A Close Run Thing Read online

  If the final victory were, by rumour and his own reckoning, so close, however, then he knew these low spirits made little sense. Was it that he considered himself to blame for Hervey’s arrest? He had given him command of a flank picket, and it was by rights a lieutenant’s command; but, then, Hervey had seen more service than many of the lieutenants. Why in any case repine over the fate of an insignificant cornet when a sou’s worth of powder and shot might carry off his young head at an instant? The adjutant had cautioned him more than once that, if he were to take responsibility so personally for every last man in the Sixth, dyspepsy would soon overcome him. But the warning had had no effect.

  He wondered what Lord George Irvine would do if he were here. He had not the inkling of an idea, however, for Lord George understood the complexities, and possibilities, of the web in a way he never could. But, be whatever that may, he knew well enough that, behind him, the Sixth were restive, for they had been posted thus for four hours without a move. Pain shot through his jaw again, catching him off guard. ‘Christ!’ he exploded. ‘Dismount!’

  His trumpeter, with no cautionary word of command to alert him, blew the call hastily, cracking the first ‘Es’ badly and earning a blistering rebuke. There could in any event have been no more calculated an invitation to bring down Slade’s wrath upon the Sixth than this order. The brigade commander’s belief that cavalry should remain mounted ready for immediate action kept his regiments in the saddle for hours on end, and to no purpose. Edmonds considered Slade’s notion of immediate action to be positively risible in view of his chronic indecisiveness. Sore backs were the bane of the cavalry, and, whether Slade liked it or not, he was damned if he was going to sit there a moment longer for no good reason.

  Yet he was not without his doubts, too. He had to admit that the French were fighting with a tenacity he had not seen since Badajoz. Yesterday, Easter of all days, Soult had left three thousand dead and dying on the field before retiring behind the canal and the Garonne. And now, after another day’s fighting, it looked as if that fox of a marshal was going to contest every street in this lovely city. Edmonds was beginning to concede the likelihood of a Fabian march on Paris after all.

  These were self-indulgent thoughts, however. One consideration above all pressed to the fore (besides, that is, the ever receding prospect of seeing a tooth-operator): how was he to secure Hervey’s release? Come what may, there were bound to be charges: Slade would be eager to take the opportunity to humiliate the Sixth. The only chance lay in having a general court martial convened instead of one of the cosy field courts where the only concern was to uphold the dignity and authority of the commander – usually, and in this instance, the very officer to have initiated the charges. With Slade it was more a matter of shoring up that dignity and authority, he admitted with distaste. But a proper court, not one packed with toadies, would take the affair with the battery as mitigation. Damn it all, he almost exclaimed aloud, they ought to regard it as justification!

  But, pressing though Matthew Hervey’s arrest might be, there was at that moment even more immediate business at hand. All Edmonds’s instincts told him that this was turning into a scrimmage of a battle. A pall of smoke was rising over the city, and he began to wonder whether Slade would stay all afternoon watching, making them mere onlookers to another of Wellington’s infantry battles, with the commander-in-chief’s admonitions afterwards to add insult to injury. Any cavalryman with a sure coup d’œil would now on his own initiative order a steady encircling movement to the north-west to occupy the prominent high ground in anticipation of the artillery. Lord George Irvine had such an eye; so did Lankester and the other squadron leaders; so did a good many of the troop officers – Hervey included. Edmonds was equally sure that Slade did not and never would in a hundred years. The trouble with Wellington, fumed Edmonds (though he would readily admit of his many soldierly virtues), was that he wanted – insisted on – order in his battles. Yet was not the battlefield the very apotheosis of chaos? And was it not the side that could impose the greater chaos that carried the day in battle? And was it not that arm – the cavalry – the arm for which Wellington had least regard, that could create such chaos?

  Edmonds sighed. By his estimation they could afford only five more minutes standing like this before the opportunity to take the ground unchallenged might be gone. If no orders came within that time, he knew he would not be able to contain his frustration and that he would go to Slade to suggest the manoeuvre, knowing full well how unwelcome that would be. And, indeed, after five more minutes of fidgeting and stamping by the troop horses, and increasingly tart commentary by the troopers, Edmonds had had enough. Sighing deeply, and cursing some more under his breath, he remounted and called again for his senior captain.

