Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) (22 page)

He leaned back in his chair, his former spirits all but restored. ‘I was told at the Horse Guards yesterday that one man in seven on the home establishment is in a prison.’

Malet nodded. He did not add (for he had sent the numbers to him with all the others) that the Sixth’s penitentiary muster was but five dragoons – four for desertion and just one for violence to a superior. Nor had there been a man hanged since the return from India.

The numbers then prompted a happier thought. ‘I did not ask before: how do things stand with the men’s reading room?’

‘Very well, Colonel. Corporal Tenty has charge of it, and Jenkinson the supervision.’

Hervey was about to ask what newspapers were provided when the orderly room serjeant appeared at the door. ‘Colonel, with permission, sir.’

‘What is it?’ asked Malet.

‘A despatch from Windsor Castle, Colonel, brought by one of the War Office party.’

Malet took it from him. ‘He’s waiting on any reply, I trust.’

‘He is, sir.’

‘Very well.’

The serjeant withdrew.

‘Better read it at once,’ said Hervey.

‘It’s addressed to you in person, Colonel.’

‘I have no secrets at Windsor,’ said Hervey, with a smile.

Malet broke the seal and began to read. ‘His Majesty commands the presence of Colonel Hervey of His Majesty’s 6th Light Dragoons at a levee at Windsor Castle at 7 o’clock p.m. on the 1st Proximo.’

‘Monday? What good fortune I’d not left for Wiltshire,’ said Hervey, delighted by the honour the invitation did him, if not by the inconvenience it might have occasioned.

‘I’ll make the arrangements, Colonel. Who will attend you?’

He needed but a second to consider it. ‘St Alban.’

‘Very well.’

‘Is there anything else – any more business to discuss?’

‘No, Colonel,’ replied Malet, in some relief now that equilibrium was returned.

‘Then I’ll attend to memoranda, and then see Mordaunt.’

‘Twelve o’clock?’

‘Twelve o’clock … And Malet …’

‘Colonel?’

‘You’ll get Kennett to withdraw these preposterous charges? The sooner the better – for all.’

‘I shall do everything in my power, Colonel – once I’ve discovered exactly what that may be.’

Fairbrother was in a hale and at the same time contrary mood that evening. He stood with his back to the fire in Hervey’s state room, as he had taken to calling it, extolling the delights of London while declaring that he did not think he could bear the cold much longer. ‘I’ve a mind to seek a warmer clime for a month or so.’

‘I thought you said last night you were pleased with London, even in this weather,’ replied Hervey, not looking up from his writing desk. ‘I should miss your company, but I couldn’t deny you comfort simply on that account.’

‘I did say that, yes, but today is today.’

‘And the glass has fallen again, I grant you.’

‘But where to go? I had thought Portugal, but the place is in turmoil.’

‘Peto was always attached to the Canaries,’ said Hervey, continuing to write. ‘Perhaps you might consult
The Times
to see what sailings there are.’

Fairbrother threw another apple-wood log on the fire. ‘But if I were to go away I should then be but a swallow.’

‘My favourite of birds.’

‘Truly? How can you have a favourite that’s not here for half the time?’

‘I was too hasty;
one
of my favourite of birds. I can’t but include the robin. And the hoopoe.’

‘Upon my word, you are a soldier through and through!’

Hervey laid down his pen and looked at his friend, bemused. ‘How so?’

‘On the one hand a red coat – if only a red breast – and on the other a crest to make your dragoon’s plume look dull.’

‘Very droll. But do you know why the swallow can’t abide an English winter? It’s not that the cold chills him – for his feathers are as warm as the robin’s – but because he subsists on insects that fly, and when the weather is cold there are none. Or so I read.’

Fairbrother picked up another log, thoughtfully. ‘A rather elegant analogy.’

‘I thought so too,’ said Hervey, smiling and picking up the sealing wax. ‘And now that I have finished this we shall have our dinner, for there’s much I would tell you.’

‘Is the letter to Hertfordshire?’ asked Fairbrother casually, adding the log to the blaze.

Hervey sat for a moment as if in thought. ‘No. There shall be no letters to Hertfordshire.’

