A Close Run Thing (46 page)

‘No, I ’aven’t found any alive this side of the road, either. Whoever caught these poor beggars was ’orrible neat with the sword. I reckon some over there is nought but into their teens. What in God’s name is Boney doing fighting with slips of boys, d’ye reckon, sir?’

Hervey almost sobbed, conscious that this was indeed the Sixth’s handiwork. Instead he turned his remorse against the orderly, angered at being touched thus. ‘They were old enough to fetch powder and put a portfire to a touch-hole if needs be,’ he snapped.

‘Ay, they were right enough, sir,’ replied the man readily. ‘Found ought worth anything on that one, sir?’ he continued breezily.

The orderly would never know how close he came at
that
instant to knowing the same sabre that had made its accounts at the battery. Hervey bit into his glove. ‘I have not searched him with any thoroughness,’ he said curtly.

But still the man was not put off. ‘Then, I’ll have a look for meself, sir, if that’s right by you.’

There was no regulation of which Hervey knew that prevented an orderly of the medical services from relieving the dead of their worldly possessions. It was, indeed, a consideration to many, who might otherwise have sought a less sanguinary billet with the commissaries.

‘Wonder if this did him any good, sir,’ said the man after a deal of rummaging, holding out a rosary.

Hervey cursed beneath his breath as the orderly threw it aside. ‘I will have that, if you please,’ he snapped.

‘Right enough, sir,’ came the cheery response, ‘but it’s not worth a ha’penny.’

When the orderly had finished his work Hervey walked over to the furthest gun and sat on the trail of its abandoned limber. He put his head in his hands and searched for a prayer that might transport him from the death and despoiling, and from the monstrousness of the orderly and his work. ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace …’ he began. But his thoughts wandered. Which of these thousands lying before him had been His servants? ‘For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,’ he continued resolutely. Serjeant
Strange
had been his servant. And Lankester. And Edmonds, too, though he would never admit it.
Edmonds
– the major had been more to him than his own kin these past six years. He shuddered at the lonely prospect of soldiering without him. But Strange had been worthier than any, in the sight of the Almighty, surely. And yet he had not departed in peace. Would his death torment him for ever?

Only then did he remember the oilskin pouch that Strange had thrust at him on parting, and reached into the deep inner pocket of his jacket where it rested securely with his other keepsakes: Sister Maria’s signet ring, d’Arcey Jessope’s watch, and the prayer-book his father had given him. He took out the pouch and unfolded it carefully. There was a lock of grey hair in the first fold – Strange’s mother’s? Then a letter (Hervey would not open it), and then a miniature, whose likeness was obscure since water had at some time permeated its case. Small enough tokens of sentiment, he concluded, but perhaps no surprise from so taciturn a man as Strange. The doubts began to gnaw at him again. Had there been
no
other course but to leave him and gallop for the trees? He took out the prayer-book, hoping for some relief in its formularies (in the Thanksgiving perhaps) – ‘For Peace and Deliverance from our Enemies’. ‘O Almighty God,’ he began, ‘who art a strong tower of defence unto thy servants against the face of their enemies,’ (‘servants’ again – service, obligation, duty: the words came crowding), ‘we yield thee praise and thanksgiving for
our
deliverance from those great and apparent dangers wherewith we were compassed …’

‘Mr ’Ervey sir!’ The voice was its usual insistence. He turned to see Serjeant Armstrong striding towards him, looking to neither left nor right. ‘The brigade-major’s come. I told ’im to wait and said I’d fetch you meself. What are you doing out here? Who are you talking to?’

‘Merely taking time to think, Serjeant Armstrong, that is all,’ he replied.

‘You don’t want to be thinking. What’s past is past – gone,’ he insisted. ‘’Arry Strange did ’is duty, and that’s it. We’ll say some prayers over ’im in a minute or two with Preacher Sandbache and then it’s
on
for us. There’s no place for contemplating till everything’s over.’

Sir Hussey Vivian’s new brigade-major (Harris had all but lost an arm after they had moved to the centre) seemed rattled. ‘I may tell you, Hervey, that we have a brigade in name only,’ he began, ‘and the butcher’s bill is prodigious. Uxbridge will be lucky to live, by all accounts: his leg was taken clean off. Vandeleur is given command, but there is to be no pursuit, for the army is not up to it. We are merely to follow on the Prussians in the event that Bonaparte turns, although I wager he is making for a ship this very instant. America, they say, will give him sanctuary.’

