A Close Run Thing (9 page)

The news, which they had awaited so keenly, and for so long, somehow lacked the inspiration that he presumed great news must have. It seemed unfitting that it should be hawked along the corridors of a cloistered billet by a corporal at this ungodliest of hours. He had imagined some ceremony or other would be attached to its heralding.

Next there appeared the adjutant, fully dressed, and at first Hervey supposed that this portended the ceremony he had anticipated, yet Barrow had so much an expression of the everyday that he again began to doubt the corporal’s information.

‘First parade at seven, details as usual, gentlemen,’ announced the adjutant. ‘Officers to assemble in the mess at eight. Sound reveille, Pye!’

Barrow was as ever spare with his words and did not wait for questions, marching briskly off towards the orderly room, spurs ringing on the flagstones. Hervey was angered. He was picket officer, and yet the adjutant had confided nothing to him. He may have been a mere cornet, but –
confound it
– Barrow would have been forthcoming enough if there had been an alarm.

When the echo of Trumpeter Pye’s long reveille had died away – the first time the extended rather than the short call had been used since winter quarters – there came the gentler sound of a bell, and Hervey saw at the furthest end of the cloisters several nuns making for
the
chapel. The bell struck every second, and with so insistent a ring that he found his annoyance diminishing with each stroke. He wandered into the courtyard. It was too dark to make out the time by his watch, as dark as it had been at midnight when he had trudged the streets of the defeated city to do his rounds of the outlying picket. There had been no moon, and the streets had been as black as pitch, for the lamplighters had fled, and the occupants of the houses had shuttered and boarded their windows so that it was impossible to know whether they were lit inside or had been abandoned. How different it had been at Vitoria. There had been no question then of not knowing what lay behind the shutters, for they had all been prised off and the property sacked, Spanish property. Yet here, a French city, where the fighting had been immeasurably more bloody than at Vitoria, the provost-marshal’s men were patrolling the streets as if it had been Westminster. The Marquess of Wellington had ordered that there was to be no looting, and no looting there was – on pain of death by an English musket. Not that Hervey disapproved of such an order. He loathed the larceny where it exceeded what might reasonably be counted as foraging, but he hated most the bestiality to which men would sink in the process. Never did he imagine, on entering the king’s service, that one day it would be his duty to shoot a man wearing the same uniform – or, rather, the same king’s uniform – as he had done after Badajoz. The vision of that Connaught private, crazed with drink, taking the ball from
Hervey’s
pistol full in the chest yet still setting about him with murderous strength, would long remain. Yet the terror in the dying eyes of the young Spanish girl whom the man had violated, and the blood from her slashed throat, would more than mitigate any guilt, or even regret, that he might feel.

As the regiment woke to the call of the trumpet and began its familiar routine, he walked back to his cell, passing the chapel with its plain windows lit dimly from within. A frail chant,
Te Deum Laudamus
, drifted out, with an occasional whicker from the cloister stalls punctuating the plainsong. He found his cell a blaze of light compared with the gloom elsewhere, for each corner was filled with candles, and an oil lamp burned brightly on a small table, these meagre but useful camp-stores bearing witness to the ever-resourceful Johnson’s nocturnal activities. Next to the lamp stood a steaming canteen of tea, and a clean pair of undress overalls lay on the bed.

‘Baggage came in last night, sir,’ explained his groom. ‘I’ll bring t’rest along presently – thought these’d be more comfortable. I’ll take thee field overalls to mend now. I ’ear it’s all over?’

But Hervey had to admit that he had no more information than the barrack room evidently had. ‘Do you have my sketchbooks yet?’ he asked.

‘Ay, sir; they’re with t’rest of thee things.’

