Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War

by Allan Mallinson

  The adjutant looked disappointed.

  There was a long silence; or so it seemed to Hervey.

  ‘I’m scarcely surprised,’ said the adjutant at length, sighing heavily. ‘Ellis can be a vexing man. Very well, Mr Hervey, you may dismiss.’

  The escort stood-to their horses at six o’clock. Though the sun had set two hours before, the torches, fires and settled snow made it light enough for Lieutenant Martyn to have a good look at them. They were a mixed bag, by no means the thirty best, for Lankester could ill afford them with what he imagined lay ahead. But he had made sure the NCOs were sound – Serjeant Emmet, long in the service and steady; Serjeant Crook, younger, dead keen and clever; and two corporals, one of them Armstrong.

  They were not at all a bad sight, these thirty, even turned out in cloaks. Lieutenant Martyn thought he should say some words. ‘We are about to do duty of especial importance,’ he began, raising his voice just enough to carry to either end of the single rank, above the occasional snort and the chink of a curb chain; he did not want to make a spectacle of it (already there were dragoons from Number Two Squadron gathering to watch). ‘For we escort General Lord Paget himself, the commander of all General Moore’s cavalry. The regiment will thereby have an unrivalled opportunity to demonstrate to his lordship its character and capability. Upon our address, therefore, will his lordship’s approval rest, for although he will have regard for the reputation in which the regiment stands from its past feats, his lordship has not had occasion to become personally acquainted with us. I trust that every man will remember that – no matter what he is called upon to perform.’ He paused to lend emphasis. ‘Very well. Twos will advance left . . . Advance!’

  His words would make no difference, Martyn supposed. The best would do their duty no matter what; the others would not be flattered into capability or exertion by appeal to the reputation of the regiment. But it would be a lame thing to parade in this bitter cold and then set off without a word. And by making such a song of it, too, there would be no expectation of clemency for defaulters. Was that too harsh a judgement? They all wanted to be at the French, he had no doubt of it, and they would all fight well when it came to it. The trouble was, too many of them believed they would go better at the French for a little liquor inside them. What was it the chaplain himself read from Scripture: Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish?

  There was no ease in drink for them that night, however. And beer and liquor they would have traded for hot tea at any price the sutler named. Lieutenant Martyn would not let them mount until they had been marching an hour and more, the road ankle-deep in snow, but they knew at least there would be no more of it that night, for there was not a wisp of cloud. That spelled worse in its way, though, for the air was already chill, so that soon the snow froze and their marching became harder as the crust began breaking unevenly with each step. Men started to curse, some of them foully, and some profanely. It pained Martyn; it pained Hervey. It pained the odd ‘Methodist’ in the ranks.

  It even pained Corporal Armstrong. ‘If you buggers cannot curse decent then ha’d your gab!’

  Hervey was surprised by the indignation, and he wondered if Armstrong was treading the boards for the officers’ benefit, playing up the corporal’s part, new-made. But Armstrong did not strike him as a man who would play to a gallery, or to the best box for that matter. ‘Jesus Lord’ was on his lips more often than on the chaplain’s, but Armstrong had a sense of occasion too, even with his fists. Hervey did indeed like him. He may have been a cornet for all of six months, but his instinct told him that Armstrong was a man he might trust, a man whose sabre would be there when the time came. The affair of Biddy Flyn’s donkey was hardly to be compared with what they might face at Sahagun, but Armstrong had come readily to the aid of his officer as surely as any coverman. And it had been Armstrong who had been last to break off the fight in that first skirmish with the French scouts. ‘Have a care not to close with the men.’ The words rang in Hervey’s ears. He supposed they meant the same for a man with rank on his arm too. But it did not stop him marking this corporal out.

  ‘How many miles do you estimate we have come, Hervey?’

