An Act Of Courage h-7

by Allan Mallinson

  Salvation it had indeed been, but their respite had not been long. Lord George Irvine had wanted his new regiment to return to the Spanish fray as soon as may be, and he had allowed no obstacle to stand in his way. Those in the regiment who had wished too loud for ease were transferred elsewhere – but kindly, for the most part, and quietly. A few, but only a few, of the officers had gone; and none of the cornets (Laming had told Hervey he would call out any who sent in their papers); the adjutant had transferred to the militia, the regimental serjeant-major left the colours altogether, and a couple of quartermasters did likewise. The consequent promotions and transfers had been welcome: new brooms were rarely liked, but they invariably swept clean. He recalled it well, the exhilaration of not quite knowing what would come next, yet confident it would be better, the pride in being ready before any other regiment to go back to the Peninsula, and having a commanding officer with the influence at the Horse Guards to arrange it all. The Sixth were a veteran corps, that second time in Lisbon, and they intended that all in the city would know it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  FIRST FLUSH

  Belem, Lisbon, April 1809

  Hervey tugged at the sheepskin to check it was secure. If he were to play his part in impressing the population of this capital of England’s oldest ally, as Lord George Irvine intended, he wanted to be sure of his seat. It was good to be reunited with Jessye again; he felt it keenly. She had gained her pratique at last after the prolonged quarantine: farcy, that ulcerating virus, which could spread through a stables in a day, had struck in one of the Sixth’s layerages just before they had sailed for Portugal the first time. It had seemed to him nothing short of disastrous, but in truth the outbreak had served Jessye well, for he knew that if she had gone to Portugal she would by now be just whitening bones on a Corunna cliff – and he, Hervey, would have had to put the ball in her brains. The thought was not to be borne.

  Jessye was by no means of a common stamp, though she had but a fraction of the blood which the blades favoured. Laming’s Fin was a full hand higher, sleek and leggy, a beauty in a shabraque. Jessye’s dam was from the Welsh mountains, a pony. Jessye’s legs were shorter, with a good deal more bone. She looked perfectly made for a bat-horse, or a covert hack (as his fellow cornets taunted), a horse fit to ride to the meet so long as there was a decent hunter to change to for the chase itself. But the ponies of the Welsh mountains had an ancient and fiery lineage, back to the part-barbs of Andalusia; Jessye had both a turn of speed and endurance. She was honest, always; she was a good doer; she did not fret when turned out in foul weather; she had bottom. Hervey would not exchange her for a dozen Fins.

  Cornet Laming affected to raise an eyebrow. ‘With pains or perils, for his courser called; Well-mouthed, well-managed, whom himself did dress; With daily care, and mounted with success; His aid in arms, his ornament in peace.’

  Hervey frowned. ‘Laming, you are a very poor judge of horseflesh, if a considerable scholar. I would have you consider multum in parvo! Where is your wisdom from, anyway? I recall it, faintly.’

  Cornet Laming continued in the studiously airy manner of the older hand (if only of a month). ‘Virgil. Or rather, Dryden.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Hervey, matter of fact, as he tightened Jessye’s girth-strap. ‘Not a very faithful translation, though. Or so said my tutor.’

  ‘But apt, and well sounding nevertheless.’

  ‘Indeed. But in the matter of horses, Laming, I can’t but think of the country we saw to Corunna, and I don’t suppose we shall have much better this time. I’ll wager the first Mameluke I take that your Fin will be cast before Jessye is.’

  ‘I am perfectly happy to accept. A thro-bred will outrun a cocktail when it comes to long points.’

  Hervey smiled. ‘Then I will remind you again, Laming: handsome is as handsome does.’

  The regiment stood in better stables than any in Portugal, being billeted in the royal mews at Belem. The ceilings were high, the stalls wide, the grilles and columns were painted white, with generous gilding. Hervey imagined that it gave Laming, and his fellow cornets, too ornamental a view of the requirements of a charger, and he shook his head in despair, if with some irony. Heaven knew they had had a hard enough lesson not three months earlier at Corunna.