There was no more news at first parade, either, only speculation – Bonaparte was dead, Bonaparte had escaped to America, Bonaparte was in a cage in the
Tuileries
. By the time the officers assembled in the refectory, at eight o’clock, there was at least unanimity that Bonaparte was finished. There were barely a dozen and a half officers on parade that morning, fewer than half the establishment with which they had begun the campaign. Hervey could picture the absent faces as clearly as if they were standing there: the colonel would, no doubt, return to duty in good time, but the two captains, Lennox and Twentyman, would never again hear reveille; nor would Martyn and Mayall, the lieutenants who had fallen at Salamanca; nor Cornets Wyllie and Lord Arthur Percival, killed at Badajoz; Cornet Bruce would never again see the wild flowers of whose names, both vulgar and botanical, he had such astonishing recall, for the explosion of the arsenal after Ciudad Rodrigo had scorched his eyes terribly. And there were others, more fortunate, who had been invalided home with wounds or sickness: they had filled the mess with laughter and companionship (and Hirsch with the uncommon beauty of his flute), and he would miss them even more now that peace brought a respite from the exertions of this campaign. The noise which the gallant and fortunate remnant made suggested double their number, however, and Cornet Laming had to struggle to make himself heard: ‘D’ye see Edmonds, Hervey?’

Hervey looked to where Laming nodded and saw the major at the far end of the refectory, looking sombre. Barrow was speaking into his ear and appeared equally grave.

‘Something’s up,’ said Laming. ‘I heard after stables that the Fourteenth are for America.’

‘I would not mind America. Why should that trouble us?’ replied Hervey, momentarily forgetful of his own pressing need to return home.

‘Because the regiment’s worn out, that is why.’

‘We might still have a march on Paris if Bonaparte’s flight is but rumour,’ he countered warily.

‘That is another matter entirely. Look around: we have been campaigning longer than any corps in the army – we are at less than half-strength! Look at Edmonds, his nerves have frayed to nothing; he’s had the blue devils for months! And there’s scarcely a horse that I’d warrant through another winter out.’

But before Hervey could reply Barrow called them to order and Edmonds began speaking. ‘Gentlemen, I have a dispatch from General Cotton. It reads as follows:

‘“Lord Wellington has received intelligence of the abdication of the self-styled Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte and of his custody with the Royal Navy. There shall be an immediate armistice, for two months. Marshal Soult is to surrender his army of the south to the Commander-in-Chief directly. The Garonne is to be the line of demarcation and Toulouse will remain in our possession. The administration of the country is to be vested immediately in the appointed representatives of His Majesty King Lewis the Eighteenth, who are to be treated as our allies.”’

‘See how quickly will they make white cockades out of tricolours,’ whispered Laming.

‘Too cynical,’ Hervey whispered back.

‘“Si foret in terris …”’ declaimed Laming airily.

‘“Rideret Democritus.” What has Horace to do with it?’

Laming nodded with faint surprise, and Hervey took the opportunity to tilt gently at the senior cornet’s self-esteem.

‘Laming, contrary to what might have been supposed at Eton, we were not barbarians at Shrewsbury.’

‘Oh, a most apt riposte, I do acknowledge!’ said Laming rather too loudly. Barrow glanced their way sharply, and then Edmonds continued.

‘But there is to be no rest, gentlemen. Two divisions under Lord Hill are to proceed to America as soon as possible. The Fourteenth are to accompany them and a squadron of the Staff Corps; we shall be asked for nominations of men of the highest character, as usual, for the Corps. Meanwhile we shall remain in Toulouse until the acknowledgement of King Lewis is universal and the French army and marshals have taken oaths of allegiance.’ The cadence seemed to indicate that this was an end to it, and a general hubbub began.

‘Thank God it’s only the Chambermaids for America, then,’ said Laming. ‘We can decamp to Paris and then be in Leicestershire for next season!’

‘Venery and then venery!’ quipped Hervey.

Laming frowned, but at least the Sixth’s prizes at Vitoria had not landed them with so ungraceful a sobriquet as the Fourteenth’s: a silver chamberpot
belonging
to Bonaparte’s brother had at the time seemed amusing booty to the 14th Light Dragoons.

‘Gentlemen,
please
!’ called Barrow, and silence quickly returned.

Edmonds paused. ‘Gentlemen, this is, I believe, the end of what we were coming to think of as a never-ending war. You have done well – the regiment has done well, but I fear that this end may be but a beginning. We are not for Paris, however. We have been warned for England together with most of the rest of the cavalry, and I need not speak aloud my worst fears, for you are only too aware of the economies which this parliament will now seek. I pray that our seniority will afford us some security. And the Earl of Sussex will not let his regiment disband without protest – of that you may be assured. Meanwhile we must continue to conduct our affairs with the same fidelity, trusting that virtue is in itself, ultimately, a sufficient reward. That is all, gentlemen.’ And, turning about, he left the room with not another word.

