Hervey was relieved his remark seemed not to have caused his erstwhile idol to be abashed. ‘It’s just something I remember from those hours in the classroom at Shrewsbury,’ he said lightly. ‘Nisus and Euryalus were friends, the closest of friends – David and Jonathan, Pylades and Orestes.’
Locke nodded his understanding.
‘Together one night they stole into the enemy’s camp and killed many as they lay sleeping. Euryalus was wounded, and Nisus rushed to save him, but both were slain.’
Locke made no reply for the moment, and then sighed. ‘Well, had our Euryalus got into trouble that night, Nisus would not have been able to go to her aid: she could not afford to lose contact with the French. But I for one, in ordinary, own that the measure of a man is his steadfastness towards his comrades in battle.’
Hervey seemed uneasy.
‘ “Greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for his friend,” it says somewhere in the Bible does it not?’ said Locke by way of explanation.
‘Yes, in St John. For his friends, indeed.’
‘But I’m very much taken with the Trojan legend. I did not know it.’
Hervey smiled again, but his expression was still a little pained. ‘Would all Euryalus’s crew have acknowledged that Nisus’s captain did the right and proper thing – leaving her to her fate in order to stay on the tail of the French?’
Locke gave a sort of half-shrug. ‘The usages of battle are well understood in the Royal Navy. Why do you ask?’
Hervey asked because of Serjeant Strange, and for an instant he was tempted to tell Locke of it. But that was not his way, nor was this the time. ‘Oh, nothing – merely that I wished to have some notion of the way things are in the wooden world.’
‘They are different in the detail, for sure, but in the spirit I reckon not,’ said Locke. ‘You must learn of it. Mr Belben would, as a rule, take you round the ship, but I shall do it – to explain things with a landsman’s eye.’
‘Thank you,’ said Hervey eagerly, flattered by
Locke’s attention as if still the schoolboy.
‘But now you must excuse me: there’s the watch to set, and we shall have many hours to talk during the passage to the Indies. And I tell you, Matthew Hervey, I am right glad to have the opportunity. It is curious, is it not, how a couple of shared years at the same school make the intervening ones as nothing?’
Hervey smiled, eased by Locke’s frankness and warmed by his congeniality. How fortunate he was, always, with his comrades-in-arms.
He left the quarterdeck, returning the sentry’s salute with a touch to the brim of his hat, and strode purposefully to Jessye’s stall where he hoped to find practical business to occupy his mind for an hour or so before he turned in. But Jessye was lying down, eyes closed and breathing soundly. He crossed the deck and clambered onto one of the guns to sweep the quayside with his telescope in the dying light. But there was no sign of Collins. He snapped the glass closed, sighing, and stepped down. It was early still, but he was not yet at ease enough to go to the wardroom so instead he went to his cabin. There he undressed, threw some water over his face, cleaned his teeth with the expensive powder bought in Paris, and climbed into his swinging cot (with less difficulty than hitherto, he was relieved to find). He read the psalm appointed for the evening and then closed his eyes, leaving the safety light burning. He lay listening to the ship’s night-noises – the lapping of the waves, made audible by the open gunports either side of his cabin, and the creaking of timbers as the ship rolled ever so gently in the swell. The motion was seductive, and the manly burgundy invigorating. If only Henrietta had been beside him.
III
FIGHTING INSTRUCTIONS
Off Ushant, in the afternoon, two days out
A fresh north-easterly was blowing down the Channel. Nisus was running with all but her royals set, and the wind, the groaning canvas and the creaking of timbers in every quarter of the ship tried the intimacy of conversation. Next to nothing now could be made of Ushant and the coast of Brittany. The heavy cloud made it difficult, at this distance, to tell even where the sky ended and the sea began, though a telescope might yet pick out the great lighthouse of L’Ouessant. The sea was becoming a forbidding grey. The waves were long, with white horses running, and the spray was persuading Hervey that his cloak would have been prudent. Great shearwaters skimmed the troughs with rapid wing-beats, rearing up over the wavetops in long glides and plunging from time to time in search of a finny bite. Soon they too would be leaving to winter in the warmer islands of the South Atlantic, not many miles distant from where Bonaparte himself would pass both his winters and summers. Hervey shivered, if only slightly.
