Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War (50 page)

‘Steady on, sir,’ said Armstrong, gripping his arm again. ‘If we try getting over yon wall there’s no saying we won’t end up like the others.’

Hervey’s mouth fell open. ‘We
have
to!’

‘Ay, sir, I know that. But not leaping up like Jack-in-a-box!’

‘Then how?’

‘Serjeant!’ bellowed Armstrong. ‘Will you get your men to put double charges in them muskets to make smoke for us?’

‘I will, sir!’ Without rank on Armstrong’s sleeve, it was easy for the man to suppose he was at least his equal.

It took a minute to make ready, but there were then two dozen muskets by the wall.

Armstrong looked pleased.

‘Fire!’

A thick black cloud engulfed the wall. Hervey and Armstrong scrambled over at once, Hervey losing his cross-belt in the process – another fifteen guineas to the Spanish dirt. They fairly sprinted up the lane: sixty yards and more, bodies the length of it, redcoats and
voltigeurs
alike, testimony to a vicious running fight. Bullets cracked the whole way.

‘Halloo!’

‘Thank God,’ gasped Hervey, hurling himself behind the wall. ‘Major Napier, sir?’

‘There,’ the man indicated, his tattered scarlet barely recognizable as a captain’s of His Majesty’s 50th Foot, the Queen’s Own.

Major Charles Napier was sitting propped against the wall, his ankle bound with his sash. Crimson though it was, it could not disguise the copious loss of blood.

‘Sir, General Bentinck instructs that you are to retire.’

Napier looked crestfallen. ‘See about you, sir. This is all that remains of the battalion.’

Hervey saw a dozen men, with perhaps four officers. ‘No, sir. There are more. I saw them in the village, though there are many wounded.’

In a way it was the last thing that Napier wanted to hear, especially from a man in a different uniform.

‘Who—’

A salvo from the main battery silenced him for an instant, the fall of shot straddling their position and beyond to the village, throwing up great spouts of stone and soil at the first graze, bowling on with lethal energy out of sight.

Hervey had not observed it so perfectly before. Each iron ball seemed propelled by some hidden force, for after striking the ground its velocity was at once diminished, yet it carried away anything in its path.

‘They come on again, Major!’ called the captain, peering over the wall.

Hervey looked too. A hundred yards to their front the 31e Léger advanced in extended order. He drew his pistol.

‘Retire at once, Denny,’ Napier groaned, holding up his hand as if to say he was done. ‘It’s a hopeless thing.’

Instead they made to lift him.

‘No, no, no! It will not do!’ Napier protested. ‘You will never get me away. You must save yourselves.’

Hervey reckoned they had but an evens chance of making the village even without a man to carry, but the decision could not be his. He glanced up.

Captain Denny shook his head. ‘This is the deuced worse thing! Napier, we cannot leave you.’

‘Denny, you must go at once. Go and take command!’

‘I’ll stay with him, sor,’ piped an Irish private.

Denny nodded, and held out his hand to his major. ‘Good luck to you then, sir.’ Then he turned to the private man: ‘Good luck to you, sir. You’re a noble fellow.’

Hervey glanced back as they began the dash. He saw the muzzles raised, and the smoke, and he heard the shots.

A midden of a ditch was their saving. They scrambled along it thankfully, without pride, coatless, hatless, filthy and stinking. They ran back through the village, stopping only to retrieve their coats, but without success, then out and up the hill to where Sir John Moore had fallen. At the top he saw Fox lying dead, her entrails spread about as if the butcher had begun his work. He found Colonel Long, gasped his apologies for their appearance, and made his report.

The colonel looked astounded. ‘I had never supposed the business so hazardous. I shall commend you to your commanding officer in the highest of terms.’

Hervey bowed. ‘Thank you, sir. May I find a horse so as to be ready to gallop?’

Colonel Graham shook his head. ‘You have done enough today, sir. You may rejoin your regiment.’

