CHAPTER EIGHT
TAKING THE FIELD

Hounslow Barracks, a few days later

The major general commanding the London district was a shrewd man. He knew all there was to know about the interior economy of a regiment, and likewise its drill, but all of this knowledge he had gained in the brigades of foot guards. Of cavalry regiments he knew nothing beyond what they had in common with the infantry, which was not a very great deal. He knew what to look for in a horse, as did any general officer. But he was all too aware that Waterloo light dragoons would demand a careful eye. He had therefore assembled a small inspecting staff of officers from the cavalry and horse artillery, under the command of a Waterloo veteran lately promoted colonel. And a month or so before, he had set the colonel the task of devising a scheme by which the Sixth’s handiness in the field might be tested.

On the day of the inspection, General Browning and his staff rode into the barracks promptly at ten o’clock.

‘General salute; prese-e-ent arms!’ Lord Towcester’s voice carried easily across the closed parade square.

The officers’ sabres lowered to the present just a fraction ahead of the lieutenant colonel’s guidon – as was proper – and the trumpeters, dismounted, sounded the first five bars of the lieutenant general’s salute, as was a major general’s due.

The commanding officer trotted up to General Browning on his blood chestnut to inform him that 467 officers and men of the 6th Light Dragoons were ready and awaiting his inspection. The general nodded in acknowledgement and then reined his charger left to begin his ride down the double rank of dragoons, as the band struck up airs from Figaro, reported to be his favourite opera.

The real work of the administrative inspection had been completed the day before, when the staff had examined every ledger and given every private man the opportunity to raise any grievance. They had found the Sixth to be in good order, and there had been no notices of grievance. The deputy assistant adjutant general – a major of the Coldstream – had reported to the general that the regiment seemed somewhat sullen compared with when he had seen them last in Belgium, but added that there had been so many new recruits that perhaps it was not too surprising that they should lack the old confidence. General Browning was alert to the point, however, and as he rode along the front rank he too thought the men’s eyes lacked just that something he had seen so often in the eyes of light cavalry – a special sort of alertness, eagerness perhaps. Well, he was confident that Colonel Freke Smyth would find out right enough when he put them through their paces on Chobham Common. Then he would know whether he had a regiment he could rely on. For he could not rid himself of the doubt, one way or other, that nagged him still about the affair in Skinner Street: the death of a young cornet in his district (and the Duke of Huntingdon’s son, too) was not something that went easily with him.

After he had gone up and down the ranks the general complimented the commanding officer on the fine appearance of his men. Then the regiment rode past their inspecting officer in troops, first at the walk and then at the trot, wheeling and giving ‘eyes right’ as pleasingly as Browning would have wished to see in his foot guards.

‘Be so good as to have the trumpet-major sound “officers”, Lord Towcester, if you please,’ the general said when he had dismissed the parade.

‘All officers, my lord?’ asked the trumpet-major, saluting as he drove his right foot down at the halt.

Lord Towcester looked at the general.

‘Just the troop leaders and their subalterns.’

The trumpet-major saluted again, turned to his right and marched off five paces to blow the officers’ call.

The quartermasters and other non-combatants – the paymaster, surgeons and veterinarians – looked relieved when the call ended with the G, for the next four bars would have summoned them as well as the squadron officers.

Ten minutes later the squadron officers were assembled in the mess ante-room. ‘Sit down, gentlemen,’ said General Browning as he came in. ‘I wished to see your faces before the real business of the day began. And to say that of one troop I hope to see very little, for I have told your colonel that I intend taking it to act as enemy for the entire scheme.’ He glanced at Lord Towcester.

‘A Troop, General. Captain Hervey’s.’

Hervey bit his tongue. Someone quite evidently had to be the enemy, but it implied that his troop was the one whose services the lieutenant colonel was happiest to dispense with. He rose to identify himself.

‘Very well, Captain Hervey. Report at once with your officers to Colonel Freke Smyth. He will inform you of your duties while I give my intention to the regiment.’

‘It should have been the junior troop – F,’ said Seton Canning when they were outside.

‘I don’t want to hear your opinion of the colonel’s decisions,’ Hervey snapped, seething with anger, though not, in truth, at Seton Canning, for he had worked up his troop so well in the past week that he wanted to see them tested.

