Never Laugh at Love Read online

  The Countess had included in her trousseau an extremely attractive habit of deep red silk, almost the colour of her rubies, which was frogged with white braid matching the long gauze veil that encircled her high crowned-hat.

  She looked exceedingly elegant and, although her face was a little serious as she concentrated on her riding as they moved through the town, the Duke knew she was enjoying herself.

  He showed her the house in the Rue de la Blanchisserie, which the Duke and Duchess of Richmond had rented before the battle and where they had given the ball that had been immortalised by Lord Byron’s poem.

  “Why did the Duchess of Richmond want to give a ball?” Anthea asked.

  “The Duke of Wellington always believed that psychologically it was wise to appear in public unconcerned and for ordinary life to carry on as usual.”

  The Duke smiled.

  “I was there when one day the Duchess of Richmond said to the Duke of Wellington, ‘I do not wish to pry into your secrets, Duke, but I wish to give a ball and all I ask is, may I give my ball? Duchess,’ the Duke replied, ‘you may give your ball with the greatest safety without fear of interruption!’”

  “But he was wrong!” Anthea cried.

  “Operations were not expected to begin before the 1st of July.”

  “Tell me about the ball. Was it very gay?” Anthea smiled as she added, “I know that ‘the lamps shone o’er the fair women and brave men’.”

  “The ballroom,” the Duke replied, “had been transformed with rich tent-like draperies and hangings in the Royal colours of crimson, gold and black. The pillars were wreathed in ribbons, leaves and flowers.”

  “Oh, I wish I had seen it!” Anthea exclaimed.

  “Byron’s ‘lamps’,” he went on, “were in fact the most magnificent crystal chandeliers, and the ‘brave men’ were headed by His Royal Highness, the Prince of Orange and of course the Duke of Wellington himself.”

  “And you were with him?”

  Anthea already knew that the Duke had been on the Duke of Wellington’s staff.

  “I was,” the Duke replied. “And I was at his side when the Duke learnt that some of the advance Prussian forces had been repulsed by the French less than eight miles from Quatre Bras. The Prussians, under Marshal Blücher, were to join up with the British at Quatre Bras. Napoleon had however begun his advance far sooner than was anticipated.”

  “How frightening!” Anthea said. “And what happened after that?”

  “The news rapidly circulated round the ballroom that we were off the next morning,” the Duke answered. “Most Officers hastily said goodbye and departed – I waited for my Commander-in-Chief.”

  Anthea drew in her breath.

  “Were you afraid?” she asked.

  “Not in the slightest!” the Duke replied, “We were all extremely anxious to get to grips with the French.”

  They left the City behind and, as they drew nearer to the battlefield, Anthea was not surprised to see men and even women searching like beachcombers for souvenirs.

  She had already learnt that there were stalls in the market place offering for sale bullets and buttons, badges and pieces of uniform.

  And the Duke had told her that hundreds upon hundreds of English visitors had come to Belgium every month since the battle to wander about, sightseeing and scavenging.

  But Anthea was not interested in anything but the battle itself.

  The Duke related how the three days had been wet and miserable with at times torrential rain.

  “I remember,” he went on, “how chilly the crossroads to Quatre Bras were at 6 o’clock in the morning on June 17th, as we waited for news of the battle.”

  The Duke’s voice deepened as he added,

  “It did not feel any warmer when we learnt Blücher’s troops had been badly mauled just before nightfall and had begun that morning to withdraw towards Warre, eighteen miles back.”

  Anthea could see he was re-living the disappointment and apprehension they had all felt at the time.

  “What happened then?” she asked.

  “We withdrew Northwards about halfway towards Brussels. We had had practically no sleep since fighting all the previous day to hold Quatre Bras!”

  The Duke paused before he continued,

  “We were all soaked to the skin. Many of the soldiers were so covered in mud that it was hard to recognise their uniforms.”

