Rumours Of War

Dom Mateo was not dismayed. ‘But you yourself told me that Lord Paget had not many more at Sahagun.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘And I have read how, on the march to Corunna, he deceived the French into believing there were many more sabres against him than was so.’

‘True.’ Hervey thought it best to let Dom Mateo run his course.

‘And he did that by placing himself at the head of his division. I do not have a division, else I should place myself as Lord Paget did. But if all I have is two squadrons, then so be it. They will have greater need of me than perhaps even your regiments had of Lord Paget.’

There was logic, and certainly honour, in what Dom Mateo said. Hervey decided to concede, if only for the moment. ‘We were lucky at Sahagun. The French were not sure who we were, or how many. Perhaps it could be the way here.’

Lucky – by God they’d been lucky! And every inch of the way to Corunna too, if truth be known. Colonel Reynell had said they were writing a new annal of war, but it had not felt like it at the time; not at any rate one that would be held up as worthy. There had been nothing heroic in the scene that Christmas Day as they left Sahagun. Hervey even shivered at the remembrance of it. Save, perhaps, that while the divisions of red were marching away from the town, Lord Paget and his cavalry were marching in the other direction, towards the French. But whether away or towards, the icy rain lashed them, the winds and snow froze them, and the roads were so churned they exhausted man and horse alike. It was the same every step of the way to Corunna, worse by far than anything he had seen since – worse than the downpour and the mud before Waterloo, worse than the freezing wastes of Canada, worse than the jungles of Burma. The memory appalled him still. And, yes, they had been lucky.

Soult would still be expecting an attack, Paget had reckoned. It was why Debelle had been bolted from Sahagun, was it not? Especially since Soult must imagine Sir John Moore to be in ignorance of the calamity about to befall him at the hands of L’Empereur marching north. Yes, Paget reckoned that Soult was undoubtedly of a mind that Moore was moving against him; in which case, Soult would surely be trying to secure the emperor’s design by drawing Moore on to him at Carrion, all unknowing? So now he, Lord Paget, marched towards Soult, obliging him it seemed, while the bulk of Moore’s army marched away. It would only take a few cavalry pressing the outposts vigorously to convince the marshal in his expectations. But without doubt he thereby put his own head, at least, into the lion’s cage! He must have a care to remove it quickly, and make tracks, when once the beast realized it had been duped.

Mud – and freezing mud at that. Two men in A Troop were so frostbitten after picket the morning Sir John Moore’s redcoats marched away from Sahagun that the surgeon feared he could not save their toes. A good many bags were thrown off the regimental cart to make space for them that Christmas morning. Trumpeter Lee’s wife died from the cold in the early hours, or so the surgeon pronounced, for she had been too sick to leave with the others. Lee sounded ‘last post’ by the cairn that he and the other trumpeters built for her.

But then the rain stopped, the clouds parted, and the midday sun, even in solstitio brumali, gave a little balm to the face, all else being swaddled or leather-clad.

Christmas Day: any regiment worth its salt would make some effort at a festive air, if only tongue-in-cheek. When A Troop had ridden past the Fifteenth’s outlying pickets on their way to probe Soult’s, they found a lemon tree decorated with lights and oranges, and a great iron pot over a fire from which steaming punch was dispensed to any who passed. The casks of wine and carboys of rum piled close by, presents of a fleeing commissary, suggested that none of Paget’s men need go without.

But that night Hervey and the rest of A Troop thought they would freeze to the marrow as they picketed the road east of Sahagun. Lord Paget had turned his little force about just outside Carrion, and retraced his steps in the early hours. And just as expected, Soult’s outposts had taken flight at the first appearance of the cavalry, so that A Troop did at least have the satisfaction, along with the rest of Paget’s men, of knowing that the French would be stood-to-arms waiting for Sir John Moore to attack at first light.

