Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) (27 page)

And so when the regimental chariot drew up just as the bells of St Martin’s church were carrying the hour along Pall Mall, he was ready to return alone to Hounslow to put in hand the arrangements for his expedition to the country of Boadicea, whose deeds had thrilled him as an ink-fingered boy at Shrewsbury – difficult as it now was to imagine the blood of the Iceni flowing in the veins of the North-folk. And well it were so: for with the whole of the yeomanry disbanded the length and breadth of East Anglia, none to call on from Suffolk or Cambridge, nor even Lincolnshire (more regulars stationed in Gibraltar than in all of those counties put together), what a perilous state of affairs Canning’s government had bequeathed the duke with their retrenchment. ‘When you are returned you are to come and speak with me about all that you find’, Lord Hill had said. And it was a fine thing to have the confidence of the commander-in-chief so, and a compliment that he should have been singled out for the most perplexing of the reconnaissances. In so short a time, though, might he even begin to make sense of what Nelson’s county needed? Better not to ponder on the responsibility too greatly.

Besides, all this was nothing compared with the immediate exigencies of the regiment (as well as his own). Nothing could happen in respect of Collins during his absence, for without a major at regimental duty, he could not anyway delegate his full powers of command. The delay in taking statements of evidence, all of it on oath, would be helpful; he expected to return before the ink was dry. And in that time, as he’d expressed to Malet, cooler counsels might prevail with Kennett. That said, he must at least consider the worst case, and therefore what more direct action he might take. It was the very devil, and he knew of no precedent to guide him. As for the minutiae of command, which in aggregate made the difference between a good and an indifferent regiment, all he could do was give general orders and directives, then trust to the good sense of Malet, Mr Rennie and such others of the Sixth as were to exercise their executive authority in his absence. It need not concern him overmuch. It was the deucedest thing, though, to be detached from command within a fortnight of assuming it – even allowing that his assignment was of the utmost importance to the King’s peace. He must simply make of it what he could. After all, he would at long last see Peto, and if there were ever a man to talk with about the vicissitudes of command it was he.

Despise Bonaparte as he did, Hervey had always embraced the Great Disturber’s caution to his generals – ‘Ask of me anything but time’. The whole of the day after his meeting with Lord Hill he spent at office – from dawn until late in the evening – while arrangements were made for the journey. Much of what he attended to was in its way routine, but things would be so much more to his liking thereby on return. And he was determined to leave on Saturday morning as soon as the sun was up.

Matters at office proceeded smoothly save in one respect: Fairbrother was not inclined to accompany him, and resisted all attempts to be persuaded otherwise. He claimed incipient malady, pressing affairs of business, undertakings given to General Gifford, an aversion to ‘tractless paths of boundless void’ (as he understood Norfolk to be at this time), and a desire to visit with several acquaintances for reasons varied and unrelenting – though he conceded that in a month or so if Hervey’s duties detained him in the north he would be glad to come to his assistance.

And indeed, after Hervey’s initial disappointment – dismay – at not having the company of one with whom he might converse freely and whose opinion he valued so highly, he saw that in truth Fairbrother might be more of help to him where he lay than in Nelson’s county. He therefore put a number of affairs of his own into the hands of his friend (how apt was Lord Hill’s appellation
fidus Achates
– the faithful Trojan, companion of Aeneas, who was the favourite of Apollo), and urged him also, when his particular business had been completed, and his visits made and his incipient malady overcome, to travel to Wiltshire to see his people – a
voerloper
as the Cape Dutch had it, telling all that he could in anticipation of the eventual, keenly looked-to return of the ever-absent son, brother, and father.

But although he, Hervey, was – and always had been – content enough with his own company, the mission on which he was to embark seemed to him to demand some interlocutor of sorts. There was a deal of evidence to be gathered and ‘rendered in writing’, there would be supplementary particulars to follow up once the day’s collecting had been assessed; and the sheer size of the county … He would need the properties of St Anthony of Padua to be in two places at once.

