Rumours Of War h-6 Read online

  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.

  Hervey smiled because he had not thought so rough an NCO would find favour with the punctilious Lankester. And he liked Armstrong. It was difficult not to like a seasoned dragoon who looked you in the eye as he saluted, and did so with a ready smile. There was never any sense of resentment in the man, as he detected (or thought he did) in others. True, Armstrong spoke in the strong voice of Tyneside, but he was never unintelligible, as some of the dragoons from the northern parts. Armstrong was, in fact, a cornet’s godsend.

  But it had been a wearying day, and worse than need have been. If only Corporal Hood had been able to find his way back to the brigade’s rallying point; they could now be taking their ease, the horses fed. And it was not even dark. Doubtless all the billets would be bagged, Martyn said, and they would have the taunts of the other columns ringing in their ears as they improvised a bivouac somewhere. Sir Edward Lankester was not a happy man.

  Hervey did not relish the idea of a bivouac. He wanted to ride through the night until they met the French. For six months and more he had imagined this day; since before his father had even lodged the banker’s draft with the regiment’s agents, whereby M
aster Matthew Hervey had become Cornet Hervey when still but sixteen save for a few months. He had prepared himself assiduously, indeed. Five years and more Daniel Coates had been his riding-master, saddler, armourer, master-at-arms, trumpeter and tutor in drill. By the age of twelve he had known the guards and cuts in Le Marchant’s manual, practising them hour after hour against the chalked face on the stable wall. He likewise knew every trumpet call. And even before going to Shrewsbury he had read Captain Hinde’s Discipline of Light Horse.

  He did not want to halt for the night. He wanted to see action so that he could write home to Daniel Coates and tell him that at last he counted himself a true soldier. But if they marched, counter-marched and re-marched, as they did now, they would never close with the French in a month of Sundays, and the laurels would go to the other regiments. He sighed; this must be what vexed his troop-leader so.

  And then he had the most disturbing thought of all: what would happen if the French sued for peace before the Sixth could cross swords with them and claim a battle honour?

  *

  Hervey had no occasion to write to ‘Trumpeter’ Coates for nearly a month, however. And even then he was not able to declare himself a true soldier. Save, perhaps, in the sense of learning the difference between the glamoury of reviews at home and the true nature of soldiery, the one in parade dress with every man peacock-smart and alert, the other with all its sweaty grime and the inadequacy of many a man who had otherwise looked the part in barracks.

  Vila Vicosa

  24th October 1808

  My dear Dan,We left Lisbon, whence last I wrote you, on 21st ult, and are now camped near the Spanish border, near the great old fort of Elvas. You must forgive me for a very inadequate description of this city, for it is quite beyond anything that I have ever seen. They say it was first a Roman city, and there is a very high aqueduct, four arches on top of each other to a height of a hundred feet, which brings water a great distance to the town and it serves still but no one says that it is Roman. And then it was a Moorish castle according to the people who come to our camp to sell us the produce of the place. There are very good blankets, which I have bought, for our guides say that it will be excessively cold these next months, and the most delicious sugar plums you would ever taste, which are a great specialty here, and are sent to England too, though I never heard of them. The whole city is fortified, and I think on the design of Marshal Vauban, or if not then his design is copied by the Portuguese themselves. I rode all around its wall yesterday, and there are ravelins and hornworks and lunettes, just as in the books in Ld. Bath’s library, and much work there is in building new and strengthening the bastions against siege guns. Within the wall and ramparts the city is quite fine, with some tall handsome buildings, white houses mostly and everywhere narrow whitewashed alleys, quite clean compared to Lisbon, and most of the houses with little balconies as in Lisbon where the families like to sit of an evening, especially the ladies, even when as now it is coming cold. There is a fine Gothick cathedral, which I have not yet been able to see beyond its exterior, and a most curious but pretty chapel which has eight sides and stands on eight painted columns, with tiles lining the walls up to the lantern, and is unlike any other thing in the whole of the country says its guardian. There are hills all about the outside of the city, but none, I think, overlook the fortress to any great extent, so that I think it must be the very strongest of places, as indeed it must be for it sits astride the road to Lisbon. However, the French took it in the Spring, by what means I do not yet know. There is no sign of the French now, neither has there been the entire distance from Lisbon. It is said that they have not re-entered the country, as was required of them by the treaty at Sintra, though all along they were expected to oppose our march when they had intelligence of it. But now we are to enter Spain and search for them, which will be a capital thing.I did not say anything of the country, which I should. It is very hard on the feet of men and horses alike, for the stone is unyielding, not at all like our chalk Plain, and it is very hilly. But everywhere there are groves of walnut trees and olives and cork, which are very necessary for the winemaking in all the parts of the country, and there are vines always, and sheep in great profusion, I think as much as on our Plain, though in smaller flocks, from which they take milk and make cheese. There are wolves here too, though I have neither seen nor heard one, and such eagles as you never saw.I have got me a good pye bald mare poney since last I wrote, called Belisarda, to carry the canteens. She is 2 years old and in foal and is but 4 foot high, and also a donkey and a mule, who is very strong.You will be glad to know that I have made many friends in my new troop. I have a good groom-servant, Private Sykes, a soft-spoken man from Kent, who attends his duties diligently and gets on well with the NCOs which, as you were wont always to tell me, is very important. I have, I believe, made a firm friend of my fellow cornet, Laming, a very excellent fellow who joined not many weeks before me, and I trust that I have gained also the troop lieutenant’s approbation. I was at first sorry to leave Captain Edmonds’s troop (I did not tell you), but Captain Lankester is also a fine man though he has not seen nearly so much fighting as Edmonds (though he was with the Twelfth in Egypt). All the men hold him in high regard . . .

