Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War Read online

  ‘It was an uncommonly good evening, was it not?’

  ‘It was, Hervey. A very noble play. I am sorry I never saw it before.’

  Hervey smiled as he recalled his original encounter. ‘It was in Lisbon I first saw it. Soon after we had got there. The duchess was Italian and spoke her lines very indistinct.’

  ‘Italian was she? I count myself poor, still, for not having seen that country,’ said Strickland, shaking his head. ‘And did you see Malfi when you were there?’

  ‘The play?’

  ‘The place.’

  ‘No. I went as far south only as Naples.’

  They rode on a little without speaking.

  ‘You should join us more often at the theatre, Hervey. We shan’t be at Hounslow for ever.’

  ‘I know it. But I’ve been much distracted by affairs. I know the road to Wiltshire as well as I know it to London.’

  Strickland’s gelding tried to take another bite at the mare’s neck. ‘For heaven’s sake! What possesses you?’

  ‘He knows the manger beckons.’

  ‘No doubt.’

  Strickland’s charger was not alone in its ill temper. Down the long column of squadrons returning from exercise on the heath there were any number of displays – mares being marish, and geldings being coltish, for all their deficiency. Nappy troopers were just a part of a cavalry regiment on parade, especially one that knew it was returning to barracks.

  ‘You are much occupied by your ladies, Hervey,’ said Strickland kindly.

  ‘I confess I am. I have neglected them sorely.’

  ‘Then we shall see them at Hounslow soon?’

  ‘My sister, I think, would not stay long if she came. Our parents are not young. And there is no governess.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘What?’ Hervey thought he had misheard. The jingling of bits, the clanking of scabbards, and iron striking the road – even at the walk – did not make conversation easy.

  ‘Your lady in town.’

  ‘Strickland!’

  ‘Have a care for your soul, Hervey.’

  ‘Strickland, old friends though we are, you sometimes presume too much. I am perfectly careful of my soul, I assure you.’

  ‘You will remain in my prayers nevertheless.’

  ‘And you in mine!’

  The gates of the cavalry barracks were now welcoming them. The commanding officer’s trumpeter sounded the approach, and the quarter-guard came doubling from the guardroom to present arms. Hervey touched his peak before dropping back to the head of Third Squadron as the regiment sat up to attention to ride in, then wheeling and forming on the square for the dismissal. He took post in front of E Troop as the commanding officer, adjutant and serjeant-major turned about to watch the evolutions.

  At length, Lieutenant-Colonel Eustace Joynson, lately confirmed in both his substantive rank and his long acting command of the regiment, rode forward a dozen paces. ‘Light Dragoons, I was exceptionally well pleased with exercise this morning. There could be no handier regiment of cavalry than ours.’

  Hervey smiled to himself: good old ‘Daddy’ Joynson – any other colonel would have said ‘mine’ rather than ‘ours’.

  ‘I must tell you, however, that I have – with regret – come to the decision that I must quit the command.’

  There were sounds of surprise, and regret too, from the ranks. Not full-throated, but distinct enough.

  ‘That is all. Troop-leaders may carry on.’

  There followed the usual five minutes’ hubbub as command of each troop and section was successively devolved and the dragoons returned to their stable lines. Hervey half sprang from the saddle rather than dismounting in the prescribed fashion. His mare was green, and he did not want her bearing more weight in the stirrup. He handed the reins to his groom, touched his peak to acknowledge the salute, and watched him lead her off (there was no need of words with Private Johnson after all these years). He nodded to his lieutenant and cornet, dismissed his trumpeter, returned his serjeant-major’s salute in the same fashion as with his groom, then turned for the officers’ mess. There was even less need of words with Serjeant-Major Armstrong, for their years together one way and another had been greater even than with Johnson.

  He met Strickland again as he came round the corner from the lines.

  ‘Soho, Hervey! Joynson to sell out?’

  ‘I can’t say as I’m surprised. He’ll get a fair penny for it.’

  ‘Well, I’d wager fifteen thousand at least,’ said Strickland, unfastening the bib front of his tunic as they walked. ‘The Ninth went for sixteen; I heard it from the agents only last week.’

