Beautiful Star and Other Stories

by Andrew Swanston

  And then a shell crashed into the roof of the barn. Timbers and tiles fell and in seconds the barn was on fire. It filled with smoke so thick that the boy could see no more than an arm’s length in front of his face but he knew that he could not stay where he was. He got to his feet and stumbled towards where he thought the door was. Those who could walk were doing the same. But the door had been replaced by a wall of fire. Some hesitated. The boy did not. He leapt through the flames and tumbled on to the earth outside. He crawled to the well and sat against its wall. From the barn came the crack of burning timber and the screams of the dying. Very few escaped.

  Too numb to move, he sat by the well not knowing what to do. Should he find somewhere to hide or should he stay where he was? Either way, he was as likely as not to die. If the British did not kill him, a French shell would. He stirred himself.

  All along the south wall, opposite the wood, the British had built fire steps from which to shoot over it. He dashed past the chateau and the yard in which the bodies of his father and his comrades still lay, jumped up on to an unoccupied fire step and vaulted over the wall into the clearing. Musket fire whistled around but he reached the edge of the wood unhurt.

  The trees, now broken and limbless, offered scant protection. French voices shouted at him to keep his head down and run back towards their lines. Weaving between the trunks and ducking under low branches, he ran as fast as he could until he emerged at the other side, where more troops were waiting for the order to advance. They too were too intent upon what lay before them to pay him much heed and he passed between them without being stopped.

  Further back he found a medical station. Drummer boys and buglers were fetching and carrying and bringing water to the injured. He took a pail from a row beside an ambulance, followed a boy to a stream which ran behind them into the valley, filled it with water, drank until his stomach was full, and carried what was left back up to the station. He could hear the battle raging in the valley but he could see nothing for the smoke. For all he knew it was almost over and the British were beaten, just as his father and the lieutenant had said they would be.

  Pushing all thought of his father to the back of his mind, all that afternoon he filled his pail from the stream and carried it back to the station, expecting each trip to be the last before he heard shouts of victory. But shouts of victory never came and, when word arrived that the Imperial Guard, the invincibles, had been beaten and were in retreat, they knew it was over. As the light began to fade, he and the other drummers joined the remnants of the 1st Regiment trudging back towards the lines of artillery, defeated, exhausted, broken.

  Gradually the smoke cleared and they could see the battlefield on which lay countless thousands of dead and wounded. The battle was over.

  1820

  At seventeen, he was young to be an innkeeper but with his father dead, killed in the service of France at Waterloo, he had been forced to take the inn on. Now he and his mother ran it together, she in the kitchen and he in the taproom.

  He never spoke of his own experiences at the battle but alone at night he did think of them. He thought of the noise and the stench and the wounded and the crippled, of the ill-fated attack on the farm at Hougoumont, of his father’s bravery and of the many thousands who had died. Most of all, he thought of how lucky he had been to survive.

  Veterans of the battle came to the inn to share their memories – sad memories now, of defeat and death, not of triumph and victory, as it once had been. Nor would there be victories to look forward to. The emperor was imprisoned on the island of St Helena in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, from where even he could not escape, and every Frenchman knew it. The king had returned with his family to Paris, Napoleon’s army was no more; in the towns and villages of France women and children starved. There was precious little for the drinkers to celebrate.

  Sometimes he wondered if he had been brave or cowardly or just plain foolish. Sometimes a veteran would try to regale him with tales of the battle; then he would excuse himself and leave the man to someone else. He did not wish to speak of it or to hear about it. Even his mother knew only that her husband had died bravely and that her son, a drummer boy, had mercifully survived. In this, she counted herself fortunate. Many others had been left widows and childless.

  The boy had made only one concession to his memories. He had asked his mother to clean and mend his uniform and had folded it away neatly in a chest in his bedroom. On the eighteenth day of June in each of the last five years he had taken it out, brushed it down and swore that his son, if he had one, would never wear one like it.

