*
Next morning, after stand-to, the regiment left Valderas for the Esla, four leagues off, the same distance they had marched the previous afternoon from Mayorga. Lord Paget had ordered the Tenth to do rearguard, and the Sixth to make haste to cross the bridge at Castro Gonzalo, which General Craufurd’s light brigade was holding. By now the three ‘fighting’ divisions would be west of the Esla and taking up positions at Astorga, and there was no profit in losing any more men this side of the river.
The rain fell heavier even than the day before. The Sixth slipped and slid all the way, past villages ravaged as bad as anything they had seen so far, object lessons to Hervey and his fellow novices of the malevolent potential of men under arms but not under discipline. It was a gloomy ride, no one speaking much, leaving ample time to ponder their situation. But just after midday, as the point men were approaching Castro Gonzalo, with its fine bridge over the Esla, spirits began to lift again, for such a crossing would be a grand prize for Ney’s cavalry, and doubtless he would be pressing his
Almost the first man Colonel Reynell saw was Major-General Robert Craufurd – ‘Black Bob’ – brooding astride a big brown gelding, in long greatcoat and cape and plumeless bicorn pulled well down, so that he appeared to scowl even worse than he did. There was no general whose will was stronger, whose tongue was harsher and whose discipline was more unvarying, and this morning he was the very picture of it. Black Bob Craufurd flogged, but he did so out of the very deepest conviction that men’s lives were saved by it. The Sixth did not flog, but seeing what some regiments had become already on the march, Hervey was beginning to understand that the proponents of the lash could make a powerful case.
Reynell saluted. ‘Good morning, General.’
Craufurd touched the point of his bicorn by return. ‘Good morning, Reynell. How is Lord Paget?’
Reynell eased his weight in the saddle. ‘We had a sharp contest with Ney’s cavalry yesterday, but they did not press us during the night. We came away this morning at nine, and it was quiet still. We saw not a Frenchman on the way here.’ Reynell’s report was dispassionate, but his voice could not conceal a certain disappointment, even contempt, for Ney’s absence. ‘Lord Paget and the Tenth intend crossing just before last light. Where do you wish me to dispose the regiment?’
‘One squadron either side, if you please, Reynell. The other as you wish. Once Paget is across tonight I shall blow up the bridge with all haste.’
Reynell disposed Third Squadron, which had seen the least of the action so far, to the east of the river, and led the other two across the graceful five arches that spanned the swollen Esla. He left Second Squadron to the immediate support of the bridge garrison, and took on First into reserve in one of the religious houses at the western edge of the town.
Hervey took careful note as they rode through. The place was scarcely more than a village, with fewer people left than he would have seen in one of the winter foldings on Salisbury Plain. Here and there a rifleman cradled his piece as though it were a baby, the rain beating down on his sodden green, but he seemingly indifferent to it all. How would his rifle fire, wondered Hervey? And yet the sullen look said that the laws of chemistry would somehow be overcome, that the curse of damp powder was nothing to a rifleman.
It was the same with the men labouring under the arches, red-and green-coated alike (there were never enough sappers for such work, so the infantry invariably found themselves impressed). There were dozens of barrels of powder to be packed into the stone once they had dug out chambers deep enough for the explosion to have effect. Two Royal Engineers officers directed the work, their blue coat-sleeves rolled up. Next year the Ordnance would have them change from blue to red to save being confused for French, but today they could have been ships’ officers supervising victualling as they went about the work with cool method.
The river, if not as wide as the Severn at Shrewsbury, was nevertheless an obstacle to marching infantry; Hervey could see that full well. But cavalry ought to be able to get across, he reckoned, perhaps with a bit of a scramble, although they could not do so in any order. Nevertheless, if this General Ney, of whom he had read a deal in England, pushed all his cavalry at the river, Lord Paget and his two regiments would be sorely pressed to drive them back into it, even with the help of General Craufurd’s admirable riflemen. Hervey wondered how long they would have before the French realized what a prize lay waiting for them. Long enough, he hoped, to have his Bel’s lost shoe replaced; the mud as they came up the last half mile had sucked off the near-hind as if it had been a child’s boot. In fact, the troop wanted the farrier now more than it did the commissary. ‘No foot, no horse,’ said the veterinarian; and there would be no remounts this side of the mountains, for sure.
