Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) (2 page)

Lord John Howard was momentarily discomfited. ‘That I really cannot say, my lord,’ he managed, but so perfectly pitched as to convey neither dismay nor dissent.

‘Deucedest thing. I’ve seen too many men follow the wrong scent …’

The hunting metaphor continued to serve. An acknowledgement seemed all that was required. ‘Sir.’

For the commander-in-chief had conveyed his meaning in the inexplicit terms of the chase, which might itself be thought analogy for the pursuit of military success – whether honours, wealth or promotion (or, indeed, all three); there was no need of exactness. Both men understood perfectly … though what Howard was supposed to do about it – or rather, how – was quite another matter.

‘That friend of his, the halfcast …’

‘Fairbrother, General.’

‘Yes, Fairbrother – a most gentlemanlike fellow, most agreeable. That report of his – the instantaneous exploding of the mine: really most admirable. Clever fellow the Roosian, to use – what’s he call it: an electric current? – to spark powder. Who’d have thought such a thing were possible.’

‘Evidently not
our
engineers, sir.’

Lord Hill frowned at him in mild disapproval.

‘The Ordnance intends granting Mr Fairbrother a good sum for the intelligence – and for his continued discretion in the matter. Can’t be too sure with fellows such as he – not at all certain where their allegiance lies, half and half so they are – though I do say I liked him a good deal. Be happy indeed to see him exchange into the Fifty-third.’

‘High praise indeed, sir.’ For Lord Hill was colonel of the 53rd (Shropshire) Regiment of Foot.

The commander-in-chief fell silent again, his gaze set distant on the park. At length he turned to look directly at his most trusted of staff officers. ‘Did you ever know the first Mrs Hervey?’

‘I did, General. I was Colonel Hervey’s supporter at their wedding –
Captain
Hervey as he then was. Indeed, too, I was his supporter at his marriage with Lady Lankester – the second Mrs Hervey.’

Lord Hill returned to his surveillance of the parade ground and the park. ‘I myself did not know her, I regret to say. By all accounts she would have been an adornment to his career.’

‘Without question.’

Without doubt, indeed. Lady Henrietta Lindsay, as first she was, ward of the Marquess of Bath, had been both a beauty and a wit, and a favourite at court. The marriage had been short, however, long enough only to bring forth a single child – Georgiana. Twelve years it had been since she died – a bitter death, laying her husband so low as to make those about him fear a good while for his sanity. Twelve years which, alternately, could seem to him as nothing and yet an age.

For some time Lord Hill studied the purifying whiteness – the same whiteness that had been the death of Henrietta Hervey in the tractless wastes of Upper Canada – before abruptly signalling the interview was at an end: ‘Deuced weather, Howard. There’ll be no hunting to speak of tomorrow.’

Lance-Corporal Johnson stood at the porter’s lodge of the United Service Club with the confident bearing of an NCO of some seniority. However, if examined with the aid of a moderately strong glass, the stitching of each bar of double lace that formed the single chevron on the upper right sleeve of his jacket would have revealed the haste with which the dragoon of twenty-three years’ service had been transformed into a man set in authority.

It had not been entirely ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished’ – not at any rate by the dragoon himself who, in the argot of the canteen, had just put up his stripe. There was many a barrack-room philosopher conversant with Mr Francis Grose’s
Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
– able to quote from it at length, indeed – of which ‘lance corporal’ was a favourite entry: ‘originally a man at arms or trooper, who, having broken his lance on the enemy, and lost his horse in fight, was entertained as a volunteer assistant to a captain of foot, receiving his pay as a trooper until he could remount himself; from being the companion of the captain, he was soon degraded to the assistant of the corporal, and at present does the duty of that officer, on the pay of a private soldier.’

And Grose, being an erstwhile cornet of light dragoons, was thereby an authority of Mosaic stature. Johnson himself could cite him; and ‘degraded to the assistant of the corporal, and at present does the duty of that officer, on the pay of a private soldier’ was one such citation. The pay was of little matter; it was that word ‘degraded’.

‘Private Johnson, if you are to remain my groom, you must answer to “corporal”,’ his new commanding officer had told him the evening before, the dozenth time at least since learning of his own appointment five days ago; ‘I mayn’t put aside the practice of the regiment on your account.’ (Indeed, Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey had begun to wonder if
all
the devices and desires of his heart would be met with such difficulties as he took up the reins of command – at last – of the regiment into which he had been commissioned one and twenty years before.)

And so it had come to pass that the newest and most reluctant holder of rank (or rather, ‘appointment’, for in law the rank did not exist) in His Majesty’s 6th Light Dragoons, the most junior of junior non-commissioned officers in that proud cavalry of the line, had at last – indeed, as the sand had been running out of the glass of ultimatum – complied with the desire of the lieutenant-colonel; for the desire of a superior officer must in the end be taken as an order. Yet Corporal Johnson remained unconvinced by the assurances of immunity that accompanied the lieutenant-colonel’s entreaties: as a dragoon he had been of no account except to the officer for whom he did duty (the same officer for twenty years; since the Peninsula indeed), but as an NCO, even if not in law established, he would fall under the regulation of the regimental serjeant-major, and while that was no cause of disquiet to those made in the image of the RSM – men indeed whose ambition was one day to add the crown to the chevrons on their sleeve – what could such regulation bring to a dragoon such as he, who had no ambition but to do his officer’s will (that is, after due disputation) and who was certainly not cast in the image of a serjeant-major? But in Grose he did have an appeal to exception (in case of the canteen’s denigrating him) – with a little licence. He was not so much the ‘assistant of the corporal’ but the ‘companion of the colonel’.

