Beautiful Star and Other Stories

by Andrew Swanston

  He glanced over to the elm tree. There was no-one under it. Wellington and his aides must have ridden off to take stock of the battle from some other vantage point. It crossed his mind – fleetingly – that he might do the same, but he decided to stay where he was. If he rode along the ridge, he would only get in the way.

  The French guns had fallen silent for fear of their shots landing short and killing their own men, but the allied artillery were still pounding away, sending their eight- and ten-pound balls into the thick of the French infantry and beyond them to where their cavalry waited.

  Then the allied guns also went quiet, the smoke cleared and, on both sides of the road, the cavalry charged over the crest of the ridge and straight at the French infantry. The button seller watched in awe as they galloped headlong into the enemy ranks, sabres slicing and thrusting into defenceless flesh.

  Not a Frenchman, he thought, would have been left alive had their cavalry not galloped up to join the fray. Then it became a battle of sabre against lance and lance against pistol. Infantrymen used their muskets as clubs, cavalrymen crushed wounded bodies under the hooves of their horses. Away to the right, the farmhouse was burning, straight ahead another farm was being attacked by French cavalry. It was quite impossible to detect any pattern or to judge which side, if any, had the advantage. The button seller, scarcely able to comprehend the slaughter, simply sat, motionless, and watched.

  Three or four times, the French riders turned back towards their own artillery lines, only to regroup and charge again up the slope. For perhaps two hours this went on, the number of dead and wounded mounting with each charge. By mid-afternoon, the ridge and the valley were strewn with the bodies of men and horses. When the French cavalry came too close, the British infantry formed their squares and waited for them to lose patience and go away. From near the elm tree, the button seller saw it all.

  Each time he saw the duke, he was accompanied by fewer aides. And when he next appeared from the direction of the burning farmhouse, he was alone. He halted his chestnut under the tree and peered down into the melee below, then looked about as if surprised that he had not a single aide with him. Catching sight of the button seller, he beckoned him closer. ‘You, sir,’ he shouted above the roar of the battle, ‘who are you?’

  The button seller took a calling card from his pocket and handed it to the duke, who peered at it. ‘Blinks and Blinks, eh? Well, I fear there’s no order for you today, but do you see that man down there?’ The button seller followed the direction of the duke’s arm to where, about two hundred yards away, a troop of cavalry stood in line, ready to receive an enemy charge. Their commander, easily identifiable by his uniform and bearing, stood at their front. ‘That is Marshal Kempt, Commander of the British 8th Brigade. Would you be so good as to ride down there and tell him to refuse his right?’ The button seller looked again. A troop of French cavalry, hidden from the British by a fold in the land, were approaching Marshal Kempt’s line from his right. If the brigade did not turn to face them, they would be taken by surprise and cut to pieces.

  If the button seller was surprised he did not show it. ‘Certainly, your Grace,’ he replied without a moment’s pause, and set off on the little cob down the slope into the valley across which the battle was raging.

  The cob was nimble enough and managed to pick its way through and around bodies and debris while musket fire whistled about over their heads. They were no more than ten yards from the line of cavalry when the cob fell, blood pouring from its flank. The button seller was thrown off, landed on grass and picked himself up. Other than a bruise on his shoulder he fancied himself unhurt. Unarmed and unable to put the cob out of its misery, he half-ran, half-stumbled to the cavalry line. The cavalrymen were too intent on their business to pay him heed and he reached Marshal Kempt without being impeded.

  He explained his business and delivered the duke’s message. The marshal peered at him and asked him to repeat what he had said. He did so. The marshal glanced back up to the ridge to where Wellington sat, tipped his hat, thanked the messenger, and immediately passed on an order to an aide.

