Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War (30 page)

It was getting light. Lord Paget could make out quite clearly now mounted figures in the fields the other side of the road – not many, ones and twos here and there, but no more than a hundred yards away.

Suddenly there was cheering, then firing – a peppering of carbines from the fields.

‘Aha! The videttes have decided it,’ said Paget, though with no more to his voice than had he been observing hounds drawing a distant covert. He strained hard to make out precisely where the cheering was coming from. And then he thought he had it, for what he had first supposed to be the dark background of the wooded slopes beyond the fields now looked like close ranks of horsemen.

Beyond the flashes of the videttes’ carbines was, indeed, General César-Alexandre Debelle’s brigade – three hundred sabres of the 8e Dragons, and a further four hundred of the 1er Provisoire Chasseurs à Cheval – all drawn up ready to charge, the
chasseurs
in the first line, with only a dry ditch between them and their bold videttes. Lord Paget could have but a very incomplete picture yet, but his instinct told him all he needed: a body of cavalry stood not two furlongs away, and his own command, inferior in number, was in column of route. It was a position that could at once turn to disaster.

Paget knew the Dundas drill book,
Instructions and Regulations for the Formations and Movements of the Cavalry,
and he knew it well. To get his column to face left in line would require, at the least, twenty-two verbal commands, including seven of ‘halt’. But he knew he could trust the Fifteenth’s commanding officer to have a handier way.

‘Fifteenth Hussars, left face!’

Colonel Colquhoun Grant had fought with the 25th Light Dragoons at Seringapatam and had led the 72nd Highlanders at the recapture of the Cape. He was not a man of unnecessary words of command. He had drilled his regiment to a handiness which, if it would not please a general officer at a review, would certainly delight one in the circumstances in which Lord Paget now found himself.

‘Hussars, form divisions! Wheel into line!’

It was done in less than a quarter of a minute, and as the men wheeled to face their adversaries, visible to all at last in the dawn’s cold grey light, they gave out a great cheer: ‘
Huzzah!
’

Not twenty yards behind Lord Paget, Hervey felt the deep-throated roar as much as he heard it. His spine shivered. He had heard hounds baying a hundred times, but never with such a lust as these men now gave tongue to. This was it. This was the moment he had prayed would come. Going knee-to-knee in the charge, he would soon be able to count himself a true cavalryman. But
when
would they draw swords?

Lord Paget knew exactly. It was an error to draw swords before the very instant of attack, for otherwise the effect was diminished. He had known an enemy waver and then break at the mere sight of the sabre’s edge revealed.

He took in all before him with one more glance about the field – the
coup d’oeil,
the cavalryman’s advantage – then made his way to the centre of the line.

Hervey and the escort followed, throwing off their cloaks, sword arms free and eager.

‘Draw sabres!’ called Paget.

Out rasped the better part of four hundred and fifty blades.

Lord Paget knew his drill book, and he knew his colonels too. Now he would show that he knew his history. ‘Fifteenth Hussars: Emsdorf and Victory –
charge!
’

The line took off like the field on Newmarket Heath when the flag was dropped. It was not as it should be – not the progression of walk, trot, gallop, charge – but Hervey scarcely noticed. There in front was Lord Paget, sword arm outstretched, the escort behind, left and right, and behind them the hussars crying ‘
Emsdorf and Victory!
’

The strangest things crowded his mind – tilting at sheep in Longleat Park astride a young Jessye, the races at Shrewsbury, Daniel Coates shouting not to let his sword arm bend: ‘Seek out your man and ride hard for him!’

He hoped to ride hard for an officer, but he couldn’t make one out. Why did the French stand to receive and not counter-charge?

He saw the carbines come up and heard the shots – he thought. He saw the smoke for sure. They hadn’t the slightest effect.

And then into the smoke, and then they were among them. Robert, his gelding, plunged between two horses that had turned already. Hervey’s right leg struck a
chasseur’s
boot hard, almost heaving him from the saddle. He lost a stirrup, cursed, swung back blindly with his sabre – ‘Cut Two against infantry’ the closest he dare call it – felt it strike, and followed through with his arm still straight. He saw the blood as the sabre came full circle.

Now they were on the dragoons in the second line, the
chasseurs
thrown back in confusion. There were horses and men down – shrieks, squeals, curses, groans, prayers for mercy. The French ranks were deep, all Greek helmets and plumes. It was like diving into a black pool, wondering if he would break the surface before running out of air. He cut and thrust left and right, as if hacking through thicket. He felt blows, but no pain. He heard shouting, orders, but they made no sense. All that mattered was to get through the mass of men and into the clear air beyond. Where Lord Paget was he had no idea. He could see men of his own regiment, and the Fifteenth, but not the general.

Then, as suddenly as they’d clashed, he was through, and gasping for air just like breaking surface in the pool. He saw Martyn, and Serjeant Crook, then Serjeant Emmet, Corporal Armstrong and Collins, and dragoons spattered with blood.

And then he saw Lord Paget – relief! For not only was he now a cavalryman, the troop had done its duty.

But it was not over yet, by any means. The French were fleeing east towards the Carrion road, and Paget meant to stop them. ‘After them, Grant! We must head them off the bridge!’

Colonel Grant raised his sabre to acknowledge. His hand was bloody, whether by the enemy’s or his own it was not possible to tell. His adjutant was a fearful sight, bare-headed, face a mass of blood – and very evidently his own.

‘Damned silly muff caps!’ said Martyn.

Hervey saw. It was not the mirliton’s appearance but its serviceability. Handsome it might be, but it was too tall to stay in place in a mêlée, and it gave not the slightest protection against a blade, for while the French hussars wore the same, theirs were strengthened by iron hoops rather than pasteboard.

