The Passage to India Read online

  ‘His name?’

  ‘Colonel Thomas Brereton.’

  ‘Brereton … There was a Brereton at the Cape, as I recall, not long before I was there. Fairbrother knew him, I believe, from his time in the Royal Africans. I should have thought him capable, if it were he. Lieutenant-Colonel, I imagine?’

  The point was of the essence: no matter what Brereton’s seniority as a lieutenant-colonel – which must be considerable – Hervey’s brevet would make him the superior officer.

  ‘Yes. Though I don’t know he is the Brereton you describe, Colonel, for he wore but a plain coat.’

  ‘No, indeed. Father, do you have an Army List?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do not,’ replied the archdeacon. ‘And I cannot imagine where to enquire after one at this hour. I could, perhaps, send to the chapter clerk.’

  Hervey shook his head. ‘No, let’s not trouble him. I don’t in any case recall the African Brereton’s Christian name, but I’ll proceed on the assumption they’re one and the same. Carry on.’

  St Alban told him of the mob’s assault on the Guildhall and attempt to fire the Mansion House.

  Hervey braced. ‘That indeed gives matters a different aspect.’

  Incendiarists, in his judgement – and to his certain knowledge that of the duke (though what sway the duke carried now he did not know) – could be dealt with but one way.

  ‘Just so, Colonel. However, I believe Colonel Brereton thought the mere presence of the dragoons would have effect, which to begin with they did, but—’

  ‘Had they drawn swords?’

  ‘No. Colonel Brereton expressly forbade it, or pistols. Late last night I was able myself, with the sar’nt-major and Sar’nt Acton, to get into the Mansion House and announce ourselves, and soon afterwards Captain Gage of the Fourteenth came, much annoyed, for his troops had come under a great hail of stone and iron in the streets leading upon the square, and he wanted the mayor’s leave to use carbines.’

  ‘I know Gage somewhat, and to be a capable man. He must have had just cause.’

  ‘The mayor thought so too, but then Colonel Brereton came and spoke strongly against the order, urging that if the mob were let alone, the hour being late, they would disperse of their own accord.’

  Hervey shook his head, wondering by what precedent Brereton believed it might be so. More likely he was minded of another precedent. ‘The shadow of Peterloo cast long, no doubt.’

  St Alban raised an eyebrow. ‘Peterloo’ was before his time, a dozen years ago, but no officer of cavalry could be unaware of it. A great gathering of people – by various estimates fifty or sixty thousand – at St Peter’s Field in Manchester, come to hear ‘Orator’ Hunt, with many banners proclaiming ‘Reform’, ‘Universal Suffrage’, ‘Equal Representation’ (and even ‘Love’). Fearful of revolution, however, the authorities had at hand two troops of cavalry – one regular, but the other yeomanry – and when the magistrates ordered the latter to arrest the speakers they had got themselves in such a disorder that the dragoons had to rescue them, with much damage to life and limb.

  St Alban took another good measure of claret, as if to fortify himself. ‘Matters only became worse, however, and much later – I believe at the urging of the mayor – the colonel cleared the square with the flat of the sword, and Gage’s men shot one dead who’d assailed them. I should add that by this time Sir Charles Wetherell had left the city.’

  ‘But we may take it, then, that the mayor is not a sort to quit his post.’

  ‘No indeed. I observed him on several occasions and he showed much coolness. It was a little after the square had been cleared that Major Mackworth came to the Guildhall and at once took charge of the constables and arranged a watch and reliefs, and sent for me and asked that I present his compliments to you and request you come and take charge as soon as may be.’

  Corporal Johnson now appeared, hastily got up in a tailcoat.

  ‘Have Serjeant Wakefield bring the chaise, if you will,’ said Hervey. ‘We leave for Bristol this night.’

  III

  The Rash Fierce Blaze of Riot

  Monday, 2 a.m.

  ‘COLONEL, SIR, I think I’d best pull up and you have a see.’

  Serjeant Wakefield’s voice carried strong above the two-time of hooves and the growl of wheels on macadam, but it failed to wake his commanding officer. Having dictated a letter for the Horse Guards, which St Alban had been able to take down – and even correct – by the light of the carcel lamps brought back from Brussels, Hervey had closed his eyes just after Wylye and slept soundly through two changes of horses. (‘When a soldier has no other duty to perform, it is his duty to sleep.’)

