Rumours Of War

advance. This was what happened when a battalion had to break ranks, he supposed; when it ceased being able to drill under strict subordination of the company officers, and the serjeants and corporals, and when shoulder no longer touched shoulder.

So far, indeed, he had not seen an officer, save two lying dead. He supposed they must all be forward, and with them General Bentinck.

As they reached the church in the middle of the village, Hervey thought to get the vantage of its stumpy tower, but as they ran inside he saw he could not for it was packed with French prisoners. A serjeant of the Fiftieth and a dozen men stood uneasy guard.

‘Have you seen General Bentinck, Serjeant?’

‘Haven’t seen nothing, sir,’ said the man, eyeing the strange sight of kersey and cross-belts. ‘Major Napier’s been gone half an hour and more. Haven’t had no orders or nothing since then, sir.’

Hervey sensed an appeal; that, or a plea in mitigation of their inactivity. It was not his concern for the present, though. His was to find the brigadier.

But it made no sense for a dozen men to be watching over disarmed voltigeurs when there was fighting to be done at the far end of the village. ‘I think you had better take the prisoners back to the line, Serjeant. Then return here at once. Perhaps you shan’t need all of your men?’

The serjeant looked doubtful.

‘Might you yourself come forward with me?’

A roundshot struck the roof and showered them in plaster.

‘My orders were to guard the prisoners, sir. From Major Stanhope himself, sir.’

Hervey felt a hand grip his arm from behind. ‘Very well.’

He turned, nodded to Armstrong, and they doubled out across the street to a pile of rubble that had once been a stable.

‘There was no fight in him, sir. Reckon he’d ’ave been happy enough to spend all day standing there.’

Hervey knew it too. Perhaps he should have ordered him forward peremptorily. ‘If we—’

Brisk musketry opened ahead of them again.

‘Come on!’

They dashed up the street and round the corner, stumbling over fallen masonry, vaulting a dead mule which blocked the way where the side of a house had collapsed, and on to the furthest edge of the village. They climbed a barricade and ran out into a lane between blasted orange trees until they found what remained of the Fiftieth, firing from the cover of the orchard walls.

‘Is General Bentinck here?’ shouted Hervey to an ensign, relieved at last to see an officer.

The man – boy, in truth, for he looked even younger than Hervey – was furiously ramming home a musket charge. ‘There!’

Hervey looked through the black smoke where the ensign pointed. The brigadier was standing by a tree as if watching target practice.

He doubled to him, stood upright as he sheathed his sword, and saluted. ‘Sir, General Hope’s compliments, and would you be so good as to join him at once!’

Major-General Lord William Henry Cavendish Bentinck looked at him with a sort of bemused condescension. ‘Who, sir, are you? And why, pray, would General Hope have me see him? Is there not work enough to do on this flank?’

A roundshot struck the tree. Bark and the remaining orange blossom rained on them, but neither man moved a muscle.

‘Colonel Long’s galloper, General; Cornet Hervey. Sir, I imagined you knew that Sir John Moore is wounded and carried from the field. General Hope succeeds to the command since General Baird is also taken from the field.’

Bentinck looked alarmed. ‘Moore is hit? It will not do!’

There was shouting from the orchard wall. Both turned. A field officer was cursing and lashing out with the flat of his sword at the crouching infantrymen. ‘Damn your eyes, Fiftieth! Get up! Get up!’

He cursed in vain.

Then he jumped atop the wall. ‘Fiftieth, damn you for ever if you do not follow!’

At once he fell back dead. A captain fell likewise by his side. Hervey saw the ensign he had just spoken to clutch his throat and fall forward. No one else would quit the cover of the wall.

‘Dear God, that was Stanhope I do believe,’ said the general. He turned to his brigade-major. ‘The Fiftieth had better withdraw, I think.’

He strode off upright and careless, not the slightest degree hurried.

The major of brigade began looking about for an officer to give the order to, but he could see none. ‘The devil, Mr Hervey! There must be one at least. Where is Napier?’

Hervey was at the same loss to know, and looked it.

‘Hervey, I cannot leave the general like this. Be so good as to find an officer and give him the order to withdraw. I should be most particularly obliged, Hervey.’

Hervey ran the length of the wall – close on fifty yards – but found no one above the rank of serjeant-major, and he lying with a bullet in his shoulder.

‘Where is Colonel Napier?’

‘Major Napier, sir. He’s up the lane.’ The serjeant-major began coughing.

Armstrong bellowed at two private men to get a blanket to carry him to the rear.

‘Major Stanhope was trying to get the men forward to ’im, sir, but they wouldn’t have it.’

Hervey cursed them beneath his breath. ‘Are there no officers, Serjeant-major?’

‘There was just Captain James, sir, and Mr ’Eal. The rest would be with the major.’

Hervey wondered what to do. He could not simply pass the brigadier’s order to a wounded serjeant-major. He saw no other course but to go forward himself.

‘Steady on, sir,’ said Armstrong, gripping his arm again. ‘If we try getting over yon wall there’s no saying we won’t end up like the others.’

Hervey’s mouth fell open. ‘We have to!’

‘Ay, sir, I know that. But not leaping up like Jack-in-a-box!’

‘Then how?’

‘Serjeant!’ bellowed Armstrong. ‘Will you get your men to put double charges in them muskets to make smoke for us?’

‘I will, sir!’ Without rank on Armstrong’s sleeve, it was easy for the man to suppose he was at least his equal.

It took a minute to make ready, but there were then two dozen muskets by the wall.

Armstrong looked pleased.

‘Fire!’

A thick black cloud engulfed the wall. Hervey and Armstrong scrambled over at once, Hervey losing his cross-belt in the process – another fifteen guineas to the Spanish dirt. They fairly sprinted up the lane: sixty yards and more, bodies the length of it, redcoats and voltigeurs alike, testimony to a vicious running fight. Bullets cracked the whole way.

‘Halloo!’

‘Thank God,’ gasped Hervey, hurling himself behind the wall. ‘Major Napier, sir?’

‘There,’ the man indicated, his tattered scarlet barely recognizable as a captain’s of His Majesty’s 50th Foot, the Queen’s Own.

Major Charles Napier was sitting propped against the wall, his ankle bound with his sash. Crimson though it was, it could not disguise the copious loss of blood.

‘Sir, General Bentinck instructs that you are to retire.’

Napier looked crestfallen. ‘See about you, sir. This is all that remains of the battalion.’

Hervey saw a dozen men, with perhaps four officers. ‘No, sir. There are more. I saw them in the village, though there are many wounded.’

In a way it was the last thing that Napier wanted to hear, especially from a man in a different uniform.