Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) (23 page)

‘Thank you, Annie; it was all very good.’

‘I’ll tell cook, sir. She’s awful proud of her rabbit things. Can I bring you some coffee, sir, or tea?’

Hervey shook his head. ‘But you may bring a bottle more of the claret, or of port if that’s to be had.’

‘I’m sure it is, sir,’ she answered obligingly, nodding to Susan to clear the table while she went to find the cellarman.

He turned back to the desk to address his letter:
Baroness Heinrici, Heytesbury, Wiltshire
– a fine title, a fine address …

And then on an impulse he took another sheet of paper and began writing the same lines, more or less, to Georgiana.

Annie was some time returning. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but the first bottle was hard to draw the cork, and then Mr Ellis said it was tainted.’ She advanced to the writing desk with a salver and the new bottle. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know how to decant it, sir.’

‘It will do very well, I’m sure,’ said Hervey, taking the bottle while still intent on his letter – then seeing that it was indeed port, and looked admirably fortified.

Susan had by now filled the trays with all that had to be removed, and Annie motioned her to take the smaller one away.

‘Shall I put more wood on the fire, sir?’

Hervey looked up from his letter, touched by the solicitude. ‘Thank you, Annie. You are very good. Just a small piece to make a flame for a few minutes more. I shall be retiring soon.’

She put on a well-split piece and poked the coals until it took light.

‘It’s awful cold, sir; shall I bring a warming pan?’

He turned again. ‘You know, Annie, that would be a true comfort. I’m most obliged to you.’

‘That’s nothing, sir.’

She returned in ten minutes with a copper warmer, took it to his bedroom, and ran it the length of the bed – a dozen times at least.

She finished as Hervey was sealing the second letter. ‘Thank you, Annie. Would you take this for your trouble this evening?’

He gave her sixpence.

‘Oh thank you, sir. Would there be anything else?’

He shook his head.

‘Beg pardon, sir, but will you be staying here long – at the inn, I mean? I know you are at the barracks but we was wondering for how long. If you don’t mind me asking, sir.’

Hervey smiled. ‘No, I don’t mind your asking, Annie. I expect to be at the barracks for some time – some years, I trust. As for the Berkeley Arms, I cannot say; but I can assure you that were I to leave it would not be on account of its being uncomfortable in any regard.’

Annie looked pleased to learn it. ‘My brother’s gone for a soldier, sir,’ she said, shifting the weight of the warming pan in her hands, anxious that she might now be speaking out of turn.

‘Has he indeed? Most admirable.’ He checked his instinct to pick up the pen, needing to add his initials below the seal.

‘Yes, sir. He went six months ago to London.’

Hervey could not but be a little charmed. All he ever saw of a dragoon was the man that stood before him, nothing of what lay behind – the family left for good or ill, a sweetheart abandoned perhaps. He wondered to which corps this brother of so fine a girl – of whom she was evidently so proud – had gone, to which serjeant’s shilling-blandishments he had succumbed. So steady and obliging a girl – a brother whose qualities encompassed these would be an asset. He hoped he’d gone somewhere worthy.

‘I think it must be very hard, sir, being a soldier.’

The candles flickered, but the light was kind. Annie was unread, unfinished, yet her looks and air would carry her. There was nothing more he wished for at this hour than companionship, the companionship of the pillow, the willing embrace – a few hours’ consolation, and warmth on waking. And Annie stood before him demurely, not as a lady of pleasure, yet seemingly at his bidding. Perhaps she too wished for companionship. All he had to do was rise, give the sign – assent. Or did he entirely misread her innocence?

He braced. ‘It’s not so hard to do one’s duty, Annie. Your brother will learn that.’

And he looked down long at the letter, until at length she said simply and softly, ‘Will that be all, sir?’

He turned and smiled with all the warmth he had for a moment contemplated sharing. ‘Yes, Annie. That will be all. Good night. And thank you.’

