Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service (26 page)

‘Very simply that if Johnson judged that Gibraltar – or, more exactly, command of a battalion of infantry there – were inimical to your wellbeing, then every instinct of mine would tell me that it were so.’

Hervey smiled. ‘“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart”.’

Fairbrother took a large measure of wine to wash down his first taste of goose. ‘I say “Amen” to that. And also that this bird renders fine service too.’

‘It does indeed.’

‘A pity, therefore, that Agar shan’t taste it.’

Hervey hesitated a moment. ‘The exigencies of the service. He would not have had it otherwise.’

Fairbrother sat back. ‘You’re not inclined to see today’s action as beyond the call of duty then … beyond the requirements of neutrality indeed?’

Hervey looked thoughtful. ‘I concede it’s a moot point. But I don’t consider that any harm comes of it.’

Fairbrother held up his hands. ‘Nor am I your keeper.’

‘I did not believe for a moment you acted as one.’

‘Have you written to Princess Lieven?’

‘As a matter of fact I have decided to write this evening.’

Fairbrother raised an eyebrow. ‘May I ask why?’

‘Courtesy, in part.’

‘Mm.’ He leaned back. ‘If you asked my counsel it would be that first you should sleep on the matter. It has been a hot-blooded sort of day.’

‘I can’t sleep on it: a courier leaves for St Petersburg in the morning.’

‘There’ll be others.’

‘I judge it best not to delay.’

Fairbrother kept silence a while. ‘So deuced difficult to tell if a ball’s fused or not, sometimes.’

Hervey perfectly understood his meaning. But there was nothing to say.

Fairbrother let him off the hook by changing the subject, ostensibly. ‘By the by, what would you have decided had I said that
I
could not accompany you to Gibraltar?’

Hervey sat up. ‘In truth I don’t know, for I had not then made up my mind – as I had with Johnson.’

‘Well, I make my acceptance now conditional,’ said Fairbrother gravely.

‘Oh?’

He smiled. ‘I have found Hazlitt’s account of his time in Rome so intriguing that I am intent on seeing the city as soon as may be, and since you are fully acquainted with it, and Gibraltar is so near, I would claim you as guide.’

Hervey returned the smile. ‘You know, Fairbrother, I do believe I should find that the most agreeable thing – quite the most agreeable thing indeed.’ It was only the strictest self-mastery that would not let him admit his friend as indispensable too.

After dinner, Hervey took candles to his room, resolved to have his letters ready for the Ordnance courier. The first was easily done – a single sheet to Colonel Youell, telling him of his decision to accept the lieutenant-colonelcy of the Fifty-third. As soon as he had sealed it he felt a weight rise from his shoulders; all else now was but a consequence of that decision. He wrote equally briefly to his agents, Messrs Greenwood, Cox and Hammersley of Craig’s Court, instructing them to take the necessary action in the disposal of his regimental majority. He wrote at greater, more respectful length to Lord George Irvine, a most difficult letter expressing his regret in not being able to take command of his regiment. He toyed with the idea of explaining himself more fully (for what of the regiment was there left to command?), but in the end he could not find words of the appropriate substance, and he closed the letter in the confidence that his erstwhile commanding officer would understand his reasons – or that no acceptable reasons could in any case be advanced. Next he wrote to Elizabeth with the briefest summary of his movements to date, an equally brief announcement of his decision, and an enclosure for Georgiana telling her that soon she would be able to join him in Gibraltar, which she would surely like a good deal. He then began a letter to Kezia. He wrote the salutation easily enough, but then his pen froze in his hand. No words would come to him. He even thought to unseal the letter to Elizabeth to copy its lines, but he could not do so, for it scarcely seemed meet, and the recipients were so unalike that the same words could hardly be apt. In the end he decided he would rise early and write with the courier’s posthorn to hasten him.

It was now late; he felt drowsy. But with the mere act of taking a fresh sheet and writing ‘Dear Princess Lieven’ it was as if he had been touched by an electric arc. So great in fact that he stopped momentarily to ponder the cause. None that came to mind was wholesome, however, and he shut them out very determinedly in order to write on. But at the end – seven whole sides in his compact hand – he shuddered with distaste at the thought that he had not been able to manage a single page for his wife. And try as he might, he could not shake off the sense of perfidy. He found it infinitely easier to scruple less about corresponding with the ambassadress of a foreign power, for he would tell the Horse Guards of what he wrote, and Princess Lieven was a woman of experience and discretion in diplomatic affairs, and besides he told her nothing that was detrimental to His Majesty’s interests (or so he very much trusted).

It was, after all, a very tame account – a summary of their itinerary with not a mention of St Petersburg, the briefest explanation of the purpose of the landing at Siseboli, the defence-works about the town, the bearing of the Pavlovsk Grenadiers, his patrol with the Black Sea Cossacks, the action by the
strelki
of the Azov Regiment, and the admirable arrangements for the sick (such as he had had occasion to observe). He did not write of the deficiencies or derelictions, only that ‘there are some instances where, in my judgement, the practice could be amended to advantage’ – and his intention to join the main army when it was ready to renew the offensive. There was not the remotest possibility of its falling into unfriendly (or even suspicious) hands, but even so, there was nothing, individually or severally, that could be construed as bearing allegiance to any but the King.