Hervey’s discouragement was allayed to an extent, however, when he learned what Colonel Freke Smyth had in mind for them. They were not simply to send men here and there with false reports, or to hand the usual piece of paper to an officer: There is an infantry picket on the high ground to your front. Instead they were themselves to manoeuvre as a troop in the face of the rest of the regiment, which was to advance as if covering an infantry division on the march to first encounter.

‘These are your boundaries, Captain Hervey,’ said the colonel, pointing out the roads and streams across Chobham Common, which he had come to know so well in the last week. ‘There will be officers from the Blues on either flank to ensure that neither your troop nor the regiment transgresses them, and Major Jago from the horse artillery will be my eyes and ears with you yourself throughout.’

Hervey opened his sabretache to make notes.

‘And, mind you,’ warned the colonel, looking him fiercely in the eye, ‘there is to be no faking – no giving way to the other troops just to make them seem crack.’

The thought had not occurred to him, but Hervey knew it must at some stage, for it was only natural to want his regiment to show well.

‘Major Ormonde from the Blues will ride with you, too,’ added the colonel. ‘You are to explain your intentions to him before any manoeuvre, and if he disapproves you are then to follow his express instructions. Is that quite clear?’

‘Quite clear, Colonel.’

‘Good. Then let us now to the detail.’

Hervey had assembled his officers and NCOs in the old tap-house by Chobham Rise. He had left his troop in the hands of Serjeant Armstrong (managing to contrive some plausible reason for not leaving them with the serjeant-major), who would bring them to the rendezvous as soon as their marching order and supply was ready. When Hervey had taken command of the troop he had asked to see the field standing orders, and had been surprised to learn that there were none. So he had dug up an old copy of those that Joseph Edmonds had written before they left Cork for Waterloo, and issued them to his squadron for his own scheme. He hoped that these would gain him a march, for without regimental standing orders there were bound to be discrepancies between troops, entailing last-minute alterations as the commanding officer noticed the lack of uniformity. And Hervey knew that he would need that time, for his orders were for the troop to throw out a vidette line across the whole of the regiment’s frontage.

‘And so, gentlemen,’ he emphasized, coming to the end of his own orders, ‘my intention, repeated, is simply this: the first half-troop, as the contact troop, will observe the advance of the regiment from the Great Park at Windsor, and will fall back along the lines I have indicated.’ He pointed to the excellent new map from the Ordnance Survey, from which the NCOs had made their own sketches. ‘On the flanks, and a full three furlongs behind the contact line, are to be videttes guarding against flanking marches. In the event of the enemy’s attempting such a manoeuvre, the videttes are to give battle briskly and to make out as best they can until relief comes. I do not wish any of the remainder of the contact troop to exchange fire with the enemy unless it is absolutely unavoidable.’ He looked at each man to emphasize the instruction. ‘Let me remind you that in an action such as this, the great object is to see. Fighting is merely a means to this end. There are other means superior and less hazardous, as we demonstrated on our scheme. Barrels clean then, gentlemen, and swords in their scabbards unless it is impossible to move within sight of the enemy.’ It was as well that he laid emphasis on this now, for the true instinct of a light dragoon, he knew all too well, was to draw his sabre and make straight for his man. Outpost work was never so exciting when they were denied a skirmish.

‘Now,’ Hervey continued, ‘the communicating troop shall be formed of the second division. You will establish your relays in the places marked. I shall remain – so far as is possible – on this centre line.’ He pointed to the old Windsor road running north–south across the common. ‘From here I shall send orderlies with reports to the controlling staff at Chobham. With me shall be a corporal and dozen men which you shall nominate.’ He looked directly at Cornet St Oswald, who nodded in acknowledgement. ‘And these shall be held ready, at a moment’s notice, as my reserve. So, having now repeated my intention, do any of you have a question?’

For some time no one spoke. That much was pleasing, thought Hervey. His plan must be straightforward and his explanation clear.

At length Seton Canning looked up from his map. ‘If I can cover the front and have a few men spare, is there any reason why I should not patrol forward of the Bourne, rather than simply awaiting the enemy’s advance?’