  His task completed, the button seller ran back to the dying cob, retrieved his leather roll of samples and flask of brandy and set off to climb back up the slope. He had gone only a few paces when he felt a tug at his trousers. Startled, he looked down. A soldier lying face up had reached out and grabbed him as he passed. The fallen man had lost an eye and his tunic was so ripped and splattered with blood and mud that the button seller could not identify it. He dripped a few drops of brandy on to the wretch’s lips and went on.

  His legs were heavy and his mind numb from the unceasing noise. Several times he slipped and fell but each time he managed to get back to his feet, the thought of a French sabre at his neck driving him on.

  Holding tight to the samples, he bent forwards against the incline and kept his head low. Behind him were the enemy, whose cavalry might at any moment launch another attack, and in front British sharpshooters who could not know that the man in the black coat scrambling up towards them was there on the orders of the Duke of Wellington. For all they knew, he was a up to some French trickery and should be shot.

  With a grunt of relief he reached the top unscathed and with his samples intact, intending to report to the duke that he had carried out his task successfully. But the vantage point under the elm tree was deserted. No duke and no aides. And, now, no cob. Just what he stood up in, his flask and his leather roll. Still, other than a bruised shoulder, he was intact. He tucked the flask and the sample roll under his shirt and made his way around behind the lines, not knowing where he was going or with what purpose, but knowing that he was no longer merely a spectator.

  The Drummer Boy

  The boy would never forget the day that the news reached Paris. As it usually was in the evenings, his father’s inn near the Porte St Denis was crowded with noisy drinkers, many of them old comrades in the emperor’s army who like nothing better than to share a bottle or two of wine and talk about victories they had shared in his service.

  As long as he was not needed to wipe tables or collect glasses and carry them out to be washed by his mother, the boy liked to sit quietly in a corner and listen to the old soldiers telling their stories. He heard them speak of great victories in Bavaria and Spain and Austria and in a place called Borodino. At times they argued – perhaps about who had done what – but they never spoke of defeats. One day he plucked up the courage to ask his father if the emperor’s army had ever been defeated. ‘Never!’ his father had replied, thumping his fist on a table. ‘The emperor’s army has never been defeated. We suffered setbacks, as all armies do, but never defeat. And do not let any man tell you otherwise.’ The boy did not ask why then the emperor lived not in Paris but on a small island in the Mediterranean Sea. There would be a good reason, and he did not want to upset his father by asking what it was.

  He was wiping tables when the inn door was thrown open and a man he knew by sight but not by name burst in. ‘Napoleon has escaped!’ he bellowed. ‘The emperor has returned to us!’

  Immediately, every man in the inn was on his feet, waving a glass or a bottle in the air and shouting ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ at the top of his voice. Bottles rattled on the tables, a glass or two was knocked off and broken. No-one bothered to sweep up the glass.

  When the noise eventually died down, the bringer of the news was given a glass of wine and told to report everything he knew. The inn went quiet while the messenger collected himself, squaring his shoulders, clearing his throat and evidently enjoying the attention of his audience. He drained his glass and held it out to be refilled. Then he began.

  ‘Gallopers arrived this afternoon from Orléans. The emperor landed near the town of Cannes on the first day of this month, with a thousand loyal men. Already they have been joined by the fifth and seventh infantry regiments. Men are flocking to his service. He will be in Paris within the week!’ At this, the inn erupted. Bearded old men hugged each other, th
e fat butcher from next door grabbed a serving girl and insisted she dance with him, and the apothecary climbed on to a table and tried to sing. His voice was not strong enough to be heard over the din and soon he gave up.

  The news was certainly good for business, or it would have been if his father had collected payment for every bottle drunk. By midnight, however, he was too drunk to care and was sloshing wine into glasses without bothering to ask for money. Every few minutes one or other of the drinkers would raise his glass and shout ‘Vive l’Empereur’ or ‘Vive la France’ and call for more wine.

  In his bedroom above the inn, the boy lay awake listening to the celebrations until dawn. He was not sure what the news meant but he was too excited to sleep.

