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Lawford’s Resurrection
Lawford’s Resurrection. Copyright © 2026 by A Lady
Sable Crow who supports our fanfiction with her website SharpeTales.net.
And
Bernard Cornwell who brought Richard Sharpe into our world.
19th January 1812 and its Aftermath
Ciudad Rodrigo, near the Spanish/Portuguese Border
/Part 1 – William Lawford’s Recollections (from the perspective of 1827)
I have not yet written fully of that night of the 19th of January in the year 1812. For many years following this turning-point in my life I repeated the anodyne account to my friends as it has often been given out by me: I went to the main breach, for reasons I have hitherto tended to fudge, because the truth does not redound well to my credit; I should of course have been nowhere near danger that night because the South Essex, seriously under-strength save for its Light Company, which had still been just about a viable body, had had no part to play in the storming. It had not been sent to join the rest of the Light Division in its assault upon the second breach under Craufurd’s command, which assault was perfectly successful, except for the fact that Craufurd himself received a mortal wound. This was the odd thing, though: instead of being sent to help Craufurd, the South Essex’s Light-Bobs, under Captain Sharpe, had been kept back to help the Engineers, fetching and carrying for Picton on the main breach, to which his Third Division, consisting of elements from, amongst others, the 94th, 5th, 77th and 83rd Foot had been assigned. (This main breach had, infamously, turned out to have been sabotaged with a clutch of large and very powerful mines, a circumstance which I shall shortly address, as it concerns me and my history most closely.) The Lights, including Sharpe’s handful of survivors of the Green-Jackets of the 95th (which he had fetched out of the disaster of the retreat to the coast three years before and had been attached to the South Essex ever since) had, at the request of Major Hogan, also been detailed to help the Engineers to carry large bales of hay to cast into the defensive ditches, so that the men would not break their bones when they jumped down into them. The men of the Wide-Awakes had been specifically ordered not to go beyond the glacis because they had not been meant to fight that night - although of course Richard and Patrick did, because, obviously, they were Sharpe and Harper, doing what Sharpe and Harper always did, disregarding orders and following their own bent so successfully that as usual they had avoided punishment – and I had recklessly followed them, I imagine because I had not been able to think what else to do. To put it simply, I had had a confounded horrid bad day ever since I had received a letter from Jessica that morning which had seemed, in effect, to end our marriage, and I had very much wanted to be close to Richard, whose company generally had over the years exercised a calming and steadying effect upon me (NB, ‘generally’ – there had been many exceptions to that rule!). We had all been some distance from the first of the mines to go up – we had had some warning that this had been about to happen, for white fire had flickered in the rubble for a few moments in advance of that, giving us a chance to fall down flat and dodge the blast, our arms over our heads against the anticipated pummelling hail of shattered masonry and rubble in-fill which had followed it - but I had been mere yards from the second mine when it detonated a very short interval later.
At any rate, according to my bland account concocted for general consumption, I saw the bright light of the second detonation but heard nothing and knew no more, lost in blessed unconsciousness until I came to myself a day or so later in the hospital, bathed and salved and smelling of lavender and with a neat pain-free stump of an arm which had been wound with spotless gauze and linen, all the while surrounded by ministering angels in immaculate habits and wimples, who tended to my every (legitimate) need. That was for many years my well-rehearsed story, but it is not true (apart from the ministering angels – I have nothing but lasting admiration and gratitude towards the sisters who so bravely tended us in that place, seeing sights and hearing sounds which gentlewomen, some of them undoubtedly of the hidalgo class, and, moreover, being devoted virgins, surely never should). However, I let my friends at home believe it, to spare them pain - for the truth was, to put it plainly, utterly horrible.
At first I was very nearly unconscious, but still aware – just - although I could neither stir nor speak. There was nobody nearby, as far as I had first been able to determine. At least, I could see no-one, for it was night, of course, and the sky was overcast with clouds, and moreover the air was full of mist and smoke and stone-dust. I could hear nothing, for the blasts of the first and second mines had left me deafened for the time being. As far as I knew, I was alone upon the slope of the breach, lying upon the rubble and the broken masonry of the fortified city wall, my head downwards, my feet upwards, staring up at the dark sky – no, not the sky – my vision was obscured by a cloud of dirty smoke dimly illuminated – neither by moon nor star however, and the Moon which I knew from that morning’s briefing had been a waxing crescent had hardly helped, for it was totally obscured - there had been merely a dull orange flickering glow from the burning carcasses (so I had supposed), reflected from the oppressively low and sullen clouds composed of both natural and unnatural elements, as I had lain oppressed beneath that squalid dome of smoke and dust and cloud and flame. I recall that the thought had occurred to me as I had lain there that perhaps I was dead, and in Hell - although if that had been the case there had been a puzzling absence of pain, to say nothing of a surprising absence of demons. I had been beyond sensation at first, but as hearing and feeling had slowly returned to me – for I had not been dead, after all, of course – not yet, anyway – dying had come later - I do remember that an apprehension of peace, almost religious in nature, such as I had not known since I had once been a small boy in church upon a Sunday morning perhaps thirty years before, had begun to steal over me. I had felt comfortable, even as the blood had flowed out of me and my brain had begun to faint even as my hearing had begun to return, the noise of the storming at first beginning to grow again then becoming ever more muffled and remote, until the world had been for all intents silent once more, it had seemed to me – and I had now lain quietly in awe at the approach of Death. I mean Death Himself, the actual embodiment of Death - for a figure had entered into my field of vision, a black Shadow whose face I had not been able to distinguish. I do not think that I had been afraid of Him. I had, after all, gone to the breach that day to seek Him out… and here, at last, He was. I had lain almost as if I had been in my campaign cot in my tent, about to fall asleep, and I had gazed upon Him quite calmly as He had swung His scythe to cut me down, although as my eyes had grown dim as dissolution had come on I had been able to make out very little either of His form or His features (later it occurred to me, of course, that the figure I had seen must have been Richard in the act of taking off my ruined arm with his terrible sword). My life had been ebbing – and yet the circumstances of what had seemed my likely demise had been, albeit very strange, all so very quiet and peaceful notwithstanding.
Then all at once it had been neither quiet nor peaceful, for – I know how it must seem if I confess that I was irritated, for irritation is such a petty and mundane state of mind, and not at all in keeping with what I had been experiencing until then – I suppose Richard’s action as he had begun to address his sword to my arm which, although still attached to me – just - had already ceased to be part of me in any way which had meaning - had caused me to rally and to return to myself a little - there had suddenly been people all around me - agitated, gesturing, staring about wildly and all speaking at once! I remember that I had now begun to feel greatly aggrieved. Oh, go away, I had thought! I had been happy, I had been comfortable, I had been about to depart with severe but compassionate Death, the great Psychopomp - why could they not have left me alone? I could not hear their voices with any distinction on account of the interference of a loud ringing noise in my ears as they had begun to recover from the insult dealt to them by the blast of the two mines. (The same ringing noise has recurred from time to time throughout the intervening years. Sometimes it lasts but a moment or two. At others it goes on for minutes, during which I find it difficult to hear what is said to me. This was often a great hindrance to me in the Commons, and at those times I relied upon Stephen to pass me notes from the Gallery as to who had said what. At times it keeps me awake at night.) I suppose I had also been slipping in and out of consciousness, yet nonetheless I had been aware of their consternation, their – anguish, even (What, I had thought, for me?) and now I had felt guilty, because, so it seemed, it had been I who had been the occasion of their distress! A carcass which had been smouldering nearby all at once had flared and in its Infernal red glare I had, for a moment or two, until consciousness had begun to desert me again, clearly seen their faces, their expressions, their looks of horror. They had seemed to be debating what to do to try to save me – Oh, no, I had thought, these well-meaning but mistaken people wish to draw me back from Death’s welcome embrace! No, no, no! But they had persisted with their near-hysterical jibber-jabber. I had recognised Harry Price and Robert Knowles and a private soldier, Peters, I think, amongst them. God knows what Knowles had been doing there; he had some time ago moved on from the Light Company, and indeed from the South Essex, having purchased up to Captain in the 7th Regiment of Foot, a Fusilier battalion (I found out later that Sharpe had tried a ruse, had secretly sent a message to him to come and tell me that Wellington wanted me, that I must go back, but he had come too late, which was just as well for him, for he would likely have shared my fate had he come with all dispatch). (1) Cheerful, happy (if almost always in some degree drunk) Harry Price – stolid, decent Robert Knowles - distraught, almost in tears? What could possibly be wrong? (Oh, I had remembered then, it’s because of me.) My God, my God, the Colonel! The Colonel! they had seemed to be saying, when I had heard anything distinct at all. I was properly aware now that Richard had been there, and Serjeant Harper, good loyal Patrick, who had often proved a staunch friend to me as well as to Richard, although I suspected for Richard’s sake rather than on my account, for Harper had known much (if not all) of our long history together, and had known of Richard’s regard for me, even if he had never really comprehended it. (My memory of this is jumbled, if I had taken Richard to be Death - but perhaps it was as it often happens in dreams, when cause and effect arrive in the wrong order – asleep, one hears a pounding on the door, perhaps, and it provokes in the sleeping brain a command to create a story, a whole series of events which seem to lead up to the incident, to account for it, before it happens). I could not hear what Harper had been saying but he had been bending down, crouched over me – the only one at that moment taking practical action - and I saw his lips moving and it had looked to me as if he had been saying,
He’s alive, sir. Then, Take the arm off, sir – better now than later. I’ve seen this before. Even a few minutes can make all the difference, whether they live or die. Take his sash, use it as a tourniquet -
Pat, no, I –
Do it, sir! If we wait until he’s with the surgeons it could well prove too late. That’s it, bind it tight. Now, cut - no, Richard, not straight across – diagonal - for the love of God, sir, you must leave a flap of skin or they’ll have to shorten the stump -
Why? I had thought, as I had lain there in a helpless sprawl upon the rubble of the breach, depressingly aware that I had probably fouled my breeches by now, as if things had not already been bad enough. Take off my arm? What is wrong with my arm? I can move my fingers. I can feel them. What is Harper talking about? I was still aware when Richard took his dreadful sword – I had the impression that Harper had still been urging him on as he did so. Why, Richard, why do you do this to me? I recall thinking, for – and I know this is strange - I had had almost no idea that I had even been wounded then, let alone so gravely hurt – I suppose my mind had been so shocked that it had been incapable of understanding - Have I so injured you? Wherein did I offend you so? Richard! I did not mean to harm your career when Slingsby… I had felt no pain when the bones of my arm and torso had been shattered by the flying masonry, but now, now I felt the bite of that sword, like the bite of the world-serpent of German story, and it was very bitter, indeed, bitter as iron is bitter, with its taste of blood (someone, Harper probably, had thrust a wad of something which had tasted like leather between my teeth – all the men carried a supply of leather in their packs, for making repairs to their boots - I suppose I might have bitten my tongue otherwise – in any case, I had reflexively bitten down on that); it was then that I had fainted quite away.
A little while later it must have been, only a little while, less than three-quarters of an hour was my guess when I had been able to think more clearly, I came to myself in a low-ceilinged white-washed vaulted room of stone lit by beeswax candles which gave off a strange, pure, spiritual, ecclesiastical scent, and which had contended bizarrely, it seemed to me, with the stench of blood and shit and piss and vomit which had otherwise filled the place. I heard the screams of men – my God, the screams! My chest hurt, I had now noticed. It had hurt badly. It had not hurt before, when I had lain upon the breach, notwithstanding the injuries from the masonry which had flown about like shrapnel. (I learned later that my heart had stopped and that someone had thumped me repeatedly upon the breast-bone to make it start again. Not for the last time that night. I was later informed that I had ‘died’ three times before light returned in the morning, although I have no recollection of anything like a Beatific Vision.) Where was this place? I was now lying upon the hard boards of something which might have been a pallet, or more possibly a door, as I was aware of peculiar irregularities, and the fingers of my right hand had encountered something metallic approximately half-way along its length - a knob, or a latch, I suspected. An ad-hoc operating table? suggested a thin trembling far-away voice in a distant chamber of my brain. Another figure had in the meanwhile now appeared, stooping over me, its breath smelling of brandy. This time it was neither Sharpe nor Harper. Surgeon, it came to me, suddenly. I am with the surgeons! This is the worst outcome! They will cut me again! Oh, Christ! Oh, God, help me! Where is this? My mind was in utter confusion. Is it Boxtel? I am sorry that I let fall the Colour when I stumbled. The ball in my thigh, the pain, the blood! Did they take it, the Regimental Colour? Pray God they did not take it! No, sir; Sergeant Hawthorne saved it and handed it to the rear before he was killed; all is well. What, then he fell, too? Dead! Oh, Jesus!
“Are you Surgeon Micklewhite, then, sir?” I remember asking.
Micklewhite? Never heard of him. You’re dreaming of Flanders, Colonel, is my guess, if you’re exercised about the Colours. You must have been an Ensign back then, just a boy. The Colours of the South Essex are safe tonight. Lie quiet now, while we tidy you up.
Boxtel. That had been more than half my lifetime ago. I had indeed been a mere boy then.
I think I must have passed out at that point for a little. Then I heard the surgeon’s weary indifferent voice saying, Cut off his coat, Hodges. What’s that blood-stained mess in his inside pocket? Envelope? Better keep that, letter from his wife, perhaps. He’ll want that. If he lives. Strap him down. Yes, I know he’s out of it (I had not been: I had still been able to hear, and see a little – just not able to communicate), but we don’t want him suddenly kicking about if he starts to wake up. I hate it when they do that. Captain Rees caught me in the cods after Talavera that time and the bugger was wearing spurs with the most businesslike rowels I’d ever encountered. They would have got his horse going, and no mistake. I’ve often wondered what became of those spurs. Silver-gilt, they were. The proper thing. Poor bugger died. They weren’t in the auction of his gear, you know that? I went along special to pick those up for my sister’s boy who was up for joining the Eleventh Hussars at the time and they weren’t buggering well there! I reckon someone made away with those. Thieving bastard, whoever it was. No care for the poor widow. I would have bid three guineas. Good boy, young Tom, he would’ve deserved those. Killed at El Bodón though, and some thieving Crapaud would probably only have taken them off him. Pass me that knife. No, the knife, not the saw; his arm is already - for God’s sake, Hodges, there is still marrow from Major Hancock’s femur stuck in the teeth! get it cleaned up, there’s another leg in the queue right after this here – now, the knife - Good God, the blade’s as blunt as Hades.
The surgeon had moved a little, presumably so that he could see the better. Suddenly I saw a light from outside the room. A lantern in the passage. I turned my head by a small degree. I could see the open door, and the corridor beyond it. A tall lean dark-haired man in a British officer’s rather shabby grey greatcoat which he was wearing draped about his shoulders like a cloak, and green French cavalry overalls, was standing there leaning on the jamb as if for support, exhausted after the evening’s efforts - possibly injured, for he seemed to be favouring his left ankle (I remember now that he – for it had been he, of course! - had once told me how, in a desperate fight with the French at Santiago de Compostela in ’09 he had injured it whilst leaping in great haste perhaps two fathoms from the platform before the west door of the Cathedral to the stones of the plaza beneath, and that it had never fully healed) (2): he had a long-arm - a musket or a rifle - yes, it must have been a rifle; he had been holding it with its butt to the flags, using it as a staff, although it had seemed too short to function as a support in the hands of so tall a man, as would not have a musket. He was staring directly at me - his face – his poor beloved face - disfigured by that terrible scar, inflicted a little more than nine years ago now in India - aghast! Even in that dim anteroom to Hades, and barely conscious as I had been, I had recognised him at once: Richard! my Richard!
Richard, Richard, I had wanted to cry out - help me, save me from these butchers! But the knife bit down just then, and, Oh, Jesus Christ! Oh, Mother Mary! The agony, the indescribable agony of it! Now I am served aright, I thought, now I have my right reward for all my filthy deeds! the just retribution for all my illicit pleasures! Jessica should see me now! She would be glad! Justice. Vindication. The Judgment of God upon the monster of depravity to whom she had been betrothed at the age of five years; whom they had made her marry. I would die, and now she could act as she pleased and society would be all sympathy. Poor Jessica!
The surgeon again: Pour some more brandy down his gullet, Hodges, he’s waking up. He’ll start to feel it. Careful, man, no need to drown him, he’s already a dead ‘un, most like, hardly any blood left in him, see, it’s barely a trickle now. Bring the light round, there’s a good man. It’ll make it easier to tie off the artery if I can see what I’m doing. And give him the pad to bite down on again, he’s spat it out. Poor sod. Sorry, sir, I thought you was unconscious. Ho there, ho there, Colonel Walford. Try to keep your eyes open now you’re awake. Stay with us. No drifting off and dying, that’s not allowed on my watch. Hang on. Not long now, sir. I’ve tied off the blood vessels. Just going to sew over this flap of skin, clever of your friend to know to leave it, you owe him a drink ‘cause you get to keep a useful piece of your arm thanks to him - I’ll make it nice and neat, crimp the edges proper, like a Cornish pasty, haha. There’ll be a few pricks of the needle. Hold his feet still, Hodges, for Christ’s sake! Thought I told you to strap him down good and tight.
It’s them buggeration spurs of his, Mr Leyton, you can’t strap ‘em down proper when the buggers is wearing spurs. I would of ‘ad them off him but you said there weren’t no time to lose.
Nor is there, ever, Hodges. There, Colonel, sir, all done now, all done. You set a good example to the men, no crying out. Well done to you, sir. And a nice neat job, I pride myself, too. Your lady wife will be very impressed. I doubt if she could have made a better go of it with needle and thread. Give him the laudanum, Hodges. No, it doesn’t bloody matter how much. Just so the poor bugger’s put out of his misery for an hour or so. Or forever, it’s all the same. Hey, you, by the door! Who gave you leave to be here?
He’s my officer, the man you have there, he’s my Colonel, my friend –
That voice, that beloved voice! –
Get out of here!
I’m Captain Richard Sharpe of the South Essex –
I don’t care if you’re King Alfred of the bloody West Saxons! No-one should be in here except the surgeons and the orderlies! And the wounded, of course.
Will he live, Mr Leyton?
Sorry, didn’t catch your name - ?”
Sharpe!
He’ll most likely be all right so long as the rot don’t get him, Mr Sharpe. And so long as he wants to live. I see it all the time. Sometimes they just seem to want to go, even if common sense says they ought to live. Your Colonel will live or die, like all the others. Now bugger off, Mr Sharpe, sir, if you would be so kind! And shut the bloody door after you!
No, Richard, no, don’t leave me…
Do you think he’ll die, Mr Leyton?
Do you think it might be raining in England, Hodges? It’s not his arm worries me, that’ll be all right with a bit of luck - it’s his ribs sticking through his chest and God knows what mischief has been done behind them. Jesus! Oh, God, no. There’s blood at his mouth. I fear we have just wasted our efforts. Have him taken upstairs anyway but tell Sister Elvira to expect him to die before the morning. Such a shame, I grant. A real good-looking gallant young fellow like him. I’m sorry, Colonel. Would you like someone to fetch a priest? There’s probably a dozen of the buggers lurking around in the city not far away, all Catholics of course, but so was Our Lord, and I’m sure they could smuggle you into Heaven – dammit, he’s going again, and after all our hard work – thump away, Sister Grimhild.
I do not remember any more or Leyton’s repartee, so I suppose that at that point I must have become insensible again (afterwards I was told that my heart had stopped and a hefty nun with experience in these matters had had once again to strike me hard upon the breast-bone to shock the lazy bastard back to recollection of its duty, thus adding additional contusions to my already colourful collection – it stopped again on another occasion that night, apparently, after they had got me onto the ward – fortunately - or perhaps otherwise - there had been another strapping sister on hand to do the job then, and now I had a fractured sternum into the bargain). Anyway, Lazarus had come to me from the sainted bosom of Abraham as I had lain in Hell’s torments, in its very ninth bolgia, and this demon in his blood-stiffened apron had driven him away with a dismissive wave of his filthy hands. Despair seized me. I think I must have passed out again, had merely fainted rather than died once more on that occasion, but sudden excruciating pain brought me to myself once more as they had now moved me from the door, or panel, upon which I had been lying (I suppose I must have been carried there on it – no doubt it would serve as a stretcher for many more that night after I had vacated it); they carried me away from that terrible room in a blanket, from which my legs from the knees down had dangled helplessly. Nice boots, them boots, I heard a voice say. The proper thing. Gold tassels and all.
Where’re you taking him?
Top floor, senior officers’ ward.
I’m having them boots soon as he’s a dead ‘un. They look just my size.
No they are not, not by a long shot. Nice delicate feet, he has, look you, proper officer’s feet, made for the dancing and the fencing and suchlike - not like your Oxfordshire clod-hoppers! Besides, they are boots for riding. When were you last on a horse, Jem Barkiss, which was not a cruel sharp wooden one, and in a guard-room - was it not? (3) A proper fool you should look.
Well, I can always sell ‘em. First call! Remember that, Derwen Maredudd! (4)
I heard a new voice speak then, which had something of East Anglia in it.