  * * *

  The button seller was travelling in Ireland when the duke’s letter arrived at the Blinks and Blinks offices, and he did not see it until he returned a month later.

  Business was harder to come by than it had been during the French wars and in Ireland he had been taking only modest orders from military outfitters and high-quality tailors and, at the age of thirty, was beginning to worry about the future. His salary, even with a small bonus at the end of each year if the Blinks brothers were happy with his work, had been reduced and he was no longer able to put a little aside for the future. Furthermore, he was away from his wife and daughter much of the time. But, unlike many of those who had fought at Waterloo, and the widows of those who had died there, he had a position, albeit a modest one, and he knew that he should be grateful for it.

  The first he knew of the letter was when the brothers summoned him into their office. The Duke of Wellington, they said, had recently visited Birmingham and had made contact with them. He had inquired about the button seller who had been at Waterloo, had described him as slightly built, polite and mounted upon a small cob, and had asked if the whereabouts of the man were known. On learning that he was still in the employ of the firm but was presently in Ireland on business, the duke had had a letter delivered to await his return.

  One of the brothers handed him the letter. ‘We were unaware that you were known to the duke,’ he said. The button seller, at a loss as to how to reply, shuffled his feet and kept his eyes on the floor. ‘I do not recall your mentioning it.’

  He looked up. ‘I was able to perform a small service for the duke, although why he would wish to contact me, I could not say.’

  ‘What was the nature of the service?’ asked the other brother.

  ‘Merely the delivery of a message. There was no-one else available at the time. I did not think it worth mentioning.’

  ‘His Grace apparently thinks otherwise. Perhaps you should open the letter.’

  ‘Mr Blinks, I would rather read it in private.’

  ‘Nonsense. The letter has been delivered to this office and therefore concerns all of us. Kindly open it and tell us what his Grace has to say. After all, it might be a large order.’ He glanced at his brother. ‘We could certainly do with one.’

  Reluctantly, the button seller broke the seal and opened the letter. It was brief and he read it quickly. Then he read it again. ‘His Grace invites me to Apsley House as soon as it is convenient. He does not say why.’ Apsley House, looking out over Hyde Park, had been purchased by the duke from his elder brother, Richard. The London news sheets had reported that the duke had employed the celebrated architect Benjamin Dean Wyatt to carry out extensive renovations on the interior.

  The eyebrows of both brothers shot up. ‘Apsley House, eh?’ asked one. ‘A great honour.’

  ‘Indeed, and we would wish to know how it is that the duke considers you worthy of it.’

  ‘I really could not say, sir, but I shall be sure to inform you when I return from London.’

  ‘So you will accept the invitation.’

  ‘It would be discourteous not to and, if I decline it, I might never discover what it is the duke wants of me.’

  ‘Does he suggest a date?’

  ‘He does. He proposes an appointment at 10 o’clock on the morning of next Wednesday. That is in eight days’ time. May I be permitted to travel to London,
as his Grace requests?’

  Again the Blinks brothers exchanged a look. ‘We would never wish to incur the duke’s displeasure, but your salary will be adjusted accordingly. We cannot afford to pay you for not working.’

  It was a price the button seller would have to pay. If the journey to London cost him a little money, so be it. ‘Very well, sirs. I will depart for London on Saturday and aim to be back a week later.’

  Apsley House, widely known as Number One, London, for its position as the first house travellers came to when arriving from the west, was every bit as imposing as he had expected. Four great columns rose above three arches and three rows of seven windows each looked out over Hyde Park.

  When he arrived punctually at ten o’clock, he was met by a servant who escorted him to the library. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, six high-backed library chairs were set around the room, beside each one a small table. It was an informal, welcoming room, no doubt where the duke met his less illustrious visitors. The servant announced him and the duke put aside the book he was reading and rose from his chair. Almost a head taller than the button seller, he wore a black coat, white stock and black trousers. He was just as the button seller remembered him – slim, upright, somewhat forbidding.

