Hervey 09 - Man Of War (19 page)

‘As I said: quite searching.’ Lord Holderness rose. ‘I’m certain the regiment will acquit itself admirably. I found it in excellent condition when I took command.’

It was a compliment, and no doubt intended as one, but Hervey was too guarded, still, to acknowledge the honours. ‘They will serve, Colonel; you may depend upon it. And,’ (he cleared his throat: the time had come to grasp the nettle) ‘I do indeed regret that I am not able to be in my proper place.’

Lord Holderness smiled doubtfully. ‘Oh, come, Hervey. You must have no scruple on that account. I confess I was disappointed when I found you had posted yourself to the detached command, but I cannot condemn it. Indeed, I should have done the same myself. And in any case, I suspect that capering over the Berkshire countryside would be dull fare after all that I read of the Cape.’

‘I am obliged to you, Colonel. But the opportunity for practising war is ever welcome. Truly, I am only sorry that business at the Horse Guards, and’ (he coloured somewhat) ‘in Hertfordshire, compels me to return to London the day following tomorrow. With your leave, though, I should like to observe as much of the manoeuvres as may be.’

‘You are most welcome.’

As had been the custom for as many years as Hervey had worn blue, the officers dined together the night before the manoeuvres (in the late war they had done so before each battle). Fairbrother wore his uniform of captain in the Cape Mounted Rifles, but Hervey wore his Sixth regimentals rather than Rifles, for he was, after all, at home. The dinner was choice, the wine was a good vintage, the band was lively and the evening altogether merry. Fairbrother found himself most agreeably engaged in conversation throughout: the officers around him at table were free and easy, solicitous and affable.

After dinner, in the ante-room as he drank brandy and soda, the senior cornet appeared at his side holding the reins of a compact-looking gelding, a handsome sorrel. None of the other officers affected to notice with the least surprise.

‘Sir, would you care to try Albany? He’s to be yours for tomorrow.’

Fairbrother had enjoyed a good measure of champagne and burgundy, but he saw nevertheless the challenge which the cornets were laying down. He glanced at Hervey, who smiled back at him sympathetically.

‘I think that would be most helpful,’ he replied, taking the reins with every appearance of ease. ‘Whose charger is he?’

‘Ashcroft’s, sir; presently on furlough.’

‘It is very generous of Mr Ashcroft.’ Fairbrother put a hand to the gelding’s face. The horse did not flinch – though that told him nothing certain about its temperament: he had known horses which stood as still as statues, but which turned into jumping jacks with a man in the saddle. He put his nose to the gelding’s muzzle, and gently blew, as one horse to another. Then standing by the saddle on the nearside, he shortened the reins, and asked for a leg. The senior cornet obliged, and Fairbrother lay across the saddle for a few seconds before swinging his right leg over the gelding’s quarters, sitting upright, ignoring the stirrups and letting his legs hang long.

The officers continued to affect indifference, as if a horse in the ante-room were an everyday thing.

Fairbrother braced himself for the inevitable invitation to jump a chair, or put out the candles in the dining room with a sabre, but instead the mess serjeant brought a silver tray on which was a bottle of champagne, and a gilt figurine, half the size of the bottle, of a woman, full-skirted, holding a basket above her head.

‘The late colonel-in-chief, sir,’ said the senior cornet, with a wry smile.

Hervey groaned. The figurine had been a leaving present from a mess wag: the saying had been that Princess Caroline could always be up-ended for a measure of champagne.

The senior cornet poured a good measure into the gilt basket. It pivoted at the raised hands, so that as he then slowly inverted the figure the basket remained upright. He then filled the skirt and handed it to the mess guest.

Fairbrother knew what he was supposed to do. He put the skirt to his lips and began drinking carefully, tilting the figurine gently so as not to spill from the basket, which he assumed would immediately invite replenishment. The gelding remained most obligingly still, and Fairbrother was able to drain the skirt and then the basket without spilling any of the champagne. There was a murmur of approbation from the officers, now disposed to acknowledge the jape.

