Outside, however, even as heavy rain began falling, the troops themselves were cheering as they set off to drub Soult. They had been waiting for months for this, and neither rain, nor the melting snow which fell on them from the rooftops or spattered them thigh-high as they marched, was going to dull their ardour. Tomorrow morning they would show the French how British infantry could fight!
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
RECALL
‘Gallopers!’
An aide-de-camp came at once. ‘Sir?’
‘Gallopers, George,’ said Sir John Moore, agitated. ‘Every one you can find. And wake Colonel Graham!’
The wind whistled continuously, rattling the loose tiles of the convent-headquarters. The stove in the corner of his makeshift office gave off too much smoke and too little heat, but the commander-in-chief did not notice, intent as he was on the despatches before him.
In ten minutes the headquarters gallopers were assembled outside. They were a dishevelled sight for usually peacock-splendid hussars, but they had risen and dressed quickly.
Colonel Thomas Graham joined them, Moore’s friend of many years. At sixty,
‘I don’t know, sir. We were about to leave for Carrion when a message arrived from General Romana, and then one of the officers whom Sir John had sent down to the Douro came in.’
At the other side of the convent, in one of the tithe barns, Hervey woke suddenly to the hand shaking his shoulder. ‘Corporal Armstrong? What—’
Armstrong, squadron orderly serjeant, held the lantern high so as not to dazzle him. ‘You’re wanted, sir; galloper detail. At Sir John Moore’s headquarters. I’ve sent Sykes to saddle up.’
Hervey rose in an instant, glad that he had lain down in his boots. He threw on his pelisse, gathered up his swordbelt, pistols, gloves and shako, and seized his cloak from the nail in the wall. ‘Thank you, Corporal Armstrong. Ask Sykes to bring my horse to the headquarters, if you will. You are sure it is to Sir John Moore’s and not Lord Paget’s?’
‘That’s right, sir. That’s what the orderly said. I’ll send Sykes. And good luck, sir. And mind, it’s freezing under foot.’
‘Thank you, Corporal.’ He said it with real gratitude, for Armstrong’s demeanour stood in marked contrast to Ellis’s.
As he came into Sir John Moore’s headquarters not many minutes later, the other gallopers were leaving. He made his way along the cloister thinking he must be called in error.
‘Where in heaven’s name have you been?’ demanded Captain Napier, as Hervey entered the orderly room.
Hervey felt the stab, and thought it unfair. ‘I believe I came at once, sir.’
‘But the others came at once! You must have been woke at the same time.’
‘I was not with them, sir.’
‘You were not sleeping in the gallopers’ quarters? Why?’
No one had told Hervey that he should. But that seemed a lame excuse. And he wondered why, as the brigadier’s galloper, he was meant to be in Sir John Moore’s headquarters anyway.
‘Sir, I—’
Colonel Graham put his head round the door. ‘Another galloper, please, George.’
Captain Napier nodded, then turned back to his hapless charge. ‘What is your name?’
‘Hervey.’
‘Very well, Mr Hervey, it seems you are spared.’ Napier smiled. ‘Come.’
They marched into Sir John Moore’s office, Hervey’s stomach tight.
‘Mr Hervey, sir,’ Napier announced.
Sir John Moore was writing. Colonel Graham took up the responsibility instead. ‘Mr Hervey, the commander- in-chief has sent word to each of the marching divisions for their immediate recall. However, General Craufurd’s light brigade is likely to be well in advance of the leading division, and you are therefore to deliver the order to the general personally.’ He passed him the note of recall.
‘Yes, sir.’ Hervey remained at attention.
‘That is all, Mr Hervey; thank you,’ said Colonel Graham, kindly.
Sir John Moore looked up, his eyes deep set. ‘Are you a Bristol Hervey?’
The truest answer, perhaps, was ‘yes’, but Hervey thought it wrong to claim so remote a connection. The Bristol Herveys were a great family; he had met none of them. Trading on their name would be unworthy. ‘No, sir.’
‘Mm.’ Sir John Moore nodded, then looked down again at the paper before him.
‘You may dismiss, Mr Hervey,’ repeated Colonel Graham in a fatherly sort of way.
When Hervey and the ADC had gone, Colonel Graham settled into an armchair next to Sir John Moore’s writing table. He put his hands together in his lap and smiled serenely, for all the world like a benevolent friar. ‘Now, my dear John, are you able to say what is the matter?’
Sir John Moore was deeply troubled, his expression almost mournful. He leaned back in his chair and shook his head. ‘The matter is, Thomas, Bonaparte is closer than I had ever believed. Perhaps even on the Douro. Certainly he has broached the Guadarramas, which the Spaniards said he would not be able to do at this time of year. They do not seem to have lifted one finger anywhere to stop him.’
Colonel Thomas Graham: fellow Scot and Whig, the man who had raised the Perthshire Volunteers, who had once dressed as a peasant to get through the French lines in Italy, and had managed to be at sieges throughout the Mediterranean, yet with no regular military rank whatever. Sir John Moore valued his advice above all men’s.
‘With how many?’ he asked, calmly.
‘All estimations are within ten thousand of a full sixty.’
Still Graham did not bat an eyelid, though he could calculate that their relative strength was unfavourable in the extreme. ‘And Soult may have half that number in a day or so too, if Delaborde makes a junction.’
‘Just so. By all accounts he is close to Palencia, on the Carrion River, as we speak.’
‘Where shall you make your stand?’
Sir John Moore shook his head. ‘My sole object now must be to save the army, Thomas, for you yourself know that England has not another.’
His old friend held his gaze.
‘We must run for it.’ Sir John Moore jabbed a finger at the map on his table. ‘To the coast.’
Colonel Graham looked saddened. He had given up a life of ease to fight the French, and he knew his old friend to be a true fighter. He lowered his eyes, as if a prize pupil had let down his master.
Sir John Moore saw, but he did not remonstrate. ‘I am sending word to have the Navy take us off at Vigo and Corunna. And to General Romana to save himself.’
Colonel Graham rose to look at the map. It was the best part of two hundred miles to Corunna, as the crow flew. But the road crossed rivers and the Galician mountains; they could not journey as the crow flew.
‘We must steal a march, Thomas,’ said Sir John, anticipating the observation. ‘Two or three marches. And we must get back across the Esla just as soon as may be.’
