A Regimental Affair mh-3

by Allan Mallinson

  Private Painter slid from the saddle to crouch by them, carbine at the aim. If he were frightened, he didn’t show it. ‘Crawl to the sledge, ma’am. We can fight ’em off from there. They won’t want to close with us.’

  Henrietta did as she was told, for Morris was dead. Painter prised the carbine from his hand and took off his pouch belt, then crawled to Henrietta’s side. ‘Don’t worry, ma’am. I’ve never missed so much as a hare.’

  But Private Painter did not have a repeating carbine, and was able to fire only once in the sudden rush of Shawanese. He knelt to aim. One brave fell clutching his chest, but before the dragoon could so much as bite the top off the next cartridge, a Hudson’s Bay tomahawk split open his chest like a spatchcock. Henrietta fought hard not to faint.

  The warriors, heads shaven but for a topknot, cheeks stippled red with warpaint, seized the troop horses. One brave pulled the driver from under the traces, pushed him to his knees and hacked his head from his shoulders as if he were butchering a sheep. Another, taller than the rest, and wearing a gold nose-ring, took his scalping knife and knelt by Corporal Atyeo’s lifeless body. He grasped the long fair hair with his left hand – so special a prize. He cut the scalp with two deft slices – one with and one against the sun – then loosened the skin with the point of the knife, and pulled with his feet against Atyeo’s shoulders until the scalp came away with a sucking sound.

  Henrietta had already hidden her eyes, but her sobs came all the more.

  It was the sight of Atyeo’s scalp that raised Armstrong’s blood to the boil as he bore down the slope screaming murder at them. ‘Fight me! Fight me! You bloody bastards, you bloody heathen, coward bastards! Fight me, any one of you!’

  The Shawanese were stunned.

  Armstrong leaped from his mare still at full tilt. The point of his sabre went clean through Atyeo’s defiler. He stood and roared his challenge the more. ‘Fight me – any of you!’

  One brave launched at him with a tomahawk, but Armstrong merely sidestepped and took off the man’s hand with a neat stroke. ‘That’s it! That’s it! Come on you savages – one by one. There’s a different cut for every bastard of you!’

  But he didn’t see the warrior crouching behind. The tomahawk struck at that defiant head and stopped the tirade abruptly. Henrietta’s frantic sobbing sounded ever louder in the sudden silence.

  A brave who wore two eagle feathers at his throat, and carried a rifle, walked towards the sleigh and pulled Henrietta from under it. She had the carbine in her hand still, though he made no attempt to take it. She pulled her arm free – he did not grip it hard. He took several steps back, as if to admire his prize. She levelled the carbine and squeezed the trigger. The recoil snapped her wrist like a twig, and the rifle flew from her hands. She screamed in pain, turned and ran back towards the bridge, sobbing wildly. A warrior trotted his pony to bar her way. She scrambled down the bank to cross below, but the ice broke as she took the first step. She plunged up to her shoulders, the shock silencing her. Still she fought. She seized at the reeds on the bank, and somehow managed to drag herself out, watched silently the while by the Shawanese. Then the cold began to numb, where first it had bitten. What little strength was left was leaving her, and she knew it.

  She began to sob uncontrollably. ‘Oh, my baby, my baby! Oh Matthew! Matthew! Please God! Please God!’

  She was on her knees before the warriors. It was snowing again, and bitterly, bitterly cold.

  ‘Please, please!’ she cried. If only the Indian would spare her, she could drive the sleigh the last few miles to safety – for all the cold, and her dousing, and her broken wrist. She knew she could do it. She must do it – for her baby, for Matthew.

  The warrior with two feathers cradled his rifle in the crook of his arm, and fired. The sleigh horse fell dead in the traces. He turned and motioned the braves to follow, and the Shawanese rode off taking the other horses with them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  RECKONINGS

  Fort Brownstown, next day

  Seton Canning spoke very softly. ‘And that is as much as we could make out, Hervey. Those dragoons must have fought like lions for her.’

  Hervey nodded slowly, using every ounce of his strength to keep his composure. He wanted to give way, but duty bound him tight even now. ‘What an end. What a terrible, terrible end.’ His voice cracked tellingly.

  Seton Canning watched him anxiously, unable to find any word to help.

  ‘And Henrietta – she . . . ?’

  ‘Hervey, I am sure she was not . . . touched by any of them. She lay under a buffalo hide, huddled up to the horse. There was no fear in her eyes. She even looked – I can hardly say this – peaceful, almost. But she’d been soaked from head to foot. That much was clear. Whether she had tried to hide by the river, I just don’t know. The snow had covered all the tracks.’

  Hervey stayed silent for a full minute. ‘Thank you, Harry. Thank you for . . . I think I should like to be left to myself for now, if you please.’

  Seton Canning rose, but Hervey had one more thought. ‘Corporal Collins is trying to track the war party, you say?’

