Man Of War mh-9 Page 15

  Hervey hesitated. ‘I do believe it our best chance, Colonel. If we begin as soon as it is dark – otherwise we risk discovery – there will be time to try another tactic if it fails.’

  The commanding officer folded his arms as he turned over the proposition in his mind. The advantages were manifest, the danger equally so. Could he take such a risk for the sake of the regiment’s – and his – reputation? Could he not take it? At length he put his hands on his hips, and arched his back. ‘I note you say “we risk discovery”, Major Hervey, from which I infer you are content to join us in the enterprise?’

  Hervey smiled. ‘An honour, Colonel.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Lord Holderness, decided. ‘I am obliged to you both, gentlemen. But I shall be the first to cross when Fairbrother has the rope secured.’

  It was no coincidence that the moon was full. The general officer commanding the London District had appointed the time for the manoeuvres so that the inspecting officers might see a good deal of any movement by night. That there was no cloud this evening was another matter: luck, as ever, was a factor in war, even mock war.

  Hervey had for many years counted himself a lucky officer: ill fortune may have placed him in more than his share of dire circumstances, but better fortune had always been his timely aid, whether in the form of stratagem or device . . . or a saviour (he shivered at the sudden recollection that he must count on Kat – again – in that role).

  Now, however, in the lucky light of the moon, he surveyed the obstacle before them, the bend of the Thames north-east of Frogmore, and wondered how much longer he would be favoured, for although fortune might indeed favour the bold, there was a mere hair’s breadth between boldness and recklessness (and that difference only determined by fortune). How did a man judge his course bold or reckless therefore? And it was, to no little degree, his, Hervey’s, course; he had proposed it – urged it – and his friend had suggested the means by which it might be accomplished. Lord Holderness staked his own standing on the plan, it was true, but Hervey now found himself as keenly committed to the manoeuvres as he would have been were he back on the regiment’s strength.

  ‘Truly, I cannot imagine how a man might swim across,’ he said, shaking his head. He considered himself to be a strong swimmer by the usual measure, but he did not see how he could challenge such a spate.

  ‘I assure you it is possible,’ replied Fairbrother, dismounting and beginning to divest himself of his uniform. ‘With a little help.’

  Serjeant-Major Collins dismounted alongside him, and took a coiled rope from his saddle. Collins had for many years been one of Hervey’s trusted men – from his time in Spain as a young corporal – and now as F Troop serjeant-major he had been assigned by Captain Christopher Worsley, with a dozen men, for the crossing of the Thames.

  ‘Your excellent serjeant-major here understands perfectly what is to be done,’ said Fairbrother.

  Hervey did not doubt it. Collins and Fairbrother had been in conclave, with the farrier-major, half the afternoon.

  The farrier-major made his way forward. ‘Here, Colly,’ he announced grimly but with a touch of pride, handing Collins the grappling hook that he had spent the past two hours fashioning.

  Hervey frowned doubtfully. The best athlete at Shrewsbury School – Henry Locke, later officer of marines, who had been his saviour at the affair of the Chintal forts – had been able to throw a cricket ball clean across the river, but the Severn at Shrewsbury was not the Thames here; and a grappling iron and rope was certainly not a cricket ball.

  Serjeant-Major Collins now took his carbine from the leather sleeve on the saddle. Hervey watched with increasing dismay: he had risked his own reputation, the colonel’s, and certainly that of his regiment, on a stratagem that looked as if it might tumble at the first fence. ‘What the deuce will you do with that?’

  But the question was unnecessary: Collins revealed the carbine’s purpose as he eased the shaft of the grapple into the barrel. ‘An exactly perfect fit, Smiddy. Well done!’

  ‘You mean to fire the grapple from the carbine?’

  ‘Ay, sir. Reckon it’ll carry.’

  As indeed would the noise. But Hervey was confident enough in that regard: he did not suppose the ‘enemy’ would so disperse his strength by picketing this far from the bridge. And as for the grapple, he had seen a musket’s ramrod fired a prodigious distance on more than one occasion in the Peninsula by a panicky finger . . . ‘Admirably ingenious, Sar’nt-Major.’

  ‘Colonel on parade!’ came the word from along the line as Lord Holderness made his way forward.

  ‘Good evening, Colonel,’ said Hervey when he reached the grapplers.

  ‘Good evening, Hervey, gentlemen,’ replied Holderness, breezily, dismounting. ‘Is that you I see, Sar’nt-Major Collins?’