  Indeed, a dragoon would brighten at a word from Sir Edward Lankester, baronet and owner of extensive acres. They trusted him not because he had seen more action than they had, but because his manner was that of a gentleman whose birthright and habit was command, the estate in Hertfordshire his training ground. Lankester had a genuine, if paternal, regard for his subordinates, though he exercised the greatest restraint on any tendency to sentimentality. ‘I shall counsel little for the present, Hervey,’ he had said when the mint-new cornet first presented himself at orderly room. ‘But you must be at pains always not to close the distance between officer and dragoon. It will be the harder to send them to their death when the time comes.’

  Hervey had felt the advice as a cold douche. If he had had any delusions as to the true nature of the profession of arms – a thrill for the panoply, perhaps, or for a gallop fifty abreast – they were gone in that instant. Indeed, he did not believe he had any misconceptions, save those innocent ones that any who had observed the military only at a distance might have. Daniel Coates had raised him to the trumpet well, and his parting advice had been as ever pertinent: ‘Keep your peace, Matthew, but never overlook a fault; defer to the NCOs in everything that is theirs, but remember that, in the event, yours is the liability.’ Distance, it seemed, was still something that must be cultivated and measured, for all the distance that there was already in their stations both in and out of uniform.

  The happy tone of Hervey’s letter belied considerable vexations, however. That month’s march to the border, with its inexplicable halts and whole days spent in watering order, had thrown up the truth about many a man. Most, he reckoned, were fair sorts, and some were very good indeed, but there were the ‘King’s hard bargains’ too, as the shirkers and defaulters were known, and others who rose only to the mark through the exertions of the corporals. That, indeed, seemed to be the corporal’s sole purpose at times, and it surprised him somehow: it came to him as strange that men with lace on their arms were needed just to drive those without. He had understood that it was the corporal’s function to expedite orders, but until he had seen it for himself, in the field, he had not imagined how ‘unscientific’ it usually was. Thus, he supposed, did a cornet learn his trade.

  In Daniel Coates’s instruction, though, Hervey had the edge over the other new cornets. But Coates had omitted to tell him of one thing that was as much a part of the Sixth’s routine as any trumpet call – women. Or, if he had, then it had somehow not registered in the way that drill and the riding-school had. Hervey had had first wind of the problem of regimental women at the Canterbury depot, but only now was the thing exposed as a plague on good order and military discipline. The Sixth were not nearly so afflicted as other corps (there were some who said not nearly
so well served), but even so, the regimental followers numbered almost fifty, and the morning after Hervey had written his letter to Wiltshire they were told, for the first time, that they would be allowed to come up with the rest of the baggage train. Lankester sent Hervey, squadron officer of the day, to bring in the troop’s party.

  *

  ‘Faith, would yer look; they’re sending boys now!’

  The lilting Irish brogue brought raucous acclamation from the rest. Hervey knew at once he had a trial ahead. It had already taken an age to find the regiment’s women, let alone the troop’s, for the baggage train was spread about the meadows outside the town like a tinkers’ fair. He wanted done with the business as soon as may be, but he realized that he had not the slightest idea how to proceed.

  But Armstrong had. ‘Come along, ladies,’ he rasped, scarcely forbearing to smile.

  ‘Isn’t he a fine-made boy, though, the officer, Annie! He’d stay at his post all night!’

  There were shrieks from the rest, and more raucous than before.

  Hervey stood composed, as best he thought, praying that his mounting discomfort was not evident. Corporal Armstrong poked at the donkeys with his cane, trying to get them separated from the others.

  ‘Can I do any washing for you, lieutenant?’ came a cheery voice from the Black Country.

  Hervey made the mistake of smiling and shaking his head.

  ‘What’s the matter, dearie – my hands too rough for your smalls?’

  ‘He don’t look to me as though he’s small, Annie!’

  ‘Now, girls! If you please!’ tried Armstrong. ‘Mr Hervey is an officer and a gentleman and he expects the regiment’s wives to comport themselves as ladies.’