Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War (29 page)

‘Well,’ began Paget, pulling tight the straps which doubly secured the box spurs. ‘You will ride in file to my rear at all times, until I order otherwise or we come in face of the enemy, in which latter case you shall bring the escort into line without ado – in one or two lines I leave to your good judgement.’

‘Sir.’

‘The point is, Mr Martyn, my thoughts will be entirely of the enemy and how to dispose my command against him. I do not have a care to directing my own escort.’

‘Sir.’

‘Very well. We march for Sahagun. My information is that the French are not many there, but enough to give of a good fight if they stand. And stand I would expect them to do. So my intention is that General Slade, with the Tenth, shall beat through the town just before dawn, driving the French on to the guns so to speak – on to the Fifteenth, whom I shall have brought myself around the town, to the south, to an enfilade. A troop of your own regiment – Captain Edmonds’s – will stand to the north to block any escape in that direction. I trust your men and horses are rested?’

This latter seemed more a punctuating statement than a genuine enquiry, but Martyn was not inclined to answer blandly. ‘Both are tired, General. But it will only tell if we must force the pace.’

Lord Paget looked at him keenly. ‘Thank you, Mr Martyn.’ Then he stood up. ‘I am obliged.’

Martyn saluted, turned and left the room, Hervey close behind.

‘He imagines we came in some hours ago, I suppose,’ he said, a shade ruefully. ‘And I dare say the weather’s taken a turn for the worse since he arrived. Four leagues to Sahagun, you reckon?’

Hervey nodded.

‘One league in the hour, then, if we’re to be in place by first light.’

Hervey had taken good note of Martyn’s candour. Many a man, he supposed, would have said yea to the general, thinking it somehow a dishonour to admit anything but readiness and capability. Scripture and many fine men had told him that truth was always the necessity, but he had also learned that truth must be founded on good judgement: it took an honest officer to hear the truth well.

He woke to Martyn’s calculation. ‘That is what we made on the march here.’

Martyn nodded. It was snowing again, heavier if anything, although the wind had moderated and the snow was at least falling more or less perpendicular. He turned up his cloak collar. ‘I would wish we had had a few hours more – just long enough for the men to lay their heads down, I mean. And the horses to have a little time with their backs eased. I don’t suppose Lord Paget will have a mind to lead in hand.’

Sore backs, the bane of the cavalry; ill-fitting saddles and too long spent in them. In the Sixth they led as much as they rode (if it was ‘walk-march’ then as a rule it was ‘dismount’), but it was not the common practice. And when it came to the trot there was no avoiding the regulation seat, bumping along, sitting deep, stirrups long, legs (as the riding-master had it) ‘like tongs across a wall’. Even now, new as he was, Hervey could not see the point. Every officer would hack to the covert rising, and then follow the field with a bent leg; but the practice of the hunt was somehow thought inapt for a regiment on campaign.

‘Shall you have me take post at the rear?’ he asked, hoping the answer would be no.

‘Ay,’ said Martyn, trying to see the time by his Ellicott hunter. ‘Emmet and Crook will do their share of driving, with a deal of curses I dare say, but some’ll go better for the odd kind word.’

But words, kind or otherwise, would have been wasted. The wind rose again soon after they left the town, and whistled in their ears all the way to Sahagun. It blew snow over them, and then it blew it off again. The road – the whole country – was white, fetlock-deep, lit brilliantly from time to time by lightning, and occasionally by a good moon when the heavy-laden clouds parted. In places, against a hedge or where the snow had piled in the lee of a bank, the horses struggled knee-deep, and at times up to the forearm. Hervey grew worried: some of them looked fit to drop. There were too many with bellows to mend, and others lobbing and sobbing. But their riders were at least doing their best to help instead of slumping like woolpacks on a chapman’s nag – lengthening the reins to let the animal stretch, shifting weight in the saddle. For here was no mere march. Now there was a fair prospect before them: Frenchmen to charge and overturn. And every man would hold his comfort as nothing when it came to such a prospect as this.

