A Close Run Thing (5 page)

‘Mr Barrow!’ he roared.

The adjutant closed up from where he had posted himself, three horse-lengths behind, next to the guidon and Edmonds’s trumpeter. The Sixth still carried the colonel’s guidon in the field – many regiments had abandoned the practice – though the squadron guidons had been left in England. When any movement was to be executed, the adjutant took up his position with the other serrefile officers to the rear, but he otherwise liked to keep close to Edmonds so
that
he could heed his orders at first hand.

‘I wish you to have the following prepared for my signature at the first opportunity. Do you have your pocket-book?’

‘Sir!’

‘Very well. To Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Fitzroy Somerset, Military Secretary, Headquarters, etc., etc. Sir, I have the honour—No, wait – begin again. It is my humble duty to submit with regret my resignation, to be effective at your Lordship’s pleasure.’ Edmonds paused. Barrow looked up with no more expression of surprise than if he had been taking orders for bivouac. Edmonds cleared his throat and continued. ‘In so doing, I place upon record my—No – begin again. I thereby protest at the want of ardour in the employment of the cavalry and’ – he paused once more – ‘the tergiversation in the conduct of the campaign.’

Barrow raised an eyebrow, not certain that he would be able to find anyone capable of spelling this latter complaint, nor even of explaining its meaning. ‘Is that all, sir?’

‘That is all, thank you, Barrow.’

The adjutant raised both eyebrows and then resumed his place with the guidon, knowing it to be unlikely that the draft would ever be called for (it was the third that Edmonds had dictated that year alone).

For another three hours the Sixth stood fast, Edmonds with every expression of serenity conceivable, and more, certainly, than anyone could have imagined. But as evening drew on he became less composed, and
by
dusk he was as thoroughly agitated as he had been that morning. The temporary remitting of the toothache in the afternoon past, he was sorely vexed now by the general inertia. ‘
Fabius Cunctator!
’ he spat.

Barrow and the trumpeter looked at each other, startled. Neither of them had quite heard every syllable but it sounded the vilest of curses. And it just might have been provoked by the sudden appearance of the brigade major (though in truth Edmonds had not seen him), who the adjutant now noticed was trotting across the regiment’s front. He sighed as he took out his pocket-book and closed up to Edmonds again, sensing more trouble.

‘Ah, Heroys, with orders for the night perhaps,’ began the major, with more than a trace of irony. ‘Tell me, are they to be as strenuous as those of the day?’ But he gave the BM no time for reply, thoroughly warming to his opportunity: ‘Let me guess. A brigade steeplechase perhaps? Or a foxhunt? Maybe even a levee, or a masque – yes, I have it, a masque! Now, which might it be?
Comus
, perhaps; that would seem apt: “What chance, good Lady, hath bereft you thus? Dim darkness, and this leafy labyrinth!”’

‘Very droll, Edmonds. You are perfectly well aware that thrift in deploying one’s assets is a sound precept in war.’

‘That’s a piss-fire answer!’

‘Edmonds, some days you try my patience, and then again others you quite exhaust it!’ replied the brigade major with a resigned smile: he had long years of
acquaintance
with Edmonds’s vituperation. ‘I have instructions for a comfortable billet, no less.’

The particulars took Edmonds by surprise: ‘A convent!’ he exclaimed. ‘And where will the nuns be?’

‘You need worry not,’ replied Heroys. ‘They are all in the hospitals with the
blessés
, and probably a good many of our own wounded, too. Never have I seen so many. But you will need to make haste: it will be pitch-dark before the hour’s out. Come, I will guide you down myself.’

‘Lead us not into bloody temptation!’ sighed Edmonds as they began the descent into the city.

Hervey had lost more blood than he had supposed. After all but fainting in the saddle on the way down, Serjeant Armstrong and Private Johnson half-carried him to one of the nuns’ cells in spite of his protests that first he must see to the horses. ‘Heaven help us,’ sighed Armstrong aloud. ‘These gentlemen-officers and their duty!’ But neither he nor Johnson had the time to argue, and Hervey, for sure, had not the energy. Leaving him with a lantern, they slammed the door closed, and he lay down on the narrow bed without even unfastening his sword-belt. With the comparative comfort of a straw-filled palliasse beneath him, the first in three months, he fell asleep at once.