‘There is no reason that I am aware of from the staff’s point of view,’ Hervey replied, glancing at the directing officers, Majors Ormonde and Jago. ‘And in ordinary I should urge you to do so, but by my calculation you will scarcely have a man to spare, let alone a patrol. See what comes, though. You know which is the priority. If you can do more, then so much the better. Are there any more questions, gentlemen?’

There were none.

‘Well, let’s go to it. And remember, the general’s orders are that we face the enemy, not friends. Good luck!’

It was the better part of two hours before Lieutenant Seton Canning was able to report that his line of videttes was secure. Just after two, he galloped back to the old coach road where Hervey had planted his flag, and there with Cornet St Oswald they made the necessary adjustments and arrangements for the relay points. It had been many years since the Sixth had carried guidons in the field, but Hervey’s trumpeter carried a lance with a yellow pennant and the letter A in blue, so that his troop leader’s position should be known at once. By night a lantern, with red and yellow glass, would indicate the same, for Hervey had many a recollection of delay and confusion searching out a headquarters in some Spanish village in the pitch dark.

‘Do you have any men to spare to patrol forward of the Bourne?’ he asked his lieutenant, more hopeful than expectant.

‘No, sir. In truth I could do with twenty more for the vidette line, for the country is so trappy on the left flank I’m concerned the enemy might slip through.’

Hervey looked at Cornet St Oswald.

‘I could spare half a dozen, though private men only.’

‘Good man! Send them to first division at once, then.’ He was gratified by St Oswald’s willingness to cede that number. The cornet’s priorities were right enough.

As the assembly broke up, Hervey looked at his watch: almost half-past three, a full hour ahead of the time they had been given to have the line set. He commended his two officers. ‘Yes, gentlemen, very satisfactory indeed! I shall ride forward and check some of the videttes and pickets, and then I shall take post back here by the appointed hour. We are in for a long hard night. I trust there are fires burning now for a warm dinner?’

Seton Canning and St Oswald smiled. Of that he could be certain, they said.

Hervey set off up the old coach road with his new covering-corporal (Troughton had indeed shown well in the past fortnight, and had sewn on his chevron only the day before), along with ‘Susan’ his trumpeter and Private Johnson. He found the picket well sited at the bottom of a shallow hill where the regiment’s advance guards would most likely have to commit themselves to one of two routes through the woodland. The NCO in command told him that Lieutenant Seton Canning had ordered both lanes to be blocked, so that the action of the advance guards, in attempting to clear the blockage, would reveal the intended route of the main body. The dragoons had been busy, therefore. They had felled four trees across the sandy lanes, closing them very effectively, and had put up chevaux de frise, which would cover the picket’s withdrawal nicely if the enemy’s scouts pressed them too hard.

Corporal Sykes had always been a steady man, thought Hervey – his own groom, indeed, when he had first joined for duty. It was good to see him wearing his second stripe to such effect now. ‘Where is the vidette?’ he asked cheerily.

‘A furlong to the front, by the spinney, sir.’

Hervey could see the spinney clearly enough, on the crest of the rising ground, but not the vidette. ‘I see no dragoon. Has he taken post yet?’

‘There’s a couple of men, sir. I’ve put a youngster with Broadhurst – a very promising lad he is too. They won’t show themselves except to signal.’

‘Well done, Corporal Sykes. I’ll ride up there to see what they can see.’

‘Shall I come with you, sir?’

‘No, that’s not necessary. I’ll ride straight there and straight back.’ He turned to his escort. ‘Stay here for the present. There’s no call for kicking up more dust than necessary.’

Lance-Corporal Troughton looked alarmed. It was mock battle, but a covering man had his duty all the same. ‘I shouldn’t by rights let you off by yourself, sir, even to a vidette.’

Hervey had once taken a spontoon in his leg because he had got too far ahead of his coverman. Corporal Collins would have said the same as Troughton, and he was pleased he’d picked a man who could think for himself and was not afraid to speak up. ‘No, you’re right. Johnson, Medwell and Corporal Sykes to remain here then. Corporal Troughton comes with me.’