  The lieutenant shook his head. ‘It’s not a case of trying, Hervey. Collins won’t give up till he’s got every one of them with a noose round their neck.’

  Hervey nodded again. ‘The rest of the Shawanese we backed away easily enough when you’d left. They were a sorry sight. The Indian Department men could scarcely believe it.’ It seemed to make it more incredible still that Henrietta should have died this way.

  ‘A few days’ cold and . . .’

  ‘Yes, Harry. Nature doesn’t seem to spare her own, even.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘No matter.’

  In solitude, there was nothing to stand between Hervey and his darkest thoughts. Every instance that might have averted Henrietta’s death, every occasion that Lord Towcester’s conduct had given him just cause to protest to higher authority – and there had been many, if only he had possessed the resolve to use them – paraded before him like ranked troops at a review. Even the vision of Sir Abraham Cole and Manvers Priory, where yet they might have been enjoying their wedded bliss, loomed like some infernal spectre. He buried his head in his hands at the sudden vision of a crib on the fine lawn of that gentle mansion. How might their daughter ever forgive him when she learned the truth?

  There was a knock, and the surgeon came in. ‘Good morning, Hervey. I’m so very, very sorry. I can give you something, later – if you want to sleep, that is.’

  ‘Thank you, Ritchie. Perhaps I’ll be glad of it then, but not at the moment.’

  ‘Ay . . . ay. Whenever you’re ready.’

  ‘Is there any more news?’

  The surgeon sighed. ‘No. No sign of consciousness yet. But he’ll live, I’m pretty certain of it. Any man that can survive this long will live. That shako is a hell of a fine thing. It took the force from the blow, and it’s as well that it broke his skull, for that’s what put Armstrong out as if he were dead.’

  ‘But how did he survive the cold then, when . . .’

  ‘Henrietta was soaked to the skin, so Canning told me. She was only minutes from death as soon as that happened, unless someone could have helped her. Armstrong? Well . . .’

  ‘Enough said, Ritchie. Thank you. Let’s just pray that Armstrong recovers his faculties.’

  ‘Ay, let’s pray that. Well, I’d better get back to see that he’s still breathing properly. I’m so very sorry, Hervey.’ He put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You know . . . that is . . . the cold is not so fearsome a death as others. Henrietta would have slipped into a peaceful sleep. She . . .’

  Hervey gave the surgeon what thankful smile he could manage, and sank back in his chair as the door closed. The clock struck the quarter and then the half-hour, and many were his visions of Henrietta in that time – happy visions of childhood, courtship and wedding day, shared perhaps by others; and there were more intimate ones, too, of which he alone c
ould know.

  At length he buttoned up his tunic, rose, and left the room.

  ‘His lordship will see you now, Hervey,’ said the adjutant, in a voice distinctly subdued.

  The commanding officer’s temporary quarters were only a dozen yards from where Hervey had been alone with his thoughts, but they might have been a league away. He put on his shako and said he was ready. The adjutant opened the door, and both entered.

  Lord Towcester nodded to acknowledge Hervey’s salute. ‘You’d better sit down, in the circumstances, Captain Hervey.’

  ‘I should rather stand, if you please, your lordship.’

  The lieutenant colonel looked a little taken aback. ‘Very well. Then let me express my deepest regrets at your very sorry news.’

  Hervey ignored the sentiments. ‘Your lordship, there is one thing which puzzles me. Why was my wife leaving the fort, and by that road?’

  ‘Captain Hervey, I hardly think this is the time or—’

  ‘I am sorry, your lordship, but I very much consider that it is. My wife had come here to see me – there is no ordinance against that – and the road she was on had been closed by order of the Americans and myself.’ Hervey’s manner was cold, insistent, but respectful still.

  Lord Towcester’s eyes showed no more warmth than they had ever done. His mouth had closed to a slit, and his words began to come with a hiss. ‘Was I expected to know that, sir?’

  ‘But why did you send her away?’ Hervey’s anger was now only barely concealed.

  ‘Did I say that I had, sir?’

  ‘Do you deny it?’ Still Hervey kept his anger just in check, though Lord Towcester could not know how hard he struggled.

  ‘Captain Hervey, your tone is becoming impertinent!’

  Hervey’s tone was still as cold as the air outside, and seemingly as calm. ‘Why did you send my wife away, sir?’

  Lord Towcester huffed. ‘Because, sir, she had taken to meddling!’

  ‘I beg your lordship’s pardon?’ The contempt was undisguised.

  ‘It seems that she had written to the Duke of Huntingdon, raking over dead coals.’

  ‘I consider your sending her away improper. And I need hardly add that if you had not done so she would be alive at this minute.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Even if you did not know the road was closed, I consider that it was a reckless thing to have done, and I shall make my complaint to General Rolt.’

