Rumours Of War h-6

by Allan Mallinson

  How he had found his way Hervey could only wonder. True, they had followed the same road all along, but there had been many a time when it appeared but a white sameness in front of them, so that they might travel north or east or west without knowing, for they could see no stars on a night like this. Yet Martyn had somehow led them faithfully; Hervey could only hope that he too would be able to do so when the time came.

  He trusted he could. Many had been the time on the plain on nights as dark or snowy when he had learned how to keep direction and calculate the distance gone. But there he had known his ground (he fancied he knew every fold of it between Imber and Warminster), while here it was first footing. His Scripture crowded in again (he had recited long passages to keep his mind active as they rode). It might be the very Wilderness itself, or the unknown lands beyond the Jordan. Was this how Joshua, his first hero, had fared? And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth-aven, on the east side of Beth-el, and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country.

  Hervey prayed hard that it would soon be as Joshua had found.

  *

  It was two o’clock when the outlying pickets of the 15th Hussars challenged them: ‘Halt! Advance one and be recognized!’

  Lieutenant Martyn coaxed his weary charger a few more yards.

  ‘Halt! Parole?’

  ‘Blenheim. Sixth Light Dragoons, escort to General Paget.’

  ‘Advance, friend!’

  Martyn signalled for the escort to follow, taking post by the picket in order to see them all in – and that there were no French tagging on behind them.

  Hervey came last with Serjeant Emmet. ‘Clear.’

  ‘Very well. Serjeant Emmet, carry on, but do not off-saddle yet. Mr Hervey and I had better report first to the general.’

  ‘Ay, sir.’

  ‘Let them have a little corn.’

  ‘Ay, sir.’

  They dismounted. ‘Just loose his girth a little, Sykes,’ said Hervey, handing the reins to his groom. ‘He’s sure to blow himself up.’

  It was not too great a fault (and scarcely deserving of the word vice), but it was a great annoyance to have to struggle to do up a girth, and then to have it all slack again when they moved off. Some believed it was a sign of more general dishonesty in a horse, but Hervey had never found it so. He had rather thought it a sign of intelligence indeed, for he reckoned a horse must have a fair capacity to reason in order to connect the volume of wind in its lungs with the circumference of the girth.

  They warmed themselves at the inlying picket’s fire, taking turns as horse holders until all had managed to recover the full use of fingers and restore a degree of feeling in their feet. Hervey checked his gelding’s shoes, then he and Martyn took directions to Lord Paget’s billet.

  They trudged towards the church. ‘Have a look inside, Hervey. It might serve.’

  Hervey pushed one of the doors open. It was now shelter for the best part of a troop of the 15th Hussars, the horses packed in the side aisles like barrels in a hold, and the men themselves lying side by side in the nave without stepping room between them – and all as warm as toast, yet with no more than an oil lamp’s heat between a dozen of them.

  ‘No room for us there, I think.’

  Martyn sighed, his breath as white as everything around them. ‘A very seasonal response, Hervey.’

  Hervey smiled. The humour was more welcome for the hard conditions.

  Round the corner, by the priest’s house, they came on Lord Paget’s sentry.

  ‘Can’t let you pass, sir. My orders,’ said the hussar, a private man but a sure one. Sure and cosy, for the sentry fire blazed brighter even than the picket’s (there was no room for wood any longer in the church).

  ‘I command the general’s escort,’ explained Martyn, equably.

  ‘The general’s sleeping, sir. He’ll be up soon though.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know, sir, but I thinks as he’s going to Sirgoon while it’s still dark.’

  ‘Indeed!’ Martyn felt his prompt arrival doubly provident.

  ‘Where is the picket-officer?’

  ‘Sorry, sir, I don’t rightly know.’

  There was no reason he should. Martyn supposed he would have to go back to find the picket-corporal again.

  ‘Mr Martyn, what’s up?’

  The voice was unmistakable – brisk, even clipped.

  ‘Nothing is up, Captain Edmonds. But I should be obliged to know what are the general’s intentions.’