Hervey said nothing. Instead he rued his own ill-fortune: Uxbridge close to death, a man who might
help
him. And then he cursed himself for his thoughts.

‘So the brigade is to march for Nivelles,’ continued the BM. ‘The Sixth are to lead – and none too quickly, if you please: as I said, we are not pursuing the French but following the Prussians. All we must do is get to Paris ere they break every window in the city!’

If Hervey had never before seen a battlefield the day after action, neither had he followed in the wake of a full-blown pursuit. The road to Nivelles was a trail of abandoned equipment, some of it no doubt jettisoned purposefully – baggage-waggons and the like, which could only hinder an orderly withdrawal. But much else betokened rout: small-packs, powder-horns, muskets and side-arms, the odd field-piece even. Nothing of value, however; for, vigorous though the Prussians must have been in their pursuit, all the signs of a systematic harvesting of booty were there – chests broken open and empty, bodies stripped and waggons likewise. Occasionally they came across a clothed body – a Prussian dragoon or hussar – his sword thrust into the ground and his helmet on its pommel, the minimal honouring of the dead before the needs of the pursuit had driven his comrades on. In Nivelles that night the Sixth sold the prize-horses to a livery stables at well over the official price. Twelve hundred pounds for the relief fund. Hervey was well pleased, and the regiment’s spirits began to revive with the issue of salt-beef and coffee (and the modest purchases of wine) as
at
last the commissary waggons caught up with them.

Subsequent entries in the regiment’s journal would read like milestones along the high road to Paris: Charleroi, Maubeuge, Laon, Soissons. Sometimes there were unhurried halts; other times they marched through the night. But never did they see a Frenchman offering resistance. Except once. And for weeks afterwards their gallant allies were, in consequence, held in some disregard by the regiment. Already, indeed, the Prussians’ wanton destruction
en route
was occasioning resentment. The duke’s instructions for his own troops had been most particular in this respect, as they had been after the Pyrenees: he had even ordered that troops should only of necessity cross standing crops, and in single file. Yet the Prussians had put the torch to anything and everything.

And so, in the late afternoon of the last day of June, fewer than ten miles short of St-Denis in the very outskirts of Paris, the plight of a lone Frenchman brought the Sixth to anger. They had seen the small château some distance off. It stood in the middle of open pasture, a handsome-looking house but without any sign of life. Had it been later in the day the Sixth might have made their billet there, but instead Hervey determined only on a watering halt. As the point-troopers rode into the yard, however, a shot rang out from a lower window, devoid of all glass and shutterless. Both men turned at once for the cover of the walls, dismounting and snatching their carbines from the saddle-boots in which they had rested idly for all but a
fortnight
. Scarcely had they pulled cartridges from pouch-belts, however, than out from the doorless château came an old man in his nightshirt raving like a madman and waving a sabre wildly. The pointmen, sensing this was no serious resistance, clipped the carbines to their pouch-belts and drew their sabres instead. Disarming the defender of the château took but seconds, so that by the time Hervey and the forward detachment rode into the yard the old man was simply raving harmlessly. ‘Je suis Bourboniste! Pourquoi vous me persécutez?’ he was shouting.

Hervey dismounted. No one meant him any harm, he said: ‘Est-ce que vous êtes seul ici, monsieur?’

The wild eyes darted about as more of the squadron came into the courtyard, and he glanced anxiously more than once towards the house, which bore the scars of what appeared to have been a brisk fight. ‘Oui, oui!’ he replied.

Hervey asked what fighting there had been around the château.

‘Rien, monsieur, pas du tout,’ he replied, and then his brow furrowed. ‘Monsieur, vous n’êtes pas Prussiens?’

As soon as Hervey had convinced him that they were not, the old man relaxed visibly. The surgeon was summoned, and Hervey asked how he had sustained his head-wound, for blood matted his hair. ‘Les Prussiens, monsieur,’ he began: they had attacked him, taken everything that could be taken, destroyed the rest and then tried to burn the house down.

‘Them is nowt but bloody fiends!’ protested one of the troopers when Hervey translated.

