Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) (14 page)

‘Oh, aye, Colonel,’ replied his coverman. ‘Good standing stalls, and a couple of loose boxes for us to bed down in, and plenty of clean straw. Warm as wool we were.’

‘What remarkable alliteration.’

‘Aye, Colonel:
deep
-litter-ation!’

Hervey laughed. Quick wit was born of intelligence (and besides, it was good to be kept amused of a cold morning). ‘Well I trust you won’t see the same bedding tonight except in a palliasse. If the Guards set to with address we should have cleared the ground by midday.’ He turned to the adjutant. ‘Have you ever seen the Guards at a field day, Mr Malet?’

‘Only at a review, Colonel.’

‘Then today will be of some novelty, if not so pretty as a review … Ah, good morning, Worsley.’

B Troop’s captain was waiting at the picket post by the church as arranged, with just his trumpeter.

‘Good morning, Colonel. I believe we may have them – half a dozen at least. Sar’nt-Major Collins and Corporal Lynch were doing poacher drill in the early hours and saw them doubling back from the vidette line – evidently they’d been too wary to cross, for we’d lit torches the length of the road to confuse them as to our strength – and they went to earth in a hut. They passed very close to the sar’nt-major, which is why he was able to count six with such surety. But he didn’t want to bolt them.’

‘Smart work indeed.’

‘I shall commend him, Colonel. And skirmishers from the Grenadiers have just come into the Winkfield road.’

Hervey quickened the more. ‘Then let’s go and see the company in.’

It was still the hour when no one was abroad, and the party could move boldly. The moon had set two hours before, but against the snow they could see their way, and the first intimations of dawn were adding their light.

Fairbrother rode up alongside his friend, intent on a word, but Hervey anticipated him.

‘“A cold coming they had of it”,’ he declaimed cheerily. ‘“The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off
in solstitio brumali
, the very dead of winter”. What eloquence is that!’

‘Eloquence indeed: your father’s sermon each Christmas, I believe you’ve told me a good few times?’

‘Though not his words – not his own words, that is.’ He fell silent for a moment … ‘When I have the reins properly in hand, so to speak, we shall go down to Wiltshire, you and I, and pay our respects.’

He did not add ‘for I am sorely missing Georgiana’, but Fairbrother knew well enough that the separation must pain him. Not in any cloying way (for besides, his friend had never had true opportunity to form any deep affection), but as a duty not rightly discharged. Nor was this frozen hour the time to be entering on a discussion of the obligations of paternity …

A cock crew, the first of the day.

Fairbrother was delighted by the gift, to deflect their thoughts with Latin of his own: ‘“
Gallo canente, spes redit
”!’

Hervey brightened again. ‘“At the cock’s chaunting, hope returns” – my God, Fairbrother, I’ve known that many a time, I tell you … But there’ll be no hope for those felons yonder, no matter how loud the cock crows. Not if Worsley’s troop have done their duty, and the Guards do theirs. Upon my word, Collins has done a fine thing last night, smelling them out.’

They turned onto the Winkfield road as the half-hour was striking, and were just able to make out a mounted party preceding what he took to be the head of the Grenadier column.

‘Hervey?’ came the clipped voice from the
prima luce
.

‘Is that you, Calthorp?’

‘It is. Good morning to you.’

‘And to you. I’m glad to see you. You come most carefully upon your hour.’

‘Let it not be said that the Guards do not keep strict time, though yonder striking clock is by Windsor time ten minutes in retard.’

‘Fortunately the sun keeps its own time. I reckon in twenty more it will be light enough to begin, would you think? And we know exactly where are six of the fugitives.’

‘Admirable. But first I would introduce Mr Freely, who is a deputy sheriff of the county, resident at Windsor … and a Justice of the Peace.’

Hervey nodded and acknowledged the justice’s salutation with a brisk ‘Freely.’

‘And Captain Jessope, who commands the Left Flank Company.’

Again he nodded; ‘Jessope,’ then added, ‘I knew a Jessope in the Second Guards. He was killed at Waterloo.’

‘A cousin, Colonel Hervey.’

He had been greatly fond of d’Arcey Jessope. The fleeting memory saddened and then warmed him. ‘Very well. Gentlemen, may I present Captain Worsley, who commands B Troop, and whose dragoons since dusk have been picketing the square mile or so which shall be our country, and who has the whereabouts of half a dozen of the blackguards. And Lord Thomas Malet, my adjutant, and Captain Fairbrother, on detachment from the Cape Mounted Rifles.’

