A Close Run Thing

Hervey could but hope that it might be thus. So much for his withering rebuke! But there was, at least, no good reason any longer why he should not take wine with his serjeant and, albeit without much sense of celebration, that is what he did — a copious quantity, in measures which Armstrong referred to as medicinal. And the Bordeaux was to have its medicinal effect, for Hervey slept until late the following morning.

The silence first told him it was no ordinary reveille. And then the height of the sun, whose rays streamed into his cell through the window high above his head — he had not lain in bed with the sun so high, nor for that matter with the sun up, for as long as he could remember. Reveille preceded dawn: that was the invariable rule of field discipline, even in quarters. There they might only feed and water the horses, but in the field they stood to, saddled, ready for any alarm which first light might bring. Wellington may have cursed his cavalry, and compared them unfavourably with the hussars of the King’s German Legion, but the Sixth would allow him no cause for complaint over that routine at least.

Hervey lay motionless, still drowsy though conscious of a dull ache in his leg, but he had no great inclination to discover for himself why he was not on parade. Lowly cornet though he might be, he was confident that the regiment would not have moved on without him, and he was sure that no sleep could be so deep as to shut out the sound of a battle. For once he might let events take their course. In any case, all was silence now, and a curious scent of rosewater, mixed with that of the wine spilled the night before, began to have an uncommonly quiescent effect. Soon he was succumbing to a faintly illicit relishing of the missed exertions of the pre-dawn, labours of which few outside the ranks of a horsed regiment could have any conception. An infantryman merely had to turn out of his bivouac and stand to his arms, but both before and after a trooper’s stand to there was a deal of toiling with mount and equipment, dawn and dusk, day in, day out.

But the dull throb in his supine leg was increasing, and he forced himself up in order to restore the circulation. There were choice curses at the stiffness as he hobbled round the cell, his sword-scabbard clanking on the flagstones, and the noise was evidently enough to alert his groom who appeared after ten minutes of this clattering and cursing.

‘Good mornin, Mr ’Ervey sir. I ’eard thee moving and thought tha could be doing with some breakfast.’

Hervey shook his head in mock despair. He was Private Johnson’s third officer in a year, though they had now been together for ten months. The others had complained of excessive cheeriness and an impenetrable Sheffield dialect, but Hervey found his ingenuity as a groom more than made up for these alleged shortcomings. Comprehension, he had told them, was ultimately a matter of determination: could they not recognize a black diamond?

Johnson brought in a canteen of tea, some boiled fowl and a loaf of grey bread. ‘An’ there’s some brandy ’ere an’ all, sir,’ — holding up a silver cup which looked to have been intended originally for a less secular purpose.

‘Private Johnson, it is as ever a pleasure to see you of a morning, but unusual in its being so late,’ he replied with a bemused smile.

‘Tha means why didn’t I wake thee afore?’

‘Just so, Johnson.’

‘Well, Johnny Crapaud’s quit t’town, and Cap’n Lankester said tha were on t’sick list. And when tha was awake t’surgeon said that tha were t’ave thee bandages changed.’

Though Hervey had counted on his not being abandoned, he knew it was the greatest good fortune to have received his wound not a day earlier, if the notion of fortune and a wound were in any way appropriate. Had the regiment moved on after the battle, he would have been left in some makeshift hospital on a pile of filthy straw, struck off strength and already becoming but a memory: the needs of the fit and the necessities of the campaign did not often admit of retrospection. But to remain on strength, local-sick, to be tended by the regimental surgeon who would be answerable to Edmonds, was a different prospect; for, however much Edmonds might curse the surgeon as a cast-off from a parish poorhouse, he would perforce be more diligent than many to be found in a so-called army hospital.