Another Taffy. I grew up in Baddow all my life and never met a Welshman. I thought all that talk about short dark men like goblins who live in the shadow of the mountains and speak a language no proper Christian has ever heard was just a story for children. Then I come out to the Peninsula and suddenly the buggers is everywhere!
I knew that accent, and I wondered if it was not one of my own Wide-Awake Boys.
Ha! Fuck you, too, Ned Colmer, said the Welsh voice then, quite amiably. And where in Hell is Baddow, anyway?
Essex, you Welsh clod! Great Baddow, Three miles from Chelmsford! Welsh Harry owned the manor! Gave it to Spanish Katherine when she still had his favour. Welsh ought to know that much about the fucking Tudors. King Taffy Henry, Eighth of his Name.
Somewhere, incongruously, as they mounted a staircase, humping me up the steps like a sack of meal, dragging my ridiculous incongruously spurred heels upon the steps, sometimes even bumping my backside upon the risers –
Gently, gently, you clods! I heard a young officer’s high, cold, hard, brittle alto voice now, come flying up the stairs after my burial detail (as I had begun to think of it) like a spear of ice, and docked like a horse’s tail, gelded, clipped, staccato – English, but not quite - like that of a close-related foreigner - perhaps one who had been educated in England? – I thought I recognised it – one of Wellington’s staff? - the Prince of Orange? - that skinny boy our men called Slender Billy? I knew that Jack-Sprat! The Peer had ordered me to let him win at Commerce on a time, although he had known that I had always made it a rule never to play at cards for money, and had in fact been ordered not to do so by my father! (Wellington had promised to reimburse me. He never did. I had lost more than a hundred pounds that night! A third of my annual salary! Thank God that I, with my privileged background, had had other sources of income. Not for the first time I had wondered how on earth officers who had had to rely entirely upon their Army pay had kept up appearances in the Mess. After that, I had simply refused to play at cards for money ever again, no matter what Wellington might have said.)
What was Slender Billy (if it were indeed he) doing in this place? That voice was reminiscent of many I recalled from my days at Eton, certainly. But sure identification slipped away on the very cusp of knowledge.
How dare you so misuse a dying gentleman! Have a care! the voice admonished further.
Ah, so I am indeed dying, then, I thought, at that; but I did not mind, although I recall that I had wished very much that Richard had been with me still. I thought of when I had been in the hospital after Boxtel and the bleeding would not stop, it had seemed, and I had thought that I had felt my life running out of me. Goodnight, Ensign Lawford, I had thought then; Goodnight, Colonel Lawford, I thought now, and it is all right this time, for no-one need trouble themselves to write to Mama – she has passed – perhaps Mama will be there to meet me once I too have passed through the River, but I daresay the trumpets will not sound for me as I reach the other side, as they sounded for Mr Valiant-for-Truth. I am sorry to say that that thought of being met by Mama had not filled me with peace and serenity, enabling me to accept my probable fate. In all likelihood, Mama’s first words to me would have been a query about why I had not raised a memorial to her pug, the latest iteration of Mr Johnson, who had died at Durford shortly before my eventual return to England. But then there had come another voice, one I was certain I recognised, lower, warmer – baritone - conciliatory.
Goodnight, good fellows; his Royal Highness thanks you for your kind service to this officer, another of our wounded heroes.
It was of course Baron Jean-Victor de Constant-Rebeque, the decent Switzer, ever the diplomat, Orange’s minder.
I learned later that Major-General Henry MacKinnon, Commander of the 3rd Division, had been killed that night. Major-General Robert Craufurd, ‘Black Bob’, had also been wounded, shot in the spine as he had led the men of the Light Division forward; he had died some days later after enduring great suffering. I guessed that the Prince and Rebeque had come to convey Wellington’s regrets and good wishes, for I very much doubted that the Peer could have found the time to come in person (5).
I heard afterwards that there had been dreadful chaos and crime and violence in the fallen city as our men had exacted the usual terrible revenge of besieging armies who had endured hellish punishment going through the breaches once they had been victorious - pillage and rape and murder and all manner of atrocities upon which it grieves me greatly to contemplate. Richard later would only tell me that he had seen ‘things I couldn’t describe and you couldn’t imagine,’ and that to his shame the men of the 95th, in particular, had disgraced themselves, being seen by an incredulous Wellington carousing through the streets with stolen hams and cheeses and loaves of bread impaled upon their sword-bayonets; it had taken many hours for the Peer and his aides and the Provosts to restore something like order, which had taken savage measures to achieve – men strung up from the shafts of weighted tumbrils, or else shot out of hand. The only faint glimmer of mitigation was that, bad as the looting and violence had been in Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, as I was later to discover, had proved far worse.)
Then the tumult everywhere prevailing in the lower storeys of the convent had faded, and I had heard women’s high clear passionless ageless voices now - they might have been eighteen, they might have been eighty - not too far off, raised in worship. Compline, completorium, the Night Office, the consummation of the day’s round of worship. I recognised it from Oporto, Talavera, Coimbra, above all Lisbon. Even as my world, as I had thought, had been ending, the nuns of Ciudad Rodrigo had been singing Compline, world without end.
Te lucis ante terminum Rerum creator poscimus Ut solita clamantia Sis praesul ad custodiam – (6)
I was aware of a faint smell of hothouse-flowers – lilies, freesias, roses, perhaps, and herbs – rosemary and thyme – and polish, and the beeswax candles, and the resins of incense, as we passed the passage at the end of which, I had guessed, had lain their chapel. Then – blackness, as the laudanum, that accursed drug to which I had once sworn never to resort again, had taken its effect. I recall thinking that I had wished then that I might never awaken.
Yet awaken I did, this time in a higher circle of Hell - the senior officers’ ward for those of the rank of Captain and above. I suppose we groaned in a quieter, more refined, more self-possessed, more well-bred way there than they did in the basement where the hopeless cases amongst the men had been left to languish and sob and die crying for their sweethearts and their wives and their mothers. I wished again that Hodges had given me a killing dose, even although here there were no bloody-handed devils, as there had been in that pit of smoky darkness which had smelled like a slaughter-house, to torment us with their blades and instruments. The room wherein I now lay was light and airy and the pale sunshine of the earliest spring sometimes had now found ingress through the high windows, when the weather was fine. The nuns, some of them mere girls, novices clothed in white, had moved amongst us like grave quiet angels and blessed spirits, ministering even to our grossest bodily needs with never a blush or look of revulsion, and relieving our pain, so far as they had been able, and speaking words of comfort, mostly in Galician, or more courtly Spanish - sometimes in Portuguese, occasionally in English; and in the end I found that I was, mostly, grateful that, due in large part to their unstinting care, it had become apparent that I was now amongst those who had been doomed to live. I wished to God I had known why I had been spared when so many with whom I had shared the ward, most of them much better men than I, had in the end perished.
After a little less than a month had passed since I was blown up on the breach I was given my own small private cell in which to complete the hospital epoch of my convalescence, and I found that by this sign I was now placed in the highest circle, Purgatory – that is to say, amongst those soon going home to England, where I must face the consequences of all my wrongdoing. This prospect, I say, now lay within my view, and it was after I had been moved to this room that the first of an occasional series of strange events occurred, which I had initially begun to experience following my wounding at Ciudad Rodrigo and which from time to time still occur to this day. (7) I recall it was St Valentine’s Day, the fourteenth of February of the year ‘12, about two hours of midnight, so far as I could tell – the feast-day of lovers! I was lying in bed sleepless, conscious of the grievous insult I had occasioned to my wife by my conduct, and picturing her with Robert Ovalton, at a ball, perhaps, or at a supper, or at the Opera, at that very moment. I was conscious too of my very great uselessness, not just to Jessica, but to the Army, and to anyone else, for that matter, and fearing that I would never again have a purpose in life, when all at once it seemed to me that something, or someone, outside of myself was impressing upon me, although not in words, that this was not so, and that I was instead destined to become as a light in the darkness to one who lacked hope. I seemed to see in my mind’s eye a bowed and despairing figure like that of a prisoner confined in irons in the solitary, grim and comfortless darkness of the condemned cell who – most strange to relate - looked to me for his deliverance! It was quite extraordinary and I did not know what to make of it. That – not a vision, for it did not have the clarity which I had understood to be characteristic of true vision, but feeling, or idea, or whatever it was - did not last long, but it made a great impression upon me, and I do believe that was the beginning of my determination to begin to do something by way of reforming England’s unfit-for-purpose penal system upon my arrival in Parliament later that same year.
Then on a morning shortly before I finally left the hospital to be taken for embarkation to Portsmouth, another strange event occurred, albeit of a different order, for this time there was nothing supernatural about it. I had been walking in the convent cloister – I had been instructed to walk there at first for fifteen minutes every morning and then twenty, and then thirty, to help restore my strength - and dressed more or less properly for the first time in weeks. There was a little fitful wan sunshine, which I enjoyed for some time, but it was early in March, and the air was still chill, so after a little I terminated my exercise. As I was returning to my cell, I passed by the door of the ward from which I had lately been promoted, and as I did so I saw that someone had brought some spring flowers into the room. They were the first of the season, so I turned into the ward in order to see them more closely, wishing that I had my painting things so that I could make a record of them in my journal, which I had begun to keep again (I had asked Richard at his last visit to have them sent in to me, and the worthy Private Clayton had brought them, watercolours and brushes and journal, accordingly, along with one or two other possessions which were dear to me, but they had now been packed up with the rest of my gear in anticipation of embarkation). The simple arrangement stood upon the table in the centre of the spacious chamber. Two of the good sisters of the company of our beloved angels in that Convent who succoured and watched over us by day and night had been standing admiring it. I think I said something unremarkable, expressing appreciation for the beauty of the flowers and speaking of esperança, and they smiled, for I knew that those particular sisters were Portuguese, and I had remembered to use the Portuguese form of the word, and not the Spanish.
Just then however a party of orderlies appeared at the door bearing a sick man upon a bier and the two nuns at once went to give assistance. The man upon the boards, it seemed, from what I had been able to overhear, had been but slightly wounded in the fleshy part of the thigh on the night of the storming some weeks before, and at first had been expected to recover swiftly (I myself had once suffered such a wound, in Flanders) but his injury had since taken a turn for the worse and his leg had had at last to be cut off. I had been at once aware that this had not been done in time to save his life (I regret that I had seen many similar instances in my time in the hospital).
The poor officer had certainly seemed to be very sick. Indeed, I made out from what one of the orderlies said that the sufferer had refused to have the surgeons take off his leg until that very morning, when he had at last been told unequivocally that he would certainly die, else. Would that they had told him that betimes! His face was wasted and sunken and very pale withal, grey, indeed, and beaded with perspiration. He was at least a week unshaven. His eyes were rheumy and rimmed with red. He was moaning with pain, or with sorrow, or both, and I heard his prayer as he suddenly uttered in a low voice, O God, O my God, have mercy upon me, a sinner!
One of the Sisters, comprehending the sense of his utterance, took the beads from her girdle at that, and gave him the pendant Crucifix to hold: he at once pressed it to his lips most passionately. I tried not to stare, but found it impossible, not least because they had been placing him upon the very bed which I had lately quitted, and it occurred to me that I could so easily have been that man. It was, as I have said, a fair day of early spring: the sun, albeit lightly veiled in thin cloud, was shining in through a window opposite the bed, illuminating the patient, whilst all around him was in shadow. Just then, as they laid the man’s head gently and with attentive carefulness upon the pillow, the cloud passed, and the sun’s beams fell full upon the face of the sufferer. At once I knew him! It was Duncan Fitzroy! evidently since become a Major in the 45th. Then in that moment he turned his head - and saw me! I saw tears come at once into his already moist and clouded eyes, for even in his distress and half-delirium he recognised me. Lawford! he said, William Lawford, is that really you? I nodded, unable in that moment to speak, for it had cut me to the heart to see him so - that swaggering confident handsome fellow who had once been the bane of my life, at school and in the Havercakes - thus reduced. He then moved restlessly upon the bed, disturbing the currents of air, and suddenly I smelled the rot on him, and I realised (whilst trying not to gag) that it was too late - too late! They had taken his leg at last, but it was too late! They might have spared him the pointless agony, I thought. I thought also of those carts of the sick and wounded in Flanders, in which I had lain, half-delirious with the marsh-fever, helpless amidst horrors, detained in a scene from Dante, and instantly I wanted to turn away and retch - but - I must not.
I wronged you, William, Fitzroy had gone on, meanwhile. I wronged you many times, for nothing, for no reason other than for my own amusement – you were so quiet, so retiring, so innocent of the ways of the world, and it made me appear the bluff bully bravo before our companions to teaze you so. I am sorry! I am sorry I stole your clothes from the willow-branch by the river as you were swimming that summer afternoon at Eton. I am sorry about the supper which made you sick, at the Barracks at Warley – and all the rest of it. I behaved vilely towards you, just to make my friends laugh and think me a great rumbunctious fellow, when you had not harmed me at all. I am sorry.
Do not think of those things, I said; I know why you took offence when I refused to play at cards with you and Dimmock and the other Ensign, Chillingford, I think, and you had every right – but it was an inadvertent insult – I must have without meaning to implied by my inept speech that you were not gentlemen – when all it was, was that I had promised my father that I would not -
but Fitzroy had gone on,
I should have told you ere this when I learned that you were in the Peninsula, but circumstances did not allow it. We always missed… forgive me, Lawford. I go now to appear before the throne of my Maker, to whom I must give an account of myself, and I would we parted in amity. For God’s sake, William, forgive me, if you can. Your forgiveness and prayers would aid me much, I have no doubt.
Duncan, I said, Duncan, pray do not weep! – those things happened long ago – we were both but foolish boys - with all my heart I forgive you for any wrong you might have done to me then! But enough of this! You will live, and we shall not need to part – we shall be friends at last – I wish indeed that we had been friends these twenty years and more!
But in that moment, the fever-light in Duncan’s eyes began to fade, and soon it was extinguished, and Fitzroy died, and I felt then as bereft as if I had lost my dearest companion. I grieved for the man who had tormented me throughout our time at school, and when we had both been Ensigns in the 33rd, in Flanders, and then when we had been back at Warley Barracks in England before we had marched to Portsmouth in ‘95 for embarkation upon our ill-starred voyage to the West Indies! Although, thankfully, he had travelled in a different transport from the one to which I had been assigned it had been my ill-luck to find myself a fellow-passenger with him in the Princess Charlotte when it had been our lot to be ordered to India the following year. But now that he was dead, though, I mourned him! Lord, but we soldiers are bloody odd unfathomable fellows. God bless you, I said, as with my hand – my only hand, now, unhappily - I reached to his face to close his eyes. God keep you, Duncan. More than twenty pointless years of stupid antagonism had come to this at last – Fitzroy lying dead in the bed which until recently had been mine, in a ward in a hospital in a convent in a Spanish border-town few people at home in England could ever have heard of – he missing a leg – not that that had mattered to him now - and I an arm. And now, to my amazement, I found that I was weeping for him, unashamedly, in the open ward, before many witnesses. I wept for Duncan Fitzroy, and for the dead of Ciudad Rodrigo and of countless battles in the past and still to come – and, it must be said, for myself and for my own bleak future prospects - and in that moment I did not care who saw it.
It is time for me to leave again the Peninsula in recollection, for I have now said, I think, as much as is necessary upon that most painful yet for all that, most delightful subject, for although I spent some of my very worst hours and days there, it was in the Peninsula also that I spent some of my very finest, most memorable - and most blissful, in Lisbon behind the Lines of Torres Vedras in the winter of the years ’10 to ‘ll.
Part 2 – Richard Sharpe’s Recollections (from the perspective of 1830) as transcribed by Peter d’Alembord (‘Dally’)
Ciudad Rodrigo, the grisly prelude to the hell of Badajoz: the breach, the terror: three times, in the long-seeming hours which had led up to the action, Colonel Lawford had touched him: on the shoulder, on the arm; he had stood close to him and in a tone low and intimate he had addressed him as Serjeant, as if he had been attempting deliberately to evoke their time together in India, as if oblivious of the presence of Harper, or perhaps past caring, because he had believed – hoped, even - that he had been about to be killed, just as I had been certain that I would be slain at Waterloo, and even as Richard had suffered so strong a presentiment of death before Toulouse that it had left him shaking – shaking so wildly that he could not have used his rifle even had opportunity presented itself. Every long-surviving soldier had always, in the end, awoken on a morning when he would be overcome with the idea that his run of luck, which he had long known must come to an end and now had reached its limit at last, and that before the sun had set that evening upon the battlefield all would be over for him: and notwithstanding the fear – how would it happen? would there be mutilation and agony and days of suffering before the final release? would there be just one lead ball through the heart, or though the forehead, and it all be over, almost without pain, in moments? – that thought was nonetheless a relief, because death meant an end to the fear of death which so oppressed the mind that in itself it had the power of unmanning one quite. (8) It had been almost, Sharpe had told me, as if Lawford had been beseeching him to remember - as if ever he could have forgotten! Then, there had been the cruel senselessness of Lawford’s being on the breach at all, because the main part of the South Essex had not been in that action, being too reduced in numbers now after two and a half years in the Peninsula, and (as ever) awaiting a promised draft from Chelmsford which had never seemed to arrive. Only the Light Company had been meant to be involved; and by the time of Lawford’s personal calamity the city had fallen in any case: the mine which had ended his war had been an evil post-scriptum, a spiteful stroke of fate. Lawford had come to be with Richard that day for the same reason that Harper had come – solely to be, in that desperate hour, with the man who, albeit for different reasons, had always drawn the two of them to him, like a living examplar of Mesmer’s theory of animal magnetism, notwithstanding the recklessness, the danger. The images, Richard told me, had come then like the pictures in one of those books where one rapidly flicked the pages, the eye-cheating effect imitating movement: the roar and blinding infernal effulgence of the explosion; Lawford thrown high into the air and then cast down upon the tumbled granite blocks like a broken puppet, his arms flung out to either side as if in a grotesque parody of crucifixion, the left crushed by the flying debris - the dressed stone of the wall’s outer masonry and the rubble of the infill – the Colonel’s chest and shoulder half-crushed too, if perhaps not so dreadfully; the blood-spattered gold lace of his scarlet coat and his mirror-bright silver-gilt gorget sparkling in the light of the ruddy flickering flames; his handsome and still strangely youthful face belying his-five and-thirty years notwithstanding its gore-flecked pallor ghastly as death; his life-blood welling from him as if from some gory chalybeate spring, the shattered bones of his arm and his broken ribs where they had punctured the skin and penetrated his shirt and waist-coat and scarlet frock-coat white amidst the gush of viscous red steaming on the incongruously pristine snow which had still been falling and settling on the breach throughout the assault, melting it. The terrible sight which Billy – Sharpe had persisted in naming him so throughout the account he rendered to me, honouring their time in India and their strange secret mission in Seringapatam - had presented had been nothing less than an overwhelming impression of a red cross upon a white ground, like the Regimental Colour of the Havercakes which young Ensign Lawford had once borne into battle in Flanders, or even England’s flag itself, to grace what Richard had been certain, in the first appalling moments, must be a patriotic English death. He had not seen what had become of Lawford’s mangled and shattered limb once he had severed it, retching, from the Colonel’s body with his great ugly sword, unwilling to set the blade to his friend but knowing that he must follow Harper’s emphatic urging, for all knew that the sooner a ruined limb was severed the more likely it was that the victim would live - although he did remember stripping the heavily blood-stained white glove from the dead hand and removing the golden ring and giving it to the Battalion’s junior Major, Robert Forrest, for safe-keeping - for better or worse, senior Major Leroy had been in command of the South Essex now, until a successor to Lawford could be appointed, but he had been nowhere nearby. The bandsmen who served as stretcher-bearers, when they had finally turned up (theirs had already been a busy night), had hurried Lawford, now covered all over in settled masonry-dust and thus eerily ghost-like in appearance save where the blood had seeped through it, to the hospital which had been set up in the Convent of St Clare in the city at the time of the first siege in June of the previous year, where, against all hope and expectation, the surgeons had saved his life. (Here ends the précis of d’Alembord’s account – Ed.)
Richard had visited Billy on two or three occasions in the hospital, once he had been deemed sufficiently recovered, and after that, Billy had been shipped home to England – far too early, in the opinion of everyone, but Billy had insisted, citing urgent family business, and this had nearly cost him his life all over again, but he had survived notwithstanding, although this had so harmed his constitution that no doubt it had been another factor which had led to his early death in his middle years at the age of fifty-three. In all the years since, Richard had seen him only three or four times again after that - the first time in the sadly strained circumstances occasioned by the Foulness affair. His long relationship with Lawford, whilst it had seen many good times, had often been a frustrating, distressing and complicated business, one in which Richard felt he had been endlessly wrongfooted and left confused and baffled and at times hurt and even humiliated. Billy had seemed to alternate between affection and eagerness for his company and even outright clinging neediness on the one hand, as on that night at Ciudad Rodrigo, and palpable faint distaste and impatience and a desire to make sure that Richard had never forgot his place on the other - veering and backing with bewildering unpredictability. Weathervane William. Inconstant Billy, even, to play a variation on that old folk-song. Part of this had been the result of Lawford’s own ingrained sense of insecurity and inadequacy, Richard supposed, and his – Richard’s - floundering out of his depth amidst the treacherous shoals of class and politics, and the new ideas – democracy, industry, meritocracy - but, Richard had been sure, much of Lawford’s mercurial capriciousness had had its roots in the febrile illness which had come upon him in Flanders in 1794 and was now, it seemed, finally to have a part in killing him more than thirty years later. It had been a complicated story and there had been three – no, four, even - of them in that relationship; and the fourth had emphatically not been Billy’s long-suffering wife, Jessica.
