Rumours Of War h-6

by Allan Mallinson

  ‘Will you take my horse, please, Corporal Armstrong? I have to go into the village.’

  Armstrong looked puzzled. ‘Village, sir?’

  ‘Elvina, below.’

  ‘Bloody hell, sir; you’ll not leave me horse-holding while you go there! One o’ these jack’eads can hold the horses.’ He sprinted to where his own was tethered, and took his carbine from the bucket.

  Hervey did not protest.

  They ran pell mell, the slope still raked by fire from the voltigeurs on the high ground. Manningham’s brigade was beginning to gain a mastery of them, but bullets flew close, and they all but dived into the nearest house, breathless. They crawled to a window; outside, the narrow street was little more than a mortuary for the highlanders of the Forty-second and the Fiftieth’s men. And the noise was even worse: cannon thundering, the eerie buzz of the shot as it passed overhead, or the terrible crash as it shattered tiles and masonry; and the sharper crack of muskets in the confines of the street. Where would he begin to look for Lord William Bentinck here?

  ‘We shall just have to go from house to house I think, Corporal Armstrong.’

  ‘Reckon so, sir.’

  Hervey pulled the pistol from his belt and drew his sabre.

  Once outside he had a mind to run, but so many were the dead and wounded that it was futile. Round the first corner a welter of musket balls came at them from both sides of the street. All were wide, by some miracle at such close range, but Hervey’s ears rang so bad he thought at first he must be hit.

  Armstrong bundled him through the nearest door. Inside was a devastation of broken brick and wounded highlanders. ‘Christ, sir, what’s the matter with yon bastards! Haven’t they enough Frenchmen to blaze at without having a go at us?’ He peered out again at knee height so as not to make a predictable target.

  ‘It’s that blue, Corporal,’ came a voice from the floor, followed by a choking cough. ‘Like the French.’

  Armstrong looked at Hervey. ‘Better had our coats off then, sir.’

  Hervey balked: eleven guineas’ worth of best cloth and gold wire cast in a Spanish hovel. But there was no other way.

  ‘You look after these, mind,’ said Armstrong to the nearest man. ‘We’ll be back for them soon enough.’

  Once in the street again, Hervey realized his best course was to get to the other end of the village as fast as he could run. There he ought to find the brigadier, but if not he would surely do so as he worked his way back; it seemed to no purpose Lord William Bentinck’s venturing this far forward without being able to see what his battalions were about. He set off at the double, leaning forward as shot continued to fly over, here and there leaping a body, French or redcoat, with Corporal Armstrong a stride behind him. He saw men crouching, taking no part in the fight, and some of them with chevrons, as if they were awaiting the order to dismiss. He saw others confused-looking, some flinching violently with every new eruption from the main battery. These were the men he had watched only an hour ago coolly practising their arms drill in the face of the cannonade and the French advance. This was what happened when a battalion had to break ranks, he supposed; when it ceased being able to drill under strict subordination of the company officers, and the serjeants and corporals, and when shoulder no longer touched shoulder.

  So far, indeed, he had not seen an officer, save two lying dead. He supposed they must all be forward, and with them General Bentinck.

  As they reached the church in the middle of the village, Hervey thought to get the vantage of its stumpy tower, but as they ran inside he saw he could not for it was packed with French prisoners. A serjeant of the Fiftieth and a dozen men stood uneasy guard.

  ‘Have you seen General Bentinck, Serjeant?’

  ‘Haven’t seen nothing, sir,’ said the man, eyeing the strange sight of kersey and cross-belts. ‘Major Napier’s been gone half an hour and more. Haven’t had no orders or nothing since then, sir.’

  Hervey sensed an appeal; that, or a plea in mitigation of their inactivity. It was not his concern for the present, though. His was to find the brigadier.

  But it made no sense for a dozen men to be watching over disarmed voltigeurs when there was fighting to be done at the far end of the village. ‘I think you had better take the prisoners back to the line, Serjeant. Then return here at once. Perhaps you shan’t need all of your men?’

  The serjeant looked doubtful.

  ‘Might you yourself come forward with me?’

  A roundshot struck the roof and showered them in plaster.

  ‘My orders were to guard the prisoners, sir. From Major Stanhope himself, sir.’