There was general nodding, and repetition of surnames, and evident interest on mention of the Cape Rifles.

‘Mr Freely, your presence is assuring, though I trust ours is but a straightforward business this morning: there is no doubt that a felony has been committed. I would have you know it. I would wish no later ill consequences.’

‘Indeed so, Colonel Hervey. We are indebted to you for the prompt action of your regiment. Do I understand correctly, however, that you allude to the vexations of civil disorder?’

Hervey was not without experience of those exact vexations, and replied with some dryness, ‘You do, sir. An officer has but one decision to make, a simple choice of whether to be shot for his forbearances by a court martial, or hanged for his over-zeal by a jury. An odious business, the dispersing of a mob, though of course it must be done.’

‘I am a barrister-at-law also, Colonel, and much in sympathy with the difficulty you describe, but a decision made in the fair and honest execution of an officer’s duty cannot be doubted by a jury – and if it be so, then the justices of appeal would not hesitate to overturn the judgment.’

A Berkshire lane on such a morning seemed to Hervey to be ill suited to debating the practice of the law, and he was inclined therefore to concede to the sheriff and take his ease … except, as often, there was an antagonistic scruple at work in him, a troublesome companion, as sometimes he saw it. ‘That is as may be, Sheriff, but I am minded too of the fate of Captain Porteous.’

‘A wretched business, Colonel, I am agreed, though I venture to say that an
English
jury might not have acquitted in such a case in the first instance, the force being manifestly excessive.’

‘Judged from the peace of a jury bench, perhaps, but who is to tell? Temporization on such occasions might be said to be a dangerous and even cruel policy.’ But Hervey was content to have made his point, and besides, the Guards were in want of orders.

‘Let us adjourn, gentlemen,’ agreed Colonel Calthorp, turning to the commander of the Left Flank Company. ‘To your duties, then, Captain Jessope. Let the guardsmen take their ease for a quarter of an hour.’

‘Sir!’ snapped the captain, who then relayed his commanding officer’s wish to the company serjeant-major, and there followed what seemed to Hervey like the yapping of an irate terrier, which went on intermittently for the best part of a minute. But soon the guardsmen were evidently taking their ease, pipes lit the length of the column. They had formed line in two ranks from column of threes, ordered arms, stood at ease and then easy, piled arms and fallen out, but in place, and all without a single word of command that made sense to any but one practised in hearing it. The darkness might hide a multitude of sins, of course – not least the violence of the NCOs – but Hervey was impressed nonetheless by the handiness of this column of a hundred. Drawing the covert should at least be a prompt and easy affair.

‘One thing more, Hervey,’ said Colonel Calthorp when the words of command had ceased: ‘with the consent of the sheriff’s deputy, the non-commissioned officers will load muskets ere we begin. The guardsmen themselves will proceed with fixed bayonets.’

Hervey imagined he might himself have given the same order to Worsley – substituting sabres for bayonets – except that the troop had no cartridge with them (and bone in the firelocks instead of flint). ‘Eminently practical, Calthorp. Men who would set light to a barn in daylight would not hesitate to carry a firearm.’ He turned to Worsley: ‘I suggest Corporal Lynch accompanies the Guards and that you ride with Jessope.’ (Suggesting how B Troop’s captain make his dispositions, and thereby the Grenadiers, was hardly proper, but it saved Worsley the business of doing so himself.) ‘You would be in agreement, Calthorp?’

‘Indeed so,’ he replied, turning to the deputy sheriff, with whom he was determined there should be no misunderstanding. ‘But let me be rightly understood, Freely: I’ve no desire for blood. My non-commissioned officers have ball-cartridge for the preservation of life, not its extinction. Clean barrels and twelve captives would constitute the greatest success –
any
captives, in truth, for doubtless they’ll sing like canaries.’

‘Your sentiment is noted, Colonel Calthorp. I understand the order perfectly, and, insofar as it is not impertinent for me to say, entirely approve of it.’

‘We are of one accord, then, Calthorp,’ said Hervey. ‘Captains Jessope and Worsley to ride together, and you and I the same, I think?’