This (9) had come out in the convent hospital in Ciudad Rodrigo, on the same occasion on which Lawford had confessed to Richard that he had followed him to the parallel trench before the glacis at the beginning of the waning of the winter daylight, seeking death because his life had become unbearable to him. Initially he had not said why that had been so, but Richard had had a fairly good idea, and what Billy had let slip during subsequent visits had confirmed it. Richard remembered that night with nightmarish clarity of recollection. The Colonel had seemed a good five, perhaps even six or seven years less than his true age of five and thirty. He had appeared young: handsome as ever he had been, immaculately turned-out, Richard had noted, in his very best uniform, as if it had been a fine summer evening in Vauxhall Gardens and he had come to keep a tryst, to dally with a lover in its discreetly bosky sinner-friendly alleys. Richard had remembered too how the strange almost febrile mood, reminiscent of how Billy had been that night in the Allied encampment to the west of fallen Seringapatam, had been upon him all the day.
“By God, sir, very fine!” Richard had greeted him heartily, when Billy had come up late in the morning, having known at once that he must force into his voice a brightness he had not felt, and flashing his Colonel his best false grin whilst thinking, Oh, shit, no, what is he doing here? “Very fine indeed! You’re got up in high style – dressed fit to be received by the King himself!”
“If there is the remotest chance that one is about to meet one’s death, Richard, it is as well to come prepared to do so properly dressed. One can at least act the part of a gentleman.”
There had been something odd in Billy’s tone, Richard had thought, almost as if he had left his observation unfinished and that the unspoken concluding self-accusing part of his remark might have been, even if one is not.
“Good advice. I’ll remember that. You mean with clean drawers on, sir, of course.”
“Richard?”
“You know, sir, for when they slice off your duds (10) on the surgeon’s table?” (God, how he had wished afterwards that he had not made that horrible tasteless sally into gallows humour!) “You ain’t going to die, sir,” he gone on, rapidly, attempting now to walk back from his brutal allusion to the explicit fear he had just expressed. Every soldier before a battle, even the usually godless ones who scoffed at the chaplains and at their conventionally pious comrades who had been known to read their Bibles and attend prayer meetings, secretly or even openly prayed to be spared the surgeons’ ministrations. Better death than amputation and weeks in hospital, which often ended in a fever death, anyway, or if not death, in a passage home before being dumped on the quayside and left to endure beggary on the streets, or the workhouse. “You haven’t any business with us at the breach tonight. You’ll have a look around, just so you can say you’ve seen how it is, we’re all fine and ready, duty done, then clear off back to your tent, all safe and snug with your Beethoven and your claret and your Blake and your Wordsworth and all the other clever fellows bent on re-ordering the world the way Boney wants it.”
“Richard. What a thing to say.”
Richard had never been quite sure who or what these two worthies Blake and Wordsworth had been, but he had noticed volumes bearing their names lying about on the delicate little wine-tables which Billy had liked to scatter here and there by the camp-seats in his tent, on occasions when he had gone to consult with him in private. He had suspected that they had been philosophers - philosophers being the lions of the age, of course. Why Beethoven, a composer of loud discordant revolutionary music which didn’t even demonstrate proper modulation but just jumped randomly from key to key (apparently – at least, that was what Billy had told him, whatever that had meant, whilst gleefully illustrating the point upon his spinet, which he had liberated from an abandoned villa in a village south of Coimbra in the course of their to-ings and fro-ings around the Peninsula in the autumn of 1810) should have bothered himself about Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, when his proper business had clearly been to belt out some decent tunes in the concert halls of Vienna of a Saturday night, keeping the people entertained and their minds off the fucking French and their ghastly enormities, he had not been able to imagine. He had supposed that that had been the Austrians for you.
“I shall, I shall, do not you worry. Although, Richard, who is to know where I might have business tonight when it comes to it? ‘Where’s our Arthur?’ as the men say,” Billy had gone on, abruptly changing the subject. “I have not seen him now for two, three days. That does not surprise me, seeing that he has no use for me as things stand at the present, but it is unnerving not even to have caught a glimpse of him from afar.”
“He is here, sir. Well, here, there and everywhere, as usual. I saw him not half an hour ago, inspecting the main breach for practicality.”
“How did he look?”
“Inscrutable as ever. But he touched his hat to me. That’s a good sign, I’ve found, over the years. If he’s too lost in thought to see you it generally means you have cause to be nervous, I’ve noticed.”
“When I was on his staff I preferred it when he was too preoccupied to notice me! It was when he noticed me that I generally found that I had cause to worry. At Talavera, for example!”
“We were bloody glad that he did notice you that day, sir, I can tell you.”
“I am relieved to hear that! And I can’t tell you how even more relieved I am to find you here - with the excellent Patrick Harper, too, of course – good day, Serjeant Harper.”
“Good day to you, too, sir,” Harper had said with a grin, removing his shako; Lawford had acknowledged the burly Irishman with a small bow, touching the tasseled tip of his cocked hat with his gloved hand in return. “I wish I could be the true Drury Lane Paddy and wish you ‘top o’ the morning’, but the fact is, your Honour, ‘tis a pretty grim one, so it is.”
Harper had flashed Richard a sly grin during this exchange; Richard had pursed his lips. He had had a word later, once Billy had wandered off towards the parallel trenches near the second breach for a little to see how the Light Division had been faring. No doubt it would have hurt his pride not to see the bright egg-yolk-yellow facings of the South Essex’s Light-Bobs moving to and fro amongst them.
“Never grim, so long as there’s a mug of tea to be had, Patrick! Is there one, might I ask? A Serjeant Harper special, with some gunpowder to leaven the leaves you’ve had in your haversack since Barossa, and perhaps a desiccated maggot or two floating about in it to impart an unique piquancy?”
“I’ll see what I can do, sir,” Harper had said, laughing good-humouredly and taking himself off to suit the action to the word.
“Why relieved to see us – you ain’t afraid, sir, are you?” Richard had said, quietly, once Harper had been safely out of ear-shot. “And got up so bravely too! I am all frank admiration!”
“Haha! Am I afraid, though? Why, always!” Billy had said, to that - quite cheerfully, or so it had seemed to Richard, although Billy had frowned slightly as he spoke, fiddling with his gorget as if he had reached for something which had once for many years hung concealed at his throat beneath his neck-cloth and shirt, and had been puzzled, even displeased to find that symbolic vestigial piece of armour, another emblem of his status as a holder of the King’s commission, there in the way instead. Nerves, Richard had thought, nerves. But he had said,
“Nowt to be afraid of in a fight, sir. What will be, will be. No sense in being afraid of something that’s fated. The only thing I was ever truly afraid of, when I were a private, was some silly bugger shooting me in the back by mistake when the third rank fired. That was when we still deployed in three ranks, when we was drilling, sometimes.”
“Did that happen?”
“Surprisingly often. They was still training us according to the three rank rule when I enlisted in ’93. You’d think it unlikely, making mistakes like that, with all the drill, drill, drill. I’m glad I never had to do that three ranks thing in a real bout. But even with two ranks that kind of thing went on, getting shot from behind out of carelessness. And sometimes not carelessness, but deliberate. I’m guilty, not of shooting anyone in the back on purpose, but I remember I shot my ramrod once. Boxtel. I was seventeen. I just forgot all of it in that moment, everything I’d learned since the day Hakeswill recruited me, I was so scared when the French dragoons suddenly came out of the fog, even though we was expecting them. I just – what does Harris say? I panicked. That’s a new word that’s been getting a lot of use in these times. Something to do with the Greeks, he said. Something about a god who could make men go mad with terror.”
“I was scared too, that day, Richard, if it’s any consolation. And my – the Viscount’s – my father’s - coachman – his knee was impaled - transfixed by a ramrod - in that battle! Serjeant Edwards of the Thirty-Third. Good man. So you can’t have been the only one who forgot the drill. (11) I clearly recollect how I was that day – I was seventeen, too, and I’d never been in a proper battle before either. I had started out as the junior Ensign at first, in Cork, but over the months three or four others had come out to join us, but they had died – fever or dysentery – so I was once again junior, and it had fallen to me to carry the Regimental Colour that day. A Serjeant in his forties told me that I’d be all right, and that waiting for the shooting to begin was the worst part – but he was wrong. He was killed – that was the worst part - for him. And I got a carbine-ball in the thigh. My first scar.” I know, Richard had thought, to that. I’ve seen it. Felt it, too. “I’ve grown quite fond of it over the years. I’ve come to see it as lucky. My lucky scar. It didn’t hit the bone, you see, so I didn’t lose my leg - but it just about nicked the artery. The wound bled and bled. Thought I was going to die that night but by some miraculous intervention on the part of the Patron Saint of Ensigns the bleeding finally stopped and so I did not die. I was in a sorry state for many weeks afterwards, though.”
“Patron Saint of Ensigns? You could have fooled me, sir. I had no idea they had one.”
“According to some, it’s Aloysius Gonzaga. Italian. Died two hundred-odd years ago. He was brought up for the military life but he chose religion instead. He bought it at the age of three-and-twenty. His death came about as a result of nursing plague victims.”
“Well, he had it coming, then. He doesn’t do a very good job, if you ask me.”
“Nor does he, quite often. But I do indeed feel greatly reassured now that I have met with you and Pat. I declare I had been so nervous since waking this morning I feared that I had been almost about to commit bad poetry! Indeed, I should have done so, had not I seemed to have mislaid my note-book. I could not find it this morning. I trust it is not lost. It must be somewhere amongst my things. For the last three years I have been compiling observations and making sketches to write an account of what we have done in the Peninsula, once all of this is over.”
“That sounds like a good scheme, sir. I recollect your poetry from Lisbon. It really wasn’t that bad! It was even funny, especially the bit about the French before Torres Vedras that winter, ‘freezing off their arses, having marched through all the passes.’ Although I’m no expert. Robert Knowles said it was good, anyway, and he knows about these things because he’s a proper officer.”
Richard had said that with an ironic grin on his face.
“Well; and now there is no need for poetry, bad or otherwise, for here comes that paragon of all the military virtues, Serjeant Patrick Augustine Michael Harper, with a steaming mug of tea! Isn’t that right, Patrick?”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Saint Aloysius Gonzaga is the patron saint of Ensigns?”
“Well, I would hardly be knowing about that now, would I, sir? Saint Martin, sir, he’s the one for me, that patron saint of plain soldiers. Gave away half of his cloak to a beggar, so he did.”
“Half his cloak? That would not have benefitted either of them.”
“I’m guessing it was a good big thick cloak, sir - like the one you aren’t wearing, although, begging your pardon sir, you should be.”
Richard remembered how, as the day had crawled on towards noon, and then as the early winter darkness had been gathering and the hour of the assault had been drawing near, he had become increasingly concerned as Billy, far from withdrawing to a safe distance and returning to his tent, curiosity and honour both satisfied, as he had promised, had instead stayed determinedly close to him, persistently demonstrating an obvious desire for an emotional and even a physical intimacy which he had not shown in many months – smiling at him in that sweetly ingenuous way which had recalled the Billy of India days, touching him lightly on the arm repeatedly, as if, at this extremity, he had not cared who had seen, and might have drawn inferences - commiserating with the latest loss by theft of Richard’s fine telescope, (12) that celebrated optic Tube (13) which Billy had frequently asked to borrow throughout the autumn and winter (it had been a finer instrument even than his own) to track the progress of the great celestial phenomenon which had for some time now been exercising the minds of charlatans and philosophers alike - “for the red comet lifts its banner high (14) and surely cannot depart before the events it must portend have come to pass” – a remark which had sent a chill shivering up Sharpe’s spine – and constantly addressing him in that softly beguiling intimate voice as Serjeant in invocation of Seringapatam - at times lively and animated, as fond and attentive as if they had indeed been lovers strolling at leisure in a secluded wooded aisle en fête with coloured lanterns whilst genteel music had tinkled like a stream from some invisible source; at others, still, silent and abstracted, conning over a letter (Richard had guessed from Mrs Colonel the Honourable William Lawford) which Billy would ever and anon draw forth from his breast, and peruse with his features set in an inscrutable expression, and then sigh deeply, and put a hand to his face as if he would hide it for shame, before folding the paper carefully and returning it once again to his bosom.
“The Colonel’s got the morbs something terrible, this time, sir,” a concerned Harper had whispered to Richard, on perhaps the third of fourth time Billy had done this – “he has, so. You had better try to jolly him along, for you have the knack with the Colonel when he’s like this – I’ve seen you snap him out of it before – although I’ve never seen him as bad as this! You do that, then I hope he’ll be his old self again by tea-time, sir, sure.”
“If there is tea-time, today, Pat. Tea-time is for nice places, soft green places like England, with doors and windows which keep out the weather - warm fires and candle-light and polite conversation. This isn’t a nice place. It’s dismal and cold, just a scree of rocks and snow, and there’s a dragon hiding under that breach, I’m sure of it - and when he rears his head he certainly isn’t going to be sipping Darjeeling from a Spode tea-cup and asking after your grandma’s health.”
But Richard had known, intuitively, that what had ailed Billy that day had been more than a mere passing heaviness. There had been the familiar light note of laughter in his speech reminiscent of the tinkle of a set of silver bells made to enhance the gear of a lady’s palfrey, yet for all that there had been an air of aching, inconsolable sadness about him, as if he had been already (as it were) in mourning for himself, truly believing that he would be killed that night. Richard had remembered a word that Harper had used sometimes of his old Irish heroes - how they had been, at the last, before the ultimate battles of their lives, fey – Billy truly had been fey, fated, doomed, Richard had thought, as if expecting, even hoping, that he had been about to be killed beneath the walls of Ciudad Rodrigo - even as he had dreaded it – and he had even said as much, later on as he had been recovering in the hospital.
Richard had tried to stop the madness. Billy really had had no business inviting himself to accompany Sharpe and Harper and the Light Company of the South Essex out of the trench, over the parapet, up the glacis and on towards the main breach, accompanying Hogan’s Engineers, helping them to carry equipment up the glacis to the main breach in the north-west of the city’s fortifications close to the convent of St Francis, and to go no further, whilst the main part of the Light Division under Robert Craufurd had been meant to attack the second, smaller breach further to the north; the Colonel could have had no rôle to play in a fetch-and-carry detail except to show himself briefly to the men for the sake of morale. The rest of the Battalion, such as it now was in its desperately reduced state as it had (endlessly) awaited a draft from Chelmsford, had not been meant to be involved, and neither had its CO. Lawford must go back, withdraw, take himself out of immediate danger, indeed as he had agreed that he would do that morning.
Billy however had now dismissed Richard’s fears, laughing the while, and claiming that he had been bored witless for almost a year now whilst his Battalion had chiefly been confined to detached duties, humdrum unglamorous activities with no chance for renown or glory owing to its being chronically under-strength – not that it had seen much in the way of combat since Bussaco and encounters with the French at the Lines of Torres Vedras – its losses had been mainly down to the feverish diseases endemic in the mosquito-ridden marshy valleys of the Sizandro and the Aguedo. Fuentes d’Oñoro had been a beast of a fight, however – but again, only for the Light Company. Sharpe had been away in England for half that time charged with finding more men to recruit to the Regiment’s recently-raised Second Battalion, which had been summoned into existence to recruit replacements for the men that the First Battalion had lost, and Billy had endured such ennui that he had been desperate to find some excitement - and here it was at last!
“If you was left without anything much to do, you could’ve asked Wellington if he’d let you come scouting in Essex with me and Harper, sir,” Richard had said, his trademark humourless hemlock-death-rictus, that sardonic smile upon his face. “It would’ve given the lads in the recruiting party a real boost to have had a genuine fancy Lieutenant-Colonel in gold lace, and an Honourable at that, on the stump with them in Great Baddow and Little Baddow and Danbury, and singing patriotic songs in Galleywood and Margaretting and Billericay, and buying pints and pies for the new lads in Ongar and Havering and Ingatestone, and playing the raconteur in Romford and Hornchurch and Ilford! The whole of bloody Essex would have flocked to see you! They’d have come up from Tilbury and Rayleigh and Leigh and down from Harwich and Thaxted and Saffron Walden! They’d even have heaved themselves out of the mud in Stow Maries and Burnham-on-Crouch and Goldhanger and Paglesham for the chance of a glimpse of you, so they would!”
“To be sure, sir!” Harper had chimed in at that, ironically, winking and grinning. “Not that I know where any of these places are, being nests of the Godless bloody English, and all,” he had added as an aside to anyone who might have been eavesdropping upon the conversation.
“Oh, Richard!” Billy had said, as if for old times’ sake, and had hummed and hawed, half-flattered, half-embarrassed, all the time suspecting that the 95th’s famous double-act had brought off yet another leg-pull at his expense. In point of fact, he had once been an officer in charge of a recruiting party, when he had been a very new Lieutenant, all of nineteen years old, back in ’96 when the 33rd had been endeavouring to fill up the gaping holes left in its ranks following the disastrous and shocking loss of life which had taken place as the result of two abortive attempts by Horse Guards to send the Havercakes to the West Indies. The regiment had lost at least a quarter of its men when storms had struck the fleet of transports, several of which had foundered. He himself had been lucky to survive when he had been cast up on Chesil Beach in west Dorset along with the other fortunate ones who had been aboard the ship, which had been thoroughly wrecked, its timbers shattered, the hapless victim of a classic lee-shore grounding. He had had to play a rôle and pretend to the market-day crowd which had gathered to watch the Serjeant’s prestidigitations with golden guineas and laugh and heckle at his cozening patter that he had come upon the party by merest chance. They had of course rehearsed what they would do and say and he had learned his lines but when it had come to it he had muddled his words through nervousness at being the focus of attention of all those people from a class he did not know and with whom he had had little empathy, and, he had feared, had made thorough fool of himself. It had taken him many years to learn how to dissemble convincingly, and even then, at Seringapatam in ’99 he had made an utter bollocks of the mission when he had let down his guard at the worst of all possible times and had simply forgotten that he had been supposed to be playing the rôle of Private Lawford, the hapless inky-fingered Company Clerk.
Richard had also guessed that Lawford had had a guilty conscience about Jessica, for he could indeed have asked Wellington for home leave, and in the circumstances Wellington, usually so strict in his demands that his officers remain with their battalions in the field, might well have granted it, for Colonel Lawford had been of precious little use in the Peninsula whilst, to be totally honest, he had not really any longer had a Battalion of which he could rightfully have been said to be Colonel – what he had had, had been about three companies at best, even counting the recovering sick and the walking wounded, and a Major could easily have commanded those. Wellington could even have taken the initiative and sent him home on leave on compassionate grounds. But he had not. “You could have met Bartholomew Girdwood, too, sir,” Richard had said. “He has command of the Second.”
“I’ve met Girdwood of the Second,” Billy had said then, a little peevishly. “I knew him in Dublin, when he was just a Battalion Company Captain in the Second Cauliflowers. I wasn’t impressed. And I’m definitely not impressed to know that it was bloody Henry Simmerson who paid for his Lieutenant-Colonelcy.”
“It was?”
“Henry – my brother Henry – he mentioned it in a letter. I got the impression he suspected something after hearing chatter at his club. Outwardly he’s somewhat dull and gives the appearance of being half-asleep much of the time, but really Henry has a mind like a man-trap – oh, that was crass of me - Hagman’s nowhere nearby, is he? Oh, good. Not for nothing did Henry spend several years at the Bar before he had to give that up to be the Earl after Charles died. He never wanted to be the Earl, you know. He liked the Law. So he and I have one thing in common, at least – on the rare occasions when we meet, once the ladies have left the table we always say God save King George and damn Charles to Hell! when the port comes out – provided Francis isn’t there, of course, because he would at once look pious and admonish us, as so he should, because that’s his job. Stupid bugger, Charles, dying like that. All his own fault. Anyway, Henry smelled a rat there, I can tell you - a bloody great big one - concerning from whence Simmerson gets his money. Trouble brewing there for the Wide-Awakes, I fear.”
“So. Just so.” Richard had changed the subject. He had not wanted to know the reason why Lawford evidently had such small regard for a fellow-officer, in addition to the obvious reason which dated back two and a half years to the day upon which he had been ordered by Sir Arthur to take command of the South Essex at Talavera de la Reina. Well, he had, but at the same time he had been aware that it was wrong to discuss such things, especially in places where enlisted men might overhear. He had been learning! - if there had been any point in striving to become a proper gentleman and therefore a proper officer, were it the case that Horse Guards had ever intended to confirm his captaincy. All that Richard had learned on that score whilst he had been in England had reinforced him in his belief that it never would. Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south, according to the Psalmist, Hector McCandless, Billy’s uncle, had once told him drily, when Richard had let down his guard one night back in India and had shyly confided to him what had then seemed his impossible ambition of one day becoming an officer. Promotion certainly had not come from anywhere for McCandless – at least, not until he had waited thirty years and more for the doubtful privilege of stepping into dead men’s shoes and had been made a Colonel in the army of the Honourable East India Company at last.