  ‘Colonel.’

  ‘And the farrier-major, I perceive.’

  ‘Colonel.’

  Hervey explained the plan.

  ‘ ’Pon my word – ingenious, sir, ingenious!’

  ‘Sar’nt-Major Collins’s idea.’

  ‘Indeed, Sar’nt-Major?’

  ‘I saw something its like once at Dover, Colonel, when the lifeboat there were in trouble.’

  ‘I could wish for a lifeboat here.’

  ‘The rest of the regiment has marched, Colonel?’ asked Hervey.

  ‘They have. They will engage the pickets as soon as may be, keep them alert all night, make them think we are probing the lodgement. And, should there be an unexpected opening, Worsley or Vanneck will seize it.’

  Collins finished tying the rope to the grapple. ‘Ready, Cap’n Fairbrother, sir.’

  ‘Ah, Fairbrother – forgive me; I did not see you there.’

  ‘I have that advantage at night, my lord.’

  Lord Holderness rose to the jest in Fairbrother’s voice. ‘So you do, sir!’

  Fairbrother, stripping finally to the flesh, and with but matches and candle in an oilskin tied at his neck, braced to attention. ‘Permission to cross, my lord?’ he asked, wholly unselfconsciously.

  Lord Holderness took his flask and gave it to him. ‘You may find the brandy restorative. Good luck to you,’ he said nodding, and then to Collins.

  Instead of firing the carbine from where they stood, however, a few yards back on the bank, as Hervey had expected, Collins remounted, gave a hand down to Fairbrother and hauled him astride behind him. ‘Keep paying out the rope, Smiddy. Give me plenty of slack,’ he said to the farrier, just as they had planned it. Then he pressed to the water’s edge, raised the carbine above his head, and forged into the river.

  By God, reckoned Hervey: Collins knew his horse! He could count on one hand the regiment’s troopers that would take so tractably to water at night. As he recalled, Collins’s had been cast as a roadster on the Bath mail, having thrown a leg over the traces on the long incline to Chippenham, stumbling and almost bringing the whole team to grief; the gelding had never taken willingly to the harness after that. The remount officer had bought him unwarranted but at a good price, thereby, and Collins had taken him on as his second trooper, remaking him, evidently, with great patience.

  Hervey smiled to himself: for once, capability and patience had been richly rewarded. Collins and Armstrong were neck and neck as serjeant-majors, in his judgement; it was but Geordie Armstrong’s seniority (and, he must admit, their long years’ association) that to his mind placed him first in line behind the RSM. For a moment he wondered how was Armstrong, and the detached troop, in that southern autumn. Whatever their fortune, with Armstrong the troop was in good hands; of that he was sure . . .

  ‘A really rather remarkable sort of man,’ said Lord Holderness, lighting a cheroot.

  Hervey snapped to in time to see Fairbrother slide from the trooper’s quarters and grasp a stirrup leather as the animal began swimming freely. He held his breath as he watched the current begin taking its hold, swinging the three of them towards the middle of the river, exactly as the branc
h had behaved when they tried it in the afternoon. Collins lay almost prone along his trooper’s neck, carbine held high, until he reckoned they were at the point when the horse would have to swim hard to make headway, the current no longer working in their favour. He raised himself in the saddle, pointed the carbine at the far bank, high, and fired.

  Hervey saw the grapple arching into the darkness, and Collins turning his trooper (or rather, letting him be turned) downstream. He could not see Fairbrother, though he searched with his telescope (it amplified the light); he could only pray the grapple held fast and his friend was able to haul himself across. He could barely see Collins, now: they would, please God, be striking for the home bank, taking advantage of the slack water on the outside of the bend – but a struggle, a prodigious effort, nevertheless. How far downstream they would make their footing he did not know. Even so, he felt like cheering.

  ‘What do you see, Hervey?’ asked Lord Holderness, searching with his own glass.

  Hervey could see nothing: the rope was anchored, for sure, but Fairbrother’s head and shoulders were hardly a mark in such a flood. ‘I can’t make him out, Colonel. But—’

  ‘ ’E’s done it, sir, the serjeant-major,’ came an unmistakable voice from the shadows. Private Johnson, with a telescope of the usual provenance, was lying full length at the water’s edge. ‘’E’s just climbing out.’