Hervey would count his comfort as naught too. He was tired, he was hungry and he was so cold that his head felt as if it were in a vice. He had tried riding up and down the line as Martyn had asked, but urging his mare to the extra effort proved progressively futile. And his want of sleep was telling too, for he was now fighting the drowsiness that came with the plodding and the numbing chill. He wanted only to lie down, not even by a fire, anywhere he might close his eyes; the same cold sleep the dragoons had been tempted by. He was dismayed that it should now tempt him, that he had to fight it so hard. And it was not just the drowsiness: there was a curious feeling in his stomach, the like of which he had never known. There had been no gut-twisting in the little affair of the point patrol, when they had gone at the enemy in the dark. But then it had been all of a sudden, so to speak; all of a business of draw swords and charge, no time for wondering what to do. It was not fear for himself – not for the cut of the sabre or its point, or the tearing of flesh and the splintering of bone which the carbine’s ball might bring; these he supposed he had a mind to bear as well as the next man. Rather was it the little voice within which asked if he would have the capability.

Daniel Coates had never told him about the little voice, he was sure. But the old dragoon must have had a sense of it, since almost his last words were that he had taught him all he could remember, but some things commissioned rank alone knew. ‘A noncommissioned officer knows how to get a thing done,’ he had said. ‘But the officer must first tell him what it
is
that’s to be done.’ A powerful obligation on a young head, Coates had said.

Hervey did not like the idea of a young head. He had wanted to count himself a proficient as soon as may be. Now, he was weighing Daniel Coates’s words very carefully.

There were shots – two. Then a pause. Then three or four more. The dragoons braced, as if to the serjeant-major’s cautionary word of command. The horses braced. Hervey woke; the voice was gone – forgotten. He put his mare into a trot and closed with Martyn.

‘The Fifteenth have run into a picket post, by the sound of things,’ said Martyn, his voice raised against the wind, though not as much as he would have needed but a half-hour ago. ‘We must be closer to Sahagun than I’d thought.’

Hervey tried to see the time by his watch, but couldn’t. It was no lighter than it had been for much of the night – no moon, no sign of the dawn. And now the garrison was alerted. He wondered in whose favour that would work.

A mile west of the town, about the distance that Lord Paget’s column stood to the south, were the Tenth and General Slade. Slade’s watch, with the aid of a lantern, told him it was six o’clock, and that in a half-hour he was to begin his drive, like beaters at a shoot. Whether these French birds would crouch like partridges until the last moment, putting up low and fast, the covey flying tight as one, or whether like fat pheasants they would lumber away noisily all over the place, he could not know. But, as on a well-run shoot, he could at least have his beaters smart and regulated. Slade decided he would halt, dress the ranks properly, and inspire them with rousing words before going at his work. It was his first time in action, and he meant to take all care to see that nothing went awry. He did not hear the picket’s shots, nor those returned by Lord Paget’s scouts.

The main column was moving again. Not yet at a true trot – irregular jogging and a deal of barging.

‘I’m damned if I can see a thing now,’ complained Martyn. ‘That moon has been very disobliging this last hour.’

But in a minute or so they caught sight of French prisoners, the remains of the picket. Hussars from the Fifteenth were covering them, and Hervey wished it had been they not the ‘tabs’, as for some reason the Fifteenth were known, for this was glory indeed. But then he remembered that Captain Edmonds’s troop would now be slipping north of the town, like ringing fingers closing round the neck of a fat goose.
Theirs
would be the fight as much as the Fifteenth’s; just as soon as the Tenth beat the ground and drove the game on to them.

Hervey was glad nevertheless to be in Sir Edward Lankester’s troop. Besides liking his captain and judging that his example was the best to follow, Hervey was uncertain of Joseph Edmonds’s temper. Edmonds had welcomed him right enough when first he had reported for duty at the depot, and his troop seemed to have a harder edge to them than the others, perhaps because there were more sweats from India or Holland. Edmonds was a gentleman – no doubt of it – maybe even of a more natural and profound quality, but Hervey had been cautious nonetheless. But no man knew better how to handle a troop than Edmonds;
that
every man seemed to agree.