The chapel and cellars had been locked before the sisters had left for the hospitals; nevertheless Serjeant Armstrong reappeared half an hour later with arms full of bottles. One crashed to the stone floor as he pushed
the
cell door open, and Hervey woke with a start.

‘Bordoo, sir – the best. Not like that rot-gut in Spain. Shall we drink to the troop?’

They had drunk together before, not frequently but often enough for Armstrong’s invitation to be unremarkable. The circumstances had never been quite so intimate, however; and, while Hervey might in the ordinary course of events have welcomed the opportunity of informality with his covering-serjeant, he was uneasy about allowing any intimacy at this time, for there was the business with the ADC to address. Without doubt many an officer, perhaps even the majority, would have chosen to disregard Armstrong’s momentary loss of control since it had been directed at so reviled a man as Regan. Especially might they have been so inclined if the offender were so warmly and genuinely solicitous of their comfort as was Armstrong now. But Hervey could not. He held the simple, if at times uncomfortable, conviction that no case of indiscipline should go at least unremarked, for not to have held so encouraged, in his judgement, a lack of constancy which made for confusion during alarms. Not that this was to advocate a regime of punishment for each and every transgression. Indeed, Hervey’s zeal was tempered by the enlightened attitude which characterized the Sixth, where not a man had been flogged in a decade, but there were other concerns now than simply that of good order and military discipline. He raised himself unsteadily on an elbow.

‘Serjeant Armstrong, what in the name of heaven did
you
think you were doing today? Those dragoons from the Staff Corps were within an ace of arresting you!’

‘I’d ’ave tipped ’em both a settler if they’d tried!’

‘Well, that
would
have decided matters! And how do you suppose you would manage on a trooper’s pay?’

‘I’d at least have my pride.’

Hervey sighed. ‘Serjeant Armstrong, I don’t seem to be making my meaning clear, do I? Has Serjeant Strange said anything?’

‘Oh ay, Strange has had at me right enough. But he didn’t have to say a thing. I’ve known ’Arry Strange for nigh on ten years.’

‘Geordie Armstrong, just listen to me for a minute. That you are a fighter is beyond doubt – one of the best. The whole regiment knows it – and most of the army, too, I shouldn’t wonder. But that temper!’

‘The pot calls the kettle black-arse!’

Hervey sighed again. ‘Serjeant Armstrong, if I encouraged you by my own—’ But he was not allowed to finish.

‘With respect, Mr Hervey sir,’ which was no warranty that any would be manifest, ‘you just look out for General Slade, and I’ll look to me own devices: I’m too small a fish for them staff to concern themselves over.’ And he grinned.

Hervey could but hope that it might be thus. So much for his withering rebuke! But there was, at least, no good reason any longer why he should not take wine with his serjeant and, albeit without much sense of celebration, that is what he did – a copious quantity,
in
measures which Armstrong referred to as medicinal. And the Bordeaux was to have its medicinal effect, for Hervey slept until late the following morning.

The silence first told him it was no ordinary reveille. And then the height of the sun, whose rays streamed into his cell through the window high above his head – he had not lain in bed with the sun so high, nor for that matter with the sun
up
, for as long as he could remember. Reveille preceded dawn: that was the invariable rule of field discipline, even in quarters. There they might only feed and water the horses, but in the field they stood to, saddled, ready for any alarm which first light might bring. Wellington may have cursed his cavalry, and compared them unfavourably with the hussars of the King’s German Legion, but the Sixth would allow him no cause for complaint over that routine at least.

Hervey lay motionless, still drowsy though conscious of a dull ache in his leg, but he had no great inclination to discover for himself why he was not on parade. Lowly cornet though he might be, he was confident that the regiment would not have moved on without him, and he was sure that no sleep could be so deep as to shut out the sound of a battle. For once he might let events take their course. In any case, all was silence now, and a curious scent of rosewater, mixed with that of the wine spilled the night before, began to have an uncommonly quiescent effect. Soon he was succumbing to a faintly illicit relishing of the missed exertions of
the
pre-dawn, labours of which few outside the ranks of a horsed regiment could have any conception. An infantryman merely had to turn out of his bivouac and stand to his arms, but both before and after a trooper’s stand to there was a deal of toiling with mount and equipment, dawn and dusk, day in, day out.