Fairbrother turned to look at his friend directly. ‘I really think that—’

‘There shall be no letters.’ Hervey put down the sealing wax and poured a glass of claret. ‘And that is an end to it. And I have weighty matters to discuss with you.’

‘Is not Hertfordshire a weighty matter?’

Hervey kept his countenance, but was emphatic. ‘I must deal with what I can, and with what is worthy of being dealt with …’

Fairbrother made no reply. He had pressed as far as he might. It puzzled rather than troubled him that his friend could not find the words – or was it the inclination? – to discuss the affairs of the heart. There might of course be another with whom he did, which would be for the better, but he had no knowledge of anyone; and he rather thought he would, for they’d spent such time together these past three years that …

There was a knock, and the door opened. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but may’s bring your dinner now?’

Hervey smiled warmly. ‘Yes, Annie; do.’

He rose and took the decanter to refill Fairbrother’s glass. ‘Your mentioning the robin minds me of something. Do you know how much is a cornet’s uniform – in the Sixth, I mean? Esterhase, who’s just joined, laid out a hundred and thirty pounds with his tailor. Malet told me at office this morning. His pay won’t cover it in a full ten years – though that’ll scarcely trouble him: by all accounts he has three thousand a year, and a good deal more when he’s of age. But there are others who’ll find any change to red more than merely
chromatically
objectionable.’

‘Perhaps if you were to plead their case at Windsor on Monday, when you meet the Duke of Clarence?’

‘If he were there I might well, but I can’t suppose he will be.’

‘There was much talk at the theatre and afterwards as to who will succeed Clarence in due season.’

‘I dare say there was,’ said Hervey, glancing at the parlour-maids, whose ears were pricked. ‘But it is settled, is it not? The Princess of Kent?’

‘There is, it seems, a question as to paternity.’

Hervey frowned. ‘We had better talk by and by. How was your sport this morning?’

Fairbrother smiled to himself:
Manners and Tone of Good Society
– speak as you will in front of indoor servants, but not those of a public house. ‘Sport? Very indifferent. Cranford Park has few birds, it would seem, though its squire is most hospitable. I shot a hare but regretted it, for it was not running fast; and that line of Keats rebuked me –
the hare limped trembling through the frozen grass
.’

‘Upon my word, the cold does indeed steal in on you!’

The parlour-maids, having laid the table, now withdrew to fetch the dishes.

‘You don’t suppose, do you, that they are in the pay of the Princess Lieven?’ asked Fairbrother, nodding to the door.

Hervey chortled. ‘Touché.’

‘As I was saying, the talk at the theatre was of the Duchess of Kent’s private secretary, Captain Conroy. He was much younger than the duke – twenty years, by all accounts – and … well, the way of the flesh, you might say.’

Hervey shifted uncomfortably. Sir Peregrine Greville was twenty years Kat’s senior – more, indeed. ‘You might say that. But twenty years is not so great a difference. There is no … inexorableness in such a matter.’

‘The duchess is, by all accounts, a very handsome woman, and Conroy a fair-looking man. You knew him, I suppose?’

‘No, I never had occasion to meet him. I know of him, of course.’

‘Strange; I understood him to be of your seniority, or thereabout.’

‘He served neither in the Peninsula nor at Waterloo, nor in America, and never in India,’ replied Hervey, dismissively.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Fairbrother, feigning indignation.

The parlour-maids returned with their tureens.

‘Thank you, Annie – and …’

‘Susan, sir.’

‘Mr Ellis said that you asked for no fish, sir,’ explained Annie; ‘so there’s soup, and a frigize, sir – rabbit – and there’s roasts as well if you’d like.’

‘We shall call, thank you.’

When they were gone, Hervey returned to his charge. ‘I was unduly severe. Conroy served in Ireland … on the staff – of his father-in-law.’

The intelligence was more damning than if he had said nothing.

‘Lord, you know a deal about him.’

‘His distance from the battlefield was long a matter of remark. And his intimacy with the duchess likewise, but if they are lovers now it is not to say they were lovers when the duke was alive. I do think it ill that a woman might not enjoy the company of a confidant without her virtue being at once suspect. Nor that a man might pay his respects without his intentions being taken for the worst.’

‘I believe you have said as much on another occasion. I stand rebuked.’