  Lankester trotted up on his big bay thoroughbred and saluted.

  ‘You are to assume command. You are to prepare to occupy yonder hill with the white church,’ began the major, pointing to a small chapel a mile away. ‘That bridge midway will have no more than a few videttes, likely as not. I shall now alert the brigadier to my intentions. However, on no account save for the immediate security of your command are you or any part of the regiment to quit this ground until I return.’

  Edmonds did not have to elaborate on the manoeuvre or its purpose. Indeed, he would have been dismayed to think that Lankester had not anticipated it. The captain simply saluted to acknowledge the orders, and a half-smile indicated that he recognized the tone well enough. Edmonds had reverted to the formal and precise manner which prudence suggested was necessary when in the field with General Slade. It added, too, a distinct charm to the Sixth’s campaign journal, written up assiduously at the end of each day by the adjutant, who scribbled every word faithfully in his pocket-book to that purpose. But principally, and at Edmonds’s insistence, the scribbling was less a matter of historical detail than a record to be used in evidence – not against an officer, but by one if events did not prove propitious: he wanted no subordinate to be in a position of disadvantage. It was needless in this instance, for the notion that Lankester would plead superior orders in mitigation if events went ill would have been entirely repugnant to that officer.

  The gallop to the knoll on which Slade and his staff had posted themselves, half a mile distant, steeled Edmonds to the exchange to come, but as he neared the top he saw General Cotton galloping towards them from the opposite direction, waving his hat and hallooing wildly. Hervey was lying on the ground nearby with Slade’s physician hunched over him, but it was the cavalry commander’s dramatic approach that gripped Edmonds’s attention. Cotton began shouting from fifty yards distant. ‘Slade, the French are giving way! Soult’s pulling back into the city: there’s no fight left in ’em!’

  Sir Stapleton Cotton, lieutenant-general, sixth baronet of Combermere, and Uxbridge’s successor – there was little doubt that his birth had recommended him to Wellington, but there was such a close physical similarity between the two men that Edmonds could not but ponder on the tendency of commanders to select subordinates in their own image. There were the same dark curls, the long face, the hooked nose, and hardly a year between them, too. What was Wellington now, forty-four? forty-five? Four years younger than Edmonds himself – it was enough to test the resolve of a saint. Admittedly he liked Cotton well enough. The man had done his share of fighting in the Peninsula, and before that, too, and he had been sound enough on the retreat to Corunna – but he was no Uxbridge. Edmonds knew that, in the business of war, he was Cotton’s equal. What, then, had ordered their respective military estates? Just twenty thousand pounds for a baronetcy a couple of centuries earlier when King James had wanted money for his Irish army, he supposed, and one or two judicious marriages thereafter no doubt. Well, so be it: his father had been a professional soldier who had died in the American war while Edmonds was still a child, leaving nothing but the value of his commission with which his widow could buy an annuity. And he himself had chosen to marry a soldier’s daughter without a
penny, either. A stoical smile almost overcame him, but another stab in his jaw made him grimace instead. What he was to hear next, however, as General Cotton pulled up sharply, almost cannoning into the brigade commander, would certainly tempt the smile back, albeit a wry one.

  ‘The commander-in-chief desires his cavalry to stand fast for the time being but wishes you to send, if you please, a troop to occupy the high ground north-west of the city. It is his intention to send guns there directly.’ Cotton was pointing to the same high ground that Edmonds knew Captain Lankester to be contemplating at that very moment.

  A look of contentment settled on the major, for at a stroke these orders relieved him of the necessity of risking the altercation with his brigadier.

  ‘Edmonds!’ Cotton exclaimed when at length he noticed him, and in a manner uncommonly genial. ‘A very good day to you! That was a smart little action on the flank. One of Lord Wellington’s observing-officers was concealed nearby and witnessed the whole affair. It seems the French were intent on harassing our flank but were discouraged into thinking we held there stronger than we did! Who was commanding the picket?’

