On His Majesty's Service mh-11 Page 2

  But these things were ever perilous. It ought, after all, to be considered no singular thing for an NCO to conduct himself in the manner that Armstrong had in that desperate fight with the Xhosa; as Lord Hill was wont to say, it was the duty of the officers to show their men how to die, and that of the NCOs how to fight. He must trust therefore to Lord Holderness’s good sense and consideration – which he had after all shown in ample measure during his command – or, at least, to a certain disinterest, for within the year Holderness would be major-general, and the regiment’s regulation therefore no longer his concern.

  He slid further into the bathtub, his head went under, and, as if it were the Jordan, he surfaced purified of dark thoughts. For there before his eyes was Georgiana – eleven years old. Yes, he had been absent for many of those years, but that did not matter now with the prospect of happy reunion and … re-acquaintance. Their last time together (he now understood) he had not admitted her years. He smiled at the thought of buying her ‘Mrs Teachwell’s’ Fables in Monosyllables, despite her having told him – in the same breath, almost – that ‘I know what are nouns and prepositions, Papa. And verbs and adjectives – and all the other parts of speech. Aunt Elizabeth has taught me.’ He knew now that he could not make up lost years by treating her as if she were still in the middle of them. When last he had seen her, six months ago and more, he had been struck by how tall she was grown, and how like her mother – the large, happy eyes, the raven ringlets. In six months she would perhaps have grown even more like her, and he was surprised to find himself perfectly contented with the prospect.

  ‘Aunt Elizabeth has taught me.’ He smiled to himself again. At first he had been inclined to think of the words as a rebuke, albeit unintended. He owed more to his sister than he could repay – and perhaps always had – but that must not prevent his now repaying what he could, if only in treating her with proper sensibility. It had been for her sake, though, as well as for Georgiana’s (he told himself) that he had in large part been so determined on marriage.

  ‘And yet Georgiana had remained in the protection of Elizabeth, for that was evidently where she found things most agreeable. That, of course, must change (he meant that she must find living other than with Elizabeth agreeable), and he was sure it would just as soon as he could make some proper establishment at Hounslow. Well, sure enough. For with Kezia, his wife of but six months, he could not see his course with anything like the same clarity. Kezia, lately Lady Lankester, whose husband (then his commanding officer) had been killed at the siege of Bhurtpore these three years past, had taken him in marriage with unexpected readiness, and yet she showed such little inclination to embrace all the purposes (as the Prayer Book had it) for which matrimony was ordained … Well, he checked himself: there had been so little opportunity to live as man and wife. There were a dozen or so years between them, but so had there been between Kezia and her first husband, with whom there had been issue. Yet there was between them a gulf of incomprehension that … well, he had not the power to comprehend. She had followed her first husband to India, but had been unwilling to come with him even to the Cape – and had said very plainly that she would not go with him to Canada if he were to accept command of a regiment there when command of his own at Hounslow had looked increasingly remote. He understood perfectly that her music was to her a very considerable matter, that she was possessed of an excessively fine voice and a rare skill at the fortepiano, and yet …

  He sighed, as he had many times during the passage home, and steeled himself: it did not serve to make any comparison, however remotely, with what there had once been, for his late wife – it was now more than ten years – had been so wholly different in spirit. For there was Georgiana to remember. It would all be regularized, put on a proper footing, resolved, just as soon as he could make a proper establishment at Hounslow. November was the month indicated, when Lord Holderness would be made major-general and the lieutenant-colonelcy would pass to him – or certainly that was what Lord John Howard had told him at the Cape was the commander-in-chief’s intention.

  If only this assignment in the near Levant, in Bulgaria, could be foreshortened and Hol’ness promoted early. The Turkish war was hardly one in which the King’s ministers had the remotest intention of becoming engaged, especially not after the debacle of Navarino – the ‘untoward event’, as the Duke of Wellington had called it. Untoward indeed: three squadrons in concert, one British, one French, one Russian, had sent the pride of the Sultan’s admiralty to the bottom in the Bay of Navarino, and then His Majesty’s government and that of France had expressed their utmost regret, leaving the Russians, their erstwhile ally in the romantic crusade to unyoke the Hellenes from the tyranny of Mahomet, to make true war with the Turk – and to do so ashore. What a mazey way to conduct affairs of state!