Hervey knew precisely the occasion, and that Fairbrother made connections. He was in no mind to entertain them, however. ‘Furthermore, I know there’s not any way of proof of such things … and I think it a treason, very probably, to speak thus.’

Fairbrother looked pained. ‘Hervey, it is I you speak to.’

Such an intimate rebuke he had not heard in many a year. He put down his spoon, looked at his plate and then at his friend. ‘My dear fellow, I beg your pardon.’

His friend would not have him excessively discomfited, however. ‘I know there’s much on your mind. I spoke without due thought.’

Hervey smiled. ‘I hope you’ll continue to do so.’

And then his look became solemn again.

‘Now, I fear I must tell you of an unpleasant turn of events regarding Collins …’

Unpleasant indeed – and the more so as Collins had been the most faithful, resourceful of supports to both of them at the Cape. Fairbrother listened in silence as Hervey recounted the various conversations with Malet, Worsley and the regimental serjeant-major, and told him his thoughts on the affair – what he had authorized Malet to do, and the courses he believed open to him.

Fairbrother said nothing at once by reply, as if still trying to comprehend. When he did it was with a look of
Your ways are strange to me
: ‘In the Royal Africans things would not have come to this pass.’

The words sank in only by degrees. As a rule Fairbrother never spoke of his time with that notorious corps. On the occasions he did, usually on finding something to his liking in contrast with his own experience, it was in tones of dismay. And Hervey was hardly surprised: at the turn of the century the Royal African Corps had been raised for the defence of Goree Island off Senegal, captured from the French, and became at once a ‘condemned battalion’, its ranks filled from the hulks and with black recruits from the West Indies. The officers, he understood, though in truth he had never known any, were no more than might be supposed in such a regiment. But his friend had obtained a commission on transfer from the Jamaica Militia, a perfectly respectable corps, and as the son of a very gentlemanlike planter (albeit a son born the wrong side of the blanket) he had, he knew, at once found the entire corps as incomprehensible as it was disagreeable – the officers no less than the rank and file. This late discovery of a superior aspect of interior economy was therefore intriguing indeed.

‘How so? How could it not have come to this pass? The discipline was ferocious, was it not?’

‘It was very ferocious, but matters were almost invariably dealt with summarily, without due process of law. Somehow a case such as this would have been settled without formal charges and court martial. Pistol, very possibly.’

Hervey cocked his head. ‘Pistols? Between an officer and an NCO?’

Fairbrother nodded. ‘Oh, I don’t say that it would have been an affair of honour, of pistols in the plural.’

‘Ah, I see. Straightforward murder, of the one or the other.’

‘Or chastisement – a horsewhip, perhaps.’

Hervey shook his head. ‘What an altogether unhealthy place Goree must have been.’

‘Indeed it was,’ said Fairbrother, pouring his fourth glass of claret with the satisfaction of knowing he would now seal his point: ‘But it was never lost to the French, though they tried to take it back more than once.’

Few things his friend had ever said quite set Hervey’s mind so awry as the present-day notion of trial by combat. Not even combat – simply the application of force. It was one thing for an NCO to chastise a dragoon, the justice swift and sparing him the torment of ‘due process’, but quite another to subject an officer to an indignity which would in turn undermine his authority. Truly things in the Royal Africans must have been beyond his comprehension. And he sought to put it from his mind, though as their dinner proceeded the image of the horsewhip returned from time to time – the cad’s scold.

The frigize was wholesome, and plenty, but they called too for the roasts, and more claret, and there was a sweet pudding of sorts, and they made the best of their evening, not speaking any more of events and affairs of business. At half past ten, the decanter empty and the candles beginning to gutter, Fairbrother suddenly announced that he was more fatigued than he’d supposed, and would retire – which he did promptly but with assurances that he would be up betimes to attend whatever divine service were ordered (gratified then to learn that there was none at Hounslow). Hervey, just as suddenly feeling the call of his bed, bid him good night, drained his glass and went to his writing desk to pen one last letter.

It took longer to compose than he’d imagined, however. Perhaps it should have come as no surprise, for to tell Wiltshire – once more – that duty was detaining him longer than expected (when he had not seen his people for the better part of a year) was a matter of some delicacy. But at least he was moderately satisfied with his effort, and was sealing it as the clock struck the hour and the parlour-maids returned.