Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) (37 page)

The princess touched the peak of her shako with her riding whip, evidently instructed in the easy ways of a colonel of cavalry.

The party was quite transfixed. Indeed Hervey struggled to recollect himself. The Princess Augusta was a strikingly handsome woman, in her late twenties, Kezia’s age, her features angular and her complexion dark for one whose ancestors must have trounced the Romans in the Teutoburgerwald. In court dress, when they’d all been presented in Brussels a few days before, she had dazzled; now, in riding skirt and regimentals, she was truly arresting. Once before had he seen hair gathered up inside a shako – Henrietta’s, when she’d visited him secretly in the night, when the Sixth had been on a scheme in …

‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Colonel Hervey, but the prince had affairs of state this morning, evidently.’

‘It was no hardship, ma’am.’

She greeted Malet and the serjeant-major. Her lady-in-waiting curtsied.

Grooms brought the Trakehners forward, and mounting blocks. Hervey and his party were quick into the saddle – protocol demanded they be mounted before the colonel – and quickly formed column of twos for the inspection.

The princess was all ease and appreciative nods as she rode along the ranks – no Prussian stiffness, no Saxon chill. What an adornment the Sixth had got themselves. In these days of retrenchment still, a word in the King’s ear might be the saving of a troop if it came to further economies; and from such as the Princess Augusta, a word that could scarcely be resisted …

Up and down the ranks, until Hervey had presented every officer and serjeant-major – she smiling the while, looking each man in the eye, a little Augustan stardust sprinkled on every dragoon, so that the meanest-bred thought himself superior, and the most hardened that he might yet have a soul.

Armstrong above all, perhaps, had never looked more the part. Every piece of his metal glinted, and his leather shone like washed coal, or else was blanco’d like new-dug chalk, his aspect the personification of hard-won experience and loyalty unto death.

And Collins, too – in his rightful place, with his troop, his character unblemished, his authority undiminished. What a business it had all been. But it mattered not, now, the charges withdrawn. Kat had been as good as her word – evidently; what a deal he owed her … in so many ways.

But for the meantime he would mutter simply ‘prudential judgement’, and put it all from his mind, as he would too the question of who would replace Mr Rennie …

The crown prince’s party was approaching. They made back quickly for the front.

It was a pleasingly modest cortège, observed Hervey – all mounted (no carriages), half a dozen equerries and orderlies, and a lance escort of the same number.

‘Leave to carry on, ma’am?’

As he said it he thought he ought to have expressed himself fully rather than in the abridged terms of the parade ground. However, she smiled and bowed. If she hadn’t any notion of what precisely he was saying, she could reasonably suppose that he himself had.

He saluted, reined about, trotted front and centre, and drew his sword – the signal that he now took personal command of the parade.

While the inspection had been taking place, the other two regiments had come up into line. The Sixth were drawn up on the right, with the Dutch
4 Regement Lichte Dragonder
in the centre, and the Prussian
Leib-Husaren-Regiment 1
on the left, the direction from which they’d arrived on the field at the eleventh hour of that close-run day in 1815. The crown prince slowed his charger to a walk as he came to the Hussars, and having served with the Prussians as a cadet proceeded along their front rank with all his famous affability. Then came his
Dragonder
, with familiar nods and as many smiles, and then to the Sixth.

‘Light Dragoons, Pres-e-e-ent … Arms!’

Hervey let the words carry towards the prince’s party, the cautionary ‘Light Dragoons’ the privilege of the commanding officer alone. Then, reining left, put his charger into a trot to pay compliments at the junction with the Dutch.

‘Good afternoon, Colonel Hervey,’ said the prince, his accent guttural but not pronounced, returning the sword-salute with his hand. ‘It is a fine thing to see your regiment again after so long.’

Hervey recovered his sword and returned the prince’s warm smile (‘Slender Billy’ might still answer to the name, sitting tall and long in the saddle – Hervey’s own age, but a major general before he was twenty-one). ‘It is a fine thing to be here again, sir.’

They rode along the front rank, the prince nodding approvingly, with ‘good afternoons’ here and there to officers and dragoons alike. It was, after all, a day simply to ride over old ground, to mark the decade and a half since that day – a decade and a half of peace indeed, for Waterloo had confirmed Vienna, and Vienna had put an end to war.

