A Close Run Thing

to rally Second Troop. Canning brought First out — with Strange’s help; the “boots” did well!’

Hervey would have heard the entire muster roll, but Bonaparte’s intrigue was the more pressing, and instead he rattled off his intelligence.

Lankester listened intently and, even with an incomplete knowledge of Wellington’s design for battle, comprehended its significance at once: ‘Very well; go immediately to Lord Uxbridge — if he is still with us, that is, for he was at the head of the heavies and in the thick of things when we reached the Greys.’

Uxbridge had returned to the place whence he had led the heavies in the fateful charge against d’Erlon’s columns. Behind the crest of the ridge, astride the chaussee, he held, as it were, the tollgate to the Brussels road. The French infantry had paid a terrible price attempting to force that gate, and would do so once more, but there was now a change in the pace of the battle — if not quite a lull, then a perceptible slackening. Yet despite his earlier exertions the Earl of Uxbridge looked just as he did at a field day, his pelisse off the shoulder in true hussar fashion, his dolman immaculate, his shako set square. Hervey was discomfited by his own mud-spattered appearance, thankful at least that he had not lost his own shako. Uxbridge seemed not to care in the slightest. ‘Well done, Mr Hervey,’ he replied on hearing his report. ‘I am only gratified that your French was sufficient — and that you had some notion of the implication of such a ruse. But we must waste no time trying to find the duke. Marshal Blucher’s liaison officer — Baron Muffling (you will remember him, I think, from our review last month) — has this hour set out to discover what is happening with our gallant allies. Ride after him; take the Wavre road. Inform him that— No, go with him in person to the Prussians! I myself shall tell the duke.’

Hervey thrilled at the commission. He was no mere galloper but an emissary — and from the duke himself to the dauntless Prince Blucher. He gathered his reins as calmly as he could, saluted and then sped back to the Sixth. Gone was the mare’s sluggishness, and instead she bucked for the best part of a hundred yards while he tried painfully to apply his leg to pick her up. How in God’s name did the French school their horses? he wondered.

‘Next time, Mr ’Ervey, sir, I’m gooin’ with yer,’ called Johnson as Hervey reached the regiment; ‘It’s not right gooin’ off in a charge an’ leavin’ me. Where’s Nero?’

‘Johnson, it’s as well that you did stay here or you might now be lying down there with Nero, and a lance in your back,’ he replied curtly. ‘Look, take this French trollop; I will have Jessye from you now. Where is Serjeant Armstrong?’

‘Here, sir!’ came the confident reply from behind.

Hervey turned and saw his broad smile — and his sword-arm in a sling. ‘I had not appreciated that you were bloodied, Serjeant Armstrong,’ he exclaimed. ‘Is Serjeant Strange fit?’

‘Ay, sir. But what do you want of him?’ asked Armstrong suspiciously.

‘I have a dispatch for the Prussians and need of an escort.’

‘This arm will not fail you,’ Armstrong declared, pulling it from the sling.

‘No, I cannot risk it. Fetch Serjeant Strange, if you will,’ replied Hervey sharply, bringing a welter of protests from his covering-serjeant, which were only silenced in the bluntest of terms. Johnson attempted likewise to protest, and he, too, was silenced only with difficulty. When Strange came up, Hervey explained their assignment and then instructed Armstrong to tell Lankester of it, receiving a surly salute in reply as he and Strange took off down the ridge-road after the baron, Jessye bucking as violently as had the French mare.

Halfa mile beyond the flank picket of Vivian’s brigade they saw at last General Muffling and his escort, the same distance again and about to enter the Foret d’Ohain. Hervey quickened the pace still more, though Strange’s horse was beginning to tire, and it seemed that they might close the distance before the Prussians were too deep into the forest. But he had gambled on speed alone to keep them safe, and the gamble now looked like failing; for suddenly, as if from nowhere, there came a check to their progress — perhaps even an end. Three or four hundred yards away, and trotting towards them, red tunics and tall chapkas vivid against the background of green, was a lancer patrol. Their red-and-white lance-pennants fluttered a full fifteen feet from the ground, and Hervey might have admired them had they not been standing between him and his mission. He counted a dozen (unpromising odds, to say the least) and he knew he had but two options. He might run back to the security of the allied line: it scarcely was an option, though, for Strange’s horse would soon be outpaced. He tried instead to judge the angle between them and the French, and the point where they might gain the cover of the forest, but it was so acute that a gallop in that direction offered little chance of success, either. Yet he must make a decision.

