A Regimental Affair (40 page)

‘Good. I’ll take a little Madeira with you until then.’

Johnson brought a new decanter.

‘There is one thing, Sir Francis,’ said Hervey cautiously as he took his glass.

‘Ay?’

He cleared his throat. ‘I am uneasy that I have not . . . not had the opportunity to speak with my commanding officer on this affair.’

Sir Francis Evans turned a gimlet eye on him, and his ear reddened. ‘Do not
sport
with me, Captain Hervey!’

Lieutenant Seton Canning moved like a seasoned woodsman along the forest track to where the last of the subdivisions stood waiting, the moon being up early and throwing all the light he needed. Corporal Clarkson was ready for him: ‘Subdivision fed and watered, carbines and pistols primed, nothing to report, sir.’ It had been the same with the others – all in their places, in good heart and eager for the chase.

‘Another half-hour, Corporal, and then we’ll break cover. Stand easy!’ Seton Canning lit a cigar.

Cuckney was about a mile to the south – the other subdivisions were a little closer – and timing was of the essence. The cordon had to be set by nine, so that if anything went wrong at the Crow’s Nest they would be able to net the assembly as they bolted. But there could be no movement from the coverts until the very last minute in case a latecomer detected them and alerted the rest. They might even bump into honest travellers, but that was a risk they would simply have to take, in which case they would detain the wayfarers until the affair was over. When the time came, Seton Canning’s dragoons would trot for half the distance to the hamlet along a green bridleway, which would take them four minutes; then, taking about the same time again, they would walk for the next quarter of a mile so as to make less noise, and then they would dismount and lead the horses the last furlong, posting dragoons at intervals until they met up with the other subdivisions and the whole village was encircled (this would probably take another ten minutes). They would therefore leave the covert at eighteen minutes to nine, a few minutes before the others.

‘It is just gone ten past eight, Sir Francis,’ said Hervey, closing his hunter.

‘Very well, then.’ The general’s orderly held down the offside stirrup as his principal mounted the handy little mouse dun, which
he seemed excessively attached to, and beckoned to his ADC. ‘If that mare of yours is still horsing, and squeals so much as once, I’ll send the pair of you packing at once!’

‘Sir!’ The ADC was from the First Guards, and therefore wont to answer any enquiry or command with the simple affirmative, relying solely on its infinite tonal possibilities to convey meaning.

Hervey gave Henrietta a parting kiss, sprang into the saddle and gathered up the reins. Gilbert crabbed right and rear, backing into the ADC’s horse, which squealed and set her teeth at the grey’s rump.

‘For God’s sake, Harry!’ The general seemed much preoccupied with the behaviour of his ADC’s mare.

‘My fault, Sir Francis,’ owned Hervey. ‘He’s still a bit green about carriage lights.’

The chaise’s lights made a sweep of the party as it turned full circle in the yard.

‘All set, Serjeant Armstrong?’ called Hervey.

‘Ay, sir,’ came Armstrong’s voice from the window. ‘It’s a press, but we’re in.’

‘Very well, Mr St Oswald, lead on if you please.’

The general obliged Hervey greatly as they rode to Cuckney by saying nothing, except the occasional reproof to his long-suffering ADC. The moon gave the evening an almost merry feel, as if they were off to a levee or a ball. The first mile they did at a walk, and only a milk cart passed in the other direction (on the whole, Sherwood was not a place to be about after dark). Then they made a good trot on the macadamized turnpike – eight miles an hour – with something still in reserve.

Plans were all made, orders had been given; there was nothing for Hervey to do now but enjoy the ride – and relish, perhaps, what was to come. He found himself humming ‘Rule, Britannia’, until he supposed it not quite apt, and then remembered another of Thomson’s ballads.

‘Pour all your speed into the rapid game;

‘For happy he who tops the wheeling chase;

‘Has every maze evolved, and every guile disclosed;’

He had to search his memory hard for the rest, repeating the last
line two or three times, so that more than once Johnson glanced his way.

‘Who knows the merits of the pack;

‘Who saw the villain seized, and dying hard
,

‘Without complaint, though by a hundred mouths

‘Relentless torn: O glorious he, beyond

‘His daring peers!’

‘Is tha all right, Cap’n ’Ervey, sir?’ asked Johnson in the nearest thing to a whisper he could manage.

‘Yes,’ Hervey assured him. ‘Never better!’

All Saints’ church clock struck the half-hour as they trotted through Clipstone. The village was ill lit and the street empty, but dogs began barking and soon there were faces at the windows, and braver ones at doors.

‘Five minutes!’ called Lieutenant Seton Canning some time later in the northernmost covert. Men began stowing canteens and tightening girths. Soon the other subdivisions would be doing the same, taking the time by the flickering light of a candle (what a todo it had been to find enough watches!).

The road party sped on, up a long incline to where an old beacon tower kept lonely sentinel, the driver checking his team at the top for a steady descent.

‘Mount!’ Seton Canning’s order was hushed but clear, and eight dragoons, their corporal and lieutenant put left foot into stirrup, pushed up with the right and swung into the saddle. They formed twos on the track at the edge of the covert, and in a few minutes were trotting across the Worksop road and onto the green bridleway for Cuckney.

There was no clock to strike the three-quarter-hour for Hervey and his men, for they were in the middle of the broad oaks which had built the nation’s wooden walls. There was nothing but the odd forester’s hut between here and Cuckney, not a light to tell the time by, either. But the pace had been steady and even: he knew they could be neither late nor early by more than a very few minutes. In another mile or so, when they reached the old ford on the Meden, he would close up and read his hunter by the carriage lights.

