‘A terrible thing, Hervey,’ said Dom Mateo as they returned to the Ordnance store later in the afternoon, frowning and shaking his head as if he had witnessed the execution himself. ‘I cannot but admire your Sir John Moore and those Pagets for their strength of mind. It was the want of it in so many of the other regiments, by your account, that served them so ill in the end. I pray that I would myself have such iron when the moment of testing came.’
The storekeeper was ready with his scissors by a bale of red cloth.
‘Your regiment, at least, retained its good order.’
‘It did. But our getting away from Corunna was a sad affair. I don’t think I ever saw a sadder one.’
The smell of camphor was almost overpowering. Major Coa nodded, and the storekeeper cut through the thick twine. He unfolded a jacket and held it up proudly. It looked as good as new, for all its years’ unintended conservation.
‘Excellent!’ Dom Mateo slapped the storekeeper’s back boisterously. ‘We need only buttons, I think,’ he added, turning to Hervey.
Hervey allowed himself a momentary expression of uncertainty: ‘And luck.’
But Dom Mateo did not recognize the difficulty. To him, luck was an everyday requirement, which he called instead God’s providence, and for which he prayed faithfully. He rattled off more orders to Major Coa and the garrison officers accompanying them, then left them to the work of the ruse.
Outside, he took Hervey by the arm. The question of luck was one thing, but he had another concern. ‘Tell me, my friend. This is a bold stratagem, and one not without its hazards. Political hazards, I mean. Should you not seek the permission of your Colonel Norris?’
Dom Mateo’s solicitude did him credit, thought Hervey. But he knew his King’s intent, and Mr Canning’s; he fancied he even knew the Duke of Wellington’s. And he considered that his colonel was but another General Slade. ‘Dom Mateo, I care not
He meant it. But he knew he must hope that Norris’s vindictiveness and reach were not a match for Slade’s in those months in Ireland before Waterloo.
A letter came for him later as they stood with the camphor and the red bales. He had an hour in which to read it and pen a reply, for after that the courier would be obliged to return to Lisbon, and he would have to engage another at twice the price. Recognizing the handwriting, Hervey excused himself and retired to his quarters, and there sat by a window, broke the seal and began to read. He knew it was sent from the Rua dos Condes, and the date told him the courier had travelled post, but the salutation disturbed him nevertheless, for despite both their physical and vocal intimacy, seeing the evidence of it on the page was a different matter.
There were two more pages. Hervey read them with a growing sense of despair. He wondered how it had come to this. The physical process he knew very well, but somehow the train of events, the promises and understandings that had made him so . . . beholden, was of very uncertain memory. He even grew alarmed. Here, too, was another man’s wife; he might push that fact to the back of his mind, but fact it still was. One day he would be brought to account. And in that he ought to have especial regard for what would be the consequences with his family, his daughter in particular. Georgiana needed a mother, not a father with a mistress who was wife of another.
He looked over the letter again. Colonel Norris was in a dangerous frame of mind, and only Kat was in a position to do anything. Should he reply saying he wished her to do nothing on his account, that he would stand trial on his own record? Had he not, after all, said to Dom Mateo that very hour that he cared not what Norris thought or did? He went to his writing table and snatched up a pen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘GROYNE’
‘And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel, and say to them, When ye come into the land of Canaan, this is the land that shall fall unto you for an inheritance, even the land of Canaan with the coasts thereof.’
The regiment had crested yet another hill that promised a view of their deliverance, but this time it did not prove false, and Hervey was moved to quote Scripture.
Cornet Laming shook his head. ‘I confess the children of Israel cannot have felt greater relieved than I at this moment.’
Both of them knew the sentiment was shared by every man in the Sixth, and would in turn be shared by every man in the army. It seemed an age since Sahagun: the high-water mark of their sojourn in the Peninsula, Sir Edward Lankester had called it. Everything after Sahagun had been on the ebb, a tide that at times had run so fast it threatened to leave them high and dry.
And the sense of deliverance was made greater by Nature’s change. It had, perhaps, been more gradual than they supposed, but suddenly there was no longer the rain and the snow, the mud and the barren fields, the fatigue and the numbing cold. Before and below them, on Corunna’s plain, were orange trees already in blossom, rye in ear, and everywhere wildflowers. But for the orange trees they might be in a country lane in England. And as if to welcome them the more, the clouds had blown away, and the sun was warm on their backs.
Lieutenant Martyn peered through his telescope at the distant sail. ‘Our ships, no mistake.’
