Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) (5 page)

‘She accompanied the King, who came with Princess Augusta.’

‘The King?’

‘Forgive me, Colonel; I had supposed you knew of it.’

‘News was not too much to be had in Bulgaria. I may take it that all was as His Majesty wished?’

‘Very much so, though he had to retire after the luncheon. He was very fatigued.’

‘Well, well …’ He took his chair. ‘To horse, then: what would you have me know, at last?’

Malet sat the other side of the table, put on a pair of reading spectacles and took up his order book. ‘You have yesterday’s states, Colonel; they are not much changed. Worsley’s troop – B, since the reductions – is at Maidenhead still. There were more disturbances during Sunday – two more barns burned.’

‘Deuced business.’ There seemed to him an especial evil in burning the summer’s harvest in midwinter. ‘How long will they be there?’

‘Until the Oxford lieutenancy assigns its yeomanry – what’s left of them. I understand the request was made on Sunday. I can’t think they can be relieved before the week is out.’

‘Mm. I’ll wager the good freeholders of Berkshire will rue the extra pennies on the rates to pay for soldiers – first a troop of regulars, and then Lord Churchill’s men. A deuced expensive economy their own yeomanry’s discharge.’ (The First Regiment of Berkshire Gentlemen and Yeomanry Cavalry had been disbanded three years before, in the late Mr Canning’s great scheme of retrenchment.)

‘And Vanneck’s troop has not yet had its recall from Windsor.’

Hervey nodded. This was the everyday of light cavalry, even in the dead of the year: a troop here, another there – dispersal in penny-packets, with nothing more for the lieutenant-colonel to command than clerks and bottle-washers … ‘Carry on.’

‘It was a poor harvest, and the winter early and hard,’ said Malet. ‘There is notice just received of something altogether more agreeable, however. We are warned to send a troop to Brussels, for the celebrations at Waterloo. Their king will attend, Lord Wellington also and divers German nobles – and Princess Augusta, and so it seems the Horse Guards think it propitious that a troop of ours be sent, though if our King goes too, as he declared it his intention to when he paid his visit here, then I fancy there’ll be his Life Guards and Blues as well.’

Hervey was at once intrigued. After the defeat of General Bonaparte in 1815 the Congress of Vienna had made a united kingdom of the Dutch Netherlands and the old Austrian (and before that the Spanish) Netherlands, under a Dutch king. There had seemed to those great statesmen redrawing the map of Europe no cause or just impediment why the Flanders of Rubens, Brueghel and van Dyck (and French-speaking Brabant and Wallonia) should not be joined together in constitutional matrimony with the old Dutch Republic – a ‘buffer state’ north of France. For why should not a Calvinist live in harmony with a Catholic? And why should difference of language be any obstacle to mutual understanding? Well, that was what the great statesmen of Europe had thought, so why should he, Colonel Matthew Hervey, have his doubts? These things were of no account compared with the necessity that the borders of France should not extend any further to the north, and that the Scheldt be not in French hands – pointed, as it were, like the barrel of a gun towards the Saxon shore. And so the Congress had pronounced the Dutch and the Belgics ‘man and wife’, one polity that no man must put asunder – without, that is, the consent of the Concert of Europe. Brussels was no longer the city it had once been (now alternating with Amsterdam as the capital every two years, with the government remaining in The Hague), though the crown prince held court there – and the crown prince had fought at Waterloo.

‘Have you warned a troop?’ asked Hervey.

‘No, Colonel; I imagined you might express a preference.’

‘It ought rightly to be the senior.’

Malet frowned, as if the moment had come. ‘Tyrwhitt’s. And in this resides a difficulty. He is in arrest.’

Nothing that occurred in a regiment of cavalry was without precedent; no delinquency of the rank and file, nor of those holding His Majesty’s commission, had the power to astonish – or, at least, should not have possessed that power over any who had served for a year or more. Nevertheless, somehow – perhaps by the manner of its discovery – the precedented occurrence could still come as a surprise.

‘You
had
thought of informing me before the day was out – even had we not the arduous task of warning a troop for Brussels? How so is he in arrest?’

Malet raised an eyebrow, acknowledging the further chaffing. ‘It seemed …
perverse
to include it with the first sips of your coffee, Colonel. I have as yet scant detail, but it would appear that he is detained in Dublin on charges that may amount to bigamy.’