  Hervey sighed to himself. Fifteen thousand pounds for the lieutenant-colonelcy of a cavalry regiment of the Line – two and a half times over the regulation price! How might he ever afford it when the time came? How, indeed, might he afford the majority when that came? Six months ago, when Sir Ivo Lankester had died in the storming of the fortress of Bhurtpore, Eustace Joynson had advanced free – by ‘death-vacancy’ – and Strickland, as senior captain by a few months, had advanced free to major in his place.

  Hervey could not be resentful beyond a moment though, for Strickland had been at duty with the Sixth for almost as long as had he – longer, indeed, counting his own ten months’ sojourn as a civilian after Henrietta’s death. Or rather, he could not be resentful of Strickland himself. Of the system he could have great cause to be. True, he had received a brevet after Bhurtpore, and, yes, he had been made a most handsome offer to join the staff of the commander-in-chief in Calcutta, with perhaps a further, half-colonel’s, brevet. But these had been conditional – conditional on his turning a blind eye to so much of which he disapproved in the sharing of spoils from that battle, which he detested even.

  So, he told himself, he had only himself to blame if he truly wanted advancement. He knew it full well. But it did not diminish his anger with the patronage, bartering and . . . profiteering which passed for a system of promotion in the army. For in the relative peace they had enjoyed in the decade since Waterloo, and with a greatly reduced army, when an officer sold out of his own volition he could all but name his price. Not officially; the sum of money changing hands through the regimental agents was now supposed to be strictly regulated (gone at least were the auctions of earlier times). But there were other ways: the sale of a horse or a sword at a grossly inflated sum to make up the difference. The means did not matter. The debt was one of honour, and no officer could afford to default on it even if he had the inclination to. Nor could any officer be too fastidious about a system in which he had such an obvious stake. Even Hervey – especially Hervey, for he had no private means to speak of, and were he to sell out, he might well find that his own captaincy had nicely increased its value.

  ‘It’s no good for any of us who want to go on,’ he replied as they came up to the door of the mess. ‘But I must say I’m pleased for Eustace if it brings him a little profit. He’ll at least be able to settle a fair amount on Frances. I fear he’ll need to to tempt a decent suitor.’

  Strickland raised his eyebrows as he took off his shako and gave it to a mess servant. Hervey had said only what they all thought, but . . . ‘Ay. Well, I for one shall be sorry to see him go.’

  It was the Sixth’s custom for the officers – save the picket-officer – to change out of their regimentals before lunch. Hervey and Strickland therefore retired to their quarters, to emerge half an hour later for the customary sherry, Strickland in a set of fustian in anticipation of a visit to the flighting ponds, and Hervey in a fine worsted in which he felt able to present himself later at White’s.

  ‘I can’t help thinking that Lord Sussex might have been able to prevail on him to stay a little while longer,’ said Hervey as he took his glass, the subject having remained in his mind for the entire time of his ablutions and dressing.

  ‘Perhaps,’ replied Strickland, who had also been turning over the implications. ‘But I thought you placed great stor
e by the new one?’

  The regiment’s colonel, Lieutenant-General the Earl of Sussex, had died that summer, before the Sixth’s return from India. His successor in this proprietorial but increasingly honorary function, Lieutenant-General Lord George Irvine, had been gazetted two months later, but his duties had so far detained him in Ireland, and his first levee as colonel would not be until the New Year.

  ‘I do most certainly. I think Lord George will be an attentive colonel, but Eustace doesn’t know him. He’d gone home from Spain before Lord George came to us.’

  ‘Well, we must hope he is attentive enough to who is to command next.’

  It was the single most important function the regiment’s colonel fulfilled, for it was he who had to approve the appointment of a lieutenant-colonel to the executive command, no matter how much a man was prepared to pay for it.

  Hervey put down his glass in a manner that suggested resolution of something troubling. ‘Strickland, have you thought what might occur if Eustace, or whoever succeeds him, were to die in command?’

  Strickland looked puzzled. ‘Graveney is senior major.’

  ‘Ay, and he is soon to go on half pay, and might anyway refuse it.’

  ‘Unlikely that he’d sniff at such a windfall.’

  ‘May be. He has his other interests, though. But suppose he did. Then what?’

  ‘You mean that I should advance to lieutenant-colonel?’