Cuckney church had no carillon, but Seton Canning was confident of his timing as he led his mare the last furlong before deploying in their cordon position, the other three subdivisions doing the same thing on the further points of the compass. The horses were quiet, to Seton Canning’s and all the corporals’ relief: it was going well.

The long-case clock in the parlour of the grange struck the hour. Henrietta glanced up. Nine o’clock – was that not the time when . . . She turned back to her novel, trying to remember what she had just read. And still she felt sick.

A pheasant started noisily from under Corporal Cook’s feet, its alarm call sounding loud enough to carry to Nottingham. His subdivision froze. They remained stock-still for a full five minutes, until a vixen’s bark nearby gave them their alibi.

The road party was late by a mere four minutes at the ford, and these they made up easily on the straight incline to Warsop Hill next, where Hervey halted the party at twelve minutes past nine.

‘We’re at the rallying point, Sir Francis,’ he said. ‘You can see our object quite clearly, yonder.’ There were only one or two lights a quarter of a mile distant, but they stood out distinctly on the open heath about the crossroads. ‘I’ll leave Cornet St Oswald, and he’ll come at the signal.’

‘Very well, Captain Hervey. Do you recognize it if I say “Bestir yourself, and then call on the gods”?’ He held out his hand.

Hervey took it and smiled. ‘I do indeed, sir. And thank you for it. With your leave, then?’ He saluted, took off his shako, reined about and kicked on.

A minute later the chaise rolled up to the hamlet at a steady trot, the driver expecting a signal to halt at any second. It came just short of the old turnpike lodge, a lantern swinging in the middle of the road. ‘What’s yer business?’ The challenge was in the rough accent of the county.

‘Master Cutler on ’is way back to Sheffield!’

The sentry held up his lantern and moved towards the nearside door. Serjeant Armstrong had already slipped from the offside one.

‘Show yerself, please, Master Cutler,’ called the sentry.

Armstrong sprang on him from behind. His forearm was round the man’s throat in an instant, stifling any sound. ‘Not a word, lad, or you’ll feel my sabre in your side!’

Private Scriven was out too, a regular pocket Atlas. They bound the man up tight with horse bandages.

‘Pistol to ’is ’ead, Scriven,’ rasped Armstrong. ‘Wait on Mr Oswald’s men to take him off!’ He leapt back inside as the wheels began to turn.

‘Well done, Geordie Armstrong!’ said Hervey to himself. He would tell Caithlin of it, with the greatest satisfaction.

They slowed to a walk to turn into the Crow’s Nest yard. ‘Who goes there?’ came another challenge, this time from the shadows, and no lamp.

‘Master Cutler, homebound. We’ve a lame wheeler. Have you a livery?’

‘No liveries!’

‘We pay handsomely,’ called Hervey from behind, seeing a window open partially in the loft and then close again.

‘Why don’t you put t’other ’oss on then?’

‘Because he’s shy of the traces!’

The inquisitor stepped from the shadows. ‘The Master Cutler, d’ye say? I saw ’im meself only a fortnight back at t’Goose Fair.’ He put his hand to the door.

Armstrong had it open before he could turn the handle, driving his fist in the man’s face with all his strength. There was a muffled cry, which had Hervey turning for the loft with his pistol. But no window opened.

‘Come on, then!’ Hervey called, jumping from the saddle and ramming his shako back on his head.

Out from the chaise sprang Armstrong, five dragoons and Wilks, all now with shakos on, including the Bow Street man, for that was the surest way of recognition in the half-light and, God forbid, the smoke.

Up the outside steps they went, Wilks porting the sledgehammer. A footboard broke under Hervey’s boot. ‘Who’s there?’ came from inside.

‘Enoch!’ boomed Wilks, and swung the hammer with all his force.

The door jumped from its hinges. In they burst.
Bedlam!
Shots – swords – clubs – fists – smoke – screams – oaths – pleas.

On the road, St Oswald, the general and a dozen dragoons spurred to a gallop, and on the heath the cordon began walking in, sabres drawn, pistols ready, reins crooked on the arm.

‘Remember – no shooting without challenging first,’ bellowed Seton Canning. ‘And outside the cordon only! Outside only!’

A minute later St Oswald’s party was at the inn, seizing Luddites as they fled the yard in terror, and then running up the steps to the fight in the loft. But it was all over. There were half a dozen men on the floor, bleeding in varying degrees, one of them Corporal Troughton, who had covered Hervey well but painfully. Corporal Perrot was already binding up his shoulder. He’d live; as would four of the Luddites – for the time being at least. Another was stone dead, and four more were holding their hands so high they were touching the beams.

‘Right, you bastards, let’s have you all in the yard,’ growled Armstrong.

When they were gone, Bartle climbed down from the eaves. He dusted off his shoulders, then held up his pocketbook. ‘I have it all, sir.’

Hervey sighed, with no little relief. ‘You’ll both be very glad to get back to London, I’m sure!’

Wilks blew out the residue from his pistol pan. ‘Sir, I can’t tell you how fine it was to smell powder smoke once again!’

Mansfield, mid-November

Three weeks passed in which there was not only a cessation of Luddite violence in the shire, but also a remarkable disinclination for the age-old activities of the night such as poaching and housebreaking, for the belief throughout the county was that the authorities now had the ear to all unlawful activity. The magistrates and solid citizens of the borough were fulsome in their praise of Hervey’s troop for the affair of the Crow’s Nest, and sent them at once a quantity of beer and ham.