“I thought you said you was going to go back from the breach, do the rounds, sir, seeing if any of the men in the storming-parties had last-minute messages for their families back home?” Richard had said, then. Of course he had felt for Billy, whose depleted Battalion, which, except for its Light Company (and that had been only in an auxiliary role) was to have had no part to play in the fight the rest of Wellington’s force would have to face that night. He had imagined that Billy had been feeling useless, worthless, shunted aside - through no fault of his own, of course – yet inevitably suffering doubts about his own merits and competence, yet again. He had been clearly desperate to feel that his presence there was as needed and as welcome as that of any of the other officers commanding the units which would make a difference, but Richard had so wished that Billy would just bugger off and remove himself well out of harm’s way! In Richard’s own view of what was right and proper, Billy had simply been too precious, too special, to put himself in the way of musket-fire and round-shot and canister, let alone what other nasty surprises had inevitably awaited those who would venture onto the breach this night - added to which he had a wife and a daughter and a wider family who deserved his attention, and plans for an eventual future career outside the Army, all of which could be needlessly blown up and thrown away if he were killed that night, for no reason that would make any sense to anyone. Richard imagined Wellington – or one of his aides, probably, but Wellington would sign the letter - having to write to Jessica to explain what had happened to her husband, who would of course have died a hero. Oh, no, no, that must not happen!
“Go back, sir, please,” Richard had said, again, as the light had begun to fade from the sky, perhaps three hours after noon.
“Oh, I shall, I shall, but not yet. This is all so very interesting. I’ve not been at a storming before.”
“Stormings ain’t no fun. You can depend upon that, sir.”
“You may call me ‘William’, you know, Richard,” Billy had said then, almost wistfully. “Brother officers, and all that.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I remember Ahmednuggur and Gawilghur. Just bloody horrible. You was well out of it down south, chasing about after bandits. Don’t hang about here too long, sir. It’s going to get very unhealthy very quickly, once the dancing starts. I’d keep your card blank if I was you. You don’t want to be dancing with any of Barrié’s buggers.”
“I shan’t linger; I shan’t. Do not you worry about me, Serjeant.”
“I can’t help but worry about you, sir. It’s my duty to try to keep you safe. You’re our third Colour, you know that?”
“It’s my duty to set an example. The men need to know I’m here with them, even if they are just carrying bales of hay. Well, I’ll do the rounds again, now, a last time, and see if there are any further messages to be relayed to those either amongst the following, or at home.”
“I’ve done that, now,” Billy had said, some time later, sitting down on some broken masonry, having returned after walking about amongst the waiting soldiers and having gathered up the remaining words meant for the wives and sweethearts and parents back in Britain. “I even took down dictation for the ones who couldn’t read or write. Haha, when Wellington finds a better candidate to be Colonel of the South Essex at last and tells me, play-time is over, now, William - although you did do rather better than I expected - cut along home to England – you may ask Nell for a quince jelly and a slice of lemon cake for nursery tea, and no nasty rice-pudding! - I’ll beg for a job pushing a pen at Horse Guards. I’m sure I’d make an excellent clerk – a thing I played at once, to poor success - or even a secretary, to one of those red-faced old farts who delight in making our lives here so very difficult. Ho, Richard - first morning in the office – I’ll look up your file, purloin an official seal and endorse your Captaincy! Just like that – gazetted, as if by magic, haha!”
Richard had laughed too, smiling at Billy, grateful for his well-meant words, nonsensical though they had been. “Although I wouldn’t mention endorsing (15) too loudly if I was you, sir,” he had said, under his breath, so Billy had not caught it.
Meanwhile Billy had begun to hum a tune, tapping his fingers in time on his knees, as if he had been playing upon his spinet, harpsichord, fortepiano, whatever that keyboard instrument was that he’d come across somewhere in an abandoned villa which had been his billet for a night in the course of their wanderings in Portugal fifteen months before, somewhere between Coimbra and Leiria, after Bussaco, and had appropriated it – taken it into protective custody, Billy had said – like the Danish fleet in the year Seven! Haha! - “Diddle-diddle-dum – diddle-diddle-dum – diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-dum! Dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum!” (16) - He had clearly been very anxious. Then Richard had seen that Billy had been seized by sudden violent shivering. He had emitted a slight cough, turning away as he pressed a handkerchief to his lips. (He had but lately recovered from another bout of the relapsing fever which had dogged him since Flanders.) Richard had already noted with concern that he had been without either boat-cloak or great-coat. Billy was exposed to the cold wearing only his bright scarlet coatee (17) with its glittering gold lace, and shining epaulettes - and that had hardly been going to keep the frost out – then Richard had been gripped by an horrible foreboding. All at once it had been, not just desirable, but essential that Billy cover those signs of rank! Meanwhile, Lawford had abruptly broken off his sonata and had jumped to his feet, brushing in irritation at the seat of his breeches. “Bloody snow! I’m wet through! My arse is bloody freezing!”
“Then at least go back and fetch your cloak, sir, like Harper said earlier,” Richard had begged him, with alarm now, for at his earlier flippant mention of gold lace it had suddenly occurred to him that with all that fine shining bullion on his coat Billy might just as well have pinned a paper target to his breast. Billy had possessed a very fine boat-cloak of best grey wool, lined with squirrel-fur and furnished with a silver-gilt chain with which to fasten it, but on that day he had evidently not thought, or more probably not wished, to bring it with him, and had left it rolled and strapped behind his mount’s saddle-bow where he had left the beast, back at the lines where the horses were picketed in the care of his orderly, that miserable Calvinist bastard Horsforth – “No need for heroics, or for getting yourself killed – “ (he should have taken his own advice and perhaps Billy would still have been whole!) – then, almost pleading now - “the Battalion needs you, sir.”
“No it don’t. The Peer will find another Jack Pudding on his staff to send in to play silly bugger in my place once I’m a stinking pile of offal.”
Richard had shrunk in horror from the terrible words which had suddenly betrayed a state of mind the nature of which he had feared to guess. He had chosen to pretend to ignore them. Carefully, skirting about them, he had said,
“Besides, you’ll be cold, else, sir - “ as previously noted, there had been snow on the ground - “Harry Price told me just now the water’s frozen in his canteen, but if that’s water Harry’s got in his canteen then I’m Napoleon Bonaparte, haha! Here, sir – “ he had concluded, seeing that Billy, unmoved, evidently had had no intention of sending to have the garment fetched, and offering his own great-coat in lieu of it. Billy, laughing again like a peal of bells – brazen church bells, now - as if half-muffled for a funeral - gay and joyous on the forward swing, melancholy, even tragic upon the return - had paid no attention to the advice – “’Anxiety for my country will keep me warm!’” he had declared grandly, ironically but presciently quoting Nelson, and had simply gone on displaying himself blatantly to the enemy on the walls above, flaunting the glittering golden embellishments to his scarlet coat to which his rank had entitled him. “Got to let the men see, Richard,” he had said, quietly. “Set an example, like I said before. You know how it is. If I should cower beneath a cloak for fear of making a target of myself, by what right then should I expect our fellows to be brave and to do their utmost?”
Richard had thought then of Captain Joel Chase at Trafalgar, arrayed in his best gold-laced hat and coat and white silk knee-breeches and silk stockings and silver-buckled shoes, all to do honour to Britain’s brave enemies, pacing in measured steps the quarter-deck of the Pucelle, seventy-four, third rate, marking the yards as sedately and with as apparent an unconcern as if he had been strolling in his garden at home in Devonshire, notwithstanding the flying splinters, the falling blocks and spars, the masts toppling like forest giants before the woodsman’s axe; the shrouds and ratlines, sticky with tar, collapsing as if they had been the webs of huge spider-creatures slashed by some monstrous sword; the musket-fire, the grape-shot, the chain- and bar-shot, the round-shot from the terrible eighteen- and thirty-two pounder French and Spanish guns - showing his men that he had not been afraid (although only a fool would not have been afraid on that day of wrath, and Joel had been no fool). It had struck Richard then that with the days, the months, the years of privilege of rank had come the likelihood that there would be at last a single moment of dreadful reckoning; he had seen clearly that he had been unjust and bigoted and simply wrong in his long history of contempt for most of the officers who had been set over him throughout his time of service. Just then Billy’s foot had slipped on the uneven snow-covered ground, his glittering swan-necked spurs of gilded steel catching upon some piece of detritus, and Richard had thrust out an arm to steady him.
“Oh, Richard! My saviour, as ever! I should have taken off these dratted spurs and left them with the nag,” he had said, with a small self-deprecating laugh, “if I hadn’t thought that that would be the last I’d ever see of ‘em – “ Billy, chattering inconsequentially again, always a sure sign with him of intense nervous agitation – oh, what had been wrong with him this day, beyond his obvious understandable concerns about the crucial action which had been coming?
“Nag, sir? That’s a nice thing to call Meteor, I’m sure.”
Meteor had been a relatively recent acquisition of Billy’s, and a useful addition to his current string of mounts which had included Incitatus and Lightning until the debacle at Work 119 at Torres Vedras when poor Lightning had fallen: a fine light chestnut gelding, Irish and, as most of Lawford’s possessions had always tended to be, as far as Richard could determine – and, as a former house-boner, he had long had a highly-developed sense of the monetary value of items of obvious quality - expensive. He had been a stable-mate to Comet, named for the celestial phenomenon of that year. Billy had been proud of the fact that he had at last been able to maintain more than two horses owing to an inheritance from his uncle, the complexities of the estate of Colonel Hector McCandless having at last been determined - a very necessary thing given the longevity of the war and the difficulties of the rugged terrain and savage weather of the Peninsula which rapidly wore out both horse and man.
“When I was asking around the Mess for ideas about how to name him, you suggested ‘Marshal Neigh’, (18) as I recall!”
“It was a sight better name for a ginger horse than ‘Carrot’, which is what Harry Price said you should call him! But Horsforth – surely he’s as righteous a Methodist as ever breathed?”
“That’s just it, Richard, he disapproves, not just of me – well, of course he disapproves of me, and moreover I’ve a brother who’s an Earl, and Horsforth disapproves of Earls and so on because he’s a bloody Radical and a Democrat, and moreover I’ve another brother who’s a Canon in the Church of England and that’s tantamount to Rome as far as Horsforth is concerned – but he disapproves of what I have heard him mutteringly call my womanish fripperies. Left to himself he’d probably sell them and give the money to the poor. And my silver. He hates having to clean it. It’s the boiled eggs, see, and the salt that goes with ‘em, they tarnish it so. I don’t know - perhaps it would be better if he did sell the lot and give the clye (19) to the needy! As for those spurs, I never have been able to walk in the damn things. It’s a knack, I suppose. Just as well I never joined the cavalry, what? At this rate I shall see myself off before the French do for me!”
In the end, however, it had not been a musketeer’s plug (nor even a spinning ball from an officer’s finely-rifled pistol) which had dropped Billy, sending him flying cleanly into eternity, as had quite clearly been his intention in coming there that day - but the detonation of the second of the infamous mines hidden deep beneath the rubble of the breach, which had first flung him twenty feet or more into the air, and then had dashed him down in maimed and bloody ruin upon the snow-covered debris as a hail of broken stone had fallen upon him – still – if barely - breathing.
“Will the Colonel live, sir?” Ensign Pullet had asked Richard, tentatively, the next morning, probably the fifth or sixth person since the previous evening who had asked him that impossible-to-answer question. There had been a tremor in the boy’s voice and a glistening in his eyes. Another Honourable; another innocent, smooth-faced, eager young scion of the aristocracy desperate not only to preserve the good name of his family, but to cover it in fresh glory, if he could - just as Billy had been in Flanders some eighteen years before. Richard’s heart had gone out to the lad (sixteen years old, only recently arrived from England and fated never to return to it – San Sebastian in ‘13 had seen to that; Richard had been glad that he had not been there to see the death of this valiant young officer – yes, valiant, notwithstanding his name, which had so often been the occasion of much mirth at his expense in the officers’ mess - upon the point of a veteran French corporal’s bayonet as his hands had locked about the ashen staff of the Regimental Colour in a corpse’s unbreakable grip – the saviour, on that occasion, of the honour of the regiment formerly known as the South Essex and, so it was to turn out, the death of his mother when she had received the news). If ever an officer had been designed by nature to inspire hero-worship in the hearts of ardent young impressionable Ensigns – youthful-seeming, charming, handsome, elegant, dashing, daring, gallant – kindly but just - and although demanding, always as careful with his men’s lives as he had been careless of his own – that officer had been William Lawford. It had been no mean sight to behold him on foot, once, in the heat of battle where the fighting had been fiercest, his horse shot from under him, his hat gone, the fierce burning Peninsula sun glinting upon his golden hair, having at the foe with his sword like the goddammest of British heroes whilst the NCOs had done their best to guard him flank and rear, knowing that, after the Colours themselves, he had been the enemy’s prime target; heedless of his own wounds (there had been some, mercifully most of them relatively minor, until Rodrigo), shouting to his men to Come on and follow me, you brave resolute cheerful fellows, for you are free Englishmen, and the least of you is better than ten miserable French, who are mere driven slaves of the Corsican upstart! Another effort and we shall have them! – although his private opinion of the French soldiers had been something quite other - setting an example to his Redcoats as if he had been born to be a warrior and had not (as he had admitted when he and Richard had met in later years) been simply doing his poor best to imitate Sharpe and forcing himself against his nature, again and again, to play the part which fate and circumstance had assigned to him.
“I don’t know, Philip.”
“It’s a terrible thing, sir. He must have known he was risking himself, going to the breach, giving our fellows encouragement – it was brave of him! But he need not have been there! No-one would have thought the less of him had he not been there! He was – is, I still hope – the – the soul of the Battalion! Our – third Colour, I think you said, once! That was his task – to be our living banner! - not to get himself destroyed - for no reason! Oh, God!” the boy had said, sobbing aloud now, trying but failing to suppress the audible evidence of his distress.
“I hear you, Philip. I hear you.”
Richard had been silent for a little, remembering: later that night, at the hospital, once the fighting had been done: Colonel Lawford lying bound by leather straps to the surgeons’ table of operation, the nightmarish sight of his feet, still encased in his beautifully-made gold-tasselled Hessian boots, suddenly kicking hard against the restraints as the barely-conscious body had revolted in instinctive outrage at the first agonising kiss of the surgeon’s blade.
Major-General Henry MacKinnon had been killed that night when an ammunition store had gone up. Black Bob Craufurd had been lying, dying, his spinal cord severed by a musket ball as he had stood upon the second breach calling for vengeance for Sir John Moore, in a small quiet room in the same building meanwhile. Viscount Wellington had come to see how he did and had remained to say his farewells, no doubt having listened, quietly and humbly, whilst Craufurd had with difficulty expressed his remorse for his former scepticism regarding his General’s leadership - and then had forgiven him for all his unhelpful croaking to his political friends at home earlier in the campaign. (‘He talked to me as they do in novels,’ Wellington had reportedly said, sadly, afterwards. No doubt Wellington, a cheerful devourer of novels himself, had known how to respond in kind so that Craufurd had died appropriately comforted.)
Wellington’s displeasure, his frank astonishment, when he had seen Sharpe in the lobby, however - !
“Sharpe! I had thought that you were with your men, securing our position in the city!”
“I am but an unconfirmed Captain, my Lord. Major Leroy – I suppose he is in command of the South Essex for the time being, being senior Major - and Major Forrest have all that in hand, and that excellent man Lieutenant Knowles is with them. I have business here; regimental business.”
“What business? And what do you mean by this, that Major Leroy is in command? What has happened to Colonel Lawford?”
Richard had hesitated, unwilling to say it –
“Sharpe! What is it? Tell me! What has happened to Colonel Lawford? Is he dead? He was not ordered to the storming!”
“He’s – he came with us, sir, he wanted to see the position, and to give encouragement to the men. I tried to persuade him to go back to safety – several times I begged him to withdraw - but he would not, sir. He’s with the surgeons – sir – I mean, my Lord. Your pardon. He was still living when last I saw him.”
“Surgeons? What – what – why – what is this that you are telling me?” Richard had not had to spell it out. His face had told the story. Wellington, at once incandescent - “I still do not understand! How came Lawford here? He had no business - ! It was to be only your Light Company which was to be employed tonight, and only for fetching and carrying for the Engineers, at that - !”
“The Colonel wanted to come with Serjeant Harper and me onto the glacis, sir, my Lord, I mean. At first he had said that he wanted to encourage the Light-Bobs at the second breach, under Craufurd, and indeed, he went there for a little, in the hours before they set off. But then he seemed very anxious to give encouragement to the men who were to do the storming at the main breach, after he had spoken to our men who were carrying the hay-bales. He wanted to set an example, to be seen by them. When we, me and Harper and the Green-Jackets, when we went on further, to give the stormers additional covering fire – “
“As you had not been ordered to do - !”
“Aye, my Lord, but it seemed the right thing to do, given the situation – “
“It was over-stepping, Sharpe, as has ever been your wont!”
“Yes, my Lord, I apologise, sir - the Colonel, my Lord, he insisted on coming with us.”
“So you are telling me that you are in some measure to blame for this calamity.”
At first Richard had been silent. Wellington had had the right of it, of course.
“Answer me, Sharpe!”
“I cannot deny that, my Lord. I should not have gone on, beyond what I had been ordered to do. However, I did not think that Colonel Lawford would follow me. I had thought that he would know to exercise proper discretion, even if I had not. There was no need for him to come with us and I wish to God that he had not. I had no authority to order him away, however, so I could only suggest that he go back. I don’t know what he thought he could do, although - ‘It helps them if they can see their officers exposed to the same perils to which they are themselves exposed,’ he said. He really said that. I tried to – to – un-persuade him – but as I said, I had not the authority.”
Several more years had yet had to pass before Richard had learned the word dissuade.
“Damned fools, both of you!” Wellington had fulminated. Then,”Lawford!” he had sighed, still incredulous, his tone softening a little. “Do you know, Sharpe, but damn me if he wasn’t one of the best Staff officers I ever had.”
“I can well believe that, my Lord.”
“Thorough. Conscientious. Could second-guess my designs like no other. Knew how to delegate and choose the right people when multiple messages needed to be passed at the same time so he wasn’t always galloping around like a blue-arsed fly. Could always be relied upon to dance with a dozen pikestaff-plain ladies at any ball involving foreign allies to keep the bonhomie flowing. Bloody good at cricket, too. He really understood the game, on the field and off it. And he brought the South Essex back into the line that day at Talavera. He filled that gap and we won. We bloody won, and I shall say it, in large part because of him. He was a damned fine officer. And I don’t care how many pot-boys and footmen or Lieutenants-General he allowed to fuck him over the years, come to that – or Serjeants or Brevet-Captains, either, for that matter.”
The ice-blue eyes had bored like gimlets into Richard’s own then, but had met flint.
“Colonel Lawford was ever the man’s man, sir,” Richard had said at last, as discreetly as he had known how, after a lengthy but well-calibrated silence.
The tidings had clearly been a very great blow to Wellington. Richard had supposed this had been because Billy had been in the 33rd since 1794, when Wellesley had been its young Colonel. Arthur had known him in Flanders and in India. Almost three years before tonight, Lawford had joined Wellesley’s staff in Portugal. Wellesley had got to know him well over the years, and to like him, most probably, for Billy had always been agreeable and altogether easy company. Richard had supposed also that it had had to do with the fellowship of the British and Irish peerage. Billy had after all represented one of the most venerable of the families which had composed it, if not of course the oldest. His brother Henry, the Earl, had been prominent as a voice for the Government in the Lords. Apart from that, Lawford’s great-grandfather, the first Earl of the fourth creation, had won great acclaim at Blenheim, and the elevation to the peerage had been the Baronet’s reward. A soldier of Wellington’s eminence would have known all about the Lawfords and their significance in the military history of Britain, even if he had never had Billy under his command, but he had, and that had added to his sorrow. “Severely wounded, then?” Wellington had said then, having with an effort succeeded in subjugating his feelings, at least for the moment.
“Unhappily, he is, my Lord,” Richard had said, taking great care now to control his voice and his face and his general demeanour. Wellington had known? Shit! Pumphrey. It had had to be Pumphrey. He must have wheedled the truth out of Billy in the third act of the Peninsular campaign, after the winter of 1810 which they had passed so comfortably in Lisbon, well behind the Lines of Torres Vedras. “We had expected the breach to be mined. But as we had mounted it, and several minutes had passed, and nothing had happened, so had rapidly grown the assumption that we had been mistaken. The first wave had gained the summit. So the second wave came on. It was then that the first mine was detonated, and then in quick succession the second - to ruin, as it turned out. Colonel Lawford was caught in the explosion.”
“Tell me, Sharpe, how bad is it?”
“He has lost his left arm, my Lord. Moreover, he has severe and sundry injuries to his chest and shoulder from the blast and the flying masonry. His ribs are exposed. Internal organs might well have been punctured by shards of bone. He has lost a great deal of blood. I fear that he is very gravely hurt, sir. The expectation is that he will not survive the night.”