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘Ah, but – the Test Act.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  During the wars with France, the Test Act had been all but formally set aside as far as the army was concerned, but of late, with trouble in Ireland once more, the whole question of Catholics holding Crown office had become of moment again. The Stricklands had not taken any oath but temporal loyalty to the King in three hundred years, and Major Benedict Strickland was not going to be the one to dishonour their recusancy now, even for the prize of commanding the 6th Light Dragoons (supposing that he could find the means).

  ‘This cursèd man O’Connell and his agitating; he makes mischief for us all.’

  ‘Well, that aside, how do you regard your prospects?’

  There were no other officers at mess, yet. Strickland smiled. ‘Are you asking me to sell you my majority, Hervey?’

  ‘No. And you would hardly expect me to be so lacking in art if I had intended it. I was merely pondering our inauspicious prospects.’

  Strickland now pulled a face. ‘Hervey, I can scarce credit it. We have been these last seven years in India, beyond what many would consider decent society; we are fresh returned, close to London, and with few duties to detain us. Can that really be so disagreeable? I should have thought you of all people would have welcomed such a respite!’

  To some extent it was true. Hervey had been introduced into some engaging society these past months in London by Lady Katherine Greville, or his old friend Lord John Howard. And respite he perhaps deserved, for he had had a ball in the shoulder at Rangoon, and had cheated death several times at Bhurtpore. He had a daughter, too, of rising nine years, with whom he must re-acquaint himself. But he was not inclined to concede his principal point. ‘My dear Strickland, I am thirty-five years old. I am captain in His Majesty’s Sixth Light Dragoons, with brevet rank of major, which carries with it neither pay nor regimental seniority. I meet men in London ten years my junior who are lieutenant-colonels. You will allow that I am not inclined to enjoy the pleasures of the station for too long.’

  Strickland drained his glass. Other officers were now coming into the ante-room, and he must draw their conversation to a close – for the time being at least. ‘Hervey, I cannot figure your devices. You are offered a half-colonel’s brevet in Calcutta, and with a man whose opinion of you was so high that further promotion was sure to follow. Yet you turn it down, almost on a whim, and now you bemoan your situation. Do you in truth know what you want? And if you do, is there not a little price in pride worth paying?’

  For all the uncertainty that Joynson’s news portended, lunch was an agreeable business, an hour of companionable table. It was the custom following the weekly exercise on the heath to have curries and rice – as a rule, beef, lamb, chicken and, occasionally, as this week, fish – with cold grouse for those whose taste for spices had been sated in India or who had not had opportunity to acquire one.

  Hervey himself was taking especial care of his diet, for he was to dine in London that evening and his appetite was still diminished by the remittent fever which had plagued him twice since the regiment had left Calcutta seven months ago. The fevers did no more than lay him low for a day or so, as might a bad winter’s cold, but for weeks afterwards he found his digestion impaired and his capacity for wine reduced.

  Talk at table was, indeed, of little but Eustace Joynson’s announcement, in particular of who his successor might be. The names were legion. In theory it might be any major with one year’s seniority on the active list, just as long as they could raise the money and meet with Lord George Irvine’s approval – which meant, of course, to be in possession of such further means as to be able to maintain the regiment’s standing in the eyes of society and the rest of the army. Hervey suggested too that the Duke of Wellington’s opinion might soon have to be taken account of. The Duke of York had exercised little interest these past years, but the duke when he became commander-in-chief (as everyone knew he would before too long) might have strong objections to those he considered lacking in aptness. Except, he had to agree, the duke had long appeared to have an unaccountable facility to suffer certain fools, especially if they had a title. ‘Black Jack’ Slade had not been so much as a baronet during the Peninsular campaign, Strickland reminded him, and he was as useless an officer as ever they had seen; yet the duke had let him remain in command of the hussar brigade even as he stumbled (and considerably less than bravely) from one mishap to another. How would Slade have done at Rangoon and Bhurtpore, Strickland asked. Hervey knew the answer: he would have botched things, even if he had been at the head of a troop only. But Slade was now lieutenant-general, by all accounts. Where was the justice? Where was the sense? The whole table agreed, new and old alike; they all knew Slade one way or another.

  After coffee, Hervey settled into one of the comfortable leather tubs by the window in the ante-room. ‘Yes, Strickland, I know full well what I want.’ He declined the cigar his friend was offering. ‘And you suppose that I turned down Combermere’s patronage solely because he retains half the prize money from Bhurtpore for himself.’

