Man Of War mh-9 Read online

  ‘What’s tha want to do, then, sir?’

  Hervey took another draw from the flask. ‘Do? We do again as we just have, until we get someone other than Captain Fairbrother across!’

  ‘Right, sir.’ The disapproving resignation in Johnson’s tone was too familiar to invite remark, let alone rebuke.

  An age seemed to pass before Collins returned. Hervey sighed, wearied but relieved again. ‘How many more times might you be able to do that, Sar’nt-Major?’

  ‘How many times might you want me to, sir? How’s the colonel?’

  ‘He’s well enough.’

  Cornet Blanche came back. ‘Major Hervey, sir, I have sent Corporal Beckett for the surgeon. He said he knew where to find him.’

  ‘I told you to fetch him, Mr Blanche!’

  ‘Sir, I’m sorry. I thought I would be of more use here.’

  Hervey shook his head, despairing of his ill temper. ‘So you would, Mr Blanche; so you would. You did right.’

  ‘Orders, sir?’ asked Collins, declining Johnson’s offer of a blanket with a shrug of the shoulders.

  ‘We carry on. Who was next to go?’

  ‘I was, sir,’ came Corporal White’s voice.

  ‘Very well . . . no. Mr Blanche, you will go next, if you please, since you have your uniform waterproof already.’ The ironic tone of his voice was marked.

  ‘Thank you, sir. It can absorb no more, that is for sure.’

  Spirits were restored.

  ‘You’re sure the colonel’s well, Corporal Steele?’ Not that there was anything they could do if the answer were in the negative.

  ‘Ay, sir, he is.’

  ‘Very well. Have we the tow rope back?’

  ‘Sir,’ came another voice.

  ‘Carry on, then, Sar’nt-Major.’

  Collins made a new loop in the tow and put it over Cornet Blanche’s charger’s neck. ‘Now, remember, sir, keep his nose at yon bank and be ready for the current to swing ’im round, about thirty yards in.’

  ‘I will, thank you, Serjeant-Major.’

  Blanche sounded steady enough, thought Hervey. But if he botched it, then he did not fancy the chances of getting anyone across (he himself would almost certainly have to take command of the regiment, for he did not believe that Lord Holderness would be fit to do so before the morning at least, whatever Corporal Steele’s assurances).

  Blanche saluted sharply and urged his mare to the edge of the bank. Like the colonel’s charger before her, she too took a quick, curious look at the moon on the water, and then slid willingly into the river. Blanche slipped his feet from the stirrups, swung his legs up on to the mare’s quarters, and as the current took hold, and the tow rope tautened, they swung to the exact same position midstream, the mare swimming well. Blanche pulled hard on the right rein as soon as he felt her quarters swinging, and gradually they began making headway. It took no more than five minutes, although it seemed longer to Hervey, and then the mare was making her first footing in the shallows on the far side. She struggled out, blowing hard as if she had just run a fast mile, and Blanche jumped down.

  Fairbrother was waiting. ‘Welcome to the playing fields of Eton.’

  ‘Welcome back, you might say, sir.’

  ‘I should have known,’ replied Fairbrother, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘And that was as hard a game as ever I had here, I may tell you.’ Blanche handed Fairbrother the water-deck bundle in which his clothes had been wrapped. ‘Here’s a parcel from home, as it were.’

  ‘Good man! I confess the chill in the air is something more than I supposed.’

  ‘A bit hotter, I imagine, where you come from, sir,’ replied Blanche, affably, slipping the loop from his mare’s neck.

  The two following horses crossed with the same facility, albeit with as great an effort. But the third was disinclined even to enter the water. Hervey was of a mind to tell Collins to stand the dragoon down, but he decided instead to try a lead, springing into the saddle and taking hold of the reluctant trooper’s reins. He pressed his spurs into his own gelding’s flanks – this was no time for half measures – and pulled hard at the other’s bit. ‘Give him the flat of the sword if he refuses, Kelly!’

  ‘Sir!’

