Hervey turned to his trumpeter. ‘Storrs, bring me the officers and sar’nt-major, please.’
It took less than a minute to assemble them. Hervey told them of the exchange, and what they would have to do if it came to it. He had no idea what the nullah was like, how wide it was or how steep its banks. They would have to lead the horses and mount at the last minute, though how much time they would have he couldn’t say.
The officers had just retaken post when another cloud of dust signalled the return of the brigadier’s galloper. ‘Looks like you were right,’ said Armstrong.
‘I wish I had not been,’ replied Hervey, handing his reins to Johnson and taking his telescope from the saddle pouch again. ‘There’s no sign of movement in those vedettes.’
‘Captain Hervey, brigade-major’s compliments, and would you execute the orders at once.’
With no sign from the vedettes, Hervey could not see the necessity of such urgency. ‘Have you spoken with Sir Ivo?’
‘Captain Hervey, sir, those are the brigadier’s express orders, and they were most imperative.’
‘Yes, but have you spoken to Sir Ivo?’
‘The general himself has, sir. Really, Hervey, there’s no time to lose!’
Hervey had received an order, in front of his troop, and he was not in possession of more information than was the brigadier.
‘Very well, Mr Shawe.’ Johnson handed him back the reins. ‘E Troop, right incline for column of route!’
Dragoons shortened reins to lead, and Hervey took post at the head of the column.
‘Forward!’
It took only a few minutes to reach the nullah, and as they began to descend the shallow bank, Hervey glanced at the ridge. The vedettes were circling.
Once the troop were all safely down, Hervey shortened his reins again and called, ‘Double march!’ for the enemy was supposed to gain the ridge ten minutes after the vedettes began signalling their approach, and he had no idea how difficult the bed of the nullah would get.
E Troop sweated and blew as they struggled over the shingle bed but they made progress, a good hundred yards in the first minute. Hervey thought they must be in line with the squadrons in another two. If they could keep this up they would make the ridge with a couple of minutes in hand.
But in two more, with no warning whatever, Hugh Rose’s troop plunged into the nullah in line, checking not the slightest from a fast trot, so that neither A nor E Troop could do anything to evade collision. Men shouted, horses squealed. Many of both fell, for the most part Hervey’s. Dragoons cursed each other, some lashed out. NCOs bellowed to regain order. Loose horses raced back down the nullah and knocked over dragoons who had survived the first collision. They would have floored Armstrong had he not already sprung into the saddle. Officers looked stunned. Over to their left the horse-gunners opened blank fire, and in a few seconds smoke was pouring into the nullah to add to the confusion.
‘What the deuce are you about, Hervey?’ shouted Rose, as he came on him struggling to get his mare up.
‘Trying to follow orders!’ Hervey almost spat the words. ‘What are yours?’
‘To get up to the ridge and take them in the flank,’ coughed Rose, the smoke engulfing them.
‘Mine too. But there’s damn little chance of that now. You’d better get on!’
Hervey looked back down the column. He could not recall any greater disorder by daylight. There was nothing for it now but to lick their wounds, real and imagined.
*
The brigadier was first on the scene, a quarter of an hour later. By then Hervey had the troop back in column, but two horses, with a broken leg apiece, lay with bullets in their brains. Private Mole sat supported in the saddle, his leg splinted with his sabre, harelip accentuating his sorry state. Private Parkin, one of the ‘pals’, stood holding a bloody bandage to his right eye. Half a dozen others had burst lips, missing teeth or broken ribs. And two horses were still bleeding severely from severed arteries.
‘Hervey, what in the name of God …?’ The brigadier looked about incredulously.
‘Your orders, sir,’ said Hervey.
Seton Canning and Cornet Vanneck looked away.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘We were executing your orders, General, when A Troop plunged on us — with the same orders, it seems.’
General Massey had not the faintest idea what he was talking about. ‘What do you mean, “with the same orders”?’
Hervey knew at once what had happened. Perhaps he had the advantage of a quarter of an hour on the brigadier, but he was not sure that that was Massey’s handicap. His anger he kept in check, but only just. ‘Sir, I surmise you gave Sir Ivo orders to send a troop into the nullah.’
‘Of course I did. But not two!’
‘But that, indeed, was the effect. You assumed Sir Ivo would order my troop to the nullah. Had you sent the hastening order to him, General, there would have been no confusion.’
‘I don’t like your tone one jot, Hervey!’ The brigadier sounded more dismayed than angry.
Hervey’s anger now matched the brigadier’s dismay. ‘And, I, with respect, sir, do not like having my troop cut about like this. Had we been in action—’
The brigadier had heard enough. ‘Captain Hervey! You exceed yourself, sir! I imagine you lay this blame on me, but I might remind you there is a level of command between the two of us!’
Serjeant-Major Armstrong had closed to Hervey’s side soon after the exchange began. He now grasped his captain’s arm from behind and squeezed hard.
Hervey made no reply to the brigadier.
‘I fancy we shall have all this out on return to the lines,’ said General Massey gruffly. ‘You had better take your troop back, Captain Hervey.’
Armstrong released his grip, and Hervey saluted.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN. EXTRA DRILL
Next day
‘I do not say the brigadier is an unreasonable man, Eustace.’ Sir Ivo paused and then sighed. ‘But I do believe he might have had the grace to withdraw on the matter, for the nonsense was his doing — no one else’s.’
