Hervey 07 - An Act Of Courage (48 page)

Hervey thought deep. ‘No, Charles, I . . . I will engage one myself if need be.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

A NEW ORDER

Next day

Hervey returned to the United Service Club late in the afternoon. The hall porter looked relieved to see him. ‘Major Hervey, sir, there is a most urgent letter for you. It came an hour ago. I told the messenger I did not know where you were or at what hour you would return, sir.’

Hervey took it, anxious. If it was not an express it could not be bad news from Wiltshire, but rats were scrambling in his stomach again, and he was certain it must be a reverse in the matter of the court martial. He withdrew from the porter’s lodge to the middle of the hall and, expecting little less than the worst, opened the envelope:

Berkeley-square
3.30 p.m
.

My dear Hervey
,

I should be obliged if you came at once, on a matter of very real urgency
.

Geo Irvine
.

The rats in his stomach were now racing: the letter was so peremptory. He had been ready for a summons to the Horse Guards, and
that
he could have borne defiantly; but to his colonel, whose judgement in matters of the regimental good was infallible . . .

His head began to swim. Last night things had been so promising. A week’s ‘quarantine’ and he would be back with his troop and all the family of men who bore the numerals ‘VI’ on their appointments, a family of saints and sinners just as any other, but a place a man could always redeem himself.

He ought to change his clothes before presenting himself to his colonel. But did so imperative a summons allow him the time? He approached the porter’s lodge again.

‘Charles, I am going to Berkeley Square, to General Irvine’s, should any further messages arrive. I will return directly, but I am engaged this evening.’

‘Very good, sir. Did you find a cab last night as I indicated, sir?’

‘What? Oh . . . yes, I did. Thank you, Charles.’

‘Very good, those hackney cabs, all the members say, sir.’

Hervey buttoned his coat and replaced his hat. ‘Indeed, yes; quick about the place, very.’ He smiled, dutifully, then stepped into the darkening street again.

It took him ten minutes to reach Berkeley Square. It would have taken less at the brisk pace he set, but he had to walk a good way along Regent’s Street to find a clean crossing. The door opened almost the instant he rang, and a footman showed him into the library, where the colonel of the 6th Light Dragoons was reading the
London Gazette
.

‘Hervey, I am sore relieved you are come,’ said Lord George, and sounding every bit as if he meant it. ‘I thought perhaps you had gone to Wiltshire.’

Hervey was at once partially relieved – it was perfectly evident that he was not to suffer summary punishment – yet equally dismayed by Lord George’s uncharacteristic discomposure. ‘No, Colonel, I have been abroad in London all day, and received your letter but a quarter of an hour ago.’

‘Then of course you have not heard?’

He had heard nothing other than from Lady Katherine Greville, and nothing of that would have occasioned his colonel’s present state. ‘No, sir?’

‘Strickland was killed last night.’

Hervey’s mouth fell open. ‘
Killed
?’

‘On the King’s New Road, not a mile from the Piccadilly bar. It seems his chaise ran full tilt into the Oxford Mail. He was brought to St George’s infirmary, which was nearest, I suppose, but by then he was dead.’

Hervey could hardly speak.
Strickland
, who had been through the Peninsula, and Waterloo, and Bhurtpore – dead in a carriage smash on the best road in the country! The haphazard of it all was never so shocking. ‘Colonel, I barely know what to say. What would you have me do? Take the news to his people?’

Lord George nodded. ‘I have written the letter. I thought to send an express, but it’s a damnable way to learn such news. An officer deserves better than that. And you will know his people, I imagine.’

‘I could try to catch tonight’s Ipswich Mail, but—’

‘No, I would that you post with my chariot. I shall delay my return north until after the Duke of York’s funeral. If you set out at six in the morning you can be back the evening following.’

‘I am certain of it, Colonel.’

Lord George fixed him keenly. ‘And then I would have you go at once to Hounslow and take command. I told you yesterday: it will be three months at least before there’s a new lieutenant-colonel. And frankly, Hervey, with things the way they are here and abroad, a very great deal of trouble there may be during that time.’

Hervey stood silent. Only days ago he faced court martial; now he was to take command of his regiment. The fortunes of soldiering were ever changing, and rarely predictable – but never so surprising.

A very great deal of trouble there may be during that time
: he knew it as well as did Lord George. As a Christian man he would pray for peace in the months ahead, but as an officer with ambition he might hope otherwise.

HISTORICAL AFTERNOTE

Lieutenant-General Sir William Clinton’s intervention force, which began landing at Lisbon on Christmas Day 1826, comprised four squadrons of cavalry, four companies of artillery, two battalions of Guards, seven battalions of Foot, a company of the Royal Staff Corps (engineers), and a detachment of the Royal Waggon Train – around five thousand men in all – with a naval squadron under command of Nelson’s famous flag captain, Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy. Meanwhile, the Miguelites had mounted another invasion of the northern provinces of Minho and Tras os Montes, and so in the middle of January 1827 Clinton marched north to the Mondego river – as the Duke of Wellington had almost twenty years before – and with this strong force to underwrite their counter-offensive, loyal Portuguese troops were able to eject the invaders. Then at the end of April, sixteen hundred of the two-thousand-strong garrison at Elvas mutinied, subverted by Miguelites at Badajoz and encouraged by a whole corps of the Spanish army mustered menacingly at the frontier. The mutiny was put down smartly, however, by the fortress commander, the admirable General Caula, and the country began to quieten once more. Clinton was able to withdraw to the area of the old Lines of Torres Vedras, although the fortifications were in a very poor state, and there his force remained until the late summer, when they moved into quarters in Lisbon, Belem and Mafra – all without firing a single shot.

On 20 January 1827, the Duke of York’s funeral took place at Windsor. The day was so bitter chill, and the proceedings so prolonged, that several of the mourners succumbed: at least two bishops are said to have died on their way home. The Foreign Secretary, Mr Canning, caught a severe cold which turned to inflammation of the lungs and liver. When in April therefore, after Lord Liverpool died of a stroke, he became Prime Minister, Canning was already a sick man. He lasted only until August, when he too died. Viscount Goderich succeeded him. Goderich, however, could not hold his cabinet together, and resigned the following January, whereupon the Duke of Wellington became Prime Minister. The duke, never having been much of a believer in the Portuguese intervention, and as former commander-in-chief knowing the strain which it placed on the army, soon recalled General Clinton’s five thousand. The Miguelites seized power not long after, Dom Pedro brought an army from Brazil, and there began the protracted – but in truth remarkably unbloody – ‘War of the Two Brothers’.

The British intervention was testament to the efficacy of a bold and timely foreign policy, but also to the ultimate futility of intervention without the military means to sustain it. Then, as now, the British army simply did not have enough soldiers.

THE GREEK ACROSTIC

Here is a brief explanation of the Greek acrostic used by Matthew Hervey to communicate the password ‘Napoleon’ to Colonel Laming. Taking the Greek transliteration of Napoleon and removing the initial letter for each subsequent word, the sentence is formed: ‘Napoleon, the destroyer of whole cities, was the lion of his people.’

NAΠOΛEΩN AΠOΛEΩN ΠOΛEΩN OΛEΩN AEΩN EΩN ΩN

Written in lower case, with full accents and breathings: