‘Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground …’
Hervey had always liked the appellation ‘brother’ applied to a fellow dragoon, irrespective of rank, and hoped that it would strike the same chord beyond just the pals. For it was the strength of the regiment that a dragoon would fight for his friends – would lay down his life, even – and that those friends, those brothers-in-arms, numbered many more than might ordinarily be the case. Indeed, at its principled best, the regiment was a body of friends, whose connection was no more than the sharing of the Roman ‘VI’ in their headdress.
The rest of the Order for the Burial of the Dead Hervey abbreviated, leading next the Lord’s Prayer – and hearing a respectable rendering of it by many of those present – and then pronouncing the Grace. But ‘Amen’ could not be sufficient to a military occasion, and so he ended with a peremptory ‘Parade dismissed.’ He turned away and closed his prayer book. It had been the first time he had opened it in many months.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE LEAFY LABYRINTH
Later
The noise of the river crossing, and then the solemnity of the burial service, had masked the peace of a rainforest afternoon. From dawn until late morning there was a procession of sound. Some of it, such as the birdsong, was entirely obvious in its origin, but much of it was far from so. Cicadas were easy to tell, like crickets in some vast echo chamber, but what started quite evidently as a chorus of cicadas would then metamorphose in the strangest way, so that it was not clear whether the cicadas had changed their tune or whether another creature had taken it up in imitation and begun its own development. Sometimes, especially at night, the noise seemed as if it were made by machine – hammering and drilling, and rasping like a saw drawn across wire. And all the time there was whistling, whooping, growling, screeching, snarling – terrible other-world noises that could chill the marrow even as the flesh ran with sweat. But not in the afternoon. Then, as in the early hours of the pre-dawn, the forest became progressively silent, as if every creature had flown or slid away. This was the time that Hervey knew, the time he had ventured a little way into the mysterious jungle. It had been silent that afternoon in Chintal, five years ago nearly, when the raj kumari had tempted him. And it had been silent that night when he had crept with the rajah’s sowars through the tangled blackness to fall upon the mutineers, so imprudently asleep at their post. Hervey had not heard the rainforest’s fullthroated chorus. He knew of it only from what men had told him, usually men wide-eyed with the telling.
With little more than an hour to darkness, there were many things for officers, NCOs and dragoons alike to attend to; but Hervey was determined to speak to them about the march ahead, and indeed of the ultimate purpose of that march. He therefore ordered the campfires to be built high so that he could address the troop in full view of them, even if they for the most part would be in the shadows.
It was a joy to watch Armstrong at field duty. This time of the day was his, and he knew precisely how to fill it. His eye missed nothing, nor his ear. His whip swished, jabbed and pointed this way and that, without ever making contact with a man, and certainly never a horse. An NCO considered himself well worthy of his rank if he escaped wholly without censure. Hervey could think himself in Spain once more, when death was an almost daily affair, and as he sat alone beneath a magnolia tree he found it easier than he had expected to lay aside thoughts of Private Parkin, and to apply himself instead to his maps. Such was the worth of a serjeant-major of Armstrong’s line and service.
‘Five minutes, sir,’ said Armstrong.
Hervey looked up. The light was failing and he could no longer make out the detail on his maps, such as it was. ‘Very good. All’s well?’
‘As you’d expect, sir. They’re just getting on with things. Surgeon’s got his work cut out trying to stop ’em pulling them leeches straight off, though.’
Hervey nodded. ‘A very noble effort of his with Parkin.’
Armstrong sighed. ‘It was scabby luck: Parkin of all people to be in its way.’
And that was the only way to look at it, Hervey considered. But he knew he had yet to bring the occurrence to a close in the minds of many of the troop, the greenheads especially.
When they were assembled, standing easy with carbines piled, Hervey began at once on the task of putting the spirit back in them. He knew how a Frenchman, or perhaps an Italian, would go about it, with soul-stirring rhetoric and appeals to patriotic sentiment. But the English soldier, in his experience, responded best to something simpler. ‘Private Parkin died today because he was too good a man to go sick when his companions were embarked on something hazardous. I have to tell you now that many of you – all of you, perhaps – will be put to the same test as Parkin in the days ahead.’
