Chapter I

 

IN THE HEAT OF BATTLE
The Convent of St Mary of Magdala, Toulouse, 12 April 1814

‘It is a very singular thing indeed, Mr Hervey, for a cornet to be placed in arrest upon the field of battle.’ Joseph Edmonds was deploying all his considerable facility with words in order to convey the gravity of the matter at hand.

‘Tell me, if you please, precisely and dispassionately, the circumstances by which this was brought about.’ Cornet Hervey stood rigidly to attention before the major’s desk, his left hand clasping the sword scabbard to his side, his right hand clenched with the thumb pointing downwards along the double yellow stripe of his overalls. His eyes were set front, and filling the limited arc of their fixed gaze were two symbols which, while if not to his mind entirely contradictory, in their juxtaposition seemed somehow incongruous. For on the wall behind the desk was a large wooden cross with a painted figure of the crucified Christ. Next to it – perhaps even leaning against it – was the regimental guidon, a piece of red silk on a beechwood stave, its richly embroidered battle honours still resplendent despite the staining and fading. The irony, that he had been raised in a household whose world was shaped by the first symbol, and had then elected to throw himself wholeheartedly behind the second, was not lost on him even at this exigent moment. He had little imagined such a convergence, however, nor its place – a nunnery hastily and rudely requisitioned for the purposes of the military. He drew in a deep breath, his stomach feeling tighter than ever it had done when he had been awaiting combat, and began the recollection of the events which had brought him now before his commanding officer. ‘Sir, yesterday forenoon I was in command of the flank picket, as you had placed me, one quarter of a league to the west of our lines of attack upon this city . . .’

The fateful encounter with authority had begun spectacularly. Edmonds had not expected any affair on the left flank. Not that that was why he had entrusted the picket to Hervey: he had long been of the conviction that the worst that could happen in battle usually did (and as a consequence he had never been wrong-footed – at least, that is, in the field), and Hervey and his standing patrol were a trusty yet economical insurance.

Hervey had disposed his command, a half-troop (by the Sixth’s depleted muster scarcely two dozen men), in the dead ground to the rear of a shallow ridge running obliquely to the army’s front. They were dismounted and standing easy. Posted as vidette a furlong to their front, with a view into the valley beyond the ridge, was his picket serjeant. And it was the sudden animation in that sentinel that alerted Hervey now. ‘Mount!’ he called, and his troopers began tightening girths before springing back into their saddles. Without an order the contact man – the picket corporal – galloped off to Serjeant Armstrong, who had by now worked his way in cover along the ridge and further to the flank.

Five minutes passed before the corporal returned, with intelligence that thrilled through the ranks: ‘Sir, there is a horse battery, six guns, approaching.’ ‘And supports?’ pressed Hervey. ‘None observed, sir.’ ‘None? No supports? That is not possible!’ ‘Serjeant Armstrong says there are none within the mile as he can see, sir.’ Hervey could scarce believe it. But, supports or no, it would still be David and Goliath if the guns came into action before they could close with them. He hesitated not another second and took the patrol in a brisk hand-gallop towards Armstrong. As they broached the ridge he held them up and edged forward with just his covering-corporal to where Serjeant Armstrong was crouching in the saddle to observe over the bracken.

‘They’ve halted, sir, just this minute,’ said the serjeant in his melodious Tyneside. ‘Why ever do you suppose they have stopped there?’ asked Hervey, peering through his telescope. ‘Can’t make it out at all,’ Armstrong replied. They both watched the battery, halted in the valley two full furlongs away, eager to know in which direction it would next move. Armstrong thought it must turn about; Hervey was sure it would wheel left and run parallel to the ridge. Suddenly both their predictions were confounded: the French began dismounting to unlimber the guns.

