Man Of War

To that end he now needed the squadron leaders’ reports. Lord Holderness’s plan had been to send a strong scouting party an hour and a half before last light through Windsor Forest, as far as the wooded high ground overlooking Fifield (where Hervey and the two squadron leaders now stood), for he had calculated that Fifield would be the southernmost extent of the Grenadiers’ lodgement. He had put Myles Vanneck in command of the party, with the five remaining cornets, to picket the route through the forest, which, though hardly like the forests of India, was no place to take chances with the main body of the regiment at night, even a moonlit one (he would not give the game away to the Grenadiers’ pickets by advancing in daylight), and then to discover what they could of the ‘enemy’ dispositions. Vanneck, as Worsley, was entirely capable, but even if the reconnaissance were detected, Lord Holderness had reckoned that it would serve his design, for the Grenadiers would stand to and reinforce their pickets, fixing their attention to the south rather than to the north and east, the other side of the Thames.

Hervey had been at one with him in this. They gambled, of course. If they had been unable to get anyone across the river, the entire adventure would have rested on a direct approach to the bridge, against the enemy’s strength rather than his weakness. Hervey now had but a handful of men on the north side, and they had no plan but to improvise a ruse on nearing the bridge. Yet he did not doubt that they would. In what he had seen of Fairbrother at the Cape – the scrapes with the Xhosa in the night, the clash with the Zulu at the Umtata River – he concluded that he had a soldier-companion of rare facility with unpromising circumstances.

The hazard in the plan was, to his mind, the inability to communicate with Fairbrother now. All, therefore, depended on timing. Since the regiment’s mission was to seize the bridge by first light, timing was in any case of the essence; but the success of a ruse, especially one with so few men, could turn on a fortuitous minute.

There was, too, the second element of the regiment’s assignment: the bridge had to be held until the Sixth were relieved. A handful of men, in the dark and with surprise on their side, might take the bridge from the rear; but as soon as the Grenadiers had recovered themselves, they would mount a counter-attack, and easily carry the bridge. In that case it were better that the bridge was destroyed, cutting off the enemy from their own forces.

But how could the umpire at the bridge be persuaded that so few men had captured and then destroyed it? That was the material question, and one which Hervey had no option but to leave to Fairbrother. Yet even if Fairbrother were able to take the bridge, and he, Hervey, was able to get every man of the Sixth to it in time – and the artillery pieces – the general’s umpire would not permit them an indefinite defence. If only he might know what were the Grenadiers’ orders! He had made the most thorough appreciation of the situation – of the Grenadiers’ situation, too – as they rode through the forest, but he could not be certain. That, however, was the nature of war, even mock war:nothing was certain.

‘What is there to report of the lodgement?’ he asked Vanneck.

‘I think I may tell you the most effectually if we ride to the forward edge of the copse.’

They did so. And what Hervey saw in the distance both surprised and buoyed him.

‘I imagine the field of the cloth of gold was no more remarkable,’ said Vanneck wryly. ‘They have a vast officers’ tent just this side of the Thames at Dorney, and the band was playing until after midnight.’

‘I don’t think I ever saw so many campfires since Spain,’ replied Hervey, not troubling to take out his telescope. ‘What else have you discovered?’

‘They have pickets within hailing of each other in an arc from a half-mile up and downstream of the bridge, almost as far as Fifield itself.’

‘Worsley?’ Captain Christopher Worsley’s orders had been to probe the far right flank of the lodgement.

‘They’ve assembled a dozen boats upstream towards Bray, on this side, strongly guarded,’ replied F Troop Leader.

‘Within the picket line?’

‘Yes. I estimate there is a full company guarding them.’

‘I congratulate you.’ Hervey began taking out his glass.

‘But why would they want boats?’ added Worsley. ‘Why would they be thinking of withdrawing, with the best part of a thousand men, and we but three hundred?’