A Close Run Thing

that could create such chaos?

Edmonds sighed. By his estimation they could afford only five more minutes standing like this before the opportunity to take the ground unchallenged might be gone. If no orders came within that time, he knew he would not be able to contain his frustration and that he would go to Slade to suggest the manoeuvre, knowing full well how unwelcome that would be. And, indeed, after five more minutes of fidgeting and stamping by the troop horses, and increasingly tart commentary by the troopers, Edmonds had had enough. Sighing deeply, and cursing some more under his breath, he remounted and called again for his senior captain.

Lankester trotted up on his big bay thoroughbred and saluted.

‘You are to assume command. You are to prepare to occupy yonder hill with the white church,’ began the major, pointing to a small chapel a mile away. ‘That bridge midway will have no more than a few videttes, likely as not. I shall now alert the brigadier to my intentions. However, on no account save for the immediate security of your command are you or any part of the regiment to quit this ground until I return.’

Edmonds did not have to elaborate on the manoeuvre or its purpose. Indeed, he would have been dismayed to think that Lankester had not anticipated it. The captain simply saluted to acknowledge the orders, and a half- smile indicated that he recognized the tone well enough. Edmonds had reverted to the formal and precise manner which prudence suggested was necessary when in the field with General Slade. It added, too, a distinct charm to the Sixth’s campaign journal, written up assiduously at the end of each day by the adjutant, who scribbled every word faithfully in his pocket-book to that purpose. But principally, and at Edmonds’s insistence, the scribbling was less a matter of historical detail than a record to be used in evidence — not against an officer, but by one if events did not prove propitious: he wanted no subordinate to be in a position of disadvantage. It was needless in this instance, for the notion that Lankester would plead superior orders in mitigation if events went ill would have been entirely repugnant to that officer.

The gallop to the knoll on which Slade and his staff had posted themselves, half a mile distant, steeled Edmonds to the exchange to come, but as he neared the top he saw General Cotton galloping towards them from the opposite direction, waving his hat and hallooing wildly. Hervey was lying on the ground nearby with Slade’s physician hunched over him, but it was the cavalry commander’s dramatic approach that gripped Edmonds’s attention. Cotton began shouting from fifty yards distant. ‘Slade, the French are giving way! Soult’s pulling back into the city: there’s no fight left in ’em!’

Sir Stapleton Cotton, lieutenant-general, sixth baronet of Combermere, and Uxbridge’s successor — there was little doubt that his birth had recommended him to Wellington, but there was such a close physical similarity between the two men that Edmonds could not but ponder on the tendency of commanders to select subordinates in their own image. There were the same dark curls, the long face, the hooked nose, and hardly a year between them, too. What was Wellington now, forty-four? forty-five? Four years younger than Edmonds himself — it was enough to test the resolve of a saint. Admittedly he liked Cotton well enough. The man had done his share of fighting in the Peninsula, and before that, too, and he had been sound enough on the retreat to Corunna — but he was no Uxbridge. Edmonds knew that, in the business of war, he was Cotton’s equal. What, then, had ordered their respective military estates? Just twenty thousand pounds for a baronetcy a couple of centuries earlier when King James had wanted money for his Irish army, he supposed, and one or two judicious marriages thereafter no doubt. Well, so be it: his father had been a professional soldier who had died in the American war while Edmonds was still a child, leaving nothing but the value of his commission with which his widow could buy an annuity. And he himself had chosen to marry a soldier’s daughter without a penny, either. A stoical smile almost overcame him, but another stab in his jaw made him grimace instead. What he was to hear next, however, as General Cotton pulled up sharply, almost cannoning into the brigade commander, would certainly tempt the smile back, albeit a wry one.

‘The commander-in-chief desires his cavalry to stand fast for the time being but wishes you to send, if you please, a troop to occupy the high ground north-west of the city. It is his intention to send guns there directly.’ Cotton was pointing to the same high ground that Edmonds knew Captain Lankester to be contemplating at that very moment.