“Dear God. Dear God. Winchester will take this badly. By your account it is clear to me that Lawford must indeed be a dead man. He was one of my finest, most promising - his humour, his wit, his musical performances, even – it seems I was wrong to have tried to forbid him his music – it kept up morale so bravely! Then at Talavera, he – I confess I had had no high hopes of how he would perform when I sent him to rally the South Essex and I had greatly feared the worst, but he behaved almost like a hero of old when he confronted that wretch Simmerson and faced him down, and so the field was not lost! Dear God! This is most grievous news! The price of success in war is so often so high, so very high – one’s best officers, one’s friends, even one’s long-time antagonists who are so familiar they might as well be one’s friends – and it is not over yet, not over by any means! One might almost wish – O God! - Lawford!”
Wellington, cool, imperturbable Wellington, stricken to the heart at these inexplicable, incomprehensible tidings of calamity, as if it were the final straw – had for a moment seemed as if he might weep, but he had commanded himself, so in the end had not.
At Badajoz however, three months later, he had been unable to discipline his emotions. There he had wept openly at the sight of the British and Allied and French dead, lying in outflung abandon upon the breaches, and in the bloody ditches and upon the ramparts - that morning after the – eventually - successful storming.
“Mr Sharpe – sir!” the boy Pullet had gone on, distraught.
“No, Philip,” Richard had said, at last, with a sigh. “He need not. But he came there anyway. He thought it his duty to show himself, first to the Light Company, to set an example of right behaviour in the face of danger, and then to our rump of fetchers and carriers, even though his presence on the glacis had not been part of Lord Wellington’s plan for the night.”
Richard had only ever called Wellington Nosey when addressing the men, and even then only at moments of ease and respite. After his rise from the ranks, he had had to learn to employ two quite separate idioms – the language of the enlisted men when amongst them – and the typical vocabulary and grammar (mastery of the possessive gerund, in which he had been tutored by Let-God-Arise Harris, had been an occasion of particular pride and satisfaction to him) and even, when necessary, the accent of the officers, when in their company. How he had wrong-footed Farthingdale during the Adrados business, he remembered, talking convincingly like a toff after the fop had denounced him to the Peer as an uncouth ruffian! That had been a good joke, notwithstanding the whole affair had ended in personal disaster with the miserably banal death of Teresa at the cursed hands of Obadiah Hakeswill – but best of all had been the times when he had had occasion to switch rapidly from one mode to the other and back again, wrong-footing everyone in the room and engendering surprise and confusion amongst the assembly in satisfyingly equal amounts.
“He was – is – “ Pullet had hastened to correct himself. “Colonel Lawford – he’s what the men call a ‘come on’ officer. Not a ‘go on’ one. (20) Isn’t he, sir?”
Richard had nodded, understanding. A killing officer. Not a murdering one. All those times he had seen Billy mounted on one of his fine horses out in front of the Battalion, waving his hat forward and shouting – not exactly intelligibly because he had never had the sort of voice that had carried far on a parade-ground even, let alone on a battlefield – Billy had had a drawing-room or at best Mess-tent voice – but the Serjeant-Major had always reliably amplified his orders for him. Yes, that was exactly what Colonel Lawford had been.
“I only wanted to say, sir – I hope he lives,” the boy had said then, dashing away an embarrassing tear and trying to make it look as if he were chastising an annoying insect. “Bloody gnats!”
“Indeed, Philip. They’re everywhere.” There had been ice in the parallel trenches and at the shallow rushy margins of the Agueda, where mosquitos might have been thought to breed. In warmer weather. “He might live, yet. So long as he wants to.”
“Why should he not want to, sir?” Pullet had said, shocked.
“Go on with you now, Mr Pullet. Go and see to the picquets, that they’re properly disposed and not just loafing about engaged in idle gossip. Always a temptation, the morning after such a night as we’ve just had, especially in the light of such dreadful news. And if you hear anyone speculating about the future of the Wide-Awakes because we are so under-strength, and especially now that Colonel Lawford lies in the hospital in peril of his life, tell them they must cease to gossip - or else they’ll be in for a flogging.”
Pullet had looked at his grim face in surprise at this, for all in the South Essex had known how Sharpe had abominated the practice – with good reason - but had decided that the Captain had meant what he had said.
“Yes, Captain Sharpe, sir,” Pullet had said, very formal once again. He had thrown the smartest salute of which he had been capable and then had disappeared to do his duty.
“Here I am, promoted at last to Dante’s first circle! At this rate I’ll soon be in Purgatory!” Billy had said, in a tone of patently forced joviality, three weeks later, as he had lain half-reclining in his convalescent’s chair in his small private cell in the convent, motioning with his remaining hand about the austere but clean and freshly-whitewashed chamber. He had demonstrated, Richard had thought, a quaintly proprietorial air which in the circumstances had struck him as incongruous. Long ere this, he reflected, shortly following his appointment as CO of the South Essex even whilst battle had been raging all around at Talavera, one of the officers had taken to referring to Billy as Mother Superior, and soon the others had latched on to this – out of affection, mainly, Richard was – almost - sure – and now here was Billy welcoming him into his presence with all the solemnity and courtesy due to that office.
“Sir?”
“Dante. I have been contemplating upon Dante a good deal since I have been here, Richard. Italian fellow, thirteenth, fourteenth century; wrote an epic poem about his dream-journey through Hell and Purgatory until at last he sees the Beatific Vision. Well, I haven’t seen a Beatific Vision yet, neither do I expect to see one any time soon, but your delightful visage is a quite acceptable substitute.”
“Ah. Poetry.”
“Oh, don’t say it in that tone of voice, Richard!”
Anxiously Richard had searched Billy’s face – against all the odds, he noted, his still handsome, almost youthful-seeming (if now somewhat haggard) face - for a moment or two before he had spoken again.
“How are you, sir? Really?”
“Not too bad actually, for a dead man, all things considered.”
“What?”
“That night. In the surgeons’ room and then on the officers’ ward. My heart stopped three times, don’t ye’know. They had to keep thumping me on the breast-bone. It really did not help, given the existing damage to that area of my anatomy. Well, obviously it did help, otherwise I shouldn’t be here. But you know. Hurt like bloody buggery! You should have seen the bruises. Still haven’t quite faded.”
Richard remembered how he had gaped at him at that. He must had looked like the village idiot, he thought, in memory, eighteen years later.
“I don’t know what to say, sir.”
They could bring people back from – oh. Hakeswill.
“I’d lost a great deal of blood, you see. Someone used my sash as a tourniquet, on the breach, and well done to them. It probably helped to save my life initially, but it must have slipped off on the way to the convent, after my arm was gone, for I fear I made a dreadful bloody mess on the floor of the lobby when they were arguing about where to drop me. They wanted to take me straight to the surgeons but the surgeons were insisting they were overwhelmed and I’d have to wait - I remember hearing that much - and meanwhile more and more of the vintage claret was dripping out of me as if I were one of those ruptured wine barrels we used to come across where the Provosts had destroyed them before the men could get at them, in the cellars of those inns along the way. By the time I got to the butcher’s block poor old Brother Heart had almost nothing left to pump, so he had wanted to call it a day - only they wouldn’t let him. Thanks to the vigilance of those who – at last - were taking care of me. Et cetera. As you see, Richard. I am on the mend, really, although do not expect me to grow a new arm any time soon. I could go back to India and hunt out the excellent Doctor Venkatesh: perhaps he knows some Oriental magic that could do the job, although I doubt it.”
Richard had smiled dutifully at the grim jest.
“Good fellow, Doctor Venkatesh. He pulled one of my teeth on a time, when I was still at the Armoury in Seringapatam. Did a fine job. It still hurt like – like hell, nonetheless.”
For a little then they had traded pleasantries, light conversation, Battalion gossip, jests. But then Richard had at last screwed up his courage, and he had said,
“Sir - what were you thinking, that night? I still can’t fathom it!”
Billy had been silent for a little, apparently turning things over in his mind. Eventually he had gone on –
“Had you not guessed? I had hoped to die, Richard – for reasons which are excruciatingly embarrassing – and, with luck, in the process to leave behind an aesthetically pleasing corpse, hence my particularly determined effort to dress to the nines that day.”
“Sir?”
“I had thought that I might appear as one of those dead sainted boy-deacons one sees lying around in glass coffins in the dark and dramatic cathedrals they have here - all uncorrupt still after centuries – a sight which would have brought those fair Spanish ladies in their lace mantillas sighing and mourning about my bier like a flock of love-lorn turtle-doves forever and a day - but that didn’t come off, obviously. I’m still here, one of the living dead, it would seem, and so I am now doomed to grow old and ugly instead. I daresay Lazarus felt the same.”
Billy had, Richard had known, been making a great effort, pretending to be almost well again for his sake, on the occasion of this, his second visit, having given him such great cause for alarm on the occasion of his first a fortnight since; although he had plainly been still far from it. He had indeed lost so much blood that at first he had almost died from hypovolemic shock (that was what Harris had called it, anyway); then had come the fever, and again the physicians had despaired of him; that had abated; but then there had come another attack of his relapsing illness contracted eighteen years before in Flanders. Now his face was gaunt and white, except for two bright rosy spots on either cheek, and the shadows were dark beneath his sunken yet still strangely bright eyes. Slender as Billy had ever been, the flesh had nonetheless still fallen from him. Even his formerly gold-bright hair, lustrous as the covetable contents of a purse of guineas, had seemed suddenly fallow and faded. Yet he had been wearing his second-best scarlet coat, all a-glitter with gleaming gold lace and epaulettes of bullion wire, and bright with the egg-yellow facings of the South Essex - albeit with its left sleeve brailed up and caught to the lapel with a humble pin which, probably, one of the nuns had donated from her sewing-box. Billy had been dressed as if to give the impression that he would soon be back with the Battalion, Richard had thought. But he could see how the coatee would have hung on him, if he had stood up. Time was when Richard had known Billy lay out seven guineas to have his scarlet coat, which had already fitted him like a second skin, taken in by the tailor one quarter of an inch to hug his trim figure even more closely, presumably so as to render his appearance in silhouette against the candlelit ambience of a mess dinner the more alluring. Billy had always been vain in that regard, but out of affection for him Richard had allowed him the peccadillo. It was pleasant, after all, he had known very well, to know that one was admired – desired, even. Had he not felt that same surge of self-admiring delight (although he would have died rather than have admitted to it) when he had appeared in London society in 1813, scrubbed-up and barbered and resplendent in his fine new Rifles officer’s uniform? He had not begrudged Billy his vanity and his posturing impulses. Officers were entitled to a little prinking and preening, he had thought, perk of the rank, remembering Major Travers of the 95th at Vimeiro, who had lost his wig when his hat had been shot off, and had been revealed to be bald as a coot, (21) and who in the aftermath of battle had ridden around promising a guinea to any man who could find it! In any case, in Colonel Lawford it had been a touching trait, endearing, almost childlike, a remembrance of the young Billy he had known in India, who even at two-and-twenty years of age had still been rather more of a boy than a man (over the years he had noticed that about the privileged young men who comprised a good proportion of the officer class: (22) they had always struck him as so puppyish, so wide-eyed and innocent and eager, so very young when compared with their contemporaries in the ranks - middle-aged, cynical and world-weary forty-year-olds though still in their twenties, most of whom had probably had to begin to take on adult cares and responsibilities when their ages had barely been into double figures), rather than an irritating one.
Just then Richard had spotted the golden ring which he had retrieved from Billy’s dead left hand and had given to Major Forrest, which Billy had now been wearing on a slender silver chain about his neck.
“I’m glad you got that back, sir,” he had said, gesturing towards it. “Novel way of wearing it, though.”
“Ah, yes. But I can’t wear it on my hand at the moment. What it is, see, I’ve lost weight: the fever. It would just fall off.”
“It’s a relief that the fever seems to be in retreat.”
“Yes. The physician tells me that the probable reason why it had not taken such a grip on me as they had been fearing it would was that I was wearing a silk shirt that night! What a thing! Silk don’t disintegrate as linen does, it seems. Far fewer fragments of fabric to pick out of the wounds, so less likelihood of serious infection. I never knew that. A practical reason for wearing silk. I feel less guilty about my extravagant tastes now. I’ll have to remember to tell Horsforth. That should wipe that sour pious look off his face. The self-righteous bugger hasn’t come to see me, you know.”
Horsforth had been Billy’s orderly, or soldier-servant, after Jeremy Collins, formerly a footman at Durford who had loyally followed him into the Army in 1809 after the retrenchments which had seen the establishments both there and at Cannock reduced, had unfortunately died of fever over the winter of 1810-11. Richard had taken care to keep his face impassive. Horsforth had already been re-assigned to another officer whose servant had been killed by a wildly rebounding eight-pound round-shot – one of their’s - which had taken off his head – freak accident. Unlike Ensign Heedless, or indeed, Headless Gleadless (who had deserved it, the daft sod) he had been well away from the fighting. Where the damn thing could have come from nobody had been able to make out.
Meanwhile, everyone had known that it had been decided that Colonel Lawford was to go home to England for good, it seemed, but Billy. His war had been over, no matter how hard he might have tried to pretend otherwise to himself. But Richard, fearing to be cruel, had said nothing.
“That’s something you should bear in mind in the future, Richard.”
“Can’t afford silk shirts, sir. I’ll just have to go on making damn sure I always jump out of the way in time.”
“Hm. Well, make sure you do. Can’t have you ending up in hospital with parts missing, what?”
“Hope I never do, sir. I’d never get tret as an officer and given a nice room to myself anyway,” he had said, gesturing around Lawford’s bare yet clean and just-about-comfortable cell. “They’d take one look at my back and stick me in the cellar to die with the rest of the poor common buggers, probably.” (23)
“God forbid! Richard, did you know Captain Little had one of his bandsmen fetch my arm back here when it was found on the breach the next day? They recognised it from the lace on the sleeve. Also the mark of the ring still on the finger – “ (at that, Lawford’s remaining fingers had gone to the ring on its chain about his neck, as if in unconscious movement) “ - so they could bury it with the rest of me. It was very thoughtful of him. He was expecting me to die.”
We were all expecting you to die, sir. Mr Little had had a soft spot for Lawford, Richard had remembered, on account of the Colonel’s love of music and of his wide knowledge of the art.
“He wanted me to have it at the Resurrection, Bandsman Ward said, boy called Percy apparently, I don’t know why but his name just stuck. Oh, I know why - Arthur – “
“Sir? Arthur? You mean Lord Wellington? Do you want to see the Earl? They’re making him an Earl now, you know,” Richard had said, entirely baffled, and not for the first time where Lawford had been concerned. “At least, that’s the rumour. It ain’t official yet, but that’s the gossip. He’ll be an Earl before the month is up.”
“I am sure Lord Wellington must be delighted at the prospect. I meant Sir Thomas Malory. Le Morte d’Arthur. Percy reminded me. Sir Perceval. Me on a bier, sorrowful ladies all about me, like I said – like King Arthur on his way to Avalon in the boat - sorry, tiresome poetry again – but it’s almost all I’ve had to think about – thank God they have a fine English library here; it’s kept me sane – anyway, young Percy Ward, he explained to Sister Elvira, Captain Little had sent my arm so I could play Mozart again in Heaven, Little being a Wesleyan and reasoning as they do, you see, holding literally with the notion of the General Resurrection on the Last Day. I don’t suppose I’ll have a left arm in the afterlife now, since they had to burn it after two or three days, when I’d disobliged them by not dying… it would have offended Jessica if she should have found out that I had lost it. The ring, I mean.”
Billy had clearly been tiring now, and finding it increasingly difficult to keep his thoughts properly in order. “It was her gift to me on the day that we were married. You’ve seen that it’s a signet-ring, not a wedding-ring as such. It was not blessed at the ceremony; but I should not wish to appear uncaring. We do try to keep things between us civilised, as far as is possible. Or we did. When I came home from India in the Year Five, at our reunion she asked me at once, had I still her portrait and the lock of hair she had given me at our parting in Ninety-Eight? I had to tell her I had not, for the Tippoo Sultan’s soldiers had taken the silver locket from me when we were prisoners in Seringapatam. I could tell that she did not think much of me for having allowed myself to be taken prisoner by the Tippoo Sultan! She was just like my mother in that regard.” But after the fall of Seringapatam Richard had shortly been to discover which locket, which portrait, which twist of hair Billy had truly prized, and he had not taken that talisman with him into the danger of the Tiger King’s lair. Billy must reluctantly have left his truly precious items in the questionably ‘safe’ custody of Captain Morris, or, more probably, Major Shee, on that occasion (although that would have made little difference, for both had been careless and incompetent), along with his commission. “I should not have wanted to have to confess that I had now lost her ring. I am fond of her, you know. Very fond. Sister – dear girl was like a sister – and now – Oh, I am so sorry - ”
Richard had been uncertain as to whom Billy’s apology, his voice now trembling upon the brink of tears, had been directed – whether to Jessica or to him, Richard, he had had no idea. Then Billy had begun to weep in earnest. Wretched for him, Richard had concentrated now upon not staring at the empty sleeve. He had come here fully expecting to feel anger and resentment towards his Colonel for having so selfishly and transparently tried to get himself killed upon the breach that night. Richard’s own future had depended upon having Billy on hand to speak for him, to crack a whid for him, as they had used to say in the rookery long ago, for the sake of their long friendship when it had come to being confirmed in his captaincy. Now it was clear to Richard that it was inevitable that Lawford was to be sent back to England (quite apart from his physical injuries it was obvious that he had been once again in the throes of some species of melancholic episode just as before, during the 33rd’s passage to India in the Princess Charlotte in ’96 when, prostrated with his nerves and with a persistent debilitating fever, he had had to be taken off at Cape Town and shipped back to England in the first available in-bound vessel) and so there would now be a new Colonel, a man who inevitably would not know Richard and who would therefore have no interest in promoting his career. An added complication had been that since the sale-of-commissions scandal involving the Duke of York and his mistress Mary Anne Clarke, Horse Guards had become neurotically resistant to the idea of confirming anyone’s field promotion – even if they had had Lord Wellington himself to speak for them. (Perhaps especially if they had had Lord Wellington to speak for them, it had occurred to him then, given how thoroughly so many members of the establishment back in England still – unfairly - disapproved of him on account of what had happened after Roliça and Vimeiro almost three and a half years before, when Burrard and Dalrymple had attempted to shift the blame for the Cintra affair onto the shoulders of the junior commander, Sir Arthur Wellesley, as he had been then, and since then when, from the perspective of London, where only half of the story had ever been fully heard, every one step forward had been succeeded by two steps backwards, which, by this stage of the campaign, had probably been why Wellington had begun to embrace haste and urgency over his former prudence, flinging men at fortress walls as if there had been an endless supply of fresh drafts from England waiting in Lisbon to replace them. Which of course there had not been. Once back in London, where he had been summoned to explain himself, Wellesley had been exonerated, but in the minds of many Whigs he had still been besmirched by the affair, and, such was the Opposition prejudice against the Wellesley family, had remained as good as guilty, notwithstanding the outcome of the enquiry.) Try as he might, however, Richard had found now that he could only pity Billy, almost more than he had pitied himself and had despaired of his own prospects for promotion – notwithstanding that kiss my hand to a captain’s rank now, had, shamefully, been his first thought as the dust had cleared and in the light of burning carcasses (24) he had seen the broken bleeding body lying unmoving upon the rubble of the breach and had realised, with a ghastly sickening double shock – horror for his friend and pity for himself - that it had been the Colonel.
“You’ll be seeing her, sir, naturally – sorry, Jess- Mrs Law- the Honourable Mrs William Lawford,” he had said, still preoccupied with his own problems. “When they send you back to England. Only send you back temporarily, of course.”
He had still found it necessary to speak the kindly-meant lie - about the conditional nature of Billy’s repatriation; not about Jessica. He had always had a knowledge, a feeling, an intuition, that Billy’s marital situation would come to this at last; ever since that night in Seringapatam when he had first heard of what had seemed to him to be the outrageous arrangement, which Billy had referred to as Marriage a là mode. That had meant nothing to him then. It had been years later that a chance encounter with a set of prints by William Hogarth when in the company of Peter d’Alembord in an antiquarian bookshop in London in the late summer of 1813 that it had finally made sense to him.
Billy had shaken his head resignedly.
“I shall not. She has said that she does not wish to see me – yet – perhaps ever - with good reason. I shall not press her upon that point. I suppose we shall inevitably have cause to communicate with each other on occasion in the future, through our respective men of law. Jessica has finally left me. I received her letter just over three weeks ago… the morning of the assault, in fact, haha. Mercury, tutelary god of the military postal service, has a way with him when it comes to the timing of the arrival of letters of ill-omen… the morning when we got back from Seringapatam, at the camp… that was another well-timed blow to the belly.“
“I am very sorry, sir.”
He had been very sorry then, too, thirteen years before, once Billy had finally felt able to give him an explanation.
“Don’t be, Richard. Mea maxima culpa, as our Romish friends say. My own grievous fault.”
“I think I know that one, sir. I’ve heard Pat say that the morning after a night on the spree, more than once. Thumps himself on the chest as he says it, too.”
“I don’t think I’ll be doing that for some time, in the circumstances.”
