A Close Run Thing (11 page)

Hervey hesitated. ‘I am not sure … that is … I …’ And then, with a note of resolution: ‘
Thank
you, Sister; I accept, with gratitude.’

Sister Maria made a small bow and said she would return later to begin the catechism.

But now that the stiff formality between them had eased he felt it possible at last to ask of
her
certain matters. ‘Sister, a moment if you will. My regiment has so abruptly intruded on the peace of this place that … well, I think what I am trying to say is that we have not seen the like of your order hitherto. You seem
more
’ – he paused again, searching for a word that would convey his meaning without disparaging others he had seen – ‘more …
austere
.’

‘Mr Hervey, even the Benedictine orders have fallen on hard times in France since the Revolution. The Church is mistrusted, and much of its earthly wealth is gone. We have been left alone here, I believe, because Toulouse was not a place of importance in the wars, but also because we are Carmelites. We pose no threat.’

That answered in large part the second question he would have asked, but he was still unsure of the nature of her order. ‘I know of the
name
“Carmelite”, Sister,’ he continued, ‘but nothing of your origins or rule.’

‘Our roots are in Palestine, Mr Hervey, among the hermits of Mount Carmel. When the Holy Land was overrun by the Turks they moved west and began living in community, but always poor and solitary communities. Perhaps when you were in Spain you saw, or heard of, the city of Avila – near Madrid, I think?’

He knew where the city was but had not been there.

‘Well, if you had been there you would have seen the place where our greatest saint, Teresa, lived – a little time after St Ignatius. She wrote a new rule for our order, and it is that which we follow here in Toulouse. She lived by the simplest of precepts.’

He nodded and made as if to ask a further question, but she instead raised a hand. ‘Forgive me, Mr Hervey, but I must go now: there are duties for me as there are with you.’

He rose and made a bow after the fashion of the King’s Germans. She smiled, and there was warmth in her eyes.

‘Mr ’Ervey sir,’ – how Johnson’s attitude to aspirates stood in sharp contrast to Sister Maria’s – ‘adjutant wants to know straight away if tha wants t’go t’Staff Corps.’

Hervey sat up and rubbed his eyes. ‘What time is it?’

‘About seven o’clock. Tha’s slept all night. Why didn’t tha tell me about America?’ he added in a distinctly resentful tone. ‘Last thing I want to do’s roust off there.’

‘Because I heard only yesterday,’ Hervey replied. ‘In any case, I am not going. And why must you be so damnably crabby?’

Johnson chose to ignore the question (it was not difficult to see, sometimes, why Rawlings and Boyse had dispensed with his services, thought Hervey). ‘Well, thank God for that, Mr ’Ervey, but wouldn’t it ’ave meant promotion?’

‘Private Johnson, may we revert to the usual practice of officer and groom in this regiment?’ he replied with a wearied sigh.

‘Suit thi’sen, Mr ’Ervey sir – I’ll wait till I’m spoken to!’

The adjutant seemed less surprised than Johnson on hearing Hervey’s decision. Edmonds would be disappointed, he said, but he really did not think the
major
had expected him to take the American option anyway. ‘We’ll just ’ave to sweat things out for a day or so until we hear about the petition,’ was his verdict.

Edmonds had calculated that it would be three days, perhaps four, before they would know if the ruse had worked. It would take Slade a day fully to comprehend the options; it would take him another to come to terms with the indignity of the compromise, and it would be the third day before his brigade major would press him for an answer (if they did not forward it within three days, they would be in default of Advocate-General Larpent’s standing orders for redresses, and to be in default of Larpent’s instructions was to invite the wrath of Wellington himself). Sure enough, just before evening stables three days later, Heroys, the brigade major, himself arrived at the convent to offer the reciprocal arrangement that Edmonds had predicted. And Heroys knew full well whose stratagem it was: ‘Oh, and by the by,’ he added casually, with a smile that might just have been described as conspiratorial, ‘I was surprised not to see young Hervey’s name put forward for the Corps. You have heard, incidentally, that General Slade is being recalled to England?’

No, he had not! The most capital news it was, too, and Edmonds had no qualms about saying so. But Heroys’s next news was not.