A look of contentment settled on the major, for at a stroke these orders relieved him of the necessity of risking the altercation with his brigadier.

‘Edmonds!’ Cotton exclaimed when at length he noticed him, and in a manner uncommonly genial. ‘A very good day to you! That was a smart little action on the flank. One of Lord Wellington’s observing-officers was concealed nearby and witnessed the whole affair. It seems the French were intent on harassing our flank but were discouraged into thinking we held there stronger than we did! Who was commanding the picket?’

Every nerve and sinew in him tensed at this promising development: ‘Cornet Hervey, General.’

‘Well, Cornet Hervey did us deuced fine service. That battery would have wrought a pretty destruction had it come into action. I shall meet him in due course, I trust?’

The fortunes of war could still take Edmonds by surprise in spite of his long years in the king’s service. An observing-officer, gone to ground on his way back from behind the enemy’s lines no doubt — by heavens, this was opportune, a most capital turn of events! But he knew there was a distance still to run, and he avoided meeting Slade’s eye, hoping to give him time to choose a line of withdrawal. Slade had indeed been studiously ignoring him, failing to acknowledge his presence even; but years of intriguing had told Black Jack when to withdraw, and he now seized the opportunity which Edmonds’s rare composure offered.

‘Cornet Hervey was hurt slightly in the action, Sir Stapleton; my own physician is attending to him over there now’ — indicating the tree under which the Edinburgh medical man, in his incongruous black Melton coat, was fussing with bandages and salving oil. Did Slade know of the battery action after all, wondered Edmonds, or was he just quick to sense a tight corner? Likely as not he would never know.

Cotton trotted over to Hervey who struggled to his feet despite the physician’s remonstrations.

‘Mr Hervey, I am glad we meet. You did well today. How is that leg?’

‘Thank you, sir; it is very well enough. The surgeon here says it will not keep me out of the saddle.’

I said that it may not,’ corrected the Edinburgh man, with barely concealed indignation at being called a surgeon.

‘Then, indeed, it will not,’ insisted Hervey.

‘Good man, good man!’ said Cotton approvingly. ‘But I doubt you will need to be in the saddle for much longer. The French are done for — and I mean not for today only: our agents are reporting that the end cannot be far off.’

After a few more words of solicitude and encouragement, and some further intercourse with Slade out of earshot of the others, the commander of Wellington’s cavalry spurred his horse back in the direction whence he had come, leaving Slade to give the orders which Edmonds had anticipated a full half-hour before.

‘Shall I take Cornet Hervey back with me, then, General?’ he ventured.

‘Yes, yes, he is obviously fit for duty,’ replied Slade dismissively, without reference to the arrest.

Private Johnson, Hervey’s groom, whose own lowly coup d’?il was every bit a match nevertheless for this delicate moment, had already brought up the black gelding. An uncomfortable, if localized, silence followed as Hervey limped across to where Lieutenant Regan stood, like a small dark cloud, in mute brooding. Without a word he stooped to pick up his sword, which lay, as in some allegory of dishonour, at Regan’s feet. The ADC said not a word, either: none was necessary, for his look said everything, none of it pleasant.

As they left the knoll Edmonds was careful to do so at a trot, though all his instincts, and not least the horses’, were to gallop like fury. ‘I am sorry, sir, that—’ tried Hervey when they had put some ground between themselves and the brigade commander.

‘God preserve us, boy!’ snapped Edmonds, leaving Hervey to wonder from what precisely. Little purpose would have been served by his asking, however; for Edmonds had scant idea, either, only a sense of the need for divine providence. It had been the narrowest of escapes, and he did not doubt that the last of it was yet to be heard.

Hervey was by no means entirely comfortable back in the saddle for, expertly though his leg had been bandaged, it was not the place to be resting it. But this was nothing to how he was to feel when they reached the regiment. Corporal Collins’s dispatch had evidently been relayed through the ranks for there was loud cheering as they approached, and though he might well bask in that approval — for he had certainly had none from Edmonds — so loud and triumphant was the clamour that it must surely have carried across to Slade’s knoll. He sensed as well