Billy had reached gingerly into his bosom then, had drawn forth a packet from beneath his coat. It had been heavily stained with dried blood which had now turned brown, and had been partly in shreds. “Here it is. Horrid thing. It was in my waistcoat-pocket. I thought it had been lost that night, but it seems the surgeon’s mate found it as he was cutting away my clothing. My guess is that Leyton cast it aside when things became difficult on the knife-wielding front but someone, one of the nuns probably, found it halfway-under a chest the following morning, whence it had been inadvertently kicked, I suppose. They rightly surmised that it was from my wife. I suppose they had thought that it would be a comfort to me, if ever I awoke, to find the token of her love and concern restored to me; as Major Forrest thought when he restored to me her ring. It is not legible now, save a phrase, a word, here and there, but its excoriating burden shall be graven forever upon my mind. She has done me no wrong. She has done her best to give our marriage the appearance of reality, as we had long ago decided. She has been seeing Ovalton for three years since the birth of Eloisa, in accordance with what we had agreed, but she has always been very discreet about it. She has kept her side of the bargain. It is indeed all my own grievous fault. I am the one who broke trust, with what happened in Lisbon in 1809. After everything I’d promised, I went and... That was truly my own grievous bloody fault… In my heart I promised her again, that would be the last time I would behave in such a way… I would be cautious and circumspect in future, would pursue my… interests… well away from public notice… but I let her down badly, Richard. I proved to be but a pathetical pie-crust! (25) Someone, I do not know who, although I have my suspicions, wrote to her anonymously cataloguing in disgusting detail all of my misdemeanours since I went to Dublin in the year Six until my major indiscretion in Lisbon three years later.”
“But - who would have directed such a letter to your wife, sir?” (26)
“I was a fool… in Ireland. I put myself into the power of someone whom I trusted, and it later came back to bite me, in Portugal. I am almost certain that it was… I am sorry, but I cannot discuss it at this time. (27). I did my best to reassure her, in the past… I told her the plain truth about some of it, but… “
Be sure your sin will find you out, Richard had thought, suddenly, bitterly.
“But the truth is seldom plain, sir, is it? That’s what I’ve usually found. Some days the truth is one thing, others, something else. Often, even when I’ve meant to tell the truth, the real truth, what actually happened, suddenly, somehow, it turns out different from how I’d meant to tell it – different from how I’ve told it before, and different again to what really took place. It depends a lot, you could say. Why, the times I’ve set out to tell someone a thing, a thing I’ve often told people before but in a way meant to make them laugh, or to make myself look good, and this time I’d meant to tell it straight, just the facts, but somehow… I don’t mean things like, there’s a band of French dragoons hidden in that copse, I’ve just seen the sunlight reflect off a couple of helmets where the covers were torn; or, there won’t be a proper hot meal tonight because we’ve mislaid the commissary wagons again, or straightforward things like that. It’s when I’m trying to give an account of myself, explain who I am, where I’ve come from, why I’ve done what I’ve done, that kind of thing. I try to tell the plain truth but so often it just goes off sideways to places I never expected, and ends up being complicated again.”
The number of times Richard had given alternative explanations as to how he had come to be in the foundling home attached to the workhouse in Brewhouse Lane in Wapping, for one thing - and when it had come to the business of running from the St Giles rookery, and why he had ended up in Yorkshire, and why he had run again and had in the end somehow had found himself in the 33rd, the variations had been endless - and then, how he had come to be savagely flogged after six fairly uneventful years in the 33rd when previously the worst that had happened to him had been that he been broken back to the ranks from Corporal on Christmas night at Warley Barracks in Essex in ‘95 for coming on guard-duty disguised in drink and being insolent to his Serjeant. That story, the story of his flogging, had been a cat’s cradle of mendacity. It was not as if he had even had anything to hide, in that instance – well, very nearly he had not. Originally he had said it had been because he had come upon Serjeant Hakeswill and Captain Morris beating a native Indian for their own warped sense of amusement and when he had intervened, by which time the poor man’s cries had brought the sentries running, they had accused him of their own crime (as it happened, Richard had once come upon Morris abusing a native servant, but Morris had stopped at once when he had noticed him, and the man had run off out of danger). Then later he had begun to tell the story of how it had actually happened – that he had been the innocent victim of a crooked Serjeant’s malice when he had tried to act to save the honour of a woman whom Hakeswill and Morris had conspired to sell into prostitution. And even if he had included his assault upon Hakeswill in the account, he had always claimed only the pure motive that he had acted in defence of the honour of Serjeant Bickerstaff’s helpless widow; he had still never told anyone that after several minutes of extreme provocation he had finally thumped Hakeswill because Hakeswill had accused him – twice, at that encounter - of granting certain favours to Lieutenant Lawford, which, at the time, had been a lie, even if it had become true retrospectively.
“That very thing, Richard, that very thing! I was thinking that very thing, but could not just then put it into words… my mind – sometimes since – the mine - it’s like there’s fog, and I do not remember… Charles Morris is still stirring, apparently, and what stirs in Dublin eventually spills over into London, like the contents of an ill-maintained cess-pit into a neighbour’s cellar… there have been hints in the Whig press about our marriage. Mischievous, scurrilous stuff in the society columns.”
“Well, you know how to deal with columns, sir. Particularly French ones. More than Morris does, I’ll bet.”
Billy had smiled at that, albeit palely – a pretence at reviving cheer – a morning of early March when the sun is but a chill, forlorn, ghostly presence, veiled in mist, Richard had thought; springtime in name only.
Morris, Richard had guessed, stuck in the Dublin garrison, frustrated and resentful, still only a Major, stewing with envy over the younger Lawford’s posting to Wellesley’s staff in the Peninsula, and then hearing of his promotion to Lieutenant-Colonel (Morris himself probably lacked the means to purchase up to the next step, likely because of his drinking and gambling, in which he indulged excessively because of his disappointment over his career, and which only served to keep him out of the running for preferment (28)), which had been quickly followed by his appointment as commanding officer of the South Essex, was the likely source of origin for the persistent and untrue calumny against Billy: that he was a pederast; for whilst it was true that Billy’s preference had been for young men (Billy himself had hardly been old, although not so young as he once had been, obviously) he had in the past sworn to Richard that he had never pursued boys: Richard, with his own sorry past, would have sensed that in him, if he had, and so had believed him without reservation. Another reason why he knew that eventually there would have to be a reckoning between them: at Gawilghur he had given Morris a sound beating for the wrong he and Hakeswill had done him four years earlier, but this continual insidious and cowardly blackening of Billy’s name he could not allow to pass forever. One day, he had thought, one day, he will cross my path; for Horse Guards will not keep even useless bloody Charlie Morris kicking his spurred heels in Dublin forever - given the attrition rate amongst the officers now as well as amongst the men.
“…Jessica has removed her belongings from the house at Durford. She has been spending all her time in London these last three years, anyway, she says, on account of Lord Ovalton.”
“…You mentioned him before, sir. Should I have heard of him?”
“I’m sure you know perfectly well who he is, Richard. Everyone else does.”
Richard had not denied it.
“Perhaps it isn’t over. Perhaps Jessica will come back to you, sir,” he had ventured.
“Why should she?”
“Well, you still have more in common than you might think.”
“Such as?”
“If nothing else, sir, you both like men.”
“Oh, Richard…”
“Sorry, sir. That was a bit tasteless. So,” Richard had gone on, after an uncomfortable pause during which Billy had once again bravely attempted a smile, to heart-breaking effect. “Where will you go, sir? Back to Hampshire?”
“Yes, to Durford, in the first instance. Now that Charles and the man I was ever discouraged from referring to as my father are both dead, and Henry is the Earl, and lives in that fine great pile in Staffordshire, and his heir is still a very young minor, barely breeched yet, Durford is at my disposal – I am under no illusion: I know the situation is very convenient for Henry, for I can act as his care-taker for years yet and he need not pay me a salary. It will be no skin off Francis’s nose, either, for he lives in his very pleasantly appointed Canonry in the Close in Winchester in any case. I’ll have the run of Durford – until young Henry needs it, anyway - whenever I’m in England.”
Which will be all the time now, of course.
“What will you do, sir, when the time comes to vacate the house?”
“It will be all right. There will no doubt be a small house or cottage available on the Estate somewhere. Or if not at Durford, at Cannock.”
Richard had considered that for a little. The idea of Billy in a cottage, sitting at a plain kitchen table in his shirt-sleeves – sleeve – eating a simple meal of, say, broth and bread and hard cheese, and reading a popular pamphlet by the light of a tallow candle – no, that was not right, not right at all! That would never happen.
“It’s strange to me, sir, that the Earl of Winchester’s great house is in Staffordshire.”
“We are a Midlands family in origin. If you ride through the countryside around Rugby you will pass through a handful of villages which bear the name Lawford along with other descriptives. It’s an old name, going back to Saxon times, that is, before the Normans came and stole our country out from under us.”
“Ten-sixty-six. I know that much.”
Billy had nodded.
“Hill beside a ford, apparently. (29) I daresay it arose spontaneously in many parts of England, given the ubiquity of hills and fords; but my family are the Lawfords of Warwickshire, many generations back. The Earldom of Winchester is almost as old as us. It was created four times between 1207 and 1704. The first Earl was a Norman, Saer de Quincey, but most of his lands were in Scotland. The second creation went to Hugh DeSpencer in 1322. The third went to Louis de Bruges in 1472. The title fell into disuse in 1500. Queen Anne revived it, the fourth creation, in 1704, to reward my great-great-grandfather (30) for his part in the victory at Blenheim.”
“I ain’t ginger on military history, sir, not particular in any case. I’ve never understood why so much is made of Blenheim.”
“Never – ! Blenheim – ! I – ! Good God! - it was our only foreign victory of note since Agincourt, Richard! Oh, no, you aren’t going to look blank at me about Agincourt now? Not when you doubtless had a many-times great-grandfather there, probably the foremost archer amongst them, on the day! The twenty-fifth day of October, 1415. St Crispin’s Day. Henry the Fifth? You have heard of him?”
“I’ve heard of Henry the Eighth, sir, so it stands to reason there must have been seven of the buggers before him. Before they turned into Georges, I’m guessing. Two hundred and eighty-nine years of hurt, I suppose you could say, in that case.”
Billy had sighed and given up on Agincourt. “My brother Francis and I… we had a chest of painted lead soldiers, very old soldiers, from a hundred years ago, wearing the uniform of the English Army of Stuart times, before there was a Great Britain. You do know the Union came about in 1707?” he had said, noting Richard’s puzzled expression.
Richard had nodded doubtfully.
“That was in the third year of the reign of Queen Anne. It was nothing to do with the war. It’s a long complicated story involving speculation and the Americas and an awful lot of gold. Anyway, the Scottish Stuarts came after the Welsh Tudors, who had come after the Anglo-Norman Plantagenets,” Billy had gone on. “The Stuarts came before the Hanoverian Georges. The Germans. The current incumbents of the throne. I know a lot of people think every king forever has been a German called George, but that is not the case.”
“I know, sir. That’s what I used to think when I were a kid in the workhouse. Then in St Giles, seeing the hoard of coin old Solly Goldstein had in a box he hid on a ledge up the chimney in the back room – he used to show me and Dan Pierce as a treat sometimes, if we’d done well – on feasts his people celebrated, Passover and Purim and Tabernacles and the like – images, names, king after king we’d never heard of, going back five hundred years – proper history lessons, those times.”
Billy had looked at him then as if he had suddenly seen him anew.
“Done well?”
“Why, sir you know – at the thieving. Dan and me, we’d both deserved to hang a dozen dozen times over by the time we was twelve! Charmed lives, we must have led.”
“We used to play at Blenheim, when I was very young,” Billy had said then, his tone subdued. “It was part of our family history, of course, but it was also very important for the country. Blenheim had seen a three-century-long victory drought ended, you see, thanks to Marlborough – and great-great-grandfather, too, of course; a pretty important one; set the tone of our relations with Europe, particularly with France, for the last hundred years. Lavish rewards all round. Before then, my ancestor was just Sir Charles Lawford, Baronet, with a relatively modest house near Petersfield – a much less grand affair than it later became - because it was convenient for Portsmouth. The West Indies interests, you might probably recall. After he was elevated he took the name Charles Saer de Quincy Lawford, which has always struck me as an outrageous display of hubris. My late brother Charles was given that name. I sometimes wonder if that was why he was such a heartless bully. It really was as if he was a conduit for the spirit of that vicious old Norman bastard, the very first Earl, at times. So that’s how a Midlands family became the Earls of Winchester. Besides, it’s no stranger than the Duke of Devonshire’s having his seat in Derbyshire.”
Richard considered Billy’s usage for a little. He smiled, remembering Harris’s lesson about the Possessive Gerund, after Richard had seen an example in a report and had been brought up short by it, and had asked the ginger oracle for an explanation. At first he had actually thought that Harris had said it was Impressive. Impressive had, to him, sounded more likely. It had been the sort of thing that had impressed him, once, anyway.
“I hadn’t thought of that. Will you live alone, sir, now that your mother has died?” Richard had gone on, thinking that reciting the history lesson might at least have gone some way towards temporarily distracting Billy from contemplation of the distressingly bleak prospect which lay now before him. Otherwise why tell him all that? He had known very well how Richard had felt about the aristocracy, himself an odd exception to Richard’s general rule of despising the upper classes on principle. But then, Billy had always demonstrated a tendency to want to lecture him, as if earnestly attempting to improve his mind, no doubt in order to better his chances for advancement.
“Yes. Apart from a reduced staff, of course. There will be our people about the place. Fewer than of old, for there is no family there now, and will not be, until little Henry is come of age. But I doubt I’ll be doing any entertaining.”
“Won’t it be lonely for you, sir?” Richard had persisted, thinking on how, in the Battalion, Billy had been constantly surrounded by his officers, pleasing-looking young men of good family for the most part; and promising; following the example which Billy had seen in his time on Wellington’s staff, when he had himself been one of those up-coming good-looking dashing young men – well, he had been in his early thirties, at any rate, although to be fair his career had stalled rather in Dublin (it had already stalled once before, on the voyage to India in ’96, when he had been taken ill and taken off at Cape Town and sent home, not re-appearing in the 33rd until December of ’98 at Madras, when they had been preparing to march to Seringapatam, and so he had had a lot of catching up to do) - capable, cheerful and very easy on the eye, whom the Peer had liked to have about him: enjoying their lively company (with one or two exceptions perhaps: George Wickham had come to mind, of course, that plausible-seeming scoundrel), always generous with his invitations to dinner. Billy had kept an excellent table when he could lay his hands on the wherewithal – the waggon-masters of the commissariat had long learned to fear his wrath – no, not that, Billy’s one essay into genuine wrath had been when he had confronted Simmerson at Talavera, an encounter which had seemed to use up his entire life-time’s supply of righteous indignation; beyond that his displeasure had been classifiable at best as petulant needling complaining when the good wine had run out, and no eggs were to be had; after Bussaco Billy had set up his own travelling hen-house on the back of a cart and with a flash of insight not unmixed with a dash of irony had put Private Batten in charge of it, and had ere that made sure he carried his own cellar with him, too) and, when conditions permitted, shooting and hunting expeditions.
“Durford was always a lonely house, for me.”
“Even when your family was there, sir?”
“Perhaps especially when they were there. Francis was all right, though, and Henry - although he was a good deal older than I, and interested chiefly in his rock collection.
“Rock collection?” Richard had said, casting back into memory. He had had a dim recollection that Billy had said something about this that night in the camp outside Seringapatam. It had made no sense to him at the time, and very little now. Who on earth collected rocks? Well, Earls did, evidently.
“He’s a noted geologist, albeit an amateur, of course. He’s addressed the Royal Society. So has Francis, on orchids. Both of them were good to me, if they could be so without Charles catching them out, but Francis in particular… Francis plays the bass viol. We have music in common; or at least, we had, before this...” Billy had indicated his empty sleeve before continuing. “Henry has a tin ear for music, I’m sorry to say. It’s the only respect in which he at all resembles Charles, however, so I forgive him for that. It will be all right. Most of Durford has been shut up since Mama died but I’ll write ahead and ask Mrs Milland – she’s the housekeeper, a good soul – she’s been there since before I was born – Mama took her on as a young widow after her husband, the steward, died – she is still only in her sixties! - to have the library opened up. They can make me up a bed there. It will be less trouble for the servants if I use just the one room, at least at first.”
“You mean to live in a library?” Richard had said, aghast, unable to prevent himself from allowing astonishment to colour his tone, and meanwhile imagining a vast and draughty panelled hall full of tall reading desks and shelves of heavy mahogany stuffed with great forbidding tomes bound in dark leather, the titles chased upon the spines in opulent gold-leaf – a kind of cross between the inside of an assize courtroom (he had occasionally visited such grim places when supporting associates destined for the drop), Jem Hocking’s office at the Brewhouse Lane Workhouse, and the crepuscular interior of the church where the orphans had been made to go three times every Sunday to listen to sermons about how lucky they had been to be the recipients of such beneficence. The idea of the library simply made him think of the Law, the Church and Charity – the three things that, growing up, he had learned to hate, fear and despise most in the world.
“It’s a relatively snug room - by no means over-whelming – only about thirty-four feet in length and perhaps seventeen broad and high – large enough to hold a fairly respectable ball in it, anyway – they used to swathe the cases in lengths of coloured silk to hide the books, and the ceiling, to make it appear lower - there’s a study off it where you can lay out a reasonable supper for about sixty people, seventy-five at the most, and the main window bay is deep enough to accommodate a good-sized mixed band, fiddles, viols, flutes, hautboys, a fellow on the continuo, that kind of thing. The library is what the architecture buffs call a double-cube. Perfect proportions, so I’ve been told. Mathematics, not that I know anything about mathematics. Comes of not having gone to the University. Our colleagues in the Navy know all about that, and I’m happy to leave them to it. Arithmetic has always done me well enough. The Lawford ancestors were no great readers beyond the works set down by authorities as suitable studies for men of their station, but they collected books anyway, for appearances’ sake, for the most part, some of them even quite fine editions - and I shall be comfortable enough. The books have always been good company; my old friends.” Richard had thought with a pang of Billy - so handsome still, in spite of all, and exquisitely sensual and apt for pleasure - sleeping with no companions save dry old books – that thought had made him want to clasp him in his arms there and then, although on this occasion merely to comfort him.
“But why in a library, sir?” he had ventured, again. Bloody hell! Billy might as well have announced his intention to retire to a monastery!
“It’ll be a kind of halfway-house as I get used to civilian life again. I’m used to being on campaign, roughing it in billets that usually left a lot to be desired – sorry, Richard, I know you did your best when I made you Quartermaster, after that unfortunate business with Slingsby – that house at Coimbra really was very comfortable and I’d have happily spent the winter there if we had not had to press on and get behind the Lines - living under canvas – I do not think I could take to sleeping in damask’d luxury again all at once – it’ll take some getting accustomed! And I do not think I shall want to sleep in my old chamber in any case. I had to spend far too much time in it, in a variety of unfortunate circumstances, at certain periods in my life. And besides, I like the books. As I said, they have long been my dear friends. But it occurs to me just now, even as I speak - I could advertise for a human assistant or servant or secretary of some kind. I have a feeling life is going to be damned awkward from now on. I mean, tying a cravat. Peeling an egg. Getting on and off a horse, even! How does David Baird do it?”
“He’s had a lot of practice, sir, since the retreat in the Year Nine.”
Billy had touched his empty sleeve again, smiling ruefully, and it had seemed to Richard as if he had winced suddenly.
“Is there much pain, still, sir?” he had asked, solicitously.
“From my arm? My stump I should say. From time to time. There is a niggling inflammation. It is the ligature with which the surgeon tied off the main artery that night. He had to work with the utmost speed and I do not blame him. He was hard-pressed. They operated again a week later and attempted to remove it but were unable to do so. I have been informed that it will probably come away of itself in time – provided the infection does not kill me first, of course. It is bearable. To tell the truth I’ve been having more pain from my ribs. It hurts to breathe. And my chest and shoulder remain a bit of a bloody mess, of course. To be frank, I am fearful for my shoulder. I have avoided the rot, but I am afraid the joint might never regain its usefulness. If I could only use a third of my arm, down to the elbow, say, I should be most grateful.”
“Are they giving you anything for it – laudanum - ?”
“I will not take laudanum! ” Billy had blazed at him suddenly. “Filthy stuff!” But then, just as abruptly, the fit of anger had passed. “I am sorry. Laudanum stole my mother’s life from her before her time and damn near ended mine before I was thirteen, Richard. Perhaps one day I’ll tell you about all of that. Do you know,” he had gone on, mildly now, “I can still feel the arm there at times. Particularly at night, as I lie in bed. I can feel the fingers of my left hand moving. They’re usually practising scales. Arpeggios sometimes. Bloody odd. I doubt I’ll be umpiring again! How could I give a Wide if my shoulder should not heal? Not unless I stood on my head and did the splits, haha. Can’t say I’m sorry about that; I hated having to umpire when it was your Light Company against Tom Leroy’s Grenadiers. I was always having to give mortal offence to one or the other of you – the two men I love best of any still under the sun, apart from my dear brother Francis.”