The silence was now absolute.
‘We shall strike camp tomorrow morning, two hours before dawn, and shall be taken by the native guides north to the Burman border through thick forest, a march of perhaps two or three days. We shall rendezvous with tribesmen from the hills who know that border well, and we shall cross it and enter Burman territory, and we shall seek out the force which is at this very moment assembling with the intention of bearing down upon the place we have just left.’
He paused to judge the effect. The silence held as acutely as before.
‘Having discovered their location, we shall attack them with the greatest ferocity and destroy their capacity to do this vile thing.’
The promise of action was too much – just as he had hoped – and there was a murmur of approval. He must now encourage it.
‘Do not ask me what is the plan of action, for until we know where is the enemy and what his dispositions, such plans are futile. Only remember this: surprise is our shield and our spear, but without our horses we can have no advantage once surprise is lost. We shall struggle therefore to take them through the forest in the expectation that their appearance alone will shock the enemy.’ He had toyed with the idea of reference to Hannibal, but the allusion would have been absurdly high-flown, and much worse understood. ‘And we should be grateful they are good little tats, all of them.’
He saw the nodding of heads. Now was the time to promise and to challenge. ‘Very well, you new men are to become soldiers full and good. See to it that you do not dishonour Private Parkin! Parade is dismissed.’ He delivered this last as fact rather than an order, which allowed the challenge to carry over into the conversation that at once arose. And he would stand aloof from it, but ready to respond if approached. It was not yet the time to go among them.
Armstrong knew it from old, and busied himself with the roster of sentries. Seton Canning sensed it and sought out the quartermaster to discuss some matter of provisions. Even Johnson found other things to be about. Eventually some NCO would come and share his enthusiasm for what Hervey had promised, but for the moment he would watch the little knots of men alone. And he could think of what he might be able to say to the Skinner’s men who had stood loyally but uncomprehendingly throughout.
It was cold that night. Even near a fire, and wrapped in his cloak, Hervey felt the earth giving up its warmth to the sky and taking with it his own, for they were bivouacked in a clearing. He had turned in at once after rounds at last light, the night noises just beginning – the men would have to bear them for themselves – and he had slept fitfully. He had not risen at all, leaving to his lieutenant instead the job of picket-officer, for he knew it was no advantage his having a man like Seton Canning if he didn’t use him. When he did wake, the silence surprised him, with only here and there a whicker from the horse lines or a grunt from a sleeping dragoon. Nothing sounded the passing of the early hours in the forest. In Spain there had always been something – the cockcrow, a tocsin, or a watchman’s call. He imagined that he had not slept this far from habitation in three years. He could look at his hunter if he wish
ed, by the light of the dying fire, or the luminescent one which Daniel Coates had given him, but he had seen no point, instead lying still, keeping what warmth remained to himself.
An hour later, as Hervey dozed, Johnson shook him gently by the shoulder. ‘Tea, Cap’n ’Ervey. An’ a good mashin’ it is an’ all.’
Tea at this time and in these circumstances had always had but one important quality as far as Hervey was concerned – that it was hot. Whether or not it was strong or sweet, or had milk, was of no moment compared with this requirement. And it had been Johnson’s singular ability in this direction which for some years now had marked him out in Hervey’s mind as a special sort of man. Since coming to him in Spain, Johnson had never failed to bring him tea at reveille. Even on the morning of Waterloo, when the rain had poured all night, Johnson had brought ‘a good mashing’ before stand-to, so welcome a drink that Hervey truly believed he would choose to give up all other before he would give up tea.
‘It’s four o’clock, sir,’ added Johnson without having to be asked.
