An Infamous Army Read online

  He did not wait, but strode out to his own room, to make what preparations for the journey were necessary. Both ladies ran after him, imploring him to tell them more.

  ‘I know nothing more than what I have told you. Cherry had no idea how things were going—badly, he thinks. I may be away some time: the road is almost blocked by the carts overturned by the German cavalry’s rout. Have Charles’s bed made up—but you will know what to do!’

  ‘I will have the pillows put in the chaise,’ Barbara said in a voice of repressed anguish, and left the room.

  The chaise was already at the door, and Colonel Audley’s groom waiting impatiently beside it. He was too overcome to be able to tell Barbara much, but the little he did say was enough to appal her.

  Colonel Audley had been carried to Mont St Jean by some foreigners; he did not know whether Dutch or German.

  ‘It does not signify. Go on!’

  Cherry brushed his hand across his eyes. ‘I saw them carrying him along the road. Oh, my lady, in all the years I’ve served the Colonel I never thought to see such a sight as met my eyes! My poor master like one dead, and the blood soaked right through the horse-blanket they had laid him on! He was taken straight to the cottage at Mont St Jean, where those damned sawbones—saving your ladyship’s presence!—was busy. I thought my master was gone, but he opened his eyes as they put him down, and said to me: “Hallo, Cherry!” he said, “I’ve got it, you see.’’’

  He fairly broke down, but Barbara, gripping the open chaise door, merely said harshly: ‘Go on!’

  ‘Yes, my lady! But I don’t know how to tell your ladyship what they done to my master, Dr Hume, and them others, right there in the garden. Oh, my lady, they’ve taken his arm off! And he bore it all without a groan!’

  She pressed her handkerchief to her lips. In a stifled voice, she said: ‘But he will live!’

  ‘You would not say so if you could but see him, my lady. Four horses he’s had shot under him this day, and a wound on his leg turning as black as my boot. We got him to the inn at Waterloo, but there’s no staying there: they couldn’t take in the Prince of Orange himself, for all he had a musketball in his shoulder. Poor Sir Alexander Gordon’s laying there, and Lord Fitzroy too. Never till my dying day shall I forget the sound of Sir Alexander’s sufferings—him as always was such a merry gentleman, and such a close friend of my master’s! Not but what by the time we got my master to the inn he was too far gone to heed. I shouldn’t have spoken of it to your ladyship, but I’m that upset I hardly know what I’m saying.’

  Worth ran down the steps of the house at that moment, and curtly told Cherry to get up on the box. As he drew on his driving-gloves, Barbara said: ‘I have put my smelling-salts inside the chaise, and a roll of lint. I would come with you, but I believe you will do better without me. O God, Worth, bring him safely back!’

  ‘I shall certainly bring him back. Go in to Judith, and do not be imagining anything nonsensical if I’m away some hours. Goodbye! A man doesn’t die because he has the misfortune to lose an arm, you know.’

  He mounted the box; the grooms let go the wheelers’ heads, and as the chaise moved forward one of them jumped up behind.

  For the next four hours Judith and Barbara, having made every preparation for the Colonel’s arrival, waited, sick with suspense, for Worth’s return. The Duke of Avon walked round the Hôtel de Belle Vue at ten o’clock, and, learning of Colonel Audley’s fate from Judith’s faltering tongue, said promptly: ‘Good God, is that all! One would say he had been blown in pieces by a howitzer shell to look at your faces! Cheer up, Bab! Why, I once shot a man just above the heart, and he recovered!’

  ‘That must have been a mistake, sir, I feel sure.’

  ‘It was,’ he admitted. ‘Only time I ever missed my mark.’

  At any other time both ladies would have wished to hear more of this anecdote, but in the agitation of spirits which they were suffering nothing that did not bear directly upon the present issue had the power to engage their attention. The Duke, after animadverting with peculiar violence upon Mr Fisher’s manners and ideals, bade them goodnight, and went back to his hôtel.

  Hardly more than an hour later, Creevey called to bring the ladies news. His prospective stepson-in-law, Major Hamilton, had brought the Adjutant-General into Brussels a little after ten o’clock, and had immediately repaired to Mr Creevey’s house to warn him that in General Barnes’s opinion the battle was lost, and no time should be wasted in getting away from Brussels.

  ‘I could not go to bed without informing you of this,’ Creevey said. ‘I thought it only right that you should know, and decide for yourselves what were best to do under the circumstances.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Judith said. ‘It was kind of you, but there is now no question of our leaving Brussels. My brother-in-law is severely wounded. Worth has gone to bring him in.’

  He looked genuinely concerned, and pressed her hand in the most speaking way. ‘I am excessively sorry to hear of this! But once you have Colonel Audley in your care you will see how quickly he will recover!’

  ‘We hope—Do you and Mrs Creevey mean to go to Antwerp?’

  ‘No, it is out of the question to move Mrs Creevey in her present state of health. I don’t scruple to tell you, my dear ma’am, that General Barnes’s prognostications do not convince me that all is over. Hamilton tells me he was shot through the body at about five o’clock, and borne off the field. I cannot but feel that if the battle had been lost we must by now have received intelligence of it. Do you know what I judge by? Why, I’ll tell you! The baggage-train is still moving towards the battlefield! To my mind, that proves that all is well.’

  ‘I had not thought of that. Yes, indeed: you must be right. You put us quite at our ease, Mr Creevey. Thank you again for coming to us!’

  He saw that the result of the battle was of less importance to her at the moment than Colonel Audley’s fate, and after lingering only for a few moments to express his sympathy, took his leave and went back to the Rue du Musée.

  After he had gone, no further interruptions occurred. The evening was mild, with a fitful moonlight shining through the lifting storm-clouds. Barbara had drawn back the blinds and opened one of the windows, and sat by it almost without stirring. In the street below a few people passed, but the sounds that drifted to the salon were muffled, as though Brussels were restless but quiet.

  Once Judith said: ‘Would you like to lie down upon your bed for a little while? I would wake you the instant he comes.’

  ‘I could not rest. But you—’

  ‘No, nor I.’

  The brief conversation died. Another hour crept by. As the church clocks struck the hour of one, the clatter of horses’ feet on the cobbles reached the ladies’ straining ears. Lanterns, dipping and rocking with the lurch of a chaise, were seen approaching down the street, and in another moment Worth’s chaise-and-four had drawn up outside the house.

  Barbara picked up the branch of candles from the table. ‘Go down. I will light the stairs,’ she said.

  Judith ran from the room, feeling her knees shaking under her. The butler and Worth’s valet were already at the door: there was nothing for her to do, and, almost overpowered by dread, she remained upon the landing, leaning against the wall, fighting against the nervous spasm that turned her sick and faint. She saw Barbara standing straight and tall in her pale dress, at the head of the stairs, holding the branch of candles up in one steady hand. A murmur of voices reached her ears. She heard the butler exclaim, and Worth reply sharply, a groan, and she knew that Charles lived, and found that the tears were pouring down her cheeks. She wiped them away, and, regaining command of herself, ran back into the salon, and snatching up a companion to the chandelier Barbara held, bore it up the second pair of stairs to the Colonel’s room. She had scarcely had time to turn back the sheets from the bed before Worth and Cherry carried Colonel Audley into the room.

  Judith could not suppress an exclamation of horror. The Colonel