‘A very pretty speech, I do declare,’ said Cornet Laming. ‘What say you, Murray?’

Their troop senior’s brow furrowed angrily. ‘So we’re going to be paid off, are we? And what price d’ye think our commissions will fetch now, eh? It’s all very well for the likes of you, Laming, but I paid twice over price and all my people’s estates in the Americas have been lost,’ he snapped, turning on his heel.

Hervey and Laming looked at each other blankly as Lieutenant Murray stalked away. Barrow had not left,
however
, and he now came up to them looking no less preoccupied than he had before Edmonds had spoken.

‘The major wishes to see you directly, Hervey.’

‘About what?’ he replied. ‘There is no more trouble surely?’

‘Not in your case, not personally. Armstrong – bloody business, bloody, bloody business,’ he replied, shaking his head.

The regimental serjeant-major was already talking with Edmonds when Barrow and Hervey entered the abbess’s library, which was beginning to look like the orderly room in Canterbury, for the regiment’s silver had arrived with the baggage train. The crucifix had been more reverently draped with a white sheet, and the guidon was unfurled so that the regiment’s four battle-honours (though still to be officially authorized) were clearly arrayed:
Tournay
, where they had lost every third man while covering the infantry’s hard-pressed retreat;
Willems
, where they had almost stuck fast in the Flanders mud;
Egmont-Op-Zee
, where they had galloped along the beach and dunes for six miles to cut off the French. He knew the battles well enough from accounts which lay in the regiment’s reading-room. But that which he admired the greatest, that which he wished most to have been party to the honour, lay not in the Low Countries but in a place so distant that it could exist for him only at the extremity of his imagination:
Seringapatam
. There were still a few old hands in the ranks who remembered that day,
though
most had by now taken their prize-money to begin life out of uniform (those, that is, who had not drunk or whored it in the three years they remained in India after that affair). Edmonds was the only officer remaining who had been present. He would never speak of it, except of late to say that the sack of Vitoria was but revelry compared with that of Seringapatam.

The adjutant joined Edmonds and the RSM beside the guidon, but Hervey saluted and stood at attention in front of the major’s writing-table – for a second time in as many days. The RSM’s appearance was more than usually imposing, and Hervey felt his habitual unease when in his company. Mr Lincoln had been in the same action as the rest of the regiment two days before, but for all the world he looked now as if he were ready for a review on the parade ground at the Horse Guards, his Hessian boots gleaming like patent. He looked as fit as any rough-rider, only the grey of his half-mutton-chops giving any clue to his real age. Abandoned as an infant in the undercroft of Lincoln’s Inn, raised subsequently on the charity of the benchers and given the customary surname for such foundlings, he had enlisted as a boy-trumpeter at the age of twelve, in the second year of the American revolt, and his attestation papers had long been conveniently lost. Hervey’s gaze fell on the four silver-lace chevrons, surmounted by the crown, on his upper right arm. The effort, the years of duty, which they marked would awe any cornet, and he wondered what Lincoln must be making of his handling of the picket: perhaps the RSM
thought
it all that could be expected from someone whose rank rested solely on the deposit of six hundred pounds with the regimental agents.

‘Mr Hervey, I will be brief,’ began Edmonds as the three turned towards him, Lincoln saluting briskly. ‘General Slade is pressing charges of gross insubordination against Serjeant Armstrong. He will allow me to deal summarily with the charges if I order him to be flogged, otherwise he will have Armstrong court-martialled and dismissed with disgrace. He knows the Sixth does not flog; I
will
not flog! It is the vilest thing – cruel punishment, corrosive of true discipline and morals. Yet Armstrong will be broken for ever if I do not. Was there anything more in mitigation that you have not already told me?’

Hervey glanced at RSM Lincoln, who remained impassive, doubtless thinking that if he, Hervey, had kept calm, then Armstrong might perhaps have kept his temper. ‘Sir, Serjeant Armstrong was insubordinate, but he was my covering-serjeant and it surely might be taken to be mere excess of zeal. Lieutenant Regan was guilty of undermining my authority in front of the picket, and no doubt Serjeant Armstrong felt he should act in this respect.’