A Close Run Thing (14 page)

‘
Nisus
, mister,’ replied the hand, with evident respect for the name.

‘
Nisus
, was she not the frigate that—’

‘Ay,’ said the man before he could finish. ‘It was ’er an’
Euryalus
that shadowed them French durin’ the night before Trafalgar and signalled the rest of the fleet to follow. Blue light ev’ry hour if standing to the southward or the Straits; three quick guns ev’ry hour if headin’ westward!’

‘You sound as though you might have been there?’

‘Was
I
, sir,’ he replied with passion, and with the same vowels as Armstrong. ‘I watched them lights all
night
from the nest o’
Royal Sovereign
– one of Admiral Collingwood’s “Tars of the Tyne”, I were. If Cap’n Blackwood’s an’ yon frigate ’ad lost them French, it would’ve been different next day.’ And then he chuckled and held up the stump of his right arm: ‘This would’ve been a mite longer for a start!’

How Bonaparte had thought he might defeat a navy with men like this, or an army of men like those now crowding the fore-rail, Hervey could only marvel. The Corsican had, it seemed to him, failed to heed his own dictum that the fighting spirit of a man was worth three times the weapons he bore. And Bonaparte had paid the price for underestimating that spirit in
these
men, for sure.

IV

‘THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF DIRECTS …’

Dover, Sunday, 12 June

BEFORE THE TRANSPORTS
were berthed a torrential downpour had begun, making disembarkation of both horses and men more than usually hazardous. And in the middle of this operation Edmonds found himself confronted by an envoy from the institution he reviled only fractionally less than Parliament. Even above the noise of the rain and the occasional peal of thunder his voice could be heard haranguing the unfortunate messenger from the Horse Guards.

‘Cork! Immediately? What in God’s name …?’

And then another peal of thunder, deafening this time, making it impossible for the onlookers to catch the precise terms in which Edmonds was expressing his opinion of the Horse Guards’ administration. The messenger, a young Coldstream ensign, stood rigid in blank astonishment.

Joseph Edmonds’s inclinations mattered not the
slightest
, however. The orders were explicit: ‘The Commander-in-Chief directs that a regiment of light dragoons be dispatched with all urgency …’ So the first to land were to be re-embarked as soon as was expedient, and were to sail for Cork – tomorrow possibly, or the day after, just as soon as transports could be found. Why Cork? he asked. Was there yet more trouble there? To which the ensign replied that, from what he read in
The Times
and
The Daily Courant
, there was trouble periodically everywhere.

By prodigious efforts, and not a little cursing of innkeepers and proprietors of livery stables (for even in this busiest of ports the Sabbath seemed to be kept with remarkable fastidiousness), Edmonds and the quartermasters managed to get covered standing, and on straw, for all the horses, and billets for the dragoons. Hervey found himself on picket once more, and it was well past midnight by the time he finished his rounds, so scattered about the town was the regiment. The officers’ lodgings were in a decent enough hotel; and there, a little before one o’clock, he found Edmonds sitting at a writing-table in the drawing room, quite alone.

‘Hervey, come over here,’ he said without looking up. ‘Take some of this Madeira and sit down. I have an assignment for you.’

Though he was happy to be sharing Edmonds’s company again – and by this time the major seemed truly to have regained his usual robust spirits – Hervey
would
in truth have preferred his bed, for there were only three hours to his next rounds.

‘These dispatches enumerate our losses and the action required for amendment to our current parlous condition, as well as sundry recommendations in respect of those officers who remain. You are to convey them to Lord George Irvine and to the colonel. To their London houses, that is: I cannot vouch that they will be there, but the dispatches can best be forwarded thence without delay. I want you then to take the leave that is owing to you and deal with that outstanding family business. I want no second thoughts in the future about taking the lieutenancy.’

The comfortable chair, the warm fire, the Madeira and Edmonds’s confidential manner – Hervey might have nodded, but the mention of home was too much, and thoughts of family rushed in on him as water through a sluice-gate.

‘Matthew, do you hear?’ said Edmonds when at length he saw that he did not have his attention.

Hervey blinked and looked surprised. ‘Sir! I—’

‘For heaven’s sake man, try and keep with me,’ he drawled. And then, with a smile: ‘You might have missed the most felicitous part: I want you to wait, at home, for the colonel to be in touch in respect of the matters I have laid before him. It might be a month or so, but that is no matter – I’m sure Wiltshire must have some charms to amuse you, though I cannot think of any myself. And we will see you in Ireland,
perhaps
, before autumn is out.’

Hervey detected no more in Edmonds’s ‘
perhaps
’ than a passing reference to the delay he might expect in the colonel’s expediting (or otherwise) the major’s recommendations; he acknowledged the instructions with a simple bow of the head and a smile.

‘Oh, and while you are about things in London you may go and lodge the purchase money with the regimental agents,’ added Edmonds in a tone which indicated that he wanted no reply, only compliance.

The inrush of home thoughts would have made sleep impossible. Besides, Edmonds seemed in no haste to dismiss him, and now that the major’s spirits were truly restored it became once more a pleasure to tarry in his soldierly company – and it emerged that the restoration of those spirits was the result of two separate items of intelligence. The first, though Hervey would have made no wager that Edmonds would have given it that priority, was that all his family were well: a remount corporal from the Canterbury depot had arrived earlier that evening with several letters from Margaret Edmonds, written over a period of six months, marked ‘to await return’. With a prescience as to the course of the campaign which many in the Horse Guards might have envied, she had concluded that once the army had entered the Pyrenees the mails would be erratic. Better, therefore, to consign them to the one establishment that years of following the drum told her she could rely on – the regiment’s own depot. Edmonds admired her logic yet despaired of her want of perceptivity, however, for surely the most favourable course would have
been
to send him the letters direct, and insure against her concerns by sending duplicates to Canterbury? In any case, it mattered not now: she was in good health. As were his daughters, who must surely during his absence have passed from childhood – and charmingly, he trusted.

