An Infamous Army (Alastair-Audley Tetralogy 4)

‘I cannot conceive what possessed George to look twice at her. She is quite insipid.’

‘Dear me! I had better go and call upon her aunt.’

She very soon took her leave, setting out on foot to the Fishers’ lodging. Her visit did much to sooth Lucy’s agitation; and her calm good sense almost reconciled Mr Fisher to an alliance which he had been regarding with the deepest misgiving. Neither his appearance nor the obsequiousness of his manners could be expected to please the Duchess, but she was agreeably surprised in Lucy, and although not placing much dependence upon her being able to hold George’s volatile fancy, went back presently to her hôtel feeling that things might have been much worse.

Worth returned at about six o’clock, having parted from the Duke at the end of the street. He had very little news to report. He described meeting Creevey in the suburbs, and their mutual surprise at finding the Sunday population of Brussels drinking beer, and making merry, round little tables, for all the world as though no pitched battle were being fought not more than ten miles to the south of them. It had been found to be impossible to penetrate far into the Forest, on account of the baggage choking the road, but they had met with a number of wounded soldiers making their way back to Brussels, and had had speech with a Life Guardsman, who reported that the French were getting on in such a way that he did not see what was to stop them.

‘He had taken part in a charge of the whole Household Brigade, and says that they have lost, in killed, wounded, and prisoners, more than half their number. George, however, was safe when the man left the field. A private soldier’s opinion of the battle i

s not to be depended on, but I don’t like the look of things.’

Scarcely an hour later, the town was thrown into an uproar by the Cumberland Hussars galloping in through the Namur Gate, and stampeding through the streets, shouting that all was lost, and the French hard on their heels. They seemed not to have drawn rein in their flight from the battlefield, and went through Brussels scattering the inhabitants before them.

People began once more to run about, crying: ‘Les Français sont ici! Ils s’emparent à porte de la ville! Nous sommes tous perdus! Que ferons-nous?’ Many people kept their horses at their doors, but no more troops followed the hussars, and the panic gradually abated. A little later, a large number of French prisoners entered the town under escort, and were marched to the barracks of Petit Château. The sight of two captured Eagles caused complete strangers to shake one another by the hand; more prisoners arrived, and hopes ran high, only to be dashed by the intelligence conveyed by one or two wounded officers that everything had been going as badly as possible when they had left the field. The Adjutant-General’s chaise-and-four was seen by Mr Creevey to set out from his house in the Park and bowl away, as fast as the horses could drag it, to the Namur Gate. More and more wounded arrived in town, all telling the same tale: it was the most sanguinary battle they had ever known; men were dropping like flies; there was no saying in the smoke and the carnage who was still alive or who had been killed; no time should be lost by civilians in getting away.

In curious contrast to this scene of agitation, light shone in the Théâtre de la Monnaie, where Mlle Ternaux was playing in Œdipe à Colonne before an audience composed of persons who either had no relatives or friends engaged in the battle or who looked forward with pleasure to the entrance of Bonaparte into Brussels.

At half past eight o’clock, Worth, who had gone out some time before in quest of news, came abruptly into the salon where Judith and Barbara were sitting in the most dreadful suspense, and said, with more sharpness in his voice than his wife had ever heard: ‘Judith, be so good as to have pillows put immediately into the chaise! I am going at once towards Waterloo: Charles is there, very badly wounded. Cherry has just come to me with the news.’

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.’