‘A bumper, sir?’

Hervey frowned, unseen however; the trouble was, Fairbrother had made it look all too easy. He wondered if he should claim guest’s privileges for his friend, but somehow thought better of it. The japery was good-humoured enough, and a slightly heavier head in the morning was a small price to pay for comradely diversion.

‘With pleasure,’ replied Fairbrother, handing back the figurine.

Lord Holderness, no longer oblivious to the proceedings, turned to Hervey. ‘A fine-looking man, your Captain Fairbrother. Who are his people?’

Hervey told him as much as he knew, which was a good deal on his father’s side, much less on his mother’s, as well as adding that in the field he was the best of men, that he owed his life to him several times over. Lord Holderness was intrigued, and said that he was much taken by Fairbrother’s gentlemanlike mien. He would be pleased to receive him in Yorkshire when the manoeuvres were ended – as he would Hervey and his new bride, too.

‘That is most handsome of you, Colonel.’

Lord Holderness’s face now became more solemn. ‘Tell me, Hervey: the Waltham Abbey business – it’s the very devil of a thing that this inquiry be got up. Patent politicking. I have spoken to Lord Hill of it – you have a friend there, for certain – and I’ve a mind to raise the matter in the House.’

Hervey was somewhat abashed. ‘I am grateful to you, Colonel, but to be frank I had hoped to avoid exposure. I was told at the Horse Guards yesterday that the inquiry would be delayed, and preliminary evidence taken in camera.’

Lord Holderness nodded, weighing the information. ‘Peregrine Greville – he’s an old fool. He’ll do exactly as he’s told.’

Hervey hoped indeed that he would. Or at least as Kat told him. ‘I could have hoped for a more . . .
active
president, I must say.’

Lord Holderness eyed him directly. ‘But in other respects his presiding gives you no cause for disquiet?’

Hervey swallowed. He wondered what were the rumours (Kat had not always been discreet). ‘I am confident that what we did at Waltham Abbey will bear any scrutiny, Colonel.’

‘I do not doubt it,’ said Lord Holderness, though not entirely dismissive. And then he smiled again as he saw that Fairbrother was about to begin his second go.

All eyes were now firmly on Albany and his jockey as the senior cornet filled Princess Caroline’s skirt and basket with more bubbles. Fairbrother pushed his leg forward and felt for the girth fastenings, tightening them as far as he could. Then he took the figurine and drained the skirt slowly as before, managing to spill not one drop from skirt or basket – to a now generous applause of ‘bravo!’ and ‘huzzah!’

But instead of then simply finishing the modest contents of the basket, he proceeded to slide slowly out of the saddle on the offside, and head first under the gelding’s belly, holding out the figurine the while in his right hand, until, legs wrapped round the girth but now wholly inverted, he drained the basket. Then, changing hands, he proceeded to right himself on the nearside entirely by the strength of one arm.

The mess erupted. Fairbrother dismounted, and stood (remarkably steadily, thought Hervey) with the most contented of smiles, acknowledging the ovation.

‘Well,’ said Lord Holderness, shaking his head. ‘I never saw the like. I confess before he mounted I wondered whether he would be able to keep the horse between himself and the floor. What a very singular fellow. And his conversation so diverting too. I do see your attachment to him.’

‘Except that he has set a devilish precedent for every new cornet!’

Lord Holderness smiled ruefully. ‘I cannot mislike him for that. You and I were inducted into a hard school; I fear sometimes a young man favours too comfortable a billet in peacetime.’

Hervey was disposed to think him right. He was faintly surprised, however, that patrician command was sensible of such a thing. And he chided himself for that surprise, for both Lankesters might have said precisely the same.

Lord Holderness gave his glass to an orderly and made to leave. ‘I hope for a good rousting about by the general these next few days. It shall do us no end of good.’

