A Regimental Affair

by Mallinson, Allan

  He put down his pen, and began to read over his letter to Henrietta.

  My darling wife,

  Yours to me of the day after our parting is now at hand, my having returned only this very morning from a tour of the country. Your sentiments I return in all their measure. I am so very content, and principally because you declare yourself to be so. I, too, pray that we may be reunited soon, and I am so very glad that you say you will come here as soon as I send word. Fort Detroit, and the town of that name, is an agreeable settlement, and you would be comfortable there. The Americans are hospitable, if somewhat brusque in their manners, and my quarters are adequate. Or you might stay instead at Fort Malden on the Canadian side of the river, for there is a ferry by which our lines of communication run from Fort Brownstown, where the troop is quartered, and on to York. I am brought to Detroit, some twenty miles or so north of there, because the American general’s flag flies here. If you believe yourself to be strong enough for the journey, then the rear details may arrange an escort for you, for there is frequent traffic on account of the despatches &c. I am glad you have found a wet nurse with whom to leave our daughter, though the weather is warming so rapidly now that in another month I am sure it would be not unwise to have her brought too.

  I have seen a great many wild creatures here, whereas we saw none before. There is moose and elk, and quite easy to catch, since they tire easily in the snow, and can be driven into deep drifts where they stick fast. We do not shoot them since the noise would give away our presence to the Shawanese. I have seen fox and racoon, and, I think, porcupine, but our guides say they take to winter quarters, so perhaps it was something else. We have seen black bears, several times. We are not able to get near, for they take off surprisingly fast at our approach, but they stand much bigger than I imagined. And – at last – we have heard wolves, and so many of the dragoons are now content. Indeed, we hear wolves almost every night. Sometimes they are a very discordant noise indeed, when they all just seem to howl for no reason but to proclaim they are there, but from time to time a single, far distant wolf calling is a very melancholy sound indeed. I am sure you will love to see all that Nature displays here.

  In all respects we are well. Seton Canning and St Oswald are greatly enjoying their liberty, and it is very good for St Oswald especially to have this chance of long patrols of his own. Serjeant Armstrong awaits his news with surprising want of ease. I never saw him so agitated! If this duty continues as uneventfully, then I shall send him back to York for a few days. I should also tell you, by the way, that Gilbert seems made for this weather. He can trot with so high an action that snow as deep as his hocks hardly detains him. And at a hundred yards he is invisible!

  But the news I am least pleased with – and which you must, by now, have yourself heard – is that Joynson is gone back to England an invalid. Besides being sorry for him in his unhealth, I fear my letter, with its enclosure for General Rolt, will not have reached him before he left. Indeed, I cannot see how it possibly could. And so I am left now with no alternative but to request an interview with the general as soon as he is come back from Quebec, though when I shall be able to return to York I have no idea. I chide myself that I should have acted earlier – in England, indeed – but in truth I cannot see how before this affair of his at Niagara I had any evidence to go on that would stand scrutiny. What one thinks of as being of overwhelming import in the regiment suddenly sounds thin skillee indeed in a general’s headquarters. And even the Niagara business is not beyond refute. I do so regret, now, the courtesy of writing first to the major, but every bit of me as a soldier said I must. It is a very dreadful thing to have done, to complain of one’s commanding officer, and I can only suppose that I was trying not to compound my delinquency by submitting the complaint through the major. For the moment, therefore, I can do no more than submit my request for an interview with the general, and trust to God that he is a fair-minded man.

  And so, with these presents I must conclude, for there is a rider about to leave with despatches, and I do so wish you – and now our daughter – to have this expression of love and admiration, as well as assurances that it leaves me well and as content as I might be in the circumstances of our separation.