Hervey, too, was awake half the night. And when he was not awake he was only half asleep, for the cold brought the shivers, even though the picket fires burned bright. The horses were tethered in a walnut grove and stirred little, however. They had had a good feed at about ten o’clock, beans and barley, and although there had been no hay they had soon given up trying to pull at the wisps of grass in the muddy slush. At first light, if there were no sign of Soult, Paget intended withdrawing to Mayorga, twenty miles to the south-west. There the commissaries had promised a good supply of forage.

It was Hervey’s first Christmas in other than the warm bosom of his family. He had scarce had time to contemplate it until now, lying on a waterdeck in his cloak next to a fire, looking at the stars. They kept a good Christmas in Horningsham. It had never been a parish, especially in his father’s cure, where the word ‘festival’ meant other than what it promised in the observance of the Church’s year. The long tradition of the village was Christmas revels that continued well after Twelfth Night and the appointment of the Bean King; indeed, Lord Bath’s tenants feasted throughout January to the Purification of the Virgin at the beginning of February.

But his father always ensured a proper observance of the sacred as well as the profane. In a few more hours, at eight o’clock, as was his invariable rule, he would be close by the brazier before the chancel steps saying the morning office, as the Book of Common Prayer required:And all Priests and Deacons are to say daily the Morning and Evening Prayer either privately or openly, not being let by sickness, or some other urgent cause.And the Curate that ministereth in every Parish-Church or Chapel, being at home, and not being otherwise reasonably hindered, shall say the same in the Parish-Church or Chapel where he ministereth, and shall cause a Bell to be tolled thereunto a convenient time before he begin, that the people may come to hear God’s Word, and to pray with him.

Not that many of the parish would ordinarily come to hear God’s Word of a weekday, either in the morning or the evening. The Reverend Thomas Hervey MA had no curate and no clerk; the glebe did not permit it, neither did he have the private means to afford it. Perhaps today, thought Hervey, a few of the devouter souls would make their way to the little church at the end of the village, and would read (if they were able), instead of the usual Apostles’ Creed, that of Saint Athanasius, Quicunque Vult – ‘Whosoever will be saved: before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholick Faith.’

But the greater number would pack the nave and the free pews of the side aisles for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion as Mr Hervey was wont to call it. When first he had come to the parish, twenty years ago and more, the service had been quarterly; now it was administered on the first and third Sundays of each month, and on the greater festivals. And he administered it without the Prayer Book’s requirement that ‘So many as intend to be partakers of the holy Communion shall signify their names to the Curate, at least some time the day before’. Most of the villagers welcomed it as a cheerier observance too, for the church band had a fuller part and more extensive repertory than at Morning Prayer, and some of the village ancients fancied they recalled the gaudery of ‘the merrier days before the stripping of the altars’. A few, however, thought it popish.

Hervey smiled to himself. Popishness ? If ever a man thought he saw it in an English parish then he ought at once to come to Portugal or Spain. He had not yet seen what Southey called ‘the mummery of a Catholic Lent’, but there had been processions enough. But why it should dismay so much, he was at a loss to know. Sir Arthur Wellesley, at least, had shown no revulsion at what he saw, and he had said as much in a General Order:The religious prejudices and opinions of the people of the country should be respected. When an officer or a soldier shall sit in a

church from motives of curiosity he is to remain uncovered. When the Host passes in the streets, officers and soldiers are to halt and front it; the officers to pull off their hats, and the soldiers to put their hands to their caps. The guard will turn out and present arms.

Hervey closed his eyes. He imagined himself sitting in the little church of St John the Baptist in Horningsham, to his brother’s right (he would surely be home from Oxford?) and his sister’s left as they listened to the Reverend Thomas Hervey deliver his sermon. He wondered if they, or his mother, might have any notion of how he passed the nativity here! He fancied he knew what would be the words of that sermon too, the same as always, for they were a true favourite of the congregation, as if they were written in that very corner of Salisbury Plain, ‘the ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short’.

The other partner of his childhood he could not picture quite so well in his present mind, for she never sat among them in Horningsham, driving instead with her guardian, Lord Bath, to the family church in Longbridge