  St Alban put his head out of the window. ‘What is it, Sar’nt Wakefield?’

  Then he saw for himself. Had they been posting east, and some hours later, it might have been but the shepherd’s warning, but a red sky in the west was a different matter.

  ‘Colonel.’

  The word and a hand to his arm was all that was needed. Hervey sat bolt upright. ‘Bristol?’

  ‘Yes, Colonel; and by the look of it, much in flame.’

  Wakefield had brought the chariot to a halt atop the Pennyquick hill on the road out of Bath. Hervey climbed onto the roof. He hadn’t his telescope with him, but there was no doubting what lay ahead. ‘It’s a great blaze, and doubtless soon unconfined. By God, I wish I’d even one troop with me.’

  Wakefield was calmly checking the traces. ‘Go to it, then, Colonel?’

  Hervey jumped down. ‘Are you sure of finding the lodgings? If we have to go a roundabout way?’

  ‘Aye, Colonel. Hard by the cathedral. Shouldn’t be no problem.’

  Unless, of course, the whole quarter was in the hands of the mob. But Reeves’s hotel, where St Alban said most of the military were billeted – the officers, at least – seemed to Hervey a better place to begin than the Guildhall. The sooner he heard from Armstrong his opinion, and met Mackworth, the better. The mayor and Brereton – if either of them were to be found – could wait.

  ‘Very well, Sar’nt Wakefield. Reeves’s, if you please. Give any crowd a wide berth, but have no scruple to drive hard if you can’t.’ He turned to Acton, who was riding a particularly disobliging post horse. ‘Load your carbine.’

  ‘Colonel.’

  Acton took no chances. He jumped down rather than fiddle in the saddle with powder and shot. He could anyway better shield it from the persisting drizzle – and ease himself beside the road.

  ‘Want me to hold them while you goes, Wakey?’

  Wakefield had been the best rough-rider in the Sixth before the riding-master detailed him to the regimental chariot. He’d driven it to Norfolk the year before, on the mission for the Horse Guards, leaving Hounslow a corporal and returning with a third stripe, having pulled Hervey’s old friend Peto from the sea at Blakeney. (Acton had likewise advanced by one stripe after duty as Hervey’s covering man in the Levant.) He was more at home in the saddle than on his feet.

  ‘Made water already, Fred.’

  Acton had thought about it a while back, but not with a skittish mare. Wet through though he was, he’d no desire to ape an incontinent dragoon of a pay night. ‘Per’aps we should be saving it for yonder.’

  Hervey smiled to himself ruefully. The mayor of London had said as much – ‘A woman could piss it out’ – when they told him the fire in Pudding Lane looked bad. He could only trust that Bristol’s mayor was of a more active bent, for the red glow looked much like the paintings of the Great Fire.

  Nevertheless, they made it to Reeves’s without a shot, though as they neared the worst of the tumult, off Queen Square, Acton had had to draw his sabre, sending more than one flying with the flat of it, drawing blood with the edge to another brandishing a halberd, and scattering the rest who saw he meant business. For, since drunk beyond sense they must be, he wasn’t inclined to parley. Better to beg indulgence of a magistrate for wounding a few wretches than answer to a court martial
for suffering his colonel to be assaulted. Besides, he had a lawful order from a superior officer, and that was all an NCO need ask.

  It was a minute or so before three. Reeves’s was a substantial mansion, with a handsome façade clear to see in the gaslight and the more distant incendiary glow.

  ‘It has capability,’ said Hervey – meaning that, properly shuttered, it would take only a few to defend it against aught but cannon.

  A sentry stood at the door, cloaked and sabre drawn – one of his own dragoons.

  ‘Carry on, Sar’nt Wakefield,’ was all he said as he got out of the chaise – and all he needed to say.

  Acton was already afoot. ‘We’ve stables round the corner, Colonel – Leigh’s bazaar.’

  Wakefield was pulling away for them.

  ‘Very well – a quarter of an hour, if you please, with new horses.’

  St Alban handed him his sword, which he buckled on as they made for the door. Had there been any to see their arrival, whether honest citizen or felon, they could not but have been taken by the impression of purpose (‘Action is eloquence’ had indeed long been the Sixth’s watchword).

  The sentry was already at attention.

  ‘Good morning, Spink. How long have you stood guard?’