‘Oh, good God!’ He’d never much cared for Tyrwhitt, not that he’d ever served with him in any sense that made for the term ‘fellow officer’. ‘Bigamy: better it were …’ He was going to say ‘buggery’, but thought better of it. ‘Better it were evading debts at the tables.’

‘It is not edifying, Colonel; no.’

In this Hervey knew full well that the opinion of his mess would not be unanimous, for it was a truth universally acknowledged: what female heart could resist a red coat (or a blue one atop a cavalry mount)? It was an essential part of female education, said that clerical wit, Sydney Smith: ‘As you have the rocking horse to accustom you to ride, I would have military dolls in the nursery, to harden their hearts against officers and red coats.’
Caveat virgo
was the motto of many a wearer of the King’s coat, red or otherwise.

‘Though he must have the benefit of innocence until proven otherwise,’ he said, trying to convince himself as much as Malet. ‘Who is the lady – the other lady, I mean?’

‘Colonel, the business is one of some convolution, and there is nothing that may be done this day. Might we suspend it until I have better intelligence, and more pressing matters are dealt with?’

Hervey was more than content to. His first cup of coffee was not yet drained. ‘Very well. And is that the worst?’

‘I think … yes.’

‘Mm. Then by all means let us have things as you see fit.’

‘Thank you, Colonel. Shall I warn Vanneck for Brussels instead?’

‘He or Worsley … No, let it be Vanneck. None of them was there that day, but his sar’nt-major was.’

Malet nodded. ‘Which brings me to the very question. Yesterday I received a communication from Lord Hol’ness expressing the wish that Mr Rennie join him as soon as may be. He’s secured for him a commission, which in turn of course presents a vacancy …’

‘Ah, the very question indeed, but not entirely unexpected. I’ll make no remark now.’

‘Of course.’

But the prospects, he knew, would be diverting to all and sundry – a new commanding officer and a new regimental serjeant-major. What sayeth Scripture? –
For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law
… ‘Kick on.’

Malet changed the subject, as bid, much as he would have liked to speak his mind (which for the time being could perfectly well wait). ‘Did you call on Lord Hill, Colonel?’

‘No, I had not the opportunity. He’d lately taken leave.’

‘You are requested to meet with him on Thursday seven days. I’ve tried to discover to what purpose, but with little success, other than, I believe, it is in connection with aid to be given the civil power in the expectation of unrest this year.’

‘I wonder that the commander-in-chief himself should want to speak with me on such a matter …’

‘I understand that others have been summoned too.’

‘Most odd. Well, we shall see what we shall see, but it would be useful to know who other is to attend. What else?’

Reports, returns, reckonings, states, orders, courts of inquiry, redresses of grievance – all the administrative baggage of a regiment in peace, whose expenditure and regulation was the earnest concern of the Ordnance, the War Office and the Horse Guards: these must pass under the eye of the commanding officer. Malet himself had no wish to burden him – this was, after all, an adjutant’s commonplace – yet the lieutenant-colonel’s signature must ultimately attest to the sound management of the public purse and adherence to King’s Regulations. He must at least apprise him of the matters on which the increasing army of clerks in Whitehall sharpened their quills for battle.

‘I’ve warned the regimental staff to be ready for your inspection this afternoon, or tomorrow.’

The regimental staff, the not-quite-gentlemen (or not-at-all gentlemen) – the quartermaster, riding-master, paymaster, surgeon, veterinarian: these were the men on whose good artisan skill and housekeeping the regiment depended (and in great part his own reputation relied). Their ledgers were indeed bulwarks. Yes, he would see those books and their bearers presently. Besides, it was as good a way as any to acquaint himself with the latter three, who had joined only lately (the sawbones and the horse doctor since his leaving for the Levant).

He nodded.

Malet now smiled, a shade warily. ‘And Mr Pearce requests an interview.’

In the Sixth, as a rule, a subaltern officer requesting an interview of the commanding officer did so for one of four reasons: to resign his commission; to exchange with an officer in another regiment; to purchase his promotion; or to marry. It was no more than a courtesy that he should do so. To resign he merely had to send in his papers to the regimental agent in Craig’s Court, off Whitehall, and wait for a buyer. To exchange, the same. Likewise promotion. There was nothing that Messrs Greenwood, Cox and Hammersley could not arrange for the appropriate fee. Marriage was quite another business. It was indeed no business of anyone’s but the contracting parties, but for a reason that no one could ever recall an officer sought a blessing. It could scarcely have been imagined that a commanding officer might withhold it, though there had been talk once in the mess of a colonel who took an objection to the lady …

‘You’re not inclined to tell me why?’