Hervey put his gelding into a canter towards the vidette. He had still not got used to the idea that Jessye was no longer his charger. Besides anything, Harkaway was so green. There again, he had rather abandoned Harkaway. The splint had put the horse off the road for the best part of a year, it was true, but Hervey felt he had not seen to his schooling properly since then. Indeed, Harkaway had done scarcely a thing for two years but gorge himself on the green grass of East Cork, and Hervey had been hard-pressed in the last month to get him to bend even a little and bring his quarters under. The gelding had a good mouth, though, and a good turn of speed, and above all he was honest. Hervey thought he could have him right by the time they went to Brighton. Gilbert, the grey, would take longer, however, for he was foaled a full two years later. If he could just keep Harkaway between himself and the ground for the duration of the major general’s inspection, he would be well satisfied.

‘Good afternoon, sir,’ said Private Broadhurst, coming out of the spinney and saluting from the saddle of his little bay trooper. He spoke confidently, with a trace of a smile, evidently taken by the captain’s visiting his vidette.

‘Good afternoon, Broadhurst,’ said Hervey, returning the salute and encouraging him to make the smile definite. ‘An English summer’s day. What better thing could there be than a vidette!’

‘Ay, sir. There’s nowt better.’ And Broadhurst meant it. A more straightforward, uncomplicated dragoon had probably never drawn pay. His accent was that of Johnson’s county, but from a little further north, and not nearly so pronounced. Even so, the other dragoons had dubbed him ‘Johnson’s nip’ when he had first joined the troop.

‘Have you seen home since returning from France?’ Hervey swished the flies from Harkaway’s ears. He would need the citronella soon.

‘No, not yet, sir. I was hoping to have leave before the year’s out, though. After Brighton, that is. I’m keen to see Brighton.’

Hervey nodded. Harkaway was getting restless as the flies swarmed thicker. ‘Where is your coverman?’

Broadhurst smiled at the idea he should have a coverman. ‘Private Wick, sir? He’s a good’n, and only eighteen. He’s posted the other side of the spinney keeping watch on the road. Shall I lead you through?’

‘Yes, please. I want to know his orders.’

Private Wick heard them coming, but only turned to salute when they were beside him, so determined was he to have first sighting of the enemy. He had joined after Waterloo, and fretted that he had not yet seen action, especially of an evening in the wet canteen when the stories of that day were being retailed.

‘Good afternoon, Wick,’ said Hervey, smiling encouragingly at him. ‘Do you see anything at all?’

‘Nothing, sir. There’s not even a rabbit moved since I was posted.’

Hervey searched the ground with his telescope. It revealed nothing too. He handed it to Wick. ‘See if things look different.’

Private Wick had never looked through a telescope before. ‘No, sir; not different, just closer.’

Hervey liked that, and smiled to himself. Of course things only looked closer. But a telescope was worth more to a dragoon on outpost duty than a carbine – yet the Ordnance had none for the issuing. ‘Right then, Wick: tell me your orders.’

The young dragoon began without hesitating an instant. ‘I am to watch the road and all to my front between the white house on the distant far hill, sir,’ he pointed with his sword arm, ‘and the line of the stream to the right. And I am to tell Private Broadhurst as soon as I see anything at all.’

‘Anything?’

‘Ay, anything, sir. Private Broadhurst says that the enemy might disguise himself as even an old gypsy woman.’

He said it with very serious purpose. And he was right, for Broadhurst had known ruses like that in Spain. ‘And what then shall Private Broadhurst do on report of a sighting?’

‘He will signal to Corporal Sykes at the picket, sir.’

Hervey turned to Broadhurst. ‘Your signal code?’ He knew he hardly needed to ask.

‘Might Wick give it, sir?’

Hervey nodded.

‘Go on then, Wick,’ said Broadhurst with a smile.

‘I go to the back of the spinney, sir, where I can be seen by the corporal at the picket, and put my horse to walking in a circle. Clockwise if the enemy is a cavalry patrol, the other way if infantry. And I put ’im into a trot if there are a lot of ’em.’

‘Well done, Wick,’ said Hervey. ‘How shall you know if they are cavalry or infantry at the furthest distance?’

‘Because the dust rises higher from cavalry, sir. And for infantry it is lower and thicker.’

‘Good! And what if it is artillery and wagons?’

‘Then the dust isn’t even: it’s all over the place, sir.’

Hervey was pleased. ‘And how might you judge the distance to the enemy?’

‘At seven furlongs you can tell if the enemy is cavalry or infantry, sir. At three, sir, you can count ’eads. And between one and two you can see what uniform they is wearing.’