And when she was gone he poured a glass of the port and sat back, and pondered on his misshapen virtue. He had not dismissed her on account of Scripture, or even fidelity to his marriage vows, but for a notion of propriety – that she was the sister of an enlisted man. ‘It’s not so hard to do one’s duty,’ he’d said. But it was, and he wished he’d been able to tell her so.

Hervey had not worn court dress for some time. Corporal Johnson had taken care to preserve his best uniform before leaving for the Levant, however, and had just had new white hose sent from Wall Street in St James’s. It was now all got up spick and span, with the silver and gilt showing well in the candlelight, and Johnson stood ready to assist with the vesting.

‘I must say that if the new king would do away with these breeches it would dispose me more towards his red tunics.’

‘I think they’re very smart, and just the thing,’ replied Johnson, taking the trees from his court shoes as Hervey pulled on the stockings.

‘Damnably cold in weather such as this.’

‘Corp’ral Wakefield’ll ’ave t’carriage warmed up right enough.’

‘I’m sure he will. No doubt I make too much of it.’

He took a while to straighten the hose to his satisfaction, and then Johnson handed him the button-hook.

‘But this new king, ’e won’t be king for a bit, will ’e?’

‘No,’ said Hervey, managing to fasten the top two buttons of his knee-breeches more deftly than he’d expected. ‘I’m not at all sure the talk is correct. The King, though excitable, and fatter even than Corp’l Stray, didn’t look
quite
next to death’s door.’

‘But why is it ’is brother who’s going to be t’king? What about all ’is children? I thought them ’ad to be king first.’

‘All bastards, Corp’l Johnson. The first marriage was not deemed legal. And his only child by our late royal colonel Princess Caroline, as you’ll recall, died giving birth.’

‘So that’s why t’Duke o’ Clarence is t’heir?’

‘Yes,’ (the struggle to fasten the remaining two buttons was rather greater than he’d expected, but he eventually managed to pull them through the button holes without detaching either of them, then handing back the button-hook and taking the shoe-horn) ‘but strictly speaking he’s called the heir presumptive, which means that if the King were to produce an heir, the duke would become second in line not first.’

‘But ’e’s not going to do that, is ’e – produce an heir? Not now.’

‘It strikes me as highly improbable,’ said Hervey, with a wry smile as he eased his left foot into the shiny buckled-patent.

‘And does t’Duke of Clarence ’ave any heirs?’

‘A man has only
one
heir, and, as it happens, the duke has none, though he too has a good many bastards. And if he were to become king and Princess Adelaide were to produce no heir, the throne would pass to the daughter of his younger brother, the late Duke of Kent.’

‘That’s who we saw a couple of years ago when we were on that scheme at Windsor, and Princess Augusta were there?’

Hervey slipped in his right foot and handed back the horn. ‘Your memory is very exact – Victoria, yes.’

‘That’ll be queer, a woman.’

‘We have not been ill-served in the past.’

‘How was that, Colonel?’ asked Johnson, handing him a silk stock doubtfully.

‘Queen Elizabeth? The Spanish Armada?’

‘Ah, Good Queen Bess. But that were a long time ago, weren’t it? Things were diff’rent then.’

Hervey looked at him, puzzled, but thought better of seeking clarification. ‘There are two things of difficulty in a woman’s acceding to the throne, one of which was Queen Elizabeth’s difficulty too – who shall be her husband? And the other is that she may not be Queen of Hanover, because by their law a woman can’t succeed to the throne.’

‘Ah, so who’d be in charge of ’Anover then?’

‘The Duke of Cumberland, the youngest of the old King’s sons. And in turn
his
son.’

‘Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it?’

‘Except that Hanover would no longer be in personal union, as it’s called, with the British throne.’

‘An’ that isn’t good for us?’ Johnson held up the coat for him.