And he allowed himself a smile unexpectedly, such that Malet remarked on it and asked if all was well.

‘Not St Anthony,’ he replied, ‘but St Alban.’

‘Colonel, I would share your amusement if you would share your joke.’

‘I shan’t try your devotion, Malet; I was merely amused by the process by which I’d arrived at the answer.’

‘The answer to …?’

‘Who shall accompany me. I need an adjutant, and since I cannot spare you – since it is you who will be exercising command for me – I must choose another. St Alban has the capability, and very possibly too a useful standing with the families of the county.’

And so St Alban was duly warned for duty.

The Horse Guards’ arrangements were generous, providing for the hire of a hack post chaise, but Hervey had decided to post as well with the regimental chariot and Corporal Wakefield, with Johnson and another, and the two vehicles proceeding in convoy. Malet argued that it would be prudent to have Serjeant Acton accompany them, but Hervey countered that it was hardly a hazardous assignment and he did not want an
entourage
– just a second dragoon for the hack chaise to ride postilion, a man capable with harness and the like. All was therefore settled for the little party to leave the Berkeley Arms at nine o’clock the following morning, and at ten o’clock that evening Hervey at last left the barracks as confident as might be that he had left no ‘i’ undotted and no ‘t’ uncrossed, and that any unforeseen dots and crosses would be placed precisely where he would wish them.

‘Only keep Collins from a court martial until my return,’ he said to Malet on leaving. ‘The regimental inquiry can be spun out a month, and then there will be legal opinion to seek, which ought well to take another month, especially if paid for by the day. And on no account are he and Kennett to do duty at one and the same time. Indeed it would be best for Kennett to be kept at some duty agreeable to him in London, or wherever can be.’

‘You may be sure I will arrange it, Colonel.’

‘And if there should be anything untoward, I have written to Lord George with an explanation of my absence and the circumstances, so he would be of assistance.’

Malet nodded, though he felt equally sure that he would not need to call on the assistance of the colonel.

‘Well, I bid you good night then. Don’t trouble to come out to see me off tomorrow. You have your parade and all.’

‘I do, Colonel. I wish you a calm sea and a prosperous voyage – and a speedy return.’

‘Aptly put for so salty a county,’ said Hervey, with at last an easy smile; ‘but I may assure you that the roughest of seas will not detain me there.’

By the time he returned to the Berkeley Arms the fires and the candles had burned low. Johnson had put a plate of cold chicken on the writing table, and a bottle of port, and Hervey sat down in front of the embers to eat his supper – with more duty than appetite, but pleased at last to be relieved of the work of the day.

But though content that at office he had done everything that duty and devotion could possibly expect of him, he could not be content that he had treated with Kat entirely honourably – a letter only, and not a very intimate one at that. Could he not have spared but one hour last evening? Except that it would not have been but an hour – though that was a matter for him, not the force of destiny, possessed as he was of free will. And he could hardly claim fear of prolongation as just excuse. Rightly, he could not claim fear of anything at any time, as a soldier, and as a gentleman. And for a moment or two he contemplated – wildly – riding now to Holland Park to put right his ill judgement (or whatever it was), only recalling himself to his senses on imagining the mortification that his knocking on the door in the early hours would occasion (Kat’s establishment were the very models of loyalty and discretion, but there was no cause to try them so sorely). Instead, eased by the port and sobered by tomorrow’s call of duty, he took to his bed.

They were away sharp at nine. It was his birthday, which he had only lately remembered, rather after the fashion of most years. Indeed, the last time he had marked the day had been in the icy fastness of Fort York, in Canada – a dozen years before, when Henrietta had got up a party, though heavy with child (or had it been when Georgiana was born, for he had been elsewhere on patrol in the weeks before her time was come?). Well, it mattered not; not in the least. There would never again be such a marking, he felt sure. Nor was it worth his regrets. This day was as yesterday or tomorrow; no more, no less. And there was business to be about.