Captain Peto had spoken hardly at all since leaving Le Havre. His lieutenants were, it seemed, men in whom he had every confidence, and his sailing-master had been long years with Nisus. He spent much of the day in his cabin surrounded by sheaves of Admiralty papers and charts, visited only by his clerk, content for the most part to observe the set of the sails from a quarter gallery. Once or twice in the morning, and then again in the afternoon and evening, he visited the quarterdeck for his solitary promenade, when, as was the custom, the whole of the windward half was instantly cleared for him. No-one ventured to address him without leave, and although this ritual aloofness seemed perfectly regular to the ship’s officers, Hervey felt keenly the loss of the earlier intimacy. Now, though, he and Locke had the quarterdeck to themselves, with only the officer of the watch, the quartermaster and two mates by the wheel.
‘I shouldn’t brood on matters were I you.’
‘Do you take your own counsel in this?’ smiled Hervey by return.
‘No,’ he laughed, ‘but that need not stop me. Is advice so great an insult to judgement?’
‘No, indeed it is not!’ laughed Hervey, thankful for Locke’s forthright cheer.
‘Then tell me more of your lady: that is your trial, is it not?’
How queer, thought Hervey, that he should feel disposed to speaking his heart to Locke. He knew him now only two days. And at Shrewsbury their situations had been so different they could scarcely be called old friends. But common years could root trust deeper than first supposed, and he was content enough to speak with a man who shared something singular. And besides, they had gone through the breach almost shoulder to shoulder. The gendarmerie was hardly Badajoz, but at the point of any assault the scale of the affair was merely theoretical. ‘Well, in truth, I should not have let my hopes rise so high,’ he admitted. ‘The odds against seeing her before we set sail could scarcely have been longer. I believe the captain might have been offended that I asked for one more day.’
Locke smiled. ‘Well, the captain isn’t known for his patience where women are concerned. But I shouldn’t let it trouble you.’
Hervey sighed. How he wished, now, that he had not thought of the interception stratagem, that he had trusted instead to the arrangements in Paris, where Henrietta might be told of things with due propriety, instead of harum-scarum along the coast with Corporal Collins. ‘No, I have fudged things. And I thought myself so clever!’
‘Tell me of her, in any case,’ pressed Locke.
‘I told you of her family,’ he began resolutely; ‘or, rather, of her guardian – for her people died when she was scarcely more than an infant. We have known each other since the day she came to Wiltshire, to Longleat. We shared a schoolroom together.’
‘Not solely the lady of fashion, then? Not someone courted to be an adornment to a man’s ambition?’
Hervey glanced cautiously at him. ‘She is not someone who owns to nothing but fashion. She has read widely and has many accomplishments.’
‘And she’s pretty, I’m sure.’ His tone suggested he was leading to some general proposition.
‘She is very pretty. I do not have her likeness with me, else I would show you.’
‘An officer should take care only to fall in love with a woman of beauty and a good fortune, for these are necessary
in the advancement of his career, are they not?’
Hervey frowned as much as Locke smiled. ‘That is very ill! It is bad enough hearing the same from Captain Peto!’
Locke smiled even more broadly: ‘Hervey, these are new and opportune times, but the day a pair of pretty eyes and connection in society do not count in the advancement of a husband will be very long in its coming. Our system is different, but I have observed that officers who rise to the highest ranks always marry the right wife!’
Hervey laughed too, but overcame the temptation to tell him he was already beholden to Henrietta’s connections – for although it seemed now a trifling affair in Ireland that required her influence, it would be wrong to underestimate her capacity to persuade. Heavens, but how he wished she were with him! Or had seen her for a few moments before sailing, even. Had it been unreasonable to ask Peto for one more day? The captain’s reaction had said as much.