The second piece of intelligence surprised him, but bore him equal relief: there would be no immediate disbandments in the cavalry. ‘I had forgotten about the damned Irish, God bless ’em!’ he laughed, pouring Hervey and himself yet another glass of Madeira. ‘And the magistrates here, too, are terrified of rick-burners and machine-breakers. There are, it seems, formed bands intent on disturbing the peace. God bless ’em, too! Parliament seems to have come to its senses, though when they’ll ever see real sense and establish a proper constabulary I could not begin to suppose. So the returning heroes will have to keep order – which means we shall not be heroes for long! Still, it’s an ill wind …’

An ill wind indeed, thought Hervey, for he had no love for the idea of being a mounted constable, even in Ireland. He no longer, if he had truly ever, expected to be treated as a hero, but here was surely the quickest way to universal opprobrium. Yet there were felicities at that moment which displaced such concerns. Home thoughts again ran freely, for he had not seen the parsonage in Horningsham these past four years, and his last visit, in the wake of the evacuation from Corunna, had been fleeting. At first the thoughts were as a
swirling
flood, but then they began to order themselves, and soon, with perfect clarity, he perceived in what fashion this return must be. To his father he must give account of his means and intentions, and hope that these might be congruent with what the changed circumstances demanded. To his mother he must needs be all that a mother expects, and be wholly tolerant of her incomprehension. And his sister? He longed simply that he and she might be what they once were to each other.

Johnson was the first to feel the effects of Hervey’s wakefulness when at four-thirty he received a shake from the picket and an order to report to the Marine hotel. Here there followed a half-hour of instructions, and a good deal of what might have passed for discourse, before Hervey felt confident he could leave his horses for the first time in his groom’s care. Barrow would for sure have counted Johnson’s part in that dialogue as verging on the mutinous; but, then, Barrow would not have apprehended the reason for the groom’s disquiet – and nor did Hervey: ‘Look, Johnson, I grant you that there is every right to be discouraged that you, too, are not to go home, but how can I trust Jessye to anyone else after all this time?’

Johnson looked bemused. ‘Mr ’Ervey, there’s nowt for me in Sheffield – tha knows ’ave no fam’ly.’ Johnson always bore his workhouse origins with a perverse pride.

‘Then why are you so vexed with the notion of going
to
Cork?’ asked Hervey, with a look of equal astonishment.

‘Because without thee there I’ll get the poke, an’ be back in t’ranks quick as lightning!’

Hervey assured him that this need not be the case, that he would speak with the adjutant. ‘But you might try to help yourself by being less … less
obstinate
.’

‘Obstinate?
Me?
’ began his groom, but Hervey rapidly deflected the challenge.

‘You will at least be glad that we are not to disband.’

‘Bloody ’ell, ay, sir. It’d be t’pit or t’foundries fer me otherwise.’

And the coalpits or the steelworks, Hervey knew full well, would mean in all probability an earlier grave than would service with the Sixth now. ‘You might have found employment as a footman,’ he tried lightheartedly. ‘There are some fine houses thereabouts, are there not?’

Johnson looked genuinely affronted. ‘I’ll be thy doggy, but I’ll be damned if I’ll be a bloody fart-catcher!’

The Angel inn, where Cornet Hervey hoped to find a seat on a London-bound coach, was crowded and noisy. And he had to endure it for two days since every seat was reserved by government messengers and officials, many in-bound from the Continent. Those that were not were taken by men of commerce already returning from hurried transactions in France (for Europe had been closed to trade for over ten years by
the
Royal Navy’s blockade, and the merchants and financiers of the City of London were anxious to stake early claims to the dividends of this sudden peace). Cornet Hervey did not take to these officials and commercial people who bustled about the Angel. He neither expected nor wanted attention as an officer returning from the war, but the insouciance which many of the travellers displayed, not to say the insolence with which they treated the Angel’s servants, landlord and potboys alike, angered him.

‘Forgot’n already the likes o’ you made their trade poss’ble, sir,’ said the landlord after one particularly self-satisfied consol-dealer had outbid Hervey for a seat in a fly-coach.

He could not but agree. But, then, he told himself, perhaps he had forgotten, too, that it was England’s commerce that had financed her war, and her allies’, too, and that he could not sniff at it too much now. Nevertheless, it was not until the third morning that he managed to get a seat inside on the
Dolphin
stage, whence he was glad to see the back of these men of affairs.

The
Dolphin
was a big and painfully slow coach. Its team comprised four strong Suffolks, and their short legs, with so low a point of draught, gave immense pulling power. But the big chestnuts were ill-matched for trotting, so much of the journey was at a walking pace. It meant, however, that the gentle green countryside of Kent could soon begin to ease the frustration with which he had set out. Indeed, the country seemed
to
him prettier even than in his recollections, and full of labouring men and women who showed no sign of the starvation or terror which blighted those of Spain and France. It was not long before he was minded of the equal, perhaps even greater, tranquillity of Wiltshire, and of his corner of the Great Plain of Salisbury. There he had known nothing but peace and happiness, and his thoughts now meandered, like the gentle chalk stream in which he had cast many a boyhood line, from one pleasurable recollection to another: his first pony, his rides on the Plain with Daniel Coates, his sister’s nimble fingers at the keyboard, his mother’s fussing as they made ready for Shrewsbury each term, his father’s long yet absorbing sermons, his brother’s—