Third Squadron threw out its pickets, while First and Second found shelter as best they could, Hervey’s in the deserted convent on the Benavente road. They were evidently not its first lodgers, for there was no food to be had, and anything that could be burned had found its way onto bonfires. Colonel Reynell could not be greatly dismayed at that, for the men who did it must have been pitifully cold, and the French would have done the same. The destruction elsewhere about the place was harder to fathom, and he wondered at the address of the officers. He had no idea if the more portable contents of the convent had been taken to safety by the nuns. In any case, he wanted fires lighting so that his dragoons could hot the salt beef and boil the biscuit they had been carrying since Valderas, and he gave orders to forage free, short of tearing down the outer doors and windows.
As they set about it, the first of the regular rations came up: two carts drawn by pairs of bullocks, led in by a commissary officer and a German hussar. Hervey watched from the shelter of the reredorter as the quartermasters told off details to unload the biscuit, seeing it into shelter as if it were gold. Then the pairs were uncoupled and led away. They were puny, stringy beasts, he thought, not up to a great deal more work. That, indeed, was the commissary’s own opinion, and there followed a bloody few minutes of shots, misfires, bellowing, cursing, and then sabre work, until the bullocks were turned into fresh rations amid gory excrement.
In fifteen minutes the chops and beefsteaks were all gone, in ten minutes more the offal, and then the rain washed the carcasses clean in another five, so that any man might come and take a bone to gnaw on later. And what was left, with neither head nor tail, the birds could pick at when the squadron was gone. The commissary was delighted the French would not have a thing.
Hervey’s portion, served up in a quarter of an hour, was tougher than anything he could remember on a plate. Hanging for a month might have tenderized it, but he had his doubts.
‘Good prog this, eh, Mr Hervey, sir?’
It was possible that Private Sykes’s portion qualified for that verdict – his had been the choice, after all, since he had cooked both – but again Hervey somehow doubted it. Sykes, as most of the dragoons, took a pride in cheery irony. It was beef, however, and it was hot; Hervey knew it would fortify, no matter how hard it was to chew. The biscuit was its usual iron constitution, in spite of its ichorose marinade.
‘That’s it, then, Mr Hervey, sir.’
It was a phrase he would become used to in the days ahead.
Two hours later, Hervey watched as the troop farrier cold-shod his march horse with copy shoes made at the last hot-shoeing, for which he had had to pay the customary half guinea. Bel stood quietly as Corporal Lambe worked away with the rasp. Lambe had put on the lost iron not ten days before, so there was little growth in the hoof to file down or sole to pare away, and he said nothing as he worked: a lost shoe was invariably blamed on the shoeing-smith. But although often as not the blame was deserved if a horse cast a shoe so soon, Hervey was not of a mind to think that way now.
‘That mud would have taxed the farrier royal,’ he tried, helpfully.
Corporal Lambe was not impressed by the comparison. ‘It might, sor,’ he replied, in an accent from west of the Pale.
In went the six nails, and then down went the foot.
Hervey tried again. ‘Thank you, Corporal Lambe. I hope she can keep them on this time until her month’s due.’
‘I hope I’ll see me waggon again afore then, sor; that’s all I hope. I’ll be needing the bellows soon enough. Captain Lankester’s lost one an’ all.’
Hervey wondered if any of them would see the waggons again if the draft animals were to be turned to meat and the waggons to firewood. He had so much stowed by way of uniform; and all of it new, the account barely settled.
‘What about that galloper mare, sor?’
‘All secure, thank you.’