‘Will you give me a straight answer if I ask a straight question?’ said Locke, breaking the vocal silence.
‘That or none at all,’ replied Hervey briskly, pushing as far away as he could the unpleasant realization of his failure, and wiping another bit of spray from his eyes.
‘Are you entirely disposed to this enterprise?’
Hervey started. It seemed a damned impudent question. ‘What the—’
Locke grasped his quarrel at once: ‘I mean the India enterprise! I’ve no cause to question your matrimonial affairs, I assure you!’ and he clapped a hand on his shoulder.
Hervey sighed to himself. Here was what came of speaking about matters which properly remained interior. ‘It’s the first time I have been detached from my regiment,’ he conceded. ‘I had not imagined I would feel quite so . . . well, at sea.’
Locke drew his head back, and then both began laughing at the absurdity of the unintended play on words.
Private Johnson had been unable to perfect any better means of communicating with the quarterdeck than by standing at the foot of the companion ladder to await the passing of an officer or mate. He had been deterred from the obvious and direct method – ascending the ladder – on their first morning at sea, by the Marines sentry. The exchange had been forthright, soldierly and ultimately bruising, leaving Johnson with little taste for the ways of the wooden world, but nevertheless a healthy respect for its discipline. This morning he had prevailed upon a midshipman who looked not half his age to convey the message that Jessye was ready for her tonic – which he himself would have mixed and administered, except that, with no locker space, the bottles were kept in Hervey’s cabin.
Hervey’s mare was on the mend. She was already on that road in Paris, but the sea air was doing her a great power of good. That and the tonic – two pinches sulphate of iron, a half of powdered nux vomica, and two each of gentian and aniseed. It had been the regimental standby since Major Edmonds had been a cornet. Hervey sprinkled the mixture into some molasses syrup and then rolled half a dozen barleyfavours from the sticky paste. Much ado, they agreed, but the surest way to have her ingest.
‘Tha thinks she’ll be all right, Cap’n ’Ervey?’
‘Heavens, yes: I don’t think we need continue this tonic beyond a day or so more.’
‘I meant will she be all right cooped up in ’ere for six months?’
A month’s box-rest was the longest Hervey remembered seeing any horse confined. ‘There’s no reason why she can’t stay the course, as long as the ship remains afloat. If the sea gets too high we can brace her into a standing stall. The real worry is the wasting of that muscle,’ he sighed, indicating the rounded quarters, testament to many hours of careful schooling. ‘It will take all of six months to get it back. But she’ll have fewer ailments this winter – of that I’ll be bound. No damned stuffy stable, with every cough of a morning becoming three by evening.’
‘Isn’t she gooin’ to go barmy, though?’ Johnson had hung up a turnip on a length of string so that she might have something to amuse herself by, but she hardly paid it notice, so taken was she by the constant activity about the deck.
‘Well, there’s plenty to keep her interest, and she’s not having any corn to hot her up. And she has space enough to stretch.’
Johnson was not entirely convinced.
But then neither was Hervey. ‘If I spend an hour each day with her, brushing and strapping, and you likewise, then we might keep the muscle hard. Come on, I’ll lend you a hand to skip her out.’
They were picking out her bed as the captain’s steward came up. Johnson had never found the job easier, for droppings and fouled straw went straight through the gunport, giving the following gulls the brief promise of a feast.
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said Flowerdew, knuckling his forehead, ‘captain’s compliments, and would you join him for dinner, at six, sir?’
‘Who’d be a bloody fart-catcher afloat!’ said Johnson when Flowerdew had gone.
‘Private Johnson, I never cease to be amazed by how ill you consider anyone in service. And yet you show no appetite for going back into the ranks of a troop yourself.’ Hervey was more puzzled than offended.
‘I’m ’appy to be of service, but not all this “by your leave” palaver. Like a lot of Susans they are! An’ tha knows I’m not frit by gooin’ back in t’ranks: it’s just that there’s too much frigging abaht – that’s what!’
One of the hands nearby was laughing.
‘For heaven’s sake, man, mind your language!’ appealed Hervey.