  Anthea and the Duke reached the ridge of Mont Saint Jean where Wellington had made his headquarters in the village of Waterloo.

  From there the Duke looked over the battlefield as if he was seeing it all happen again.

  He could point out to her the Fort of Siogres on their left, La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont ahead, both scenes of desperate fighting.

  “The rain had poured down incessantly,” he said, “and the ground became squelching mud. But if our Army was wet and miserable, so were the French!”

  “We learnt afterwards,” he went on, “that Napoleon had said confidently, ‘the Prussians and English cannot possibly link up for another two days!’ He therefore decided to launch an assault on Wellington. ‘The battle that is coming,’ he told them, ‘will save France and be celebrated in the annals of the world!’”

  “When did the battle actually start?” Anthea asked.

  “First there was desperate fighting for Hougoumont at about midday,” the Duke replied, “and Wellington always said it was the gallantry of the Coldstream Guards there that saved the battle of Waterloo.

  “Then the situation on the crest above La Haye Sainte became critical,” he continued. “But many of us who had served in the Peninsula with Wellington were there. The 92nd were ordered to advance.”

  He gave a sigh.

  “The Brigade had been reduced to 1,400 men by the fighting at Quatre Bras, but the Gordons, the Black Watch and the 44th flung themselves with bayonets on the 8,000 Frenchmen, then – ”

  He paused dramatically.

  “As the Gordons staggered under the weight of the massed French, they were aware of huge grey horses thundering down behind them with their riders uttering wild exultant cries.”

  “It was the Scots Greys!” Anthea said hardly above a whisper.

  “They swept through in a mad whirlwind of a charge such as had never before been launched by the British Cavalry.”

  Anthea felt her eyes fill with tears at the thought that her father had been amongst them.

  “Behind them came the heavy Cavalry,” the Duke went on. “As the bugle sounded the ‘charge’ I heard someone shout, ‘to Paris!’ They went through like a torrent, shaking the very earth!”

  Anthea shut her eyes.

  She could visualise the King’s Dragoons wearing the classical helmets with horsehair crests and plumes designed by the Prince Regent.

  She could hear them thundering deep into the enemy lines until the French turned and fled!

  Buglers sounded the rally, but no one listened!

  Two eagles were captured and fifteen guns in Napoleon’s great battery disabled, while the French gunners sat on their limbers and wept.

  “But they had charged too far,” Anthea murmured, who had read the story of the Battle of Waterloo a thousand times.

  “The whole valley behind them was flooded with French Troops. They were cut off.”

  “And yet it was a victory.”

  “Despite the heavy casualties. No Cavalry has ever before routed so great a body of Infantry in formation.”

  “It was the way Papa would have wished to die.”

  Then, because Anthea did not want the Duke to see the tears that had suddenly begun to run down her cheeks, she spurred her horse forward.

  She was riding, she thought, over the same ground that her father had ridden in that wild charge when 2,500 Cavalry had lost their lives.

  The Duke rode after her and only came to her side when she had wiped away her tears.

  “It was just here,” he said quietly, “where we are now standing, that in t
he afternoon Wellington turned to one of his aides-de-camp and asked the time.

  ‘Twenty minutes past four, sir,’

  ‘The battle is mine,’ Wellington said, ‘and if the Prussians arrive soon there will be an end to the war’.”

  The Duke paused.

  “As he spoke, we heard the first Prussian guns.”

  “And that was the end?”

  “Not for some hours yet. In fact not until eight o’clock and by then our Army was down to some 35,000 men. The French were shaken, but not yet routed.”

  “Were you worried?” Anthea asked.

  “Things had gone wrong. The Prussians had still not been able to break through and yet I think that everyone was supremely confident that the Duke could not fail.”

  “What happened?”

  “At about seven-thirty the Duke was standing up in his stirrups at his Command Post by that tree. A ray of the setting sun threw into relief an unforgettable and indescribable expression on his face”

  “What was happening?”