  Edmonds was wearing his cloak. It was covered in snow, and his Tarleton helmet looked like a besom that had been hard at work clearing a path. Yet he seemed every bit as comfortably at home as if that indeed was where he was.

  Joseph Edmonds – forty-two years old, Sir John Moore’s junior by only four, and half his life spent in the saddle, most of it on active service. He had advanced from cornet without payment, but for ten years and more he had been captain. He could not afford to purchase a majority (talk in the mess had it that his father was killed at Bunker Hill, or Saratoga, and that his mother had been left without a penny), and his prospects depended therefore on the enemy’s shot. Edmonds was not yet a bitter man, but his stock of civility had been run bare of late years.

  ‘Put very simply, Martyn, we march for Sahagun in an hour. Is there anything more you would know?’

  Martyn thought for a moment. ‘No, Edmonds, not a thing.’

  ‘Is that young Hervey you have with you?’

  ‘It is, sir,’ answered Hervey for himself.

  Edmonds said nothing, but seemed to nod his head. At least, snow fell from his Tarleton as if to say he did.

  When they got back to where the escort were gathered, outside a tithe barn filled with men and horses from the Tenth, there were camp-kettles already on the boil.

  ‘Does tha want a mashin’ wi’ us, sir?’ asked one of the dragoons, in a voice so alien that Hervey for an instant could not be sure what the man had said.

  ‘Tea, sir,’ explained a helpful one, his accent not far from that which Hervey knew in Wiltshire. ‘Would you like to have some with us?’

  Hervey was as much gratified by the offer as with the promise of the liquid itself, although the latter, when it came, revived him remarkably.

  ‘Tha’s a good knocker-up, sir! Us’d all say that.’

  Hervey was once more mystified.

  ‘He means you did ’em well tonight, sir – keeping ’em awake. Don’t you, Johnno?’

  Private Johnson had lately joined from C Troop. Hervey wondered at his blunt cheerfulness, while struggling to make sense of his syntax and enunciation. It was from a place far removed from his own, for sure; and further, he felt certain, than Corporal Armstrong’s.

  ‘Fall asleep in this an’ it’s t’dead knock all right!’

  This time he understood. It was a matter, he reckoned, of catching the all-but-absent definite article and the curiously compact vowels – not really so difficult with anything like a half-decent ear. If he could speak French and German he ought to be able to fathom a dragoon from the far north of his own country.

  Martyn, meanwhile, had sent word for the serjeants.

  Crook came up rubbing his hands as if relishing another four hours’ march, saluting as sharp as on parade. ‘Morning, sir!’

  Emmet, if not so obviously animated by the prospect, joined them not long after. Hervey could not imagine a troop better served by its NCOs than was A.

  Martyn listened to the parade states, gave a few orders, then told Emmet and Crook all he knew. There were a few questions, some answers, and then exchanges of compliments, before they dismissed to their duties.

  These were two different men, mused Hervey, and he would be pressed to choose which was best. He wondered how Armstrong might be in his turn.

  ‘Now, you dragoons, we’re for the off again in an hour – less,’ he could hear Crook piping.

  He closed to hear better.

  ‘
So them ’orses is to have a bit o’ water, good an’ warm, mind, a bit o’ corn and no ’ay. We don’t want the colic, do we? Off-saddle an’ give the back a good rub. And then you may have a bit of something yourselves.’

  ‘Where’s us off to, Serjeant?’ asked Private Johnson, his voice lively in its way, but somehow indifferent.

  ‘Sirgoon.’

  ‘Where’s that, Serjeant?’

  Hervey answered instead. ‘About four leagues to the east. There’s a brigade of French cavalry there.’

  Every man turned his head, and very intent. ‘Are we going to fight ’em, sir?’ asked one.

  ‘I think we must if that is where we go.’

  ‘I hope dere’ll be enough to go round!’ chirped an Irish wag.

  ‘How many’s that, then, Mick?’ asked the oldest sweat. ‘How many should we put you down for?’