  Every nerve and sinew in him tensed at this promising development: ‘Cornet Hervey, General.’

  ‘Well, Cornet Hervey did us deuced fine service. That battery would have wrought a pretty destruction had it come into action. I shall meet him in due course, I trust?’

  The fortunes of war could still take Edmonds by surprise in spite of his long years in the king’s service. An observing-officer, gone to ground on his way back from behind the enemy’s lines no doubt – by heavens, this was opportune, a most capital turn of events! But he knew there was a distance still to run, and he avoided meeting Slade’s eye, hoping to give him time to choose a line of withdrawal. Slade had indeed been studiously ignoring him, failing to acknowledge his presence even; but years of intriguing had told Black Jack when to withdraw, and he now seized the opportunity which Edmonds’s rare composure offered.

  ‘Cornet Hervey was hurt slightly in the action, Sir Stapleton; my own physician is attending to him over there now’ – indicating the tree under which the Edinburgh medical man, in his incongruous black Melton coat, was fussing with bandages and salving oil. Did Slade know of the battery action after all, wondered Edmonds, or was he just quick to sense a tight corner? Likely as not he would never know.

  Cotton trotted over to Hervey who struggled to his feet despite the physician’s remonstrations.

  ‘Mr Hervey, I am glad we meet. You did well today. How is that leg?’

  ‘Thank you, sir; it is very well enough. The surgeon here says it will not keep me out of the saddle.’

  ‘I said that it may not,’ corrected the Edinburgh man, with barely concealed indignation at being called a surgeon.

  ‘Then, indeed, it will not,’ insisted Hervey.

  ‘Good man, good man!’ said Cotton approvingly. ‘But I doubt you will need to be in the saddle for much longer. The French are done for – and I mean not for today only: our agents are reporting that the end cannot be far off.’

  After a few more words of solicitude and encouragement, and some further intercourse with Slade out of earshot of the others, the commander of Wellington’s cavalry spurred his horse back in the direction whence he had come, leaving Slade to give the orders which Edmonds had anticipated a full half-hour before.

  ‘Shall I take Cornet Hervey back with me, then, General?’ he ventured.

  ‘Yes, yes, he is obviously fit for duty,’ replied Slade dismissively, without reference to the arrest.

  Private Johnson, Hervey’s groom, whose own lowly coup d’œil was every bit a match nevertheless for this delicate moment, had already brought up the black gelding. An uncomfortable, if localized, silence followed as Hervey limped across to where Lieutenant Regan stood, like a small dark cloud, in mute brooding. Without a word he stooped to pick up his sword, which lay, as in some allegory of dishonour, at Regan’s feet. The ADC said not a word, either: none was necessary, for his look said everything, none of it pleasant.

  As they left the knoll Edmonds was careful to do so at a trot, though all his instincts, and not least the horses’, were to gallop like fury. ‘I am sorry, sir, that—’ tried Hervey when they had put some ground between themselves and the brigade commander.

  ‘God preserve us, boy!’ snapped Edmonds, leaving Hervey to wonder from what precisely. Little purpose would have been served by his asking, however; for Edmonds had scant idea, either, only a sense of the need for divine providence. It had been the narrowest of escapes, and he did not doubt that the last of it was yet to be heard.

  Hervey was by no means entirely comfortable back in the saddle for, expertly though his leg had been bandaged, it was not the place to be resting it. But this was nothing to how he was to feel when they reached the regiment. Corporal Collins’s dispatch had evidently been relayed through the ranks for there was loud cheering as they approached, and though he might well bask in that approval – for he had certainly had none from Edmonds – so loud and triumphant was the clamour that it must surely have carried across to Slade’s knoll. He sensed as well as Edmonds that it would only fuel the general’s resentment and make worse the eventual retribution. But the cornet’s horizon was the next hill and the next minute, and the discomfort would soon pass. Edmonds could not afford to set his sights so close, however: too much in his service told of the hundred and one ways Slade’s vindictiveness might be visited on them. Their best hope lay in this war’s coming to the rapid end which Sir Stapleton Cotton had predicted, though there was little enough sign of that. Nor was there any sign of the activity which he presumed might be consequent on that assessment. If the French were on the point of collapse, then it was the function of the cavalry to hurry them along. Now was surely the time to throw caution to the wind and launch them all at Soult’s lines of communication, was it not? What in heaven’s name was there to lose? he wondered.

