Company Of Spears

accompany.

‘No, if you please; I would rather scout on my own. It will arouse less suspicion, I think.’

Nasmyth looked irritated, but chose not to contest the matter.

‘Do we meet the Sixtieth’s colonel too? I must have words with him.’

‘I do not know,’ said Nasmyth curtly. ‘That is a military matter.’

Hervey turned instead to Major Dalrymple.

‘Neither do I,’ said Dalrymple apologetically. ‘My orders are solely in connection with the cavalry.’

Hervey was angering. It did not seem too much to ask of the man acting on the direct authority of the General Officer Commanding the London District to know such a detail. It was, after all, not unimportant. ‘Very well, I shall ride over to the mills while there’s still daylight.’

Nasmyth shook his head. ‘I wish you would not. The Sixtieth will have taken up their positions by now. It would be very perilous for all.’

‘In God’s name, man, I’ve got to speak with the Sixtieth else sure as fate we’ll blunder into each other! Believe me, I’ve seen it more times than I care to remember, and in circumstances a deal more favourable than these!’

Nasmyth did not rise to the anger. ‘I am sure we can arrange for the Sixtieth’s colonel to come here, Hervey. I’m sure Colonel Denroche would wish it so.’

Hervey bit his lip. He was obliged, by the normal usages of aid to the civil power, to submit to any order from a magistrate, or in this case the representative of the Home Secretary himself, but that did not, in his view, mean submitting to orders as to how to exercise his military authority. Except, of course, where such action might be contrary to the law of the land. He chose to be emollient, however. ‘I shall ride a mile or so yonder, to the crossroads – if this map’s faithful. I want to see what is the going off the road.’ He held his map out to Nasmyth, indicating his objective. ‘This, I take it, is the road by which the intruders will come?’

‘That is our intelligence. With one waggon, covered. And armed.’

Hervey nodded. ‘And then I shall return by the old turnpike along the Lea. I shall be back in an hour,’ he said, turning Gilbert about before there were any more protests and impediments.

* * *

There had been other occasions when he had felt acutely the want of time for reconnaissance. It made no difference whether the enemy was French or Hindoostani – or even Luddite or Irish: a thorough survey of the ground repaid any expense. He rejoiced that for once he had a good map, or rather plan – the Board of Ordnance’s of 1801 – but he understood there had been extensive building during the late war, and it was as well to mark the changes while he could. Here after all was one of the biggest – perhaps the biggest – manufactories in England.

That, however, was not his immediate impression as he came into Waltham Abbey. The town was sleepier even than Enfield. As he turned north into Powdermill Lane and began trotting alongside the river he was at once struck, and to his immense surprise, by how pastoral, how green and pleasant, was the scene: no towering foundries, no ‘dark Satanic mills’, no winding gear to lower poor colliers to the infernal regions, no smoking chimneys to begrime the country thereabout. There were so many trees he might have been in Epping Forest still, or else nearby on good Queen Bess’s old chase. There was no noise but for the creaking of waterwheels, no noxious vapours to sting the eyes and throat, no hurly-burly of any sort; only sailing barges which plied the sluggish Lea as peacefully as if they carried flour to City bakers rather than gunpowder to the Woolwich arsenal. But he knew full well how violence could suddenly intrude even on such a bucolic scene (he had drawn sabre and pistol in the English countryside before). And even here, in the quietness of birdsong and a light breeze in the oaks and elms, there was ever the threat of explosion as great as any he might hear on the battlefield. Greater, indeed: as loud as the magazines at Corunna and Ciudad Rodrigo when their powder had taken a spark; and as unpredictable as a volcano.

