Major Lord David (20 page)

The stifling afternoon wore on. French attention appeared
to be drawn to the center of the battlefield, giving David and
the others an opportunity to reconnoiter. The wounded were
removed to the south-side buildings that remained intact, and,
in an effort to plug gaps, muskets and ammunition were redistributed from slain guardsmen along the garden walls. The
deafening artillery from the fight to their east was such a constant accompaniment that it resolved itself into a hum. One
could not shut out the groans of those injured and dying.
Though David knew there should be at least two surgeons
with his own regiment, he did not know where they were to be
found. And at any moment the French might be relied upon to
renew their assault.

The men were cleaning their muskets. David pulled more
wounded men from the garden, placing some in the small stable where Incendio and the few remaining horses were saddled and ready. Across from that stable, the once elegant
chateau stood, only a shell in flames.

“Steady, fellow,” David muttered, rubbing his black charger’s
muzzle just as the French drummer boy had done earlier. Little Guillaume, hovering near, appeared to have more color in
his cheeks. He asked David how much longer he must stay.

“A few more hours, mon ami,” David said, and he repeated
the words more softly to Incendio. Through the open stable
door he could see that the base of the chapel was now blazing. Across the garden, upon the slope to the ridge, the 52°d
regiment had formed two squares just off the northeast corner of Hougoumont. French cavalry had begun charging those
squares and others, unseen upon the ridge, probably in the
mistaken notion that Wellington had pulled his army back. Instead, David knew his commander was likely to be preserving his forces from French artillery by moving them behind the
rise.

Even as he questioned the fate of Alan Athington and others he knew in the 52nd, even as he watched the French cavalry
charge repeatedly, David turned his weary attention to the
tasks at hand. Again he entered the garden.

“Bitte-” a young Nassauer choked, as he lay upon crushed
herbs and vegetables in the once neatly plotted beds. David
offered the German his own canteen, holding the injured man’s
head up as he scarcely managed a sip before expiring. There
were too many like him; the fighting had been fierce and prolonged. Many had struggled for hours with wounds from the
first attacks, only to succumb now in the relative calm.

David ran the length of the garden wall along the south and
east of the garden. When he met his colonel, Woodford, and
McDonnell, he heard that Wellington had noticed the fires at
Hougoumont and had sent a note desiring that men be spared
from the flames, but stressing that the farm must remain theirs.
The duke had been answered with an assurance. And the
chapel still stood, though the blaze had risen as high as the
feet of a wooden figure of Jesus inside the door.

David thought it a curiosity that after despairing of so
much rain the night before, and though the mists and damp
had persisted, he should now feel so thirsty. Given the carnage
and devastation about him, it was strange to feel anything other
than numbed. But he did crave water. He set a subaltern to
collecting canteens from the dead and portioning the water to
the men at the wall. There was a well in the north farmyard,
but even that seemed too far away.

Again they waited. David could no longer distinguish how
many attacks had been rebuffed. He recognized only that this
had been a ferocious bit of fighting.

Early in the evening, the French infantry took advantage of
its own cavalry movements, not to support that cavalry but to make yet another dedicated invasion of Hougoumont’s orchard. As the French swarmed onto the ground, David stayed
at the east garden wall and watched Hepburn’s Third Foot
Guards fight valiantly before being forced to give way.

“There is more French, sir,” one frustrated Nassauer remarked in broken English, furiously reloading his musket, “than
we are”

“Yes,” David agreed. “But we have walls.”

They gave the French no chance to press an advantage. The
German troops and Coldstreamers along the east wall kept up
such a thick and fierce barrage of musketry fire that the apple
trees themselves started to waver, their branches hanging
limply. The Third’s soldiers were able to recover and evict the
invaders. But there was no time for celebration. The exercise
was repeated: the French again moved in from the east side of
the orchard, the British infantry were pushed back to the
sunken road, and then the defenders at the garden wall, muskets blazing, pummeled the persistent French. On both sides
the troops were nearing a state of exhaustion. This time, when
the British Guards counterattacked through the trees, the
French appeared set to vacate the orchard for good. The soggy
ground under the orchard’s rows was covered in red, blue, and
green uniforms. But now, pressing forward to the far hedge at
the east side of the orchard, Hougoumont’s champions could
fire into the French cavalry’s flanks.

It was early evening. The light was beginning to fade.
David did not anticipate another attack. After such continuous, defiant effort, not one part of Hougoumont, even the
much-disputed orchard, had been lost to Bonaparte’s forces,
though the remaining buildings and scorched surroundings
were now scarcely recognizable. Not an inch had been lost,
but it seemed to David that almost every inch was covered in
some form of devastation. On his return to the south yard, he
had to make his way past men dead and dying, German and British. He might have spent hours simply tending to the
wounded.

He learned that the other farm, La Haye Sainte, having
failed to receive a resupply of ammunition, had fallen to the
French, inspiring the attackers to new efforts. But the allied
center upon the ridge held firm. Bonaparte would be compelled to desperate measures if he were to carry the day. Yet the
French emperor still had a chance at victory, because the muchlooked-for Prussian army had still not arrived to strengthen the
allies.

The French cavalry’s fierce charges appeared to have
ended. Since the other British Guards regiments had been
pulled back to support the line up upon the ridge, the slope
behind Hougoumont now hosted replacement companies of
Hanoverians and the King’s German Legion. After consulting
with the other officers, David was tasked with informing their
new German reinforcements of the state of the farm. So he retrieved Incendio, in the process cautioning little Guillaume to
wait for his return. Passing through the farm’s north gate with
a number of walking wounded, David made his way to the
east, along the sunken way, then turning to move gradually
upslope. There, more wounded British Guards, resting from
the battles in the orchard, sat about looking physically spent.
The fighting had been at close quarters, often with bayonet.
In the absence of aid, the wounded were attempting to look
after one another.