  Despite the quantity of wine he had drunk, his father was still in high spirits the next morning. Together they set about clearing up the mess and getting the inn ready for another day, while his mother washed glasses and counted the money they had taken. ‘They drank a lot but paid little,’ she complained, gathering up coins into a canvas bag. ‘At this rate we will soon be penniless.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ replied the innkeeper. ‘The emperor is returned to us. Mark my words, glory and prosperity lie ahead.’

  Almost every day for the next two weeks more news arrived. Napoleon’s army was growing apace, King Louis and the royal family had left Paris and fled to England, Marshal Né, the one known as ‘the bravest of the brave’, had joined the emperor with six thousand veterans of the invincible Imperial Guard. Flag-waving supporters thronged the streets of every town, officials read out declarations of loyalty in the squares and markets. Very soon France would be at war again.

  On the evening of the day that Napoleon finally arrived at the city gates, the boy heard his parents arguing. ‘You cannot join the army,’ shrieked his mother, in a voice he had never heard before. ‘How will we cope without you? I cannot look after the inn and our son alone.’

  ‘The boy will come with me. I will leave the inn in your care.’

  ‘Come with you? For the love of God, he is only twelve years old. How will he defend himself against the English? With his sling-shot? Every son of France knows that the scum of England are cruel and merciless. They will carve him up and roast him over their fires.’

  The innkeeper laughed. ‘That I doubt. And he will carry no weapon. We march to the sound of the drums. He will be a boy drummer. There will be many others like him.’

  ‘It is monstrous,’ wailed his mother, ‘Twelve-year-old boys should be at their lessons, not on a battlefield. What if he is killed? How will I bear the loss?’

  ‘By knowing that your son died gloriously fighting for France, that is how. Now let there be no more talk of this. Tomorrow I will take him to a recruiting station and we will join the emperor’s army.’

  The boy heard all of this and was happy that his father had prevailed in the argument. He did not want to stay at home and wipe tables. He wanted to go with his father and join the emperor’s army. He too wanted victories and glory.

  The queue outside St Agnes’s Church, which was being used as a recruiting station, stretched down the street and around the corner. The boy and his father joined the end of it and for three hours shuffled slowly forward until at last they reached the church doors.

  The innkeeper had taken his old uniform from the chest in which it had lain for nearly five years, brushed it down and proudly put it on. The jacket bulged a little over his stomach but otherwise it still fitted well enough. It was the uniform of the infantry regiment in which he had chased the British through the mountains of northern Spain to Corunna and routed the Spanish at Medellin. The recruiting sergeant recognised the uniform and shook the innkeeper by the hand. ‘An old soldier, I see,’ he said. ‘And a brave one.’ He looked at the boy. ‘Is this your son?’

  ‘It is, sir. He wishes to serve as a drummer.’

  The sergeant beamed. ‘Then he shall do so.’ He made a note of their names and told them to be at the training depot set up outside the Porte de la Chapelle at seven o’clock the next morning. ‘Bonne chance et vive la France.’

  ‘Vive l’Empereur.’ The boy and his father had replied as one.

  That evening the family did not open the inn but dined together on a chicken roasted with carrots and garlic, fresh bread baked by the boy’s mother, and an apple tart made with last year’s crop. They spoke little and later the boy heard his mother sobbing before he went to sleep.

  The depot outside the Porte de la Chapelle consisted of rows and rows of tents, lines of wagons loaded with weapons and equipment and dozens of harassed officers trying to bring order to the chaos.

  Once again the boy and his father joined a queue and waited to collect their uniform, musket, ammunition and rations. The innkeeper did not expect to be issued with a new uniform, his own being perfectly serviceable, but when they reached the front of the queue, the sergeant looked him up and down and told him that he and his son would be in the Light Regiment of the 1st Brigade of the 6th Division, to be commanded by General Prince Jerome, the emperor’s brother, and that the emperor wished every man in his army to have a new uniform whether or not he had served before.