‘The brigade is to commence the march for embarkation in five days’ time,’ he began. That in itself was not bad news; but they were not, as everyone had
expected
, to sail from Bordeaux, where shallow-draught claret-boats, which made excellent horse-transports, would be able to get right up from the mouth of the Gironde.

‘Boulogne!’ exclaimed Edmonds when Heroys revealed the port at which they would embark. ‘For heaven’s sake, man: that must be all of eight hundred miles!’

‘Nearly nine,’ replied Heroys, matter-of-fact.

‘What in God’s name is Slade thinking of?’

‘Not his doing.’

‘Cotton?’

‘I should not think he was even asked.’

‘But has he protested? Damn it, I’ll go and see Wellington myself!’

‘I think that would be foolhardy even by your standards, Edmonds. You have not exactly endeared yourself to Slade. I know I said that he has been recalled, but stick your neck out any further and … well, let us just say that in the present scheme of things I counsel extreme caution. Even Sir Hussey Vivian is having a hard time of things with Wellington.’

Edmonds accepted Heroys’s advice with reluctance and had set about readying the Sixth for the long march north. Lankester forbade Hervey to take part in any active duty in the hope that his leg might thereby stand the journey. Instead he arranged for him to receive each morning a pile of French documents – of which there seemed no end in the
préfecture
– to scrutinize for
anything
of intelligence value. But they proved to be of a mundane nature, with nothing of military interest. His work was made less tedious, however, by the assistance of Sister Maria de Chantonnay whose Ignatian catechism had to be conducted in snatches while they sifted through endless titles and land deeds confiscated over the previous two decades. Come the third day she had, by degrees, revealed the circumstances of her life before entering the convent. Her fine English she had learned from her nurse, the daughter of Lancastrian recusants, who had lived with them in the Vendée. Hervey’s own French, he told her, had been acquired in the same fashion, for his governess had been of an old Jansenist family from Alsace, and she had taught him German, too, although it was not quite so fluent perhaps as his French. At this Sister Maria laughed, and mocked his Alsatian accent: ‘But you would almost certainly pass for a Frenchman if ever it suited you, Mr Hervey.’

‘An unlikely requirement now, I think, Sister.’

And she agreed. ‘I think so. I surely pray that there will be no more fighting between our countries. And what of you, then, Mr Hervey – what are your intentions?’

Only three days before, he had rounded on Johnson for wanting to know his business, yet now he was content to tell all to this nun – about his family, about his joining the Sixth and his hopes for promotion, and how these were suddenly in doubt with the news of his brother’s death.

‘It seems very strange to me, Mr Hervey, that a man must pay for his position in the Army. Any man with aptitude in France may become an officer: it does not turn on a question of money.’

‘No, Sister, it
is
strange, and I for one would not long defend it, but it is supposed that it has its merits – besides, that is, making the Army a good deal cheaper for Parliament.’

‘What might be these merits, Mr Hervey?’ she asked sceptically.

‘Well, I think if you knew of the dread in which any return to the late Commonwealth is still held in our country you would own that by having officers with so tangible a stake in the system there was less chance of their throwing in with some dictator.’

‘You are suggesting that such a system in France might have stayed a republic?’

‘France is not England, Sister, but such a notion is not infeasible.’

‘Is this notion not at heart dishonourable, though? Is it money
only
which commands loyalty in England? Would not an oath suffice?’

‘Sometimes the best of men are subverted by evil ones who are able to confuse them as to where their duty lies.’

‘That is well said, Mr Hervey,’ and she laughed.

He liked her laugh. He admired her mind and her soul, but her laugh made both accessible. ‘Sister, do you suppose there might be anything in these documents of the slightest import to matters of
state
?’ he asked, reflecting the smile.

‘Not especially,’ she replied. ‘In fact, not at all, I should say.’ Her look turning to one of conspiracy.

‘Then I believe we might permit ourselves some respite. Would you like to take a turn about the horse lines?’

‘Indeed, I should,’ she replied, still smiling.

Never, perhaps, had Sister Maria de Chantonnay expected the cloisters of the Convent of St Mary of Magdala to throng with so great a number of men, let alone horses. As she and Hervey made their way through the lines they had to step this way and that around piles of hay and soiled straw, and buckets of water (for the watering call had sounded ten minutes before, and the troopers were working in relays from the well in the courtyard). Stopping here and there when Hervey thought there was some point of interest with a particular animal, they were paid no more attention than if they had been at a fair. ‘C’ Troop were evidently to furnish some escort, for a dozen troopers were in the throes of saddling up under the supervision of the troop corporal.