Hervey’s reaction was instinctive: ‘Draw swords! Charge!’ he cried, ramming the telescope into its saddle holster and digging his spurs into his mare’s flanks. His troopers took off after him as eager as greyhounds springing a hare, but Hervey would not check his pace for the sake of dressing: he was a dozen lengths clear of the front rank by the time they were half-way to the battery, only his covering-corporal within challenging distance. The French, who had seen them the instant they crested the ridge, were now frantically ramming charges down the barrels of the eight-pounders, the limbers racing back whence they had come. At a hundred yards Hervey stretched his sword-arm fully to the engage and fixed on the narrow gap between the centre guns. Not one had managed to load with canister by the time the troopers fell on them. In panic two guns were fired with charges only, adding smoke to the confusion but nothing more injurious than the deafening reports. Had the gunners taken up side-arms instead, they might have inflicted some damage, but it was too late now. Hervey slashed at the battery commander as the Frenchman belatedly reached for his pistol, and the officer fell from his horse screaming, his arm all but severed at the shoulder. Hervey galloped on to the limbers, which were making heavy weather of crossing a half-sunken track (the guns were no immediate threat now and could wait – the limbers and teams would not). They showed no sign of yielding as Hervey made for the lead team, and he glanced behind to see who was with him. More than a dozen, and he could see Serjeant Armstrong still at the guns. It would do. If only the drivers had yielded. Then they could have been made prisoner, or even set free. But no, they tried to run. In panic, or in duty to the teams? There was no time to care, even had there been time to think. Hervey pointed rather than cut at the lead driver, using his forward momentum to take the blade halfway to the hilt in the Frenchman’s side. He followed through as if at sword drill in camp, effortlessly recovering the sabre to set about the wheeler-drivers in the same fashion. Behind him it was the same, his dragoons doing swift execution. And then they cut the traces to set loose the teams, and began driving them back towards the British lines.

Still the fight was not gone from the battery, and small-arms fire (albeit ragged) began at the guns. Hervey galloped at once to the relief of Serjeant Armstrong and his half-dozen prize-takers, but the firing was ended by the time he came up. ‘Start spiking, then, Serjeant Armstrong,’ he called, ‘and fire the limbers.’ ‘Ay, sir,’ Armstrong replied grimly. ‘Jesus, but some of these bastards were a time dying!’ Hervey sheathed his sabre and leaned forward in the saddle to adjust the breastplate which had somehow twisted. In that instant a bombardier sprang from beneath one of the guns and thrust a spontoon in his thigh. Hervey’s covering-corporal leaped from his horse and launched so ferocious an assault that the Frenchman had no time to parry the downward swordstroke. It cleaved his skull in two, and blood bubbled like a spring for a full minute where the body lay twitching. Armstrong rushed to support Hervey in the saddle.

‘Leave go,’ he said sharply, angry with himself for the lapse of alertness that was costing so much pain to body and pride. Corporal Collins spluttered an apology. ‘Don’t be a fool, man,’ snapped Hervey, gripping the gash hard. ‘I’m not a greenhead. For heaven’s sake, Serjeant Armstrong, let’s get these guns spiked and then back to our post before worse arrives.’ A second later Hervey and his arresting officer would have galloped into each other. Hervey had crested the rise, however, just in time to evade the collision. Reining hard right, he cursed as his mare crumpled then struggled to regain her footing, the air bursting from her lungs as they fought to keep their balance, her nostrils flaring wide and blowing blood into his eyes. And although searing pain from the gash made it difficult for him to keep his right leg pressed on the girth, with blood spreading its sticky warmth the length of it, neither this nor the damned fool galloping about his corner of the battlefield was going to dull the exhilaration of success. He had led the charge to the French guns, judging the moment to perfection so that his dragoons had caught the battery at its most vulnerable – unlimbered but not yet in action. Had he charged too soon, the French would have been off; a fraction too late and his little command might have been swept away in a hail of grapeshot. The surprise and terror in the faces of the gunners, the frenzied cutting, thrusting and slashing, the hammering of nails into touch-holes, then the dash back to their picket post, expecting French lanciers to appear at any second to spear them like dogs – it had been the stuff of a cornet’s dream.

In truth it had been an affair, and a prize, beyond his dreams, a prize which by rights ought never to have been in the offing: for a whole troop of horse artillery to come into action on a flank without cavalry supports was abominable to any professional. Half a dozen eight-pounders disabled, three score and more horses captured or driven towards the British lines, and as many gunners now lying with their lifeblood draining into their native soil – barely a dozen Frenchmen had escaped to seek the protection of their errant lancers. Somewhere, Hervey knew, there was a lancier officer who ought to be cashiered – or shot – for that dereliction of duty. But he at least knew that he had done his, and he had been scarcely able to bear the wait before he would make his report to Edmonds, afterwards to bask in the praise with which the major was as a rule so sparing.

To have collided with the mounted interloper would have denied him that satisfaction for sure. At such a speed a broken neck, and death, was the likely outcome. Or perhaps – and what many would have counted worse – it might have meant invaliding to the Chelsea hospital and a lifetime of milk pobs spooned haphazardly by some old soldier. Either fate would have been a terrible irony after escaping the French, and he could only wonder at how often he had had cause to be grateful for his little mare’s cat-like agility: more than nine times, certainly, she had saved him from disaster.