  Your ever loving husband,

  Matthew Hervey

  Brigadier-General Sam Power was a man whom Hervey knew at once to be just the sort of officer whose generalship he would enjoy. His family were farmers from the west of the territory, and he had enlisted in the Michigan Legionary Corps on its formation in 1805, serving first with the rifle and then with the cavalry company. In 1808, when the regular army was enlarged, he went to the new military academy at West Point in New York state, and was subsequently commissioned into the Second Infantry. He had served with Zachary Taylor on the Wabash, Winfield Scott at Niagara and Andrew Jackson at New Orleans, and he was not yet thirty-five. His blue staff uniform put Hervey in mind of Captain Peto, except that where at first meeting Peto had been guarded, distant, almost hostile, Power was open, warm and thoroughly engaging.

  ‘Captain Hervey. I am so glad we meet, sir. And sorry for its being two whole weeks after coming to my country. Sit you down!’

  A vigorous handshake reinforced the welcome, and coffee, and applejack from the Power family’s farm, sealed it. ‘It’s a great privilege for me to have a troop of His Majesty’s dragoons at my disposal, Captain Hervey. Congress must be ruing their paring. But it is a good thing for our armies to be cooperating, at long last.’

  Hervey said it was his privilege, too, but hoped it could be one without bloodshed.

  ‘I’m not happy with these Indian wars myself, Captain Hervey. I regret very much some of the excesses of my countrymen. Some of the nations have a right to feel aggrieved. Yet the settlement of this land is not something that any can now set their face against. That is the reality. From now on it should be the proper management of that inevitable fact – the westward progress of the frontier. I only wish we were managing it as well as you are in Canada.’ General Power offered him a cigar, and lit one himself.

  Hervey lit his and made appreciative noises.

  The general smiled with satisfaction. ‘Yes, best Havana. We had them brought from just across the water when I was in New Orleans, if you follow.’

  Hervey did, but would not dwell on the notion. ‘And so the Shawanese, sir?’

  Power sighed. ‘The Shawanese. God damn it, they can be as awkward as a bent nail. You know they believe the Creator is a woman? The “Finisher” as they call her. Well, they have a new prophet, related to Tecumseh, and he claims the Finisher has prepared a land of milk and honey for them near their brothers the Ojibwa and their cousins of the Six Nations. That means northern Michigan – and Ontario, for that matter. The trouble is, the department’s lost track of the main group altogether. They’re not even sure they’ve left the Indiana territory. If they’re making north on the western side of the lake, past Fort Dearborn,’ he pointed to the map again, ‘there are too few troops to hand to track them, let alone turn them back, and then they could come into the territory from the north – not easy, of course, but perhaps a sight easier than trying to run a line of blue in the south.’

  ‘What do you propose then, sir?’

  General Power poured more coffee, and relit his cigar. ‘I don’t have you indefinitely: that’s a strong consideration. But as the thaw comes on, the rivers won’t be easy for the Shawanese to cross. I reckon two infantry companies could picket the gap between the Maxanic and the Raisin, and then if we cover the fords once in twenty-four hours we’d pick up a crossing. They’d never do it in less, not with the spring melts. And their ponies are grass-fed, so you shouldn’t have much trouble catching them on corn.’

  ‘We’re consuming that corn at a fair rate, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I know. My quartermaster-general’s working on it.’

  Hervey thanked him. ‘Presumably the Shawanese can’t just wade anywhere?’

  ‘Indeed, no. They can�
�t all swim, and they won’t want to cross too close to the lakes for fear of running into folk, or of not leaving themselves room to manoeuvre if they’re discovered. I should like you to keep up your patrols along the Grand River for the time being, but be ready to move up to the Maxanic in strength. That just gives space to close with them before the country begins to open up.’ The general pointed on the map how they might have the run of northern Michigan. ‘I’ve taken several dozen Winnebago scouts onto the payroll, and I’m confident they’ll come up with something. The point is, if we can confront them in strength – overwhelming strength – they mightn’t draw a bowstring at all.’

  Hervey said he would apprise Fort York of the intention in his next despatch.

  General Power nodded. ‘I’m told your colonel is to visit, by the way.’