  Tired men – exhausted men, some of them – yet come alive at the prospect of a fight. Hervey all but shook his head as he tried to fathom it. And it was not the fiery spirit of the flask that stirred them to arms, just the prospect of ‘Death to the French’. These men had little enough, but they had their pride, a rough sort of honour, and they had grumbled that it would be a mean homecoming if they left Spain with never a shot. For without a bit of blood on the sword they would be no better than the yeomen.

  Hervey felt the same. He had had a skirmish, but it had not been battle. The guns hadn’t roared, and bullets hadn’t sung past his ears; he hadn’t charged, sabre-drawn, knee-to-knee. That was what they all wanted. And they wanted it in the company of messing friends and companions, with the NCOs they knew, and the officers they trusted, for it was in that company they were emboldened to do it, and in sight of which they could never default. That much he thought he understood.

  He now withdrew to be with his thoughts. How they raced too, this way and that, like a horse turned out first time of a week. He sensed he was near the test. And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth-aven, on the east side of Beth-el, and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country. And the men went up and viewed Ai.

  Joshua was his favourite, still. He had read every word a hundred times. Joshua was brave in battle, but clever too, resourceful. That, he knew, was what these dragoons expected of him. He prayed that when the time came he would be first and foremost like Joshua, that when it was his time to command he would first be as cunning, and then as brave. He trusted that what Daniel Coates had taught him over long years – and in their way his family, and the fellows at Shrewsbury too – would give him the resource. And he prayed for the wit to recall it when the time came. And the men went up and viewed Ai. And they returned to Joshua, and said unto him, Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai; and make not all the people to labour thither; for they are but few.

  Hervey had no true idea how strong were the French at Sahagun. What was a brigade of cavalry? Anything from five hundred to five thousand. Neither, for that matter, did he know how strong was General Paget’s own command. Private Dooley fretted for a surfeit of Frenchman, but Hervey wondered how they would manoeuvre if they found themselves badly outnumbered. Not that he actually feared it. What was it they said? ‘The silly, sanguine notion that one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen encourages, and has sometimes enabled, one Englishman, in reality, to beat two.’

  Well, perhaps one Irishman might manage three or four, but only if the French fought with no art. He had observed Private Dooley about the lines; indeed, he had watched him in little short of amazement as he expended copious muscle power – and sometimes blood – where a grain of brainpower would have served as well. But Daniel Coates always said to beware the Irish, for the image could often as not be pretence, masking both aptitude and guile (and even low cunning). Dooley’s mask was indeed a good one if mask it was, and Hervey wondered at the NCOs and their patience with him. But then again, it was impossible not to like Private Dooley.

  At one o’clock, the general called Lieutenant Martyn to his quarters. Hervey went too, half surprised to gain admittance. He stood in a corner speaking to no one, no one speaking to him. Instead he observed.

  Lord Paget was tall, a fine-looking officer, thought Hervey, with the open expression of a man to trust and admire. The general shook hands with Martyn and told him to sit down, as he himself did to fasten on his spurs. Also in the room were gallopers from the regiments of General Slade’s brigade, together with Paget’s own quartermaster-general and ADCs – a dozen or so staff officers, well booted, assured. Hervey felt a shade awkward, like a doul summoned to the praepostors’ hall for the first time.

  ‘Well,’ began Paget, pulling tight the straps which doubly secured the box spurs. ‘You will ride in file to my rear at all times, until I order otherwise or we come in face of the enemy, in which latter case you shall bring the escort into line without ado – in one or two lines I leave to your good judgement.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘The point is, Mr Martyn, my thoughts will be entirely of the enemy and how to dispose my command against him. I do not have a care to directing my own escort.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Very well. We march for Sahagun. My information is that the French are not many there, but enough to give of a good fight if they stand. And stand I would expect them to do. So my intention is that General Slade, with the Tenth, shall beat through the town just before dawn, driving the French on to the guns so to speak – on to the Fifteenth, whom I shall have brought myself around the town, to the south, to an enfilade. A troop of your own regiment – Captain Edmonds’s – will stand to the north to block any escape in that direction. I trust your men and horses are rested?’