Shortening the rein and completing his circle, he looked about angrily for the man who had nearly ridden him down. Anger then turned to astonishment as he recognized him to be one of Slade’s aides-decamp, and he wondered what in heaven’s name he was doing on this flank. Then two staff dragoons galloped on to the ridge as Hervey’s own men caught him up. But his own anger was nothing to that which he was about to face.

‘What the devil do you mean, sir, by abandoning your post?’ bellowed the ADC as he bore down from the opposite direction, having himself circled right, though nothing like as tightly as Hervey and his mare had managed.

Cornet Hervey was aghast. Blood from the gash in his thigh, where the French bombardier had thrust the spontoon, was soaking the entire leg of his canvas overalls. From this alone, even to the most purblind, it must have been clear that something had been happening. But Slade’s staff could be as obtuse as their general.

‘What in God’s name are you talking about, Regan? We did no such thing!’ he protested, sliding painfully from the saddle to loosen the girth. ‘Then tell me how lancers have been able to loot the general’s own baggage!’

By now Hervey’s covering-serjeant had joined him, still in a frenzy from the slaughter they had just dealt the hapless battery. He seized the ADC’s reins: ‘Look, mister, what d’ye think—?’ But the staff dragoons reached for their sabres. ‘As you were, Armstrong! Go and settle the patrol!’ snapped Hervey. The ADC was now beyond mere anger, and his voice rose in shrill rage. ‘Mr Hervey, you have disobeyed orders and that insubordinate serjeant is proof of your unfitness for this command!’

Hervey’s groom had brought up a second charger, and he now remounted, though not with the easy vault he would ordinarily have taken. Instead he was helped up awkwardly, grimacing as more pain shot the length of his leg. It hardly made for a conciliatory response. ‘Regan, you are a confounded ass! We’ve just spiked six guns, for pity’s sake; we have seen no lancers!’ Lieutenant Regan’s voice lowered menacingly. ‘Then, how, pray, did they get to General Slade’s baggage?’

‘How in hell’s name do I know? I am responsible for this flank, not for the whole battlefield!’ The contempt was unequivocal, and Hervey might have anticipated its consequences had he not been so entirely exasperated by the lieutenant’s seemingly wilful ignorance of the affair with the enemy battery. ‘You are a damned impudent officer as well as a disobedient one; you will hand me your sword this instant!’

Hervey’s jaw fell. ‘In the middle of a battle? Have you taken leave of your senses?’ The contrast between the red jackets of the ADC and staff dragoons and the blue of Hervey’s regiment seemed to be intensifying the confrontation. Serjeant Armstrong spat and let out a string of oaths, but so thick was his Tyneside accent that Lieutenant Regan was not sure what he had heard. The staff dragoons recognized the tone well enough, though, and drew their sabres. Hervey shot an angry look at Armstrong, but it was another voice that was to quell what had by now become little short of a brawl, a voice infinitely more measured than Hervey was capable of at that moment. ‘Go to your post, Serjeant Armstrong,’ it commanded, in mellow tones of Suffolk. And then, with admirably contrived understatement: ‘Mr Hervey, sir, is there some difficulty?’

Hervey’s composure began returning. The voice had often steadied him – steadied many of them – and more so now for its being unexpected. ‘Serjeant Strange, I am in arrest. General Slade appears to think we abandoned our post. Have you come with orders?’ ‘No, sir,’ replied the troop serjeant, in a manner so matter-of-fact they could have been at a review, ‘only with a report of guns moving in the direction of your picket.’

‘Well, they do not move any longer,’ said Hervey with a sharp edge. ‘Look, Serjeant Strange, you had better take command. I will tell you briefly of the circumstances and then you must send someone to report to Major Edmonds.’

Serjeant Strange listened impassively as Hervey gave a hasty account of the disabling of the battery. ‘I trust Mr Regan here will have that wound attended to properly and with all dispatch, sir?’ was all that Strange said in reply, turning to the ADC. Of course he would, said the lieutenant testily. ‘I do not need to be reminded of my business, thank you, Serjeant!’ Serjeant Strange saluted, reined about and trotted over to the patrol, leaving Hervey feeling not a little awkward at his own intemperance compared with this non-commissioned officer’s bearing.