  So why was the Horse Guards so eager to have an observer at the ceremonies? Lord Hill could not believe there would be any novelty of strategy revealed? And, if truth be known, he, Hervey, was not a little affronted at the thought of relieving Lord Bingham so that that new-come officer (Bingham had not even been in uniform at the time of Waterloo) might take command of the 17th Lancers, for which he had paid an unconscionably large sum. He wished Lord Hill had not asked him to be the relief. He wished Lord Hill had not suggested it in such a way as to make it seem that it was by way of their former association, a sort of favour indeed. Except, of course, there was something undoubtedly thrilling in the prospect of observing the clash of armies on a scale not seen since Waterloo.

  He sighed, and ducked his head under the water again: he would travel to Hertfordshire, to where Kezia lived with her people, as soon as the Horse Guards gave him leave, and thence to Wiltshire to see Georgiana and his own people; and then he would ready himself for the assignment with the army of the Tsar.

  But thoughts of Navarino made him break surface almost at once, for in that battle his old friend Peto – cruelly disappointed in his betrothal to Elizabeth, who had (though with great resolution and with sound reason, he now conceded) broken off the engagement, to marry instead a former officer of the King’s German Legion – had suffered the most grievous wounds in command of his ship. What life lay ahead for Captain Sir Laughton Peto now? To be sure, he was well tended in Norfolk, his native county, where the Marquess of Cholmondeley had made Houghton Hall an Invalides. But with no prospect of sea service again, and scarcely of a wife, how might that estimable man fare? He swallowed hard: Houghton – it had been by Kat’s hand, Lady Katherine Greville’s. In her letter, which he received just before leaving for the Cape again, she had written of her expectation of some improvement in his old friend’s condition (though how that could be with such grievous wounds he found hard to understand): ‘And George’ (the new, young Marquess of Cholmondeley) ‘has most eagerly contracted to attend to all dear Captain Peto’s needs until such time as he is able to return to his own house.’

  How he wished to banish all thoughts of Lady Katherine Greville.

  Well, so let it be, he prayed. He would go and see his old friend too, after Hertfordshire and Wiltshire, just as soon as he was able.

  But Kat: she would not be banished, no matter how hard he willed it. If only she had dutifully followed her husband, agèd though he was, all would now be different. Lieutenant-General Sir Peregrine Greville, for nigh on ten years the military governor of Alderney: he had occupied that martial outpost without (as again the Prayer Book had it) the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other – of a wife, indeed, and one whom he had elevated, if not in rank, then certainly in material condition, from the penury of a crumbling Connaught mansion, her father’s, an Irish peer. It was strange, to be sure, that so many years after the Peace, Alderney had not been reduced (in its dignity, that is; the actual garrison was long dismantled). It might even be supposed, mused Hervey, that a staff officer at the Horse Guards, lately asked what might be done with General Greville, had replied that, since he was anyway fast approachi
ng ‘the days of our years’ (full threescore and ten), it were better to let things take the natural course. For although Sir Peregrine stood high in the gradation list, no exigency of the service would have induced the Horse Guards to appoint him to any active command.

  But then Hervey smiled wryly, and soon shamefacedly: that same staff officer, had he heard the news, would now be pondering on the late-revealed virility of this general, this senex amans, for Lady Katherine was with child. In two months’ time – Hervey knew the date well enough – Kat would present Sir Peregrine with a son and heir, or perhaps a daughter, but the paternity would not be that which was entered in the register.

  He closed his eyes once more and slid under the water, as if to wash away the sins, and the remembrance of them.

