A Close Run Thing (13 page)

The country through which they passed subsequently was never as pretty, and in no degree as friendly, as the Vendée. They were jeered and spat at in Le Mans, and stones were thrown at them in Rouen, although the flats of a few troopers’ swords exacted swift retribution. The flats, mind, for the British trooper could possess an uncommon magnanimity. Prussians,
Austrians
, Russians – all seemed to perceive it their duty to avenge their national dishonour, a dishonour which thereby became a personal quest for vengeance, and a vengeance which might therefore be exacted indiscriminately. Beyond the immediate right to quench his prodigious thirst the
British
trooper cared not overmuch for loot, unless it could buy more drink. Wanton destruction and rape sometimes followed from too much of it, but terror and pillage were not instruments of war or conditions of service, and, though it was of little consolation, those of the fair sex who were taken in such moments were not ravished with method, the Sabine way. It was true enough that Britain had never been invaded by Bonaparte, but the ranks of the Sixth (and the Sixth were in this respect not untypical) were scarcely made up of idealists. They were not inspired by royalist fervour in the way that so many French were inspired by revolutionary fervour. There were upright and loyal subjects of King George in the ranks: there were as many, probably more, who were the flotsam and jetsam of the realm, the sweepings of the alehouses and the streets, and occasionally of the prisons. But they were under authority; and under that authority, these men, these very dregs of the country, comported themselves with no little chivalry. They did not habitually put to the sword prisoners of war and civilians caught in a siege. And they were more likely to share a scarce canteen of water with a wounded enemy than do him further harm. Authority could make of them tolerably fine
fellows
: Hervey could not conceive of a life without them.

At Boulogne the regiment had two further days’ rest while the commissary officers arranged their loading in three transports, all merchantmen. One was a particularly filthy Kent coaler in which Edmonds flatly refused to embark men or horses until a working party from the town gaol had scrubbed its holds. ‘Damn it, man!’ he had thundered to the startled embarkation officer, ‘we had better to take us off at Corunna, even!’ And the regiment had smiled. They liked to hear the major’s ranting occasionally. It seemed to reassure them that at bottom there was nothing to worry about; for if the major raved, then it must be because things might be changed thereby, and if things might be changed then the situation could not be so bad. Few would have allowed the thought that such explosions might mask Edmonds’s growing sense of powerlessness in what he perceived to be the regiment’s imminent betrayal.

On the second morning there was no sign of rage. Despite his efforts at cheeriness, however, there was an edge to him which revealed that his better spirits were indeed an effort. And everyone knew why, for the news that orders for their eventual destination had arrived with the tide had spread even quicker than would orders for pay parade.

‘Canterbury, my boys,’ he told the assembled
regiment
as breezily as he could at muster, ‘though to what purpose I am yet unaware. The Fourth are for the depot, too, and they have no inkling why, either.’

Gloom then settled on the squadrons, the like of which Hervey had not seen since being ordered to abandon all but their side-arms before wading out to the ships in Corunna bay. For the depot, surely, could mean no other but that they were to disband forthwith. Fane, the new brigadier, visited the lines soon afterwards but he knew no more of the purpose, nor could he see any more sense in what they presumed to be the purpose, than anyone in the Sixth.

‘I wish the marquess were here, or even Sir Stapleton Cotton,’ he said. ‘For sure
they
would have been told more. I think it wicked that men – men with families about whom they have heard nothing in years – and officers with affairs overdue for attendance, should be treated in so ill-considered a fashion.’ They were fine enough sentiments but of little help, concluded the cornets at mess that evening, and the gloom remained as the Sixth began embarking just before noon the following day.