Strange had already made it: ‘Go on, sir; I’ll stop them!’

He had never before heard such urgency in Strange’s voice. Stop them: Strange said ‘stop’, not delay. Both knew what that meant, for stopping could only be at one price.

‘Go on, sir!’

Hervey undipped the carbine from his crossbelt and thrust it and the cartridge-pouch at Strange. ‘Here, you know the mechanism well enough.’

That he did, for the carbine had been the talk of the Sixth in Ireland, and he had fired it. He took them without a word but reached inside his tunic and pulled out what looked like a leather tobacco-pouch, though Hervey knew he did not smoke. ‘Here, sir, take this for later, and go on, now!’ he urged, spurring his tired gelding towards the patrol. ‘And good luck, Mr Hervey,’ he called over his shoulder.

‘Good luck to you, too, Serjeant Strange!’ said Hervey beneath his breath as he, too, spurred into a gallop. There was no show of sentiment: the formality was exaggerated even. Hervey knew he would have done the same himself had their circumstances been reversed, and that Strange was only doing his duty as countless other Serjeants were doing at that moment. But it made it no less gallant. He reckoned Strange would be able to get off four or five shots before the French closed with him, but this was no guarantee that the lanciers would be dissuaded from pursuit, for the patrol (if it knew what it were about) ought to divide — one group to deal with Strange, the other to intercept him. But he guessed they would not, for he had never thought much of their patrolling. Knee-to-knee in the charge, yes, but not this sort of work. And pride would surely get the better of them when the first lancer was hit.

He gambled well. Even against the continuous thunder of gunfire a mile away he heard Strange’s first shot, then after a few seconds another, then another and another — then nothing. With fifty yards to go to the trees he looked back. The French had made straight for Strange, and there was an evenly spaced line of four dead or dying lancers. Each shot, which Strange fired mounted, had told, and now the best marksman in the regiment was parrying a lance with his sabre. Hervey looked away for an instant to fix his opening into the forest. When he turned again Strange was no longer visible, overwhelmed by the French. ‘Stop them’, indeed: Strange had known precisely the price he would pay.

The forest swaddled him in leafy silence as he slowed to a jog-trot, then a walk, for Jessye was blowing hard. First Edmonds, now Strange — he wondered who might live to recount this battle. His head hurt sorely. The trees were a blur, and he was all but overcome by the urge to lie down, dropping the reins and letting Jessye take him along the rutted track, oblivious now to his surroundings.

A pistol exploded. He felt the ball kiss his cheek. Bark splinters flew as it struck the tree behind, magpies and jays scattering in noisy flight, making Jessye shy.

‘Votre epee, monsieur! Rendez votre epee!’ shouted the chasseur a cheval.

Hervey touched the graze, curious that there was no pain — nor then any blood on his fingers. His gut tightened, his mind raced, the plume of the chasseur’s busby changed from a blur to sharp detail, and he saw that neither flight nor resistance was prudent in the face of two cavalry pistols not ten yards ahead.

‘Je dis encore, monsieur: rendez votre epee.’ But the voice somehow lacked assurance (though the escorts — five, six, or even more — looked solid enough).

‘Eh bien, lieutenant,’ replied Hervey, measured, thoughtful; ‘qu’est ce que vous faites ici?’

The lieutenant looked surprised. It was for him to ask that question, he stammered. What was an Englishman doing, speaking this way?

Hervey felt himself trembling uncontrollably, yet he did not know if he were. His voice almost broke as he