But, having now been raised to the rank, the erstwhile Private Johnson intended playing the part, and instead of bending to the charge of transferring the assemblage of trunks, valises, portmanteaux, hatboxes and dressing cases to the fourgon outside, he now merely supervised the aproned club porters as they did so, afterwards giving them coin with the same self-possession with which he would have treated the native bearers in Bengal, or in any of the other strange parts in which from time to time he had found himself serving the King and Colonel Hervey (and before that, Major Hervey, and before that, Captain Hervey, Lieutenant Hervey, and even Cornet Hervey): the northernmost part of America, the southernmost part of Africa; the near Levant; Spain and Portugal; France; Ireland –
India
. He was glad to be done with those exotic parts for now, content to take a little ease at Hounslow – so untroubled a station.

Except that Hounslow would not be without its own vexations. Mrs Hervey – he still couldn’t understand (or, more probably,
wouldn’t
) how a
Lady
became a
Mrs
, especially when the first Mrs Hervey was Lady Hervey, or Lady Henrietta Hervey as everybody said she had to be called, not just
Lady
Hervey (and yet
Lady
Irvine had been good enough for Colonel Irvine’s wife) – well, Mrs Hervey, who had not long before been Lady Lankester when her first husband had been commanding and got himself killed at the storming of Bhurtpore, she didn’t like him much; in fact she didn’t seem to like him at all really.

‘And why’s that, Johnno?’ Wilkes the club valet had asked, when they’d sat up late in the buttery the last night, drinking to Johnson’s promotion with the ‘unexpended portion of the day’s ration’ – the claret that invariably remained in the decanters when the second bottle had been ordered.

And Johnson had shrugged, unwilling to speculate, and certainly not willing to paint any unfavourable picture of his officer’s wife, even for so convivial and understanding a drinking companion as Wilkes – old soldier and occasional valet to some of the greatest of martial names. ‘Colonel ’Ervey just says she won’t be at ’Ounslow, not to begin with at any rate, an’ ’e might ’ave to take an ’ouse-keeper for a while, but that ’e’d be sure to take on somebody they’d all get on with, and Mr Fairbrother –
Captain
Fairbrother as ’e ought rightly to be called – Colonel ’Ervey’s particular friend (and right pleased I am wi’ that, because Mr Fairbrother’s a proper gentleman, even though ’e’s a black man – although ’e’s not very black at all, and a right good man with a sword and a pistol an’ all): well
’e’d
said they’d all better depend on it.’

And Wilkes had just tutted, and said what rum ways the quality had.

And Johnson had silently agreed, but only up to a point. He’d seen the quality close all right in his time, but they weren’t all the same. He felt sorry for Colonel Hervey. He hadn’t seen his wife in more than six months, and now she didn’t want to come to Hounslow – just when he needed somebody to be in charge now that he was the commanding officer. It didn’t seem right. Colonel Hervey said there were social obligations that kept Mrs Hervey in Hertfordshire, and that it was his fault for coming back so unexpected from Roumelia – or wherever it was they’d just been. But it didn’t seem right all the same. He’d seen the look on Colonel Hervey’s face when he’d got the letter back express: he thought as though the colonel’d lay everything aside and go at once to Hertfordshire, wherever that was – nought but a day’s journey, perhaps just half a day – and tell Mrs Hervey that she had to come to Hounslow; but he didn’t. He just said he needed a while to recollect things, and then later he sent word by express to Hounslow, and then word had come back express towards the end of next morning.

‘And tha knows, Wilkesie, Colonel ’Ervey said “good man” when ’e read it—’

‘Read what?’

Johnson remembered that he’d not explained but merely thought it (the hour was late, and there’d been several more unexpired portions than usual). ‘T’letter, from t’adjutant, Mr Malet – ’e’s a good man, Mr Malet – so good they’ve made ’im a lord – well, ’e’d arranged a billet for us. Well, ’e didn’t exactly say “billet”; ’e said “appropriate quarters”. And then, I suppose, once Mrs ’Ervey’s finished doing ’er social obligations in ’Ertfordshire, Colonel ’Ervey’ll take the ’ouse that Lord ’Olderness’d ’ad, and she’ll be t’colonel’s lady – as’s only proper.’

He liked the idea they were going to be staying at an inn, though; and a right good one at that – the Berkeley Arms near the heath and Cranford Park. It wasn’t a post-house, so it’d be nice and quiet, and …

‘We are ready, Corporal. Would you inform the colonel, if you please.’

Johnson woke, for an instant taken aback, for an officer he’d never before seen had just ‘if-you-pleased’ him, while the serjeant in charge of the fourgon was keeping his distance, as if he’d no right to speak.

He braced himself. ‘I will, sir. Your name, sir, please?’

‘St Alban.’

Johnson generally supposed that when an officer’s name was that of a county of England, or one of its great places (and he knew about St Albans because that was where Mrs Hervey’s people lived near – and Alban was just Albans without an ‘s’), the title ‘Lord’ was its likely prefix; and not wanting to let down the new lieutenant-colonel by any show of callowness in his groom (or deficiency occasioned by his orphaned upbringing in distant Yorkshire), replied, ‘Thank you, Cornet St Alban, m’lord.’

Cornet St Alban made no reply (there would be time – and more appropriate opportunity – to correct the mistake), which to Johnson signalled that his surmise had been correct. With much satisfaction, therefore, Johnson turned to the porters to thank them for their exertions – not least to the bleary-eyed Wilkes, who had stayed long in the buttery after the new lance-corporal of dragoons had quit the celebratory ‘ullage’ and retired to his cot in the attics – and went to find the smoking-room waiter to relay the noble cornet’s message to the Sixth’s new commanding officer.