A Close Run Thing Read Free Page A

Bristol he would doubtless have dismissed the connection with a sneer at the Whig propensities of that family. Whatever ecclesiastical influence the Herveys may have had (and, in truth, they had none, for Bishop Hervey of Derry had been dead these past ten years), they were wholly without influence in the military. It had not been long before someone in Regan’s family had managed to get
him
appointed to a general’s staff. And what a general – John Slade, ‘Black Jack’ as he was known throughout the Peninsular army, as incompetent an officer as was ever placed in command of a brigade of cavalry, and a coward, too, by common consent. But, if Hervey had only qualified contempt for the system which could put an officer like Regan where he was, his contempt for the man himself was absolute. As he unbuckled his sword-belt and handed him his sabre he saw the utter triumph on the ADC’s face, and he knew that there was not the slightest thing he could do about it.
    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