  “We could see that the French extreme right was under crossfire. Then someone cried, ‘the Prussians have arrived!’”

  “They had got through!” Anthea cried.

  “This was the decisive moment,” the Duke answered, “and every soldier knew it. I heard one of the Commanders advise limited action, but Wellington knew better.

  ‘Oh, dammit!’ he exclaimed. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound!’ He took off his hat and waved it three times towards the French. In a flash his signal was understood.”

  The Duke paused.

  “Three deafening cheers of relief and exaltation rang out as the Light Cavalry swooped onto the plain.”

  “And that was the end?”

  “Nothing could stop Wellington’s men. Napoleon formed a reserve of his Old Guard into squares to stem the torrent, but it was impossible. Eventually he just had time to swing into his berline and escape before he could be overtaken by the Prussians.”

  Anthea drew a deep breath.

  The Duke had made it seem all so real.

  “It was nine o’clock on Sunday the 18th June and nearly dark when Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher and Wellington rode forward to greet one another.”

  “Napoleon was finally defeated!”

  “But at a terrible price!”

  ‘Papa,’ Anthea whispered to herself.

  “And 15,000 other British,” the Duke said. “But the French had lost 25,000!”

  “I hate war!” Anthea exclaimed.

  “So did the Duke of Wellington. He said – ‘I hope to God I have fought my last battle. It is a bad thing to be always fighting!’”

  Anthea turned her horse towards the plain.

  She felt as if the ghosts of those who had died there rode beside her.

  Then something, perhaps it was the emotions surging within her, spurred her quiet horse from a trot to a gallop.

  She felt the turf pounding beneath her hoofs and she thought that she could understand the wild elation the Scots Greys had felt as they swept towards the French.

  She remembered being told that in a charge the horses felt the same excitement as their riders.

  “Those terrible grey horses – how they fight!” Napoleon had said watching from his mound.

  Then she recalled how the Scots Greys had been cut off and that the Colonel was last seen with both his arms shot off and holding his bridle in his teeth.

  A friend of her father’s, Captain Edward Kelly, had three horses shot under him. But he lived to survive the battle –

  ‘My dearest, dear love,’ he wrote to his wife next day, who showed the letter to Lady Forthingdale. ‘All my fine troopers knocked to pieces – ’

  A little shame-faced Anthea pulled on her reins and checked her horse.

  She looked back over her shoulder and realised in consternation that something had happened to the Duke.

  She had thought he was following her, but now she saw that his horse was down on the ground and he himself was sprawled beside it.

  Hastily she rode back.

  As she reached him, the stallion staggered to his feet and she saw that the animal must have caught his foot in a shell-hole and pitched the Duke over his head.

  He was lying very still and she dismounted quickly.

  Feeling that her horse was too quiet to wander far away, she left him free and crouched down at the Duke’s side. She turned him over onto his back and realised that he was unconscious. His eyes were closed and there was mud on his forehead. The skin was broken and she guessed that in the fall he must have struck his head on a stone that had knocked him out.

  She felt suddenly desperately afraid and wondered frantically what she should do!

  *

  The Duke came slowly back to consciousness to realise he was lying on something soft and above his head he heard a voice say,

  “Will you or will you not fetch help? I have promised you three louis, but I will make it five if you hurry.”

  Anthea was speaking in French and the man who answered her spoke in a rough patois that was difficult to understand.

  “I’ll go, but I’ll take one of the horses. It’ll be quicker.”

  “You will do nothing of the sort!” Anthea stipulated firmly. “How do I know that you will come back?”

  “You’ll have to trust me.”

  “I do not intend to trust you with a horse.”

  “What is to prevent me from taking one?”

  “I will prevent you,” Anthea said quietly.

  The Duke felt her hand go into his pocket and draw forth the pistol that she knew he always carried when they were travelling.