Hervey turned to Private Broadhurst. ‘You’ve drilled him well. And I think you’ll be the first to put the drills to the test, for this is the enemy’s main route of advance, by my reckoning.’

‘Will he go on through the night, do you think, sir?’

Hervey tilted his head. ‘We have to be ready for the possibility. You are clear as to the signals then?’

‘Ay, sir: unshaded red lantern for enemy approaching, carbine shot for alarm.’

‘And when do you make the alarm, Wick?’ said Hervey, turning back to the young dragoon.

‘If we’re surprised—’

‘Which we shan’t be,’ said Broadhurst emphatically.

‘Or if the red light isn’t repeated back to us by the picket,’ added Wick.

‘Just so, just so.’ There was nothing more for Hervey to test. He was sure that if the Duke of Wellington himself were to ride up he could not find fault with this vidette. He turned to leave, but then a notion came to him. ‘Are you a Shropshire man, by any chance, Wick?’ Perhaps it was the way he pronounced ‘light’, as C Troop’s serjeant-major did, and the town boys when Hervey had been at school.

‘Ay, sir,’ replied Wick, with a proud smile both at the fact and at its interest to his officer. ‘From Shrewsbury, sir. Have you been there, sir?’

What Hervey liked about the Sixth – one of the many things he liked – was the way the private men would speak up. He had once tried to coax the most innocent opinion from one of d’Arcey Jessope’s guardsmen, only to be met with incomprehending silence. And here was the youngest dragoon asking him a question. ‘I was at school there,’ he replied.

‘At Shrewsbury school, sir? The big school?’

Private Wick’s first syllable of Shrewsbury rhymed with ‘shoe’, and Hervey was tempted to make a little sport, for many a time he had got close to blows with the town boys over the matter. He thought better of it, though. ‘Yes,’ he said, simply.

Wick positively beamed. ‘My father kept the gate there, sir.’

‘Indeed, yes, I remember now. “Gaoler” Wick, as we called him.’

‘Yes, sir. I knew as that was ’is name among the gentlemen,’ replied the young dragoon, proudly.

Hervey shook his head. ‘Well, I may tell you, Private Wick, your father had a heart of gold. But you will know that already. Many was the time I thawed myself by his fire, and drank his tea.’

Wick was beaming with pride now.

‘Is he well still?’

A frown at once replaced the smile. ‘No, sir. He died two years ago.’

‘Oh, I am sorry,’ said Hervey. ‘Your mother is well provided for?’

‘Oh yes, sir. The school has given her rooms and everything. She does for one of the masters.’ The beam had returned.

Hervey was doubly pleased, for as well as making for a contented dragoon it was what he would have hoped from his old school. ‘Well, Wick, we can continue this at another time.’ He pushed his telescope into its saddle holster. ‘There are things pressing elsewhere, don’t you think, Broadhurst? How long would you suppose it was after us that the regiment left barracks?’

Private Broadhurst thought hard for a moment. ‘Well, sir, knowing ’ow things is at present, they wouldn’t ’ave left until everything were perfect . . . At least three hours, I’d say.’

Broadhurst didn’t miss much, either, thought Hervey. ‘In which case we should expect them within the hour, and then there’ll be two more of good daylight left. They could advance a fair distance before last light – well beyond the Bourne, indeed.’

The estimate proved right. A little after six o’clock the warning sentries began reporting that the videttes were circling. The pickets stood to, the relays brought the intelligence to Hervey’s flag post, and a galloper set off to the notional army headquarters with a first-sighting report at twenty-two minutes past the hour. Later the inspecting staff would compare timings thoroughly, but Major Jago was already noting in his pocketbook that reports arrived with impressive speed and were handled with confidence and despatch. Hervey’s orders to the contact troop were that videttes should fall back on the warning sentries when the enemy came within carbine range (for to remain any longer risked a ball in the back on retiring), and there form a second vidette line while the sentries fell back on the pickets. The pickets would engage the enemy’s scouts, only withdrawing if the advance guards came up in force, by which time the videttes and warning sentries would have taken post on the new observing line behind. These lines Hervey had carefully chosen from the map and confirmed from the saddle with his two troop officers, and, because they had practised the manoeuvres the week before, he was sure they would be able to keep close track of the regiment during its passage of the common – greatly outnumbered though his troop was.

