Swordpoint (2011) (37 page)

It was another battle behind them, another step nearer home. It hadn’t been a big battle compared with Alamein or Dunkirk, but, like Snipe and Kidney Ridge in the desert, it would be remembered. There’d be reports to write, more men to promote. There would probably even be a new colonel if Yuell’s wound proved bad enough. In the meantime, as senior surviving officer, he supposed he’d be in command, and it would be pleasant to be running the show especially in Trepiazze, under the gaze of Graziella. He could remember every line and curve of her face, and her habit – half grave, half amused – of wrinkling her eyes at the corners as she explained something for him or sought a difficult English word. Then it struck him that, as commanding officer, he didn’t have to share his billet with anyone and could have the whole house to himself if he wished, able to enjoy Graziella’s company without Deacon bursting in, loud in his complaints about Syzling. He found he was looking forward to it enormously.

Yuell was sitting in a jeep in San Bartolomeo as they arrived. He looked pale and his leg was swathed in bandages. But he’d insisted on waiting for them to appear before he would allow himself to be taken away. Warley called for an eyes right and they gave him one that made their eyes click, while Warley threw him up a salute which would have done credit to the Brigade of Guards. Yuell returned it gravely. There was nothing more he asked for than this gesture from these men. His leg was agonisingly painful, he was full of dope, but he knew there was nothing now for him to do. He could rely on Warley to look after things. He’d arrived under Yuell’s command four years before, a wide-eyed youngster still wet behind the ears and with a tendency to refer to the regimental colours hanging in Ripon Cathedral as ‘those flags’. Now, he was capable of running the battalion and running it well, and Yuell intended to see that he was promoted into Peddy’s place – and further if possible.

‘Thank you,’ he said to the jeep driver. ‘That’s all I wanted. To see them safe back. We can go now.’

There was hot food waiting for them in San Bartolomeo, and this time there was no shelling. And at long last there was dry straw to lie on, dry rooms to sit in, no longer the smell of damp and the chill of running water. Soon every bush and wall would be festooned with washed and drying clothing.

Several officers he knew came in to speak to Warley and congratulate him on what they’d done. He took it all as it came. They’d been told to take San Eusebio and they’d taken it. It was as simple as that. But now, before the quartermaster arrived with his new issues and they were still wearing the dirt of battle, there was a quiet happiness about him that was reflected in the faces of Jago, Deacon, Farnsworth, Gask, Fletcher-Smith and every single man who’d conducted himself with honour in the fight.
They’d
been there and these others had not. Only
they
knew what it had been like.

The thought ran through Warley’s mind again and again. It produced a sort of contempt for other men, an unfair contempt, he knew, because their turn would come – very likely while he was sitting safely in Trepiazze holding Graziella Vanvitelli’s hand. But it existed nevertheless. Henry of Navarre had summed it up exactly in a reply to one of his boastful generals.

‘Go hang yourself, brave Crillon. We fought at Arques, and you were not there.’

That was the whole point of the thing. All that was left after you’d sifted through the rubbish dump of heroism and ineptitude, good will and jealousy, life and death – what soldiers lived on when they were too old to do anything else but remember.
They’d
been at San Eusebio and the others had not. Despite everything, it was curiously satisfying.

Published by House of Stratus

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