Rumours Of War

was not possible to tell. His adjutant was a fearful sight, bare-headed, face a mass of blood – and very evidently his own.

‘Damned silly muff caps!’ said Martyn.

Hervey saw. It was not the mirliton’s appearance but its serviceability. Handsome it might be, but it was too tall to stay in place in a melee, and it gave not the slightest protection against a blade, for while the French hussars wore the same, theirs were strengthened by iron hoops rather than pasteboard.

‘Rather the Tarleton any day!’ Martyn stood in the stirrups and raised his sabre above his head to rally the rest of the troop. ‘Keep an eye on Paget, Hervey. He’ll be off like a greyhound given half a chance.’

True it was. Lord Paget was view-hallooing like the best of them, waving his sabre at the bridge, his horse blowing hard and champing for the second off.

Martyn had rallied two dozen of his men. It was enough. They wheeled into line behind the general, expecting him to bolt at any second.

Hervey just had time to look back where he had ridden. The sight appalled and thrilled him at the same time: men and horses down, some of them still but many more writhing in agony; and some neither up nor down, staggering to rise, on two legs or four, occasionally succeeding, but for the most part just falling back. Who would tend them? He had no idea. He turned to face front. The last thing he wanted was an involuntary tear, not now he had been seasoned.

Off they sprang again. The ground seemed heavier than before. And devilish treacherous, vine stumps and ditches everywhere. He saw Private Dooley’s trooper fall, somersaulting and throwing him clear the other side of the cut, the horse thrashing, cast, in the bottom of it. Everywhere Hervey could see pairs of men in combat – individual, as if jousting – while others raced for the bridge, the French knowing where they were galloping to, the hussars only sensing. And every so often another French horse would tumble, and its rider might rise, hopeful of regaining the saddle – but in vain, for an English blade would take him first.

Hervey looked for his man – a dragon, preferably, the greater prize. He had no fear. Robert was fagged, but he didn’t doubt he would answer to the leg. And his blade was sharp. But as long as Lord Paget was not threatened he could have no occasion to prove his skill.

They galloped the best part of a mile until the general judged that his men were out of hand. He had his trumpeter sound ‘rally’, a simple call, just Cs and Gs, the same pitch whether bugle or trumpet.

Hervey pulled up, not without difficulty, for even though Robert was lathered as white as the ground there was fire in him yet. He looked back towards Sahagun: how great indeed they had shocked them! His chest swelled with pride. So Joshua rose up early in the morning, and brought Israel by their tribes!

Joshua’s own trumpeters could not have been more insistent than were the Fifteenth’s now. Bugles all across the field repeated the ‘rally’ (it was ever a problem to get a man to hear, let alone respond). Lord Paget cursed loud to himself, and then at the hussars as they eventually began answering the call. But they merely cheered him by return, taking a pride in their wilful ardour.

They were hard up against the Valderaduey and somehow drawn well north of the bridge. Paget cursed again. But the stream was deep with snowmelt, not a way to escape. Paget looked about, saw the French scattered like so much chaff, and ordered his captains to call on them to surrender.

The French would not yield, however – those, at least, still in the saddle. Three or four dragons close by plunged into the stream. One of them fell as his horse stumbled, sinking at once with the weight of his boots and breastplate. Two managed to reach the far bank, but their horses could get no footing, and they in turn fell. A chasseur put his mount obliquely at the bank. It managed to scramble out a little way, just enough for the man to leap from the saddle and gain a footing, grasping at the sedge near the top of the bank and hauling himself out. Then, catching the reins as his horse, without the burden of a rider, managed to struggle up the snowy slide of the riverbank, he remounted and saluted his pursuers. Hervey and the others gave him a cheer.

‘Damnation!’ cursed Lord Paget, loudly, as he dug his spurs into his own gelding’s flanks. ‘This ain’t a tourney!’

And off went the field again, headlong for the bridge. The ‘rally’ and the call to surrender had lost them time, and Debelle was making good use of it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THREATS

Reeves’s Hotel, Lisbon, 27 October 1826

Hervey woke from a fitful sleep, with cramp in his right leg and his neck stiff. The low chair in his sitting room was comfortable enough for its usual purpose, but the candle had burned down to an inch and the fire was nothing but a few embers; three hours sleeping thus was not three hours’ repose. He pulled his cloak tighter about his shoulders, and wondered what delayed Kat so long at the residence.

He sat up, eyes open but seeing little, contemplating his condition. He had hurt her, of that there was no question. She had rallied, and they had spent the rest of the night as close, seemingly, as before, but there was a care about her the following morning despite her efforts to conceal it. She said she was to dine with the Forbeses that evening, that she would speak to the charge again and press Hervey’s design on him, and alert him to the refusal of Colonel Norris to consider it properly, and to the prodigious cost that Norris’s own design would occasion. But Hervey had drawn back. Whether somehow fearing the obligation it implied, he dare not imagine. And then he had given in, wanting, more than his fears were worth, what Kat alone seemed able to deliver.

His thoughts returned once more to Sir John Moore’s time: how green he had then been, the trusting, faithful, guileless cornet. He knew nothing about the ‘web’ and how it was woven, allowing one officer to advance while trapping another. Now he could use the strands to his own advantage, where before they excluded him. Now he used cunning, and not just to deceive the enemy. Sometimes it seemed he was even partial to it. And all this because Lady Katherine Greville was his patroness. No, not all because; he could neither blame nor hail Kat for his own condition now, for their acquaintance had not been so long, whatever its gestation. Eighteen years ago, when first he came to the Peninsula, Hervey had said his prayers daily. Now his observance was next to nothing, and the seventh commandment he broke almost daily. Life in Sir John Moore’s day may have been uncomfortable and dangerous, but it had at least been honourable. No, he did not open his Prayer Book very often these days, but its words haunted him: And there is no health in us.

He wondered if Johnson were still there. As he got up there was a loud knocking at the door.

The landing outside was still well lit, the figure consequently in silhouette.

‘Senhor, se faz favor.’

The man was so much swaddled against the cold that it would have been difficult to gauge anything of his purpose even had the light shone on his face. But he held out an envelope.

‘You had better come in. Entra por favor,’ said Hervey, beckoning.

The man stepped inside, taking off his hat, and stood attentively as Hervey broke the seal and began to read, holding the letter close up to the stump of the candle. With the light outside, it was just possible to make out the neat, small hand.

When he had finished reading he folded the letter and placed it in the inner pocket of his tunic. ‘Obrigado, senhor.’ Then he contemplated the difficulty of finding the words for his reply.

‘I speak a little English, senhor.’

Hervey nodded. ‘Return, if you please, and tell the senhora I will come at once.’

He rang for Johnson as the man left.

Johnson came at once, still dressed, with boot-black on his hands.