‘Well, I don’t suppose it’ll be the least concern to us during my command. What happens thereafter’s another matter, though having a sister who’s now a subject of the King of Hanover it might be of greater moment to me.’

Johnson frowned. ‘How’s that, Colonel?’

Hervey explained as he finished dressing.

Johnson had known all about the marriage with the baron, but had not thought that it would make Hervey’s sister German. He liked ‘Miss Hervey’; she wasn’t like
Mrs
Hervey at all – well, she was like the
first
Mrs Hervey. But it
was
queer marrying a German, even if you got a castle and became a baroness. He’d never met a baroness before (he didn’t think). He supposed you could just say ‘Ma’am’ to them all the same. And Miss Hervey wouldn’t mind anyway if he got it wrong. Not like
Mrs
Hervey. If you got anything wrong with
her
it would be like being checked for something on guard mounting …

Outside – five minutes to five o’clock exactly – the regimental chariot was drawn up. It was twelve miles to the castle, and there was a good half-moon (these things were always arranged with close attention, Hervey marked). It ought to be a comfortable drive.

A minute later his orderly officer, Cornet St Alban, presented himself, and in three more they were under way.

Two dragoons accompanied them (Hervey had said it was not necessary, but Malet countered that changing a wheel in levee dress would hardly be edifying, and in any case, it would serve to relieve the dragoons on the War Office party) – and their progress was remarkably unhindered. Hervey first scrutinized the
Gazette
which Malet had put into the coach, and then talked very agreeably with his temporary aide-de-camp about Reform, the matter on which St Alban had written in
The Spectator
with, to his mind, singular dispassion and clarity. But where did the eminently reasonable arguments St Alban advanced have end? If popular – indeed turbulent – clamour was to be rewarded with such tinkering as was proposed by the radicals, would that not encourage yet more clamour? It was all very well for high-minded Whigs secure in their broad acres to advocate improvement of what was at times an undeniably sorry affair (the House of Commons), but what manner of man would it be that emerged to sit there in place of those with so solid a stake in the country? These were the men, were they not, with a true understanding of the general wellbeing, rooted as it was in the solid earth of the shires and the good sense of the church established? And then, when the Whig nobility had secured their ‘reforms’, what would be the fate of that other affront to rationalism, the House of Peers? Would that not go the way of their forebears in Cromwell’s day? Indeed, was not ‘Reform’ but a specious cloak for the introduction of republicanism? He declared that although in the peculiar circumstances that was his military service (peripatetic) and his father’s profession (pecuniary) he had no vote, he was perfectly content to allow such an indignity as the price of the English peace – which was the envy of Europe, if not the world. And St Alban countered that such an affront was insupportable – he himself having two votes (one in his father’s borough, one at Oxford) while his commanding officer, much decorated in the service of his country, had none.

‘Hard cases make bad law, it is said,’ Hervey had countered, thoroughly warming to his subject, as if polishing his credentials before joining the stoutly Tory assembly at Windsor.

‘Indeed, Colonel, but bad law makes hard cases too,’ replied St Alban, with disarming forthrightness. ‘And perhaps solely for want of effort. I’m not a thoroughgoing Whig. I find much sense in what Mr Burke said, that when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change, but he wrote also that a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.’

Hervey nodded. He had no objection to change – far from it: but it should be brought about gradually and naturally, as the seasons changed. ‘That is surely so. But tell me, for I’ve scarcely been in England these three years, and you were better placed to know: is there truly a mood here – in the country parts, I mean – that the authorities are so exercised by it? The affair in the park was vexing enough, but was it really a harbinger of worse to come?’

St Alban considered his answer for a moment. ‘I believe, Colonel, that there is a mood – yes, but that it is in truth a mood of many parts. I am, though, much taken by something Mr Cobbett wrote lately,’ (Hervey took note of the dignity ‘Mr’ accorded to that inveterate radical – and former NCO) ‘that it is scarcely possible to agitate a fellow with a full stomach.’