  Hervey’s spirits fell. ‘I was not aware of it, sir,’ but he thought that sounded a little curt, and tried to seem more eager. ‘But I imagine he would wish to. He’s been in Quebec these past weeks.’

  ‘The Earl of . . . Towcester is it?’

  Hervey put his pronunciation to right.

  ‘I should be very happy to receive him with full honours here – if he would like that.’

  ‘I believe he would regard that highly, sir’.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  BITTER COLD

  The Maxanic River, three weeks later

  Fires burned all about A Troop’s camp. They had buffalo-hide blankets and fir-frond beds, but still Hervey was cold. Nor was it a cold that bit at the extremities only, but one which rendered him sleepless and unaccountably fearful. He needed this sleep, for he had been in the saddle for the best part of three days since the alarm. How like the exercise on Chobham Common it had seemed when he had told his officers and NCOs of his design, and how different the reality was – the cold, and an enemy who thought in so alien a way, and who fought not as soldiers but as men desperate to preserve their very being. Here, on the shallow snow-covered hills of southern Michigan – a place he could only imagine might be pleasant without its white shroud – he felt for the first time an uncertainty in the outcome, for he could not take the initiative and he had never met his adversary before.

  He felt the want of Serjeant Armstrong keenly, too. Armstrong, now also the father of a fine, healthy daughter, remained at Brownstown, from where the troop’s supplies, intelligence and orders came. Hervey would have trusted no other for the task, but he was paying the price. At that witching hour of night, when the wolf called – menacing now, where first it had been novel and diverting – Armstrong would have been about the place, cursing, sparing no one, just waiting for a dragoon to complain of the cold or use it as an excuse for some dereliction. In the end it was so much easier to be afraid of Serjeant Armstrong than something altogether unknown.

  The Winnebago scouts had soon repaid the investment in them. They had told General Power that the Shawanese would pass around the headwaters of the Maxanic, and then of the Raisin, when the full moon next shone. It was now the night before that moon, but the sky was overcast and the dark was like the first quarter’s. The thaw had begun a week before, making the crossings treacherous and narrowing the Shawanese’s options, but three days ago there had been a sudden relapse into deep winter, with heavy falls of snow and then a fall of the glass so great that the surface of the snow was now frozen as one continuous sheet. Horses were losing condition rapidly. Their heads were frostcovered, their breath freezing even as it left the nostrils. Fetlocks became chafed or clean cut with every step through the ice crust, and a red trail had often marked their progress of late.

  Hervey forced himself from his bed to begin a tour of the sentries. It would test all his skill in hiding his own dejection in this God-forsaken wilderness.

  At Brownstown, Henrietta slept little better. Not for want of warmth or security, but because she had hoped so very much to see her husband that day. The ferry and sleigh ride from Fort Malden that morning had been pleasant, a pleasure she was not expecting to have again for some weeks. But, on arriving at Fort Brownstown, she had encountered Lord Towcester, and his mood had been extraordinarily malevolent – the reason for which she could only guess. He had ordered her to return to York at once, and, she recorded in her journal, in terms that overstepped any mark of a gentleman. When she had made to protest, he had pointed out that she was in military quarters and would hear him in silence.

  He had even disbarred to her the ferry to Fort Malden, since he required it for his own purposes, he said. ‘You must take a sleigh to Detroit, madam,’ he had told her, ‘and wait on your husband in that place, or else cross there and wait at Malden. Either way, you shall not consume military supplies for another day more in this fort!’

  Henrietta’s suspicions as to the cause of the earl’s ill humour, if correct, indicated that her initiative in writing to the Duke of Huntingdon had been speedier in its consequences than she had imagined. But she hadn’t the initiative here, and she knew she had little option but to submit to the lieutenant colonel’s will. She regretted its ill effects with Serjeant Armstrong, however. He had immediately declared that he would escort her himself to Detroit, but when Lord Towcester found out, it sent him into a rage. He accused Armstrong of failing to comprehend where his duty lay, and of loyalties inimical to the well-being of the regiment. Armstrong had argued, forcefully, that his captain had told him that the whole of Michigan south of Detroit was to be regarded as hostile until such time that they had apprehended or turned back the Shawanese.