It had taken the firmest resolve on Hervey’s part not to be drawn forward himself. His every instinct was to get a sight of the enemy, and he had thought long about placing himself with Corporal Sykes’s picket. But the best place for a commander, Joseph Edmonds had always said, was where he could best command from. And with videttes and pickets thrown across the most part of a mile of bosky heathland, that place was at the apex of a triangle which allowed reports to come almost as quickly from the flanks as from the centre line. Heavens, it was frustrating though, especially when shots began ringing out along the front. But he knew he could trust his corporals not to allow their pickets to be overrun. What about the flanks, though? Hervey knew that if this were real battle he could expect to count on squadrons abreast of him, but on this scheme there were none. This did not matter, the inspecting officer had said, because the regiment would not be allowed to stray outside its boundaries. What would happen at night, though, or with the dawn’s mist? The enemy could stray, intentionally or not, and Hervey’s flank pickets would have the devil of a job. At night or in mist, keeping station with the observing line two or three furlongs to the front would take the greatest address, too (on his own scheme the week before, his flanks had been easily turned). He had therefore insisted on two of the most experienced NCOs being put to the task. But still he was unquiet.

Hervey now determined to employ observers behind the enemy’s line, as the duke himself had employed them in Spain. The trouble was that he had scarcely men enough for the vidette and picket lines, so he decided to take a gamble by detailing Serjeant Armstrong to the task. This was a costly wager, for he had wanted to place Armstrong at the rally point instead, behind the notional line of infantry two leagues to the rear, where the troop would reunite and be revived, ready for what the inspecting officer might order them to do next. Serjeant-Major Kendall, Hervey feared, was not up to seeing to a rally point by day, let alone by night, but Armstrong behind the enemy was a premium he felt unable to default on. There was nothing for it, then, but to trust the rally point to the troop serjeant-major. That Kendall had botched it on last week’s scheme was a worry, but was not that the purpose of the exercise – that shortcomings could be rectified before today?

At eleven it had been dark for three hours, and the action was still going well. The good moon was working in A Troop’s favour, aiding both detection of the enemy and fast movement by the relays. Major Jago’s own observers were reporting that the picket line continued to retire steadily but without penetration, while from Hervey’s own dragoons there was a continual flow of intelligence on the enemy’s progress. There had been a lull in the last quarter of an hour, though, and Hervey was beginning to get anxious that something was amiss. Major Jago had pressed him for his assessment, and he had had to admit the possibility that the enemy might have trickled through his line here and there: after all, they were hardly greenheads. But it was also true that by now the regiment had been advancing for six hours – tiring for both men and horses, perhaps more so than withdrawing in the face of that advance. Might it be the short halt, then, suggested Hervey: saddles fast, bridles off and nosebags on, and water from the Runnymede ponds where the last reports said the advance guards had reached?

Major Jago had smiled appreciatively on hearing the assessment, and said he would leave him to his own devices for a while.

‘Sir,’ whispered Johnson as he came into the old pannage hut which now served as Hervey’s command post.

Hervey thought it strange he should be whispering with quite so much effort.

‘Sir,’ he repeated, and with some insistence, gesturing towards the door.

The lantern was bright enough to read a map by, but it only cast shadows across Johnson’s face, and Hervey could not make out what it was he wanted. The door scraped open, and Hervey shot to his feet at the sight of the general officer’s cloak.

‘You did say I might share your bivouac,’ said Henrietta, pulling off the Tarleton and smiling wide.

‘What in heaven’s name are you doing here?’ gasped Hervey. ‘Where did you get that cloak? And those plumes! How did you get here?’ He was about to ask a dozen more questions when she stopped him with a kiss. He glanced awkwardly at Johnson, who was making a show of looking the other way.

Henrietta, still smiling, began to rearrange her hair, as if nothing were more normal.

Hervey glanced anxiously at the door. The last thing he needed was to have the inspecting officer find dalliance instead of alertness. ‘My dear, we are in the middle of a battle—’

‘What are you doing in a hut, then?’

‘Well, we are—’ He realized the absurdity of trying to explain. ‘Johnson, would you—’

‘Ay, sir,’ replied his groom. No need to spell it out – sentry duty, the other side of the door. He allowed himself a grin as he squeezed through, and Henrietta grinned back.

