Colonel Shaw turned once more, this time with less of an enquiry in his voice.
Suddenly agitated, the men began gabbling among themselves, until the supplier of wine spoke up for them, and stern-faced. ‘Sim, senhor. We will take the boats across. We will gather twenty men more – half an hour, that is all – and then we will take the boats to Senhor Sir Wellesley!’
Colonel Shaw merely smiled, and nodded.
The men smiled too as their confidence swelled.
It was an anxious half-hour for the two of them, crouched waiting in one of the barges. Colonel Shaw explained what he intended. He wanted the barges to cross to the south side as soon as the men returned, for although the French would see, and stand-to-arms, and they would lose surprise, he couldn’t wait on this side until the infantry were ready to cross, risking discovery by a French patrol. He told Hervey he wanted him to take charge of the boats, while he slipped into the city to discover Soult’s intentions. ‘And, Mr Hervey, I shall commend you in very decided terms to Sir Arthur Wellesley. You and your dragoons.’
It was as much as any cornet could wish to hear, and with Sir Edward Lankester’s words of but a few hours before, it promised certain advancement. This, indeed, was the fortune of war; and he had never expected to be favoured by it, let alone so soon. Daniel Coates used to speak of the bullet’s brute chance: was there such a thing as a lucky soldier, a man whom fortune naturally favoured? Was that why they had found the boat hidden in the reeds? Perhaps that was Colonel Shaw’s luck, though, not theirs. Such a man, who devilled behind the enemy’s lines, needed it in the largest measure. But lucky they had been, as well, to be his escort. Hervey smiled: such notions were absurd – but they were agreeable. ‘We are honoured, Colonel.’
When the men returned, it was with nearer fifty than twenty, and all of them armed.
‘Well, Mr Hervey,’ said Colonel Shaw, allowing himself to look gratified. ‘Here is your command. You will never have another like it!’
Hervey could not know it, but his luck was greater than he supposed. As the Porto boatmen and the other willing hands began paddling the barges across the still-silent Douro, the commander-in-chief himself stood watching from the terrace-heights of the Serra convent. He said not a word, while about him artillerymen manhandled four six-pounders and a howitzer into position, and below and a little further upstream, taking the greatest care to conceal themselves from any sharp-eyed sentry on the heights opposite, men of the 3rd (East Kent) Regiment – the Buffs – were assembling in the narrow streets. It had been the work of but an hour; the work and good fortune, for Corporal Collins had ridden straight into Sir Arthur Wellesley and his staff not a mile from Villa Nova. Later, Collins would recount how the commander-in-chief had at once seen the possibilities in Colonel Shaw’s despatch, sending gallopers to the advance guard, and how the horse artillery had come careering past them not twenty minutes later, gunners hanging on to the limbers for dear life; and then the Buffs, doublemarching, sweating like pigs but grinning ear to ear, knowing they would be first at the enemy.
Corporal Armstrong stood at attention before the Buffs’ commanding officer. The colonel was red in the face and short of breath, as every one of his men, but he was concerned for one thing only. ‘Four boats, you say, Corporal?’
‘Yes, sir. They’re coming across now.’
‘Very well. Is there any view of the far bank to be had from this side?’
‘There are no houses near where the barges’ll come, sir, and it’s very reedy. I think it would be better to take a look from upstairs here, sir.’
But the houses were strongly barred, and in any case the colonel was certain of his instructions: Sir Arthur Wellesley wanted him to cross the river straight away and establish a strongpoint so that they could ferry the entire army over as they arrived. The French would be sure to launch the most ferocious counter-attacks as soon as they realized what was happening, and everything would depend on how strongly the Buffs could lodge themselves.
The colonel turned to his leading company commander. ‘You shall just have to choose your ground when you’re over. Make sure you mark your positions for the gunners. And take off your jackets: it’s just possible the French’ll be confused if they don’t see red.’
‘Very good, sir.’ The captain turned about. ‘Jackets off, serjeantmajor. Company will advance.’ He nodded to Armstrong. ‘Lead on, Corporal!’