Not that this nunnery was anything like as comfortable as some they had seen in Spain, where they resembled more the houses of grandees than of religious orders. The Convent of St Mary of Magdala had a peculiar austerity, a chill which did not come from the weather, for it was seasonally warm and dry outside. Hervey’s sick- quarters were no cell in the purely figurative sense, for they had every appearance of the clink’s lodgings. The walls were white and in poor repair. A crucifix above his bed was their one adornment. The bed was the only piece of furniture except for a prie-dieu with three books. As Johnson arranged the breakfast in a niche of the thick wall, Hervey picked up each book in turn. The Latin bible, strangely perhaps for a son of the cloth, was the first he had ever opened, and he felt a mild revulsion at seeing the scriptures rendered thus — the Englishman’s revulsion at the martyrdom of Tyndale and others for the vernacular. The second volume was in Spanish, El Via de Perfection, and he puzzled for a time whether this was ‘The Way to’ or ‘The Way of Perfection’, for his Spanish was still rough. But he understood enough to learn that it was the testimony of St Teresa, the mystic from Avila about whom he knew little, and that only because his father had once made a study of the works of St John of the Cross. If he had felt uneasy at the Vulgate, however, the third volume might have thoroughly revolted him, for in the common consciousness of Hervey and his kind the very word Jesuit proclaimed every perfidy imaginable, and this volume was the work of St Ignatius of Loyola, no less.

But the title intrigued rather than repelled him — Exercitia Spiritualia Sancti. The coupling seemed somehow discrepant: he had studied books on exercises for light cavalry, manuals on sword exercises and pistol exercises, signalling exercises even, but spiritual exercises — an altogether arresting notion. He sat down and began to leaf through its pages while at the same time struggling to wrest the stringy meat of the fowl’s leg from its bone.

Meanwhile, Private Johnson had slipped from the cell without his noticing. By the time he reappeared only bones remained of the fowl, and Hervey was wholly engrossed in The Spiritual Exercises. Johnson was grinning broadly but unseen, for Hervey did not immediately lift his head.

‘Mr Evans says this sister will change thee bandages now, sir!’ announced his groom at length.

In his struggle with the complex Latin constructions of St Ignatius’ epilogue, Hervey did not catch this communication from the surgeon. Nor did Johnson wait for any acknowledgement: he was out of the door with the speed of one of the ferrets which travelled in his valise and supplemented the rations with rabbits. He had no intention of being the butt of Hervey’s protests when he tumbled to.

Hervey looked up absently and was all but transfixed by the image of other-worldliness. A white-habited nun, head bowed, holding strips of cloth and a bowl of steaming water, stood framed in the arched doorway like a phantom, albeit of a distinctly celestial kind. As she stepped into the cell, and light from the window fell on her, he saw that her overmantle was more blood-stained than white, though the habit beneath was brown like those of the nuns in Spain. Her face, what little of it was revealed by the wimple, was also smeared with blood and looked excessively drawn, though it was not old. In other circumstances it might have been described as prettyish, but a haunted look made any such worldly adjective inappropriate. It was certainly unlike those of the Spanish sisters, some of whose more sensual features had been decidedly tempting.

Suddenly he recollected himself and sprang up, though pain stabbed his thigh as he did so, adding to his discomposure.

‘I am sorry, Sister, but I was not expecting—’ he began in French. ‘I really think it better if the surgeon attends to this.’

‘Sir, the surgeon has been working throughout the night,’ she replied, in the measured voice of the Languedoc, by contrast with Hervey’s more guttural Alsace, and with evident distaste. ‘There are many soldiers — private soldiers — French and English, yet to be attended.’

Her tone stung him. In his confusion he had conveyed something wholly other than what he had meant. ‘I am sorry; I did not mean to …’ he stuttered; and then, sensing that any explanation would be pointless, he tried to dismiss her: ‘The dressing is perfectly well, Sister. In the circumstances I think you should return to the wounded.’

‘I think we must both do as we are bidden, sir,’ she replied firmly, putting the bowl on the floor and beginning to tear a piece of cloth into bandages with considerable violence.

Hervey could not have been more dismayed. Though the idea of being ministered to by a nun was by no