When the door was pulled shut she kissed him again, but longer. Hervey pulled open her cloak and slipped his arms around her. ‘What—’

She kissed him again. ‘I couldn’t very well ride in a skirt!’

He was too nervous of discovery to be shocked. Whose breeches they were he simply could not imagine, and in truth he didn’t much care, for she filled them very handsomely.

‘Don’t pretend you disapprove. Didn’t the Queen of Scots ride like this?’

Hervey shook his head in half-despair.

‘I am very tired.’ She smiled.

‘I am not surprised!’

‘Where shall you lie down tonight?’

He shook his head again. He would dearly like to lie down this very instant, to put out the lantern and trust to Johnson’s vigilance. ‘I cannot lie down for a minute! The enemy could be close by us even now!’

‘Well,’ said Henrietta. ‘A cavalry bivouac is a chaster place than ever I have heard of. And very dull!’

‘Does anyone know you’re here? Who brought you?’

She gave a little laugh. ‘The regiment was so taken up with getting itself to Chobham I just followed them. No one seemed to notice me.’

How that could be so, he simply couldn’t conceive. ‘But how then did you find me?’

‘When we got to Egham there were a great many spectators. And all the regiment were telling them what they were about to do.’

Hervey shook his head. A dragoon loved to share his secrets.

‘And I heard one of the officers saying that he was off to give you a surprise.’

‘What did he mean, I wonder?’

‘I don’t know, but about twenty of them left soon afterwards and so I followed them hoping to see you.’

‘And then?’

‘Well, at length they just turned into an inn yard, and the officer said they were to stay there until night.’

‘Where was this?’ Hervey began to feel anxious again.

Henrietta look puzzled. ‘The Plough at Addlestone, I think it was. I rode on a little way, hoping to find you, but I became quite lost. And then an officer from another regiment happened by, and he seemed to know exactly where you were, and he brought me here.’

‘What was his name?’

‘He didn’t give it,’ she said blithely. ‘He had no idea who I was, and I thought it better not to say.’

Quickly he found Addlestone on his map. ‘Johnson!’

His groom opened the door gingerly. ‘Sir?’

‘Ask Mr St Oswald to come here at once.’

‘What is it, dearest?’ Henrietta seemed puzzled that her scanty report should have caused such alarm.

‘Addlestone is well outside the boundaries of the scheme. From there those dragoons will be able to slip behind my picket line, and they’ll avoid even the flank picket if they strike a little further south first. Who was the officer with the party that you followed?’

Henrietta didn’t know, for she had yet to meet them all.

‘What colour were the horses?’

She smiled. ‘Chestnuts, all.’

‘E Troop – Strickland.’ He nodded. ‘He will have drilled them keenly. It could be Sandys or Binney with them, the troop officers. Both are capable enough.’

The cornet came into the hut, squinting a little in the sudden, if dim, light. He saw Henrietta, and then looked at his troop leader curiously.

‘Not a word, St Oswald, not a word.’

‘No, sir, I . . . of course.’

‘I’ve just learned that about twenty men from E Troop, under Sandys or Binney, were lately assembled here,’ he pointed to Addlestone on the map, ‘which makes them very well placed to slip behind our line, if, indeed, they are not already doing so.’

Cornet St Oswald glanced at Henrietta again. His admiration for his captain grew daily. Whoever would think of sending his wife as an observing officer!

‘The flank pickets ought to pick them up, but if they ride south any further then they’ll be missed.’

St Oswald nodded. ‘Do you want me to go there?’

‘Yes. It looks to me as though their best move would be to come in on this road here, about half a mile behind where our line now is.’ He pointed out the lateral road which cut right across the area of the scheme. It was one of his own reporting lines – a line which would serve to get his pickets back in hand if they were pushed too badly before it.

The more Hervey studied the map, the more it occurred to him that the slackening of pressure all along his front was more than just fatigue. The regiment had checked just sufficiently forward for E Troop’s party to get in behind his own line without Colonel Freke Smyth’s staff suspecting they had come from outside the boundaries, for he might be persuaded that they had found a gap in the picket line and slipped through. That was cunning, Hervey thought. No, on second thoughts it was devious; there was a difference. He looked at Henrietta. Thank God she had come that way. Armstrong had missed Strickland’s men, but then he could not have been expected to be everywhere at once.