  ‘You impertinent devil!’ roared Towcester. ‘Mr Dauntsey, you will take this officer’s sword!’

  The adjutant stood open-mouthed. ‘My lord! Captain Hervey has just suffered the most wretched bereavement!’

  ‘That is no excuse for insubordination! Take his sword, sir!’

  ‘There will be no need of that,’ rasped Hervey. ‘I shall send in my papers this very day. But I shall also lay before the major general my complaints, including your late conduct at Niagara, and certain other matters of which I have been made aware.’

  ‘How dare you, Captain Hervey! What conduct? What matters?’

  ‘You will discover, your lordship. But I believe I may say that it were better that your lordship placed a pistol to his head!’ He saluted slowly and turned on his heel.

  Lord Towcester struck the table in so great a rage that the veneer splintered. ‘Stay where you are, sir! I have not finished with you! Mr Dauntsey, arrest that officer!’

  But the adjutant made no move.

  Back in his quarters, Hervey took the letter from his pocket. He had had it now for longer than he had known the worst, and his sister’s neat round hand was a comfort, even if, as he supposed, it bore ill news. But what ill news could possibly compound his grief? Elizabeth’s earnest face was before him now, and without doubt there was solace in it.

  Horningsham

  10 December 1817

  My dearest Matthew,

  I bring you news that you will scarcely be able to believe. Our father has been made archdeacon and a canon of the cathedral! I cannot begin to explain how this all came about, for up until only a very few days ago we were certain that he was to be deprived of the living here. But the bishop deems that the offences of which he stood accused, and which charges were to have been heard by the consistory, were all occasioned by misunderstanding. The old archdeacon has been translated to Ely, where he is made dean, and the bishop, it seems, believed it only right that Father, whose nerves have suffered so very ill these past months, should have the preferment in his stead. And so he is now Archdeacon of Sarum, and by the time this letter reaches you he will have been installed, and so you may write to him thus.

  Mama is restored to all her former spirits. She even says she hopes the old archdeacon will have a perpetual chill in the Ely fens! And now that there is peace and ease in the vicarage I myself shall go to Warwickshire, to Lord John Howard’s people, for his sister is to give a ball. I do not think you met her. She came to Bath last winter when her brother took a house there for the season, and I like her very much.

  I pray that this finds both you and Henrietta in excellent health and spirits. By my reckoning, this shall reach you not many weeks, or even days, before the birth of my nephew – or shall it be niece? I long to hear of that news, which I do pray you will hasten to us here by the speediest of means!

  And so I shall end, for it pleases me more than I can say to write to you a letter with such happy content at last, and I do not wish to dilute its happiness with common tattle. God is very good to us!

  Your ever affectionate sister,

  Elizabeth

  Hervey folded the letter carefully and put it back into his pocket. He would write to Elizabeth, and at the same time to Lord and Lady Bath, to say that he had lost his wife – that he had lost his wife. He did not know how he would find the words, however, or even the courage.

  But for one letter he was certain he could find both words and courage in ample measure. He went to the desk, took out pens and paper, sat upright in the chair and looked out of the window. Despite the bitter cold, his dragoons were going about their business as best they could, for in the army, life must always go on, and with as little interruption as might be.

  Hervey dipped his pen in the inkwell, and began to write his report to the major general.

  The End

  HISTORICAL AFTERNOTE

  Something was bound to give in the business of the cavalry and aid to the civil power. On 16 August 1819, at St Peter’s Fields in Manchester, one of the shadowy villains of my tale held another meeting, the numbers approaching sixty thousand. The magistrates ordered the local yeomanry to arrest ‘Orator’ Hunt, but the parttime cavalrymen botched it. An antecedent troop of my own regiment was sent to rescue them and restore order, which they did apparently with restraint. But the damage was done, and ‘Peterloo’, as the press dubbed it, became a cause célèbre for the reform movement. But it did have a positive side, for it was a major factor in the establishment of professional police forces – although it was not for another decade that the Metropolitan Police Act was actually passed.

  ‘The unguarded border’ secured by the Rush–Bagot Agreement is now so much taken for granted that the war of 1812 seems incomprehensible, let alone any tension since. And yet there were occasional local disputes as the frontier moved west, often as a result of the difficulty of accurate surveying. I have a photograph of Canadian army officers, as late as the 1920s, covertly making a reconnaissance of the border approaches in New York State. Should any reader wish to see for himself the ground over which the bitter and destructive Anglo-American war was fought, I commend Gilbert Collins’s Guidebook to the Historic Sites of the War of 1812 (Dundurn Press, Toronto, 1998).

  The 19th Light Dragoons, the only cavalry regiment of the British army to earn the battle honour Niagara, were disbanded in 1821 – only to be re-raised in 1861, almost disbanded again in 1870, amalgamated in 1922 and then again in 1992. The ‘War Office’ does not have many historians.

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