A Close Run Thing (18 page)

To Hervey’s mind the plain had no rival for both bleakness
and
beauty. In winter, with a strong, cutting north-east wind, and sleet, hail or heavy rain driven in sheets over the lonely plateau, the scene, broken here and there by a few clumps of dripping trees or a misty barrow, was dismal – desolate even. He had been as cold here – more so even – as on the retreat to Corunna. But in fine weather (and that midsummer morning was as fine as they came) the air was as pure as in the Pyrenees and the sun, high and directly ahead, as warm as in Gascony. The turf was soft and yielding (it had cushioned many a fall in his youth), and the whole face of the down was carpeted with flowers whose names he was surprised to be able to recall: harebells, centaury, dark blue campanula, scabias, milkworts, orchids and meadowsweet. And where there were no flowers there was broom and furze.

Still they rode on without speaking until, cresting the rise of Summer Down, Hervey saw, and heard, the source of Daniel Coates’s wealth: sheep – many, many more than he could ever remember, so many that for the best part of a mile it was scarcely possible to see the carpet of turf and flowers. ‘Yes, they’re all mine,’ said Coates, guessing his thoughts. ‘Every bale of wool these past five years has gone to clothe His Majesty’s troops. The war has upped demand beyond anything I could’ve imagined. The flock’s grown a hundredfold, and I’ve five shepherds tending ’em. I’ve
been
sole agister on these downs for three summers now. I’m a rich man, Matthew!’

Hervey nodded: he could find no words adequate for his admiration.

‘But I doubt demand’ll remain high now that regiments and ships are being paid off. I shall sell ’em all before winter.’

This last was perhaps the true measure of Coates’s acumen: energy and good fortune alone might promote wealth but, it seemed to Hervey, real judgement was needed to know when to sell out. But Coates did not want to speak of business. ‘I see the Army hasn’t given you a taste for the straight leg, then, Matthew?’ he smiled approvingly, nodding to the hunting length of Hervey’s stirrups.

‘No, Dan, it has not. I cannot abide it. All through Spain we bumped along. The King’s Germans didn’t: they ride at half our length and always rise to the trot, and their horses are the better for it. Ours seemed to have no end of sore backs.’

It gave Coates no pleasure to hear it, but he could take satisfaction in Hervey’s opinion: it had been one of the hard lessons of America, lessons of which he had spoken endlessly when they had ridden out together. ‘Yes, I always said I learned more about campaigning from the colonists than from our own officers: they had little idea other than how to drill. How in heaven’s name can you lean out with a straight leg?’

‘I reckon I had the advantage of an extra half-sword riding at hunting length – all the difference when
cutting
at an infantryman trying to use his bayonet. There’s an ensign in the Coldstream who would be dead but for that reach.’

‘Ay, I saw that time and again. But the reach has no purpose unless the sword is sharp.’

Hervey sighed. ‘We put straw in our scabbards as best we could, and it stopped the rattling, too, but that steel sorely blunted the blades. The Germans had wooden scabbards and had not half the trouble.’

Daniel Coates’s interest in each and every detail seemed limitless. They crossed Summer Down with the old soldier apparently oblivious to the vastness of his flock, which calmly parted for them as they trotted through, and they descended the east slopes, into the dry valley where, legend had it, King Alfred hid his army before Edington. Yet scarcely did Coates seem to notice their progress. Only when they climbed on to Chapperton Down, where the Imber shepherds grazed their flocks (though on this morning the Imber sheep were the other side of the valley), did he return to the present. ‘Come on!’ he called suddenly, urging his bay into a canter, ‘keep with me till Wadman’s Coppice an’ then it’s flat out to Brounker’s Well. D’ye remember the gallop, Matthew?’

That he did! Though he would have preferred to be on Jessye now, for that fast and sure-footed little mare was made for just such a run on the plain. But this gelding felt handy, too, and soon revealed a turn of speed, pulling the whole mile and more to the ancient coppice and making Hervey work hard to check him.
Letting
him have his head for the last half-mile into the dry valley beyond, they reached Brounker’s Well a dozen lengths clear. As he pulled up and turned south for the Imber road, Hervey laughed and called to Coates: ‘By heavens, you’re spending some of your wealth on horseflesh, Dan!’

‘What else is worth it, Matthew? Not a woman in a thousand, that’s for sure!’ he called back.

They both laughed even louder.

‘The gelding is yours, Matthew!’