  He held out his hand. ‘Here you are, sir, the cob man himself. I doubted we would meet again and I am happy to see you.’

  The button seller shook the duke’s hand and bowed his head. ‘And I you, your Grace. I am flattered that you should remember me. There was much going on when last we met.’

  The duke smiled. ‘Indeed there was.’ He indicated a chair. ‘Sit and tell me what happened to you at the battle. I assumed that you had been a casualty.’

  The servant returned with two glasses on a silver tray. He put one on the table beside the button seller. The duke raised his glass in a silent toast. ‘I am listening.’

  The button seller took a sip from his glass and began. He explained that after he had delivered the message to Marshal Kempt, he had managed to get back to the allied lines, but without his cob. While the battle had raged, he had wandered about behind the lines for a while, uncertain as to what to do, until a medical orderly had seen him and asked for his help getting the most badly wounded on to the ambulances ferrying them to the farmhouse at Mont St Jean. He had spent the rest of the day of the battle working with the medics, carrying stretchers and patching up minor wounds, and having very little idea of how the battle was progressing. It had not been until they had heard cheering that he and some of the orderlies had left their posts and ventured to the top of the ridge. There they had seen that the Prussians had at last arrived and the French Imperial Guard were beaten, and had known that the battle was won.

  The duke listened in silence, his gaze never leaving the button seller. ‘And you managed to find your way back to Birmingham.’

  ‘I did, your Grace. I was fortunate.’

  The duke nodded. ‘Perhaps you were, but some say I too am fortunate. I believe that fortune is what a man makes of it. And you performed a signal service to your country. At last the Corsican is safely marooned on the island of St Helena, from which not even he will escape, and England is safe again.’

  ‘There were many on that day who gave much more than I did, sir.’

  ‘There were many indeed who gave their lives or suffered terrible wounds, but with very few exceptions, they were soldiers carrying out orders. You were a civilian and need not have taken that message to Kempt.’ He laughed. ‘I could not have had you shot if you had refused. By doing as I asked, you risked you own life and saved others.’ He paused to take a sip from his glass. ‘As a civilian, I cannot award you the Waterloo Medal, much as I would like to. I can only thank you and ask if there is anything I can do for you in return for your service.’

  The button seller had not expected this. He had not really expected anything at all. A few minutes with the duke, perhaps, certainly no orders for buttons, nor any sort of reward for what he had done. Indeed, he had scarcely thought of the matter in the five years since that day. He thought of his wife and daughter at home in Birmingham and took a deep breath. ‘I am looking for a new position, your Grace, one that does not so often take me from my family. If you were able to suggest a suitable opportunity, I would count myself more than amply rewarded.’

  The duke scratched his chin. ‘It so happens that my brother is Master of the Royal Mint and I believe that he may be able to help. I will speak to him and ask him to contact you at Blinks and Blinks in Birmingham. How would that suit you?’

  ‘I should be most grateful, your Grace. I do hope it was not impertinent of me to ask.’

  ‘Not at all. Leave it with me.’ He rose and extended his hand. ‘And I thank you for your service.’

  The button seller bowed. ‘And I thank you, your Grace.’

  A month later, the button seller and his family moved to London. They rented a small house in Smithfield, near to the premises of the Royal Mint, where he had accepted a position at nearly twice the salary he had received at Blinks and Blinks. He never again spoke of the battle or his part in it.

  The story of the button seller, or ‘the cob man’, was one the Duke of Wellington himself liked to tell.

  Several contemporary accounts mention the French drummer boy who managed to get into the Hougoumont farm.

  The names of neither the button seller nor the drummer boy are known.

  Published by The Dome Press, 2018

  Copyright © 2018 Andrew Swanston

  The moral right of Andrew Swanston to be recognised as the author

  of this work has been asserted in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organisations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-0-9957510-4-0

  The Dome Press

  23 Cecil Court

  London WC2N 4EZ

  www.thedomepress.com