It was a shrewd and necessary move, for Calthorp was his senior (it was ever so with an officer of foot guards, whatever his date of promotion), and if Hervey was to exercise any influence on the proceedings it must be by suggestion – and suggestion, in his experience, was made all the more compelling by intimacy.

The lieutenant-colonel of Grenadiers was himself content: if there were to be any honours in the wretched business of apprehending incendiaries, he had no objection to sharing them. ‘Very well, Hervey. Allow me a moment to confer with Jessope, and then I propose we take post in the centre when the line advances.’

Hervey nodded and pulled away a little.

Fairbrother moved alongside him again. ‘A fine job of work, that – Collins’s poaching drill, as Worsley calls it.’

Hervey smiled, if unseen still. ‘I rather fancy he may have learned that from you at the Cape – the stuff of the veld?’

Fairbrother was ready enough to admit his superiority in ‘veldcraft’, as the Cape Rifles were wont to call it, but he’d seen enough of Hervey’s troop there – especially Collins – not to claim it exclusively. ‘You are too modest. No one could crawl unobserved into Shaka’s kraal, as you did, and be without resource in these things.’

Hervey frowned. In truth it was something he would be glad never to recall again. ‘I could not commend what I did that day to anyone. On reflection, it was imprudent. But in point of fact the observing officers in Spain were playing the poacher’s game long before. Collins showed exemplary address, however, and at his own instancing.’

Fairbrother now cut to the point. ‘Neither is he a man to do so out of any desire for the notice of his commanding officer.’

Hervey smiled again. ‘You are a worthy advocate. I confess it
had
occurred to me.’

‘Then I shall desist from further advocacy. Tell me, by the way, what was the affair of Captain Porteous that so presses on tender consciences?’

Hervey explained.

Indeed, the case of Captain John Porteous, though a century gone, was a cautionary tale for any man wearing the King’s coat. A smuggler by the name of Wilson was hanged in Edinburgh for robbing a customs officer. A riot ensued – whipped up, no doubt, by fellow villains – and Porteous, captain of the guard, ordered his men to fire on the crowd, killing or wounding several dozen of them. At the sessions that followed he was sentenced to death but then reprieved, whereupon the ‘mob’ dragged him from prison and hanged him from a dyer’s pole.

‘Ah, then I read of it in Scott. I hadn’t thought it was a true business. But his defence was that he’d never given the order, was it not?’

‘It was. The court did not believe it – but, more’s the point, neither did the mob.’

Fairbrother shook his head. ‘The rule of the mob: we are, I suppose, ever but a judicious cut of the sabre from its terrible prospect.’

‘That is uncommonly well put,’ replied Hervey, reaching into his pocket for the flask of brandy that his host the magistrate had so generously provided. ‘
Judicious
– most apt. An
injudicious
cut and a street gallows beckons.’

Fairbrother took a draw on the flask and handed it back. ‘And you say your parliament had long opposed a standing constabulary, preferring the cut of the sabre, however injudicious – or indeed, unjudicial?’

Colonel Calthorp was evidently taking much care in his conference with Captain Jessope; a discourse on aid to the civil power was the last thing Hervey would have chosen at such a time, but as there was nothing else to do … ‘I told you: they equated a police force with Fouché’s spies. But let’s not trouble over it now, for mine and three other regiments were spared for the sole purpose of securing the King’s peace. And I mean to justify that decision.’

Besides, like any Tory – as a son of the gentry, even the minor gentry, must be – his first instinct was for order. He had long observed, from the violent inclination of so many in his native county of Wiltshire, that no one and nothing could prosper while in fear of the mob.

But first there were the matters at hand. The sun had seemed more sluggard this morning, but it was at last turning night into something that passed for day. Worsley’s trumpeter’s horse could now be discerned as grey, and the guardsmen’s greatcoats a bluish colour rather than black. Another quarter of an hour, he reckoned, and ‘types and shadows’ would have their ending. But men immobile in this frosty lane would be finding it a trial …

Moments later – to his relief – Colonel Calthorp rejoined them. ‘Light enough now for our purposes, Hervey? If we bolt any, your men should have ample sight of ’em – yes?’

Hervey was as sure as may be. ‘Depend on’t.’

‘Very well,’ said Calthorp, distinctly warming to his task. ‘It ain’t Waterloo, that’s certain, but it ain’t every day that His Majesty’s Grenadiers take to the field.’ He braced. ‘Stand up, Guards!’