The Sabre's Edge (16 page)

There was little reason why he should believe it. Mr Lincoln had been regimental serjeant-major for fifteen years. It was generally imagined that he was the senior in the whole of the cavalry. Why should he suddenly feel the need of a wife? Except that Johnson's canteen intelligence was almost invariably accurate . . .

'I'd put any money on it, sir.'

'Who is she?' demanded Hervey, sounding almost vexed.

'Widder o' one o' t'Footy's quartermasters.'

Hervey, for all his nausea and discomposure, managed an approving smile.
^‘
She must be a redoubtable woman. How is it known? Has there been any announcement?'

Johnson became circumspect; there were canteen confidences to safeguard.
^‘
Mr Lincoln saw Major Joynson yesterday an' asked 'is leave to marry.'

Hervey smiled again. A clerk with an ear to the door, and a thirst to be quenched by selling tattle in the wet canteen. Things hadn't changed. Not that Johnson would have paid for his information. Hervey had learned long ago that Johnson received word from many a source because the canteen attributed to him considerable powers of prophecy and intercession. 'What a tamasha that will be, then. And colonel and RSM wed in the same year.' Then he frowned. 'Oh, I do hope this doesn't mean Mr Lincoln intends his discharge.'

It was a curious thing, and Hervey knew as well as the next man, and better than most, that 'new blood' was as necessary in the officers and senior ranks of a cavalry regiment as it was in its horses. And yet with Mr Lincoln it was different. It was scarcely conceivable that there could be any want in the performance of his duties, and his grey hairs served only to add distinction to his appearance. In any case, the RSM would yield to no one in the jumping lane at the end of a field day. To many, indeed, Mr Lincoln
was
the regiment. No one in the Sixth had served longer, though his actual record of service, with its attestation date, had been conveniently lost years ago.

^C
I bet that's not what Serjeant-Major Deedes thinks,' said Johnson, screwing up his face.

That was the problem. There could only be the one crown, and for as long as the admirable Lincoln wore it above his stripes no other could. Deedes was next in seniority, and had been for five years or more, and behind him were others wondering if the crown would ever be theirs to wear before they were obliged to leave the colours. One of those, indeed, was Armstrong. Hervey had never given it much thought before. Could he imagine Geordie Armstrong filling Lincoln's boots? It was pointless his making any comparison, for so different were the two men. Except, perhaps, that Armstrong's formation had been at Lincoln's hands as much as anyone's.

There was, of course, one man who would by now have been the acknowledged heir. Serjeant Strange could have worn the crown, a worthy successor in every respect, except that by now another regiment might have made a claim on him, or even a field commission might have come his way. It was nigh on ten years ago, in a corner of the battlefield at Waterloo, that Strange had demonstrated his singular worth - and had lost his life doing so. Hervey still thought about that day, and his own part in Strange's fall. He asked himself the same questions, and the answers were always as uncertain.

'Still, dead men's boots are a sight easier to come by 'ere than at 'ome,' chirped Johnson. He did not actually nod to the garrison cemetery, and its growing regimental plot, but the timing of their passing could not have been more apt.

'For heaven's sake, Johnson, have a little compassion!'

Johnson mistook Hervey's meaning. 'Sorry sir, I didn't mean as I thought
tha
were
—'

'Oh, thank you. You'll be sure to let me know when the canteen shortens the odds on
my
getting to the end of this posting, won't you?'

Johnson looked only very slightly abashed.

'Come then,' said Hervey, sighing. 'Let's shorten the reins instead and see what we can do.'

Gilbert broke into a trot a fraction before the - aids applied, leaving Hervey to curse his own lack of handiness as well as his horse's. It was going to be a long business, this getting back to condition.

When they returned to the bungalow the best part of an hour later, for he had wanted to ride right out of the lines onto the plain, Hervey slid from the saddle in better spirits and health, and said that he would attend morning stables. Then he went inside for
hazree
and an hour with his pen. There was correspondence long overdue and he meant to make a start today, just as he intended taking back the charge of his troop.

On his desk were five letters. Two were from Horningsham, one from Elizabeth, the other from his father. They had been written a fortnight apart but had arrived together. That from his father contained the same warm paternal sentiment as that sent to Shrewsbury when first he had gone up, on his fourteenth birthday. Indeed, it was in essence the same letter, except for a line or two on diocesan affairs (which hitherto Archdeacon Hervey had rarely mentioned) and the news that his monograph on Archbishop Laud was at last nearing completion.

The letter from Elizabeth was not greatly longer but contained altogether more information - about the village, their part of Wiltshire, the country as a whole (garnered, she admitted, from the newspapers), about their parents and relatives, and last, but at greatest length, about his daughter. Georgiana was six months older than when Elizabeth had last written, and it seemed she was a favourite at both Longleat and the vicarage. She showed all the signs of a fine intelligence, was able to read, and she could sit a pony well. She laughed a great deal. It was a letter to reassure an absent father that he should have no concerns for the well-being of his child. And yet this agreeable report had the effect of making Hervey want to be with his daughter as keenly as would an unhappy one, for Georgiana was Henrietta's offspring.