He and Armstrong went into the château while the surgeon attended the old man. ‘Christ, Mr ’Ervey,’ gasped the serjeant, ‘there’s not a piece of glass not broken!’ The shards were almost ankle-deep, the remains of fine chandeliers and mirrors shot to pieces. Furniture – evidently the less portable pieces – was now merely gilded matchwood. Velvet and brocaded curtains hung in tatters, flame-blackened, and the carpets were ingrained with excrement. In every room it was the same: from the top of the house to the kitchens, nothing remained undamaged, not a window or a door even. Except the door from the kitchen to what Hervey thought must be the cellar, which was firmly fastened though it looked as if it, too, had been off its hinges. ‘Looks like the Prussians weren’t partial to wine then, sir,’ said Armstrong, shaking his head in disbelief.

‘That hardly seems likely after what we have seen, do you not think?’

‘Why’s it locked then?’

‘Well, I wager it was not locked, when they left.’

‘You reckon the old man’s hidden something in there, then?’

‘Not some
thing
, Serjeant Armstrong, some
one
. Or more than one. Where is his family? Perhaps he sent them to Paris for safety, but how would he know there was any danger? No, I think the Prussians took him by surprise.’

Only with the greatest reluctance did the old man give up the keys, and he remained close by as they unlocked the heavy oak door. A light was burning below – more than enough to illuminate the occupants.

‘Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed Armstrong. Hervey shouted for the surgeon.

The terror in the girls’ eyes was enough to relate what must have gone before, and their soiled white shifts testified to the violence of their ordeal. Hervey checked his instincts: he wanted somehow to reassure them, but he knew it was better to leave them to their father and the surgeon.

He and Armstrong picked their way once more through the debris of the great hall, this time without a word, but then Hervey grabbed him by the arm. ‘See there!’ he called, peering up at one of the corner bosses on the ceiling. All were peppered with bullet holes, but the decoration on one was still recognizable.

‘See what?’

‘See the device on that corner boss, and see here this,’ he replied, taking the de Chantonnay ring from a pocket.

‘It looks the same. Does that mean anything?’ asked Armstrong indifferently.

‘Well, a fleur-de-lis within a laurel wreath: it is the de Chantonnay seal, and I should say therefore that we were in a residence of the de Chantonnays.’

Armstrong shrugged. ‘That didn’t save them two lassies, did it?’

* * *

The vicomte de Chantonnay-Fougard fell to his knees, even amid the broken glass. ‘Monsieur, c’est le travail du grand Dieu.’ Gaining then his composure, he explained how he – the entire de Chantonnay family indeed – knew that the ring had been passed into the hands of an English officer after Bonaparte’s defeat.

It was a little enough undertaking, replied Hervey.

But the family was indebted to him, protested the vicomte. And now he – a widower and cousin of the comte de Chantonnay – must impose once more on that Englishman and ask protection of him for his two daughters, for their safe conveyance to their aunt in Paris, ‘au nom du roy et de Dieu, monsieur!’

Hervey thought a while. It was not possible for himself to escort them, he explained: there was not even a carriage in the mews. But he would leave a cornet and quaternion at the château, and once they reached Paris he would see that a carriage was sent for them.

‘Vraiment les Anglais sont gentilhommes. Je vous remercie, monsieur. Je n’oublierai jamais cette gentillesse.’

But Hervey hoped he would forget soon enough what had occasioned the need of his gratitude, and resolved to make a beginning at once. ‘Mr Lawrence!’ he called into the courtyard, and up the steps came running the junior cornet, his fresh face and fair locks betraying barely seventeen years – fewer, even, than the younger of the daughters. ‘Mr Lawrence, you will choose three of the steadiest troopers – married men, if you can – and Corporal Sandbache, and you will make
these
people as comfortable as you can. Do you have any French?’

‘A little, Hervey …
sir
, I mean.’

‘Then, speak softly to the vicomte, here, and clean up a room so that his daughters at least may try to regain some modesty. Place each man upon his honour and that of the regiment. They are to be as your own sisters, Lawrence – do you understand?’

‘Perfectly, sir. I am sorry you doubt me,’ he added, more puzzled than offended.

Hervey sighed. ‘I am sorry, William. It is just that an outrage such as this …’