  ‘All night, Colonel.’

  ‘Anything to report?’

  ‘There were a lot of trouble earlier on, Colonel – a lot o’ stone throwing – but the DGs chased ’em off and it’s been quiet since, except a lot of noise from yonder, Colonel.’ He nodded in the direction of the cathedral and the bishop’s palace. ‘And comings and goings all night in here, but no trouble.’

  Private Spink was Armstrong’s groom. He spoke as if it had been Hounslow of a band night.

  ‘Who is in there now?’

  ‘Of us, Colonel? Nobody.’

  Hervey wondered why, with so many troops supposedly in the city, Spink alone stood guard here (except that there must be a deal of regimental baggage within), but it was not the time to enquire. No doubt Armstrong had first placed him there, and for good reason had not yet stood him down.

  ‘Where is the sar’nt-major?’

  ‘He went to the docks before midnight, Colonel, to muster the sailors. He thought as they’d answer to discipline.’

  ‘And is there anyone else within?’

  ‘Some of the magistrates came an hour ago, Colonel. They looked dead beat and proper frit.’

  ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘Mr Reeves’s sent me out plenty, Colonel.’ He didn’t add that the proprietor had given him a half-sovereign as well.

  Inside, Hervey found half a dozen citizens of evident standing, who after turning anxiously to see who had come past the sentry looked intensely relieved.

  ‘Upon my word, sir, you are come in deliverance,’ said one, stepping forward with his hands clasped. ‘I am Alderman Camplin.’

  Even in the lamplight it was not difficult to make out the face of a man both anxious and at the same time exasperated – and who might give useful intelligence.

  ‘I am Colonel Hervey. I am due here in connection with the assizes but am come on hearing of the tumult. You are a magistrate?’

  ‘I am, Colonel.’

  ‘Then what of the military here?’

  Camplin hesitated a moment. ‘They are too few, Colonel.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘I think no more than thirty or so.’

  ‘Thirty? After a day of riot?’

  Camplin shifted awkwardly. ‘There were more, Colonel, but they are gone away.’

  ‘By whose orders?’

  The man looked even more uncomfortable. ‘I can’t rightly say, Colonel. It was agreed, I think, between the mayor and the military.’

  ‘Who is in command of the military?’

  ‘Colonel Brereton. Of the recruiting office.’

  ‘What does he do now? Where is he at this time?’

  ‘I don’t know, Colonel. That is the matter on which we were conferring when you arrived.’

  ‘He is on the streets perhaps?’

  ‘I think not, for the cavalry are returned to their billets, at the horse bazaar hard by.’

  ‘Major Mackworth?’

  ‘I am not acquainted with him, Colonel.’

  ‘And the mayor – where is he?’

  ‘He’s taken refuge at the house of one of his aldermen. He was very much in fear of his life, and with good reason. He’s been much about the city, but after the firing of the bishop’s palace and the Mansion House, and—’

  ‘The bishop’s palace is fired?’

  ‘Like a bonfire on Guy Fawkes’s night. And the Bridewell, and its inmates let loose; and the new county prison and the governor’s house – two hundred more felons running free.’

  Hervey wondered why, in the first instance, Brereton hadn’t made one at least of these places into a strongpoint. ‘And constables?’

  ‘Chased from the streets, I fear,’ replied Alderman Camplin, warming now to his complaint that the military had deserted them. ‘The mayor called for as many specials to be sworn as may be, but without support of the troops they lost heart.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Mr Goldney here, and Mr Harris, bear a letter from the mayor authorizing – nay, begging – Colonel Brereton to take action to restore the Queen’s square, but they’ve been unable to speak with him.’

  Hervey looked at the two of them.

  Goldney, a surgeon, and evidently a man at the end of his tether, took it as licence to speak his mind. ‘At about midnight, fearful that my house would soon be attacked – for two sides of the square were already alight and their contents strewn in the street and carried off – I went to seek out the mayor, or some magistrate capable of action, and found him at …’

  He seemed to forget himself.

  ‘Proceed,’ said Hervey, and a shade peremptorily.

  ‘The mayor gave me this letter for Colonel Brereton.’

  31st Oct, 1831

  Bristol, 1 o’clock, Monday Morning

  Sir: I direct you, as commanding officer of His Majesty’s troops, to take the most vigorous, effective and decisive means in your power to quell the existing riot and prevent further destruction of property.