Hervey would record in his journal, later that day, that the dawn stand-to went passably well, except that the troop made too much noise. And he would be pleased with the day’s march, too. The going was easy, and they met with no setback in the forty miles they covered, most of it by midday. The camp that evening therefore had an altogether different air from that of the one before. The NCOs were agreeably surprised by the way the march had gone, and were now giving their orders with not quite so much of a snarl. Armstrong, especially, had been pleased to be able to march and ride for long periods without having to open his mouth. The private men, for the most part, were very tired, for to those unaccustomed to such a distance in one day, the bodily and moral exertion was prodigious. But a tired soldier was almost invariably a contented soldier, a maxim Hervey had learned from Joseph Edmonds when first he had joined, and which he had confirmed for himself in no time at all. And so it would be a propitious time for him to go about the troop in their bivouac as fires were beginning the work of making their supper – just to show himself, just to be there to let the private men share their contentment with him. It would make it so much the easier when he needed to go among them when things looked perilous.
Hervey walked the horse lines by himself, in the main content with what he saw. But the mosquitoes were back, and the men were occupied in rubbing a foul-smelling liquid about their horses’ faces and ears – and, indeed, their own – which the commissary in Chittagong had dispensed. Hervey had brought some citronella from Calcutta, which seemed to work just as well as the camphor or whatever was the other, but had the advantage of a pleasant scent, if the disadvantage of a hefty price.
At the end of the line he came across Private Mole sitting on the ground, who, when he saw Hervey approaching, began struggling to pull up his overalls to stand. He looked more doleful than usual, even taking account of his lip.
‘Are you quite well, Mole?’
‘He’s got a leech on his pennis, sor!’ said Corporal McCarthy, taking an ember from the fire, blowing it red-hot and handing it to Mole.
Hervey kept the shiver to himself. The surgeon had warned them all about the jungle leech’s habits and preferences, but this seemed uncommonly early proof of it. ‘Sit yourself down, then, Mole. Would it not be better to call Mr Ledley, Corporal McCarthy?’
‘Ah, there’s no need, sor. That ember’ll do it. I’ve done it meself many a time afore, though I must say never with the crown jewels.’
Hervey watched as Mole braced himself and applied the ember to the engorged worm. It curled up at once and in another second let go its grip, falling wriggling to the floor, where Mole’s angry boot finished the job.
‘Just as Mr Ledley told us, sor,’ said McCarthy, with a look of satisfaction. ‘An ember’s the thing. That or salt. I’ve seen ’em pulled off in a panic and the wound become very pussy afterwards.’
Mole looked unhappy still. Hervey thought it best to leave him to recover his humour as well as his modesty. He turned and walked back along the line contemplating his good fortune in having McCarthy. It was clear the man was possessed of something in his field habits which commanded the dragoons to imitate him. He had recognized McCarthy’s fighting spirit in an instant when first they had been hurled together in France, but he had for long months retained a suspicion that an NCO who had once lost his stripes might ever be doing so again. McCarthy was probably no more impulsive a pugilist than Armstrong, and probably no more enamoured of a drop or two than he, but Armstrong had never been reduced to the ranks; that was the difference. Was it, perhaps, that discipline was in some way administered differently in the infantry? He wished he had been able to enquire of the 104th what had been the circumstances. But there was no denying now that McCarthy was an exemplary corporal. Hervey didn’t even have to trust to his own judgement in that; Armstrong was certain of it.
It was not the same with Corporal Mossop, though. Mossop did not do anything wrong; he did it, indeed, to the best of his ability. And there lay the problem. Mossop tried, but nothing came easily or naturally. Mossop was awkward, even in conversation. He would have thrown himself into the flames for his captain, but Hervey would dodge the other side of a horse so as not to have to pass the time of day with him. And that, he knew full well, could not but convey itself to the man, and so he would make himself go through the motions of bantering, if only to display his confidence in him in front of the dragoons. But Mossop would never be a serjeant; that was certain. With McCarthy, on the other hand, there could be no such certainty.
