Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War (13 page)

But Hervey knew such a consideration would never of itself serve. The papers were full of it – the Tory papers at least. Repealing the Test Act would only invite trouble in Ireland, and there was not an army to safeguard both Ireland
and
the colonies. That, at least, is what the King thought (so it was said), and all his ministers, even the Duke of Wellington. And Hervey fancied that the trouble lay in too great a fear of the past, and too great a remove from the effects of the penal laws on humble folk trying to better their lives but in conscience. Sometimes Hervey found it hard to warm to the duke’s politics. The sooner the great man went to the Horse Guards, to the position for which the last thirty years had been perfect prelude, the better. There he could bring the army back to its former efficiency and avoid the rank world of placemen, rotten boroughs and political deals. That had been Hervey’s settled opinion for some time now, and the sight of his friend’s sister in exile for her faith only settled it deeper. But he was able to close the letter on a happier note at least:

As to my military duties, I cannot tell, for we are idlers at present awaiting orders from the colonel (a tiresome man, but I will not belabour you with more of that). So for the moment I am pleased to receive an invitation for tomorrow to the house of the Baron of Santarem, whom we all knew so well for his hospitality and sensibility when first the regiment came to Lisbon . . .

Next day, early, Hervey once more engaged a calash and made his way to Belem in the western outskirts of the city, where the Delgados had their town house.

Belem, he recalled, was the place of the navigators, whence the caravels had set off on the great voyages of discovery, returning, if they did at all, treasure-laden; a place where the kings of Portugal had built extravagant churches and monuments to those days, which three hundred years later, even after the ruination of earthquake and war, still spoke something of the riches and confidence of that age. Here, unlike Lapa’s teeming elegance, was an expansive grandeur, the colours regal, the pace sedate. Hervey found he needed no guide once they came on the royal palace, its pink stone warmly familiar in the soft sunlight of a late-autumn morning, and he felt the keenest sense of a happy return as he hailed his driver to turn up to the porticoed doors of the white house in the Rua Vieira Portuense, where once he and his fellow cornets had been so kindly and divertingly received. Almost twenty years ago; it seemed impossible.

Yet in the barão’s greeting the years fell away at once. ‘It is very pleasing to see you again, Mr Hervey,’ he began, in French as they had always spoken. ‘Or, as my daughter informs me, it is
Major
Hervey?’ He held out his hand with easy informality.

Hervey bowed nevertheless as he took the hand, and then again to Isabella, who did not curtsy but held out hers instead.

Two brindle pointers stood close by, tails wagging. There had always been dogs at Rua Vieira Portuense, and many had been the days when Hervey and his fellows had walked game with the barão’s spaniels and
perdeguerras.
The latter breed, he seemed to recall, had once been so good at pointing their birds that the King had banned their use. Happy memories of a simpler time, mused Hervey; a
cornet’s
time.

‘Yes, they are pleased to see a face that might give them a little sport,’ said the barão, smiling and patting their heads. ‘I fear I am able to give them little enough myself these days.’

‘Your daughter was not without skill, if I remember rightly, sir.’

Isabella smiled. ‘I should not prize my skill too greatly, Major Hervey; I have not held a gun in many years.’

‘She prefers, I think, the
arme blanche,’
said her father, transferring his affectionate smile to Isabella.

Hervey looked at her quizzically.

‘I take my exercise with a fencing master, Major Hervey.’

‘I am all admiration, madam.’

He was indeed. He had not known a woman who practised the fence. At Shrewsbury the master-at-arms had long extolled the benefits. He remembered still: ‘it equalizes the circulation by forcing the whole body to be in motion, it quickens the mind, trains the eye to be alert, and – above all, gentlemen – it trains the temper to be under a right control’. Hervey had not fenced since then (the cavalry sabre was not for the sport), and he could only envy Isabella’s possessing the qualities that he himself would frequently have been the better for.

‘Let us take some wine, then,’ said the barão, grasping his guest firmly by the arm. ‘We have had a fine year.’

The Delgados’
quinta
on the Ribatejo produced a dry white wine which, Hervey fancied he could recall, was better than most of the sherry they had grown accustomed to in the Peninsula. He took his glass and tested his memory. The wine was cool, and dry, and very fresh, a
vinho verde.
‘It does so very much remind me of those days here before, Baron. Thank you.’

The barão nodded appreciatively. ‘But it is a sad day for my country that you should have to come here once more in uniform, Major Hervey. Or that I should have need to search out mine.’

There was no longer the full head of hair, nor the queue, old-fashioned though that had been even a decade and a half ago, nor the active eyes, like the hawk’s. If the barão were indeed a colonel of
ordenança,
then he must have a fine executive officer, thought Hervey, taking another sip of his wine while wondering how to reply.

‘It is a pleasure nevertheless, sir.’

There was a brief silence. The barão appeared to be measuring his conversation. ‘I am sorry you never visited us again after you had left, though I understand your duties hardly permitted it.’

Hervey felt the barão’s warmth, but the sentiment required a response nevertheless.

Isabella, sitting with them as she used to, unlike so many of the Portuguese ladies to whom the Sixth’s officers had paid court, looked at him keenly.

Hervey glanced at her, then back to her father. ‘I have been kept occupied, sir, it is true. Indeed, I believe this is the first time I have ever’ – he faltered just a little, searching for the French – ‘retraced my tracks, so to speak.’

The barão frowned momentarily before he, too, apprehended the French. ‘And shall you retrace them to the border, do you think?’

Hervey looked apprehensive, or so it seemed to Isabella. ‘We do not expect you to divulge anything that is secret, Major Hervey,’ she assured him, in English.

The barão understood. ‘No, no,’ he said, apparently dismayed that his enquiry should have been misconstrued. ‘I would have you tell me all, for I want for reassurance in these lamentable times, but I would not have you tell me aught that you should not.’

