Hervey 08 - Company Of Spears (4 page)

‘Hervey?’

He woke from his troubled contemplation to see the Chestnut Troop’s captain saluting. ‘Dalbiac, you are finished?’

‘There is one round left per gun. I would have them limber up and come into action again on that ridge yonder. Shall you charge?’

It was the usual way, and it would go hard with the dragoons if he said ‘no’, especially with the Chestnuts galloping half a mile to the ridge, but he was determined to work the regiment by degrees rather than give every trooper his head and then count the fallers. ‘We shall not charge; we shall advance deliberately, with skirmishers out. Thank you for your support. How are your injured gunners?’

Captain Dalbiac frowned. ‘The number seven’s not long for this world, and the ventsman will likely lose his thumb.’

‘Then I am sorry for them both.’

‘The number seven occasioned his own misfortune, and if the ventsman
hadn’t
burned his thumb to the bone there’d be the devil to pay!’

Hervey nodded. Fireworking was a hazardous affair, and it could only be done with the most faithful of drill. If the ventsman had not burned his thumb to the bone it would have proved he had not held it to the vent diligently. ‘Very well. Perhaps you will let us occupy the ridge first and then join us for a final discharge?’

Captain Dalbiac saluted, reined about and cantered back to his guns.

Hervey glanced left and right. The line’s dressing was good enough. ‘The regiment will fire by half squadrons! Draw carbines!’

Four hundred right hands reached to the leather ‘buckets’ on the offside of the saddles to draw the short muskets – the cavalry carbines – just as Hervey had so often seen in the French war. There were not many veterans of those days now: the serjeants, for the most part, had been at Waterloo, and the majority of them were seasoned Peninsular men, though fewer than half had been at Corunna. Of the corporals, there was but a handful who had clambered into the boats at ‘Groyne’ that day. It had been almost twenty years ago; what else did he expect?
The old order changeth.

Except that in too many respects the old order did not change fast enough. Here they were with the exact same weapon their fathers – even grandfathers – would have been handy with, dependent on a piece of flint to spark loose powder in the pan. The primitives who had lived on Salisbury Plain had worked flints; as a boy he himself had played in the pits. It did not seem to him that the techniques of war had advanced with the dispatch possible. He had lately returned from Portugal in a ship whose power came from steam as much as from the wind, and he knew there were locomotives which derived all their traction from that source. Why, therefore, could science not serve the soldier better? The answer was – and he knew it – that science was perfectly able to serve the soldier, if only the Board of Ordnance would let it. His own life at Waterloo he owed to the merest drop of fulminate of mercury, a percussion cap instead of a flintlock, which had allowed him to fire his soaking carbine when a flint, even if it had sparked, could not have ignited damp powder in the firing pan. Later he had petitioned the board on behalf of an American inventor who had shown him an astonishing revolving-chamber pistol. The authorities had not been impressed, however. Other than for a few riflemen to act as skirmishers, they required an army that could volley, on command, for it was volley fire that broke up massed ranks and columns. Would the enemy be always so obliging as to come on in such a manner?

The Sixth were handy with their carbines at least, observed Hervey as he took post on the right flank with the other officers, allowing the dragoons a clear line of fire, for unlike the gunners they would load live cartridge. ‘By squadrons, carry on!’

The squadron officers now took over the practice.

‘Load!’

Ramrods clattered as dragoons tamped the one-ounce balls.

‘Front rank, even numbers, advance!’

One hundred dragoons pressed their troopers to the walk.

‘Halt!’

They checked, inclining right in the prescribed manner so as to be able to fire to the flank rather than over the horses’ heads.

‘Present!’

Up came the carbines to the aim, though there were no targets.

‘Fire!’

It was a good volley, but there were slow ignitions and misfires. Some of the horses shied; only one bolted. Hervey watched intently as next the odd numbers advanced half a dozen paces beyond the evens, presented and fired. And then the same again with the rear rank. Four volleys in all.

On the whole the horses stood them well, thought Hervey, but he could hardly be satisfied with the rate of misfires, and on a morning with not a touch of dampness in the air. ‘Very well,’ he said to the adjutant, as grey smoke drifted towards them. ‘Have them re-form in double rank.’

‘Sir.’

The adjutant moved to the front to give the executive commands, while the smoke rolled the length of the line, quite obscuring the front rank’s line of sight. Hervey wondered if here, too, science might not serve them better. Was it contrary to the nature of the elements to require powder to burn without excessive smoke? Was there such a thing as fire without smoke? Smoke stood in the way of observation on the battlefield; he had only to recall the day at Waterloo, when it had been the very devil of a job to see what the French did. More than once had the duke’s infantry fired on his own cavalry. But it was more than mere obscuration: every time a dragoon discharged his carbine he gave away his position. In line it mattered not at all, but on outpost duty it might make the difference between staying put or having to withdraw. Except that the weapon in these men’s hands possessed neither the range nor the accuracy to exploit the advantage of smokeless powder. Hervey shook his head. Here they were on Hounslow Heath going through the exact same evolutions of that day a dozen years ago, which was supposed to have been an end to the
Grande Armee
and the system that had need of it. There was no denying that there were armies still on the Continent, but he had seen enough in India these past six years to know there were other ways of war. If he, a mere acting-major of light dragoons, could see it, then there were sure to be those in the armies of France, and Russia and Austria – even Prussia – who could see it too. What if those armies were to embrace science (England had no monopoly in this field, even if she had the lead) and put to nought the superiority in drill and courage of His Majesty’s men? He was sure the Royal Navy would be thinking ‘scientifically’, for in the navy there was no disdain of innovation. Quite the opposite, indeed: he could not easily forget the steamship in the Rangoon river in the late war with Ava.

