A Close Run Thing

touch-holes, then the dash back to their picket post, expecting French lanciers to appear at any second to spear them like dogs — it had been the stuff of a cornet’s dream.

In truth it had been an affair, and a prize, beyond his dreams, a prize which by rights ought never to have been in the offing: for a whole troop of horse artillery to come into action on a flank without cavalry supports was abominable to any professional. Half a dozen eight-pounders disabled, three score and more horses captured or driven towards the British lines, and as many gunners now lying with their lifeblood draining into their native soil — barely a dozen Frenchmen had escaped to seek the protection of their errant lancers. Somewhere, Hervey knew, there was a lancier officer who ought to be cashiered — or shot — for that dereliction of duty. But he at least knew that he had done his, and he had been scarcely able to bear the wait before he would make his report to Edmonds, afterwards to bask in the praise with which the major was as a rule so sparing.

To have collided with the mounted interloper would have denied him that satisfaction for sure. At such a speed a broken neck, and death, was the likely outcome. Or perhaps — and what many would have counted worse — it might have meant invaliding to the Chelsea hospital and a lifetime of milk pobs spooned haphazardly by some old soldier. Either fate would have been a terrible irony after escaping the French, and he could only wonder at how often he had had cause to be grateful for his little mare’s cat-like agility: more than nine times, certainly, she had saved him from disaster.

Shortening the rein and completing his circle, he looked about angrily for the man who had nearly ridden him down. Anger then turned to astonishment as he recognized him to be one of Slade’s aides-de-camp, and he wondered what in heaven’s name he was doing on this flank. Then two staff dragoons galloped on to the ridge as Hervey’s own men caught him up. But his own anger was nothing to that which he was about to face.

‘What the devil do you mean, sir, by abandoning your post?’ bellowed the ADC as he bore down from the opposite direction, having himself circled right, though nothing like as tightly as Hervey and his mare had managed.

Cornet Hervey was aghast. Blood from the gash in his thigh, where the French bombardier had thrust the spontoon, was soaking the entire leg of his canvas overalls. From this alone, even to the most purblind, it must have been clear that something had been happening. But Slade’s staff could be as obtuse as their general.

‘What in God’s name are you talking about, Regan? We did no such thing!’ he protested, sliding painfully from the saddle to loosen the girth.

‘Then tell me how lancers have been able to loot the general’s own baggage!’

By now Hervey’s covering-serjeant had joined him, still in a frenzy from the slaughter they had just dealt the hapless battery. He seized the ADC’s reins: ‘Look, mister, what d’ye think—?’ But the staff dragoons reached for their sabres.

‘As you were, Armstrong! Go and settle the patrol!’ snapped Hervey.

The ADC was now beyond mere anger, and his voice rose in shrill rage. ‘Mr Hervey, you have disobeyed orders and that insubordinate serjeant is proof of your unfitness for this command!’

Hervey’s groom had brought up a second charger, and he now remounted, though not with the easy vault he would ordinarily have taken. Instead he was helped up awkwardly, grimacing as more pain shot the length of his leg. It hardly made for a conciliatory response.

‘Regan, you are a confounded ass! We’ve just spiked six guns, for pity’s sake; we have seen no lancers!’

Lieutenant Regan’s voice lowered menacingly. ‘Then, how, pray, did they get to General Slade’s baggage?’

‘How in hell’s name do I know? I am responsible for this flank, not for the whole battlefield!’

The contempt was unequivocal, and Hervey might have anticipated its consequences had he not been so entirely exasperated by the lieutenant’s seemingly wilful ignorance of the affair with the enemy battery.

‘You are a damned impudent officer as well as a disobedient one; you will hand me your sword this instant!’

Hervey’s jaw fell. ‘In the middle of a battle? Have you taken leave of your senses?’

The contrast between the red jackets of the ADC and staff dragoons and the blue of Hervey’s regiment seemed to be intensifying the confrontation. Serjeant Armstrong spat and let out a string of oaths, but so thick was his Tyneside accent that Lieutenant Regan was not sure what he had heard. The staff dragoons recognized the tone well enough, though, and drew their sabres. Hervey shot an angry look at Armstrong, but it was another voice that was to quell what had by now become little short of a brawl, a voice infinitely more measured than Hervey was capable of at that moment.

‘Go to your post, Serjeant Armstrong,’ it commanded, in mellow tones of Suffolk. And then, with admirably contrived understatement: ‘Mr Hervey, sir, is there some difficulty?’

Hervey’s composure began returning. The voice had often steadied him — steadied many of them — and more so now for its being unexpected.

‘Serjeant Strange, I am in arrest. General Slade appears to think we abandoned our post. Have you come with orders?’

‘No, sir,’ replied the troop Serjeant, in a manner so matter-of-fact they could have been at a review, ‘only with a report of guns moving in the direction of your picket.’

‘Well, they do not move any longer,’ said Hervey with a sharp edge. ‘Look, Serjeant Strange, you had better take command. I will tell you briefly of the circumstances and then you must send someone to report to Major Edmonds.’

Serjeant Strange listened impassively as Hervey gave a hasty account of the disabling of the battery.

‘I trust Mr Regan here will have that wound attended to properly and with all dispatch, sir?’ was all that Strange said in reply, turning to the ADC.

Of course he would, said the lieutenant testily. ‘I do not need to be reminded of my business, thank you, Serjeant!’

Serjeant Strange saluted, reined about and trotted over to the patrol, leaving Hervey feeling not a little awkward at his own intemperance compared with this non-commissioned officer’s bearing.

Matthew Hervey was not invariably quick-tempered. Twenty-three years old, six years with the cavalry, most of it on active service, he still retained a surprising belief in humanity. But the proverbial wrath of the patient man could from time to time overwhelm his cautious instincts, a risky proclivity for an officer who valued his prospects: anyone who thought that survival in this war depended merely on fighting the enemy was naive in the extreme. Jealousy, snobbery, intrigue and patronage were the preoccupations of men of ambition in the Marquess of Wellington’s army; and Hervey and others like him, decent officers with little but their ability to recommend them, were increasingly resentful of Wellington’s indifference to it all. Indeed, many believed he actively connived at it. But they remained wholly powerless to effect any change whatever; and, besides, they each had a stake in the system, however small, so long as their commissions were obtained by purchase and held their value.

Lieutenant Regan’s dislike of Hervey, inasmuch as it could be rationally analysed, stemmed from just these preoccupations. Intensely jealous of the distinction which his campaign service might bring — though few would suppose that he envied the service itself — he regarded Hervey’s lack of means with open distaste. Six years’ service and still a cornet. He, Regan, had purchased his lieutenancy even before his regiment had seen him at a field day! And if he had known Hervey to be distantly related to the earls of Bristol he would doubtless have dismissed the connection with a sneer at the Whig propensities of that family. Whatever ecclesiastical influence the Herveys may have had (and, in truth, they had none, for Bishop Hervey of Deny had been dead these past ten years), they were wholly without influence in the military. It had not been long before someone in Regan’s family had managed to get him appointed to a general’s staff. And what a general — John Slade, ‘Black Jack’ as he was known throughout the Peninsular army, as incompetent an officer as was ever placed in command of a brigade of cavalry, and a coward, too, by common consent. But, if Hervey had only qualified contempt for the system which could put an officer like Regan where he was, his contempt for the man himself was absolute. As he unbuckled his sword-belt and handed him his sabre he saw the utter triumph on the ADC’s face, and he knew that there was not the slightest thing he could do about it.

Serjeant Strange chose to send the news to Edmonds with Hervey’s covering-corporal, for he could not trust