  Equipped with their uniforms, cross belts, shakos and haversacks, they were sent to the armoury where the innkeeper was issued with a musket, powder, and sixty rounds of ammunition in a wooden cartridge box. The boy was given a drum with a leather strap to go over his shoulder and two drumsticks. They were told to find a tent in which to sleep and to parade at three o’clock that afternoon for training.

  The boy had been too overawed to say anything in the day, but when they found a tent, he put on his new uniform, slipped the drum strap over his shoulder and marched round and round the tent beating out a rhythm until his father told him to stop. ‘There will be time enough for that,’ he said. ‘Now we will eat and rest.’

  Over the next two weeks, the boy found that in the army much time was spent eating and resting. Between practices with the other drummers there was little to do but snooze in the tent he shared with his father or sit by the fire they lit outside it. While he practised beating out different marching rhythms his father practised carrying out orders to form columns and squares, to march in time and to load and fire his new musket. The boy was beginning to wonder if he had joined an army that would be trained to perfection but would never fight, when the order came one morning to strike camp and prepare to march. The camp stirred itself, the tents were dismantled and put on wagons, the men collected their marching rations and checked that their equipment was in order, and soon, to the sound of drums and trumpets, they were on their way.

  Drummers and trumpeters were placed in the centre of each block of marching men, where they would have some protection from enemy fire and their drums and trumpets could be clearly heard from front to rear of the lines. Head high, shoulders back and unable not to grin with pride, the boy stepped out on his way to war. Somewhere in the ranks around him, his father did the same. What finer thing, the innkeeper thought as they set off, than for a soldier of France to march to battle with his son? He had thought that his military days were over yet here they both were in the emperor’s Armée du Nord and destined for victory and glory in his service.

  For two more weeks they marched through villages and towns, by rivers and woods, cheered by the crowds lining the roads, and were joined as each day passed by more troops and horses and artillery, until the army that had set off from Paris had doubled in size. They pitched their tents each evening, ate whatever rations they had and helped themselves to whatever they could find in the farms and villages along the way. The emperor, the boy was told, expected his soldiers to live off the land. His task was usually to find fresh water from a well or a stream and to carry it in buckets back to the camp. Now and again he was sent in search of food from a nearby farm and came back with a chicken or two or some eggs. He was quick and nimble and was shouted at by angry farmers but never caught.

  As they travelled north, rumo
urs reached them of a huge army led by the British gathering in the towns of Belgium and preparing for war. His father told him to ignore everything he heard because rumours were just rumours, they could not know for certain what the strength of their enemies was and in any event they would find out soon enough. With each day, the boy’s legs grew stronger from marching and the weight of his drum lessened as he became used to it.

  When they reached the river Sambre, which marked the border between France and Belgium, they pitched camp. Across the river stood the small town of Charleroi. The boy’s father told him to be ready for a long wait because crossing the river would be an act of war which the emperor would not want to carry out until all his forces were assembled and he could be certain of victory.

  The boy and his new friends among the drummers spent the days fishing in the river and trapping rabbits in the fields. They stole from the farmers and from the kitchens of local cottages. It was what the emperor expected his soldiers to do. In the evenings they sat with the soldiers smoking their pipes around their fires and listened to their stories.

  On a hot summer’s day in the middle of June, his soldiers, many for the first time, saw the emperor in person. Mounted on a fine grey mare, the man who had been appointed a general at the age of twenty-four and had led his army to victory after victory, rode into the camp. Word of his arrival sped through the rows of tents and every man hurried to catch a glimpse of him. The boy’s father hoisted him on to his shoulders so that he could see over the heads of the men in front. The emperor, his bicorne hat worn side-to-side as was his custom, in a blue jacket and white trousers, waved to his men as they raised their hats and cheered. No wonder Napoleon was confident of victory, thought the boy, with such devotion from his army. He waved and cheered as loudly as he could without falling from his vantage point.