As the Buffs began filing to the river’s edge, Hervey and his little command began making headway. He would willingly have taken up pole or paddle, but the boatmen would have none of it; the river was theirs. Instead, he stood in the bows of the leading barge, searching the opposite bank. He wondered how long they would have to wait for Sir Arthur Wellesley’s men to come up. He had no idea where they had bivouacked that night, how near they might be, or even how long it would take Corporal Collins to reach the contact point. He reckoned they would have to wait until nightfall, at least. Oughtn’t he to have gathered some willing citizens of Porto to make barricades and defend the quay where they would land? But that must have occurred to Colonel Shaw; perhaps he judged that it would surrender all surprise? Perhaps, though, in slipping into the city, the colonel intended raising such a party? He wished he had asked. Did he have the authority to act on his own initiative? Or had Colonel Shaw supposed that it was sufficient merely to instruct a cornet to do something, with no need of elaboration as to what he might not do? These things were knotty. In any case, his first priority was to get the barges to the south side; he could always slip back across in the skiff . . . He turned and scanned the enemy bank with his telescope. It was as deserted as when he had first crossed.
The barges plied effortlessly. The steersmen knew the river well, the crews bent hard to the oars or put their shoulders to the poles, and the snatching current did not trouble them. Hervey, his telescope now trained on the south bank, spotted Armstrong at the waterside, with men either side of him – local men, he supposed. Perhaps he should take them across at once to guard the landing? But what if the French caught them as the barges ran in? They would then have lost the only means of getting the infantry across. Perhaps if he risked just the one barge . . .
He jumped to the bank as they grounded among the reeds. He saw the jacketless men, and the service muskets – and he breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Dawes, Third Foot, captain of the grenadier company,’ said a man in his mid-twenties with cropped black hair.
Hervey took his hand, then put on his Tarleton and saluted. ‘Cornet Hervey, sir, Sixth Light Dragoons.’
‘We shall cross at once, if you please,’ replied the captain, with resolution rather than certainty. ‘You had better tell me what you can of the other side.’
‘I cannot tell you much, sir, for I have only been at the water’s edge. You will have to scramble about six feet up onto the quay itself: the river is low and the barges sit likewise, as you see. There’s a steep ascent to a fair-size building, cobbled all the way – very steep in fact, but I would reckon the building a good place to occupy. I can’t see how the French might take the quay, or even fire on it, without first clearing the place.’
‘Very well, Mr Hervey, that will do. Now, do you suppose these barges will take a couple of dozen men each?’
‘That is what the boatmen say. I will accompany you; I have a little Portuguese.’
The captain half smiled, as if pitying the youthful eagerness. ‘No, Mr Hervey. That will not be necessary. You may leave this to the Third. I imagine you have other business.’
Could he argue? These were his boats, were they not? ‘Sir, I think I ought to—’
‘No, thank you, Mr Hervey. This is infantry business. Your horse will be waiting somewhere, no doubt!’
And the captain of grenadiers, with the weight of a hundred picked men behind him, brushed aside the cornet of light dragoons and jumped into the first barge.
CHAPTER NINE
FIELD PROMOTION
Two hours lat
er
‘Where in heaven’s name have you been, Hervey?’ Sir Edward Lankester sounded like a man irritated by a trifle, but to whom no trifle was unimportant. And he was tired, as they all were, but without Hervey’s thrill of crossing and recrossing the Douro.
‘We escorted Colonel Shaw to the river and—’
‘Well, well, it has all taken a deal longer than I supposed, and now we are bidden to be two leagues east of here as many minutes ago.’ Sir Edward detected muddle on someone’s part, and he had a great disdain for disorder of any kind.
Hervey was a shade crestfallen. He had not expected words of praise (Sir Edward could not have known what they had been about at the river), but it felt doubly unfair that he should suffer his troop-leader’s irritation on account of someone else’s folly. But that was war, as Daniel Coates used to say. He wondered what would have happened if he had not found the troop at all as they made their way up the Douro valley: he didn’t seem much missed – he could have stayed with the infantry. And there was heavy cannonading at the river, now. The river was the place to display, no doubt of it. Armstrong would have been in his element!