  But Private Kelly did not need to draw his sabre; his horse took the lead, and Hervey was able to let go while they were still treading the bottom. ‘For’ard then, Kelly; keep his nose at the far bank. You’ll be fine.’

  ‘For sure, sir!’ Private Kelly was an old hand; he had no wish to be disgraced in front of the others.

  The moon disappeared behind the clouds as they surged forward, the gelding picking its feet up high, exaggerated like a hackney, and then the first uneasy moments of flotation, unbalanced, even floundering, until the confident action as the animal settled to a proper rhythm. Kelly loosed his feet from the stirrups and lay full length along the trooper’s back, gasping at the sudden cold douche, letting the water lift him clear of the saddle, for all his sodden weight.

  Hervey could no longer see them.

  The current, deflected at the bend, took them exactly as the three before, but Kelly was not as ready as they for the undertow. The gelding’s quarters began to swing downstream, and his rider was too slow with the correcting rein – were the horse anyway well mannered enough to respond, out of his element.

  The tow-rope loop slid forward to the gelding’s throat, levering his head up even more, so that he started struggling against it. Nothing that Kelly could do would get the horse to answer to the rein. He had but seconds, he reckoned. His trooper would drown, if it did not first choke. Though he knew he would be cutting himself free of his line, he reached for his sabre, groping for the hilt in its uncustomary position. He got the blade out, with difficulty, and then hauled himself by the brow-band to get within reach of the rope. Then he swung his sword arm.

  The rope severed at the second cut. He let go of the brow-band and grabbed for the return line. He got but a touch – enough, though, for a desperate man – and both hands grasped it vice-like as the current swept the gelding away.

  He began shouting, but against the spate it was like a whisper. Fairbrother, waiting at the point where the horses got their first footing, just had a glimpse of the loosed gelding – and thought the worst.

  He ran back to the tether point and began pulling on the line. Resistance meant it was fouled – or there was a dragoon clinging to it. ‘Give me a minute and then haul in!’ he shouted to Cornet Blanche and the others, stripping off his tunic and boots. Then once more he dived into the slack water.

  Blanche counted to sixty and then began hauling. In another minute it was done – the two of them dragged to the bank, Kelly exhausted, Fairbrother little better.

  Corporal White was first to speak. ‘Sir, if I may say so, that was a rare brave thing you did, an’ we’s awful thankful for it. Isn’t that right, Micky me old pal?’

  Private Kelly was still on his hands and knees, with Corporal White’s sodden cloak about him. ‘We is, sir; right thankful o’ it. Can you ’ave a see for my Ben, Chalky?’

  Fairbrother, gathering up his clothes and attempting to dry himself a third time, was more touched by the accolade than he might have imagined. ‘Well, let us try to get the rest across without recourse to the same measures. Where’s the rope? We must needs make a new loop and then get it to the other side.’

  Johnson saw the candle-signal, and hauled on the return rope as fast as he could.

  Back came the tow-rope; but with no moon – and no immediate prospect of it – Hervey had had enough. ‘No, Sar’nt-Major. They will have to go to it with the men they have. I’ll get word across in an oilskin. Have the party form up. We join the rest of the regiment.’

  X

  COUP DE MAIN

  Later

  Just after four o’clock, an hour or so before first light, Hervey arrived at the regimental contact point, a knoll half a mile to the south-east of Fifield (it was a most opportune rendezvous that Lord
Holderness had fixed on before the troops had gone to their tasks).

  ‘So ho, Hervey! Where is the colonel?’

  Captain Worsley sounded unusually hale, thought Hervey as the party jingled up the hill. ‘He is at the river, still. Is Vanneck here?’

  ‘Adsum.’

  Hervey reckoned the mood was evidently infectious: doubtless the ride through Eton High-street brought memories. ‘I would speak to the two of you.’

  They drew aside, remaining mounted. Hervey lowered his voice nonetheless. ‘Lord Holderness was taken by a fit as he crossed the river. He damn well nearly drowned. The surgeon’s with him. He says he will recover quickly, but I don’t believe he’ll be able to take the reins again for a good few hours.’

  ‘What do you propose, Hervey?’ asked Worsley, sounding now less hale.

