Hervey 08 - Company Of Spears (38 page)

‘Matthew?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Jaswant asks if you prefer whiskey or brandy.’

‘Oh, I hadn’t … whiskey, thank you.’

The khansamah bowed and left.

‘You were thinking…’

Hervey sighed. ‘I was thinking – at that moment, at that precise moment – of Vaneeta.’

‘Is that a cause for sighing?’

Hervey shook his head a little. ‘No, it should not be. I never asked you: did you see her before you left?’

Before he himself had left, he had asked Emma to keep watch. He had settled a good income on Vaneeta: it was the very least he believed he could do (though a very good deal more than others did in like circumstances), but he had asked Emma to let him know at once if his former bibi fell into any sort of difficulty. Indeed, he had asked her to make whatever financial provision she felt necessary as soon as possible, and he would reimburse her at once. He had settled more than enough on Vaneeta for her to live in respectable comfort. Even though her standing in Calcutta would ever be that of bibi of a
Feringhee,
he had hated the idea that she might pass from one pair of military hands to another. The thought that she might even return to the
haveli
had reduced him almost to tears. He had at one stage – in a moment he now saw as beyond reason – thought to bring her back with him to England. And in a fit of distinct madness he had even contemplated marriage, remaining in Bengal, throwing in with the Company’s forces, perhaps even with Colonel Skinner’s regiment of irregular cavalry. Emma, who disdained the growing ‘respectability’ and aloofness of the new memsahibs, had received Vaneeta in her own drawing room, albeit discreetly for her visitor’s sake more than her own. She had liked Vaneeta, both for her wit, sensibility and charm, and for her evident restorative powers: Vaneeta had nursed Hervey back to health in every sense. Emma had never sought to persuade him of the unsuitability of marriage, or for that matter taking her to England as ayah to Georgiana. She had only wanted him to think in terms other than wholly of duty.

‘I did see her before I left, yes. She was very well.’

‘And…’

‘And what?’

Jaswant came with his whiskey and soda water.

Hervey took it, nodding his thanks. ‘She … she was happy?’

Emma looked a trifle frustrated. ‘It was not so many months after you left that Eyre and I sailed.’

Hervey looked anxious. ‘And so…’

‘Matthew, it is very hard for me if you will not finish your sentences!’

‘Was she appearing to … be recovered?’

Their parting – Hervey and Vaneeta – had indeed been a painful one. He had loved her as much as he was able; she had loved him completely.

Emma’s look of frustration only increased. ‘Matthew, I understand that you should be concerned for Vaneeta’s situation – but at this time? I made careful arrangements for her, with a very reliable party, as I explained in the letter I sent you, and for the rest … only time can do its work.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘Is there something in the letter that has prompted this – Kezia Lankester’s letter, I mean?’

Hervey shook his head. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘Then in the circumstances I believe we should drop the matter.’

Hervey nodded. ‘It’s just … there are times…’

Emma leaned forward and placed a hand on his. ‘Of
course
there will be times, Matthew. You cannot help it. It does you credit, indeed. But to dwell on it is … imprudent. I dare say unseemly.’

Somervile returned, with a glass in his hand. ‘Great Ganesh, but Bourke’s oldwomanly about that place!’

Hervey and Emma looked at him, uncertain.

‘St Helena! He’s got a notion the French’ll seize it one day – make it a shrine or some such. Does it matter one iota if they do? How in the name of Shiva can it be worth the cost of placing one bombardier there? And why so urgent a dispatch, I can’t imagine.’

Hervey shook his head and raised his eyebrows slightly.

‘In all else I’ve found him a most sensible fellow.’

‘I am very glad of it,’ said Hervey. ‘You think, therefore, he will approve of my own dispatch?’

Somervile gestured with his glass. ‘Ah, your dispatch. Indeed – admirable, admirable. I have written this afternoon to Bathurst, in large measure your words, with a copy to the War Office – who, I trust, will send it to the Horse Guards. And I have written to the magistrates at Port Elizabeth and Graham’s-town commending their actions.’

Hervey looked pleased. ‘And you will commend Fairbrother?’

‘I shall. But first I would meet him. I very much like the sound of him. Indeed, had it not been for Colonel Somerset I should have invited him this evening. But it would have been unfair on Somerset to interpose to all intents and purposes a stranger when there is colony business to be about.’