‘Sir!’ called one of the dragoons outside, excitedly. ‘A rocket!’

Hervey dashed from the hut. The firework was just beginning to fall, but its smoke trail was clear enough. It came from the right flank, from almost exactly where he made the lateral road to be.

‘Armstrong! He’s there after all!’ cried Hervey, with a little note of triumph, and grabbing his cornet’s arm. ‘Thomas, take your half-dozen dragoons and make the biggest demonstration you can. Take my repeating carbine – you know how it works well enough. It will make your party sound twice the size. Let me get one of Major Jago’s men first, though. The affair will need an umpire!’

Cornet St Oswald was pleased no end with the plum.

Major Jago himself now appeared with his lantern. ‘What do you make of that rocket, Hervey?’ he enquired suspiciously. ‘It isn’t a Congreve, that’s for sure.’

‘No sir,’ admitted Hervey, noticing Henrietta concealing herself from Jago. ‘I bought it two weeks ago in London.’ And then he wondered why he was being so guarded. ‘It is the alarm signal from one of my videttes on the flank. I believe there is an incursion. I am sending Cornet St Oswald and six men to intercept it. Would you send one of your staff with them?’

‘I shall go myself. Come on, young man!’ Jago called to St Oswald.

‘Matthew!’ whispered Henrietta when he had gone. ‘That was the officer who brought me here when I lost my way.’

Hervey groaned. Major Jago, he suspected, was not a man to miss much. ‘The question now, my love, is how we are going to take you back again.’

That question presented much less of a problem than he expected, for soon after Cornet St Oswald’s successful affair on the flank, Major Jago received word from Colonel Freke Smyth that the scheme was at an end, and that all of the regiment was to assemble at first light on the green at Addlestone so that the condition of the horses might be assessed by the veterinary surgeons and farriers of the Blues. Hervey had no doubts that the regiment would be adjudged exemplary in this, but he was surprised that the officers received a separate order to assemble at the Plough Inn, for it had been the invariable practice for them to attend at any such parade. But General Browning wished to breakfast with them, and that was that. Hervey was therefore able to ride with Henrietta as far as the crossroads short of the village, from where Johnson would escort her back to Hounslow.

Hervey felt a deep glow of satisfaction, as did his subalterns. After the order to ‘cease fire’, Major Jago had told him that not once had his picket line been penetrated by so much as a single scout, and that the affair on the flank had been the sharpest piece of work he had seen in many a year. He had not asked about Henrietta, but something in his remark about unorthodox tactics hinted that her identity and her part in things had not gone unnoticed. But it was Hervey’s ploy with Serjeant Armstrong – and, indeed, with Armstrong’s own conduct – that brought Jago’s especial praise. Armstrong’s orders had been to remain covert unless it were absolutely necessary to do otherwise. The rocket had been a desperate, and expensive, expedient to warn of the incursion. Now that the whole world knew of the wheeze, Hervey couldn’t very well keep his stratagem secret. He would surely have to admit that he had set his serjeant to follow the regiment from the outset. He began to fear that Jago’s praise was double-edged.

His fear soon proved not to be groundless. Lord Towcester was beside himself with rage when he learned of the rocket, and that it had been fired from behind the outflanking party (poor Strickland was mortified later to discover how his troop had been the cause). Neither did it help when General Browning complimented Hervey in front of the other officers on ‘his sharp action to counter the penetration’ (at least he made no mention that the penetration was the result of someone’s disregarding his instructions).

As soon as breakfast was finished and the major general and his staff were gone, Lord Towcester made to leave, and without a word. His adjutant, however, marched up to Hervey and addressed him sharply. ‘Captain Hervey, his lordship is very severely displeased that you should have sought throughout the inspection to thwart his ambition.’ He did not wait for a reply, turning on his heel instead and striding out after the commanding officer.

Hervey was speechless.

‘You too?’ said Strickland. ‘I had the foulest tongue-lashing of my life as we came here. “I should have known better than to trust to a damned papist”, was what Lord Towcester said to me. The man’s a mountebank!’

Hervey sighed. The Catholic relief measures had still a way to run, evidently. ‘I wonder how much a mountebank may do before he is called to account. I fear we’re in for a very hard ride indeed.’