  ‘Propose? I propose nothing. I am damn well taking command!’ Detached to the Cape though he was, Hervey could not see why Worsley should have any doubt what was to do. ‘Now, I want not a word of the indisposition. If the colonel recovers in time he can be back before the general has any idea of it. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was something in the tone of that shortest of replies which conveyed offence at the notion they would think otherwise. But he was taking no chances: once a general smelled blood, so to speak, he would hound the wretched quarry until it were done for – and Hervey had no desire to see Lord Holderness brought down (and even less the regiment with him). ‘Where is the sar’nt-major?’

  ‘He’s checking the pickets,’ said Vanneck.

  ‘Very well, I’ll tell him on return.’ Mr Rennie, whom Lord Holderness had brought with him from the Fourth, already enjoyed the confidence of the officers, though Hervey himself did not know him. The RSM and the adjutant were the only two others whom he considered it necessary to inform of the colonel’s true situation.

  ‘The party otherwise crossed safely?’ asked Worsley.

  Hervey recovered himself. ‘Yes, forgive me: they are, but only a handful. Kelly near drowned. I could not risk any others. Blanche is across. Fairbrother and he shall have to do the business.’ It had been the idea that Hervey would lead the party, but Worsley and Vanneck must know that with the colonel hors de combat Hervey was obliged to take his place.

  To that end he now needed the squadron leaders’ reports. Lord Holderness’s plan had been to send a strong scouting party an hour and a half before last light through Windsor Forest, as far as the wooded high ground overlooking Fifield (where Hervey and the two squadron leaders now stood), for he had calculated that Fifield would be the southernmost extent of the Grenadiers’ lodgement. He had put Myles Vanneck in command of the party, with the five remaining cornets, to picket the route through the forest, which, though hardly like the forests of India, was no place to take chances with the main body of the regiment at night, even a moonlit one (he would not give the game away to the Grenadiers’ pickets by advancing in daylight), and then to discover what they could of the ‘enemy’ dispositions. Vanneck, as Worsley, was entirely capable, but even if the reconnaissance were detected, Lord Holderness had reckoned that it would serve his design, for the Grenadiers would stand to and reinforce their pickets, fixing their attention to the south rather than to the north and east, the other side of the Thames.

  Hervey had been at one with him in this. They gambled, of course. If they had been unable to get anyone across the river, the entire adventure would have rested on a direct approach to the bridge, against the enemy’s strength rather than his weakness. Hervey now had but a handful of men on the north side, and they had no plan but to improvise a ruse on nearing the bridge. Yet he did not doubt that they would. In what he had seen of Fairbrother at the Cape – the scrapes with the Xhosa in the night, the clash with the Zulu at the Umtata River – he concluded that he had a soldier-companion of rare facility with unpromising circumstances.

  The hazard in the plan was, to his mind, the inability to communicate with Fairbrother now. All, therefore, depended on timing. Since the regiment’s mission was to seize the bridge by first light, timing was in any case of the essence; but the success of a ruse, especially one with so few men, could turn on a fortuitous minute.

  There was, too, the second element of the regiment’s assignment: the bridge had to be held until the Sixth were relieved. A handful of men, in the dark and with surprise on their side, might take the bridge from the rear; but as soon as the Grenadiers had recovered themselves, they would mount a counter-attack, and easily carry the bridge. In that case it were better that the bridge was destroyed, cutting off the enemy from their own forces.

  But how could the umpire at the bridge be persuaded that so few men had captured and then destroyed it? That was the material question, and one which Hervey had no option but to leave to Fairbrother. Yet even if Fairbrother were able to take the bridge, and he, Hervey, was able to get every man of the Sixth to it in time – and the artillery pieces – the general’s umpire would not permit them an indefinite defence. If only he might know what were the Grenadiers’ orders! He had made the most thorough appreciation of the situation – of the Grenadiers’ situation, too – as they rode through the forest, but he could not be certain. That, however, was the nature of war, even mock war:nothing was certain.

  ‘What is there to report of the lodgement?’ he asked Vanneck.