Hervey would have preferred that Colonel Henry Somerset had not been invited at all. He had hoped for a reunion of friends; but then he reminded himself that Eyre Somervile, undoubted friend that he was, was now primarily his sovereign’s regent in the colony, to whom even General Bourke must answer in the first instance. There could probably be no occasion that was entirely – or even, he had to admit, and with regret, in any large measure – an affair of friends. He took comfort, however, in Fairbrother’s delightful assertion that where one gentleman was the subordinate of another, the superior would never mention it, and the inferior would never forget it.

Emma tilted her head, resigned. Her drawing rooms, be they in Madras, Calcutta, London, and now here, had ever been conference halls, or else offices, and occasionally even headquarters. ‘May we not first have a little conversation, my dear? I would ask Colonel Hervey how was his visit to the frontier.’

Somervile looked puzzled. ‘Did you not read the dispatch?’

Emma lowered her head emphatically. ‘A very little. If you recall, I only had opportunity to take it up this afternoon, and your secretary at once had need of it.’

‘Mm.’

‘So, Matthew, after you left these wonderful-sounding clay pits, did you encounter the fearsome and magnificent Xhosa?’

Hervey’s eyes widened. ‘I did, though I had no occasion to observe any magnificence. I must admit they very nearly worsted us in an ambuscade, and again the same day – in the middle of the night. They might have taken our camp had it not been for Mr Fairbrother.’

Emma quickened. ‘Oh, I must have the particulars, Matthew!’

Hervey knew full well that Emma would want the particulars. She had smelled more powder than many a man in England. He let the khansamah take his glass, accepted another, and began recounting the affair at the headwaters of the Gwalana.

When he had come to the natural conclusion of the action, Emma, who had remained silent but very intent, shook her head. ‘I, too, am full of admiration for your Mr Fairbrother. Such resolution as well as skill!’ She turned to her husband. ‘Eyre, he must come to the castle as soon as may be.’

Somervile, who had been listening almost as intently, though he knew the affair from the pages of the report, smiled and nodded, as if conceding to his wife a personal favour. Hervey was touched by the evident orientation of the lieutenant-governor’s heart. He said nothing, allowing Emma and her husband their intimacy.

Emma turned back to him. ‘But Matthew, your corporal: again he dashed to your rescue – no, not rescue, defence. I—’

Hervey inclined his head. ‘I should happily admit to “rescue”. Had there been more men in that bush Fairbrother might have been shot from his horse, as might I.’

Emma shook her head. ‘I mean that yet again he was there with you. In Rangoon, and then again in Spain, and now here.’

‘That is his position: he
is
my covering corporal.’

Her eyes widened with astonishment.

Hervey smiled. ‘I sport with you, Emma. He is the most admirable of NCOs. I am, you may imagine, inordinately attached to him – not least because of the circumstances of his joining. I listed him from the Warminster sink, and I have to say that – God be praised – he is not the only man of his kind in the Sixth. Nevertheless he is singular in what he has been obliged to do these past five years. I have today made him serjeant.’

Emma clapped her hands. ‘I am delighted for it! When shall I see him? For besides prodigious courage and a devotion to you, he has very agreeable manners. As does, too, your serjeant-major.’

‘The night affair, Hervey,’ Somervile interrupted. ‘The fleysome affair of the night!’

Hervey looked suitably chastened. ‘Ah, yes, the night affair. I should say, Emma, that after the ambuscade we retired north towards one of the frontier posts, taking the wounded man with us, making camp a little before sunset. It was impossible to know if the Xhosa had followed, and just before midnight Mr Fairbrother, of his own, went out of the camp to discover what was the cause of some rustling noise, and found three of them poised to the attack. He killed two at once and came into the camp with a third.’

Emma gripped her glass tight. ‘Was it
very
dark?’

‘The whole country’s very trappy, with a great deal of thorn, and it was as black as Hades. How Fairbrother found them, let alone did what he did, astonishes me still. But then, he called for one of the fires we had laid to be lit, so that he could show any Xhosa who were waiting to attack that we had a prisoner.’

‘But would that not encourage them to his rescue?’