  ‘Stuff and nonsense, Serjeant!’ Lord Towcester had roared. ‘I have myself just come from Detroit. Did I then pass through hostile country? Bah! It had all the appearance of Surrey!’

  Serjeant Armstrong pressed his case. ‘Your lordship, they were my orders. And the intelligence is come from the highest level. The Americans have spies with the Indians. I don’t think—’

  ‘Spies, Serjeant? Renegade Indians who’d sell anything for the price of a tot! And “orders” you call them? From Americans? Tush, sir! One more word and I’ll have your stripes!’

  At this, even the adjutant had looked uneasy. Armstrong had seen the futility of further argument, however, and had knuckled his forehead instead. And so all he had been able to do by way of seeing Henrietta decently back to Detroit was detail three troopers and Lance-Corporal Atyeo to escort the sleigh, and threaten them to secrecy and a start before first light so that Lord Towcester would not learn of it in time to countermand the instructions.

  Henrietta stared into the darkness of her chamber, resigned to being sent away but wishing – praying – that her husband might somehow come to her before the day did.

  Just after six there came a knock. Henrietta had woken a few minutes before. Indeed, she had slept only very fitfully. She rose, put on her cloak (for the fire’s embers were giving off little heat now), turned up the oil lamp and opened the door. A dragoon stood with a tray covered by a white cloth.

  ‘The serjeant said to bring you this, ma’am,’ he whispered.

  Henrietta’s spirits could hardly have been lower, but she smiled at him warmly, for she could see his unease. ‘Serjeant Armstrong is very good.’ She opened the door wide to allow the dragoon to pass.

  He put the tray on the table and removed the cloth. Steam rose from the spout of a coffee pot. ‘The serjeant said to tell you, ma’am, that it’s chocolate not coffee.’

  Henrietta smiled again; Armstrong must have been very resourceful to find her favourite, here. ‘What is your name?’ she asked the dragoon.

  ‘Stancliff, ma’am.’

  ‘Well thank you, Private Stancliff, and please convey my thanks to Serjeant Armstrong, too. Do you think I might have a little hot water later?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, of course, ma’am. And the serjeant says to tell you we’ll be leaving at seven, ma’am, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Yes, that will do very well for me. You are coming too?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Corporal Atyeo’s in
charge, and there’ll be Painter and Morris as well.’

  Henrietta did not know them, but they sounded true enough men.

  When Private Stancliff had gone, Henrietta sipped the chocolate and held aside the curtains to look out into the yard below. She hoped still to see her husband – just long enough for them to bid each other farewell, even – but there was no sign of him yet. It was dark, and all she could make out by the flickering torches was her sleigh, the small but sturdy long-coated horse standing patiently between the shafts, its breath white in the cold air. She shivered, a little afraid now.

  At seven, with half an hour still to go before first light, Serjeant Armstrong saw off the sleigh and its escort. ‘Take this with you, ma’am,’ he said, giving Henrietta her husband’s repeating carbine. ‘If so much as a footpad comes anywhere near you, Atyeo and his men’ll see to them, don’t you worry. But . . .’

  ‘Yes, I know, Serjeant Armstrong.’ Henrietta squeezed his hand and smiled at him. ‘Much better to have something of one’s own in case they don’t notice.’

  ‘Ay, ma’am. Something like that! Just point it in the air and keep pulling the trigger. It’d frighten a lion!’

  ‘I’m sure it would,’ she said, finding herself trying to reassure him. ‘My husband has shown me it. And again, thank you so very much for what you tried to . . . for arranging this. And many, many congratulations on the birth of your beautiful daughter. You will be enchanted when you see her.’