  Two of Hervey’s fellow cornets now came into A’s lines – from one of the new troops, H. They stood silent for the moment, and, Hervey fancied, with something of a superior air. He braced himself: if one of them so much as made remark about his mare, other than honest praise, he would chastise him roundly.

  ‘Wheell now,’ ventured one of them, a Galway squireen whose manners and pugnacity had endeared him to no one from the first day he reported for duty a month before. ‘We’re off to the city to see what the ladies there offer. Are ye inclined to come with us? We’ll be back in time for fothering.’

  Laming answered for the cornets of A Troop, and coolly. ‘In the Sixth we say “evening stables”, Daly. And we have not time to be calling upon ladies in Lisbon; there’s drill to be about. We are not come back here for amusement.’

  ‘The divil with that, Laming! I’ll not give up my recreation for a damned Frenchman.’

  ‘Nor me,’ said the second H cornet, in an accent not unlike a Leadenhall street-vendor. ‘I’ll have my sport while there’s chance. That’s what we al’as say in Piccadilly!’

  Hervey groaned, though inaudibly. He was about to second his fellow cornet’s opinion when Daly seemed suddenly to tire of the exchange.

  ‘Come then, Quilley m’lad. Let’s leave these professional officers to their own enjoyment. They’d be dull company for the senhoritas in any case.’

  Hervey was a little inclined to make some riposte, but Laming merely gave them a look of such hearty disapproval that he thought it must rupture their communication permanently.

  The two H cornets left without a word.

  ‘I cannot conceive of any exigency when men of that character might be thought worthy to join a regiment such as this,’ said Laming, having watched the two quit the lines in as brash a manner as they had spoken.

  ‘Nor any regiment indeed.’

  Laming sighed. ‘True. I would not trust them with commissary work, even. Daly might have made a passing officer had he been introduced to any decent society ten years ago, but Quilley is an abomination. You know what was his business before he came to us? Billiard marker!’

  Hervey looked incredulous. ‘What?’

  ‘Billiard marker – in White’s Club. His father is steward there, or some such. Seems he managed to be of assistance to a member of parliament over a matter of debts at the tables, and got his boy a commission in return.’

  ‘How have you learned this?’

  ‘Last night, at mess with the Coldstream. It’s infamous. We shall be the very laughing-stock of the army. I can’t think why Lord George tolerates it.’

  ‘I should be less inclined to call it infamy if Quilley showed the slightest address about his duties here.’

  ‘You may as well look skywards for a pig, Hervey.’

  Hervey finished lengthening Jessye’s stirrups as his groom brought a pot and paintbrush. ‘Martyn said last night that their troop-leader will place them in arrest before the month is out.’

  Laming shook his head. ‘The devil of a thing it must be for Warde to come in from the Tenth and find his two cornets as ill as those. Deuced embarrassment it is. I wonder what Lord Sussex had of it?’

  ‘A letter of nomination, I suppose; that’s all. It was the same for me: I saw no one. I can’t imagine the colonel has course to see every man before he accepts him.’

  Indeed, so rapid had been the Sixth’s reconstitution, driven as it was by Lord George Irvine’s determination to have the regiment ready to return at once to Portugal, it was a wonder the regimental agents had been able to handle the commissions at all.

  ‘Perhaps so,’ said Laming, frowning the while. ‘Well, Warde will have his work cut out with those two in his troop,
and I fear he’ll have little help from Daddy Joynson as squadron leader.’

  Hervey raised an eyebrow, signifying agreement, if regretfully, then nodded to his groom.

  Private Sykes began painting Jessye’s hooves with an oily paste.

  Laming looked inquisitive. ‘What does he do there, Hervey?’

  ‘Marshmallow ointment. It will keep her feet from cracking.’

  ‘I did not know that. Singular!’ (Cornet Laming, though he might banter in judging a horse, was ever ready to give Hervey his due for an evident greater knowledge of equine husbandry.) ‘But why has John Knight not prescribed it?’

  Hervey smiled. ‘He has. He instructed the quartermasters yesterday.’