David could at last see more of the valley, at least that part
on the allied right side. In the press of battle, with the limited
views, he had not comprehended just how many men had
confronted one another today within a small, suffocating
space. The reality was appalling. The armies were so dense,
they looked not like men but waves, moving in currents across
the rain-soaked, undulating ground-a great, grinding swell of
sweating, bloodied, muddy humanity. The morning’s shoulderhigh crops had been so trampled and crushed that they now re sembled reed mats, a peculiar terrestrial flotsam cushioning the
casualties.

He had never seen such a slaughter. He hoped never to see
it again. What had seemed like the world to him for so many
intense hours at Hougoumont had been only part of this
blasted whole.

He spoke briefly with a captain of Du Plat’s King’s German
Legion, which regiment thankfully gave its orders in English,
and then with a lieutenant of Colonel Halkett’s Hanoverians,
relaying to both the state of Hougoumont and hearing in turn
their news of Wellington and the line. Prepared to go back,
David turned about. As he neared a short hedge and low bank
just forward of one of the 52nd infantry’s vacated squares, he
heard a sharp groan. Peering under the thick holly and beech
hedge, he spotted several figures lying still, and their uniforms
were red.

“Trent!” one of them croaked, before lapsing into ragged
coughs.

David dismounted instantly. Drawing Incendio behind him,
he moved closer to the hedge and knelt to look into a muddy
face framed by a blanket.

“Athington!”

Ahington! What do you do here?”

Again Alan Athington groaned. “Put here-ahead of square.
No time-take us-rear-”

“Your wounds are bad?”

Athington nodded. “Others..

David checked the two other men. Neither breathed.

“They are gone, Athington. You cannot stay here. I must
take you up to the line. You see I have my horse”

“No … time,” he said. “Do you not … hear it?”

The guns were still firing. Seemingly the day’s cannonading had left David deaf. But in the distance he could just hear
the faintest drumbeat. Ta-rum-dum, ta-rum-dum, ta-rum-a-dum,
rum-a-dum, dum, dum. The beat repeated across the bloody,
darkening valley. It was the French pas de charge. In the last
hour before the sun set, Bonaparte was sending his tried and
trusted personal guard, the Imperial Guard, against the allied
line.

“Look out … for Caswell,” Athington muttered. “He
stopped … in our square”

“Caswell!” David was hauling the boy out from under the
hedge. “You mean the captain? Jack Caswell?”

Athington’s dark gaze was unfocused. “Kit. Junior ADC.
General Smallwood. Think … friend of … family. Kit …
shammed it.” Again he struggled through a cough. “Jumped …
inside our square … just before hit.”

David was attempting, gently, to right him. Athington was
heavier than he looked. But he could not be left there. The
drumbeats sounded louder.

“I shall keep an eye out. But, Athington, where are you
wounded?”

“Right arm-right leg. You must … cosh me, on the head.
Less … painful.”

The lad had bottom. David raised him and steadied him
against Incendio’s side, then strained to shove him up across
the saddle. He had to move, and quickly.

As he urged Incendio up the slope, he thought Athington
might have swooned. But then he was talking again, and garrulously.

“Guess he’s still … in-law. But not … the same-what?”
He started to laugh but halted, hacking.

“I don’t understand you, man,” David said tightly. To hear
wild chatter now distracted him. He probably should have ridden on-officers were reprimanded for stopping-but he had
never quite been able to do it….

“Hayden … marryin’ Miss Caswell. In the Times … last
week”

“That’s nonsense, Athington,” he bit out. “Miss Caswell is
to marry me”

“Not … no longer. Sanders girl-wrote Charis. M’sister’s … never wrong.” He drew a ragged breath. “Shouldn’t
mind … you as … brother, Trent….”

Handsome of you, David thought. But he said aloud, and
curtly, “You’re off your head, Athington. Don’t talk anymore.
Here” He wedged one of the lieutenant’s boots into a stirrup,
then rearranged the muddy blanket. Given his gentler breathing, Athington must have passed out.

David looked behind them. He could now see the Imperial Guard, Bonaparte’s Middle Guard, marching toward
them in the dusk. Amid the drumbeats he heard the cries
of “Vive l’Empereur! Vive l’Empereur!” The column was impressive-uniformly tall, matchlessly disciplined, dedicated, and intimidating. They looked a race of giants.

He hurried Incendio on, as well as they could in such a carpet of dead and dying, and crested the first bank bordering the
ridge’s sunken road. They crossed the road and mounted the
farther bank, to find a quietly prone army of guardsmen lying
in wait on the reverse side of the bank. Farther behind them
was a confusion of wagons and horses and reserves, civilians,
even women and children, searching for injured soldiers, calling in efforts to locate regiments-or taking the opportunity
to steal the effects of the wounded and dead. The volume of
activity behind the lines was amazing. Yet somehow David’s
batman, Barton, found him in that melee.

“I saw you-makin’ your way up the slope, m’lord-Major,”
he gasped. He’d been running. “I feared you’d be caught in
the firing.”

David shook his head. “I’ll ask you, Barton, to take Lieutenant Athington to shelter.” He was, as carefully as possible,
sliding Athington from Incendio’s back. “Find him a doctor.”
David slid a hand inside his tunic to remove his watch. “Take
this, should you need to pay for help or a bed. And keep
Athington’s things as well. I’m back to the farm. You might
find me there tonight.” He could tell that Barton had no fondness for the task. His duty, as he had always seen it, was to
look after the major, not to tend the major’s friends.