When Hervey looked at Collins, though, he wondered how any other corporal might aspire to serjeant. How might they measure themselves against him – his celerity in action, his composure in routine? It was Collins’s misfortune, however, to be a serjeant at this time, for the wait would be long for the fourth piece of tape. He needed the toast to ‘a short war and a bloody one’, but India looked unlikely to oblige him, even with forays such as this. It was a sorry thing to wish for dead men’s boots, thought Hervey, but he hoped very dearly that Collins would not be spent before his time came for a troop of his own.
However, it was the little knot of Warminster pals that intrigued him most. They were three now, the original pals, but Rudd was messing with them this evening. His mother would have been appalled at the notion of her son’s associating with the roughs of Warminster Common – and in ordinary the son too would never have had occasion to speak with them – but the bond of a shared home place when so far distant from it was ever strong. Even Shepherd Stent, although an Imber man by birth, felt some kin with Rudd and Wainwright and Spreadbury and Needham. Indeed, he had been more welcome in the high street, at the sheep markets with his father, than ever the roughs of the Common had been. Hervey stood watching them for some time, unnoticed. Stent was the older by ten years, perhaps, and by experience and temper should have been the chosen man in their case. But he seemed always to want nothing of it, to want that nothing extra be required of him other than honest duty as a private soldier. Hervey still had his doubts about him as coverman. As for Rudd, he was a shiny dragoon – no doubt about it – but as yet there seemed no edge to him that would make him fit for command. It was Wainwright, not yet twenty, who held the pals’ esteem. Indeed, the more Hervey saw of him, and the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that Wainwright had singular promise. What was beyond doubt was that yesterday both Jobie Wainwright and Shepherd Stent had shown instinctive and selfless courage. England bred her heroes rough, mused Hervey; but breed them she did.
They were late striking off next morning. Hervey had been expecting a rendezvous with the Chakma guides the evening before, but there had been no sign of them. By eight o’clock, the troop having breakfasted and done an hour’s making and mending, there was still no sign of them. Hervey spoke with Seton Canning and Armstrong. ‘I don’t like just sitting and waiting. The track we’re following is clear enough, and the Chittagong guides say they’r
e certain it leads to the border. The Chakma will have no difficulty finding us if they’re as good as they say. I intend pressing on and making up lost time.’
Armstrong made as if to turn, but Seton Canning looked mildly troubled. ‘Why might the Chakma not be here, Hervey? You’re not inclined to see any mischief?’
Hervey grimaced to himself. ‘No, I’m not inclined to, not yet. There are any number of reasons why they mightn’t have shown – the haste with which we mounted things, to begin with.’
‘These folk work to a different clock from us, Mr Seton Canning, sir,’ added Armstrong. ‘It were just the same in Spain. There you’d wait days for some bandit to leave off what he was doing.’
‘And in any case, I don’t see any alternative.’
Hervey’s voice had an edge to it again. Seton Canning made no reply.
Just after midday, with close on four hours of marching behind them, the troop halted for the second rest. The going had become harder than the day before, the ground now climbing towards the tribal tracts, but the way was wide enough still to permit two horses to go abreast. This was important for it allowed the NCOs to patrol the column, although, as yesterday, they found remarkably little dereliction or inactivity to reprove.
The troop had taken longer than prescribed at the first halt since they had ridden for longer, the way being too steep to pull up for some miles; and it had been the same with the second halt, for Hervey had wanted to draw closer to the river. By his calculations they were now within three hours of the border. The Chittagong guides seemed sure of it too, although they conceded that their knowledge of these parts was sparse. There was still no sign of the Chakma, however, and Hervey knew that soon the guides would be wholly beyond their reach. Not that they had shown the least hesitation so far. Quite the opposite, indeed: one of them, an Arakani boatman whom Somervile had said knew the rivers well, seemed positively fired with the notion of the coming blow at his people’s oppressor. He told Hervey, in broken Urdu, that he knew the country well enough to take them to the boats, and Hervey could but admire the man’s determination to be at them; and, he reasoned, he was not himself entirely without resource in navigation. The way they had come had been the way of the Karnaphuli, and that was the essential detail, even if for much of the time the river had been out of sight.
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