Soldier of the Queen Read Free Page A

fished together, even joined the regiment together, and, in one of the mad moments of peacetime when Colonel Markham had felt his men needed some knowledge of war, had practiced the rescue of wounded together, so that it had been Brosy Colby placed ‘unconscious’ across the saddle of a led horse and allowed to slide off on to his head so that he ended up with a week in bed with concussion.
    In his bewilderment and trepidation, his dislike for his missing superior officer increased rapidly. The responsibility he’d been handed was just too much for someone of his age and experience. But Claude Cosgro had never been known as a man of much sensitivity or even sense, any more than his father, while his younger brother, Aubrey, was said to be even worse. The Cosgros seemed to come in bunches of a dozen, with nothing to choose between them.
    The low murmur of voices behind him told him that his men were well aware of what lay ahead. Nolan, obviously not intending to miss anything, had taken up a position now in front of the left squadron of the 17th Lancers and the brigadier-general was cantering his horse across the front of his brigade. He looked flushed and excited and, as he passed, Colby lifted his sword in salute.
    ‘My lord,’ he said. ‘There are only a few of us but I imagine you’ll be able to use us.’
    Lord Cardigan stared at him with his blue pop eyes: he had a reputation as a womaniser, but his whiskers, Colby noted, were beginning to show grey and he looked old and ill.
    ‘Place yourselves in the middle of the first line,’ he said. ‘On the right of the 17th and the left of the 13th. Might as well have all the lancers together.’
    As he rode off, upright and stiff, more men, seeing action impending, galloped up from their different duties about the field and down at the port. The 19th drew rein alongside the sombre block of the 17th – the Death or Glory boys, they called themselves; the Dogs’ Dinners they were known to everybody else from the skull and crossbones on their lance caps. Morris, the officer in command, was still wearing the frock coat of a staff officer, because he had taken over only the night before when the senior officer of the regiment had gone down with cholera.
    ‘With your permission, sir,’ Colby said, ‘we’ll join you.’
    Morris turned, frowning. ‘We’ll be glad of you,’ he growled. ‘See you keep your line.’
    Cardigan had moved forward now to a point two horses’ lengths in front of his staff and five lengths in front of the right squadron of the 17th, almost in front of Colby. He looked calmer now than he ever normally looked on parade, stern, soldierly, and upright as a steeple, his long military seat perfect. He wore the full uniform of the 11th Hussars, his old regiment, but his pelisse was not slung like everybody else’s – it was worn like a patrol jacket, its front a blaze of gold, that accentuated his slim waist.
    As the last shouts of the troop officers died away, a strange hush fell over the field. Neither gun nor musket spoke on either side as they settled themselves in their saddles and fidgeted nervously with their equipment, two long lines of horsemen, first the 13th Light Dragoons, then the 17th Lancers with the small knot of the 19th between them, and finally Cardigan’s own regiment, the 11th Hussars, known as the Cherrybums from their red trousers. Behind them were the 4th Light Dragoons and the 8th Hussars, and behind them still, the Heavy Brigade, in three lines, with the divisional commander well in front where he could maintain control of both his brigades.
    Fishing out his watch, Colby glanced at it. It was eleven-twenty. It seemed a particularly ominous time.
    Cardigan’s hoarse strong voice came over the shuffle and snort of horses and the clink of bits. ‘The brigade will advance! First squadron of the 17th Lancers direct.’ He turned his head towards his trumpet-major who jerked at his instrument with an arm decorated with four