Malet thought for a moment. ‘I’m not able to tell
all
, for I simply don’t know. But he’s asked for the hand of Lincoln’s daughter.’

Hervey was taken aback, for Lincoln was quartermaster. When Tom Weymouth, heir to Henrietta’s guardian, the Marquess of Bath, eloped with the daughter of the Warminster turnpike-keeper the Longleat heavens had fallen – and remained so still. Edward Pearce had come to the regiment five or six years ago straight from Eton, where his learning, looks and graceful bat had by all accounts made him one of the most popular Oppidans of his day. He had charmed Calcutta and the regiment alike, as well as throwing himself into the fight at Bhurtpore with commendable zeal. His future seemed assured – as befitted the son of one of the most respected of men. And now …

But Hervey had met Lucy Lincoln, in India – a girl of fifteen, her mother not long widowed (her late husband a quartermaster of Foot) and soon to be married to the Sixth’s then regimental serjeant-major. That was five, nearly six, years ago. Yet how he remembered the Lincolns’ wedding – four hundred dragoons confounded, who had each believed that the bachelorhood of the finest, longest-serving sar’nt-major the regiment had ever known was somehow a condition of his service. The Lincolns had sent Lucy to England soon afterwards to an academy for young ladies (Mr Lincoln was not without accumulated means, and on her mother’s side Mrs Lincoln was from a respectable family of yeoman farmers, and ran a ragged school for the children of the sepoys in the neighbouring lines). Lucy Lincoln, he’d heard say, was now as pretty as the daughter of any earl, and twice as clever. Nevertheless …

‘I wonder what says the quartermaster.’

‘Lincoln says next to nothing even when he’s talkative.’

Hervey smiled. ‘Indeed, indeed. And what will say Pearce’s father?’

Lieutenant-General Sir James Pearce was Assistant Secretary at War. There was no knowing his temper. But his younger son was intelligent and clean-limbed – Hervey had taken to him at once when he joined – and he supposed him perfectly sensible.

Malet merely inclined his head.

‘Then I should see him without delay.’

‘And Rennell.’

‘Rennell intends committing matrimony too?’

‘No, I may say that with assurance. Quite the opposite indeed.’

‘Is this to be a game of guessing, Malet? Rennell was taking instruction from a priest when last I heard.’

‘He was. And he is now of that persuasion; and he intends going to Rome to seek his ordination.’

‘Well, what a rich tapestry of cravings is the subalterns’ list. I must see him too without delay.’

The orderly trumpeter sounded ‘Stables’ from the middle of the parade ground – faultless quavers, middle and then treble C, carrying into the room as if nothing stood between bell and ear.

‘The trumpet-major, Colonel. He was insistent that he do duty.’

Hervey smiled to himself. This was indeed no common day. But you couldn’t fault a man who risked his own reputation for no need (sounding calls on a cavalry trumpet on a day so cold was a hazardous affair).

‘Law?’

‘Just so. He has the trumpeters in excellent fettle, mind.’

‘And the band?’

The trumpeters were dragoons, ‘on the strength’; the band was a more or less private affair, kept at the officers’ expense – a few men who showed an aptitude for the clarionet, horn or some such, but who under a decent baton made pleasant music.

‘We’ve not much seen them of late. They’ve been greatly in demand in the theatres. The new bandmaster is spirited – German again – and the band fund stands in good health. And they were re-clothed for the King’s visit, in large part at Lord Hol’ness’s expense.’

Hervey sighed inaudibly at yet another reminder of his predecessor’s deep pockets. ‘Capital. But the King: the talk at the United Service is that he will not see another year. Does he truly intend going to Brussels?’

‘His very words, it seems, were that he intended once more to ride at the head of his cavalry in a charge over the battlefield again, as he had that day in June.’ (Malet raised his eyebrows yet again, for the fanciful notion that the Prince Regent had been at Waterloo was rapidly becoming a subject of mirth.) ‘In truth, though, I don’t suppose there’d be a horse capable of carrying him, and I can’t suppose, either, that the exertion would be healthful. After his visit here the surgeon observed that so great must be the excessive demand on every limb and organ that he could not hope to see another six months.’