Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War (49 page)

Two ADCs sped off. Hervey wondered if he ought to go too, but Colonel Long bid him stay.

He came as close as he thought right; he could not approach the army commander without leave.

Sir John Moore tried to raise himself on his good arm.

‘No, John, take your ease,’ said Graham softly.

Hervey was not ten yards from them now, trying to hold Fox still as orderlies took up the others’ reins. He saw the army commander trying to turn his head to see the Forty-second.

‘They advance yet, Sir John,’ said Hardinge, gripping the general’s hand.

Sir John Moore said nothing.

‘Let us get him some cover, at least,’ said Colonel Graham, as calmly as he could. He looked about. ‘You there, sir!’

A big, broad-shouldered highlander standing sentry to his battalion’s largepacks doubled to. Colonel Graham gestured towards a wall close by. The man picked up the bloody body of the army commander, carried him as if a child-in-arms, and laid him down in the lee.

Surgeon McGill of the Royals came up and began work at once. A roundshot had torn open the shoulder so deep that the lung was exposed; the ribs over the heart and part of the collarbone had splintered into he knew not how many pieces; the muscles of the breast were torn into strips, and the arm was hanging by a thin length of flesh and coat sleeve. He took a piece of cloth from the wound, and two buttons, but he knew he could do no more.

‘I think we should move him to the rear,’ he said quietly, but in a voice that spoke of no expectation of recovery.

The big highlander returned with three of his fellows, and a blanket.

The army commander was so composed that Colonel Graham began wondering if the wound were not as bad as it appeared. ‘I think once the surgeons are able to dress it properly all should be well, Sir John,’ he tried, laying a silk handkerchief over the devastated shoulder.

‘No, no, Thomas. I feel that is impossible. You had better summon John Hope. Tell him I am wounded and carried to the rear.’

The highlanders began lifting him. They were burly men who might fell another with one blow, yet they took up their countryman with the tenderness a midwife took up the newborn.

Hervey could scarce believe what a split second had brought, the army commander at once active, masterly, inspiring, and then broken in a way that must turn the course of things beyond imagining. A split second: the random strike of shot or shell. Now he understood how precarious battle was, not just how dangerous.

He made a move suggesting he should do the galloping. Colonel Graham nodded.

When he returned with General Hope, the Guards were standing ready, bayonets fixed, where the left of Bentinck’s brigade had looked most vulnerable. The skirmishers of General Edward Paget’s division – riflemen of the Ninety-fifth – were harassing the flank of the French column which had come to a standstill in the face of the King’s Own’s steady volleying. Hope saw at once that his right was secure enough; looking through his telescope he could see that the French dragoons in the distance were turning back, unable to do anything in such trappy country in the face of fire from Paget’s skirmishers. But to his front the situation was uncertain. There was so much smoke he simply could not tell where the Forty-second and the Fiftieth now were. The two six-pounders nearby had been silent for a quarter of an hour, fearful of firing on their own side, and there was no sign of Bentinck.

Colonel Graham came galloping back from the right flank. ‘General, the right is holding strong, though Wynch is carried to the rear. I have told the Fourth to face front once more, now that Paget’s men are come.’

‘That is as well. Where the devil is Bentinck? There’s neither divisional commander nor brigadier.’

‘I do not know, General. He may have gone forward into Elvina.’

‘It is most irregular,’ growled Hope.

Colonel Long turned. ‘See there, General!’

To their left, redcoats were advancing down the slope.

‘What the devil do they do!’

‘It will be Manningham’s brigade,’ said Graham. ‘They see, I expect, that the Forty-second must be in peril. The smoke will not be as bad where they stood.’

General Hope said nothing for the moment. Then he turned his horse. ‘Very well. Graham, send word to the Guards they are to stand fast, and to Leith to put his reserve battalion at Manningham’s disposal. And we had better find Bentinck.’

Colonel Graham sent gallopers to the two brigadiers. He looked about, saw how few they had become, and turned to Colonel Long, shaking his head. ‘I think your man might search Bentinck out, Long. I can’t spare any more.’

‘As you please. Mr Hurley!’

Hervey closed, wondering if it were right to correct him, but judged it to no purpose. ‘Colonel?’

‘Find Lord William Bentinck, if you will, and inform him that General Hope would see him as soon as may be.’

Hervey hesitated to ask where he might begin to look, smarting still over the Guards rebuke. And yet he must have some clue. ‘I imagine, Colonel, he must be there in Elvina?’

‘Just so. And have a care, do.’

Hervey saluted, reined round and began wondering what was best. It was scarcely two hundred yards to the village, and mounted he would be twice the target. He needed Corporal Armstrong.

He found him behind a wall where the Forty-second had stood, trying to drill out the touch-hole of an eight-pounder which the bombardier had spiked when it looked as if the French would take it.

‘Why, hallo, sir,’ he said cheerily, as if the day were nothing at all.

‘Will you take my horse, please, Corporal Armstrong? I have to go into the village.’

Armstrong looked puzzled. ‘Village, sir?’

‘Elvina, below.’

‘Bloody hell, sir; you’ll not leave me horse-holding while you go there! One o’ these jack’eads can hold the horses.’ He sprinted to where his own was tethered, and took his carbine from the bucket.

Hervey did not protest.

They ran pell mell, the slope still raked by fire from the
voltigeurs
on the high ground. Manningham’s brigade was beginning to gain a mastery of them, but bullets flew close, and they all but dived into the nearest house, breathless. They crawled to a window; outside, the narrow street was little more than a mortuary for the highlanders of the Forty-second and the Fiftieth’s men. And the noise was even worse: cannon thundering, the eerie buzz of the shot as it passed overhead, or the terrible crash as it shattered tiles and masonry; and the sharper crack of muskets in the confines of the street. Where would he begin to look for Lord William Bentinck here?

‘We shall just have to go from house to house I think, Corporal Armstrong.’

‘Reckon so, sir.’

Hervey pulled the pistol from his belt and drew his sabre.

Once outside he had a mind to run, but so many were the dead and wounded that it was futile. Round the first corner a welter of musket balls came at them from both sides of the street. All were wide, by some miracle at such close range, but Hervey’s ears rang so bad he thought at first he must be hit.

Armstrong bundled him through the nearest door. Inside was a devastation of broken brick and wounded highlanders. ‘Christ, sir, what’s the matter with yon bastards! Haven’t they enough Frenchmen to blaze at without having a go at us?’ He peered out again at knee height so as not to make a predictable target.

‘It’s that blue, Corporal,’ came a voice from the floor, followed by a choking cough. ‘Like the French.’

Armstrong looked at Hervey. ‘Better had our coats off then, sir.’

Hervey balked: eleven guineas’ worth of best cloth and gold wire cast in a Spanish hovel. But there was no other way.

‘You look after these, mind,’ said Armstrong to the nearest man. ‘We’ll be back for them soon enough.’

Once in the street again, Hervey realized his best course was to get to the other end of the village as fast as he could run. There he ought to find the brigadier, but if not he would surely do so as he worked his way back; it seemed to no purpose Lord William Bentinck’s venturing this far forward without being able to see what his battalions were about. He set off at the double, leaning forward as shot continued to fly over, here and there leaping a body, French or redcoat, with Corporal Armstrong a stride behind him. He saw men crouching, taking no part in the fight, and some of them with chevrons, as if they were awaiting the order to dismiss. He saw others confused-looking, some flinching violently with every new eruption from the main battery. These were the men he had watched only an hour ago coolly practising their arms drill in the face of the cannonade and the French 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.