Rumours Of War

‘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 Leger 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