A Close Run Thing by Allan Mallinson Read Free Book Online Page A

and English, yet to be attended.’
    Her tone stung him. In his confusion he had conveyed something wholly other than what he had meant. ‘I am sorry; I did not mean to …’ he stuttered; and then, sensing that any explanation would be pointless, he tried to dismiss her: ‘The dressing is perfectly well, Sister. In the circumstances I think you should return to the wounded.’
    ‘I think we must both do as we are bidden, sir,’ she replied firmly, putting the bowl on the floor and beginning to tear a piece of cloth into bandages with considerable violence.
    Hervey could not have been more dismayed. Though the idea of being ministered to by a nun was by no means alien, since he had seen them, and women of rank, in hospitals in the Peninsula,
this
nun made him uneasy. To begin with, there was her spectral appearance. And, though the Marquess of Wellington may have issued instructions that the army was to enter France not as conquerors but as liberators, it seemed prudent first to be certain that this was how the French themselves regarded them. How he was to dispense with her ministration, however, was entirely beyond him; and at length, after it became apparent that no amount of protest would weaken her resolve, and with more chagrin than he could lately remember, he gave up, sat down and removed his blood-stained overalls. He need not have been concerned, for pain soon proved a great distractor: he suspected that this sister might be more devout than most, but she could scarcely have been less tender, cutting the dressing off briskly, and none too gently wiping away the caked blood.
    ‘It is clean, but some of the sutures are broken. I do not think the wound will putrefy, but I think they must be replaced.’
    Hervey bit his lip and nodded, and she re-bandaged his leg without speaking. Her eyes were reddened, and he surmised that she had had no sleep for three, maybe four days, for that had been the duration of the fighting. And, though the armies may have had sleep, those tending the wounded could not have found their work slackening during that time. He would have asked her of the
blessés
, but her manner seemed not to invite it; and he suspected, too, that she was a woman of few words, perhaps ordinarily under a vow of silence. Instead he thanked her as she left, but she made no reply, glancing only at the
Spiritual Exercises
lying next to him and then bowing slightly. Hervey noticed for the first time that her feet were bare, and thought of the broken glass which, in stepping over, she must have taken to be evidence of his carousing.
    The rest of his day promised little, and for a while he limped around the convent’s grounds to try to keep the leg from stiffening, though he might have wished for a less congested place to do so. The courtyard had become a forum for what seemed like every staff officer in the army, as it emerged that the Marquess of Wellington had also made it his advanced headquarters for the formal surrender of the city. The place had, indeed, more the air of Bedlam than of a convent, or even than of a cavalry billet. Had he suspected that in the midst of this seeming babble there might be the commander-in-chief he would have taken pains to make himself scarce; but nothing suggested such a distinction, and he almost literally stumbled on him around the east corner of the cloisters. Sir Stapleton Cotton, one of several generals in the assemblage, spied him before he could turn away.
    ‘Cornet Hervey! How are you, my boy? Come hither!’
    He tried hard not to limp as he crossed the yard, wanting no sympathy.
    ‘Lord Wellington, this is Cornet Hervey of the Sixth. It was he who saw off the sortie on our left yesterday.’
    The commander-in-chief nodded without smiling. ‘Smart work, boy, smart work,’ he said simply.
    It was very probably the first time he had said anything complimentary to anyone in the cavalry for months, certainly to anyone in the Sixth. For all the regimental ambivalence