Company Of Spears

‘Rugged elms,’ he mused. He liked elms. As a boy he had climbed them, about the churchyard in Horningsham, to test his courage or to see what the tall nests held. Or sometimes on the plain to gain a distant prospect. He loved the elm-lined lanes in high summer, dark leafy tunnels where he might catch sight of a roe deer at midday – still, secret places, a foreign land, far from the safe parsonage and yet within sound of the church bell. There were no elms in foreign lands, though. Or if there were, they were poor specimens: he had seen none he could recall in France, or Belgium, none in the forests of the east – India, Ava – and certainly not in Spain and Portugal. Yet there must have been … but not the ‘rugged elm’. He thought of his Wiltshire churchyard again, ‘where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap’; beneath the tall elms, where ‘the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep’. Yes, the elm had a power to command attention, more so even than the oak. Elms were England’s leafy witnesses – to village-Hampdens, mute inglorious Miltons and guiltless Cromwells, as well as to the great men themselves. What was it in that poem that could conjure a vision of his youth – his simpler, honest, chaste youth? Was it true that General Wolfe (as brave as any man to wear the King’s uniform) had said before battle that he would rather have composed Gray’s Elegy written in a Country Churchyard than take Quebec? Hervey did not suppose that Wolfe had meant it to be taken exactly literally, if he had said it at all; nevertheless there lay power in those words, power to invoke a visceral love of country. Was it not time for him, now, to return to the elms of Horningsham, to ‘the blazing hearth’, and to his makings? The question was point-less: behind him, albeit under his temporary orders, was his regiment – his regiment! This was what he had dreamed of for long years. There could never be a going back. Not, surely, without diminution? But was that not to pit himself against Gray’s own injunction: ‘Let not ambition mock their useful toil’? He must not allow himself conceit in this temporary command:

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.

(He shuddered)

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Number two gun fired. Gilbert snorted. Number four followed three with but a split second’s interval. The last of the rooks, bravest of the brave, quit the furthest elms. Hervey glanced over his shoulder. The sight was no boast of heraldry, nor of anything else for that matter. He would have the Chestnut Troop blaze away until both ranks of the regiment, three squadrons in line, were dressed with a decent semblance of security (and he wondered if the Chestnuts would run out of powder before then). Then he would have his dragoons draw carbines, load and fire, return carbines, draw sabres and advance in line. They would not finish with a charge, however, as field days usually required: the heath was too broken to risk a gallop in regimental line – not, at least, with so many new men and horses.

Number five gun fired and a trooper from C Troop bolted, its rider, a seasoned dragoon, hauling on the reins for all he was worth but without effect. The Chestnuts’ captain tried to stay number six gun, but it fired prematurely. The sponger was hurled a hundred yards still clutching the ramrod, and the ventsman was thrown to the ground beside the trail.

It oughtn’t to happen, Hervey knew, but it did occasionally: all it took was a piece of wadding still glowing when the next charge was loaded. ‘Insufficient sponging,’ he said to himself. ‘Poor devil.’

The Chestnuts’ captain ordered his first section to continue the firing while the rest of the premature’s crew doubled forward to recover the unfortunate gun number. They found him with not a mark on his face or hands, but motionless, his neck snapped. As they picked the man up, the runaway from C Troop found a rabbit hole and somersaulted twice, driving a shoe into the face of its floored rider. No one moved to his aid; no one would, not without the order of the officer commanding.

When neither horse nor rider rose, Hervey turned to the adjutant. ‘Have C Troop bring in their man,’ he said, sounding weary.

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