  She pointed it at the man and he spat at her,

  “All right, madame, but you’re an Amazon – not a woman!”

  “I would rather be an Amazon than a ghoulish sneak-thief from the corpses of dead men. Get on with you and be quick about it if you want your money.”

  The man must have gone, for the Duke heard Anthea give a little sigh of relief and realised he was lying in her lap.

  “We will be – gone before he – returns,” he managed to say with difficulty.

  Anthea gave a cry.

  “You are all right? I was so afraid when I found you that you might have broken your neck.”

  “I am fine,” the Duke said. “Give me a moment or two and then we will ride back.”

  “Do you think you can do so?” Anthea asked. “I imagine the man I was just talking to will wish to earn five louis.”

  “I shall be surprised if he is any help to us,” the Duke muttered. “Assist me to my feet.”

  It was not as easy as it sounded, because, although he disliked having to admit it, he felt very dizzy. It took time and a great deal of effort before he could hoist himself onto the saddle of his horse.

  Finally with Anthea’s help he managed it and they moved at a very different pace back towards Brussels.

  Afterwards Anthea often wondered how the Duke had managed to stay in the saddle.

  She knew he was in pain and she learnt after the doctor had seen him that he had, as she suspected, concussion.

  “He will be all right, madame, after two or three days in bed,” the doctor said cheerfully, “but these big men fall heavily and he is lucky there are no bones broken.”

  They had been forced to ride home very slowly not only because the Duke was injured but also because the stallion was lame.

  ‘It was my fault,’ Anthea told herself.

  She realised it had been crazy to gallop over the battle-scarred field where there were deep holes made by the guns of the opposing Armies.

  ‘I was fortunate,’ she thought. ‘But how could I have been so foolish as to involve the Duke in trouble for the second time?

  She felt chastened and rather depressed the first night when she had to dine alone.

  Although she peeped into the Duke’s bedroom to say goodnight, he was asleep and could not speak to her.

  *
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  Two days later he was better if rather disagreeable and, to make amends for having been so stupid, Anthea determined to be cheerful and not, as her father would have deprecated, to bore him with dramatics.

  Instead she amused him with some toys she had bought at the stalls in the market.

  A toy monkey with string to make him climb a pole, a puzzle fashioned from horse-nails on which the Duke spent a considerable time before he mastered the trick of it, and some funny little pictures of the battle showing Wellington with an enormous beak nose to distinguish him from a moon-faced Napoleon.

  “I have also brought you a special delicacy,” Anthea told him.

  She sat down on the side of the Duke’s bed and produced a cardboard box in which reposed the rich, succulent and creamy patisseries the Belgians were famous for.

  “Do you feel like eating one?” she asked.

  “I do not!” the Duke replied.

  “Then, as I could not bear to waste them,” Anthea said, “I shall eat them myself! If they make me disgustingly fat, I can always blame you!”

  The Duke watched fascinated as she bit into a cake from which coffee cream oozed out between thin layers of sponge.

  “How Phebe would enjoy this,” Anthea remarked.

  “I hope you are not suggesting that we take some back for her?” the Duke said.

  Anthea considered the question for a moment.

  “I suppose such delicate confections would not travel.”

  “I can assure you they would not!”

  “It’s a pity. I think they are without exception the most delicious cakes I have ever tasted!”

  The Duke closed his eyes as if the sight of them made him feel somewhat sick.

  “I am not boring you, am I?” Anthea asked anxiously.

  “Not in the least,” he replied. “I intend to get up tomorrow. I am tired of staying in bed.”

  “No, no! You must not do that!” Anthea cried hurriedly. “It is very important when one has had concussion to rest, otherwise, as Nanny used to say, one becomes ‘addle-pated’! Think what a disaster that would be for His Grace the Duke of Axminster!”

  “I wonder if it would matter very much?” the Duke sighed.

  “But of course it would matter! What will happen if you father a long line of half-witted Dukes?”