IX
THE HABIT OF COMMAND

Hounslow, the following morning

At precisely eight o’clock, by the striking of the bell on the guardhouse clock, Lord Holderness rode on to the parade square to take command from the senior captain, under whose orders the squadrons had formed up. The Sixth prided themselves on their speed of forming, disdaining the regiments of foot, whose serjeants would have had them fall-in on the square an hour ahead of their time, and with show parades for good measure before that. In the Sixth, ‘boot and saddle’ was blown but an hour before ‘general parade’, the serjeant-majors presented their troops five minutes after the orderly trumpeter’s second call, and the regimental serjeant-major would require only the muster states before handing over the parade to the senior major (except that this morning the senior major – Hervey – was off parade, his place taken by Second Squadron Leader). Then it would be ‘march on, officers’, and within the minute all would be ready for the commanding officer.

‘Most admirable,’ agreed Fairbrother, watching with Hervey from beneath the trees adjacent to the parade ground. ‘They have the bearing of an altogether different stamp of man than I was privileged to command in the Royal Africans.’

Sometimes, the way Fairbrother mixed sincerity with irony could be quite trying, but Hervey was confident, now, that he was able to discern the one from the other. ‘We do flatter ourselves that a better sort of man finds his way into the cavalry, but I assure you it is by no means the rule.’

‘Then it is greater to the credit of the NCOs and officers.’

A wasp danced about the nose of Hervey’s gelding, which appeared to be increasingly suspicious of its intentions. He hoped the animal was more at ease with other elements of the countryside: he had taken a horse that no one seemed to know anything of. He must trust that it was not one of the kind that knew only the stable and the pavestone (Fairbrother’s charger looked an altogether better prospect for the field).

‘I am glad you are disposed to think so. It was partly my design in bringing you here.’

Indeed it was, but to what purpose, he would not reveal. The visit of an officer from one corps to another was usual enough, a simple affair of pride and courtesy. But Hervey had a mind to test his own high opinion of his regiment. In one respect it was tested often enough: there was no end of inspections, and occasionally more searching trials such as Waltham Abbey. But to see the regiment put through its paces by the district commander, as Fairbrother would, must surely expose all that he, Hervey, realized that he took for granted. He did not know – he did not dare trust any longer – if he would ever attain command of the Sixth, but he had determined on knowing whatever there was to know of the regiment, knowledge for its own sake, even. And Fairbrother was the one man whose opinion he could bear to seek, as well as count on.

Lord Holderness was every inch the cavalry commanding officer. His frame was lean, his face had the features to distinguish him as a considerable gentleman whether in shako or forage cap, and to this was added – besides a uniform that appeared as though it were from the tailor that very morning – that air of easy, natural authority which in others Hervey had so admired, and yet without wholly comprehending.

‘Yes,’ said Fairbrother, nodding as if confirming a previous opinion: ‘Lord Holderness is a man whom all would wish to follow.’ He did not try his friend’s loyalty by adding ‘Let us see what he would lead them into’.

Private Johnson edged his trooper up alongside Hervey’s gelding. ‘Shall I go wi’ t’baggage, then, sir?’

‘No,’ replied Hervey, perfectly aware of his groom’s reasons for seeking the anonymity of the quartermaster’s train: Johnson had spent the last hour trying to avoid the attention of the serjeant-majors, any one of whom would have found fault with something or other (at least when Hervey had been acting commanding officer Johnson had enjoyed a measure of immunity . . .). ‘I may need you to gallop for me.’

‘Right, sir,’ he said wearily. He had feared as much, but now reconciled himself to twenty-four hours’ ‘trouble’.

The regiment formed into column of route, the trumpeter sounded ‘walk-march’, and the band struck up ‘Early One Morning’. Hervey’s gelding had taken three steps before he could reassert the bit. ‘The devil of this horse’s manners!’ he spluttered.

Fairbrother smiled. ‘I am but a foot soldier, irregularly mounted. I would not dare to sit without the curb applied!’

Hervey smiled back; Fairbrother was indeed one of the few men who might speak his mind thus (and aptly: Hervey knew he had loosed the reins all too readily). He pointedly changed the subject. ‘Do you think we shall have rain?’