A Regimental Affair (21 page)

‘Good afternoon, Wick,’ said Hervey, smiling encouragingly at him. ‘Do you see anything at all?’

‘Nothing, sir. There’s not even a rabbit moved since I was posted.’

Hervey searched the ground with his telescope. It revealed nothing too. He handed it to Wick. ‘See if things look different.’

Private Wick had never looked through a telescope before. ‘No, sir; not different, just closer.’

Hervey liked that, and smiled to himself. Of course things only looked closer. But a telescope was worth more to a dragoon on outpost duty than a carbine – yet the Ordnance had none for the issuing. ‘Right then, Wick: tell me your orders.’

The young dragoon began without hesitating an instant. ‘I am to watch the road and all to my front between the white house on the distant far hill, sir,’ he pointed with his sword arm, ‘and the line of the stream to the right. And I am to tell Private Broadhurst as soon as I see anything at all.’

‘Anything?’

‘Ay,
anything
, sir. Private Broadhurst says that the enemy might disguise himself as even an old gypsy woman.’

He said it with very serious purpose. And he was right, for Broadhurst had known ruses like that in Spain. ‘And what then shall Private Broadhurst do on report of a sighting?’

‘He will signal to Corporal Sykes at the picket, sir.’

Hervey turned to Broadhurst. ‘Your signal code?’ He knew he hardly needed to ask.

‘Might Wick give it, sir?’

Hervey nodded.

‘Go on then, Wick,’ said Broadhurst with a smile.

‘I go to the back of the spinney, sir, where I can be seen by the corporal at the picket, and put my horse to walking in a circle. Clockwise if the enemy is a cavalry patrol, the other way if infantry. And I put ’im into a trot if there are a lot of ’em.’

‘Well done, Wick,’ said Hervey. ‘How shall you know if they are cavalry or infantry at the furthest distance?’

‘Because the dust rises higher from cavalry, sir. And for infantry it is lower and thicker.’

‘Good! And what if it is artillery and wagons?’

‘Then the dust isn’t even: it’s all over the place, sir.’

Hervey was pleased. ‘And how might you judge the distance to the enemy?’

‘At seven furlongs you can tell if the enemy is cavalry or infantry, sir. At three, sir, you can count ’eads. And between one and two you can see what uniform they is wearing.’

Hervey turned to Private Broadhurst. ‘You’ve drilled him well. And I think you’ll be the first to put the drills to the test, for this is the enemy’s main route of advance, by my reckoning.’

‘Will he go on through the night, do you think, sir?’

Hervey tilted his head. ‘We have to be ready for the possibility. You are clear as to the signals then?’

‘Ay, sir: unshaded red lantern for enemy approaching, carbine shot for alarm.’

‘And when do you make the alarm, Wick?’ said Hervey, turning back to the young dragoon.

‘If we’re surprised—’

‘Which we
shan’t
be,’ said Broadhurst emphatically.

‘Or if the red light isn’t repeated back to us by the picket,’ added Wick.

‘Just so, just so.’ There was nothing more for Hervey to test. He was sure that if the Duke of Wellington himself were to ride up he could not find fault with this vidette. He turned to leave, but then a notion came to him. ‘Are you a Shropshire man, by any chance, Wick?’ Perhaps it was the way he pronounced ‘light’, as C Troop’s serjeant-major did, and the town boys when Hervey had been at school.

‘Ay, sir,’ replied Wick, with a proud smile both at the fact and at its interest to his officer. ‘From Shrewsbury, sir. Have you been there, sir?’

What Hervey liked about the Sixth – one of the many things he liked – was the way the private men would speak up. He had once tried to coax the most innocent opinion from one of d’Arcey Jessope’s guardsmen, only to be met with incomprehending silence. And here was the youngest dragoon asking him a question. ‘I was at school there,’ he replied.

‘At Shrewsbury school, sir? The big school?’

Private Wick’s first syllable of Shrewsbury rhymed with ‘shoe’, and Hervey was tempted to make a little sport, for many a time he had got close to blows with the town boys over the matter. He thought better of it, though. ‘Yes,’ he said, simply.

Wick positively beamed. ‘My father kept the gate there, sir.’

‘Indeed, yes, I remember now. “Gaoler” Wick, as we called him.’

‘Yes, sir. I knew as that was ’is name among the gentlemen,’ replied the young dragoon, proudly.

Hervey shook his head. ‘Well, I may tell you, Private Wick, your father had a heart of gold. But you will know that already. Many was the time I thawed myself by his fire, and drank his tea.’

Wick was beaming with pride now.

‘Is he well still?’

A frown at once replaced the smile. ‘No, sir. He died two years ago.’

‘Oh, I am sorry,’ said Hervey. ‘Your mother is well provided for?’

‘Oh yes, sir. The school has given her rooms and everything. She does for one of the masters.’ The beam had returned.

Hervey was doubly pleased, for as well as making for a contented dragoon it was what he would have hoped from his old school. ‘Well, Wick, we can continue this at another time.’ He pushed his telescope into its saddle holster. ‘There are things pressing elsewhere, don’t you think, Broadhurst? How long would you suppose it was after us that the regiment left barracks?’

Private Broadhurst thought hard for a moment. ‘Well, sir, knowing ’ow things is at present, they wouldn’t ’ave left until everything were perfect . . . At least three hours, I’d say.’

Broadhurst didn’t miss much, either, thought Hervey. ‘In which case we should expect them within the hour, and then there’ll be two more of good daylight left. They could advance a fair distance before last light – well beyond the Bourne, indeed.’