Perhaps, then, it would have been better had he been with Edmonds’s troop still, for at this rate it looked as if all they would see would be
dead
Frenchmen. Perhaps, though, when dawn eventually came, the French would see Lord Paget and assail him.
There
would be his chance, for then the laurels would be un-rationed. And had he not been dismissed from both riding-school and skill-at-arms with uncommon speed? Quicker, perhaps, than rough-riders and master-at-arms could remember? That was what the adjutant had said. If it came to the fight hand-to-hand, he would surely be a match for a French
chasseur?
If only the moon would show again, or the dawn come!

The walls of the town loomed, not as high as a true fortress but solid enough. And the column was inclining east, following the road as it turned a right angle. Hervey thought it odd they were not fired on; was there not one
tirailleur
brave enough?

It was half an hour, perhaps, since the first shots. If the Fifteenth had not got their scouts well ahead, would the French not be forming up now ready to meet them? Hervey imagined more shots at any second. Perhaps they might already be running east, though – free? He could hardly bear the thought. But the French had surely had the time to rouse and muster, no matter how off-guard they had been?

‘
Qui vive?
’

It came down the column like a Babel brook, and the thrill with it. At last they were closing with the French!

Hervey itched to draw his sword.

‘
Qui vive?
’

Again. It must have been repeated fifty times along the column, like ripples from a stone in a mill pond. But they didn’t check the pace, not for a moment – a fast walk still, and a jogtrot every so often to close a gap. Who was challenging? Did they fall back as they did so? Why were there no shots?

A few furlongs north, riding parallel with them indeed, though Lord Paget could not know it, was Edmonds and his troop. Their progress was not so easy, for the country there was well wooded, and the snow had drifted more, but they too were hearing ‘
Qui vive?
’ and wondering why, when he gave no answer, the videttes did not open fire on them.

West of the town still, in the same position he had halted half an hour before, General Slade was finishing his rousing speech. It had been too long. Even if his audience had not been so damnably cold it would have been too long, for it was full of needless rhetoric, of bravado even. Many of the Tenth’s officers shifted in the saddle with embarrassment, and not a little distaste, for Slade now exhorted his command to ‘feats the day would quake to look upon’, and to ‘an affair that will be writ down large in the annals of the cavalry!’

But while Slade declaimed, General Debelle was able to assemble his own command unmolested and with perfect regularity – exactly the condition that Lord Paget had most calculated to avoid, for there were perhaps twice as many Frenchmen as he himself could match in his depleted brigade. In truth, there was still no telling how many men Debelle had.

‘Very well, the Tenth! Blood and slaughter!
March.
’

And with that, Slade at last began his drive.

It had stopped snowing now, but it was still too dark even to contemplate bringing the accompanying gun into action. Paget had brought two, giving one to Slade. He had fancied they might serve him as the
ultima ratio,
for the ground favoured him (as far as the observing officer who had first reconnoitred the town had described it to him). If he could get to the little bridge over the Valderaduey – not a deep or a wide river, but in this weather obstacle enough – he could command Sahagun’s eastern approaches with canister. But what Paget could not understand was who these French were challenging him out of the dark, or how many they were. And where was Slade? Could these Frenchmen be the Tenth indeed, having overrun the town? But why would they shout ‘
Qui vive’?
Where
was
Slade?

Hervey’s thoughts were now solely of when he might draw his sword. He had scant enough knowledge of the general’s design and an imperfect conception of how the ground lay, for his was not a position of advantage so far back in the column. But he could hear the
Qui vives
clearly now. Why did the French videttes persist? What did they want to hear – whether the reply was in Spanish or English? Could they really think they were French?

He thought it the queerest thing, marching in column along a road with the enemy in the fields close by unable to make out what things were and therefore what to do. Was it always like this? Would he ever know what was really happening? Later their tracks would reveal it all: Debelle and Paget moving in parallel a couple of hundred yards apart, separated by snowy vineyards in their winter truncation, and a dry ditch. The skirmishers perhaps had a notion of it, but their field of view was too small to comprehend the symmetry of the march. Debelle wanted to get to the little bridge over the Valderaduey too, the only crossing point in the darkness, but he could not shake off the shadowy force on the road.