  II

  AN EMPTY COMMAND

  Later that morning

  It was snowing again. And Fairbrother delighted in it, the first he had ever seen, the flakes caught in the light of the post-chaise along the turnpike the night before, and then this morning from his window, the white carpet that was Pall Mall. He was fascinated by the sound of it beneath his feet as they walked to the Horse Guards, not yet feeling the chill he knew must be its consequence.

  ‘And so this is how you marched to Corunna?’ (thinking that at last he might understand what hitherto he could only imagine).

  Hervey smiled. ‘But a twelfth part. What’s this here – three inches? There was never less than three feet on that march.’ He turned up the collar of his greatcoat as they came to the steps at the end of Carlton House Terrace. ‘My blood has evidently thinned at the Cape, though; I confess I find it damnably cold! Do not you?’

  But Fairbrother was like the schoolboy, and would have taken to snowballing had the decorousness of uniform not forbidden it. He declared that he did not in the least feel the cold this morning, and proceeded to descend the steps at break-neck speed, all but sliding across the Mall, which was no longer the muddy avenue of his earlier acquaintance but a broad, white highway, before recovering an appropriate enough composure to cross the parade ground of the Horse Guards.

  ‘See yonder fellows at their drill as if the snow were nothing!’ (nodding to the company of greatcoats at the far side of the square): ‘Such men! Such incomparably fine men!’

  ‘Admirable,’ replied Hervey, feeling chastened by his friend’s heady appreciation, and trying to repair his inattention. ‘The First Foot Guards. I recall seeing them come into Sahagun after we took the place from the French. They held their bearing even then, though we were knee-deep in snow.’

  ‘I rather think they are the Coldstreams, the grenadier company – the officer’s white plume?’

  Hervey’s brow furrowed beneath his forage cap as he peered at the guardsmen in greater scrutiny. And then he nodded somewhat abashed. ‘You are more eagle-eyed than I.I saw the bearskins and nothing more. I’ll gladly pay a sconce at dinner.’

  ‘Salut.’

  Hervey recovered himself a little. ‘Mark, they would jib at the “s”; they will answer to “the Coldstream” or to “Coldstreamers” but never “the Coldstreams”. Though do not ask me why.’

  Fairbrother smiled. ‘Touché. But I fancy they need no reason. And it is, I suppose, regimental weather?’

  ‘Regimental weather?’

  ‘Did they not march in snow all the way from Coldstream when Cromwell died?’

  Hervey nodded again, his friend’s eclectic knowledge ever diverting. ‘And where did you come by that?’

  ‘I read it in Bishop Burnett’s history.’

  Hervey shook his head in part despair. ‘I confess I have not read him, but my good and late departed friend D’Arcey Jessope was always inordinately proud of the march, which he somehow placed on a par with Bonaparte’s on Moscow.

  ‘“A cold coming they had of it. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter”.’

  Fairbrother inclined his head, his turn to be impressed.

  ‘A sermon on the Nativity,’ explained Hervey, ‘by another bishop. My father is wont to preach a deal of it each Christmas.’

  ‘Which bishop?’

  ‘I don’t recall. Is it of any moment?’

  ‘Everything is of some moment, is it not? You yourself have said so in matters of soldiery.’

  ‘I concede. But I can’t remember.’

  They were half-way across the parade ground before Fairbrother voiced his doubts about their destination once more. ‘You are sure Lord Hill would wish to see me?’

  Hervey shortened his step only very slightly. ‘If he wishes to see me then there can be no doubt that he will wish to see you. He is a most affable man, and besides, your repute has gone before you in those despatches from the Cape.’

  Fairbrother had saved the life of the lieutenant-governor in the desperate skirmish with Mbopa’s warriors. Hervey was sure that this alone would secure him entry to any drawing room in London.

  Fairbrother made no reply.

  They walked a few more yards in silence. ‘And it was Bishop Andrewes. Lancelot Andrewes.’

  ‘I shall make enquiries of him,’ said Fairbrother in all seriousness. ‘What fine words, they: “The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short”. I only wish I might hear them from your father’s pulpit.’