  Lieutenant Martyn’s enquiry recalled him to the present. He had to think hard. The escort was mounted again, now, and they had been riding side by side for half an hour without a word. He took out his watch. The moon was full and bright, and he saw that the hour hand had reached eight. Two hours, at a pace of no more than three miles in the hour. ‘I would suppose two leagues,’ he replied.

  ‘My reckoning too.’

  They had the same to go again before they would reach the rendezvous at Melgar de Abaxo. But it was perishing cold, now, and some of the dragoons were beginning to wonder if they would see its end. Hervey was strangely thankful for his cold nights on Salisbury Plain with Daniel Coates, searching for errant sheep like the Good Shepherd; he knew there was a deal to run before the cold took a man, and he knew also how to stave off that peril. The poor city men whose feet had never touched grass before listing were suffering dreadfully, but as much from their fears as the frost itself. If they could bring themselves through this night they would be swords of ice-brook temper, Spanish swords. And they would see the morning, he had no doubt. It was his place to see they did.

  ‘Quite an affair, Hervey, the picket pig,’ said Martyn suddenly, and as if it were a perfect sequitur.

  Hervey thought it sounded disapproving. ‘In what manner, sir?’

  Martyn smiled a little, though Hervey could not see. ‘A right Tantony pig, too, so I gather.’

  ‘Do you say I should not have acted as I did?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ Martyn’s horse slipped again, throwing its rider forward, so that he had to recover himself before completion. ‘No, the picket-corporal was deuced idle. The whole camp standing to arms just so his picket might have a slice of pork – infamous.’

  Now Hervey’s horse slipped and threw its rider forward.

  Martyn waited for him to reseat himself. ‘But I wonder if it were absolutely necessary to report Serjeant Ellis?’

  Hervey was keen to know what might have been the better alternative. Martyn was, after all, his senior by four years. ‘He would not carry out my order, and defied me in front of the dragoons. I cannot see that I had any choice. Indeed, I believed it to have been an obligation.’

  He said it with just a suggestion of indignation, however, and Martyn was quick to it. ‘Hervey, do not misunderstand. Your resolve in this is wholly admirable. Some there are who would, without doubt, look the other way. They preserve a sort of easy-going regimen; nothing too evil occurs, but it is as injurious to the health of a troop as is the violent enforcement of each and every regulation. And, of course, I was not there.’

  Neither of them spoke for several minutes. Hervey was not to know that Martyn forced himself to conversation out of the same respect as his for what the cold could do.

  ‘It hath been the wisdom of a good officer to keep the mean between the two extremes, of too much stiffness in refusing, and of too much easiness in admitting any variation from it.’ Martyn spoke his parody of the familiar words with a sort of mock gravity, but with just a note of satisfaction in finding the Prayer Book’s preface so apt and adaptable.

  Hervey turned to him.

  It was just possible to see his look of surprise. ‘We are both sons of the cloth, my dear fellow,’ said Martyn reassuringly. ‘You will not, as a rule, hear me quoting Scripture or rubric however.’

  Hervey warmed with the recognition of friendly intent, though he was still unsure of what Lieutenant Martyn’s judgement was in respect of ‘the picket pig’ – or rather, Serjeant Ellis and the picket pig. Martyn had said that he himself had not been there, which, manifestly, was a bar to his perfect judgement, but at the same time Hervey thought he hinted at too much stiffness.

  It troubled him, too. Cornet Hervey thought it very difficult to know what was right; more so than he had imagined. He
told himself it would all be revealed as the months went by and he became a seasoned dragoon. For the time being, though, he would have to hope that his trials were not exceptional, that he would not have to face the wretched business of a recalcitrant serjeant again. He knew full well the NCOs would be watching – testing him on occasions – but that was not the same.

  ‘I think I will take a turn along the column, then, and see how they are fairing.’

  ‘Yes, do so,’ said Martyn, approvingly. ‘Cheer their spirits, for I think we may have to dismount again if this continues as ill.’

