Rumours Of War

Hervey shivered as he recalled their cold coming at Mayorga all those years ago, the snow driving so hard they could see nothing beyond the half-dozen men in front of them. And Major-General Slade, the brigadier, wearing two cloaks, berating them for their tardiness and appearance.

‘You come to join the hussar brigade, and you come like so many carters’ men. I tell you, gentlemen, I will have no slopping in my brigade!’

On and on he had ranted as the Sixth plodded past. And every man had been bewildered, for the regiment had always taken a proper pride in its appearance. They had perhaps been huddled overmuch in their cloaks and oilskins as they came into the town, but was it not only wise in weather like that? They had been bent in the saddle, against the wind, but they had braced up properly as they rode past the brigadier. So what ailed him?

‘I fancy we’re for a fair few turn-ups, Hervey,’ said Cornet Laming, unhappily.

‘Oh, I expect we’ll manage,’ replied Hervey, though by no means certain of his prediction; after all, Slade’s reputation stood in universal disregard.

The squadron billet had been a part-ruined friary. There were men on the roof fastening down what looked like sail cloth to keep out the weather, and as Hervey began to dismount, one of them lost his footing, slid down the snowy pantiles and fell to the ground. Dragoons rushed to where he lay half buried in a drift. Hervey ran too, certain his back must be broken at least.

But the man was laughing. They helped him to his feet. He was still laughing.

‘My ’at, gentlemen, if you please!’

The accent was heavy. One of the King’s Germans, thought Hervey, and an officer, for all his curious occupation. ‘Are you quite well, sir?’ he asked.

The man, twice Hervey’s age, and as bald as a coot, was vigorously brushing the snow from his head. ‘A roof is no place for me!’

Hervey was nonplussed. ‘I imagine not, sir. Can I be of assistance?’

‘You can ’elp me find my ’at!’

But one of the dragoons had it already, a bicorn without a plume.

‘Obrigado, senhor,’ said the man, bowing to the dragoon as he took it. ‘Do not concern for the feather. It is safe in my baggage!’

It was bitter cold and the snow fell thick, yet here was an officer thoughtful of his plume. Hervey smiled. ‘Sir, you are Portuguese?’

The man bowed again. ‘Colonel Pedro Folque, Real Corpo de Engenheiros, at your service.’

Hervey was taken aback. ‘Colonel, I am Cornet Hervey of His Majesty’s Sixth Light Dragoons, at your service.’

‘I am ’appy to meet you, Cornet ’Ervey. But as you see, it is I who am truly at your service. My men make a roof for your ’eads – see?’

‘I am sure we are very grateful, Colonel. But—’

‘Ah, you wonder why a colonel of engineers is on the roof of a stable? Because if there is nothing for ’im to do at the general’s ’eadquarters then it is better that ’e uses ’is ’ands where there is.’

Sir Edward Lankester came striding, his cheeks pinched with cold, relieving his cornet of the duty of conversation.

Hervey took his leave of both for his duties as officer of the day, wondering just what chance he might have of lying under the colonel’s improvised roof that night.

He soon learned that his chances were next to nothing.

‘A Troop’s to furnish a general’s escort within the hour,’ growled the adjutant from his new orderly room, in a chapel of rest just outside the friary walls.

‘For which general?’

‘Lord Paget.’

Hervey would have given up a week of sleep under Colonel Folque’s roof for such a commission. Not only was the general not Slade, there had been no end of talk about Paget these past weeks, and all of it in the most laudatory terms. Lord Paget was, in the eyes of the Sixth, the apotheosis of cavalry.

Hervey set off to inform his troop-leader, finding him with the quartermaster at what was evidently to pass as evening stables. Lankester had set himself to look at every foot, for he was convinced that the troop – the whole army, indeed – would have no respite in the days ahead. Sir Edward Lankester had friends in Sir John Moore’s headquarters, and he learned things.

‘To move where?’ Lankester asked, pulling off a loose shoe and handing it to the mare’s dragoon.

‘Sahagun, eight leagues to the north-east.’ Lankester stood up. ‘Is Debelle there? Is that the reason?’ ‘The adjutant did not say, Sir Edward. Only that Captain Edmonds’s troop is gone there already, and General Slade with the Tenth and the Fifteenth.’

Lankester narrowed his eyes. ‘Debelle; it must be. If Soult is where Moore believes him to be, at Saldana and Carrion, then he’ll have Debelle’s cavalry covering him at Sahagun.’ A smile creased his face just perceptibly. ‘So Paget is going to bustle him out of the place! I’d have wished it my troop with him rather than Edmonds’s. You had better ask Mr Martyn to come here.’

A general’s escort of thirty cavalry was a lieutenant’s command, plus a cornet and two serjeants. Hervey cursed that he was officer of the day, for Laming would have the sport instead. He went to find them both.

Laming was not in the horse lines, however. He was with the surgeon by a pile of blazing wood in the ambulatory, and his face told of some pain. ‘She shied, just as I was stepping down. I think my wrist is broke.’

‘I fear it is,’ said the surgeon. ‘But not so bad as may have been.’

‘Martyn is to take an escort for Lord Paget,’ said Hervey. ‘Sir Edward asks for you too.’

‘Ten minutes more, Hervey, as you see, and then I’ll come.’

In ten more minutes Lankester had inspected another dozen horses. And it was as well that he did so, he reckoned, for so far he had found need of the farrier in half the troop. It was the quartermaster’s responsibility to instruct the farrier which horses were to be shod, the invariable routine in barracks. In the field, however, both the captain and the quartermaster attended stables after a march. That, at least, was the rule in the Sixth. Not that Troop Quartermaster Banks was anything other than diligent, but an officer who did not hold the health of his horses’ feet to be his personal responsibility was unwary in the extreme.

‘What in heaven’s name have you there?’ said Lankester, seeing Cornet Laming at last.

‘It is but a splint, Sir Edward.’

‘I can see that. But what does it serve? And why?’

‘My wrist is broke – just a little. I fell with it under me. The surgeon says the splint will see things to right in a few days.’

‘A few days? I’ve never known anything mend in under a month, not properly. You’d better take Hervey’s place as officer of the day, and he yours with the escort.’

Laming’s jaw dropped. ‘But Sir Edward, Hervey here has seen action already. This splint is nothing. I can ride perfectly well.’

‘That is as may be,’ replied Lankester, frowning. ‘But you will need both hands, I do assure you, if you face the French.’

The dragoons of Number One Division, First Squadron (A Troop), did not immediately share Hervey’s enthusiasm for the escort. They wanted to be at the French, and no mistake, but a bellyful of beef first would not have gone ill with them. Lankester thought so too, and rode to Lord Paget’s quarters to beg a stay of an hour. He told no one what he was about, partly because it was not his way, and partly so as to give no offence to the lieutenant-colonel, whose adjutant ought in truth to have thought of it for himself.

‘Sir Edward! It is good to see you,’ declared Lord Paget cheerily as A Troop’s captain presented himself.

Lankester saluted and took off his Tarleton.

The two men could have been peas from the same pod, save that Lankester looked even sparer now from the month’s hard march. There were ten years between them, but as gentlemen little at all.

‘What a time you must have had of things. But at least you’ve not had that arse Slade with you. I swear he’ll do the business to a good many before the year is out. Will you take a mess of tea with me?’

Lord Paget’s quarters would not have served the meanest of his father’s tenants in Staffordshire, but in this blizzard, with a roof and four walls and a pine log burning in the grate, it was as a palace.

‘Indeed I will, sir. And it’s a very great comfort for us to see you too. We have not had much of a go so far;