Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey) (6 page)

‘Well I am sorry for it, for I cannot abide the uncertainty that will hang on the new order.’

‘Indeed, Colonel. The new King would have us all dressed in red.’

‘What? How so?’

‘I have it on the best authority that he is violently of the opinion that only sailors should wear blue.’

Hervey frowned. The Duke of Clarence had of late been Lord High Admiral, an honorific that he’d taken with excessive zeal. ‘I fancy he might moderate his opinion once the estimates go before parliament.’ (He most certainly hoped so, for he had just laid out a small fortune with the regiment’s tailor: His Majesty clothed his soldiers at the public expense, but not his officers.) ‘Incidentally, I was sorry that old Gieve had shut up shop. He made my cornet’s uniform. But your assurances of Herr Meyer I thought were well found.’

‘I believe that Lord George had little discretion in the matter of Herr Meyer: the King was most insistent that his tailor was without peer. I believe His Majesty would have taken the sealed patterns there himself that very afternoon had he not been indisposed.’

‘Brummell’s tailor too, I think.’

Malet smiled. ‘Indeed, Colonel. The cornets were most reassured on hearing that.’

The coal burned low in the grate as the agreeable march through the agenda of command was reaching its end – save for the affair of Tyrwhitt’s two wives – and Malet rose to pick up the scuttle.

‘Not too great a blaze,’ said Hervey. ‘I don’t intend returning after mess. I’ll see the regimental staff in due course – Friday, let us say.’

‘Very good, Colonel.’

‘Now, Malet, your own affairs: I should deem it to be the greatest benefit were you to continue in your present position, though I know there will be a vacancy soon and you would wish for a troop.’ Hervey had not intended allowing his adjutant to question that supposition, but he paused momentarily, and Malet was eager to correct him.

‘I would wish for a troop, Colonel, only were the regiment more actively engaged; I am very content where I am.’

Hervey inclined his head, a little show of gratification. ‘But be that as it may, I would not have you forfeit promotion. By my reckoning – and yours, if I have understood matters rightly – F Troop will be but a statement of intention for six months at least, with neither the men nor horses. We may as well have its captain in the orderly room. I’ve spoken of it with the Horse Guards, and they have no objection. The rank is yours for the payment of the regulation price.’

Malet was temporarily overcome. Officers of the artillery and the engineers were promoted without purchase on seniority and merit, inordinately slowly. Those of the cavalry and the infantry, with rare exceptions, purchased theirs – and, though increasingly regulated (or so the Horse Guards thought), at sometimes astonishing prices through private treaty, and with equally astonishing celerity. Only on the death of an officer on active service did a vacancy pass without purchase to the next senior.

‘I am in your debt, Colonel.’

Which was, in some part indeed, Hervey’s intention.

But he waved it aside. ‘I think we might repair to mess now?’

Malet looked at his watch. It was past one o’clock. ‘I think you’ll find all the officers in barracks will have assembled, Colonel.’

‘I rather thought they might have,’ said Hervey, with a wry smile. ‘And Monsieur Carême brought from Paris to cook?’

Malet’s smile reflected Hervey’s. ‘So you’ve heard of our triumph.’

Hervey frowned: what triumph was this?

‘Monsieur Carême.’

‘Monsieur Carême what?’

‘Ah, I thought you must have heard. Lord Hol’ness had him come for the King’s visit.’

Hervey made no reply but to shake his head in despair at his ill-judged joke. Who would have thought it – Carême brought from Paris (he
supposed
from Paris) to make a culinary impression? But Lieutenant-Colonel, and now Major-General, the Lord Holderness evidently reckoned that in want of a bloody war and a sickly season to make vacancies for promotion, rich sauces and
pâtisserie beurre
would do instead. He could only congratulate the noble earl on knowing the King’s mind – and stomach. For himself, he would have to trust to far plainer fare.

‘Hervey, I am passing warm for the first time since leaving London – if indeed I were truly warm there. I cannot fathom why your countrymen ever return hither from sunny climes.’