  Hervey felt a hand grip his arm from behind. ‘Very well.’

  He turned, nodded to Armstrong, and they doubled out across the street to a pile of rubble that had once been a stable.

  ‘There was no fight in him, sir. Reckon he’d ’ave been happy enough to spend all day standing there.’

  Hervey knew it too. Perhaps he should have ordered him forward peremptorily. ‘If we—’

  Brisk musketry opened ahead of them again.

  ‘Come on!’

  They dashed up the street and round the corner, stumbling over fallen masonry, vaulting a dead mule which blocked the way where the side of a house had collapsed, and on to the furthest edge of the village. They climbed a barricade and ran out into a lane between blasted orange trees until they found what remained of the Fiftieth, firing from the cover of the orchard walls.

  ‘Is General Bentinck here?’ shouted Hervey to an ensign, relieved at last to see an officer.

  The man – boy, in truth, for he looked even younger than Hervey – was furiously ramming home a musket charge. ‘There!’

  Hervey looked through the black smoke where the ensign pointed. The brigadier was standing by a tree as if watching target practice.

  He doubled to him, stood upright as he sheathed his sword, and saluted. ‘Sir, General Hope’s compliments, and would you be so good as to join him at once!’

  Major-General Lord William Henry Cavendish Bentinck looked at him with a sort of bemused condescension. ‘Who, sir, are you? And why, pray, would General Hope have me see him? Is there not work enough to do on this flank?’

  A roundshot struck the tree. Bark and the remaining orange blossom rained on them, but neither man moved a muscle.

  ‘Colonel Long’s galloper, General; Cornet Hervey. Sir, I imagined you knew that Sir John Moore is wounded and carried from the field. General Hope succeeds to the command since General Baird is also taken from the field.’

  Bentinck looked alarmed. ‘Moore is hit? It will not do!’

  There was shouting from the orchard wall. Both turned. A field officer was cursing and lashing out with the flat of his sword at the crouching infantrymen. ‘Damn your eyes, Fiftieth! Get up! Get up!’

  He cursed in vain.

  Then he jumped atop the wall. ‘Fiftieth, damn you for ever if you do not follow!’

  At once he fell back dead. A captain fell likewise by his side. Hervey saw the ensign he had just spoken to clutch his throat and fall forward. No one else would quit the cover of the wall.

  ‘Dear God, that was Stanhope I do believe,’ said the general. He turned to his brigade-major. ‘The Fiftieth had better withdraw, I think.’

  He strode off upright and careless, not the slightest degree hurried.

  The major of brigade began looking about for an officer to give the order to, but he could see none. ‘The devil, Mr Hervey! There must be one at least. Where is Napier?’

  Hervey was at the same loss to know, and looked it.

  ‘Hervey, I cannot leave the general like this. Be so good as to find an officer and give him the order to withdraw. I should be most particularly obliged, Hervey.’

  Hervey ran the length of the wall – close on fifty yards – but found no one above the rank of serjeant-major, and he lying with a bullet in his shoulder.

  ‘Where is Colonel Napier?’

  ‘Major Napi
er, sir. He’s up the lane.’ The serjeant-major began coughing.

  Armstrong bellowed at two private men to get a blanket to carry him to the rear.

  ‘Major Stanhope was trying to get the men forward to ’im, sir, but they wouldn’t have it.’

  Hervey cursed them beneath his breath. ‘Are there no officers, Serjeant-major?’

  ‘There was just Captain James, sir, and Mr ’Eal. The rest would be with the major.’

  Hervey wondered what to do. He could not simply pass the brigadier’s order to a wounded serjeant-major. He saw no other course but to go forward himself.

  ‘Steady on, sir,’ said Armstrong, gripping his arm again. ‘If we try getting over yon wall there’s no saying we won’t end up like the others.’

  Hervey’s mouth fell open. ‘We have to!’

  ‘Ay, sir, I know that. But not leaping up like Jack-in-a-box!’

  ‘Then how?’

  ‘Serjeant!’ bellowed Armstrong. ‘Will you get your men to put double charges in them muskets to make smoke for us?’

  ‘I will, sir!’ Without rank on Armstrong’s sleeve, it was easy for the man to suppose he was at least his equal.

  It took a minute to make ready, but there were then two dozen muskets by the wall.