  ‘Mr Barrow!’ he roared.

  The adjutant closed up from where he had posted himself, three horse-lengths behind, next to the guidon and Edmonds’s trumpeter. The Sixth still carried the colonel’s guidon in the field – many regiments had abandoned the practice – though the squadron guidons had been left in England. When any movement was to be executed, the adjutant took up his position with the other serrefile officers to the rear, but he otherwise liked to keep close to Edmonds so that he could heed his orders at first hand.

  ‘I wish you to have the following prepared for my signature at the first opportunity. Do you have your pocket-book?’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Very well. To Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Fitzroy Somerset, Military Secretary, Headquarters, etc., etc. Sir, I have the honour—No, wait – begin again. It is my humble duty to submit with regret my resignation, to be effective at your Lordship’s pleasure.’ Edmonds paused. Barrow looked up with no more expression of surprise than if he had been taking orders for bivouac. Edmonds cleared his throat and continued. ‘In so doing, I place upon record my—No – begin again. I thereby protest at the want of ardour in the employment of the cavalry and’ – he paused once more – ‘the tergiversation in the conduct of the campaign.’

  Barrow raised an eyebrow, not certain that he would be able to find anyone capable of spelling this latter complaint, nor even of explaining its meaning. ‘Is that all, sir?’

  ‘That is all, thank you, Barrow.’

  The adjutant raised both eyebrows and then resumed his place with the guidon, knowing it to be unlikely that the draft would ever be called for (it was the third that Edmonds had dictated that year alone).

  For another three hours the Sixth stood fast, Edmonds with every expression of serenity conceivable, and more, certainly, than anyone could have imagined. But as evening drew on he became less composed, and by dusk he was as thoroughly agitated as he had been that morning. The temporary remitting of the toothache in the afternoon past, he was sorely vexed now by the general inertia. ‘Fabius Cuncta
tor!’ he spat.

  Barrow and the trumpeter looked at each other, startled. Neither of them had quite heard every syllable but it sounded the vilest of curses. And it just might have been provoked by the sudden appearance of the brigade major (though in truth Edmonds had not seen him), who the adjutant now noticed was trotting across the regiment’s front. He sighed as he took out his pocket-book and closed up to Edmonds again, sensing more trouble.

  ‘Ah, Heroys, with orders for the night perhaps,’ began the major, with more than a trace of irony. ‘Tell me, are they to be as strenuous as those of the day?’ But he gave the BM no time for reply, thoroughly warming to his opportunity: ‘Let me guess. A brigade steeplechase perhaps? Or a foxhunt? Maybe even a levee, or a masque – yes, I have it, a masque! Now, which might it be? Comus, perhaps; that would seem apt: “What chance, good Lady, hath bereft you thus? Dim darkness, and this leafy labyrinth!”’

  ‘Very droll, Edmonds. You are perfectly well aware that thrift in deploying one’s assets is a sound precept in war.’

  ‘That’s a piss-fire answer!’

  ‘Edmonds, some days you try my patience, and then again others you quite exhaust it!’ replied the brigade major with a resigned smile: he had long years of acquaintance with Edmonds’s vituperation. ‘I have instructions for a comfortable billet, no less.’

  The particulars took Edmonds by surprise: ‘A convent!’ he exclaimed. ‘And where will the nuns be?’

  ‘You need worry not,’ replied Heroys. ‘They are all in the hospitals with the blessés, and probably a good many of our own wounded, too. Never have I seen so many. But you will need to make haste: it will be pitch-dark before the hour’s out. Come, I will guide you down myself.’