Allan Mallinson: A Close Run Thing

A look of contentment settled on the major, for at a stroke these orders relieved him of the necessity of risking the altercation with his brigadier.

‘Edmonds!’ Cotton exclaimed when at length he noticed him, and in a manner uncommonly genial. ‘A very good day to you! That was a smart little action on the flank. One of Lord Wellington’s observing-officers was concealed nearby and witnessed the whole affair. It seems the French were intent on harassing our flank but were discouraged into thinking we held there stronger than we did! Who was commanding the picket?’

Every nerve and sinew in him tensed at this promising development: ‘Cornet Hervey, General.’

‘Well, Cornet Hervey did us deuced fine service. That battery would have wrought a pretty destruction had it come into action. I shall meet him in due course, I trust?’

The fortunes of war could still take Edmonds by surprise in spite of his long years in the king’s service. An observing-officer, gone to ground on his way back from behind the enemy’s lines no doubt — by heavens, this was opportune, a most capital turn of events! But he knew there was a distance still to run, and he avoided meeting Slade’s eye, hoping to give him time to choose a line of withdrawal. Slade had indeed been studiously ignoring him, failing to acknowledge his presence even; but years of intriguing had told Black Jack when to withdraw, and he now seized the opportunity which Edmonds’s rare composure offered.

‘Cornet Hervey was hurt slightly in the action, Sir Stapleton; my own physician is attending to him over there now’ — indicating the tree under which the Edinburgh medical man, in his incongruous black Melton coat, was fussing with bandages and salving oil. Did Slade know of the battery action after all, wondered Edmonds, or was he just quick to sense a tight corner? Likely as not he would never know.

Cotton trotted over to Hervey who struggled to his feet despite the physician’s remonstrations.

‘Mr Hervey, I am glad we meet. You did well today. How is that leg?’

‘Thank you, sir; it is very well enough. The surgeon here says it will not keep me out of the saddle.’

I said that it may not,’ corrected the Edinburgh man, with barely concealed indignation at being called a surgeon.

‘Then, indeed, it will not,’ insisted Hervey.

‘Good man, good man!’ said Cotton approvingly. ‘But I doubt you will need to be in the saddle for much longer. The French are done for — and I mean not for today only: our agents are reporting that the end cannot be far off.’

After a few more words of solicitude and encouragement, and some further intercourse with Slade out of earshot of the others, the commander of Wellington’s cavalry spurred his horse back in the direction whence he had come, leaving Slade to give the orders which Edmonds had anticipated a full half-hour before.

‘Shall I take Cornet Hervey back with me, then, General?’ he ventured.

‘Yes, yes, he is obviously fit for duty,’ replied Slade dismissively, without reference to the arrest.

Private Johnson, Hervey’s groom, whose own lowly coup d’œil was every bit a match nevertheless for this delicate moment, had already brought up the black gelding. An uncomfortable, if localized, silence followed as Hervey limped across to where Lieutenant Regan stood, like a small dark cloud, in mute brooding. Without a word he stooped to pick up his sword, which lay, as in some allegory of dishonour, at Regan’s feet. The ADC said not a word, either: none was necessary, for his look said everything, none of it pleasant.

As they left the knoll Edmonds was careful to do so at a trot, though all his instincts, and not least the horses’, were to gallop like fury. ‘I am sorry, sir, that—’ tried Hervey when they had put some ground between themselves and the brigade commander.

‘God preserve us, boy!’ snapped Edmonds, leaving Hervey to wonder from what precisely. Little purpose would have been served by his asking, however; for Edmonds had scant idea, either, only a sense of the need for divine providence. It had been the narrowest of escapes, and he did not doubt that the last of it was yet to be heard.

Hervey was by no means entirely comfortable back in the saddle for, expertly though his leg had been bandaged, it was not the place to be resting it. But this was nothing to how he was to feel when they reached the regiment. Corporal Collins’s dispatch had evidently been relayed through the ranks for there was loud cheering as they approached, and though he might well bask in that approval — for he had certainly had none from Edmonds — so loud and triumphant was the clamour that it must surely have carried across to Slade’s knoll. He sensed as well as Edmonds that it would only fuel the general’s resentment and make worse the eventual retribution. But the cornet’s horizon was the next hill and the next minute, and the discomfort would soon pass. Edmonds could not afford to set his sights so close, however: too much in his service told of the hundred and one ways Slade’s vindictiveness might be visited on them. Their best hope lay in this war’s coming to the rapid end which Sir Stapleton Cotton had predicted, though there was little enough sign of that. Nor was there any sign of the activity which he presumed might be consequent on that assessment. If the French were on the point of collapse, then it was the function of the cavalry to hurry them along. Now was surely the time to throw caution to the wind and launch them all at Soult’s lines of communication, was it not? What in heaven’s name was there to lose? he wondered.

‘Mr Barrow!’ he roared.

The adjutant closed up from where he had posted himself, three horse-lengths behind, next to the guidon and Edmonds’s trumpeter. The Sixth still carried the colonel’s guidon in the field — many regiments had abandoned the practice — though the squadron guidons had been left in England. When any movement was to be executed, the adjutant took up his position with the other serrefile officers to the rear, but he otherwise liked to keep close to Edmonds so that he could heed his orders at first hand.

‘I wish you to have the following prepared for my signature at the first opportunity. Do you have your pocket-book?’

‘Sir!’

‘Very well. To Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Fitzroy Somerset, Military Secretary, Headquarters, etc., etc. Sir, I have the honour— No, wait — begin again. It is my humble duty to submit with regret my resignation, to be effective at your Lordship’s pleasure.’ Edmonds paused. Barrow looked up with no more expression of surprise than if he had been taking orders for bivouac. Edmonds cleared his throat and continued. ‘In so doing, I place upon record my— No — begin again. I thereby protest at the want of ardour in the employment of the cavalry and’ — he paused once more — ‘the tergiversation in the conduct of the campaign.’

Barrow raised an eyebrow, not certain that he would be able to find anyone capable of spelling this latter complaint, nor even of explaining its meaning. ‘Is that all, sir?’

‘That is all, thank you, Barrow.’

The adjutant raised both eyebrows and then resumed his place with the guidon, knowing it to be unlikely that the draft would ever be called for (it was the third that Edmonds had dictated that year alone).

For another three hours the Sixth stood fast, Edmonds with every expression of serenity conceivable, and more, certainly, than anyone could have imagined. But as evening drew on he became less composed, and by dusk he was as thoroughly agitated as he had been that morning. The temporary remitting of the toothache in the afternoon past, he was sorely vexed now by the general inertia. ‘Fabius Cunctator!’ he spat.