  CHARLES PINNEY

  To Col Brereton, or the Commanding

  Officer of His Majesty’s Troops.

  Per MR GOLDNEY

  MR W. HARRIS, Jun.

  ‘I took it at once with Harris to Leigh’s horse bazaar, where we found Captain Warrington, in charge of the Dragoons, and begged him in the absence of the Colonel – whose whereabouts he was unwilling to divulge – to read and act on it. However, on reading it – which I must say he was most reluctant to do, on account of its being addressed personally to Colonel Brereton – he said that he felt unable to act without the presence of a magistrate and asked if we knew where to find one, but we had given an undertaking to the mayor not to reveal his whereabouts, and so were unable to oblige, and so came here to consider our position.’

  Hervey angrily pulled off his cap. ‘In the name of God! Is there no one who will reveal anything? Where is the mayor?’

  Surgeon Goldney, who only now appeared to realize the absurdity of the respective heads of the civil and military powers not knowing each other’s whereabouts (let alone being side by side), swallowed hard. ‘At Alderman Fripp’s brother’s in Berkeley Square.’

  ‘Where is this square? I am strange to Bristol.’

  ‘A furlong or so northwards, towards the park.’

  ‘Very well. I desire that you bring the mayor here, and I shall have Colonel Brereton come here so that we can concert our action. Is there a high constable of the city?’

  ‘No, Colonel, only chief constables of each ward.’

  ‘And the fire companies?’

  ‘I would say they have been largely ineffectual, on account of there being so many fires started, and the hostility of the onlookers.’

  Hervey angered again. ‘They’d do better to serve with their axes ag
ainst the miscreants, then. See to it they’re mustered and sworn.’

  Alderman Camplin and his deputies thought it theirs to comply. This colonel of dragoons appeared to be in very sanguinary mood, and while they had no wish to subject themselves to the process of law that would follow when the riots were over – when the courts might be more concerned with the letter of the law than with the exigencies that had led to the suspension of it – they had no wish to dissuade him from the vigorous action necessary to preserve life, limb and property.

  Hervey took their silence as agreement. ‘Very well. Let us convene again as soon as may be.’

  Armstrong now appeared, heated. ‘Colonel, praise be you’ve got here. Can we ’ave words?’

  St Alban turned away. Notwithstanding rank, customs of the service and pride, the greenest dragoon knew that Hervey and the serjeant-major had soldiered so long together that they enjoyed an intimacy not prescribed by King’s Regulations. Armstrong was sparing with the privilege, but ‘Can we ’ave words?’ was the formula for claiming it.

  They went into a small ante-room followed by a man in a tailcoat who announced himself as the night porter and offered to bring them coffee, which Hervey was glad of.

  ‘Well, Mr Armstrong, quite an affair, it would seem.’

  ‘Colonel, it’s worse than aught I’ve ever seen – worse even than Brussels.’

  Brussels had been shocking enough. They’d been at the theatre in some state – with their royal colonel-in-chief no less – when the city had lost its head: Death to the Dutch! (What an unhappy union of the two Netherlands the Congress of Vienna had made.) And ‘Dutch’ seemed to be anyone in authority – and uniform the mark of it. So they’d had to use their swords to clear a way through the mob, and watch the flames begin licking at the buildings.

  Hervey’s brow was deep furrowed: Armstrong was not given to excess when it came to these things.

  ‘There’s just no will to stop it, Colonel. Yon Colonel Brereton had four troops to hand last night – two of ’em already here, and some yeomanry come in at the mayor’s calling – and Brereton sends away the Fourteenth, and the yeomanry clip-clop round for an hour and more trying to find somebody to tell ’em what to do – as if they needed anybody, for there’re villains on every street – and then they takes themselves off ’ome, so all there is now is the Third and their captain, who’s no more use than a bent nail. All the constables’ve scarpered – for all that Major Mackworth did his best to keep them. It’s only the tars on them ships yonder who’ve any fight in ’em at all. There were word that the docks were to be fired, so we went down there with one of the magistrates and got them to muster, which they did good and proper – specially the blacks. Answered to discipline like a good troop. The harbourmaster’s got them all mustered now, which is why I’ve come back – to try to find out what in God’s name Brereton intends doing, for if he doesn’t the place’ll be naught but cinders tomorrow.’