  Armstrong looked pleased.

  ‘Fire!’

  A thick black cloud engulfed the wall. Hervey and Armstrong scrambled over at once, Hervey losing his cross-belt in the process – another fifteen guineas to the Spanish dirt. They fairly sprinted up the lane: sixty yards and more, bodies the length of it, redcoats and voltigeurs alike, testimony to a vicious running fight. Bullets cracked the whole way.

  ‘Halloo!’

  ‘Thank God,’ gasped Hervey, hurling himself behind the wall. ‘Major Napier, sir?’

  ‘There,’ the man indicated, his tattered scarlet barely recognizable as a captain’s of His Majesty’s 50th Foot, the Queen’s Own.

  Major Charles Napier was sitting propped against the wall, his ankle bound with his sash. Crimson though it was, it could not disguise the copious loss of blood.

  ‘Sir, General Bentinck instructs that you are to retire.’

  Napier looked crestfallen. ‘See about you, sir. This is all that remains of the battalion.’

  Hervey saw a dozen men, with perhaps four officers. ‘No, sir. There are more. I saw them in the village, though there are many wounded.’

  In a way it was the last thing that Napier wanted to hear, especially from a man in a different uniform.

  ‘Who—’

  A salvo from the main battery silenced him for an instant, the fall of shot straddling their position and beyond to the village, throwing up great spouts of stone and soil at the first graze, bowling on with lethal energy out of sight.

  Hervey had not observed it so perfectly before. Each iron ball seemed propelled by some hidden force, for after striking the ground its velocity was at once diminished, yet it carried away anything in its path.

  ‘They come on again, Major!’ called the captain, peering over the wall.

  Hervey looked too. A hundred yards to their front the 31e Léger advanced in extended order. He drew his pistol.

  ‘Retire at once, Denny,’ Napier groaned, holding up his hand as if to say he was done. ‘It’s a hopeless thing.’

  Instead they made to lift him.

  ‘No, no, no! It will not do!’ Napier protested. ‘You will never get me away. You must save yourselves.’

  Hervey reckoned they had but an evens chance of making the village even without a man to carry, but the decision could not be his. He glanced up.

  Captain Denny shook his head. ‘This is the deuced worse thing! Napier, we cannot leave you.’

  ‘Denny, you must go at once. Go and take command!’

  ‘I’ll stay with him, sor,’ piped an Irish private.

  Denny nodded, and held out his hand to his major. ‘Good luck to you then, sir.’ Then he turned to the private man: ‘Good luck to you, sir. You’re a noble fellow.’

  Hervey glanced back as they began the dash. He saw the muzzles raised, and the smoke, and he heard the shots.

  A midden of a ditch was their saving. They scrambled along it thankfully, without pride, coatless, hatless, filthy and stinking. They ran back through the village, stopping only to retrieve their coats, but without success, then out and up the hill to where Sir John Moore had fallen. At the top he saw Fox lying dead, her entrails spread about as if the butcher had begun his work. He found Colonel Long, gasped his apologies for their appearance, and made his report.

  The colonel looked astounded. ‘I had never supposed the business so hazardous. I shall commend you to your commanding officer in the highest of terms.’

  Hervey bowed. ‘Thank you, sir. May I find a horse so as to be ready to gallop?’

  Colonel Graham shook his head. ‘You have done enough today, sir. You may rejoin your regiment.’

  *

  There were loose horses enough about the field, but none would come within catch. Corporal Armstrong’s was nowhere to be seen. They ran the mile and a half back across country, as best they could, to where Edmonds had posted the regiment. There was no sign of them at the bridge, however. Hervey decided they must carry on towards Corunna; they had at least found coats and helmets (mercifully not the Sixth’s). A provost officer eyed them suspiciously, so that Hervey felt obliged to explain they were sent to the rear under orders. But there were so many stragglers and walking wounded that he wondered at the man’s efforts.

  It was, at least, a sign of some regularity. The remaining mile was otherwise the picture of military despair, the opposite in every extreme to that which any soldier, however green, knew to be good order and military discipline. Hervey felt a revulsion in his stomach as much as in his head. For as long as he could remember he had wanted to be a soldier. He had revered the men in red coats who marched about the downs where he lived, or who bivouacked in the fields near his school. He wanted only to share their world, mounted if he could, for that was how best he imagined himself in uniform, but if not, then on foot in a red coat like the others. But today he would be ashamed even to speak the name of soldier.

