Rumours Of War

Isabella, sitting with them as she used to, unlike so many of the Portuguese ladies to whom the Sixth’s officers had paid court, looked at him keenly.

Hervey glanced at her, then back to her father. ‘I have been kept occupied, sir, it is true. Indeed, I believe this is the first time I have ever’ – he faltered just a little, searching for the French – ‘retraced my tracks, so to speak.’

The barao frowned momentarily before he, too, apprehended the French. ‘And shall you retrace them to the border, do you think?’

Hervey looked apprehensive, or so it seemed to Isabella. ‘We do not expect you to divulge anything that is secret, Major Hervey,’ she assured him, in English.

The barao understood. ‘No, no,’ he said, apparently dismayed that his enquiry should have been misconstrued. ‘I would have you tell me all, for I want for reassurance in these lamentable times, but I would not have you tell me aught that you should not.’

Hervey felt awkward. Here were friends – allies, even – and he seemed to be hinting at mistrust. Yet he could scarcely be expected to abandon his caution altogether. Any soldier knew that, and no less the barao. The irony was that he could not answer with certainty in any case. ‘In truth, sir, I have no orders yet. Colonel Norris, who is my commanding officer in this mission, speaks with your officials as we sit. But I will say this: I am sure that we must go again to Almeida, and to Sabugal; and to Elvas.’

The barao’s eyes lit up. ‘At Elvas we can surely be of assistance, Major Hervey, for my brother is bishop there.’

‘So your daughter has informed me, sir. I am obliged.’

‘My father means, I believe, Major Hervey, that I might serve as interpretress at my uncle’s palace.’

The barao nodded.

Hervey was delighted; it was a most unexpected solution to a problem he was only just beginning to think about. ‘Truly, I am obliged, sir. I will inform you of my arrangements just as soon as may be; as soon as I have my colonel’s authority, that is.’

The barao too looked content. ‘Ah, how well I remember the regiment leaving for Elvas the first time! Do not you, Isabella?’ His face changed from anxiety to happy thought.

It had not been quite the first time for the Sixth, though, that day they had said goodbye to the Delgados. Nor even, indeed, the second, for they had first marched with Sir Arthur Wellesley to Talavera before the French had driven them back into Portugal and behind the lines of Torres Vedras.

No, the first march had been with Sir John Moore, a full year before they had returned to Lisbon and met the barao. But the sequence of history was not something he need trouble him with now. Hervey himself remembered it all too well. It could be no other way with his first time in the field, and soon his first time shot over: the twenty-first of September 1808, the feast day of St Matthew the Apostle, his patronal day. How different then he had looked – they had all looked.

CHAPTER SEVEN

FIRST BLOOD

21 September 1808

The 6th (Princess Caroline’s Own) Light Dragoons, as then they were known, had every appearance of another regiment altogether. Instead of the simple jacket they had worn since 1812, with its double row of buttons and bib-front worn open on parade to display the regimental facing colour, or closed for practicality on campaign, the braided dolman was the order for all ranks; handsome, but fussy. White breeches and black boots set it off very smartly too, rather than the more serviceable but plainer grey overalls they had taken to later. And the Tarleton helmet-cap topped all with its elegant bearskin mane. The shako, serviceable though it was, looked a poor thing by its side. And half the men carried musketoons still, rather than the improved Paget carbine – ‘a mean little popgun’, Edward Lankester, Hervey’s troop-leader, called it. Even the sabre was different. They carried General Le Marchant’s 1796 pattern, a fine slashing sword, not unlike the Indian tulwar, thirty-three inches long with one and three-quarters of bend; years later there were still those in the regiment who thought it superior to the 1820 pattern. The Sixth did look fine though, peacock-proud. But, Hervey would admit, green to a man were the cornets, and many a dragoon too.

The people cheered them on their way for many a mile after leaving Lisbon. But the country by degrees became a sad spectacle, destitute even, the fields unsown, whole villages ruined and deserted. Now, as they made for the frontier, nobody cheered them. Nobody seemed to be there. It was Cornet Hervey’s first taste of the consequences of war, and it touched him deep, for it was not difficult to imagine himself in the countryside of Wiltshire and the picture of ruin transposed. But it was adventure still, and adventure he had sought. What was there to fear? He had good captains, first Edmonds at the depot, and now Lankester. Come cheer up my lads, ’tis to glory we ride! He believed it with all his heart.

‘I rue the day I made him corporal,’ said Sir Edward Lankester, surveying from the saddle the little, but in many ways complete world that was his troop.

‘Shall I convene a court martial?’ asked his lieutenant.

Lankester sighed. ‘He’ll get himself killed before the ink is dry.’

‘True.’

Lankester took off a glove and pulled his hunter watch from the vest pocket beneath his dolman. ‘But my care is that he’ll have half a dozen others killed with him.’ He sighed again. ‘Five o’clock, nearly. We should be feeding-off by now. And instead we’re going in circles because Corporal Hood can’t remember the road! But I should have known.’

Hervey was straining hard to hear the exchanges above the clinking, creaking, snorting and stamping that was a troop of cavalry on the march. He did not know if they were lost, but he did know they were riding ground they had covered but an hour before. It was all a far cry from the orderliness of a review. Was this what campaigning was like, as Daniel Coates had often joked? He wished Dan Coates were with him now. He would like to know there would be a whisper in his ear – the right thing to do, and when to do it. It would all be well after the first blood, after they were shot over. But marching like this just made it too easy to think.

‘He’s done me good service in the past,’ said Lankester, suppressing his anger with himself at having chosen to send as guide one of the NCOs better known for drilling by numbers. ‘I’ll not break him; not after he’s destroyed himself in front of the troop thus. I’ll find him a billet with the casual division. The mules, at least, will be stupider.’

‘And his replacement?’

Lankester looked thoughtful. ‘I shall have to consult the quartermaster. Armstrong, I think – now that we’re out of barracks.’

Lieutenant Martyn smiled.

Hervey smiled too, but to himself. Armstrong, chosen-man (or lance-corporal, as now that limbo rank was known), to be made corporal! Armstrong was a bruiser, and a most effective disciplinarian because of it. There was no flogging in the Sixth, by long custom, but Lance-Corporal Armstrong and one or two others were authorized, in a manner of speaking, to carry out ‘troop punishment’. Nothing injurious; half a dozen condign punches, perhaps, and by a fist hardened through years of practice. And always carried out on the blind side of the horse lines, mention never made of it by either party. By common consent, troop punishment served the regiment well.

Hervey smiled because he had not thought so rough an NCO would find favour with the punctilious Lankester. And he liked Armstrong. It was difficult not to like a seasoned dragoon who looked you in the eye as he saluted, and did so with a ready smile. There was never any sense of resentment in the man, as he detected (or thought he did) in others. True, Armstrong spoke in the strong voice of Tyneside, but he was never unintelligible, as some of the dragoons from the northern parts. Armstrong was, in fact, a cornet’s godsend.