The estimate proved right. A little after six o’clock the warning sentries began reporting that the videttes were circling. The pickets stood to, the relays brought the intelligence to Hervey’s flag post, and a galloper set off to the notional army headquarters with a first-sighting report at twenty-two minutes past the hour. Later the inspecting staff would compare timings thoroughly, but Major Jago was already noting in his pocketbook that reports arrived with impressive speed and were handled with confidence and despatch. Hervey’s orders to the contact troop were that videttes should fall back on the warning sentries when the enemy came within carbine range (for to remain any longer risked a ball in the back on retiring), and there form a second vidette line while the sentries fell back on the pickets. The pickets would engage the enemy’s scouts, only withdrawing if the advance guards came up in force, by which time the videttes and warning sentries would have taken post on the new observing line behind. These lines Hervey had carefully chosen from the map and confirmed from the saddle with his two troop officers, and, because they had practised the manoeuvres the week before, he was sure they would be able to keep close track of the regiment during its passage of the common – greatly outnumbered though his troop was.

It had taken the firmest resolve on Hervey’s part not to be drawn forward himself. His every instinct was to get a sight of the enemy, and he had thought long about placing himself with Corporal Sykes’s picket. But the best place for a commander, Joseph Edmonds had always said, was where he could best command from. And with videttes and pickets thrown across the most part of a mile of bosky heathland, that place was at the apex of a triangle which allowed reports to come almost as quickly from the flanks as from the centre line. Heavens, it was frustrating though, especially when shots began ringing out along the front. But he knew he could trust his corporals not to allow their pickets to be overrun. What about the flanks, though? Hervey knew that if this were real battle he could expect to count on squadrons abreast of him, but on this scheme there were none. This did not matter, the inspecting officer had said, because the regiment would not be allowed to stray outside its boundaries. What would happen at night, though, or with the dawn’s mist? The enemy could stray,
intentionally or not, and Hervey’s flank pickets would have the devil of a job. At night or in mist, keeping station with the observing line two or three furlongs to the front would take the greatest address, too (on his own scheme the week before, his flanks had been easily turned). He had therefore insisted on two of the most experienced NCOs being put to the task. But still he was unquiet.

Hervey now determined to employ observers
behind
the enemy’s line, as the duke himself had employed them in Spain. The trouble was that he had scarcely men enough for the vidette and picket lines, so he decided to take a gamble by detailing Serjeant Armstrong to the task. This was a costly wager, for he had wanted to place Armstrong at the rally point instead, behind the notional line of infantry two leagues to the rear, where the troop would reunite and be revived, ready for what the inspecting officer might order them to do next. Serjeant-Major Kendall, Hervey feared, was not up to seeing to a rally point by day, let alone by night, but Armstrong behind the enemy was a premium he felt unable to default on. There was nothing for it, then, but to trust the rally point to the troop serjeant-major. That Kendall had botched it on last week’s scheme was a worry, but was not that the purpose of the exercise – that shortcomings could be rectified before today?

At eleven it had been dark for three hours, and the action was still going well. The good moon was working in A Troop’s favour, aiding both detection of the enemy and fast movement by the relays. Major Jago’s own observers were reporting that the picket line continued to retire steadily but without penetration, while from Hervey’s own dragoons there was a continual flow of intelligence on the enemy’s progress. There had been a lull in the last quarter of an hour, though, and Hervey was beginning to get anxious that something was amiss. Major Jago had pressed him for his assessment, and he had had to admit the possibility that the enemy might have trickled through his line here and there: after all, they were hardly greenheads. But it was also true that by now the regiment had been advancing for six hours – tiring for both men and horses, perhaps more so than withdrawing in the face of that advance. Might it be the short halt, then, suggested Hervey: saddles fast, bridles off and nosebags on, and water from the Runnymede ponds where the last reports said the advance guards had reached?

Major Jago had smiled appreciatively on hearing the assessment, and said he would leave him to his own devices for a while.

‘
Sir
,’ whispered Johnson as he came into the old pannage hut which now served as Hervey’s command post.

Hervey thought it strange he should be whispering with quite so much effort.

‘
Sir
,’ he repeated, and with some insistence, gesturing towards the door.

The lantern was bright enough to read a map by, but it only cast shadows across Johnson’s face, and Hervey could not make out what it was he wanted. The door scraped open, and Hervey shot to his feet at the sight of the general officer’s cloak.

‘You did say I might share your bivouac,’ said Henrietta, pulling off the Tarleton and smiling wide.

‘What in heaven’s name are you doing here?’ gasped Hervey. ‘Where did you get that cloak? And those plumes! How did you
get
here?’ He was about to ask a dozen more questions when she stopped him with a kiss. He glanced awkwardly at Johnson, who was making a show of looking the other way.

Henrietta, still smiling, began to rearrange her hair, as if nothing were more normal.

Hervey glanced anxiously at the door. The last thing he needed was to have the inspecting officer find dalliance instead of alertness. ‘My dear, we are in the middle of a battle—’

‘What are you doing in a hut, then?’

‘Well, we are—’ He realized the absurdity of trying to explain. ‘Johnson, would you—’

‘Ay, sir,’ replied his groom. No need to spell it out – sentry duty, the other side of the door. He allowed himself a grin as he squeezed through, and Henrietta grinned back.

When the door was pulled shut she kissed him again, but longer. Hervey pulled open her cloak and slipped his arms around her. ‘
What
—’

She kissed him again. ‘I couldn’t very well ride in a skirt!’