  The wind was driving snow into their faces again, and whipping up the powdery covering of the drifts either side of the road, so that instead of the reassuring shape of a comrade fore and behind, there was only a swirling white. Even had it been day, they would have been indistinguishable as dragoons of the Sixth, or any other regiment for that matter, for they looked like nothing so much as an eerie legion of snowmen.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SIGNALS

  Elvas, 23 October 1826

  The morning was fresh, the sky clear and the sun warm. Eagles soared above the hills in front of them, and there was a scent of pines. In the summer they would bake here; Brevet-Major Hervey had known five Peninsular summers, and seen dragoons and fellow officers alike turn the colour of walnuts, parched and shrivelled. But it was nothing to the six winters he had endured. And the last five had been nothing to that first one, for they had gone into quarters in the old manner, whereas that first – the first and last with Sir John Moore – they had crossed the mountains when the days were shortest, the French at their heels every step of the way. What had he learned that winter? Everything. Never again would he doubt his capacity to think or act or endure. He looked about at the hills and their forts: just the best time of year this, and the spring, for campaigning. Not in the depths of winter, nor the heat of summer either. But of course they could not choose their time that way, not if the enemy chose to fight; nor, indeed, could an army let itself be driven into quarters. If it could master the elements that sent the enemy into quarters it would master the enemy with very little blood. That, at least, had been his experience in India. He recalled the old wisdom: All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

  ‘Dom Mateo, you say there is no telegraph line anywhere in Portugal now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And yet there remains a corps for its operation?’

  Dom Mateo loosed his reins a little to let his mare stretch her neck as they continued the incline. He was especially happy on a day as fine as this. But he had reason to be proud too. ‘Such was its proficiency at the end of the war that it has remained ready if it should be called on.’

  Hervey had heard of the Duke of Wellington’s telegraph, but not once had he seen it during those five years of war in the Peninsula. There was supposed to have been a line all the way back to Lisbon, and to Vigo in the north, or wherever their supply came ashore, but he had thought it was operated by the Royal Navy, as the telegraph had been along the lines of Torres Vedras. Dom Mateo explained to him now that it had been Brigadier-General Pedro Folque of the Real Corpo de Engenheiros – the colonel of the snowy descent from the friary roof – whom the duke had instructed to raise a corps from veterans and invalids who could read and write. And he had asked him too to devise a system of semaphore and to set up lines linking Lisbon with the great border fortresses.

  ‘General Folque was an eminently practical man, Hervey. As I told you, his corpo never numbered many more than a hundred, yet they were able to relay a message from Lisbon to Almeida in a matter of hours – two hundred miles as the crow flies. It would have taken three days by courier.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hervey, nodding. ‘Well do I remember the country. Three at least.’

  ‘And today you will see how well the corpo have kept their science. The distance is not great, but the principle will be demonstrated.’

  Their fine morning, so good for the spirits, was also ideal for such a demonstration – the sun, though warming, not so fierce as to distort an image. They had ridden together for about an hour, first along the highway and then up a goat track to a little ruined hut. Here, in neat blue coatees and white pantaloons, stood two men of the Corpo Telegráfico, one a private, the other a second corporal. As Hervey and Dom Mateo closed, the men drew their brass-handled hangers and stood at attention.

  Dom Mateo returned the salute and hailed them heartily, dismounting and handing the reins to his groom. Hervey followed, handing his to Private Johnson.

  ‘This was the last post on the Santarem-to-Elvas line, although later it was extended to Badajoz,’ explained Dom Mateo. ‘From here the message was taken by galloper to the fortress, or it could be repeated by turning the semaphore tower through ninety degrees. But the distance is not so great, and it is better to demonstrate the work on the old line itself, I think.’

  Hervey nodded. ‘At Santarem it connected with another line, I should imagine?’

  ‘Yes, from Almeida. There were six posts on the Elvas–Santarem line, each four or five leagues apart, and at each there was one man, although on the other lines there were more, because the number of messages was greater.’