But the dull throb in his supine leg was increasing, and he forced himself up in order to restore the circulation. There were choice curses at the stiffness as he hobbled round the cell, his sword-scabbard clanking on the flagstones, and the noise was evidently enough to alert his groom who appeared after ten minutes of this clattering and cursing.

‘Good mornin, Mr ’Ervey sir. I ’eard thee moving and thought tha could be doing with some breakfast.’

Hervey shook his head in mock despair. He was Private Johnson’s third officer in a year, though they had now been together for ten months. The others had complained of excessive cheeriness and an impenetrable Sheffield dialect, but Hervey found his ingenuity as a groom more than made up for these alleged short-comings. Comprehension, he had told them, was ultimately a matter of determination: could they not recognize a black diamond?

Johnson brought in a canteen of tea, some boiled fowl and a loaf of grey bread. ‘An’ there’s some brandy ’ere an’ all, sir,’ – holding up a silver cup which looked to have been intended originally for a less secular purpose.

‘Private Johnson, it is as ever a pleasure to see you
of
a morning, but unusual in its being so late,’ he replied with a bemused smile.

‘Tha means why didn’t I wake thee afore?’

‘Just so, Johnson.’

‘Well, Johnny Crapaud’s quit t’town, and Cap’n Lankester said tha were on t’sick list. And when tha was awake t’surgeon said that tha were t’ave thee bandages changed.’

Though Hervey had counted on his not being abandoned, he knew it was the greatest good fortune to have received his wound not a day earlier, if the notion of fortune
and
a wound were in any way appropriate. Had the regiment moved on after the battle, he would have been left in some makeshift hospital on a pile of filthy straw, struck off strength and already becoming but a memory: the needs of the fit and the necessities of the campaign did not often admit of retrospection. But to remain on strength, local-sick, to be tended by the regimental surgeon who would be answerable to Edmonds, was a different prospect; for, however much Edmonds might curse the surgeon as a cast-off from a parish poorhouse, he would perforce be more diligent than many to be found in a so-called army hospital.

Not that this nunnery was anything like as comfortable as some they had seen in Spain, where they resembled more the houses of grandees than of religious orders. The Convent of St Mary of Magdala had a peculiar austerity, a chill which did not come from the weather, for it was seasonally warm and dry outside. Hervey’s sick-quarters were no cell in the
purely
figurative sense, for they had every appearance of the clink’s lodgings. The walls were white and in poor repair. A crucifix above his bed was their one adornment. The bed was the only piece of furniture except for a prie-dieu with three books. As Johnson arranged the breakfast in a niche of the thick wall, Hervey picked up each book in turn. The Latin bible, strangely perhaps for a son of the cloth, was the first he had ever opened, and he felt a mild revulsion at seeing the scriptures rendered thus – the Englishman’s revulsion at the martyrdom of Tyndale and others for the vernacular. The second volume was in Spanish,
El Via de Perfección
, and he puzzled for a time whether this was ‘The Way
to
’ or ‘The Way
of
Perfection’, for his Spanish was still rough. But he understood enough to learn that it was the testimony of St Teresa, the mystic from Avila about whom he knew little, and
that
only because his father had once made a study of the works of St John of the Cross. If he had felt uneasy at the Vulgate, however, the third volume might have thoroughly revolted him, for in the common consciousness of Hervey and his kind the very word
Jesuit
proclaimed every perfidy imaginable, and this volume was the work of St Ignatius of Loyola, no less.

But the title intrigued rather than repelled him –
Exercitia Spiritualia Sancti
. The coupling seemed somehow discrepant: he had studied books on exercises for light cavalry, manuals on sword exercises and pistol exercises, signalling exercises even, but
spiritual
exercises – an altogether arresting notion. He sat down
and
began to leaf through its pages while at the same time struggling to wrest the stringy meat of the fowl’s leg from its bone.

Meanwhile, Private Johnson had slipped from the cell without his noticing. By the time he reappeared only bones remained of the fowl, and Hervey was wholly engrossed in
The Spiritual Exercises
. Johnson was grinning broadly but unseen, for Hervey did not immediately lift his head.