But Sir Edward evidently had other orders, and the battle moved on. He could still make his report, later, in writing. But what would he write? He could not speak of his own part in things. He could commend – he must commend – Corporals Armstrong and Collins, of course. For himself, if his service was in any way singular, he need not worry, for there would in due course be Colonel Shaw’s despatch. But, looking back on things, with the infantry having to fight their way into Oporto, what was so special about rowing a skiff across the Douro?
‘Hervey?’
He woke suddenly, having touched his helmet to Sir Edward and fallen back routinely to the cornet’s place in troop column. ‘What? Oh, I—’
Lieutenant Martyn, A Troop’s second in command once more, now that the squadron was reunited, looked as fresh as a daisy, his uniform just as if it had come from a portmanteau, although he could not have had a great deal more sleep than the rest. ‘I said that it sounded hot work in Oporto.’
‘Ah,’ said Hervey, supposing he had been nodding for several minutes. ‘The infantry – they’ve found some boats and are crossing the river.’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Martyn, sounding almost accusing. ‘No matter. That is what we are supposed to be about. Somewhere upstream, a ford or something. Do you not know of it?’
Hervey had to think; he was still not wide awake. ‘No, I . . . that is, we didn’t patrol east of the city. I don’t recall why. I think the French were quite strong there yesterday.’
‘The Sixteenth had a bruising, yes. We saw them on the way up. They say Stewart mishandled it.’
Hervey found himself unusually without appetite for Martyn’s news. He wanted only to nod in the saddle. For some reason, Brigadier-General the Honourable Charles Stewart was not popular with the regiment. Martyn had never ventured any opinion, only fact, but others had voiced theirs – that Stewart was a young man who owed his rank and place to the influence of his brother, Lord Castlereagh, the man who had secured command of the army for Sir Arthur Wellesley. To Hervey, General Stewart was not an especially young man – thirty-one, closer in age to Sir Arthur Wellesley than he was to Stewart; but others believed he had neither experience nor aptitude for generalship. That much was the common tattle of the mess, among the cornets at least, who after all only repeated what they heard.
‘How so?’ he answered, but with little enthusiasm.
Lieutenant Martyn shortened his reins as the troop broke into a trot. ‘Don’t know the particulars, but I had it from one of the Sixteenth yesterday that he ordered them to charge in the most unsuitable country. They were really quite badly cut up.’
Hervey wondered whether that meant as badly as the Buffs might be cut up, for the cannonade at the river was intensifying by the minute, and it could only spell the hottest fighting at the quay. The cavalry could have its tribulations, and bloody ones too, but they were not the normal currency of their trade. The Sixteenth were cut about, but it was by some mishap, a thing infrequent enough to provoke comment such as Martyn’s now. The infantry, on the other hand, found heavy casualties an attendant misfortune. The cornets might disdain their legionary ways, thinking the cavalryman superior for his independence – or rather, for his worth other than mere volleying – but when Hervey saw a company going to it as he had the Third’s grenadiers, he could not but admire them.
They rode east and a little north for a full five miles, in dead ground so as not to be observed from the far bank of the Douro, at the main in a trot, cantering occasionally where the going favoured it, and pulling up to a walk once or twice in broken country among the vineyards. It shook Hervey back to life, and while he had started the ride fretting for the action at the crossing, by the end he was seized again with the peculiar thrill that was the cavalryman’s, riding not to the sound of the guns, but to some bold and distant deed that might make the work of the infantry easier – or even unnecessary.
They were not too late reaching Avintas, as Sir Edward had feared they might be, and as they slowed to descend to the Douro, they saw the little force which Sir Arthur Wellesley had hastened there, to the one crossing-point upstream of Oporto of which he had certain intelligence. A squadron of the 14th Light Dragoons stood in line in the shade of some cork oaks by the river, while two six-pounders from the horse artillery were unlimbering to the rear. Their purpose was not immediately apparent, however; at least to Hervey.
‘What do you suppose is afoot, Martyn?’
