Allan Mallinson: A Close Run Thing

Serjeant Strange chose to send the news to Edmonds with Hervey’s covering-corporal, for he could not trust Serjeant Armstrong to deliver a coherent report in the circumstances, let alone a detached one. And he knew that the combination of Edmonds’s temper and Armstrong’s was the very last thing that was needed now. Corporal Collins’s big gelding had once been the proud possession of the commanding officer of a regiment of French hussars, but the corporal had cut him down in a brilliant little affair at Campo Mayor three years before. Even a French aristocrat’s charger could rarely outpace a good British troop horse, but this gelding was an exception and the corporal covered the three-quarters of a mile or so, to where the rest of the 6th Light Dragoons were drawn up, in a fast straight line.

It would not have taken a practised eye to discern that the Sixth had been on campaign for several seasons. For though they stood in perfect order of three squadrons in line, numbered from the left, they were in double rank only, the regiment’s strength having fallen to two troops in each squadron. The troops were still able to front the regulation sixty men, however (less the half-troop of Hervey’s patrol from Number 1 Squadron), and twenty or so dragoons stood with the farriers as supernumeraries to the rear. The horses were a mixed bag, Irish mainly and beginning to regain the semblance of sleekness as their winter coats grew out. Some were of real quality: those which the regiment’s colonel had purchased when they had been in England, and for which he had reached deep into his own pockets. Since arriving in the Peninsula, however, remounts had been found under collective arrangements, and from divers sources, and some were barely up to weight. It was the lament of every cavalry mess that England must indeed be in peril to have run short of troop horses. The same in its way could have been remarked of the dragoons themselves: without doubt, many of the troopers would never have got the better of a recruiting Serjeant’s pride in peacetime. As for their clothing, an untutored observer might have concluded that a hatmaker had reached some advantageous arrangement with the quartermasters, for every shako seemed as new compared with the rest of the uniform, which was faded and patched to a marked degree. In truth the shakos were new, of a pattern only recently authorized, and although they were nothing in appearance to compare with the older Tarleton helmets they stayed put in action and the oilskin covers kept them dry. At a distance of fifty yards the regiment was a fine sight: only closer inspection would reveal the signs of wear, as it would, too, that ‘A’ Troop’s jackets were in distinctly better condition, their captain having used his own wealth to engage the services of Spanish tailors during winter quarters.

The Sixth were sitting easy on the same piece of ground they had occupied since first light that morning. Many of the troopers were leaning forward on the rolled cloaks over the saddle arches, and a good number were smoking clay pipes. Corporal Collins found Edmonds not in his appointed position to the front of the regiment but as a serrefile to the left of the first squadron, doubtless attempting, but vainly, to conceal his frustration with the regiment’s enforced inactivity. Edmonds’s bad humour was exacerbated, too, by the worst toothache he had ever known. He had already taken two sizeable draughts of laudanum that morning, more than three times the quantity prescribed as efficacious by the regimental surgeon, and it would be many hours before he could expect to have the offending molar drawn by a tooth-operator. He certainly had no intention of risking the surgeon’s pelican after that hamfisted fool had dislocated one poor trooper’s jaw earlier in the week.

Scarcely had Corporal Collins begun his report but Edmonds began to rage. ‘Damn it, all he had to do was sit on a hill and watch for a few Frenchmen fool enough to cross the canal! What in God’s name …?’

The major’s facility with words extended also to those of the barrack room. Indeed, they frequently seemed his natural and preferred idiom.

‘No, sir, wait, that’s not all.’

Edmonds’s notorious temper, and his present irritability, would have unnerved many an NCO, but Strange had picked his man well: the victor of the single combat with the French colonel would not be frighted by the major’s anger. Besides, the cannier NCOs (and Collins was one of the canniest) knew what lay beneath it. The corporal did what he had done many times before, since the days when he had been a young dragoon in the then Captain Edmonds’s troop: he affected blithe unawareness, and pressed his report with determination. The major listened to the account of the attack on the battery, and what followed, with mute but growing disbelief until another pang of excruciating pain made him explode again. ‘Why, for mercy’s sake, was he placed in arrest, then? What the devil is going on up there?’

Corporal Collins judged it beyond the responsibilities of his rank to comment, though he could for certain have given a perceptive enough appreciation. Instead he sat silent: opinions about the staff would have to wait for the canteen. The major, taking a strong but not altogether effective grip of his anger, and biting hard into a lint wad soaked in oil of cloves, summoned ‘A’ Troop’s leader who, as one of the senior captains, was also the officer commanding Number 1 Squadron.

‘Captain Lankester, I may presume that you heard our corporal-galloper, and it will be no shave, I’ll warrant. A very pretty mess indeed! I wish you to send an officer at once to the flank picket to relieve Serjeant Strange.’

Another spasm jerked him as if a musket ball had struck his jaw. ‘Corporal Collins, you stay here. Go and rejoin your troop!’ he barked.

Joseph Edmonds reined about to face front again, and cursed audibly and even more foully than before. It was not the pain so much — he had endured worse under the surgeon’s knife during his service — but the way that all before him seemed to be unravelling, like a loose horse-bandage. He had not the slightest control over matters, and seemingly no influence. He began wishing Lord George Irvine were back; that damned tirailleur’s bullet which had smashed the colonel’s shoulder at Croix d’Orade three days earlier had been about the worst-timed shot of the campaign! He was relishing this acting command right enough, albeit without even a brevet promotion to lieutenant-colonel (as he might have expected), but he knew General Slade despised him — a conclusion it was not difficult to come by, although Slade seemed to despise everybody, especially if they showed the remotest chance of doing something that might reflect his own inadequacy.

‘Laming will relieve Serjeant Strange, sir,’ Lankester informed him after dispatching his lieutenant to the picket. He might as easily have resumed his place in front of his squadron, and with every propriety, for Edmonds had all but formally dismissed him; but Lankester had seen the storm cones hoisting and experience suggested that a weather eye would be prudent.

‘Captain Lankester, do you suppose that damned stupid fellow has the remotest idea what he is about?’

‘You refer to General Slade, sir?’

‘Indeed I do, sir, though I cannot claim any novelty in that description, as you very well know. It was Lord Uxbridge’s, and never has his opinion of Slade been more fully justified than during these several past months. What deuced ill-fortune has placed us in his brigade? And now it seems that his own staff are every bit as stupid as he!’

‘I think he has never recovered from the affair at Maguilla.’

‘I do not think that Wellington himself has recovered from Maguilla. The whole Maguilla business was absurd. A few of the Royals’ squadrons become over-excited, press on too far for their own good and get a fraction cut up, and Wellington says that all his cavalry are fit for is drilling on Wimbledon Common! What a confounded insult! What a—’ Yet another spasm contorted his face, and a string of expletives followed. ‘And now Slade tries to curb all vigour in his subordinates, and hangs the arse at any price rather than risk another of Wellington’s scoldings. The man’s fit only for a depot squadron!’