Hervey’s ‘particular friend’ stood with his back to the blazing apple-wood, to which he turned from time to time to reassure himself that its hearty crackling was but noise. Edward Fairbrother’s blood was thin, of that there was no doubt, like any of his race; or rather, that half which had come originally from the tropics, Africa indeed – and none too willingly. Of his father’s side Hervey knew little but that he was a planter of some wealth and refinement, though the planter families of Jamaica, he supposed, were so long established that their blood too must have thinned a good deal. But then, in the colds they’d known – he and Hervey – in the mountains of Bulgaria of late, his friend had never once remarked on it; nor had it dulled his instinct with sword and pistol. He liked to play to the gallery rather, though only, it was true, when the gallery had but the single seat.

‘They return for the sport, I suppose,’ replied Hervey laconically, without looking up from the writing table.

The fire spat a sudden shower of sparks, making his friend turn sharply (he was not much acquainted with apple-wood). ‘Yet man is born into trouble – as the sparks. I suppose it must be so,’ he said, rubbing his left arm on some account.

‘Born
unto
trouble,’ said Hervey, pressing his seal into the wax on the folded sheet before him.

‘Did I not say that? “Yet man is born into trouble, as the sparks fly upwards.” Psalms – as I recall.’

Hervey smiled indulgently. ‘Job.’

‘You’re certain? Psalms, assuredly.’

‘“Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground; Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upwards.” Come, man; admit it.’

Fairbrother frowned. ‘What deuced ill luck. I hadn’t counted on your knowing chapter and verse, only on not being able with certainty to discount the Psalmist.’

‘Then you must try humbugging other than a son of the parsonage. Countless hours in church and chapel … though it’s many moons since I read a psalm a day.’ He said it almost regretfully, handing the letter to Corporal Johnson.

‘First thing in the morning, Colonel?’ asked his groom.

Hervey nodded. ‘And you may dismiss. Thank you for your exertions today. The arrangements have all been admirable.’

The ‘companion of the colonel’ took his leave cheerfully. The day had indeed gone well for him: he had even been saluted by a dragoon – before the man’s corporal had cuffed him for a nigmanog.

‘And thank you too,’ said Hervey to Fairbrother when the door was closed. ‘I am most awfully obliged.’

His good friend took another full measure of the rum cordial which was doing so much to supplement the work of the fire. Their quarters were commodious by any standards, even those of the United Service Club at which they’d lodged since returning from the Levant, but he’d not spared himself in making them equally comfortable. ‘Say nothing of it. I was fretful, however, at seeing you go alone this morning to your hallowing.’

Hervey frowned again. ‘You are becoming arch. As I told you, taking command is a matter of no ceremony in the Sixth. And today we kept the custom admirably. You would have found little to divert you, if at all.’

He got up from the writing desk, took a cup of the cordial for himself and settled into one of the fireside chairs. Fairbrother took the other as a parlour-maid came in with a tray and began laying the table.

She was a handsome girl, as Fairbrother would observe, and with a look of sufficient wit for Hervey suddenly to become circumspect: he had no desire for his remarks to be tattled back to the barracks. The weather would therefore have to occupy them for a few minutes – and news that was general enough to be of no remark. ‘Do you know the day – I mean, the Church’s day?’

‘I do not,’ replied Fairbrother, sounding intrigued.

‘The Conversion of St Paul. I recall a childhood rhyme: “If Paul’s day be fair and clear / There shall be a happy year / But if it be both wind and rain / Dear will be all kinds of grain.”’

‘It didn’t mention snow, I suppose?’

Hervey shook his head. ‘I don’t recall its saying anything of snow, though I’m sure there was always excess of it in Horningsham at this time.’

‘There were no such rhymes in Jamaica. The weather followed a very settled design.’

Hervey took a peaceful sip of cordial.

‘O for a beaker full of the warm South,’ tried Fairbrother.

‘What?’

Fairbrother merely raised his glass.

‘Strange the things one remembers,’ continued Hervey. ‘“Dear will be all kinds of grain.” What’s the end of burning barns in winter – and the worst winter in memory, it’s said? A bad business, a bad business. I wonder what Worsley’s making of it.’

‘I fancy he’ll be surprised to see you tomorrow – so soon on taking command.’