‘Fine men, Colonel Hervey; fine horses too,’ said the prince. ‘I am so very gratified that His Majesty King George has seen fit to send them.’

Hervey bowed.

‘And so we shall now take a little gallop across the field, and yours shall be the directing regiment, Colonel. Our
objectif
is La Belle Alliance.’

The right was not always the directing regiment, and Hervey took it as a further compliment: ‘Sir,’ he replied, saluting as the crown prince and his party dispersed to their various posts.

La Belle Alliance: was there ever a more aptly named rendezvous? – the inn on the Charleroi road where the duke had shaken hands with Prince Blücher after the battle. ‘Alte Vorwärts’ had little French, and the duke no German, so ‘
Lieber kamerad
’ and ‘
Quelle affaire
’ was all they could manage.

And how well did Hervey recall the inn’s shelter that night, when he’d recovered the body of Serjeant Strange, wrapped it in a velvet curtain –
blue
velvet, the colour that in life had clothed him – lain down in the same room and slept, exhausted, oblivious of all without …

‘Colonel Hervey?’

He woke. ‘Ma’am?’

‘You will permit me to ride with you?’

Hervey tried not to look dismayed. ‘Ma’am, I … But of course. It is your regiment indeed.’

And if she were to be thrown, and her regiment ride over her … Better not to think on it. ‘Ma’am, I would have my covering serjeant check the girth.’

Serjeant Acton sprang from the saddle as the princess held up her skirt, and knew at once he’d face a deal of ribaldry at mess that night. He tightened the straps – and then those of the countess’s saddle – with singular despatch.

‘Thank you, Serjeant,’ said the princess, as Acton remounted; and then, to Hervey, ‘It is a most fine thing to have a regiment of cavalry keeping watch.’

There was a blush to her face – and, he feared, to his too. He cleared his throat and spoke as blithely as he could – the first thing that entered his head: ‘We kept watch most of that day, the battle, ma’am, over on the left flank, until we were called to the centre towards the middle of the afternoon – to about where we stand now, as I recall, though there was a great deal of smoke. I think, however, that we shall ride the very ground over which we charged at the last and sent the French reeling. It was very well judged. The Duke of Wellington caught them just so.’

As he finished he saw with relief the prince take off his hat and with a great flourish wave it in the direction of ‘the French’: ‘The whole line will advance!’

The royal trumpeter sounded ‘Walk-March’.

‘Exactly as the duke did it,’ said Hervey to the princess as they billowed forward. ‘The very words and gesture, when we knew it must all be done, the French finished.’

‘Then what a day this is too,’ she said. ‘I never thought to see.’

‘Ma’am.’ But Hervey’s eyes were already on the prince, for he had to regulate the advance. He must trust to the princess to keep up, or else to Acton to rescue her if she didn’t.

The first hundred yards let the brigade find its natural spacing, and then the prince’s trumpeter blew ‘Trot’. The line began elongating, as it always did, though Hervey kept the axis exactly parallel with the prince’s, so that the Dutch were pushed even more to the left, and there was a deal of swearing until the Prussians gave ground – just as any field day.

He’d already decided to regulate the pace as well as the direction and dressing (the prince could check his own if he got too far in front), for it wasn’t the day for a melee, and he held the Sixth in a short trot as they went down the slope to the sunken lane that had unhorsed so many of Bonaparte’s cavalry, in turn forcing the Prussians to come back to a walk temporarily to avoid the shame of outrunning the directing flank. He saw and couldn’t help but smile, for they’d now have a devil of a scramble to cross the ditch, fall behind and then have to catch up – with even more swearing.

The princess gave her gelding its head – in and then out of the lane in two easy bounds, with a short step between. Hervey saw – and she his admiring look. He glanced back to see the countess take the lane with the same ease. He need have no worries.

Indeed he could now take his ease: the lane was the only test between the ridge and the inn. Any horse could stumble in a rabbit hole, but there was nothing to check a regiment’s worth.

He glanced behind again – the Sixth were in good order – and then left. The Dutch and the Germans appeared to have come to terms, but the prince was pulling ahead, so he extended the trot.

And then the trumpeter sounded ‘Gallop’.

With no enemy to charge and no shot and shell to discompose them, the line was better behaved than many he’d ridden, but he was determined nevertheless to keep them in his check. Up the slope beyond Hougoumont they raced, the Prussians pulling ahead until he held out his sabre very emphatically and they began to conform. How much rye grass they trod down he’d no idea, but nothing he supposed to that day – and corn. It had concealed many a man, and all who fell.