They posted by way of Harrow to the Great North Road, changing again at Hatfield and Stevenage (passing close to Walden Park, where he supposed Kezia must be in residence yet – and with little more sentiment than mere recognition); and all the time keeping a steady trot, and with never more than two horses, in tandem, so that he was able to talk to St Alban without effort, while Johnson and Private Gilbee, St Alban’s groom, enjoyed the comfort of the hack chaise, apprising him of the task in hand, how he intended going about it, and what difficulties might arise, until as the light was beginning to fail they reached Royston, and there spent the night at the Old Bull. And then, on the second day’s posting, when St Alban had taken his place in the hack, and Johnson and Gilbee theirs in the respective baskets, he had been able to browse Pigot’s
Directory of Norfolk
,
Leicestershire and Rutland
, make a beginning on Stacy’s new
A Norfolk Tour
and study the maps which the Horse Guards had with commendable foresight procured for him – Bryant’s newly issued sheets, ‘Respectfully Dedicated to the Nobility, Clergy and Gentry of the County’, 12¼ inches to 10 miles, from an ‘actual survey’ very lately, consisting in the most admirable and well-defined detail (though the Board of Ordnance had completed their own survey, their maps were still in draft). All in all, he trusted, Pigot, Stacy and Bryant presented him with a very fair portrait of the county.

The snow lay deep in the fields yet, but the ways were tolerable going, even after leaving the Great North Road, for the turnpike companies had set parties to work with the shovel, not wanting undue loss of revenue, and there had been no fresh falls for two days. When they resumed their journey, therefore, on the Newmarket turnpike, even though the country became more undulating their steady pace of the first day continued unchecked. They changed horses at Sawston and then Newmarket Heath, and again at Mildenhall, where they ate a fine venison stew, and then at Thetford before the lonely run to Attleborough, changing there for the last stretch to Wymondham, where with creaking leather and stiffening joints they at last pulled up for the night at the White Hart. Fresh horses were got at once for the hack chaise, however, for Hervey wanted St Alban to go that evening to Kimberley Park nearby (the moon was full and one of the White Hart’s postboys knew the road well) to see if the lord lieutenant were at home, for he lived also beyond Norwich, and if he would receive him next day; otherwise he would drive to Norwich in the morning to see the Royals, the 1st Dragoons, the only regular troops in the county, save Marines, and thence to his seat at Witton. St Alban had returned by eight, however, with the news that the lord lieutenant would be glad to receive him at Kimberley at ten in the morning.

Kimberley Park, three miles north-west of Wymondham (which only now did Hervey learn was pronounced with a short ‘y’, and the ‘m’ and ‘o’ entirely silent), was the ancient seat of the Wodehouses, Tories among broad acres of Whigs. The hall was set amid some of the greatest oaks he could ever recollect, with a fine stream and lakes, and a park whose nobility – thanks to ‘Capability’ Brown – was evident even under its snowy blanket, with pleasances he would have wished to explore had it not been for duty. The carriages came to a halt on the hour, and servants were at once on hand to attend them.

The Honourable John Wodehouse, Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk, Custos Rotulorum, Vice Admiral of the County and Lord Steward of Norwich Cathedral, received them in the library before a good fire. He was a big, active-looking man of about sixty, with grey hair brushed forward covering his temples, kind eyes and a general expression of amiability. He began by saying that he feared Hervey’s journey was ‘somewhat otiose’, for on receiving a letter from the Home department last month he had at once instigated measures for the re-raising of the yeomanry: ‘I have only yesterday written to Mr Peel informing him that I have placed matters in hand to re-form four troops each with a strength of – to begin with – fifty officers and yeomen, and that these will be accoutred by subventions from the Militia vote and armed with the sabres which were placed in Norwich castle on their disbandment, requesting also the necessary letters patent and the firelocks, powder and shot, and instructions as to pay.’