  ‘Mm. You are as courant with your intelligence as I am, and perhaps more worthily.’ Laming continued to frown. ‘But no matter. Do I suppose you have heard anything of our movements?’

  ‘We march east these Saturday seven days.’

  Laming cocked an ear. ‘Really? How on earth have you heard—’

  ‘A fellow with whom I was at school, on Sir Arthur Wellesley’s staff.’

  ‘Really?’

  Hervey smiled, admitting the tease.

  ‘Mm. Well, I have heard that Wellesley will not set foot outside Lisbon until Beresford has whipped the Portuguese into shape. And how long do you suppose that will take?’

  Lord George Irvine rose as his major and senior captain entered. ‘Gentlemen, take a dish of wine and sit ye down. We have a deal to speak of, and you shall not leave until I am content, and certain that you are too.’

  The commanding officer’s quarters occupied the better part of a wing of the palace at Belem, although half of it was the domain of the regimental staff, the orderly room. Lord George’s servant, who had followed him to the Sixth from the Royals, served them glasses of Madeira and then took silent leave.

  ‘Well, gentlemen, I will make no bones about it: I have been pressing the regiment’s case with Stapleton Cotton, and I believe we shall have it. We may have green horses, and a deal too many green dragoons, but I believe the surest remedy is to plunge them into the thick of things without delay. I see no merit in drilling here when the rest of the army is on the march. It would be vexing in the extreme to the Corunna ranks, and doubtless we should drill to the wrong tunes. I’ve a mind that Wellesley doesn’t intend the cavalry to go at it in the old manner. To begin with, he doesn’t have enough to hurl about the battlefield knee-to-knee. This is damnable country, as you know better than do I. Patrols, scouts, videttes – that’s what Wellesley will want, not lines of sabres.’

  Joseph Edmonds and Sir Edward Lankester sipped their Madeira and nodded just perceptibly.

  ‘And that sort of work, given officers with a good eye and a cool head, is best learned at first hand.’

  Edmonds listened with especial care. Nothing so far since Lord George Irvine had assumed command disposed him to think anything other but good of his new colonel. It was not easy, however – the exercise of command by a man a dozen years his junior, and who, although he was well shot over, had seen nothing like his service. Edmonds was on his guard, therefore, half expecting (though not hoping – indeed not hoping) some betrayal of weakness of character or judgement. Yet he still saw none to speak of, even after three months’ intense study. The lieutenant-colonel’s passionate determination to get the Sixth back to the Peninsula might have appeared in other men as mere pursuit of ambition, for personal glory; but in Lord George Irvine it appeared wholly as the impulse of an instinctive soldier and a patriotic Tory. Edmonds could have no objection on either count.

  Nor, indeed, would Sir Edward Lankester. He had succeeded to his father’s baronetcy not two years before, his temperament as a soldier was effortless accomplishment, and his inclinations were as Tory as those of his major and commanding officer. Without question he agreed with Lord George’s opinion that lessons were better learned hard and soon.

  ‘Very well, gentlemen. Let me now tell you what is in the mind of our commander-in-chief.’

  It was said without the slightest condescension or self-delight, Edmonds was certain. Nor was it self-delusion: they all knew very well by now that Lord George Irvine was a coming man, and that he enjoyed the confidence, in the widest sense, of Sir Arthur Wellesley. This of itself changed the character of the regiment somewhat, for to have a lieutenant-colonel of such evident quality and influence both increased the respect in which they were held by other regiments and multiplied the prestige of every man, for the meanest dragoon was no longer a mere legionary in this army of fifty thousand, but a man with connection (only once removed) to the commander-in-chief himself. What that profited a man was another matter, but without doubt it felt better to be in a regiment commanded by the likes of Lord George Irvine than in one whose lieutenant-colonel was of no account outside.

  Edmonds knew exactly the value of such a connection. They would be made privy to Sir Arthur Wellesley’s intentions, not merely to his instructions. That was a pearl of rare price to cavalry, for it was in the nature of war that events could only be dictated (if at all) before contact was made with the enemy. It was then that the cavalry – the commander-in-chief ’s eyes and ears – was of incomparable worth. Since, too, the commander-in-chief could not communicate rapidly with his cavalry when they were dispersed, much depended on the judgement of the individual cavalryman – on his coup d’oeil, as the theorists had it.