But now they would end the field day with an advance in line, sabres drawn, exactly as they had done at the close of Waterloo. At that glorious moment, too, Hervey had been at the head of the Sixth, the senior officer remaining in the saddle, though still but a cornet. Well, he had them again now, and on the same terms (for as long as it took to replace him); he had better let them have their gallop after all! And he had better do it exactly as the drill book prescribed.

He turned to his trumpeter, whose mare stood composed at last. ‘Draw swords!’

Corporal Parry, commanding officer’s trumpeter since the Sixth had come back from India, put the bugle to his lips and attacked the
arpeggiando
quavers and semi-quavers as if the enemy were before them. It was not the hardest of calls, but neither was it one to falter over at the end of a field day.

Out came four hundred sabres, more or less as one.

‘Forward!’

The simplest of the calls – just an E and a C, two semis and a quaver, repeated the once.

The line heaved forward, and the cursing began at once. Hervey fancied he recognized the NCOs’ voices – ‘Sit up, there!’ ‘Get back!’ ‘Close up, you idle man!’

‘Trot!’

Short, bumping quavers on C, E and G.

Every horse recognized the call, but on different notes. The line billowed like sheets in the wind. ‘Hold hard, damn you!’ ‘Get up, there! Get up!’ ‘Steady!’

Hervey glanced back. The sight was not propitious. But it was too late now. ‘Gallop!’

Corporal Parry blew creditably – the same notes, but in different time.

Hervey glanced over his shoulder again. The line was about as straight as a gaggle of driven geese. He might as well prove to them just how much drill they still had need of: ‘Charge!’

Corporal Parry managed the triplets admirably until the third repetition when he was bumped hard by a dragoon behind, and nearly lost a tooth.

Hervey heard him curse the man as foully as ever he’d heard from Armstrong. He glanced behind once more, saw the line of lofted sabres, and put his spurs into Gilbert’s flanks for more speed: he was damned if he was going to be overtaken by what looked like a band of irregulars. Great God, what work there was to be done yet!

II

THE GRIM REAPER

Later

When they were come back to Hounslow barracks, Hervey handed over the parade to the senior captain and rode to the commanding officer’s stables at the back of the officers’ house. Here were four loose boxes, altogether quieter and more comfortable than the standing stalls of the troop-horse lines. Private Johnson was waiting.

These days, Hervey considered Johnson more soldier-servant than groom; except that the RSM would dispute that he answered any longer to the description ‘soldier’ (and even ‘servant’ would not have done in any proper establishment). The care of Hervey’s two chargers, Gilbert, who had survived two crossings of the Equator and the siege of Bhurtpore, and Eliab, Jessye’s foal, was largely given to Private Toyne, a good coper who prior to joining the Sixth three years past had learned his business around the horse fairs of Westmoreland.

Johnson was now about thirty-seven years old (the details of his birth were not recorded comprehensively), a year Hervey’s senior, a single man still, with no home but that of the 6th Light Dragoons, which some were still pleased to call ‘Princess Caroline’s Own’ although the title had long since been officially withdrawn out of deference to the Prince Regent, now King George IV. Johnson was a contented man, on the whole, given to speaking his mind, not always with optimism but unfailingly with honesty and absolute loyalty. He had joined the Sixth before the Peninsular campaign, a boy of fifteen-ish, lately of a Hallamshire orphanage and the Barmby Furscoe deep coal mine. Twice, when fire damp had ignited, and the explosion had brought down the roof, Johnson had been buried along with the pit pony he had been leading, and so after the second explosion, two months before Trafalgar, he had joined the army, certain that it must be an altogether healthier and safer occupation. His subterranean connection with equines had led him into the ranks of the Sixth rather than to the infantry’s recruiting serjeant, though at that time there was more enlistment money to be had for a red coat than for a blue one.

Johnson had refused any promotion in the two decades since then, which seniority alone should have brought him (although he was not entirely without merit for corporal), convinced as he was that the extra duties and responsibilities were not worth the additional pay. In any case, he was content with his billet, so to speak, and the intimacy – the increasing intimacy – with the man to whom he had been groom for near a decade and a half. When Henrietta had died (he had been devoted to her in very high degree) he had left the colours in order to remain with ‘his’ officer; and when Hervey had rejoined the Sixth a year or so later, he had rejoined too without demur even though he was exchanging an agreeable life in a pleasant Wiltshire village for the uncertainty of one in the cantonments of East Bengal. As commanding officer’s orderly now, although ‘acting’ because Hervey himself was acting in that appointment, he enjoyed a position of some prestige, elevated above the ranks while still ‘Private’ Johnson, beyond the effective reach of any NCO since none would wish to incur the proxy wrath of the commanding officer, and yet with no responsibility beyond that which he had shouldered these past years attending to Cornet, now Acting-Major, Matthew Hervey.

Hervey handed Gilbert’s reins to him, and Johnson in turn handed them to Private Toyne.

‘There’s an express for thee, sir.’

Hervey froze. ‘From Wiltshire?’

‘Ay, sir.’ Johnson’s tone was subdued. He knew that no one sent good news express; not that anyone had ever sent
him
an express.

Hervey knew it too:
For evil news rides post, while good news baits.
He breathed deeply. ‘Who has it?’

‘Adjutant, sir.’

It was a mark of the gravity of the news that Johnson was being punctilious in the formality of his address, and it did not escape its hearer. ‘Do you know what it says?’

Johnson was surprised: Hervey must know that an express from Wiltshire, especially one held by the adjutant for his commanding officer, would not be revealed to a mere private man, for all the elevated position of his officer. Yet he continued evenly in his reply. ‘No, sir, I don’t.’