as Edmonds that it would only fuel the general’s resentment and make worse the eventual retribution. But the cornet’s horizon was the next hill and the next minute, and the discomfort would soon pass. Edmonds could not afford to set his sights so close, however: too much in his service told of the hundred and one ways Slade’s vindictiveness might be visited on them. Their best hope lay in this war’s coming to the rapid end which Sir Stapleton Cotton had predicted, though there was little enough sign of that. Nor was there any sign of the activity which he presumed might be consequent on that assessment. If the French were on the point of collapse, then it was the function of the cavalry to hurry them along. Now was surely the time to throw caution to the wind and launch them all at Soult’s lines of communication, was it not? What in heaven’s name was there to lose? he wondered.
‘Mr Barrow!’ he roared.
The adjutant closed up from where he had posted himself, three horse-lengths behind, next to the guidon and Edmonds’s trumpeter. The Sixth still carried the colonel’s guidon in the field — many regiments had abandoned the practice — though the squadron guidons had been left in England. When any movement was to be executed, the adjutant took up his position with the other serrefile officers to the rear, but he otherwise liked to keep close to Edmonds so that he could heed his orders at first hand.
‘I wish you to have the following prepared for my signature at the first opportunity. Do you have your pocket-book?’
‘Sir!’
‘Very well. To Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Fitzroy Somerset, Military Secretary, Headquarters, etc., etc. Sir, I have the honour— No, wait — begin again. It is my humble duty to submit with regret my resignation, to be effective at your Lordship’s pleasure.’ Edmonds paused. Barrow looked up with no more expression of surprise than if he had been taking orders for bivouac. Edmonds cleared his throat and continued. ‘In so doing, I place upon record my— No — begin again. I thereby protest at the want of ardour in the employment of the cavalry and’ — he paused once more — ‘the tergiversation in the conduct of the campaign.’
Barrow raised an eyebrow, not certain that he would be able to find anyone capable of spelling this latter complaint, nor even of explaining its meaning. ‘Is that all, sir?’
‘That is all, thank you, Barrow.’
The adjutant raised both eyebrows and then resumed his place with the guidon, knowing it to be unlikely that the draft would ever be called for (it was the third that Edmonds had dictated that year alone).
For another three hours the Sixth stood fast, Edmonds with every expression of serenity conceivable, and more, certainly, than anyone could have imagined. But as evening drew on he became less composed, and by dusk he was as thoroughly agitated as he had been that morning. The temporary remitting of the toothache in the afternoon past, he was sorely vexed now by the general inertia.
Barrow and the trumpeter looked at each other, startled. Neither of them had quite heard every syllable but it sounded the vilest of curses. And it just might have been provoked by the sudden appearance of the brigade major (though in truth Edmonds had not seen him), who the adjutant now noticed was trotting across the regiment’s front. He sighed as he took out his pocket-book and closed up to Edmonds again, sensing more trouble.
‘Ah, Heroys, with orders for the night perhaps,’ began the major, with more than a trace of irony. ‘Tell me, are they to be as strenuous as those of the day?’ But he gave the BM no time for reply, thoroughly warming to his opportunity: ‘Let me guess. A brigade steeplechase perhaps? Or a foxhunt? Maybe even a levee, or a masque — yes, I have it, a masque! Now, which might it be?
‘Very droll, Edmonds. You are perfectly well aware that thrift in deploying one’s assets is a sound precept in war.’
‘That’s a piss-fire answer!’
‘Edmonds, some days you try my patience, and then again others you quite exhaust it!’ replied the brigade major with a resigned smile: he had long years of acquaintance with Edmonds’s vituperation. ‘I have instructions for a comfortable billet, no less.’
The particulars took Edmonds by surprise: ‘A convent!’ he exclaimed. ‘And where will the nuns be?’
‘You need worry not,’ replied Heroys. ‘They are all in the hospitals with the
‘Lead us not into bloody temptation!’ sighed Edmonds as they began the descent into the city.
* * *
Hervey had lost more blood than he had supposed. After all but fainting in the saddle on the way down, Serjeant Armstrong and Private Johnson half-carried him to one of the nuns’ cells in spite of his protests that first he must see to the horses. ‘Heaven help us,’ sighed Armstrong aloud. ‘These gentlemen-officers and their duty!’ But neither he nor Johnson had the time to argue, and Hervey, for sure, had not the energy. Leaving him with a lantern, they slammed the door closed, and he lay down on the narrow bed without even unfastening his sword-belt. With the comparative comfort of a straw-filled palliasse beneath him, the first in three months, he fell asleep at once.
The chapel and cellars had been locked before the sisters had left for the hospitals; nevertheless Serjeant Armstrong reappeared half an hour later with arms full of bottles. One crashed to the stone floor as he pushed the cell door open, and Hervey woke with a start.
‘Bordoo, sir — the best. Not like that rot-gut in Spain. Shall we drink to the troop?’
They had drunk together before, not frequently but often enough for Armstrong’s invitation to be unremarkable. The circumstances had never been quite so intimate, however; and, while Hervey might in the ordinary course of events have welcomed the opportunity of informality with his covering-serjeant, he was uneasy about allowing any intimacy at this time, for there was the business with the ADC to address. Without doubt many an officer, perhaps even the majority, would have chosen to disregard Armstrong’s momentary loss of control since it had been directed at so reviled a man as Regan. Especially might they have been so inclined if the offender were so warmly and genuinely solicitous of their comfort as was Armstrong now. But Hervey could not. He held the simple, if at times uncomfortable, conviction that no case of indiscipline should go at least unremarked, for not to have held so encouraged, in his judgement, a lack of constancy which made for confusion during alarms. Not that this was to advocate a regime of punishment for each and every transgression. Indeed, Hervey’s zeal was tempered by the enlightened attitude which characterized the Sixth, where not a man had been flogged in a decade, but there were other concerns now than simply that of good order and military discipline. He raised himself unsteadily on an elbow.
‘Serjeant Armstrong, what in the name of heaven did you think you were doing today? Those dragoons from the Staff Corps were within an ace of arresting you!’
‘I’d ’ave tipped ’em both a settler if they’d tried!’
‘Well, that
‘I’d at least have my pride.’
Hervey sighed. ‘Serjeant Armstrong, I don’t seem to be making my meaning clear, do I? Has Serjeant Strange said anything?’
‘Oh ay, Strange has had at me right enough. But he didn’t have to say a thing. I’ve known ’Arry Strange for nigh on ten years.’
‘Geordie Armstrong, just listen to me for a minute. That you are a fighter is beyond doubt — one of the best. The whole regiment knows it — and most of the army, too, I shouldn’t wonder. But that temper!’
‘The pot calls the kettle black-arse!’
Hervey sighed again. ‘Serjeant Armstrong, if I encouraged you by my own—’But he was not allowed to finish.
‘With respect, Mr Hervey sir,’ which was no warranty that any would be manifest, ‘you just look out for General Slade, and I’ll look to me own devices: I’m too small a fish for them staff to concern themselves over.’ And he grinned.