Hoofs pounded – joyous noise! – and now they were half-way to La Belle Alliance, where they’d come on the battery, and he’d led the squadrons straight at the big 12-pounders that had tormented the duke’s line all day – ‘
les belles filles de l’empereur
’. The gunners had no fight left in them – they ought to have been able to get off a round of grape, but instead they raced for their horses or cowered under the guns. And the Sixth had fallen on them with rare savagery, the drivers – boys, some of them – crying as the sabres cut, dragoons standing in the stirrups for extra force in the downswing. No one who didn’t raise his hands was spared, and some who did found it too late.

The princess galloped on his right. She sat so prettily and with such assurance – with courage, indeed, the pace now fast and the ground unknown. His dragoons would be able to see, too; it would do them no harm to admire their colonel-in-chief.

And now La Belle Alliance was just a furlong ahead – the moment to give point. But the prince had said he wouldn’t risk a charge: he wanted the battle to claim no more men or horses.

But the Prussians were once more forcing the pace, and Hervey cursed them roundly below his breath. Out went his sword again, and he glowered at their
oberst
– had
he
ever led a charge in battle? Till at last the deuced man checked his gallop, and in turn brought his hussars back into line.

They were well drilled – of that no doubt – and Hervey could scarcely damn their eyes for long. They rode admirably. He looked forward to their manoeuvres together in the weeks to come – if only they’d admit that Frederick the Great was long dead.

He’d done his duty, though – and more – bringing them up in such order that they might charge now as a brigade, tight enough to break a whole division. But it was the prince’s now to take them left or right of the cluster of buildings about L’Alliance, and to wherever beyond – to practise the rally perhaps, or pursuit?

Instead the prince thrust his sword high and his trumpeter blew ‘Halt’.

The Sixth checked at once and without repeats, for every man and horse knew the call – C, G, octave C. In fifty yards Hervey had them back in a trot, and halted in another ten. He’d lost not a single bolter – as good as the best field day, and better than most (how right to insist they brought their own troopers).

But the Prussians, unused to the Dutch-English calls, nor their
oberst
evidently to the rules of the game, were slower, and had begun overrunning the prince before getting back in-hand (in truth, ‘Halt’ was a movable feast, as Hervey always called it: all depended on where it began).

‘
Nach Paris, Herr Oberst?
’ the crown prince teased, bringing enthusiastic calls from the hussars.

The princess’s face was all exhilaration. ‘Colonel Hervey, your regiment –
c’est magnifique!
’

Hervey coloured. Perhaps it was the French, and the accent from beyond the Rhine. ‘Ma’am, it is
your
regiment. I wish only that you were seeing every man of it on parade.’

‘Then I hope I shall have opportunity to do so, in England.’

Hervey answered as he knew would Lord George Irvine. ‘Ma’am, you must be welcome at any time.’

An aide-de-camp cantered over. ‘Sir, His Royal Highness invites you to take refreshment with him, and your regiment also.’

A princely refreshment too. Behind the inn were picketing lines in the welcome shade of orchards and plantations, and on long rows of canopied tables a cold feast the like of which no dragoon believed he had ever been treated to. Beef, ham, chicken, sausage, pickles, bread of all sorts, cake, brandied fruit, all
ad libitum
, and with plates and forks and knives so that they dined like gentlemen – and drank the local
saison
from Delft tankards specially made which the prince wished every man to take with him; Rennie and the troop serjeant-majors keeping watch on the taps the while, for although the beer was weak, the thirsts were strong. That the Prussians and the Dutch were not so fastidious was their business.

At the crown prince’s table, under a white canopy decorated with emblems of the house of Orange-Nassau, Prussian eagles and the Union flag, a dozen sat with easy conviviality – the princess on his right, the object of all attention. Hervey marked, and not for the first time, how the presence of but a single woman (the countess too was at table, on his right, though mute) so completely changed the tone. Not that the conversation was any more elevated (although French had a way of sounding so) but that all seemed to frame their remarks with a desire for the lady’s favour. He marked that he himself felt proprietorial – Princess Augusta was
his
colonel-in-chief after all – becoming restive at the accomplishment of the
oberst
, who seemed to extract the readiest smiles from her (must Prussia lord it over every German
staat
?).