Rumours Of War

sparking on the cobbles and sliding to a halt. The man jumped down and looked about, surprised by the absence of orderlies eager for his intelligence. He saw Hervey and made for him instead. ‘Sir, the French are fording the Esla. General Paget wants all his cavalry to rally at once!’

It didn’t take an order to have the men mounted. Indeed, Hervey was last into the saddle.

‘Where exactly are we to rally?’

‘Straight down the road, sir, towards where we crossed last night.’

Hervey would have liked something more precise, but it was clearly not to be had. His men were moving, too. They would have pressed straight into a gallop if the stones had not been so worn. Every vestige of weariness was gone. All they wanted was to have a go at the French again.

But how had the French been able to cross? Hervey struggled to imagine, just as he struggled with Stella’s plunging; she was hotted as if she’d had racing corn for breakfast. Why had they spent so long blowing up the bridge if all the French had to do was trot upstream a few hundred yards and ford across?

He need not have worried about an exact rendezvous, however. In a quarter of an hour they heard musketry. He could not go far wrong if he rode to the sound of the guns.

It was all but daylight now. The musketry was the other side of a thick belt of trees. How might he push through in good order and safety?

The fire continued, more ragged than in volleys, but intense enough. He checked the pace, saw a defile and galloped for it. They checked again to a breaking canter, cursed the low branches, then came out to the flood plain of the Esla as the sun rose full over the hills the other side. He saw the line of blue five hundred yards away. It could have been any of Lord Paget’s six regiments – at that distance it was impossible to make out the distinguishing marks, even the headdress. Yet somehow a dragoon knew his own; he put Stella back into a hand- gallop and took his two dozen wayfaring sabres fast towards the roost.

As he closed on the serrefile Hervey saw Lord Paget galloping from the direction of the river, where the pickets of the 18th Light Dragoons – hussars in appearance and practice, if not by name – had spent the night in chilly watch.

‘You see, there are not so many of them, Reynell,’ called Paget from the saddle. ‘Otway’s pickets should hold them!’

He galloped off towards the reserve, leaving Colonel Reynell to judge for himself what should be his action.

That was how it was meant to be; or so Hervey understood. It was not for a brigadier, let alone the commander of the cavalry, to be the fount of all commands on the battlefield. As custom had it, a cavalry officer, whether in command of a troop or a brigade, was meant to exercise judgement according to his coup d’oeil. How easy it all seemed when Lord Paget expressed his intention and left Colonel Reynell to it. It did not require the intermediation of General Slade; that was certain.

Hervey stood in his stirrups to see better, and sensed the twitching of two hundred sword hands, all eager to draw sabres and close with the enemy. The French were across the river, no doubt of it. In strength too, evidently: he could see the Eighteenth’s pickets giving ground before them. But it was one thing to drive in a picket line, and quite another to stand against a counter-charge, especially with a river at one’s back. The Eighteenth would send them splashing back across the Esla in very short order.

Now the Eighteenth’s adjutant came galloping. He was beside himself with exasperation, and full voiced.

‘Where is Slade, Colonel?’

‘It is a mystery to me as you,’ replied Reynell coolly but no less audibly.

‘Will you support us then, Colonel?’

Two hundred men behind him would want to know the reason why not.

‘You need scarcely ask,’ said Reynell. He turned his head at once. ‘Trumpeter, walk-march!’

It was a ragged strike-off, but it did not matter. Colonel Reynell’s promptitude was what counted to ‘the yellow circle’, the fellowship of the cavalry.

The Sixth mustered only two hundred and ten sabres, Number Three Squadron being in reserve with Lord Paget, and a good part of Second on picket or forage duties, but it would still be a fair weight to throw behind the Eighteenth. Together they could drive the French back into the Esla or take them prisoner. Reynell was confident of it. And he would not pull up until the west bank was cleared of every last chasseur.

If only he could see them. The flood plain was extraordinarily flat, and the Eighteenth were masking the object of the advance.

Hervey could see even less with two ranks close in front of him, and Stella plunging again in an alarming fashion, unhappy with her station at the back of the field. He heard no bugle, but the pace quickened, and Stella began throwing her head up as well as plunging. Hervey thought they would break through the ranks in front if once he let her have the rein. And if he did that he might as well send in his papers at once.

He had both hands to the reins now, struggling to keep his sabre upright as he pulled, not wanting to advertise his difficulties. He wished it were Jessye beneath him; handy little mare, no looker but answering to leg or hand with equal honesty. She could not match Stella for speed, but then he was no longer a general’s galloper. And – the very devil was in it – this fine blood, which had meant to be his making, looked like being his undoing. Or his ruin, even, for a stumble with her head up would mean a broken neck; his too, probably. What was this mare about?

Then the whole regiment was trying to pull up hard. The lines buckled, so that for a time it was not possible to say that one man had overtaken another. Stella just missed the flying hooves of the horse in front and slewed into a trooper in what remained of the front rank. Hervey’s leg knocked its rider’s boot clean from the stirrup.

‘Fookin’ Jesus!’

‘I’m very sorry, Corporal,’ tried Hervey, at last with Stella in hand.

Colonel Reynell, a full twenty yards ahead, was standing in the stirrups with his sword raised, still bellowing ‘Hold hard!’

Hervey saw why: the Eighteenth had turned. There was no chance now of taking the Sixth into the enemy’s ranks, not with the Eighteenth retiring before them. He could see the French at last, though: there were so many chasseurs it looked as if a whole brigade had got across.

‘The regiment will face in two ranks!’ Colonel Reynell’s voice was calm but insistent.

It was like falling-in at first parade: an eager, untidy business, corporals shouting, heads and eyes all over the place, until by degrees there came the semblance of two lines, and, finally, good order. Hervey managed to find his place, in the rear rank and to Reynell’s right. But he could see with what assurance the Eighteenth retired: unhurried, as at a review, knowing as they must that if the French dared to charge they would be thrown over in an instant. He wondered where they would halt and front. He supposed about fifty yards from where the Sixth stood. That would be where Dundas prescribed, so as to have the close support of a second line. But the regulations did not serve on every occasion, and would not this morning, for only too clearly there were more chasseurs than the Sixth and the Eighteenth could stand against without support. To his left was a troop of the King’s German Legion coming from Benavente, and at a fair speed, but the rest of Slade’s brigade was nowhere to be seen. And certainly not the brigadier. What were they expected to do?

He saw General Stewart, the Eighteenth’s brigadier, signalling the right with his sword, towards Benavente, and they began wheeling. It looked to Hervey like a very explicit giving of ground, and it left the Sixth exposed. But perhaps that was intended? He was surprised by the pace of things, how little time there was to judge their action; it had not been like this up to now.

Colonel Reynell was not outpaced, however. ‘Advance at the trot – march!’

The line billowed forward.

‘Left wheel!’

The Sixth wheeled left to follow the Eighteenth. As they did so the chasseurs quickened their trot.

In a minute the leading French squadron was closing, and rapidly. Hervey thought the regiment must change to canter or else be overrun. It would look horribly like flight though.

Colonel Reynell had other ideas. ‘Walk-march! About face!’

It was smartly done. The Sixth turned about in two ranks, the flanks nicely overlapping those of the chasseurs now only seventy yards away.