‘I omitted to say he held a knife at the man’s neck, and called out to them in Xhosa that he would slit his throat’ (he paused and cleared his own slightly) ‘and cut off his manhood if they attacked. We managed to get away, first on foot and then at a gallop, all the time with the Xhosa captive bound and with a pistol at his head, until we came on a patrol from Fort Willshire.’

Emma sat back in her chair. ‘Great heavens; I do not think I ever heard its like in all the time I was in India. This Mr Fairbrother: he sounds half savage!’

‘I told you of his lineage, my dear,’ explained her husband. ‘There’s the blood of the natives there somewhere.’

Hervey took another sip of his whiskey. ‘I have a notion that a half-bred fellow with the education of an Englishman – which is what Fairbrother would answer to – might be the beau ideal of a cavalryman in this place.’

‘Well, I am all eager to make his acquaintance,’ said Emma, very decided. ‘And he is a poet too, you say?’

Hervey raised his hands. ‘I confess he has read those I have never heard of.’

‘You never heard of Wordsworth?’ replied Emma, incredulous.

‘Of course he’s heard of Wordsworth,’ said Somervile helpfully. ‘Wordsworth the soldier of the Westmoreland Militia!’

Hervey would not rise to the fly. ‘I said I had never read the poem he had composed about the warrior.’

‘Neither have I,’ said Emma, contented.

‘But you will like him very much. He is a little thin-skinned in respect of his origins, but that is easily overcome.’

They passed a further quarter of an hour in pleasant conversation, though all of it with a purpose, until the khansamah announced Colonel Somerset.

A man of middle height and patrician good looks, and several years Hervey’s junior, entered the drawing room and bowed.

‘Colonel, you are most welcome,’ exclaimed Somervile in exaggerated greeting, intending to roust the prickly scion of the Somersets from habitual ill humour.

Hervey rose, as did Emma, who advanced on her guest with hand held out. ‘You are indeed, most welcome, Colonel.’

Colonel Somerset, though evidently a little surprised, took her hand nevertheless. ‘Lady Somervile,’ he said, bowing, then again to his fellow guest: ‘Colonel Hervey.’

‘Have you travelled far today, Colonel?’ asked Emma, before Somerset could make any conversation of his own – or even her husband (she was determined to have just a few of the civilities of the presidencies observed in this, by comparison, unrefined outpost of the realm).

Somerset, his head already half turned to the lieutenant-governor, and his lips parted to form the first of his enquiries, was obliged to return to his hostess. He looked a shade abashed (which Emma took satisfaction in). ‘Forgive me, ma’am … yes, it has been a long day. I was obliged to go to Simon’s-town early this morning on account of a frigate’s putting in.’

‘To advantage?’ asked Somervile.

‘Yes, she brought the Horse Guards’ approval for the estimates respecting the Cape Corps, as well as private mail. There is, I observe, a substantial bag for you and your dragoons, Colonel Hervey.’

Hervey was pleased to hear it: the mails were ever the soldier’s cheer, but he was especially hopeful that his bag contained the percussion cartridges he had ordered from Forsyth’s in Piccadilly. But beyond the information of the mails, Colonel Somerset was not especially communicative, and certainly not warm. Hervey knew that the business of the Cape Corps estimates was of some family concern to him: Eyre Somervile had told him that General Donkin had left a quarter of a million pounds to the credit of the colony, whereas Lord Charles Somerset had left a deficit of almost a million. General Bourke had therefore set about the economies necessary for the restoration of the budget, including taking down the signal towers communicating with the frontier, leaving only those to Simon’s Town from the castle, and the reorganization of the Cape Corps into something more akin to Mr Peel’s Irish constabulary.

‘Colonel Hervey has had a most interesting time of it at the frontier,’ said Somervile, in the pause during which Colonel Somerset took his glass from the khansamah. ‘Quite a sharp encounter with the Xhosa indeed.’

Hervey had no desire to conceal it, and certainly not to deny it, though he would have wished for it not to have arisen so soon.

But it was a vain hope on both counts. ‘So I heard,’ replied Somerset, not at all approvingly. ‘And with that planter’s bastard from the Africans.’

Somervile remained blithe. ‘Rather a useful planter’s bastard, though: he appears to have saved Hervey’s life here, and rendered rather valuable service in other directions too. He collared one of the Xhosa in the middle of the night, who turns out to be no less than one of Gaika’s own sons – and a favoured one at that.’