Billy had smiled again, properly this time, notwithstanding that Richard had been sure he had seen the beginnings of new tears appearing at the corners of his eyes.
“I wish to God you had not come to the assault that night, sir.”
“Don’t speak so damn solemn, Richard! When all is said and done, I have only lost an arm – part of an arm – and my ribs will heal in time. I have not lost my head, like Headless Gleadless!”
Richard had laughed ruefully. But - “Only?” he had gone on. “You make it sound like nothing. A man don’t lose his arm just by scratching his arse, sir, as the saying is.”
“George Napier lost an arm that night, and he ain’t complaining, or so I have heard. Or have not heard.”
“No, sir.”
“And I am not dead. Unlike MacKinnon and Craufurd. You attended Craufurd’s funeral? I heard that most of the Rifles officers were present for that.”
“Yes, sir. I was there when they buried him where he had fallen, in the second breach. In the city wall. Like Sir John Moore at Corunna, which seemed fitting.”
“Ah. His hero.”
“He was heard shouting Avenge John Moore! as the Light Division went forward that night, the nineteenth of January. Just as he did at Bussaco, d’you remember?”
“I don’t think I could ever forget Bussaco. It was sheer bloody murder on the ridge. For the French, that is. And you saved my skin.”
Poor bloody Craufurd. Took him the better half of a week to die. And we all practically caught our deaths wading back to camp through the half-frozen marsh afterwards to honour him – up to our arses in freezing cold water! No deviating from the bloody line of march, bollocks to that. How would it have honoured Black Bob if half of us had then upped and died of pneumonia? He’d probably have said that we were fucking insane.
“That might well have been my fate, also, to be buried in the rubble if I had died there. Do you know, when first I saw Harper stooping over me, and you and Harry and Robert all looking so tragical, it occurred to me that that had been what you were all about to do! I thought I was dead, at first, you see. It was all so very strange.”
“Why did you go there?” Richard had persisted. “There was no need.”
Billy had been silent for a little. Then he had said,
“There is nothing so stupid as a gallant officer, is there? I have heard Lord Wellington say that many times. Usually when looking at a dead one who had come an unnecessary cropper. And he was right! I believed it was my turn to die. I – I wanted to die, Richard. I should have thought that was obvious. To die in a manner which could be interpreted as heroic, sword in hand, and hopefully be remembered as a stupid gallant officer, not a pathetic failure and a miserable excuse for a man, moreover one who had never been able to keep it in his breeches.”
“Sir, no, sir - !”
“From the age of twelve, I chose death. Francis and Henry and Uncle Hector, however, they stepped in.”
“For God’s sake, Billy - !”
“A thousand shall fall beside thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand: but it shall not come nigh thee. (31) I had not been ungrateful. I knew I had been lucky – I was hit at Boxtel, and there were some unpleasant moments in the Tippoo’s dungeon, but in the Peninsula, not even so much as a scratch - when so many had fallen in battle after battle. But it had come upon me very strongly that day, even before I received Jessica’s letter, that my run of good fortune was come to an end – that it was time, even. When I looked in the glass to shave that morning it was as if there was another man there, not me at all, and he had seemed to be saying to me, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee, (32) and it had seemed to me that it really was all up at last. I suppose I’d been thinking in terms of a clean musket- or pistol-ball through the head or through the heart, although I know that hardly ever happens. Shall I tell you why I thought like that, Richard – that night in India, the evening of the day we’d fought at Malavelly, when Hakeswill tricked you into assaulting him – I went to see one of those fellows in the yellow silk tents, the fortune-tellers. They were out by where Naig had his own pitch. I thought, jolly good if I’m seen there; they’ll just assume I’m off to see one of Naig’s ladies. But I wanted to know my fate. Superstitious tosh. I would never have dared tell Uncle Hector what I had done! This was but two days after I had seen Mark. You know – “
“I remember.”
“Perhaps I had begun to believe in the strangeness, the oddness of India. I am not sure I would have done such an irrational thing back home, in Vauxhall Gardens, it might be, except to please Jessica, perhaps, for you know how women like to indulge such fancies. But… anyway, I gave the man his fee; then he looked into his pots of hot oil, then he looked into my face for a very long time. That made me feel very strange. Then he asked me what I would know, and I said, could he see whether or not I was destined to die for my country. He answered, perhaps, but not now. For the time being you will be safe, he said. If it happens, it will not happen in this land, but in a land closer to your own country. So, taking him at his word, I got through the India years with very few qualms after we had survived Seringa, although I nearly died that time Rufus threw me. That was Hakeswill’s doing, of course, although I knew I could never prove it, as a horse’s evidence (for he had shown a marked aversion to Hakeswill after that) is not admissible, so I did not press for charges. Then I was posted to Dublin. Ireland is in some sense a home to me, you know why. I began to think that I would probably be murdered by a United Irish assassin in the shadows, or in the course of a riot, perhaps. That started to affect my behaviour. I became fatalistic, and very careless of myself, body and soul. But I did not die in Ireland. I came to the Peninsula – well, that’s only fifteen hundred miles from home, hardly any distance. So I began to think that the Peninsula was the place where the prophecy would come true at last. In fact, by the time we had come up to Rodrigo I had quite convinced myself of this. There would be a bracing and uplifting letter home, from Craufurd perhaps, possibly even from Wellington himself. It would be better for Jessica. Better for Eloisa, especially. She could have remembered her father, the hero, at least. Better than her father, the – a word which should not be spoken in the company of ladies, and must not be, where a child might hear it! And it would unequivocally have relieved the South Essex of my presence and allowed the appointment of a decent commanding officer at once – I mean, without having to go through this drawn-out charade of pretending that at some point I shall return – someone better fitted to the task.“
“No, sir!” Richard had protested again; but it was as he had feared, then: Lawford, in a mood of supernaturally-inspired resignation, the state which indeed the Celtic people called fey, had come to the breach that night to keep what he had believed must be his appointment with Death - although Death had in the end left him standing, in a manner of speaking, having jilted him. (But had Richard not also wished to die, later, when he had sought the command of the Forlorn Hope at Badajoz? To leave his infant daughter with a bright memory of her father, the hero – for he had had nothing else left to leave her.)
“Come, Richard!” Billy had gone on. “I was only ever pro-tem. After Simmerson had disgraced himself and endangered the Allied cause at Talavera, Wellesley simply had to replace him with someone – anyone – there and then, no delay; the peril was imminent. Wellesley had needed someone who could just ride up and take over - anyone. I was conveniently to hand. And look at what nearly happened at Bussaco because I was not quick enough to see the danger – and then at the Lines, when the French damn near did for us – I’d have lost us our Colours, for God’s sake, either at Bussaco or at the Lines – the Battalion would have been destroyed, Richard, had it not been for you! Picton, that old bear, gave me such a verbal beating with his ragged staff afterwards, such that I was sure it was all up with me and that I’d be sent back home in disgrace, notwithstanding. Wellington was very off with me for some time after, as well, although he said nothing about either of those episodes. I daresay he knew that I had already heard enough about it all from Picton! But all that time we were in Lisbon that following winter, every time I was told that the Peer wanted to see me, I thought to myself, this is it, he’s found a new commanding officer for the South Essex, and I doubt I’d be lucky enough to return to my old job on the Staff, not with a never-ending supply of young hopefuls coming out from England all the time – I’d be lucky to find I’m still in the Army at all! I often see it in my mind’s eye when I lie in bed at night – the South Essex trying to retreat, still in square, being picked off by the French Voltigeurs, and our own Light Company unable to help them, being pinned down in that bloody farmhouse, where I had sent them – the worst scrape ever I was in - I thought it was the end, especially when poor Lightning was shot from under me. Such a splendid horse. The ball which killed him should have done for me instead. There is no justice… You saved the South Essex that day, and you saved me.”
He had saved the South Essex? Surely Billy had exaggerated? There had been occasions when he had come to the rescue, certainly, of a small unit or two, perhaps. Richard remembered a foraging-party of the Grenadier Company of the 52nd upon whom he and a handful of Riflemen had stumbled about the time of that engagement, who had been surprised by a patrol of French dragoons and had been in a pretty desperate plight until he and his Green-Jackets had come jumping out of the bushes, surrounding the Crapauds like so many lethal grasshoppers – they had been pretty handy at saving them, he recalled; their lieutenant, a tall yellow-haired young fellow with the strangely memorable name which for all that now eluded him, had been most complimentary – he had run into him again five years later, on the ridge at Waterloo, towards the end of the day, when the field had for a time been all but lost – a Captain, he had been, by then: Captain – that was it! – Sandman! and they had exchanged the looks of men sure that they had been about to die - are you come hither to ease us all into our last sleep, Captain? he had said to him - a bitter sorrowful jest with a smile to match, which Sandman (33) had returned, as the Imperial Guard had come marching, marching up the slope with apparent inexorability; but suddenly they had not been marching any longer, but halting – retreating! – and, incredibly, the day had belonged to the Allies! Never had there been such a reverse since the Lord had given the Amorites over to Israel, and the sun and the moon had halted in their courses, granting the Israelites the precious time which they had needed to complete their victory! (34) – or at least, that was what the Bible-thumpers amongst them had said - but talk of saving the Battalion (at the time of Bussaco the South Essex had still been a single-battalion Regiment, and had been termed such, although there had been talk of raising a second, based back home in Chelmsford, to provide drafts of replacements) had surely been too extravagant. As embarrassed by praise and as incapable of playing the flattered recipient of gratitude, as ever, Richard had looked down at his feet, frowning, at first lost for words.
“If Sir Arthur, as he was then, had meant it to be a temporary arrangement he wouldn’t have left you in charge for nearly three years, sir, would he at all, now?” Richard had said, eventually, wheedling, meaning to try to coax Billy out of his sinking mood. “He’d have written to Horse Guards, and they’d have sent him out some chinless wonder formerly of the Fartfordshire Militia or Lord Arseface’s Volunteers, no doubt. Another Simmerson, in other words.” Billy had laughed once, but it had sounded more like a sob, immediately stifled, and in the silence which followed Richard had heard his penultimate utterance repeat in his mind’s ear as if in an echo. I’m channelling Pat Harper now, so I am, he had observed to himself ironically. Unless that was Major Hogan. (Hogan. Hogan had tried to warn him about his likely fate once Lawford’s successor arrived, although, and quite as usual with Hogan, in a way which had at first made little sense to Richard - ‘Now there arose up over Egypt a new king, which knew not Joseph,’ he had said, by way of a gnomic utterance in respect of Richard’s prospects under the incoming regime, and then, seeing Richard’s complete lack of recognition of the quotation, ‘Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor yet from the south.’ (35) Once again, Richard had needed Harris to explain it to him, and once he had, it had simply confirmed him in his worst fears – the Light Company was to be taken from him, again, and just as before, with that five-times-bastard Slingsby, through no fault on his part. The unfairness of it had gnawed at the thews of his heart then; and still it did.)
Billy had shaken his head.
“I told you that when I was a child, I used to play with a fine set of lead soldiers – British and French, their uniforms those of a hundred years ago – a cedar chest beneath my bed in the nursery served as their barracks – I suppose there must have been a good-sized company of each. They had been the Viscount’s. I know I have had a great deal of bad things to say about him over the years, but to grant him his due, Richard, he was a successful soldier and leader of men, until he had to resign his commission and step up to the rôle of Heir after Uncle George was lost at sea. It has occurred to me lately that that might have caused him to become embittered, which would go some way to accounting for his poor treatment of all of us, all those years ago. Those lead soldiers must first have got him into the way of understanding how to handle a Battalion, as they did me, in my turn. I imagine they’d belonged to his father first. My brother Francis and I used to play at the War of the Spanish Succession, as I said. He was always Marlborough, or Prince Eugene, and I always had to be some hapless General Johnny Frog… we used to knock down each other’s files with marbles. Now that I have seen in the last three years more men than I should ever have cared to bowled over and destroyed by round-shot I can vouch for the unwitting verisimilitude of our play. Real soldiers – their members fly apart, and they bleed, of course, when they are struck by heavy iron balls flying at the speed of shooting-stars; they scream, if they are not dead already, and cry for Christ and for their mothers. But when I played by myself, I left the French alone. After all, I had no personal quarrel with them. However, the Redcoats were my Battalion, and I took care of them. I used to pretend that I was their CO, you see. I was told from a young age that it would be my lot to go as an officer, an Ensign, in his Majesty’s Army, just as it was my lot to wed Miss Jessica Hayles, so it seemed the natural thing that I should aspire to, to advance in seniority, to be granted the honour, perhaps, as a junior Ensign, of bearing the Regimental Colours, and then, if I lived, to rise in rank and command a unit - a Company - a Battalion – perhaps be a Lieutenant-General one day, with a Division under my sway - or even an Army! But when I played alone, there was no fighting. There was drill, and, and exercises, and mock-battles, left wing against right wing - and then (in my imagination) there were make-and-mend afternoons, and after their supper the men would sing and jest about their fires, just as you and Tom and Harry did, Richard, when we were marching to Seringapatam. I suppose I was remembering what Grandfather and my uncles and the other grey old men who kept them company, their companions, would talk about, when they came for the Christmas holidays and were reminiscing about the old wars. We had so many of those in the old century, didn’t we? And then, I was most solicitous of the social lives of the officers amongst those lead soldiers… I would imagine them sitting down to dinner in the Mess and in my head I would improvise conversations between them, as far as childish ignorance permitted. They would talk about books, and plays, and music, their wives and children, their hounds, their horses. I believe I even used to demonstrate the steps of some dances for their benefit… I remember playing the little square piano in the nursery - for the balls I graciously permitted them to attend, when they were at their ease in England and billeted in the pleasant towns of which I had heard Mama speak – Fort William, perhaps, or Edinburgh - or Bath, or St Albans, or Exeter, or Winchester, or Devizes – in my imagination these places all looked like Petersfield, anyway. I played them country-dances and quadrilles, until they could dance no more, but must go in to supper at last. What a natural leader of men I showed myself from an early age!” Billy had exclaimed then, bitterly. “Wellesley had certainly known what he was about, the hour he sent me to take command from Simmerson at Talavera, had not he, Richard?”
“Sir…”
“I recollect, one day, when I was so occupied, alone in the nursery, Charles came in. He had with him one of the mommets from Mama’s dolls’ house – which she had had when she was a girl. It is very fine. It is all of seven feet tall. It is a thing which teaches girls of good family how to run a household. It stood – still stands - in the Long Gallery at Durford. He snatched up one of the lead soldiers and began an indecent display… you can imagine, having heard enough about Charles from me over the years! Then Francis came in – ‘Charles, what is it you do?’ he cried, for he was very shocked at what he saw. Although he should not have been, for he had known Charles even longer than I had… ‘I’m showing William Mama at jig-a-jig with the Marquess of Ardara,’ Charles said. ‘See, William; this is how you were gotten – this is why you are a creature of such violent feeling, flying from correction, hiding from justice, weeping at trifles and wholly unable to govern your wayward passions.’”
“Bastard.”
“Indeed!” Billy had said, as if deliberately misconstruing the utterance. “’Conceiv’d in Rapture, and with Fire begot!’ (36) If I had not understood before, I did then. All my life, I feel I have lived under a false pretence, you see. I have hinted to you before that the Viscount was most probably not my father, and it follows I have but small claim upon his name when much of society holds that I am in truth a Fitz-Simons of Donegal, and not a Lawford of any English shire, notwithstanding all that rigmarole of mine just now. So I can’t be Lieutenant-Colonel Lawford. I never was that person – except according to the law of England, of course. ‘William Lawford’ is as fraudulent a being as my so-called ‘Uncle George’ who plagued us for so long, pretending to be Grandfather’s lost heir! It is better that I never should have to pretend to be him again.”
“Sir – I don’t- I don’t think it’s helpful to think like that. Whatever the ultimate truth of it, as far as the law is concerned, your name is Lawford, sir. Better not to stir up the river-bed and muddy the waters. That way you’d never catch your trout, is what Dan Hagman says, and he ought to know. God knows who Sharpe was but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t my dad’s name. ‘Sharpe’ is just what the workhouse-master called me because it was next in the alphabet on his list of suitable pauper names. But it’s always served me well enough. Be satisfied with Lawford, sir? Just saying.”
“William Lawford never existed.”
Richard said nothing. Best let it go then.
“But if only I had died - it would have freed Jessica to marry her lover and know a little honest happiness at last. If one can be happy being married to Ovalton and having to move in his circles,” Billy had added, with a pathetic attempt at humour.
“Never heard you sally a clench before, sir.”
“Lowest form of wit next to sarcasm, Richard. I’m not capable of anything more, at present. But it might have helped restore Ovalton to Perceval’s good books too. He has a very great private as well as public disapproval of adultery which is most unusual in politicians.”
“Has he, sir?” Richard had said, in his best stolid Serjeant’s manner which had got him through many trying situations in the past and had remained useful to him throughout his later career as a means of papering over the considerable cracks – fissures – chasms - in his knowledge of current affairs – knowledge in general, really. He had had only the vaguest notion of who Spencer Perceval was, and that had not mattered, as it had turned out, because less than three months later Perceval had been assassinated and Lord Liverpool had become Prime Minister, and Richard had never really had much awareness of his existence, either. But Billy had failed at dying for the German lunatic and for a country whose inhabitants had usually not seemed to care much about the war one way or the other, except when, from time to time, they could get excited about a victory, and there were fireworks and and hawkers with dubious sausages and pies on trays, and bands playing in the parks, and they could bellow God Save The King in public like they actually meant it; or when they allowed themselves periodically to be riled up by the Whiggish anti-Wellington rhetoric in the more unscrupulous broadsheets. Billy had hoped that his sins and his failures would be washed away in the flood of his heart’s blood and that he would thereby recover his honour and his dignity in death. Instead, he had only succeeded in becoming a cripple, the wreck of the man he had been, a pitiable thing.
Lawford had smiled again; this time sweetly, in a way reminiscent of the Billy of old; but also sorrowfully.
“At least I succeeded in one of my objectives,” he had said. “The Battalion will now have a new Commanding Officer.” Then with sudden discordant bitterness he had gone on, “When a horse is injured at the races, or in a hunt, or on a battlefield, everyone knows that the kindest thing to do is to put a bullet between its eyes straight away. Someone should have had the decency to shoot me that night.”
“Now, sir, you know you don’t mean that.”
“Or perhaps I should have done it myself when I received Jessica’s letter that morning. Poor Charles Bevan (37) of the Fourth shot himself for shame last year and he had done no wrong, no wrong at all - it was all that madman Erskine’s fault, it was proven – too late! But Bevan showed courage and resolve, in any event. And that Spanish-Irish fellow, Lord Kiely – I was there, you know, at Wellington’s headquarters in Vilar Formoso – I’d just given the Peer my regards as I was on my way to Castello Branco to catch up with Four and Five Companies, to see if they needed any extra snap put into them – they were on wagon-guarding duty, and I knew how that could sap morale – I never got there – I had not gone five miles when I heard from a guerrillero fellow who happened upon me what was happening at Fuentes de Oñoro so I went back, thinking there might be a more urgent job there that I could do, but… the Peer gave Kiely such a roasting! I’d heard nothing like it since that time Simmerson at Plasencia… “
“I remember that, sir. A roasting for the ages, that one.”
“I was downstairs chatting with Ned Pakenham and that villainous fop Wickham and two or three others from the Staff – there was a shout and raised voices, and the next thing was Kiely racing down the stairs looking like a ghost – he barged right through us, and then he went and… “
“He was drink-fuddled, deluded. He was pathetic and clueless, but he didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
“No. But I deserved death.”
“Sir, no, sir – “
Billy had cut him short. “I thought I could leave it to the French to do it for me, so I could die with the pretence of honour regained. And, as I have already said, I was anxious to leave behind a pretty carcass. I shouldn’t have looked so fine with half my head missing, should I? Vain as always; vain even in extremis.”
“Hush, sir! That’s the fever talking, still - don’t say such things. Please.”
Billy was silent then, probably realising belatedly how his words had been hurting his friend.
After a little, Richard had said,
“What will you do in England, sir?”
“Probably write to Lord Liverpool to beg a desk job at the War Office. Or try my luck with Horse Guards. I shan’t need the money but I shall need the occupation. All right. I shall need the money. Ovalton’s boys’ school fees.”
“Why can’t Ovalton pay?”
“It would appear strange. According to the law, I am their father. I do not wish to give society further cause to condemn Jessica, whom I consider to be blameless, in any case.”
“Are you still thinking of Westminster, sir? Parliament?”
“Not likely, Richard, is it? Bloody Morris and his whisperings – “
“I’m sure you’ll be able to pay someone who can shut him up.”
“Richard?”
“I know people who know people who can find enough dirt on Morris to make him shut his pie-hole good and proper, sir. I’ve made it my business to collect intelligence on him since Mysore. He’s rotten to the core.”
“Blackmail?”
“If needs be. Little girls, when we was back in Warley in Ninety-Five. Used to see that kind of thing at Brewhouse Lane. Maddened me, made me sick to my stomach. I won’t have that bastard sink your career, sir.”