There were few in the regiment with any expertise in embarking horses. Only those who had been there at Southampton, four years earlier, had even seen it done. But the march to Boulogne did at least have one advantage: it meant that they could embark direct from the wharf rather than by lighter – a perilous enough adventure at the best of times. Nevertheless, the operation went as smoothly as Edmonds could have
wished
. The horses were first led by the collar-rein (saddles and bridles off) to the side of the transports, and here their dragoons placed a sling made of sacking around each. Johnson was one of the first to protest that it must end in disaster for any of the bloods, but the slings were securer than they perhaps looked, reaching from the withers to the flanks and with breastplate and breeching also of sacking to prevent the horse from slipping out. Then, under the watchful eye of the quartermasters, the dragoons fastened two strong pieces of wood on the top of the sling to stretch it out, in the centre of which a hole had been made to put the tackle hook through. At the given signal a team of convicts from the local prison hoisted the sling aloft and the horse disappeared into the ship’s hold. Embarking was laborious work, by any account, but it kept minds from the ill news of the morning.

It went on until a little before six, when at last they were able to set sail on the ebb tide. And whatever fate might await them in Canterbury, the gloom was by degrees overtaken by the growing anticipation of returning home. As the three transports, led by a frigate, passed the harbour mole, the regiment’s spirits lifted visibly with the fresh offshore breeze which filled out the sails and began to throw spray into the faces of those on the weather rail. And they were, too, the first regiment to get away.

Hervey watched the frigate take up station a quarter-league to windward, her hands deftly altering sail, the line of her single gundeck in the black hull, a brilliant
yellow
band broken by the black hatches of the gunports –
Nelson-style
– betokening a defiant confidence. A frigate was a world apart: she sailed independently of the line; she passed both land and fleets, ghost-like, on secret missions, a lonely but independent command which, Hervey reflected, was exercised by men no older than him. That he must lodge that six hundred pounds soon with the regimental agents, before any more talk of disbandments curtailed the vacancies, was never more certain in his mind. And then somehow he must find two thousand pounds more for the captaincy. But
two thousand pounds
– he almost laughed out loud at the sum! And, in any case, did he not first have to discover his father’s wishes?

Turning towards the larboard side to see how the other transports were faring, he saw Edmonds standing at the rail. There was a more distant look to him than Hervey had yet seen, and it would have been easy – prudent even – to let him alone. But if companionship in the Sixth were to mean anything, then this was not the moment to let differences of rank intrude. Nevertheless Hervey approached him cautiously. ‘Good evening, sir. Do you know, I have calculated that we have marched almost three thousand leagues since landing in Portugal.’

Edmonds at first made no reply save for several slow nods of the head. When at length he did speak, the reply took him aback. ‘Matthew, those three thousand leagues have been added to your life; they have been taken away from mine.’

It was a reply so far removed from his image of Edmonds, an image shared in large measure by the whole regiment, that he could scarcely begin to conceive of its cause. Ill-tempered and violently suspicious of authority though Edmonds might be, he was first, foremost and for ever a soldier. In their six years of campaigning in the Peninsula, before and after Corunna, no matter how appalling the conditions or how desperate the situation, Edmonds had shown no emotion beyond explosive but short-lived anger – or, indeed, simple kindness. Did he now really abhor those years?

‘What will you do when we reach England, sir?’ Hervey asked, searching for a different tack on which he might lift the major’s spirits, though he could hardly have chosen a worse one.

‘Once I have settled the regiment in Canterbury and discovered what in God’s name those lickspittles in the Horse Guards are intending – and I have no doubt that a grateful Parliament are at this very moment exacting their dividend from the peace which so many good men have bought with their lives – well, once I know what our great nation plans for us, I shall write a dispatch for the colonel and Lord George, hand over to Captain Lankester as fast as I decently can, and go and see Margaret and my girls,’ he replied, his tone increasingly defiant. And then, turning and walking towards his deck cabin, he added, ‘If they’re still alive.’