He rode north for almost a mile, and still the land was the Board of Ordnance’s. In among the trees he could see the little curved-roof stone buildings, or else flimsy wooden ones which would blow apart readily rather than contain the blast and do fearful destruction to all inside. The more he saw the more astonished he was, for His Majesty’s principal gunpowder mills would, he felt sure, have been at once familiar to great Henry himself when first the manufacture of powder began here three centuries ago. It was a most curious, almost primitive affair, the advances of science and engineering having passed by this very heart of the nation’s machinery of war. There was not even a wall around the site to speak of, nothing to keep out male-factors, although he supposed the road might easily be closed at the southern and northern ends, and then the river on the one side would form a barrier, and the part-canalized Mill Head on the west another. Indeed there were so many cuts and sluices to channel the power- water or let small boats take powder from one process to the next that it appeared to him a veritable little Venice. He would have wished for a more thoroughgoing reconnaissance; all he could do now was gain an impression of the ground over which they might manoeuvre, if ‘manoeuvre’ was not too pretentious a description of a scramble at night after Irish hoddy-noddies.

He had yet to discover it for certain, but he felt sure the place must be stoutly patrolled by watchmen, to whom even a navvy fortified by spirits and armed with a pickaxe handle was not too formidable an opponent, for the watchmen would, of course, be firearmed, or have access to firearms. Doubtless the ringleaders would be carrying pistols; perhaps even muskets. They would think themselves well set up for the night’s work, expecting nothing out of the ordinary of the watch, so that a sharp fusillade from the Sixtieth might confound them altogether. Not that it would be a fusillade: aimed shots was what the Sixtieth’s riflemen would deliver, even in the dark, for there would be moon enough tonight to make out figures at fifty yards. And that was something that spoke of the intruders’ inaptness too: a bit of a moon they no doubt considered to their advantage – enough to light their path but not enough to give them away. Hervey shook his head. Poor fools! It would be no hunter’s moon tonight, but enough to give the pursuer his line; and with each dragoon carrying a torch those who escaped the Sixtieth’s marksmanship would not evade the following sabre. Poor fools; poor, damned, gullible, Irish fools!

The ground to the left of the Powdermill Lane was firm enough. Hervey reckoned a man could run a good way before tiring. A pity it was not soft going, to let a horse overhaul a running man not too far from the road. He could see the odd fugitive getting into the woods on the common, where he would then have the advantage if he kept his head. If this were the only road approaching the mills (the parallel canal a couple of hundred yards across the common had a towpath, but according to his map little more), it would be well to put the better part of the squadron in the woods to begin with, leaving a strong party of carbines at the inlets where the Powdermill Lane and canal converged. The rest could picket the lane and the towpath and then drive the intruders north onto the carbines like beaters at a shoot. Unless they were given to panic (which of course, being Irish, was a very distinct possibility), or bent on murder, there was no reason why every one of them should not be taken prisoner. And that would be of the greatest advantage to the Home Office in their pursuit of intelligence. He needed to know for certain, however, where the Sixtieth were: close garrison of the corning mills and storage sheds was their task, but he must make sure there was no possibility of their mistaking his men for intruders.

‘Halt!’

A rifleman, green-uniformed and grim-faced, stepped into the road from behind a rhododendron bush. Hervey pulled up at once. ‘Good evening, Corporal. I am Major Hervey of the Sixth Light Dragoons.’

The Sixtieth corporal at once shouldered his rifle and saluted. ‘Sir!’

‘I was hoping to find your colonel.’

‘Don’t know where the colonel is, sir. The captain’s just yonder a couple of hundred yards; at the flour mill beyond the big magazine, sir.’

Hervey was surprised by how far north the picket was posted, several hundred yards from any building; but that was a question for the captain. ‘That will do, Corporal. Thank you.’

The corporal stood aside to let him pass. Hervey touched his hat in reply to the second salute, and put Gilbert back into a trot.

The metalled road now turned into soft track, which in turn all but disappeared at the Grand Magazine. Here was a safe enough place reckoned Hervey: it was entirely surrounded by water, though there was no sign of a guard. He picked his way carefully, wondering how they would fare if there were no moon, for the cloud was becoming heavy.

At the mill he met the officer commanding Number One Company, a young captain who quickly told him of