  ‘Who is that?’ asked Lord Holderness (it was, to his ear, an unusual report).

  Hervey cleared his throat slightly. ‘Johnson, my groom, Colonel.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Private Johnson.’

  Hervey thought it better not to ponder on the reason the commanding officer might know Johnson’s name. ‘A good eye, he has.’

  ‘He puts us to shame observing in silhouette,’ declared Lord Holderness, now crouching to try the same perspective of Fairbrother.

  ‘Indeed, Colonel.’ Hervey took a few steps nearer the edge. ‘Is the sar’nt-major out yet, Johnson?’

  ‘Reckon ’e is, sir: can’t see owt o’im now for them trees. Ah reckon Cap’n Fairbrother’s gooin all right an’ all cos t’rope’s theer.’

  ‘You can see the rope?’

  ‘Ay, sir. It’s ’angin from a tree.’

  Hervey sighed with no little relief: if the rope were truly fast, Fairbrother would make the bank.

  ‘Admirable éclaircissement,’ said Lord Holderness, sounding both relieved and amused.

  The sound of hoofs signalled Serjeant-Major Collins’s happy approach. ‘Johnson, hold that rope fast,’ he barked as he cantered up, seeing the farrier was now tying the return rope to the tow. ‘Drop it and you’ll go in after it.’

  ‘Right, Serjeant-Major,’ replied Johnson wearily (he had no ambition for rank, but occasionally he had to bite his lip: the serjeant-major had joined the Sixth a month after he had).

  ‘By, but there’s an undertow midstream, sir,’ said Collins, slipping from the saddle and rubbing his gelding’s muzzle.

  ‘How does it run, Sar’nt-Major?’ asked Lord Holderness.

  ‘It’s nothing you can’t make headway through, Colonel, but a nasty enough surprise. You will have to keep your charger’s head at the far bank or his quarters’ll swing right round, downstream.’

  ‘Perhaps you should tie a line round yourself, Colonel, as well as Rolly’s neck.’

  ‘Too many lines, I think,’ he replied, unbuckling his sabre to attach to the saddle.

  ‘We can’t use the return rope, sir, or we might not get the tow back,’ explained Collins.

  ‘There’s the reins, Hervey; that’ll do,’ insisted Lord Holderness.

  Hervey nodded, if reluctantly. He had seen scores of upsets in the Peninsula (as indeed must have Lord Holderness too), but the memory of Chittagong, and the Karnaphuli, weighed heavily with him still. There they had lost Private Parkin, a Warminster man, one of ‘the Pals’, in sluggish water and broad daylight . . . ‘All of the party are swimmers, Sar’nt-Major?’

  ‘Ay, sir.’

  It was as if he had never been away – the application of duty, the habit of command. He searched anxiously again for Fairbrother, though in this was an element beyond mere obligation (as there had been, too, with Collins).

  There was a flicker of light on the far bank – the safety match – and then the steady flame of the candle, the signal that the tow rope was secure; and, moreover, that Fairbrother was also.

  ‘Ready, Colonel?’

  ‘I am,’ replied Lord Holderness, climbing into the saddle. His big thoroughbred, manners perfect, moved not a foot.

  ‘Colonel, wouldn’t it be better if I held your sword?’ asked his groom doubtfully.

  ‘It would, Corporal Steele, but who will hold the dragoons’ swords?’

  ‘Colonel.’ Steele knew as well as the rest that the commanding officer was intent on giving a true lead.

  ‘The tow, Johnson.’

  ‘Right, Serjeant-Major.’

  ‘The reply is “sir”, Johnson.’

  Hervey cringed, feeling somehow responsible (though he knew Johnson ought to have known): there were three officers on parade.

  ‘Right, sir.’

  ‘Just “sir”.’

  ‘Sir.’ Johnson put the return rope over his shoulder, and handed the tow to the serjeant-major.

  ‘Colonel, with permission,’ said Collins, slipping the tow loop over the charger’s neck. ‘Keep his nose at yonder bank, sir, and be ready for the current to swing ’im round, about thirty yards in.’

  ‘Thank you, Sar’nt-Major. And I should have said: that was smart work.’

  ‘Thank you, Colonel.’

  Serjeant-Major Collins counted himself especially fortunate that the commanding officer had witnessed it: in these days of peace there was little enough opportunity for distinction, and without distinction there was no alternative but the dead hand of seniority when it came to the promotion stakes.