  Dom Mateo said something to the two men, and at once they sheathed their hangers and doubled to the semaphore tower.

  The tower was a simple device, a white-painted mast about eighteen feet high, with a movable arm atop, and a red panel, three-foot-square, at the arm’s end.

  Dom Mateo began explaining enthusiastically. ‘The red square is moved to one of six positions, like the face of a clock – see?’

  Hervey saw the arm move, pausing for a few seconds at each of the six points.

  ‘And this is in a sequence of three numbers; these three signify a letter, or word or message contained in the code book. Like, say: two-three-four – cannon fire is heard to the north. Folque himself wrote the book, and still it is used.’

  Hervey nodded again. The principle was simple enough.

  ‘Now, your corporal should be at the next post. Shall we see?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  Hervey walked over to where Johnson stood with the horses. He took his telescope from the saddle holster, put it to his eye and rested his forearms on the saddle.

  ‘Do you have it?’ asked Dom Mateo eagerly. ‘In a straight line beyond the whitened convent.’

  ‘Yes, I have it.’ The post was indeed well chosen, the white mast showing up clearly against the background, and the red panel in the rest position at six of the clock face.

  Dom Mateo gave the signalmen their instructions.

  The private began hauling on the pulleys, and the arm swung first to number one position (seven-thirty), then to three (ten-thirty), then five (three o’clock), the panel passing through ‘rest’ each time.

  Hervey peered the while at the distant semaphore. The Telegráfico corporal did likewise, though his telescope was bigger, and rested on a tripod.

  The red panel began to move.

  ‘Um, três, cinco,’ called the corporal. One, three, five – the signal repeated back.

  ‘Now they know that they see each other’s signals clearly, and that your man is with them. Very well, Hervey, now let us test these telegráficos. What is the question you would pose to your corporal?’

  Hervey had decided on the ride up to ask for a model vidette’s report, but now he thought the idea dull. Instead he smiled, and said, ‘Ask, “Who shall be next RSM?” ’

  It would be easy enough to send the message in English – the signalmen could spell out the words as written in the tri-number code – but Dom Mateo wanted to test the code book fully. At the distant post there was an officer who could speak English too, so there would be no difficulty in that. He wrote down the question in
Portuguese and handed it to the corporal.

  The corporal consulted his code book – it took but a few minutes – scribbled the numbers above the words on the piece of paper, then began to read them off to the signalman, who worked the pulleys with impressive speed.

  When the panel returned to rest for the last time, Hervey took up his telescope again.

  ‘They will need some time, I think,’ said Dom Mateo. ‘The reply they will have to spell out.’

  They waited, not long, and then the distant semaphore sprang to life. Dois, dois, dois – two, two, two – the signal ‘ready’. And the home response: dois, dois, dois.

  The reply took little more than a minute.

  Dom Mateo seemed pleased. ‘Regular signalmen who know each other can do it so much the quicker, but today they do the drill exactly as General Folque prescribed.’

  The corporal doubled across to them with his message pad, and handed it to Dom Mateo.

  Dom Mateo looked at it, smiled, then handed it to Hervey. ‘It will, perhaps, be reason to you.’

  Hervey read. ‘England expects Armstrong.’ He nodded slowly, smiling. ‘A most impressive demonstration, Dom Mateo. Altogether most convincing.’

  ‘Do you wish to see more?’

  ‘No,’ said Hervey, smiling still. ‘I am certain that any message may be passed faithfully. This way, without doubt, we can use the reserves to best advantage. Beresford’s men, if it is to be Beresford, need move only when they are needed, and not a minute before.’

  ‘I am glad you approve. Now, what more may I show you?’

  ‘Nothing, Dom Mateo. I am wholly convinced of what should constitute our contingent, and where, and I intend speaking plainly of it when we return to Lisbon. For the rest, I believe we ought to see if the land here might support a soldier. We were sore hungry at times in Spain!’