  Without knowing what was in the mind of a general, forming a right judgement was a hit-and-miss affair – if, Edmonds reflected ruefully, there was anything in the mind of the general (he was certain there was nothing in ‘Black Jack’ Slade’s). Thank God that man was left behind in England – never to see service again, he prayed (not active service at any rate)! Edmonds could curse long at the very thought of Slade and the system that permitted such a knave to advance. But so it was, and there was little point in fretting about it. If Wellesley could keep the Slades out of the Peninsula then he for one would be inclined to think favourably of the commander-in-chief. And if Wellesley were to bring Paget here then he would entirely revise his opinion of him! Stapleton Cotton was no Slade – he had seen enough of Cotton to be certain of that – but he was no Paget either, and with so few cavalry at his disposal, Wellesley required a commander of genius. Edmonds was by no means certain that these general officers were universally apt.

  ‘Edmonds?’

  ‘Colonel?’

  Lord George Irvine smiled. ‘You were in another place, I think.’

  Edmonds glanced at his glass; it was all but full still. ‘I’m sorry, Colonel. I truly was in another place.’

  ‘Well, I may tell you that Wellesley intends to eject the French from the north of the country. He is determined to have them out of Oporto by May’s end.’

  Sir Edward scarcely batted an eyelid, but Edmonds was at once on the edge of his seat. ‘I’m astonished. I heard that he would first drive east at Lapisse or Victor; their armies threaten Lisbon more directly than does Soult’s.’

  Lord George Irvine inclined his head. ‘And that would have been your counsel would it, Joseph?’

  ‘By no means. If we move quickly, Lapisse and Victor can be of no assistance to Soult on the Douro, and they wouldn’t be able to take Lisbon without a deal of preparation.’ Edmonds glanced again at the map on the wall. ‘And if Soult’s driven from Oporto, then he’ll have no option but to continue north, and away from any prospect of their assisting him. The Spanish ought then to be able to tie him down in Galicia. We would then have two armies to contend with instead of three, for if we were to drive at Lapisse or Victor directly, Soult would hare down from the Douro to be at our flanks.’

  ‘Then we not only understand the commander-in-chief ’s intention, gentlemen, we approve it!’ Lord George Irvine knew as well as the next colonel that executing orders that were heartily disapproved of went hard with a thinking officer. ‘Cotton shall take a brigade north to make contact with the Portuguese already watching t
he Douro – ourselves, the Fourteenth and the Sixteenth, and the Third Germans – while Wellesley brings up the army. He’ll keep a division here for the defence of Lisbon in case there’s any move by Lapisse or Victor, and Beresford shall take one of his Portuguese brigades of infantry and another of cavalry to stand astride Soult’s route of withdrawal east, which should drive him north into Galicia. Exactly as you prescribe, Edmonds.’

  Edmonds nodded, the merest confirmation – no sign of self-satisfaction.

  Sir Edward Lankester, his face impassive, enjoying the comfort of a good chair and passable Madeira (though by no means fretful for the want of comfort when circumstances demanded), recrossed his legs. ‘Who shall do – how shall we call it? – the éclairage, Colonel?’

  Lord George Irvine smiled. ‘You shall, Sir Edward. You will scout for Cotton’s brigade – a day ahead, if may be.’

  Sir Edward’s face remained impassive. ‘Very well. Then the sooner we begin, the better.’

  ‘Just so, Sir Edward, just so. Shall you be ready two days hence?’

  ‘I trust I shall, Colonel. If I am given the requisite mules.’

  Edmonds addressed the proviso. ‘A shipload arrived this morning from Algiers. I believe we may have a hundred of them.’

  ‘You shall have fifty in that case, Sir Edward. Enough to carry your hard feed, but it shall have to be green fodder unless I get more.’

  ‘That should not be too great a problem at this time of year, Colonel, although cutting it will take up a part of the day better spent.’