‘What? Dan … I can’t
possibly
…’ Hervey spluttered, but his protests were unlikely to make any impression.

‘I’ve more to be grateful to your family for than ever I could repay – not even with a
troop’s
worth of horses. Without your father I would have trudged on down that lane where he found me coughing up my lungs thirty years ago and more. It was ’im that found me employ on the estate, and it was ’im that lent me the money for the first year’s rent on Drove Farm fifteen years back. The horse is yours for as long as you wants ’im. Take ’im – at least until you go to Ireland. And by then you won’t want to leave him anyway. He’s a homecoming present, Matthew – why should I not give you a homecoming present?’

Interest to pay or not, he was sure that such a gift was more than he could accept, and he might have continued protesting but for the sudden appearance of a score or more horsemen on the Imber road.

‘Warminster Troop. Come on and see ’em,’ said Coates, spurring into a canter again.

Though the troop had been raised before he had left for Spain, this was Hervey’s first encounter with them. Their appearance was, in one respect at least, impressive, for the blue dolmans and Tarleton helmets looked almost new. But the troopers themselves did not have the stamp of men under habitual discipline, hardened by service in which a bed was the infrequent alternative to a straw billet or a muddy bivouac. Indeed, in some respects they had a faintly theatrical appearance, for the Tarleton had been out of regular service for two years at least. But, although the Tarleton had been disliked for field service (it was almost as cumbersome as the hussars’ mirleton), he considered it still a very handsome head-dress.

‘Good morning, Coates,’ called their lieutenant.

‘Good morning, Mr Styles,’ replied Daniel Coates, raising his hat to the guidon. Hervey blanched at the man’s lofty manner, and looked with disdain at the pallid face and fleshy thighs of this leader of yeomen, but he raised his hat to the guidon nevertheless. Styles, however, assumed that both salutes were his and waved his hand airily in acknowledgement.

‘And who, indeed, was that?’ asked Hervey when the troop had passed.

‘Mr Hugo Styles, son and heir of Sir George Styles of Leighton Park at Westbury,’ replied Coates, ‘and a right Johnny Raw!’

‘I do not know of a Sir George Styles,’ said Hervey, puzzled.

‘No, you would not. He bought Leighton Park three years ago, and a baronetcy a year or so before that. He owns most of the mills in Devizes.’

‘Not a man at home much in the saddle, I should say.’

‘I dare say not,’ sighed Coates. ‘He fancies himself very much the gentleman, though, and disports himself as a blade hereabouts.’

‘Then I am doubly certain that I shall not call on him.’ A supercilious yeomanry officer was, by all accounts, nothing unusual, and hardly something to be troubled by: it did not appear to trouble Coates. But, simmered Hervey to himself, that Daniel Coates, JP and sometime trumpeter to General Tarleton, should not receive the commonest of courtesies from someone wearing the king’s uniform was detestable. ‘Dan, that milksop hailed you as if you were Dick-in-the-green!’

‘Not to worrit, Matthew. You’ll be looking to a troop yourself next,’ said Coates, seeing his anger and wishing to divert him.

‘Hah! And where would
I
find two thousand pounds, Dan?’

Coates whistled. ‘Is that what it takes nowadays, Matthew?’

‘In
addition
Dan, in
addition. Three
thousand is the price.’

‘Well, I’ll be … You should go to India!’

‘You are the second to tell me that,’ replied Hervey,
with
a smile at last, ‘but I have no desire to leave the Sixth. They are the very finest of fellows.’

Hervey had expected a dinner of mutton at Drove Farm – a joint perhaps, or a pudding even – but not venison.

‘Shot by me on Summer Down this last week,’ said Coates with evident pride as Hervey remarked on its tenderness. ‘And when dinner is finished I’ll show you the means by which I dropped her.’

That morning’s ride had given them both prodigious appetites, and it was not until a custard of some size had come and gone that Coates revealed the means by which he had taken the venison, fetching from the hall an ordinary-looking carbine. ‘It’s not what it seems, though –well, not what you might think,’ he explained.

‘Rifled?’ suggested Hervey.

‘Ay, that, too,’ said Coates, delving into a leather bag and pulling out a cartridge that looked longer than usual. ‘This here is powder
and
bullet, and it’s fired by an initiator in the base – I mean a cap which gives off an igniting spark when this pin here strikes it,’ he continued, pointing to the firing pin. ‘The pin’s held in this block,’ he continued, ‘and is struck by a cocking hammer – see?’