Hervey shook his head. ‘I’d wager he’d expect me to come sooner than later. What else should detain me when there’s a troop on active duty? But it won’t trouble Worsley either way. A most even-tempered man. Besides, Malet’s sending him word at first light tomorrow. It would have gone this evening, except there was no reason to hazard a man in this weather and the moon so new.’

‘Quite.’

‘By the bye, did I say he was now wed?’

‘No.’

‘A marriage of some happiness to Yorkshire, evidently – neighbouring estates. Mrs Worsley is installed at Richmond now. Richmond here, that is. I look forward to receiving them as soon as he’s returned.’

They had strayed from the weather, but not into perilous country. Fairbrother smiled to himself. It was the first he’d heard his friend speak of entertaining, except that he knew he favoured Worsley highly – a quieter, more bookish sort than the usual cavalry captain, but one who’d shown his mettle in the affair at Waltham Abbey a year or so ago, when it looked as if Hervey and his party might all be blown to kingdom-come in the powder mills … And yet, to speak of new marriage must be bitter-sweet, given his friend’s own standing in that regard. He supposed himself a poor substitute for the person who by rights ought to be sitting with Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey on this of all days – the culminating day of his good friend’s – his only true friend’s – service. All that had gone before, to which he, Fairbrother, had come late (but not, he trusted, too late), was but past preparation. Command of a King’s regiment – and not just any regiment, but that in which his friend had been first commissioned twenty years before as an ink-fingered boy from school; and not a command bought like some piece of acreage from a dealer in these things (or for that matter like men at a slave market), but an appointment without purchase, in recognition of long merit, at the instigation of the commander-in-chief himself –
this
was the cornet’s dream, not the proverbial field marshal’s baton in his knapsack. And so where were the admiring eyes, the gently caressing hands, the bosom promising more intimate contentment? How could it be that with this new half-colonel of cavalry sat not his wife but a man born the wrong side of a plantation blanket?

But how
well
did his friend conceal his disappointment: his composure did him the greatest credit. It was not for him, Fairbrother, to dampen now the spirits of this man apart, on this of all evenings. On the contrary …

The parlour-maid was gone; he could at last engage his friend in careless banter. ‘So, you are a man now set in authority, having under you soldiers, and you say unto one, “Go”, and he goeth; and to another, “Come”, and he cometh; and to your servant, “Do this”, and he doeth it.’

Hervey frowned good-humouredly. ‘You are determined to quote Scripture at me, even if you quote it ill. I am a man set
under
authority.’

‘I do not quote it
so
ill. What I would know is to whom you have said “Come” and to whom “Go”.’

Hervey smiled. ‘I had perfectly intended telling you, though in truth I’ve made no decisions – or rather, I’ve not made them known. The most pressing will be the new sar’nt-major. Rennie’s to have a commission elsewhere, by Hol’ness’s arranging.’

Fairbrother looked at him almost askant. ‘Armstrong – surely?’

‘Armstrong – of course. But I must tell you frankly that having supposed – hoped – for so many years that Armstrong would one day be my sar’nt-major, I am now of a mind to test that supposition.’

‘
Test?
’ Fairbrother was frowning as if in pain, but suddenly seemed to recollect himself. ‘You don’t mind my speaking in this way, do you? It really is not my business.’

‘On the contrary. I value your opinion greatly, as well you should know. It’s not given to every man in command to have one with whom he might speak indifferently …
Respica te, hominem te memento
.’
^fn1

Fairbrother inclined his head. ‘I knew you not to be a sentimental man, as the saying goes – not decidedly, at least – but I’m surprised by your having doubts in Armstrong. What more might you wish of a man than he has proved these past two years alone? How do you intend testing your supposition?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Hervey confidently. ‘A little more time, perhaps.’

‘That is reasonable, except that once Mr Rennie’s commission becomes known, will not any delay in appointing Armstrong be an affront?’

‘Armstrong will perfectly understand: the exigencies of the service … But your point is well made. Indeed I should not wish to delay for one moment more than I thought entirely necessary the just deserts of such a man. We have served together since my earliest days in Spain.’

‘I know it, of course. I’ll not press you on who might have the better claim.’

‘I’m perfectly happy to tell you. Indeed you might tell me.’

‘Collins?’

‘Naturally. And there’s a fine man with C Troop, with whom I never served – Robertson.’