  Strickland held his peace. Lord Combermere had outraged the army of India – there was no other word for it – when he had defied custom and kept his share rather than give it to the lower ranks and the widows.

  ‘That is true,’ said Hervey, gazing out of the window. ‘Though I cannot wholly claim it is on but a point of honour that I did so. What do you suppose might be Combermere’s standing in popular eyes? Well I for one do not intend to be cast out bag and baggage when Combermere’s star proves to be of the shooting variety.’

  ‘A little ere the mighty Julius fell?’ Strickland smiled wryly and blew smoke towards the ceiling.

  Hervey turned back to look at him directly. ‘Just so.’

  ‘My dear friend, when it comes to the time for me to sell out there would be no happier man than I, should you be the one to buy my majority. Meanwhile, I at least intend taking my ease – in decent measure, of course. And I hope that others will do likewise, for they have earned it. And when the trumpet bids us to do battle in the name of the King, be that sooner or later, I trust that we shall do our duty again just as keenly as we have always done.’

  Hervey smiled. He had no wish to gainsay anything of his old friend. Strickland had exchanged into the Sixth from the Tenth just before Waterloo, and had at once become as the others, remaining faithful throughout the miserable tenure of Lord Towcester’s command, and the dusty, tedious years in Bengal. No, Hervey would pick no fight with him. ‘We are not so ver
y distant in our opinion. It is only that I fear I cannot wait for the trumpet.’

  ‘And therefore?’

  Hervey took a sip of his Madeira, as if about to impart something confidential. ‘Greece. That is where we shall be tried next. The Duke of Wellington’s mission to Russia – there has been some compact, of which we perforce know little, and without doubt it will mean an offensive against the Turk. I have heard that Lord Hill has been instructed to place a brigade in readiness.’

  ‘And you intend to join it?’

  ‘Strickland, I hope the regiment shall join it. I’ll warrant there is none more experienced in the home establishment.’

  ‘Fair Greece! Sad relic of departed worth!’

  Hervey looked puzzled.

  ‘Lord Byron.’

  ‘You are a clever fellow.’

  ‘Have a care that Greece is not the death of you, my friend!’

  Hervey frowned. ‘You would live for ever?’

  ‘I would live a little longer! At least till I have the dust of Hindoostan out of my lungs. Perhaps you shall learn more this evening.’

  Hervey nodded slowly. ‘It is certainly my intention. The duke will be taciturn, no doubt, but I am seeing John Howard before dinner, and he is illuminating company always.’

  By three o’clock, Hervey was fair flying along the King’s New Road. It was probably the best turnpike in the country. In an hour and a half, or less if there was not too much carting traffic and the horses could have an occasional gallop, the officers of the Sixth could reach the clubs and drawing rooms of St James’s. This was certainly Hervey’s intention this afternoon as he sped in a chariot with the Greville arms emblazoned on the doors. Lady Katherine Greville had been most insistent. He was to be her escort at Apsley House, and she could do no less than have him travel comfortably, and fast, to town. She had been disappointed when he had declined her invitation to stay at Holland Park, but, he explained, he would have business to transact early at St James’s, and it were better that he lodged, as usual, at the United Service Club in Charles Street. It was not the whole truth, but Lady Katherine’s portion of their correspondence while he had been in India filled a small trunk, and with Lieutenant-General Sir Peregrine Greville not in residence (his duties as military governor of Alderney and Sark, such as they were, detaining him almost permanently on the other side of the English Channel) he judged it prudent to observe a strict decorum. But first there was his engagement with his old friend at White’s. There could scarcely have been a less auspicious beginning to any friendship than that which was theirs. Lieutenant, as he had then been, Lord John Howard had arrived at the vicarage in Horningsham those eleven years past to place the then Cornet Matthew Hervey in arrest and to bring him to London. They had never served together, but the circumstances of their meeting, and their subsequent acquaintance, had been such as to build a mutual regard. It was a regard, too, that might have puzzled any outside the service, since Lord John Howard had risen by purchase two ranks higher than Hervey, and had done so without ever hearing a shot fired in anger. Hervey’s regard for him rested in considerable measure on his friend’s own humility in that respect. But above all the regard was conditioned by Lord John Howard’s evident qualities as a military courtier and staff officer, qualities which, Hervey knew full well, eluded him.