Then a nun, Sister Elvira, had come and scolded Richard in Galician for outstaying the allotted hour of his visit, evidently meaning to shoo him from the room; so he had taken Billy’s remaining hand in both of his, meaning to press it; but he had been shocked to find how thin it was indeed. He could tell all the bones. He had caressed the wasted hand instead, and had heard the breath catch suddenly in Billy’s throat, and he had thought he would have kissed that hand had it not been for the inhibiting presence of the nun. But Richard had hesitated for a heartbeat, then he had thought, bugger it, and had dropped suddenly to one knee, not so much to appear as a suitor, but more as if he had been about to take a shot at a French officer, but he had held Lawford’s hand to his lips anyway – the fingers, white and soft as a girl’s at Seringapatam, had been hardened now - the hand of a senior officer – still white from the habitual wearing of gloves, but battle-tempered after eighteen years of service - kissing it formally, as one would the hand of a prince or a bishop, first on the dorsum – but then, on an impulse, having rotated it, on the palm – and then a third time on the inside of the wrist where the skin had been even whiter and the veins had shewn blue - lingering over this final kiss to show Billy that he had indeed remembered; and Billy had let escape a small involuntary groan as he had traced with his fingers the scar which disfigured the left (38) side of Richard’s face, just as Teresa had liked to do; and the bloody old sour-faced harridan in the wimple could think what she damn well liked. How he had gazed into those blue eyes, mere inches from his own, as Billy had caressed his face; how they had gazed back into Richard’s - so black, hard, like flint – shining black flint, fresh-knapped - Malavelly, remember - as Billy had said to him once, on another occasion when he had seemed desperate to reassure himself that Richard had still born in mind those far-off days in India - treasured the memory of them as tenderly as Billy had. All at once he had felt Billy’s pulse begin to race, and no longer had he been as if kneeling to lord or prelate: there had been true feeling in that kiss now and Billy had groaned again, his head sinking backwards upon the cushion, his eyes closing. It had been plain that, in despite of all his pain and weakness, his sorrow and his fear, his shame and his despair for his future, desire for Richard, that dark sorcery of old, had mastered him. How Richard had wanted then to set his arms about him! But that would have been an outrage too far, in this place of pain and piety. Slowly, unwillingly, he had relinquished Billy’s hand.
“’O lente, lente, currite noctis equi…’
“Sir?”
“That magical flying carpet, Seringapatam, you remember?” Billy had said, sadly, opening his eyes. “Don’t go asking Major Hogan about the horses of the night, now, will you? After Talavera, you asked him about Coriolanus, because of what I’d said.” A forced laugh, the wannest phantom of a smile.
“I won’t, sir.”
So that evening he had not asked Hogan, that exemplary Dragoon (39) amongst officers. He had asked the admirable Harris instead. He had not been able to recall the unfamiliar Latin words correctly or in their entirety, but Harris, recognising the garbled quotation at once, for it had been a famous one, had been keen to demonstrate his erudition by explaining the riddle of the slow horses, notwithstanding his evident initial mild irritation at having been interrupted in his exercise of the writing of his nightly entry in his journal. (40) Ovid, Harris had said, had been writing as a lover who had not wanted the night to end, and Richard had seen the kindling of sympathetic understanding in his eyes, and then had sensed Harris’s curious bespectacled gaze lingering on his back as, suddenly mortally embarrassed, he had walked quickly away. But it was shortly after that, that Harris had confided to him, unasked, that his parents had belonged to an obscure Nonconformist sect which had not approved of naming children after the saints, which they had considered a Romish practice, and that his first name had therefore been Let-God-Arise-And-Let-His-Enemies-Be-Scattered. It was that, Harris had said, which had first driven him to drink, and which had in turn lost him his position as a private tutor, from which he had been dismissed without a reference, and had thus been driven for refuge into the bosom of King George’s Army: but that Richard could continue to call him Harris whenever he wished.
“I wish you could have stayed just a little longer, Richard,” Billy had said, as Richard had got to his feet once more (it had been something of a struggle – neither of them had been getting any younger, and infanteers’ joints famously took a pounding, shrinking them in height as their spines were compressed from bearing the weight of all their kit and weapons, and simultaneously crippling their ankles, knees and hips). He remembered how he had longed to stay with Billy in the convent, yet at the same time he had yearned for Teresa, who had been known to be in that country, and he had wanted to search for her. He recalled how utterly he had felt torn in two by his love for the both of them.
“So do I, sir.”
“God, Richard, I am so glad you came. You are the only one who has come to see me apart from Slender Billy, that little Dutch boy on the Peer’s staff. God knows I am grateful to him for coming, though. He is an Etonian, after all, and he was a huge tonic to me. We talked of the School; the familiar places, the river. I told him of the time I went swimming in a popular spot one hot afternoon when there was a half-holiday, and how Duncan Fitzroy and a crony of his happened upon me and stole my clothes from where I had left them hanging on the branch of a willow, so I had had to run back to school wearing only my soaking-wet drawers. How the boys from the town had laughed to see me! At the time I had felt desperately humiliated by that, but telling the story to the Prince so many years later I saw the funny side at last! He found it uproariously hilarious, and I could not help but laugh with him. If ever I see Fitzroy again I’ll tell him I forgive him. I might even forgive him for the emetic stew that time at Warley in Ninety-Five! Orange knew many of the masters who had taught me – still there! But he is a bit of a holy fool, isn’t he? He fancies himself a military genius because he has been permitted to serve with Wellington for a few months! He has a good heart and he means well, but I pray God you never have him next to you in a real battle, Richard. We had better make sure we do for Boney in this round, and put him down for good, and soon - or God help us if ever he comes back and we have to depend upon the likes of the Prince of Orange to stiffen our ranks!”
“I’ll deal with him as and when, sir, never you mind.”
“Please, señor, you must leave now,” the officious nun had insisted; so he had turned to go.
“Richard!” Billy’s voice had been all at once cracking as if with a kind of panic fear, breaking with emotion, suddenly somewhat high and uncertain like that of a youth of about fourteen years old, Richard had thought - although with nothing at all in the sound of it which might have provoked a smile or a jest, as when a boy’s voice suddenly begins to change, taking all by surprise although the event had been long-expected.
“Sir?” he had said, turning back.
“Shall… shall I ever see you again, do you think?” Billy had said, mastering himself with what had evidently been a very great effort.
Richard had smiled at that; the scar had ceased for a little to distort his features in its signature cynical grimace and for once his face had taken on a pleasant expression. He had been unaware of this, although it had evidently wrung Billy’s heart to see it. He had let out a small rueful laugh.
“That’s for the lap-dogs (41) to decide, I think, sir,” he had said, making a deliberate effort to raise a smile to replace the distraught expression in which Billy’s features had been suddenly set.
There had been a momentary pause whilst Billy had worked it out; then he had emitted a short high peal of silvery laughter: the old Billy, just for a little.
“Oh, that’s good! that’s very funny!” he had said. “Lap-dogs, an enigma to counter my horses of the night! In Hampshire we had a neighbour, well, not all that close really, but within half a day’s ride, a sea-officer, a Post-Captain like your friend Chase; he said things like that all the time! Sometimes I thought he had done it on purpose, to make us laugh at dinners, and sometimes it was as if he really could not help it, and that his tongue had somehow tripped over his brain! I wish he had not removed to Dorsetshire. He was good company. Richard, wait - Richard – I – I – you – I - ”
“Señor!”
“I really have to go, sir,” Richard had said then, almost brusquely, silencing him; and so Billy had not after all said next what, when Richard had later replayed their parting dialogue in his memory, he had obviously been nerving himself to say throughout that entire interview.
Richard had turned again, and had gone to the door, wishing that his last sight of his Colonel (for the next eighteen months, as it had turned out) had not been of Billy sitting huddled and sunken in despair in his cell in the convent-turned-hospital, eyes closed, sudden helpless tears again sliding in silence down his wan, wasted, exhausted face.
Notes
1 Robert Knowles was murdered by Obadiah Hakeswill on the night of the taking of Badajoz as he valiantly endeavoured to protect Sharpe’s wife Teresa and infant daughter Antonia from the evil designs of the renegade Serjeant; he had no part in the shameful behaviour of the men of the 7th in the fallen city which disgraced the British Army that night. Ed.
2 Sharpe almost made a habit of jumping off the facades of huge ornate Behemoth cathedrals of the kind in which they had specialised in Spain and Portugal. He later told me that he had had occasion to leap from a high window beneath the dome of the Cathedral in Cadiz in 1811, shortly before the battle of Barrosa, but in that instance it had only been Pumps who had suffered a twisted ankle! Sharpe did try to explain the circumstances, but it was all preposterous cloak-and-dagger stuff involving the Peer’s brother Henry and some purloined letters and the kind of nefarious Papist cleric who seemed to feature often in Sharpe’s adventures whenever he was required to go on secret missions away from the Battalion, and I could make very little sense of any of it. He also on that occasion told me some very disturbing things about Pumphrey – things which caused me to re-evaluate the events which had occurred at Lisbon in May of the year ‘09, shortly after my arrival – but at the time I had only had the most nebulous of suspicions and no tangible evidence with which to back them up, and so I had said nothing to Richard, and for a time thereafter had reluctantly dismissed them.
3 A reference to an archaic form of corporal punishment once used in the British Army. Ed.
4 Meredith. Ed.
5 But I later learned that he did – he was everywhere that night, following his customary practice of ubiquity through necessity; he had frequently complained to me before then that unless he was upon the spot nothing was ever done properly, or even at all.
6 The Office Hymn for Compline in Ordinary Time. Ed.
7 After his near-death following his wounding, WL began to experience moments of clairvoyance, or second-sight, or at least, so he believed, and so he interpreted the impressions these episodes left in his mind. He refers to similar instances at various points in this MS. Ed.
8 Sometimes the very strength of the conviction operating on the unconscious mind had been enough to make the prophecy come true, inducing the subject to act unwittingly in such a way as to bring about the dreaded catastrophe. This had been very nearly the case with both d’Alembord and Lawford, both of whom, in the fey state of mind more familiar to Celtic subjects, had gone more than half-way to meeting their almost-deaths, the one in Belgium and the other in Spain. It was entirely the case with Lord John Spears and Colonel the Lord Kiely. Ed.
9 Further information regarding the circumstances surrounding Sharpe’s ill-conducted ad-hoc hearing (which was neither a properly convened Court of Inquiry nor a Court-Martial) in 1799 shortly before the assault upon Seringapatam. Ed.
10 Clothes. Ed.
11 It was actually Sharpe’s ramrod, discharged from the barrel of his musket when he had lost his nerve and forgotten his drill, which had disabled Sjt Edwards at Boxtel. Sharpe never knew that, however, and neither did Edwards, or Lawford, either, for that matter, which was probably just as well. Ed.
12 This famous telescope had gone missing on a few occasions – this was only the latest (uncanonical) instance before it disappeared again in the Badajoz campaign. It was to be stolen once more before its final destruction in Burgos Castle by the French secret police chief ‘Major’ Ducos in June of 1813. On this occasion it turned up in a pawn shop in Elvas, Patrick Harper having tracked it down after beating the daylights out of a Private Marsden (a ne’er-do-well who had joined the South Essex as an alternative to the gallows at the suggestion of Judge Tindall at the Chelmsford Assizes) who had finally admitted to popping it in order to get money for rum: Judge Nicolas Tindall – 1776-1846 – was an unusually humane man for his day, best known for his performance as Counsel engaged to defend Queen Caroline at her trial for adultery in 1820). Ed.
13 James Thomson. Autumn. 1730. Ed.
14 An allusion to verses beginning Keep Silence, all created Things in Isaac Watts’s Horae Lyrica, 1709, which Lawford is applying to the phenomenon of the comet which first appeared in the heavens in 1811 and which caused much fear and speculation throughout the world on account of the continuing global war and uncertain political situation. To the superstitiously-minded amongst the British, the comet seemed to have been pointing towards the terrible events at Ciudad Rodrigo in January of 1812 and particularly at Badajoz in April – engagements so savage and with such terrible losses that the British army was to encounter nothing like them again (save the storming of San Sebastian) until the Battle of the Somme just over a century later. Tom Garrard and Edward Keogh died in 1811, the year of the comet’s appearance; and in January 1812, just as the comet was waning in magnitude, the CO of 1/South Essex, Lt-Col the Hon. William Lawford, suffered life-changing and near-fatal injuries upon the primary breach at Ciudad Rodrigo. But following these misfortunes, the prospects of the Allies improved markedly. Ed.
15 In the low slang of the time it was a euphemism for sodomy, for much the same reason that backgammon was. Lawford was probably unaware of this. Ed.
16 Evidently the Rondo alla Turca from Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11 in A. Ed.
17 A typical officer’s coat worn in most armies of the time, based on civilian fashion: cut short to the waist in the front, with tails falling to the knees behind. Ed.
18 Marshal Ney, fêted by Bonaparte as ‘the Bravest of the Brave’, was said to have had red hair. In fact, he had not, and it was his complexion which had been ruddy. However, Lawford had possessed a fine chestnut horse called Rufus when he was in India, but he had had to sell him before he sailed for England in 1805; hence Sharpe’s jest. Presumably he did not wish to re-use the name, out of lingering attachment to Rufus the First (who had, perhaps unconsciously, been named after Mark Lucas’s ginger cat). Ed.
19 Slang term for money. Ed.
20 cf Rfn Costello. Elsewhere, a ‘come on’ officer was sometimes known as a ‘killing officer’, as opposed to a ‘go on’ officer, who by comparison was a ‘murdering’ one. Ed.
21 Rfn Benjamin Harris’s phrase. Ed.
22 Not all of the officers of the British Army at the time of the Peninsular War came from privileged backgrounds, by any means. A surprising number came from families of relatively humble circumstance, being the sons of professional men rather than Dukes or Earls or Viscounts. Some had been so-called Gentlemen Volunteers, men who by birth and education were counted gentlemen but had not the connections to obtain rank, or the means to purchase it, who ate, lived and socialised with the officers but who did the duty of common soldiers, hoping to prove themselves by their valour and good conduct and so eventually earning a commission that way. Rising directly from the ranks was unusual when Sharpe made the leap in 1803, but by 1815 one in twenty British officers had come up that way, by necessity, as the rate of attrition had become so high after two decades of almost unremitting war which had relentlessly ground down the pool of available officers as if in a carborundum. Lawford was somewhat unusual in that although he was from an aristocratic family, being a grandson of the Earl of Winchester, he had initially only been able to obtain a comparatively inexpensive Ensign’s commission in the 33rd, a respectable but unglamorous Regiment of Foot. There was a good reason for this, of course. Ed.
23 This did in fact happen later that same year, at Salamanca. Sharpe was saved by the devoted persistence of Sjt Patrick Harper, who searched for his missing Captain in the hospital at the Irish College until he found him in the dying-room with the mortally wounded common soldiers, and then against all odds had nursed him back to health, aided by his wife, Isabella. Ed.
24 Large basket-like frameworks filled with flammable material, thrown to give light on the battlefield in night-time conditions. Captain Thomas Leroy suffered serious burns when he was hit by one during the storming of Badajoz. Ed.
25 Easily broken and best discarded in a dirty industrial situation. The workers ate the contents and threw away the casing for the delectation of the rats and the mice. Ed.
26 This was never discovered, although Lawford, on asking Jessica if he might see the original (once he was in England and relations between them had been patched up, at least to a certain extent) was surprised to note that the hand-writing had a certain look about it which had suggested to him that it had been written by someone who had been educated in France. Ed.
27 This has to do with the long-unsuspected treachery of Hargreaves and Pumphrey. The scheme was, first, to get Lawford assigned to Wellesley’s staff in the Peninsula, and then to cause him to be so badly compromised that, from his position close to Wellesley, he could be coerced into providing crucial information to the French. Lawford first refused, and for a short time was in a terrible agony of mind about whether or not he should confess all to Hogan, expecting every hour to be denounced; then, most fortuitously, he was unexpectedly removed from Wellesley’s staff at a crisis in the Battle of Talavera in order to command the South Essex, which, Simmerson having been permanently removed as Colonel, rendered Lawford useless thereafter for the purposes of espionage. The marriage-wrecking letter delivered to Jessica was simply by way of revenge for Lawford’s having harmed the credibility of Pumphrey and Hargreaves with the French, and had been designed with the purpose of making any further civilian career in public life impossible for him. Fortunately he had friends in England who were able to thwart that scheme, with the aid of the commendable Jessica, who in despite of all stuck by her husband for the sake of their old childhood friendship. Ed.
28 If there was a Regency-era equivalent of the phrase ‘negative feedback loop’ we have yet to see it cited. Ed.
29 Perfectly plausible; although Stephen Murdogh was later to suggest to Lawford that, given the antiquity of the Lawford family, the origin of the name might just as well have been the Old English Hlaefweard, that is, bread-guardian, from which Hlaford was first derived, and then the modern English title Lord; as Lady is a worn-down form of Hlaefdige (bread-kneader): that is, the family name began not so much as an appellation, but as a title - the Lord of that tract of countryside at a time many hundreds of years before the general adoption of surnames. Ed.
30 Lawford’s actual great-great-grandfather had probably been helping to put down Patrick Harper’s ancestors in Donegal at the time. Ed.
31 Psalm 91. Ed.
32 St Luke 12:20. Ed.
33 Captain Rider Sandman, late of the 52nd Regiment of Foot, when returned to civilian life, from time to time took commissions from Lord Addington, Viscount Sidmouth, Home Secretary 1812-1822, to investigate the validity of petitions for clemency for those who had been condemned to death. It was he who introduced Captain John Marlott of the Thames River Police, formerly of the 95th Rifles, later the Brigade of Rifles, to Sir Robert Peel when Peel occupied that office (1822-1827) and was in need of someone to undertake similar special services on behalf of the State. (Ref: Gallows Thief, novel by Bernard Cornwell, 2001; The Frankenstein Chronicles, Benjamin Ross/Barry Langford, tv series 2015-2017.) Ed.
34 Joshua 10:12-13. Ed.
35 Exodus 1:8 and Ps. 75:6 (BCP translation, which suggests that Hogan, although Irish, is Church of Ireland, i.e. Anglican.) Ed.
36 Richard Savage. The Bastard. 1728. Ed.
37 Lt-Col Bevan was blamed, mistakenly, by Wellington for the escape of the French garrison from Almeida in 1811. He never received the order to pursue them because Erskine forgot they were in the pocket of his greatcoat. He asked for a Court-Martial so that he might have the chance to clear his name, but Wellington refused him. Bevan could not bear the shame of having been blamed for what had been a blunder which had had serious consequences, so he shot himself. Ed.
38 The scar began its existence on the right side of Sharpe’s face (Fortress, Trafalgar) but by Rifles it had translated itself to the left side (Rifles was written before either of those other two but for the sake of simplicity we shall stick with the chronology, rather than the date of publication). As this fits well with Lawford’s injury, the scar upon the left side is canon, for present purposes. Ed.
39 ‘Dragoon’ had become a slang term to describe any functionary whose coat had buttoned up tight over a number of other duties. The Dragoons were by tradition deemed cavalry when on horseback but counted infantry once they had dismounted, although by the time of the Peninsular War they had now generally stuck to their mounted rôle and no longer fought on foot. Ed.
40 Harris had often been used to say that he meant to write his recollections of the war in the Peninsula once he had returned to civilian life, and to make his fortune thereby, and that his meticulously-kept journal was to be his primary source. His half-serious, half-comedic working title for it had been Napoleon: My Part in His Downfall. Batten, Cooper, Hagman, Harper, Perkins, Pendleton, Peters, Sharpe and Tongue and all the rest of them had claimed their part in the Emperor’s Downfall, too, and Harris had promised them that he would include their exploits and refer to all of them by name, ensuring their everlasting glory. Sadly, owing to the events of 15 – 18 June 1815, this volume, which would otherwise undoubtedly have proved to be Harris’s magnum opus, and one of the great testaments of the common soldier’s experiences in the Peninsular Campaign, had been fated never to see the light of day – until one hundred and sixty-four years had passed, and on a day in 1979 a battered, scorched and blood-stained exercise book, many of its pages bearing witness to the deadly through-passage of a bayonet, came to light in an antiquarian book-shop in the village of Lawford, near Manningtree, on the river Stour on the Essex-Suffolk border. What its provenance was and how it had come to be there no-one knew, but the rest, as they say, is history. Following some light editing and some rather heavier imaginative reconstruction, a few of its early chapters, recounting amongst other things the previously unrecorded taking of an Imperial French Eagle at Talavera in 1809, became the British publishing sensation of 1981. It proved to be the foundation volume of a long sequence of popular historical novels, some of which were eventually adapted for television in the 1990s. Ed.
41 Sharpe has deliberately mangled the clichéd phrase referring to uncertain outcomes as being in the lap of the gods, presumably to try to raise a smile in an effort to cheer his obviously distressed commanding officer. This was not at all his usual style, but it was an inspired utterance. He would not have realised this, but Lawford’s great pleasure in his bon mot probably chiefly derived from the fact that he recognised it (as Richard almost certainly did not) as a butchered quotation from the Iliad, in which it is spoken by Automedon, the charioteer of Achilles and Patroclus, which in the circumstances rendered it as just about the most appropriate and comforting thing which Sharpe, had he but known it, could have said to him. Ed.
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