  Hervey smiled. ‘I’m sure you shall. The parish is very fond of the sermon. They would have him preach no other at Christmas. Perhaps we might resolve here and now that if we do not Christmas next at Hounslow then we shall do so at Horningsham. There; does that serve?’

  ‘It does most assuredly.’

  ‘And you shall come with me to Wiltshire as soon as we are finished here and wherever we must – to ride the Plain again, and shoot bustard. Just as I promised we would.’

  ‘Agreeable in every respect.’

  Fairbrother felt a warming in his breast that no brandy could induce. In truth his studied nonchalance and contrary passion masked a great want of companionship, which Hervey had come unexpectedly to supply, and which Fairbrother by return supplied in like manner, though in Hervey’s case the want arose not from birth on the other side of the blanket but by the steady falling away, for good reason and ill, of those with whom he had seen service.

  It was more than that, however. In Fairbrother, Hervey recognized a quite exceptional aptitude for the sabre and the saddle, a sort of ‘sixth sense’ for the field. He himself had been taught a good deal as a boy – in a boyish sort of way – by Shepherd Coates, who had lately been trumpeter to General Tarleton. But it seemed to him that Fairbrother’s talent was not merely acquired; there was something that came with the blood – and he was sure it must be that part of the blood which came from the dark continent of Africa. Fairbrother’s mother was a house-slave of a Jamaica plantation, and therefore but one generation removed from the savagery of her tribe – the savagery and the wisdom. When the two friends had faced that savagery together, at the frontier of the Eastern Cape, it had been Fairbrother who had known, unfailingly, what to do. But more: he had then been able to execute his own advice, to take to his belly to out-savage the savage. And yet, too, such were Fairbrother’s cultivated mind and manners – which his father, the plantation owner, had seen to as if Fairbrother had been born in the great house rather than one of its cabins – that his company would be sought by gentlemen of the best of families. When first Hervey had introduced him at Hounslow, Lord Holderness had expressed himself delighted: ‘a fine-looking man’, with a ‘gentlemanlike mien’.

  Only a certain weariness with life on Fairbrother’s part (although not so much, perhaps, as when they had first met eighteen months or so ago) stood occasionally between them. Yet so erratic was it, for his enthusiasm for knowledge seemed at times to know no bounds. But then Fairbrother never admitted himself to be a willing soldier in the way that Hervey was; he had not thought himself a soldier from an early age. His father had purchased a commission for him in the Jamaica Militia, a
nd thence in the Royal Africans (a corps which more resembled the penitentiary than the regular army), and then on Hervey’s recommendation and entreaty Fairbrother had quit his indolent half pay at the Cape to accompany the Mounted Rifles to the frontier as interpreter. Their first meeting had indeed been unpropitious; Hervey had very near walked away in contempt. But now this handsome, half-caste, gentlemanlike, disinclined soldier was his paramount, boon companion.

  The clock began striking eleven as they walked under the arch of the Horse Guards – in step, for Fairbrother had picked up Hervey’s as they approached (which amused his friend since Fairbrother had always affected an unmilitary air) – and Hervey returned the sentry’s salute as they made for the oddly unimposing door into the headquarters of the commander-in-chief of His Majesty’s Land Forces. Inside, an orderly showed them to a waiting room. Hervey took off his greatcoat, bidding Fairbrother to do likewise, and moved to the fire to warm his hands.

  Hervey was now revealed in the undress uniform of a lieutenant-colonel of the 6th Light Dragoons rather than of the Cape Mounted Rifles, which hitherto he had been assiduous in wearing, for his substantive promotion on the regular establishment had only been lately gazetted. He wore no sword, as was appropriate for an ‘interview with refreshment appropriate to the time of day’, but carried, wrapped in leather, an iklwa taken at the fight at Ngwadi’s kraal, which he intended presenting to the commander-in-chief. Fairbrother, in the green serge and black buttons of a captain of the Rifles, appeared unmoved by his proximity to power and glory – which was exactly as Hervey would have it, since it was his design to have his friend impress their ‘host’.