*

There were loose horses enough about the field, but none would come within catch. Corporal Armstrong’s was nowhere to be seen. They ran the mile and a half back across country, as best they could, to where Edmonds had posted the regiment. There was no sign of them at the bridge, however. Hervey decided they must carry on towards Corunna; they had at least found coats and helmets (mercifully not the Sixth’s). A provost officer eyed them suspiciously, so that Hervey felt obliged to explain they were sent to the rear under orders. But there were so many stragglers and walking wounded that he wondered at the man’s efforts.

It was, at least, a sign of
some
regularity. The remaining mile was otherwise the picture of military despair, the opposite in every extreme to that which any soldier, however green, knew to be good order and military discipline. Hervey felt a revulsion in his stomach as much as in his head. For as long as he could remember he had wanted to be a soldier. He had revered the men in red coats who marched about the downs where he lived, or who bivouacked in the fields near his school. He wanted only to share their world, mounted if he could, for that was how best he imagined himself in uniform, but if not, then on foot in a red coat like the others. But today he would be ashamed even to speak the name of soldier.

A quarter of a mile from where the lighters were taking off the army, in fields running down to the sea, they found the regiment’s execution of Sir John Moore’s order. The carcasses of three hundred horses lay in neat lines, their legs tied. What grass lay exposed was now red, the blood still wet. Bonfires burned at the ends of the lines, and half a dozen dragoons threw on saddles and bridles, and anything else that would burn.

Hervey could not speak. They had been promised – as near as may be – that there would be transport enough to take off the troopers as well as the officers’ chargers. Had the officers’ horses received a bullet too? He had a mind to search for Stella and Belle, Robert, Belisarda and the mule. But what was the point? ‘Come on, sir,’ said Armstrong, despondent. ‘We’ll be wanted.’ A comforting thought, to be wanted; even in a troop with no horses. Hervey made himself turn away, and he prayed he would forget it, a picture of such regular slaughter that he felt sick at the thought of what it must have been before the last pistol crack. He should have been there, he told himself; he should have been there. But he was profoundly glad he had not been.

‘Last boat from Groyne!’

The cutter bobbed in the swell twenty yards off.

Hervey smiled. The tar’s black humour: it never did to think things were too bad.

‘Tickets to be had aboard!’

‘Why do they call it Groyne, Corporal Armstrong?’ he asked, watching the file of redcoats chest-deep, muskets over the shoulder, waiting to be hauled into the boat.

‘Blessed if I know, sir. But yonder buggers look as if they’d swim for it if it were the last ’un.’

Hervey supposed they might. ‘We had better find out which ship the regiment is taken to. We can’t get into any old boat.’

‘Won’t be easy, sir. Do you see any sign of the provost?’

Hervey looked about. All he saw was straggling lines, and precious few officers.

There was a sudden deal of shouting from the cutter, the orderly file giving way to clamour.

‘You’d think they’d learned by now, sir, wouldn’t you? If a man won’t stand in his place until he’s told otherwise . . . No wonder they’ve lost so many.’

Hervey shook his head, uncomprehending. The same men stood square in the face of Soult’s assault not a league away; what made
these
men a rabble? ‘I see no officers or serjeants, Corporal Armstrong.’

Armstrong screwed up his face.

And then, astonished, he pointed to the boat. ‘Look, sir, there’s a corporal at least. The one as pushed by them others!’

Hervey saw. ‘Not even the NCOs will do their duty.’

‘No,
sir – it’s Ellis!’

‘Ellis?’

‘Ay, sir, Ellis. I’d know that ginger hair anywhere! The bastard’s put on a red coat to shirk away!’

‘What do we do?’

Armstrong shook his head. ‘Nothing, sir. Nothing we
can
do, save tell the serjeant-major or the provost when we see them.’

Hervey boiled. He might get clean away when they reached England.

Two sailors grabbed at Ellis’s shoulders to haul him aboard. Couldn’t they hail the boat to have them put him in irons? Not above the breaking waves. Couldn’t they wade after him?

