‘It is a most fine thing to have a regiment of cavalry keeping watch.’

  There was a blush to her face – and, he feared, to his too. He cleared his throat and spoke as blithely as he could – the first thing that entered his head: ‘We kept watch most of that day, the battle, ma’am, over on the left flank, until we were called to the centre towards the middle of the afternoon – to about where we stand now, as I recall, though there was a great deal of smoke. I think, however, that we shall ride the very ground over which we charged at the last and sent the French reeling. It was very well judged. The Duke of Wellington caught them just so.’

  As he finished he saw with relief the prince take off his hat and with a great flourish wave it in the direction of ‘the French’: ‘The whole line will advance!’

  The royal trumpeter sounded ‘Walk-March’.

  ‘Exactly as the duke did it,’ said Hervey to the princess as they billowed forward. ‘The very words and gesture, when we knew it must all be done, the French finished.’

  ‘Then what a day this is too,’ she said. ‘I never thought to see.’

  ‘Ma’am.’ But Hervey’s eyes were already on the prince, for he had to regulate the advance. He must trust to the princess to keep up, or else to Acton to rescue her if she didn’t.

  The first hundred yards let the brigade find its natural spacing, and then the prince’s trumpeter blew ‘Trot’. The line began elongating, as it always did, though Hervey kept the axis exactly parallel with the prince’s, so that the Dutch were pushed even more to the left, and there was a deal of swearing until the Prussians gave ground – just as any field day.

  He’d already decided to regulate the pace as well as the direction and dressing (the prince could check his own if he got too far in front), for it wasn’t the day for a melee, and he held the Sixth in a short trot as they went down the slope to the sunken lane that had unhorsed so many of Bonaparte’s cavalry, in turn forcing the Prussians to come back to a walk temporarily to avoid the shame of outrunning the directing flank. He saw and couldn’t help but smile, for they’d now have a devil of a scramble to cross the ditch, fall behind and then have to catch up – with even more swearing.

  The princess gave her gelding its head – in and then out of the lane in two easy bounds, with a short step between. Hervey saw – and she his admiring look. He glanced back to see the countess take the lane with the same ease. He need have no worries.

  Indeed he could now take his ease: the
lane was the only test between the ridge and the inn. Any horse could stumble in a rabbit hole, but there was nothing to check a regiment’s worth.

  He glanced behind again – the Sixth were in good order – and then left. The Dutch and the Germans appeared to have come to terms, but the prince was pulling ahead, so he extended the trot.

  And then the trumpeter sounded ‘Gallop’.

  With no enemy to charge and no shot and shell to discompose them, the line was better behaved than many he’d ridden, but he was determined nevertheless to keep them in his check. Up the slope beyond Hougoumont they raced, the Prussians pulling ahead until he held out his sabre very emphatically and they began to conform. How much rye grass they trod down he’d no idea, but nothing he supposed to that day – and corn. It had concealed many a man, and all who fell.

  Hoofs pounded – joyous noise! – and now they were half-way to La Belle Alliance, where they’d come on the battery, and he’d led the squadrons straight at the big 12-pounders that had tormented the duke’s line all day – ‘les belles filles de l’empereur’. The gunners had no fight left in them – they ought to have been able to get off a round of grape, but instead they raced for their horses or cowered under the guns. And the Sixth had fallen on them with rare savagery, the drivers – boys, some of them – crying as the sabres cut, dragoons standing in the stirrups for extra force in the downswing. No one who didn’t raise his hands was spared, and some who did found it too late.

  The princess galloped on his right. She sat so prettily and with such assurance – with courage, indeed, the pace now fast and the ground unknown. His dragoons would be able to see, too; it would do them no harm to admire their colonel-in-chief.

  And now La Belle Alliance was just a furlong ahead – the moment to give point. But the prince had said he wouldn’t risk a charge: he wanted the battle to claim no more men or horses.

  But the Prussians were once more forcing the pace, and Hervey cursed them roundly below his breath. Out went his sword again, and he glowered at their oberst – had he ever led a charge in battle? Till at last the deuced man checked his gallop, and in turn brought his hussars back into line.