‘Rather the Tarleton any day!’ Martyn stood in the stirrups and raised his sabre above his head to rally the rest of the troop. ‘Keep an eye on Paget, Hervey. He’ll be off like a greyhound given half a chance.’

True it was. Lord Paget was view-hallooing like the best of them, waving his sabre at the bridge, his horse blowing hard and champing for the second off.

Martyn had rallied two dozen of his men. It was enough. They wheeled into line behind the general, expecting him to bolt at any second.

Hervey just had time to look back where he had ridden. The sight appalled and thrilled him at the same time: men and horses down, some of them still but many more writhing in agony; and some neither up nor down, staggering to rise, on two legs or four, occasionally succeeding, but for the most part just falling back. Who would tend them? He had no idea. He turned to face front. The last thing he wanted was an involuntary tear, not now he had been seasoned.

Off they sprang again. The ground seemed heavier than before. And devilish treacherous, vine stumps and ditches everywhere. He saw Private Dooley’s trooper fall, somersaulting and throwing him clear the other side of the cut, the horse thrashing, cast, in the bottom of it. Everywhere Hervey could see pairs of men in combat – individual, as if jousting – while others raced for the bridge, the French knowing where they were galloping to, the hussars only sensing. And every so often another French horse would tumble, and its rider might rise, hopeful of regaining the saddle – but in vain, for an English blade would take him first.

Hervey looked for his man – a
dragon,
preferably, the greater prize. He had no fear. Robert was fagged, but he didn’t doubt he would answer to the leg. And his blade was sharp. But as long as Lord Paget was not threatened he could have no occasion to prove his skill.

They galloped the best part of a mile until the general judged that his men were out of hand. He had his trumpeter sound ‘rally’, a simple call, just Cs and Gs, the same pitch whether bugle or trumpet.

Hervey pulled up, not without difficulty, for even though Robert was lathered as white as the ground there was fire in him yet. He looked back towards Sahagun: how great indeed they had shocked them! His chest swelled with pride.
So Joshua rose up early in the morning, and brought Israel by their tribes!

Joshua’s own trumpeters could not have been more insistent than were the Fifteenth’s now. Bugles all across the field repeated the ‘rally’ (it was ever a problem to get a man to hear, let alone respond). Lord Paget cursed loud to himself, and then at the hussars as they eventually began answering the call. But they merely cheered him by return, taking a pride in their wilful ardour.

They were hard up against the Valderaduey and somehow drawn well north of the bridge. Paget cursed again. But the stream was deep with snowmelt, not a way to escape. Paget looked about, saw the French scattered like so much chaff, and ordered his captains to call on them to surrender.

The French would not yield, however – those, at least, still in the saddle. Three or four
dragons
close by plunged into the stream. One of them fell as his horse stumbled, sinking at once with the weight of his boots and breastplate. Two managed to reach the far bank, but their horses could get no footing, and they in turn fell. A
chasseur
put his mount obliquely at the bank. It managed to scramble out a little way, just enough for the man to leap from the saddle and gain a footing, grasping at the sedge near the top of the bank and hauling himself out. Then, catching the reins as his horse, without the burden of a rider, managed to struggle up the snowy slide of the riverbank, he remounted and saluted his pursuers. Hervey and the others gave him a cheer.

‘Damnation!’ cursed Lord Paget, loudly, as he dug his spurs into his own gelding’s flanks. ‘This ain’t a tourney!’

And off went the field again, headlong for the bridge. The ‘rally’ and the call to surrender had lost them time, and Debelle was making good use of it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THREATS

Reeves’s Hotel, Lisbon, 27 October 1826

Hervey woke from a fitful sleep, with cramp in his right leg and his neck stiff. The low chair in his sitting room was comfortable enough for its usual purpose, but the candle had burned down to an inch and the fire was nothing but a few embers; three hours sleeping thus was not three hours’ repose. He pulled his cloak tighter about his shoulders, and wondered what delayed Kat so long at the residence.

He sat up, eyes open but seeing little, contemplating his condition. He had hurt her, of that there was no question. She had rallied, and they had spent the rest of the night as close, seemingly, as before, but there was a care about her the following morning despite her efforts to conceal it. She said she was to dine with the Forbeses that evening, that she would speak to the chargé again and press Hervey’s design on him, and alert him to the refusal of Colonel Norris to consider it properly, and to the prodigious cost that Norris’s own design would occasion. But Hervey had drawn back. Whether somehow fearing the obligation it implied, he dare not imagine. And then he had given in, wanting, more than his fears were worth, what Kat alone seemed able to deliver.

His thoughts returned once more to Sir John Moore’s time: how green he had then been, the trusting, faithful, guileless cornet. He knew nothing about the ‘web’ and how it was woven, allowing one officer to advance while trapping another. Now he could use the strands to his own advantage, where before they excluded him. Now he used cunning, and not just to deceive the enemy. Sometimes it seemed he was even partial to it. And all this because Lady Katherine Greville was his patroness. No, not
all
because; he could neither blame nor hail Kat for his own condition now, for their acquaintance had not been so long, whatever its gestation. Eighteen years ago, when first he came to the Peninsula, Hervey had said his prayers daily. Now his observance was next to nothing, and the seventh commandment he broke almost daily. Life in Sir John Moore’s day may have been uncomfortable and dangerous, but it had at least been honourable. No, he did not open his Prayer Book very often these days, but its words haunted him:
And there is no health in us.

He wondered if Johnson were still there. As he got up there was a loud knocking at the door.

The landing outside was still well lit, the figure consequently in silhouette.

‘
Senhor, se faz favor.
’

The man was so much swaddled against the cold that it would have been difficult to gauge anything of his purpose even had the light shone on his face. But he held out an envelope.