  This latter seemed more a punctuating statement than a genuine enquiry, but Martyn was not inclined to answer blandly. ‘Both are tired, General. But it will only tell if we must force the pace.’

  Lord Paget looked at him keenly. ‘Thank you, Mr Martyn.’ Then he stood up. ‘I am obliged.’

  Martyn saluted, turned and left the room, Hervey close behind.

  ‘He imagines we came in some hours ago, I suppose,’ he said, a shade ruefully. ‘And I dare say the weather’s taken a turn for the worse since he arrived. Four leagues to Sahagun, you reckon?’

  Hervey nodded.

  ‘One league in the hour, then, if we’re to be in place by first light.’

  Hervey had taken good note of Martyn’s candour. Many a man, he supposed, would have said yea to the general, thinking it somehow a dishonour to admit anything but readiness and capability. Scripture and many fine men had told him that truth was always the necessity, but he had also learned that truth must be founded on good judgement: it took an honest officer to hear the truth well.

  He woke to Martyn’s calculation. ‘That is what we made on the march here.’

  Martyn nodded. It was snowing again, heavier if anything, although the wind had moderated and the snow was at least falling more or less perpendicular. He turned up his cloak collar. ‘I would wish we had had a few hours more – just long enough for the men to lay their heads down, I mean. And the horses to have a little time with their backs eased. I don’t suppose Lord Paget will have a mind to lead in hand.’

  Sore backs, the bane of the cavalry; ill-fitting saddles and too long spent in them. In the Sixth they led as much as they rode (if it was ‘walk-march’ then as a rule it was ‘dismount’), but it was not the common practice. And when it came to the trot there was no avoiding the regulation seat, bumping along, sitting deep, stirrups long, legs (as the riding-master had it) ‘like tongs across a wall’. Even now, new as he was, Hervey could not see the point. Every officer would hack to the covert rising, and then follow the field with a bent leg; but the practice of the hunt was somehow thought inapt for a regiment on campaign.

  ‘Shall you have me take post at the rear?’ he asked, hoping the answer would be no.

  ‘Ay,’ said Martyn, trying to see the time by his Ellicott
hunter. ‘Emmet and Crook will do their share of driving, with a deal of curses I dare say, but some’ll go better for the odd kind word.’

  But words, kind or otherwise, would have been wasted. The wind rose again soon after they left the town, and whistled in their ears all the way to Sahagun. It blew snow over them, and then it blew it off again. The road – the whole country – was white, fetlock-deep, lit brilliantly from time to time by lightning, and occasionally by a good moon when the heavy-laden clouds parted. In places, against a hedge or where the snow had piled in the lee of a bank, the horses struggled knee-deep, and at times up to the forearm. Hervey grew worried: some of them looked fit to drop. There were too many with bellows to mend, and others lobbing and sobbing. But their riders were at least doing their best to help instead of slumping like woolpacks on a chapman’s nag – lengthening the reins to let the animal stretch, shifting weight in the saddle. For here was no mere march. Now there was a fair prospect before them: Frenchmen to charge and overturn. And every man would hold his comfort as nothing when it came to such a prospect as this.

  Hervey would count his comfort as naught too. He was tired, he was hungry and he was so cold that his head felt as if it were in a vice. He had tried riding up and down the line as Martyn had asked, but urging his mare to the extra effort proved progressively futile. And his want of sleep was telling too, for he was now fighting the drowsiness that came with the plodding and the numbing chill. He wanted only to lie down, not even by a fire, anywhere he might close his eyes; the same cold sleep the dragoons had been tempted by. He was dismayed that it should now tempt him, that he had to fight it so hard. And it was not just the drowsiness: there was a curious feeling in his stomach, the like of which he had never known. There had been no gut-twisting in the little affair of the point patrol, when they had gone at the enemy in the dark. But then it had been all of a sudden, so to speak; all of a business of draw swords and charge, no time for wondering what to do. It was not fear for himself – not for the cut of the sabre or its point, or the tearing of flesh and the splintering of bone which the carbine’s ball might bring; these he supposed he had a mind to bear as well as the next man. Rather was it the little voice within which asked if he would have the capability.