Hervey might at that moment have begun a long (but utterly futile) brooding on this unaccountable
change
in Edmonds’s humour, had it not been for the appearance of Serjeant Strange on deck. The admirable Strange, ever formal and correct, was still as much an enigma to Hervey as the day they met when the regiment sailed for Portugal on the first campaign. Strange had left Southwold, and its fishing fleet, the year after the guillotine had been set up in Paris, to enlist in the Sixth, who were encamped nearby at Ipswich. He was the best swordsman and shot in the regiment, even better than RSM Lincoln, and he had passed out of the riding school quicker than anyone in the riding-master’s memory (until Hervey’s own skill had both impressed and dismayed the RM in equal measure). These accomplishments would in themselves have been sufficient to hold in awe both officers and other ranks, but in addition Strange held a curious authority because no one, but
no one
, had ever heard him swear – not an obscenity, nor even a faintly indecent remark, not an oath, nor the mildest profanity even. He was a temperance Methodist, though he would preach at no one. He kept his own company and permitted no one to become close. No one, that is, but Serjeant Armstrong – Armstrong, the hard-drinking, frequently foul-mouthed ex-miner. Armstrong was no Methodist: he was not even baptized. What they saw in each other had long been a matter for speculation in the officers’ mess. The simple attraction of opposite natures seemed an inadequate explanation. There were some who said that the reason for their enlistment might reveal a cause. But neither man seemed the sort
to
be afraid of the deep mine or the deep sea, nor the sort to run from some domestic sorrow. Besides, Strange was married, was he not? Hervey thought meanly of himself for not knowing more about both of them, though Strange would not have volunteered the smallest piece of intelligence, he felt sure. In any case, Hervey would always recall his first troop-leader’s advice:
Do not get too close – sending them to their deaths will be all the harder
. A humane, if cynical, doctrine, it had been sound enough counsel for a young cornet in his greenness. Perhaps that advice was as good now as it had been, but Hervey could no longer bring himself to believe so.

‘Good evening, Mr Hervey sir,’ Strange said quietly, and with a relaxed salute. ‘The major looked thoughtful.’

‘Yes, he was thinking of home.’

‘Major Edmonds was my lieutenant when I joined, sir. He and his lady taught me to write.’

This was possibly the first time that Hervey had exchanged any talk with Strange that was not strictly related to duty – certainly the first time he could recall – and even after six years’ campaigning he did not feel at his ease doing so. While many a dragoon liked the attention of the officers, Strange seemed to have no need of their company. Or, that is, as little need of theirs as any other’s. And soon, despite his initial discomfort, Hervey could not but feel a warm glow at this initiation of intimacy.

‘What will you do when we get to Canterbury, Serjeant Strange?’

‘I have not seen my wife for nigh on six years, either,’ he answered without a trace of emotion, ‘nor my father or mother.’

It was the same mellow Suffolk again, curiously soothing, reassuring. Hervey probed gently. ‘What will you do if the regiment disbands?’

‘I have two years to a pension,’ he replied resolutely. ‘I reckon they would pay me off fairly, but I would have liked my own troop, and then to be a quartermaster if Colonel Irvine wanted me.’

Hervey would ordinarily have shared Strange’s trust that Parliament would treat fairly with them, but Edmonds’s cynicism these past weeks had begun to erode that confidence. He wondered how many other good men would be lost to the king’s service in this way – indeed, whether he himself would be placed on half-pay – and he shuddered at the thought in the cool evening breeze. The intimacy was fleeting, however, for Serjeant Strange suddenly stepped back, as if the act of so doing were necessary to break that intimacy, and took his leave formally saying he had to be about his duty below. Hervey thought of staying on deck awhile but instead he, too, went below, to the cabin he was to share with three other cornets. There was a half-hearted attempt to carouse, with wine they had brought aboard, but they were all more tired than they had cared to admit. In less than an hour they were happy to turn in, and Hervey slept tolerably well as the ship gently pitched and rolled in the Channel’s swell.

* * *

He was awakened at dawn by cheering from the upper deck and straightaway went up to see the cause. The bows and fore-rails were packed with troopers peering towards the land three miles distant, the chalk-white cliffs reflecting the first streaks of daylight. Though few of these men, if any, had ever seen those cliffs before, they were an image of England as powerful as the standard of St George itself. Within the hour the transports were reefing sail in Dover’s outer harbour and the towing-boats were approaching to take them in to berth on the morning tide. The frigate had left them moments before, firing one of its eighteen-pounders in farewell and breaking out what seemed like every yard of remaining sail so as to take her in a fast turn back towards France –
so
fast that she heeled over at a breathtaking angle with the wind, exaggerating her speed still further. ‘Who is she?’ Hervey asked one of the transport’s crew.