  ‘I think I may tell you the most effectually if we ride to the forward edge of the copse.’

  They did so. And what Hervey saw in the distance both surprised and buoyed him.

  ‘I imagine the field of the cloth of gold was no more remarkable,’ said Vanneck wryly. ‘They have a vast officers’ tent just this side of the Thames at Dorney, and the band was playing until after midnight.’

  ‘I don’t think I ever saw so many campfires since Spain,’ replied Hervey, not troubling to take out his telescope. ‘What else have you discovered?’

  ‘They have pickets within hailing of each other in an arc from a half-mile up and downstream of the bridge, almost as far as Fifield itself.’

  ‘Worsley?’ Captain Christopher Worsley’s orders had been to probe the far right flank of the lodgement.

  ‘They’ve assembled a dozen boats upstream towards Bray, on this side, strongly guarded,’ replied F Troop Leader.

  ‘Within the picket line?’

  ‘Yes. I estimate there is a full company guarding them.’

  ‘I congratulate you.’ Hervey began taking out his glass.

  ‘But why would they want boats?’ added Worsley. ‘Why would they be thinking of withdrawing, with the best part of a thousand men, and we but three hundred?’

  ‘I am wondering the same,’ said Hervey, searching the low-lying country below. ‘And they would have the devil of a time ferrying men across, with the river in such spate. But let us presume that the Grenadiers’ commanding officer knows his business. Recollect that the general has set him a test as well as us. Suppose he fears the general’s umpire will declare that the Guards must quit the bridge – that it has been destroyed or captured by some extraordinary means – to see what he, the commanding officer, will then do?’

  ‘You mean he might try to put men back across the river to recapture the bridge from the far side?’

  ‘That is a possibility.’

  ‘But with so many men, he hardly needs to make such an indirect approach – not one that would take so long to mount.’

  ‘Supposing the umpire would by some means still deny him the bridge, even if the Grenadiers were making the most direct and violent counter-attack?’

  ‘Is that likely?’

  ‘I cannot say. But the Guards would then be wholly unsupported on the wrong side of the river, facing annihilation: recollect that we alone may be the “enemy”, but on paper there is a division and more behind us. Might not the general wish to test the Guards’ suppleness of thinking – in other words, whether they have some means of recovering themselves from a most perilous position? A pru
dent commanding officer would have some plan ready. What would be the general’s delight if the Guards’ colonel were able to re-cross the river with his entire battalion?’

  ‘It would show an admirable capacity for improvisation.’

  ‘Just so. And you will recall that the manoeuvres are a test not merely of the Sixth but of the Grenadiers.’

  ‘How does this help us?’

  ‘Think on it, Worsley: which is the more important to the Guards’ colonel – the bridge or the boats?’

  Worsley thought for a moment. ‘It ought, I suppose, to be the bridge. If this were real war then it would be the bridge. But,’ (he seemed reluctant to say it) ‘I suppose, this being mock war, the boats are more important to him.’

  ‘Exactly so. If the Grenadiers’ commanding officer is a thinking man, and one adept at games. Do you know of him, by any chance?’

  ‘St Aubyn. He took command last year. But I know nothing more. I think he was lately in Portugal.’

  ‘Well, the mere fact that he has assembled those boats persuades me that Colonel St Aubyn is a thinking man.’

  ‘Our efforts should therefore be directed towards the boats, to draw him away, I suppose?’

  Hervey nodded. ‘We must show him early that we know of them. That way he will have to reinforce there, at the expense of the pickets. And as soon as Fairbrother’s party takes the bridge we can move a reserve rapidly to reinforce him. St Aubyn will then have to decide as rapidly what is his best option . . . and if Fairbrother can persuade him and the umpire that he has the capacity to destroy the bridge, we might just carry the day.’

  Vanneck cleared his throat very slightly. ‘Hervey, I do not wish to sound disobliging, but how shall Fairbrother manage that with half a dozen men and but the clothes they stand in?’

  Hervey replaced his telescope in its holster, almost dismissively. ‘Something will turn up.’