Johnson looked astonished. ‘Language? Tha should be on t’mess deck! It’s—’
‘Yes, very well – let’s not have all of it,’ Hervey protested, somehow wishing he had saved himself the trouble. ‘You know the captain’s strictures on profane or low words on deck.’
‘Suit thisen, Captain ’Ervey.’
Truly, it was not difficult at times to see why Johnson had been passed on from two lieutenants within the space of a couple of months. And why he had been the bane of the corporals in his troop. Yet it was his very irrepressibility that recommended him – that and the undisputed fact that he was a deuced fine groom. And then there was his resourcefulness. Never would Hervey forget that Waterloo dawn, rain still beating down, every dragoon skulking under his cloak until all but kicked from under by the picket. But not Johnson. He had spent the opportune hours progging, and managed to wake Hervey with a canteen of hot tea – the only officer in the Sixth, besides the major, to have that privilege. Sheffield vowels and brusquerie was hardly a great price to pay, whatever others thought.
Hervey dressed for the captain’s table with particular care that afternoon. He put on white cotton breeches, and court shoes instead of hussar boots, hoping, however, that the buckles might not look so obviously like the pinchbeck they were. He put on one of his fine lawn shirts, turning up the collar so that the points would project. Then he took out his best coat, finer cloth than his service tunic. How diligently Johnson had wrapped the buttons in paper to preserve their shine, he noted. Ten, top-to-bottom on each side of the bib front – he took care not to touch any as he hitchedto the tunic hooks. He fastened the belt and girdle, smiling again at how he and his fellow cornets had complained of the new pattern with its red hoops – the colour of the legionary infantry – which ‘vulgarized’ them. That and the new crossbelt with its deuced red stripe. And all because a new colonel – long gone – had wanted to be able to see instantly which were his officers. How trifling had been their concerns.
And so they both sat, with Peto likewise more formally attired than hitherto, sipping the presents with which Hervey had joined Nisus – all blue coats, gold lace and white breeches. The wind had fallen away in the early afternoon, and they were running very smoothly now through the water, the flatware on the table making not the slightest noise. At first, conversation was merely polite – the weather, Jessye’s sea legs, Hervey’s engagement with the language of the Mughal court. Not a word of the gendarmerie, however. A paltry affair, unworthy of mention? He sim
ply could not judge.
Quite suddenly, Peto changed his tack. ‘Captain Hervey,’ he began, ‘you may think me overly curious, but I have observed you closely since our first meeting. This business of yours in India: it seems hardly patrician sport.’
Hervey’s frown said he was not sure of Peto’s meaning.
‘Officers who are well connected have little appetite for the Indies. They would rather do their soldiering in Brighton, would they not?’ replied Peto, with a note of the accusatory.
Hervey laughed. ‘I have no blue blood, sir – well, none to speak of, that is. Why did you presume otherwise?’
Peto looked surprised. ‘The Duke of Wellington, by my understanding, chooses his ADCs from the nobility. You are a Hervey, are you not?’
‘So distantly am I related that the Earl of Bristol would not know of my being on this earth!’ he smiled. ‘Indeed, those Herveys pronounce the name as if it were spelled with an a.’
‘Oh.’ Peto now seemed disappointed. ‘So neither are you descended, in any direct sense, from Admiral Augustus Hervey?’
‘I am afraid that I am not descended in any sense whatever,’ he smiled again.
‘Then by what influence did you become aide-decamp to so great a man?’
‘You have a decidedly low opinion of the way the army conducts its business, Captain Peto!’
‘I know what I know, sir!’
‘Well, the duke chose me – that is all there is of it.’ He hoped that it would put off further interrogation on the subject, but it did not.
‘Fiddlesticks, Captain Hervey! There’s a great deal more of it – of that I’ll be bound. I have observed an officer with a true instinct for his profession – if as such it may be dignified – and one with an uncommon eye for a horse in respects other than its bloodlines. I’m pleased the duke recognizes your aptitude, but I’m sceptical.’
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