As the hands heaved Ellis to the gunwales, he suddenly slipped back. They lost their grip and he disappeared beneath the swell.

‘He gets a ducking at least,’ said Armstrong.

Hervey could not feel sorry either.

But Ellis did not break surface. No one close did anything but shout.

‘Come on, Corporal!’ snapped Hervey, sprinting into the breakers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
REDCOATS

Lisbon, 17 December 1826

Kat picked up the sheet of writing paper and read over her words. They were not especially well chosen, but for some days she had pondered the import of what she meant to say, and her mind was made up. At least, it was made up in what she would do, if not necessarily in what she felt.

My dearest Matthew,

There being no further purpose to my remaining in Lisbon, I am taking passage tomorrow to Madeira, where I shall spend the winter months. Your endeavours on His Majesty’s behalf will, I am sure, be both fruitful and advantageous to you, and if I have been able to play a part in that, however small, then I am happy for it. You have been ever in my thoughts these past days, nay, weeks, and I pray that you will have a safe return.

Your most affectionate friend,

Kat.

She held it until the ink was perfectly dry, satisfied with both its economy and purpose. She folded the sheet, put it in an envelope, sealed it with wax, and impressed her seal. Then she rang the bell to tell her maid to summon an express boy.

At Belem, the other side of the city, in the Rua Vieira Portuense, Isabella Delgado removed her mask and lay down her foil.
‘Merci, maître,’
she said, slightly breathless and with a flush to her face.

‘Dona Isabella,’ replied the fencing master in native French, bowing, ‘it is I who should thank you, for you attack with such subtleness.’

‘In all things,’ said the Barão de Santarem, with a smile both rueful and proud. ‘You will stay for some refreshment, Capitaine Senac?’

‘I thank you, no, Barão. I must attend on Ministro Saldanha before noon.’

‘Senhor Saldanha? Yes, indeed. I fear he will have need of you, rather than my daughter’s mere want for recreation. A brave man.’

The fencing master took his leave, and a lady’s maid began unfastening Isabella’s padded doublet.

‘It is many years since I practised the fence, my dear,’ said the barão. ‘But I too may recognize your skill. I am certain Major Hervey would say the same were he here.’

Isabella blushed. ‘Major Hervey’s experience with the sabre is too real for him to have any regard for my sport, father.’

The barão smiled kindly. ‘I think in that you are wrong, my dear. Quite wrong indeed. I have observed that Major Hervey is an admirer of spirit in a woman. And he is already disposed to admire you.’

Isabella blushed the more, and lowered her eyes. The maid began unhitching the hem of her skirt, which was gathered up by hooks and eyes just below the knee.

The barão smiled again, then shuffled off to his library.

Isabella unfastened her hair and let it fall to her shoulders.
That
was something Major Hervey would
never
see her do, whether he were to watch her at fence or not.

But she was hot, despite the coolness of the season; and her last riposte, with its ringing acclamation from the fencing master, exhilarated. She shook her hair loose, unfastened the top of her bodice, threw her head back and breathed deeply. And for an instant, very secretly, she imagined Matthew Hervey was there.

The great bailey, dank and sunless, was a gloomy place except for a few hours of a summer day. The walls, fifty feet high closest to the magazine, to protect it from all but the lucky plunging shot from mortar and howitzer, put its cobbles into a semi-permanent shade, so that moss grew unchecked, and lichens turned the walls a pallid green. The parade square was momentarily silent but for Hervey’s mare pawing the cobbles.

Dom Mateo shifted in the saddle, then nodded.

Hervey gave the sign.

‘Battalion, att-e-enshun!’

Corporal Wainwright, with four chevrons and a crown on his sleeve, took the four hundred redcoats through their arms drill. They had been proficients when he began, two days before, but not to English words of command. Now they looked to be. And at a distance of a dozen yards even a practised eye would be unlikely to notice a deception. With the Union flag and what passed for regimental colours, the masquerade was complete. Even Hervey wore red, and the plumed hat of a general officer.