  A quarter of a mile from where the lighters were taking off the army, in fields running down to the sea, they found the regiment’s execution of Sir John Moore’s order. The carcasses of three hundred horses lay in neat lines, their legs tied. What grass lay exposed was now red, the blood still wet. Bonfires burned at the ends of the lines, and half a dozen dragoons threw on saddles and bridles, and anything else that would burn.

  Hervey could not speak. They had been promised – as near as may be – that there would be transport enough to take off the troopers as well as the officers’ chargers. Had the officers’ horses received a bullet too? He had a mind to search for Stella and Belle, Robert, Belisarda and the mule. But what was the point? ‘Come on, sir,’ said Armstrong, despondent. ‘We’ll be wanted.’ A comforting thought, to be wanted; even in a troop with no horses. Hervey made himself turn away, and he prayed he would forget it, a picture of such regular slaughter that he felt sick at the thought of what it must have been before the last pistol crack. He should have been there, he told himself; he should have been there. But he was profoundly glad he had not been.

  ‘Last boat from Groyne!’

  The cutter bobbed in the swell twenty yards off.

  Hervey smiled. The tar’s black humour: it never did to think things were too bad.

  ‘Tickets to be had aboard!’

  ‘Why do they call it Groyne, Corporal Armstrong?’ he asked, watching the file of redcoats chest-deep, muskets over the shoulder, waiting to be hauled into the boat.

  ‘Blessed if I know, sir. But yonder buggers look as if they’d swim for it if it were the last ’un.’

  Hervey supposed they might. ‘We had better find out which ship the regiment is taken to. We can’t get into any old boat.’

  ‘Won’t be easy, sir. Do you see any sign of the provost?�
��

  Hervey looked about. All he saw was straggling lines, and precious few officers.

  There was a sudden deal of shouting from the cutter, the orderly file giving way to clamour.

  ‘You’d think they’d learned by now, sir, wouldn’t you? If a man won’t stand in his place until he’s told otherwise . . . No wonder they’ve lost so many.’

  Hervey shook his head, uncomprehending. The same men stood square in the face of Soult’s assault not a league away; what made these men a rabble? ‘I see no officers or serjeants, Corporal Armstrong.’

  Armstrong screwed up his face.

  And then, astonished, he pointed to the boat. ‘Look, sir, there’s a corporal at least. The one as pushed by them others!’

  Hervey saw. ‘Not even the NCOs will do their duty.’

  ‘No, sir – it’s Ellis!’

  ‘Ellis?’

  ‘Ay, sir, Ellis. I’d know that ginger hair anywhere! The bastard’s put on a red coat to shirk away!’

  ‘What do we do?’

  Armstrong shook his head. ‘Nothing, sir. Nothing we can do, save tell the serjeant-major or the provost when we see them.’

  Hervey boiled. He might get clean away when they reached England.

  Two sailors grabbed at Ellis’s shoulders to haul him aboard. Couldn’t they hail the boat to have them put him in irons? Not above the breaking waves. Couldn’t they wade after him?

  As the hands heaved Ellis to the gunwales, he suddenly slipped back. They lost their grip and he disappeared beneath the swell.

  ‘He gets a ducking at least,’ said Armstrong.

  Hervey could not feel sorry either.

  But Ellis did not break surface. No one close did anything but shout.

  ‘Come on, Corporal!’ snapped Hervey, sprinting into the breakers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  REDCOATS

  Lisbon, 17 December 1826

  Kat picked up the sheet of writing paper and read over her words. They were not especially well chosen, but for some days she had pondered the import of what she meant to say, and her mind was made up. At least, it was made up in what she would do, if not necessarily in what she felt.My dearest Matthew,There being no further purpose to my remaining in Lisbon, I am taking passage tomorrow to Madeira, where I shall spend the winter months. Your endeavours on His Majesty’s behalf will, I am sure, be both fruitful and advantageous to you, and if I have been able to play a part in that, however small, then I am happy for it. You have been ever in my thoughts these past days, nay, weeks, and I pray that you will have a safe return.