A Close Run Thing

Prussiens?’

As soon as Hervey had convinced him that they were not, the old man relaxed visibly. The surgeon was summoned, and Hervey asked how he had sustained his head-wound, for blood matted his hair. ‘Les Prussiens, monsieur,’ he began: they had attacked him, taken everything that could be taken, destroyed the rest and then tried to burn the house down.

‘Them is nowt but bloody fiends!’ protested one of the troopers when Hervey translated.

He and Armstrong went into the chateau while the surgeon attended the old man. ‘Christ, Mr ’Ervey,’ gasped the serjeant, ‘there’s not a piece of glass not broken!’ The shards were almost ankle-deep, the remains of fine chandeliers and mirrors shot to pieces. Furniture — evidently the less portable pieces — was now merely gilded matchwood. Velvet and brocaded curtains hung in tatters, flame-blackened, and the carpets were ingrained with excrement. In every room it was the same: from the top of the house to the kitchens, nothing remained undamaged, not a window or a door even. Except the door from the kitchen to what Hervey thought must be the cellar, which was firmly fastened though it looked as if it, too, had been off its hinges. ‘Looks like the Prussians weren’t partial to wine then, sir,’ said Armstrong, shaking his head in disbelief.

‘That hardly seems likely after what we have seen, do you not think?’

‘Why’s it locked then?’

‘Well, I wager it was not locked, when they left.’

‘You reckon the old man’s hidden something in there, then?’

‘Not something, Serjeant Armstrong, someone. Or more than one. Where is his family? Perhaps he sent them to Paris for safety, but how would he know there was any danger? No, I think the Prussians took him by surprise.’

Only with the greatest reluctance did the old man give up the keys, and he remained close by as they unlocked the heavy oak door. A light was burning below — more than enough to illuminate the occupants.

‘Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed Armstrong. Hervey shouted for the surgeon.

The terror in the girls’ eyes was enough to relate what must have gone before, and their soiled white shifts testified to the violence of their ordeal. Hervey checked his instincts: he wanted somehow to reassure them, but he knew it was better to leave them to their father and the surgeon.

He and Armstrong picked their way once more through the debris of the great hall, this time without a word, but then Hervey grabbed him by the arm. ‘See there!’ he called, peering up at one of the corner bosses on the ceiling. All were peppered with bullet holes, but the decoration on one was still recognizable.

‘See what?’

‘See the device on that corner boss, and see here this,’ he replied, taking the de Chantonnay ring from a pocket.

‘It looks the same. Does that mean anything?’ asked Armstrong indifferently.

‘Well, a fleur-de-lis within a laurel wreath: it is the de Chantonnay seal, and I should say therefore that we were in a residence of the de Chantonnays.’

Armstrong shrugged. ‘That didn’t save them two lassies, did it?’

The vicomte de Chantonnay-Fougard fell to his knees, even amid the broken glass. ‘Monsieur, c’est le travail du grand Dieu.’ Gaining then his composure, he explained how he — the entire de Chantonnay family indeed — knew that the ring had been passed into the hands of an English officer after Bonaparte’s defeat.

It was a little enough undertaking, replied Hervey.

But the family was indebted to him, protested the vicomte. And now he — a widower and cousin of the comte de Chantonnay — must impose once more on that Englishman and ask protection of him for his two daughters, for their safe conveyance to their aunt in Paris, ‘au nom du roy et de Dieu, monsieur!’

Hervey thought a while. It was not possible for himself to escort them, he explained: there was not even a carriage in the mews. But he would leave a cornet and quaternion at the chateau, and once they reached Paris he would see that a carriage was sent for them.

‘Vraiment les Anglais sont gentilhommes. Je vous remercie, monsieur. Je n’oublierai jamais cette gentillesse.’

But Hervey hoped he would forget soon enough what had occasioned the need of his gratitude, and resolved to make a beginning at once. ‘Mr Lawrence!’ he called into the courtyard, and up the steps came running the junior cornet, his fresh face and fair locks betraying barely seventeen years — fewer, even, than the younger of the daughters. ‘Mr Lawrence, you will choose three of the steadiest troopers — married men, if you can — and Corporal Sandbache, and you will make these people as comfortable as you can. Do you have any French?’

‘A little, Hervey … sir, I mean.’

‘Then, speak softly to the vicomte, here, and clean up a room so that his daughters at least may try to regain some modesty. Place each man upon his honour and that of the regiment. They are to be as your own sisters, Lawrence — do you understand?’

‘Perfectly, sir. I am sorry you doubt me,’ he added, more puzzled than offended.

Hervey sighed. ‘I am sorry, William. It is just that an outrage such as this …’

Armstrong, however, did not scruple: ‘Mr Lawrence sir, just tell whichever bastards you pick — and that goes for Preacher Sandbache, too — that they’ll have me to answer to if one of them so much as looks at them lassies!’

Paris, 20 July

Hervey had remained in command a full three weeks. The regiment had arrived in Clichy at the beginning of the second week in July, and he had at once put them to the routine of a garrison, where comforts were bought only at the price of tedious proximity to headquarters. He was not, in most respects, greatly exercised, but one concern in particular was beyond his capability to deal with: the speculation in commissions to which the casualty lists had given rise. Indeed, he was convinced that the regiment might soon have officers on paper only, so brisk was the trade purported to be. His relief, therefore, when Lord George Irvine resumed command was palpable. And he welcomed even Adjutant Barrow’s return from his sickbed in Brussels (‘I were getting nicely used to it,’ Barrow lamented. ‘Silk sheets and fine ladies with china teacups. Treated as quite the gentleman, I were’). Lord George would know how best to spike the trade, and all Hervey now hoped was that his conduct during his brief tenure of command might be deemed worthy for the stop on promotion to be removed. Of the army’s prize-money his share as a lieutenant amounted to about ?35, of which half, by custom, would go to regimental alms, leaving just enough to replace his losses of uniform and camp-stores. He still had not the means to purchase a captaincy.

But would his command be deemed worthy? Who might know that he had led the squadrons in the final hour, that he had brought them to Paris? Vivian and Vandeleur would have seen nothing out of the ordinary; Lord Uxbridge was already invalided home, and replaced once more by Sir Stapleton Cotton. The fortunes of war seemed perverse in the extreme.

The summons to Cotton’s headquarters (or, rather, to Lord Combermere’s, for so he had been ennobled after Spain) came therefore as a harbinger of hope. Yet what might Combermere have to say to him that Lord George Irvine might not? All that Lord George knew was that Combermere apparently wished to question him on some aspect or other of the battle.

‘Mr Hervey, how our paths do cross!’ began the general, holding out his hand. The room, in the Place Vendome, had a more spartan look than Hervey had imagined on entering the building. ‘You have had quite a time these past few weeks, I understand.’

‘I think all would say that they have been momentous weeks, sir,’ he replied guardedly, for there was not enough in Combermere’s proposition from which to infer that he judged his time to have been singular.

‘Just so, Mr Hervey; just so. And I may tell you how keenly I feel the want of those weeks: it was by no choice of mine, however, that I remained in England. But that is no matter,’ he continued, handing him several sheets of paper. ‘Here, my boy, I wish you to read this and tell me if in general terms it is accurate. Sit down, if you please.’

Hervey took the papers and began to read. The first paragraph made his heart pound. By the end it was racing, and he struggled hard to maintain an even tone in his reply. ‘It is completely accurate, sir — in its facts, that is. The opinions expressed are, of course, Lord Uxbridge’s.’

‘They may be Lord Uxbridge’s, my dear boy, but I warrant they would be shared by any who knew the facts,’