‘This seems a most elaborate routine, Mr Hervey,’ said Sister Maria, watching a trooper folding saddle blankets.

‘Yes, the saddles are different from any you will have seen, most likely. The necessity is to keep all the rider’s weight, and that of his equipment, well clear of the spine – as, indeed, it ought to be with any saddle. But
we
cannot afford the luxury of measuring a saddle to individual horses, so each is built up to suit. Look’ – he picked up a crude wooden saddle-frame – ‘the saddle itself is composed simply of two arches joined by pieces of wood called side-boards. This is then placed over as many blankets on the horse’s back as is required by its particular conformation.’ Sister Maria nodded. ‘How many does this one take?’ he asked the nearest trooper.

‘This un’s broad-backed, sir – needs six,’ replied the man.

‘If the saddle isn’t set up right, then the horse will have a sore back within the hour,’ added Hervey. ‘And that is the gravest source of our trouble – that and poor feed.’

‘But,’ said Sister Maria, looking puzzled, ‘you cannot possibly sit in such a saddle? It seems so … crude.’

Hervey smiled. ‘No, Sister, a sheepskin goes over the top of it, secured by a surcingle. We officers have a shabracque, too, for reviews – you will know of shabracques?’

‘Oh, yes, as had the warhorses of the knights – but not very practical, I should suppose?’

‘No, which is why we no longer take them on campaign. But see also, the holstered pistols have to be strapped to the front arch of the saddle, along with the rolled cloak, and the carbine boot strapped to the offside, and the sword to the nearside. It is something of an art,’ he added.

‘So it indeed seems, Mr Hervey,’ she replied, ‘but tell
me
, you have spoken before of troops and squadrons in the same breath, as if they were one. How is this so?’

‘No, they are not one, Sister, though I understand your confusion,’ he began. ‘A troop may number up to a hundred or so and is commanded by a captain. Usually there are six such troops in each regiment. When there is a royal review both the colonel and the lieutenant-colonel, and the major, too, would each take command of a squadron. The squadron would comprise two troops, and each squadron would carry a guidon. But on campaign it is the lieutenant-colonel who commands, and the senior captains each command a squadron, with command of their own troop devolving impermanently to their senior lieutenant. It sounds perhaps a little complicated but it works well.’

‘Oh, evidently so,’ she smiled, as the dragoon they were watching finished saddling. ‘You fit the head-harness last?’ she added with a note of surprise.

‘Because it gives time for the animal to adjust to the girth, which can then be tightened before mounting. The breastplate must, of course, be fitted at the same time as the saddle, then the crupper and last the bridle. This is the new 1812 pattern,’ he said, holding up a practical-looking piece of harness. ‘Much better than that we had before, but it can still be the devil of a job to fit in the dark, especially with cold fingers. This rosette here on the crossed face-pieces must be set dead between the eyes, and just below the bridge, or the
orderly
corporal will round on a man once daylight reveals otherwise!’

‘It is a handsome bridle, Mr Hervey, for sure. But what is this chain across the top?’

He gave a faint smile of satisfaction. ‘That is an additional device which we ourselves – in the Sixth I mean – have made. A sabre-cut through the headpiece would mean the bridle falls away and the rider would lose control of his mount. The chain prevents that.’

She turned and looked at him intently, and then spoke more softly than hitherto. ‘You are proud of your regiment, not just of your army, are you not, Mr Hervey?’

He seemed surprised. ‘Oh
yes
, it is
everything
!’

Their parting, a week later, was a curious affair. In the days that had followed their visit to the cloister stalls Hervey had looked forward to subsequent meetings with increasing anticipation. The routine each day had been the same. She would first dress his wound (removing the sutures when the time came). Then followed several hours of sifting papers, and then a half-hour’s catechism (but of no great earnestness). In the afternoon they would walk together – further each day as his leg regained its strength. So that, as the time came for Boulogne, there had formed between them a considerable bond, a respect, an affection.