‘Deuced if I know,’ replied the troop lieutenant, shielding his eyes from the bright, overhead sun. ‘I can’t make out any French at all.’
‘I don’t imagine they’ll have given up a ford without a fight. Shall the Fourteenth dismount to flush them out?’
‘What choice do they have? As far as I can see, it’s a deal too trappy for saddlework.’
Hervey had thought the same.
‘Ah, there’s Stewart, by the look of things,’ said Martyn suddenly.
Hervey saw a hussar officer cantering the length of the Fourteenth’s line. From the animation which followed he concluded that the enemy was close. He wondered if General Stewart had seen their troop approaching. If he had, would he wait for them?
He saw him raise his sword arm and wave his sabre in the direction of the village, and the Fourteenth take off into the trees. Perhaps there were but a few French, and the going not so trappy after all?
Musketry began at once. A Troop, with the advantage of high ground, saw it all: powder-smoke inside the grove – the French must have had sharpshooters not fifty yards from where the Fourteenth had stood! And the squadron’s six-pounders could not support them; they had neither target nor clear line of fire.
‘Christ!’ snarled Martyn. ‘Don’t they see how deep is that wood? The deuced fools!’
Sir Edward Lankester saw. ‘Into line! Draw carbines! Load!’
A hundred rammers clattered like a water frame.
‘Advance! Right wheel!’
It was done adequately rather than neatly. The slope did not permit of the usual pivot, but with the aid of a deal of cursing by the NCOs, the troop managed to deploy in two ranks knee-to-knee. As junior cornet, Hervey took post on the right and rear of the second serjeant, in the second rank. He had no line of fire, but the job of the rear rank was to support the front, either with the sabre if the enemy closed, or by taking their place with loaded carbine if they were too hard pressed. He had no idea what they faced. Even to his subaltern eye the prospect of launching after the Fourteenth into such country was perilous to say the least.
In five minutes the first of the Fourteenth’s men came staggering from the wood, unhorsed and bloody. In two more, half the squadron were out, badly bruised. The quartermaster spurred from the trees, bellowing at them to clear the front. Others followed, and loose horses – and then voltigeurs, emboldened by the effect of their mu
sketry. At a hundred yards, Hervey knew, the advantage was all with the French. To close with them now would take the strongest nerve.
‘Return carbines! Draw swords!’ barked Sir Edward.
Nerve indeed, gasped Hervey! Out rasped a hundred sabres. His heart began pounding.
‘At the trot, advance!’
The French opened fire immediately. The shooting was wild, but there was plenty of it. More than one ill-aimed ball struck. The horse next to Hervey’s squealed as a bullet gouged through its mouth. A dragoon in front of him toppled forward stone dead. Others fell to his left – he couldn’t make out who. It was like a parade in slow time. He wanted to dig-in his spurs and close with the voltigeurs – they all did – but Sir Edward Lankester knew what would follow if they galloped at the wood. He wanted his troop in hand. He had panicked the French into firing early, knowing he could close the distance at a fast trot before they could reload. He was gambling, but what choice did he have?
A ball ricocheted off Hervey’s scabbard and hit the man next to him painfully but harmlessly in the thigh. Another struck the dragoon next to the right marker in the throat. He made a noise like a hissing kettle as he fell from the saddle, sword hanging from his wrist by the leather knot as his hand tried to close the wound. Hervey winced: Meadwell, a good man, smart and decent. Would someone help him?
Too late: the front rank was into the trees, sabres slashing. Hervey looked for a mark as they closed up behind them, but there was none. The voltigeurs wouldn’t stand against steel. No one would if they could run instead.
‘Halt! Halt! Halt!’
The rear rank pulled up just short of the trees. Hervey glanced left: it was a good, straight line, ready to support the front rank if they pressed into the wood or cover them if they withdrew.
‘Front rank retire!’
Sir Edward burst from the trees, his expression keen, but for all the world as if he were drawing a fox covert. There was blood on his sabre, and on a dozen of the dragoons’ that followed him out. Two or three had lost their Tarletons – not the best of caps for a fight in the woods – but they all looked in good order and high spirits. Hervey cursed his luck.
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