He signed it quickly –
I remain, yours faithfully, Matthew Hervey
– and sealed it before he could have any more troubling second thoughts, and placed it with the other letters inside an oilskin envelope addressed to his agents, which he left unsealed to await the morning letter to Kezia. By now he was feeling the hour keenly (it was past two o’clock and the candles were beginning to gutter). He rose from the table at which he had sat for two hours, and without even recourse to the nightstand lay down on his bed and closed his eyes.

There was no easy repose, however. At once Kat appeared – so vividly as to make him open his eyes and sit up. He shook his head, willing her away. She had visited him daily before they reached St Petersburg, then less frequently during the journey south, and hardly at all since coming to Siseboli. He had hoped that time and distance would work its usual cure. But such confusion as were the circumstances with Kat could not be resolved by the mere passing of hours and the accumulation of miles. He cursed himself for the weakness of will that had brought those circumstances about, and shivered with the shame of it. It pained him to think how Fairbrother and Johnson (and Agar and all the others) looked to him for his assured command, for his certainty in what to do, and yet he was so in error in his private affairs as to render himself unfit to exercise any authority. Or so it would be thought were his affairs to cease being private. Not that there was immediate danger of that; not if he kept his head. And therefore he would exercise his authority in pretence, deceit – the ‘mask of command’ writ large.

Would it matter? He didn’t know. There was in the Prayer Book, in the ‘Articles of Religion’, an affirmation concerning the unworthiness of some ministers of religion that might equally apply to the exercise of military command: ‘Neither is the effect of Christ’s ordinance taken away by their wickedness’. He had always found it curiously fortifying, upheld, as it had been, by his father, who would always quote it in adversity, when some wickedness of the diocese oppressed him. But for all that the article gave comfort, it contained a rider: ‘Nevertheless it appertaineth to the discipline of the Church that inquiry be made of evil ministers, and that they be accused by those that have knowledge of their offences; and finally, being found guilty by just judgement, be deposed.’ There was no assured refuge from reckoning, therefore. He could go to Gibraltar, wear the badges of rank, exercise the power of command – but ruin lurked, perhaps even stalked.

He lay down again, sick in his stomach, and closed his eyes. He gave desperate thanks for the fellowship of his good friend and his much older one; what a barren office would any command be without their company.

XII

THE BOOT AND THE BAYONET

Early next morning

The signal gun in ‘B’ Redoubt – unshotted, twice as loud – woke Siseboli an hour before its expected reveille. Hervey sat bolt upright, full awake, the instinct of twenty years’ campaigning, which many a time had saved his skin. The nightlight by his bed was still burning. He reached for his hunter – ten minutes before two o’clock. Bugles sounded ‘Alarm’ above the distant rattle of musketry. He was up, buckling on his sword, reaching for his pistols, grabbing telescope, spurs, crossbelt, cap, and making for the door. The first thing that mattered was speed.

Corporal Acton was at the foot of the stairs. ‘Signal rockets from the redoubts, sir – red ’ns. The Turks are attacking.’

‘You saw the rockets?’

‘I did, sir. I were gone to the groyne for a see if they’d caught any fish, when the gun went off.’

Fairbrother came hurrying downstairs, booted and spurred (Hervey was always intrigued how his friend could rise with alacrity when the occasion required, yet otherwise remain abed all morning). ‘It might be a false alarm,’ he said, as if to excuse his promptitude, ‘but I take no chance. I’d wager your Colonel Vedeniapine knows his business.’

Johnson now appeared, barelegged but in his greatcoat, shielding a candle. ‘Sir?’

‘Captain Fairbrother and I are going to see what’s the alarm. Stay here and make ready. Have Brayshaw and Green help.’

‘There’s water on t’boil, sir. I could mash some tea, quick.’

‘No,’ said Hervey, pushing his spurs into a pocket, and telescope into his tunic bib. ‘If the Turks are attacking we must see it at once.’ He remembered: ‘On my desk – a letter for London. See it gets to the headquarters for the courier if I’m not back in the hour.’

They went into the street. There was the faintest notice of coming dawn in the moonless sky, but the torches everywhere made it seem midnight still. An infantry detail doubled past, two
efreytors
barking time. The distant musketry swelled and then slackened like fireworks at a fête.

‘If the Turks have got in the trenches they’ve duped us,’ said Fairbrother, pulling his cap down. ‘They must’ve been toying with us yesterday; that musketry doesn’t sound like a picket skirmish.’

‘It does not,’ agreed Hervey, striding out after the grenadiers. ‘We must pray if they
have
got into the trenches it was more by good fortune.’

Both men had given up any pretence at disinterest: the Turk was an intruder; he must be seen off.

In the square behind the main gates the guard company was already drawn up in two ranks, standing easy, while others of the Pavlovsk were getting on parade. Officers of the reserve battalion of the Kozlov Regiment were gathering for orders while the men mustered outside their billets at the further end of town. A party of Cossacks – twenty or so – came clattering along the cobbles at the trot, and then General Wachten arrived with his staff and escort of grenadiers.

Hervey kept a respectful distance. In any case, he would not be able to understand the orders, and could hardly expect Wachten to translate for him while disposing his troops. It would soon be perfectly apparent what the orders were.

A rocket shot up from the castellation above the main gates, bursting in a bright green shower at a hundred feet. Seconds later the gunships moored either side of the isthmus opened a sweeping fire on the approaches.

Fairbrother frowned. ‘What in God’s name do they shoot at?’

‘Wachten told me they’d fire blind on signal.’

‘It goes hard, then, with any messenger.’