He laid the letter to one side. It would be as difficult to begin a reply to his sister's as to his father's, if for wholly different reasons. He picked up the third, from John Keble. He imagined it written with that same prospect before the writer against which he had inveighed the evening before at the Somerviles. It was a letter composed in a Gloucestershire curate's house, an untroubled place where dreams could be dreamed, a letter full of rebuttals of this divine and that, with a lengthy description of the work he was jointly embarked on with Hervey's father - a charge to the clergy of the archdeaconry of Sarum. There was the startling revelation that Keble had been asked if he would go to the West Indies, as archdeacon of Barbados no less; and the wholly unsurprising addendum that he had declined. The letter concluded with an evidently pained enquiry into whether or not Hervey had yet had occasion to discourse with Bishop Heber, it being more than a year since that prelate had been enthroned. It was, indeed, so worthy a letter that Hervey felt it required a peculiar state of grace before any response could be attempted. He laid it down and picked up the fourth.

He already knew its contents. Yet even as he began rereading a third or fourth time, it had its effect. The hand was the freest of the four, the sentiment likewise. What it was to have a female of the likes of Lady Katherine Greville bestowing her time on him. How diverting seemed the gossip that had formerly repulsed him so. How fondly, now, he remembered their brief company, and her uninhibited pleasure in it - and how lame his own response had been. But it had been different then

- too close to events, his mind encumbered by all sorts of notions and doubts. Things were not the same now. India, for all her heat, had moistened that dried-up interior of his. First she had given him back his very being as a soldier. It did not matter that in reality the affair of the headwaters of the Karnaphuli had been unhonoured by Calcutta, or that the campaign he had so recently left in a dhoolie was the re-creation of that muddle in the Low Countries a quarter of a century before. India was a stage on which the soldier could expound his art, learn stratagems and devices unheard of at home, and above all might have that most prized thing - the true exercise of command. Yes, Hervey was angry with Major-General Sir Archibald Campbell and the campaign in Ava; but it and the other diversions of this singular country made him feel as alive as ever he could remember.

He took a sheet of paper from the drawer and picked up his pen. Perhaps as little as a year ago he would have begun his replies in the strict order of filial duty, then sibling love, then respectfulness for the cloth, and then . . . But this morning he began, 'Dear Lady Katherine
^’
. An hour or so later, having written rather more than usual to this wife of an absentee husband, and likewise having returned her teasing and toying in fuller measure, he put on cantonment dress - the looser-fitting cotton jacket that the Sixth had adopted soon after arriving, with light cotton overalls and forage cap - and walked to the regimental headquarters to report himself back at duty.

Major Joynson heard him through the open door of his office and came at once into the adjutant's room to add his salutation. 'And a word with you as soon as you are done
here’
he added, in a manner that Hervey could not quite determine as encouraging or otherwise.

He wanted to appear neither apprehensive nor indifferent, and so after ten minutes with the adjutant, in which he was apprised of the comings and goings of his troop, and its defaulters, Hervey signed the orders book and then repaired to the major's office.

Since the death of his wife, an invalid to laudanum, and the military demise of Lord Towcester, Eustace Joynson had grown steadily in stature and affection in the regiment. His reputation for painstaking administration had always been high, but the demands made on him by his late wife had sapped his vigour, and Towcester's martinet command had all but eviscerated him. Now, the sick headaches that had removed him from duty with monotonous regularity had all but gone, and he enjoyed many a mess night where before he had found them a sore trial. However, he did not feel himself entirely a match for the decision before him now. And there were none, perhaps, who would blame him, for the decision was one of the utmost importance to every man in the Sixth.

'Hervey, close the door and take a seat. Have you had coffee? Would you like a little Madeira? No? Perhaps a shade early. I never do, not before eleven. Have you heard that Mr Lincoln's to marry?'

Hervey sat in a tub-chair that creaked with the slightest move of a muscle. 'I have. Joyous news.'

'You think so? Possibly, I suppose . . . yes.'

'Is there some objection to the lady?'

^‘
Oh no. No, indeed not. She is a very respectable woman; very highly regarded by the light infantry's colonel. Lincoln's calling on him this very morning.'

'Then why do you sound uncertain?'

'Because Marsh is to send in his papers. Says he wants to spend his declining days in Ipswich rather than be quartermaster here.'

'Singular!'

Joynson smiled. 'A man who prefers Ipswich to Calcutta might rightly be said to have begun his decline already. I could not say that even the worst of the stink here would drive me to such a decision.'

Hervey nodded, returning the smile, a sort of mock grimace. 'Ipswich. Indeed no.'

'But you will imagine that there must be a replacement quartermaster.'

'And a replacement for the replacement.'

'Exactly so. I am excessively pleased that Lincoln shall join us at last in the mess. Indeed, it is long overdue. But the pleasure is dulled by the thought of having to determine his own succession.'

The word was well chosen. Lincoln's had been a long reign by any standard. Hervey wondered what the RSM himself thought of relinquishing the crown. 'It should be Deedes, by rights. Is there any serious objection? It has always been seniority tempered by rejection.'

Joynson took off his glasses and polished them with a silk cloth. 'I've been disappointed with Deedes these past twelve months. There's a want of vigour. I dare say that he'll make no mistakes, but if we're to have him for any time then I fear he'll begin to drop the bit. Rose thinks so too.'

Hervey raised an eyebrow. 'Deuced tricky superseding Deedes. He'll fall right away and become a malcontent, no doubt. And the rest of his mess will be ill at ease if they perceive no very good reason for it. Who is next in seniority? Harrison?'

'Telfer.'

'Oh dear.'

'Precisely. Who would
you
want?'

'Hairsine.'

'Exactly.'

Hervey frowned. 'They've all been too long in the rank, even Hairsine. In that respect the war brought them on too quickly. I can remember Hairsine the night we had word of the surrender, at Toulouse. He was orderly serjeant-major. It was
ten years
ago.'