  Lord Holderness urged Rolly to the edge of the bank. The gelding paused only to take a look, curious, at the moon on the water and then slid gently into the river with scarcely a sound. As Rolly began swimming, Lord Holderness slipped his feet from the stirrups, swinging his legs up on to the horse’s quarters, letting the weight off its back. As the current took hold, the tow rope tautened, and horse and rider swung midstream like the weight on the end of a pendulum, Rolly now swimming confidently. Lord Holderness, ready for the undertow, pulled hard on the right rein as soon as he felt the quarters swinging, just as Collins had told him, until slowly they began to make progress again.

  Hervey, watching through his telescope, began at last to believe the scheme would work. And then he froze. Lord Holderness was struggling – upright, violently. ‘What—’

  He tumbled from the saddle suddenly, as if shot.

  Hervey raced into the water, grabbing the return rope. ‘Hold hard, Johnson! Hold hard!’

  Collins remounted and put his trooper into the water. ‘Keep it taut, Johno!’

  ‘What’s to do?’ asked Corporal Steele anxiously, closing to Johnson’s side.

  ‘Ah don’t know. T’Colonel just seemed to thrash abaht an’ then tummel into t’watter.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ groaned Steele as he got hold of the rope.

  ‘What’s up wi’im then, Flashy? Is ’e poorly?’

  ‘Just keep ’old o’ this rope, Johno.’

  Hervey made progress despite the weight of sodden uniform, and his left arm over the rope. But Collins bore down quicker. As he reached Rolly, held fast midstream by the tow rope, he saw Lord Holderness motionless in the water, a leg held by the reins, and knew he had but a few seconds before the current would sweep his own trooper clear. He slipped from the saddle to grasp Rolly’s reins, holding on desperately to his own, until he was able to thread his arm through both sets of reins and get a hand to Lord Holderness’s crossbelt.

  Hervey just reached them as the drag of Collins’s trooper became too much to fight against. ‘I’ve got him!’

  ‘Go on, the
n, sir; I’ll cut Rolly free.’

  ‘Hervey? Is that you? What goes there?’ Fairbrother’s voice came from but a dozen feet away. He had swum down the tow rope just as Hervey had along the return line.

  ‘Hol’ness is in the water, but we have him.’

  ‘What would you have me do?’

  Serjeant-Major Collins had managed to draw his sabre. ‘How close is the return line tied, sir? I’ve got to cut Rolly free.’

  ‘A good six feet. Give me the sabre!’

  Somehow Collins did it, before at last the drag broke Rolly’s reins, and his trooper slid away with the current, Collins hanging on, exhausted. Fairbrother cut through the tow between return line and neck loop, and the commanding officer’s charger drifted off downstream after them. ‘Hervey, do you manage?’

  Cornet Blanche, newly joined the regiment and detailed by Captain Worsley for the crossing detachment, was now in the river and closing fast to Hervey’s aid. Between the two of them, Hervey reckoned they would recover the colonel. ‘Yes, Fairbrother. Get back to yonder bank!’

  In a few minutes more, helping hands pulled the three from the river. ‘Get blankets!’ gasped Hervey. ‘Wrap all there are about him!’

  Corporal Steele felt for a pulse – successfully. ‘Thank God, sir: he’s breathing.’

  ‘I don’t think he can have swallowed much water. He was not long in it. I don’t know what happened; the horse, perhaps . . .’

  ‘Sir,’ said Steele, as if seeking permission to give an opinion.

  ‘What? What is it, Corporal Steele?’

  ‘Sir, the colonel has fits, sir. Not often, but he’s had two or three bad ones since we came to Hounslow.’ Lord Holderness had brought his groom with him from the 4th Dragoon Guards.

  ‘We must get the surgeon. See to it, Mr Blanche,’ he said, turning to the bedraggled new cornet.

  ‘He’ll be all right, sir, will Lord Hol’ness,’ said Steele, anxiously. ‘He just needs to sleep. Only half an hour or so, and then he’s right as a line, sir.’

  Johnson brought Hervey his brandy flask. ‘Corporal White’s gone off t’elp t’serjeant-major, sir.’

  Hervey was relieved to hear it, and could only pray that Collins was fit to be helped. He cursed. ‘A foolhardy thing, that,’ he muttered – though in Johnson’s hearing, not meaning to bring an answer. ‘Noble, but deuced foolhardy.’