Hervey felt awkward. Here were friends – allies, even – and he seemed to be hinting at mistrust. Yet he could scarcely be expected to abandon his caution altogether. Any soldier knew that, and no less the barão. The irony was that he could not answer with certainty in any case. ‘In truth, sir, I have no orders yet. Colonel Norris, who is my commanding officer in this mission, speaks with your officials as we sit. But I will say this: I am sure that we must go again to Almeida, and to Sabugal; and to Elvas.’

The barão’s eyes lit up. ‘At Elvas we can surely be of assistance, Major Hervey, for my brother is bishop there.’

‘So your daughter has informed me, sir. I am obliged.’

‘My father means, I believe, Major Hervey, that I might serve as interpretress at my uncle’s palace.’

The barão nodded.

Hervey was delighted; it was a most unexpected solution to a problem he was only just beginning to think about. ‘Truly, I am obliged, sir. I will inform you of my arrangements just as soon as may be; as soon as I have my colonel’s authority, that is.’

The barão too looked content. ‘Ah, how well I remember the regiment leaving for Elvas the first time! Do not you, Isabella?’ His face changed from anxiety to happy thought.

It had not been quite the
first
time for the Sixth, though, that day they had said goodbye to the Delgados. Nor even, indeed, the second, for they had first marched with Sir Arthur Wellesley to Talavera before the French had driven them back into Portugal and behind the lines of Torres Vedras.

No, the
first
march had been with Sir John Moore, a full year before they had returned to Lisbon and met the barão. But the sequence of history was not something he need trouble him with now. Hervey himself remembered it all too well. It could be no other way with his first time in the field, and soon his first time shot over: the twenty-first of September 1808, the feast day of St Matthew the Apostle, his patronal day. How different then he had looked – they had
all
looked.

CHAPTER SEVEN
FIRST BLOOD

21 September 1808

The 6th (Princess Caroline’s Own) Light Dragoons, as then they were known, had every appearance of another regiment altogether. Instead of the simple jacket they had worn since 1812, with its double row of buttons and bib-front worn open on parade to display the regimental facing colour, or closed for practicality on campaign, the braided dolman was the order for all ranks; handsome, but fussy. White breeches and black boots set it off very smartly too, rather than the more serviceable but plainer grey overalls they had taken to later. And the Tarleton helmet-cap topped all with its elegant bearskin mane. The shako, serviceable though it was, looked a poor thing by its side. And half the men carried musketoons still, rather than the improved Paget carbine – ‘a mean little popgun’, Edward Lankester, Hervey’s troop-leader, called it. Even the sabre was different. They carried General Le Marchant’s 1796 pattern, a fine slashing sword, not unlike the Indian tulwar, thirty-three inches long with one and three-quarters of bend; years later there were still those in the regiment who thought it superior to the 1820 pattern. The Sixth did look fine though, peacock-proud. But, Hervey would admit, green to a man were the cornets, and many a dragoon too.

The people cheered them on their way for many a mile after leaving Lisbon. But the country by degrees became a sad spectacle, destitute even, the fields unsown, whole villages ruined and deserted. Now, as they made for the frontier, nobody cheered them. Nobody seemed to be there. It was Cornet Hervey’s first taste of the consequences of war, and it touched him deep, for it was not difficult to imagine himself in the countryside of Wiltshire and the picture of ruin transposed. But it was adventure still, and adventure he had sought. What was there to fear? He had good captains, first Edmonds at the depot, and now Lankester. Come cheer up my lads, ’tis to glory we ride! He believed it with all his heart.

‘I rue the day I made him corporal,’ said Sir Edward Lankester, surveying from the saddle the little, but in many ways complete world that was his troop.

‘Shall I convene a court martial?’ asked his lieutenant.

Lankester sighed. ‘He’ll get himself killed before the ink is dry.’

‘True.’

Lankester took off a glove and pulled his hunter watch from the vest pocket beneath his dolman. ‘But my care is that he’ll have half a dozen others killed with him.’ He sighed again. ‘Five o’clock, nearly. We should be feeding-off by now. And instead we’re going in circles because Corporal Hood can’t remember the road! But I should have known.’

Hervey was straining hard to hear the exchanges above the clinking, creaking, snorting and stamping that was a troop of cavalry on the march. He did not know if they were lost, but he did know they were riding ground they had covered but an hour before. It was all a far cry from the orderliness of a review. Was this what campaigning was like, as Daniel Coates had often joked? He wished Dan Coates were with him now. He would like to know there would be a whisper in his ear – the right thing to do, and when to do it. It would all be well after the first blood, after they were shot over. But marching like this just made it too easy to think.

‘He’s done me good service in the past,’ said Lankester, suppressing his anger with himself at having chosen to send as guide one of the NCOs better known for drilling by numbers. ‘I’ll not break him; not after he’s destroyed himself in front of the troop thus. I’ll find him a billet with the casual division. The mules, at least, will be stupider.’

‘And his replacement?’

Lankester looked thoughtful. ‘I shall have to consult the quartermaster. Armstrong, I think – now that we’re out of barracks.’

Lieutenant Martyn smiled.

Hervey smiled too, but to himself.
Armstrong,
chosen-man (or lance-corporal, as now that limbo rank was known), to be made corporal! Armstrong was a bruiser, and a most effective disciplinarian because of it. There was no flogging in the Sixth, by long custom, but Lance-Corporal Armstrong and one or two others were authorized, in a manner of speaking, to carry out ‘troop punishment’. Nothing injurious; half a dozen condign punches, perhaps, and by a fist hardened through years of practice. And always carried out on the blind side of the horse lines, mention never made of it by either party. By common consent, troop punishment served the regiment well.