Hervey did see, and quickly enough: ‘A breech-loader? I had heard there were such but never saw one before.’

‘The breech-loader is nothing new – we had ’em in America!’ Coates laughed. ‘They had their problems –
they
were slow, for a start – but instead of trying to improve them the Ordnance gave up! You see, you can lie down, behind cover, and load one of these easy enough. You can’t very well with a muzzle-loader.’

‘But I have never heard of this initiator,’ said Hervey, still puzzled.

‘
That
is the most significant part – more so merely than breech-loading. The piece is called a percussion lock. Come, see.’

They went to the paddock beyond the stables where Coates handed him both carbine and cartridge-bag. ‘Try it first and then I shall tell you the story of how I came by it,’ he said, lifting the hinged firing mechanism at the point where stock and butt met, and placing a cartridge in the breech for him. ‘You pull back the hammer – it locks itself back,
see
? There’s a safety catch here, too – and then the trigger releases the hammer just like a flintlock. No exterior spark – nothing. And the cartridges are waterproof, too, made of goldbeaters’ skin.’

‘Of
what
?’

‘Well, not strict as: goldbeaters’ skin is from ox gizzards. These are sheepgut; I make ’em myself.’

Hervey tried the carbine, firing at a tree a hundred yards distant and watching with satisfaction as pieces of bark flew off with some velocity. Coates even dropped several cartridges into a bucket of water, and these fired instantly, too. It took only a fraction of the time to reload that it would a loose charge, and the accuracy compared well with the Baker service rifle.

‘Dan, such a weapon – it is astounding. Tell me how you came of it.’

‘From a minister of the Kirk, would you believe!’

‘What?’

‘The Reverend Alexander Forsyth, doctor of divinity no less, the minister in Margaret’s village near Aberdeen. He made it in his own workshop! And you know what, Matthew? He took it to the Board of Ordnance, and they said they had no use for it! No use!
Bonaparte
had use for it right enough – offered him twenty thousand pounds for the secret. But he would not sell it, so the Ordnance have promised him a pension for keeping silent! He now has a shop in London – sporting-guns and the like.’

‘
Yes
, Forsyth’s in Piccadilly – I saw it only days ago! So this is from London?’

‘No, he has no permit to sell them yet. This I made myself after he’d shown me the principle!’

‘Dan, at every river in Spain it was the same – the Devil’s own job just to keep powder and fire-locks dry. Then we would have to prove the carbines although we were meant to be scouting: you risked either giving yourself away or a misfire when you least needed it. I’ve seen every carbine in a troop flash in the pan so.’

‘Well, the carbine is yours, Matthew – I have a pair. There’s no reason why
you
should not have dry powder at least. Though, now that Bonaparte is done for, His Majesty’s Ordnance will no doubt consider it timely to make it a general issue!’

* * *

The next morning, before seven, Hervey drove with his mother into Warminster for the Saturday fair, where she bought turbot and lobster fresh-caught from Weymouth. On settling for the fish, as had been her routine for as many years as he could remember, she took a letter for her sister in Hereford to the letter office in the high street, and afterwards they drove home, returning to the vicarage before nine. Each way she spoke of little but Henrietta Lindsay – how fine a lady she was grown, what society she kept, how distinguished a peer was her guardian, the marquess, and on what close terms Henrietta and Elizabeth had remained. She urged him to pay her a call at Longleat that day, and lamented that she had not the servants to ask her to dine with them at the vicarage. What thoughts Hervey entertained in that direction he now sought hard to conceal; for, much that he might look forward keenly to meeting once again the sparkling child whose schoolroom in Longleat House he had once shared, he knew that both the years and the society in which she moved must place a distance between them.
No
, he insisted politely, and to his mother’s consternation, he would wait a little while more before calling. Instead, when they had breakfasted, he took out his new bay, intending to put the gelding through its paces in Longleat Park.

The yeomanry were being put through their paces in the park also. Hervey saw them from some distance as he rode towards the deer enclosure, and first
impressions
of their manoeuvring were of handiness. He knew well enough the difficulties with which the volunteers were beset – largely the want of anyone to train them, since all the regulars had been sent to the Indies or Spain, or to Ireland or the coast at the supposed invasion-points. He halted fifty yards or so from them as they drew up in double rank on the edge of a piece of open ground which evidently served as their drill field.