Late in the evening, after stables and the colonel’s preliminary inquiry into the affair of the nullah, the brigade-major had come to the Sixth’s headquarters bearing unwelcome news. While, he said, the brigadier did not hold Hervey to be responsible for events, he held his manner to have been insolent, and required his apology in writing at once. Sir Ivo, having no means by which he might dispute the brigadier’s judgement, had had no option but to instruct Hervey to comply. Hervey had received this order by protesting that he did not believe a general officer ought to take refuge in his position when attempting to discover the truth of a misadventure. He might have added that neither did he think it fitting that a general officer should imply that his — Hervey’s — commanding officer bore the responsibility. But Sir Ivo had persuaded him to write, for, as he explained, he saw no merit in giving the brigadier a cause which might in the end eclipse the issue of culpability in the botched orders. And Hervey had acquiesced because he saw the logic and held Sir Ivo in absolute respect.
But the letter of apology had not requited the general. ‘Does the brigadier say in what measure he considers Hervey’s letter to be insufficient?’ asked Major Joynson, reading again the fair copy.
‘It would seem that his “necessity for establishing the lessons of the affair” and his reference to a “real not imagined enemy” are the offending portions.’
‘Yes,’ said Joynson, nodding. ‘I can see that would go hard with Massey. And he presumably is not best pleased with you for forwarding it in the first place?’
Sir Ivo raised his eyebrows. ‘That much was implied, yes.’ He sounded philosophical, but everyone knew that his pride was still hurt by the rebukes which had followed the review; the squadrons had manoeuvred well, and even the brigade-major had reported that the fracas at the nullah had remained unseen by the spectators.
‘If I may speak, Colonel,’ s
aid the RSM.
‘Of course, Mr Lincoln.’
‘It is causing a deal of resentment in the ranks. Even though they all know Captain Hervey’s troop were ordered into the nullah, they know too it was never your intention that they be there. I am afraid, Colonel, very contrary though it is, the view is that E Troop should not have gone into the nullah. And it does not help, of course, that they are largely so raw.’
Sir Ivo sighed. ‘It is quite perverse. But thank you, Mr Lincoln. You will, no doubt, be speaking to your mess on the subject?’
‘Yes, Colonel. Directly after orderly room.’
‘Good. Armstrong behaving well?’
‘Exemplary, Colonel. I gather he was a model of restraint in the nullah.’
‘Perhaps he can stroll through the lines at evening stables with Serjeant-Major Bowker, and Hervey and Rose the same. A comradely show?’
The RSM returned Sir Ivo’s ironic smile. ‘Indeed, Colonel.’
Sir Ivo turned to the adjutant. ‘Thomas, my compliments to Captain Hervey, and inform him that he’d better pick up his pen again.’ He nodded to the RSM. ‘And that will be all, too, Mr Lincoln. Your counsel, as always, is appreciated.’
The RSM, matchless in his turnout, even though the heavy air would have made sweat-scrapes busy on them all, saluted and left the office. As he closed the door, Joynson took off his cap and sat down.
‘Colonel, I worry about Hervey. He seems his old self a lot of the time, but the anger burns still.’
Sir Ivo nodded. ‘It can sometimes be a powerful force for action, Eustace. I saw many an angry man in the Peninsula carry a place with the bayonet or the sabre.’
The major knew that if he himself had had more anger he might have remained with the regiment longer in Spain. He nodded slowly. ‘Of course, of course,’ he said, as if still measuring the proposition. ‘But, I wonder, is it conducive always to good judgement, in hot or in cold blood? Hot blood is probably the lesser to worry about. It’s the slow-burning anger, the brooding, the resentment, the loss of reason which sets all the factors in a decision in their proper perspective.’
The Earl of Sussex had warned Sir Ivo that his major would serve him at all times faithfully, and in matters of administrative detail well, but that beyond this he should expect nothing. Yet Sir Ivo had a growing regard for Joynson’s general wisdom, not least his modestly perceptive estimates of character in the Sixth’s officers. They might all still call him ‘Daddy’ Joynson, but Sir Ivo had observed that his opinion was sought increasingly by them, and that was ever a sure sign — as, indeed, was the virtual absence of sick headaches. ‘A glass of Madeira, Eustace?’
‘Thank you, Colonel.’
Sir Ivo took a decanter and glasses from a cupboard. ‘You don’t think Hervey has lost anything of his touch, do you? I mean, it just occurs to me that the Hervey of whom I’d heard might have seen that confusion before it happened.’
The major took his glass and considered the proposition. ‘In truth, I’ve thought the same. I know that I should never have seen it.’
‘Nor I,’ said Sir Ivo, with a wry smile. ‘Indeed, the notion’s probably absurd. But I, too, worry. We must keep a special eye. Who are his friends, though? Eyre Somervile, I suppose.’
‘Hervey would count all the officers his friends, but none would own to knowing his thoughts, not even Strickland. And I dare say that Somervile, neither, has ploughed too deep; but he’s a shrewd man.’
‘A good man. I’d have him with me in a fight any day. I’ll speak with him — unless you think it better it came from you?’
The major thought about it for a moment. ‘I think, let me try first. It might not do for Somervile to think he were being asked to spy on him in some way, which it might well seem if you approached him.’
Sir Ivo smiled. ‘Quite so.’ He pushed the decanter back across the desk. ‘Tell me, Eustace, to change to happier matters, how is Frances? I have not seen her these past two weeks.’
The major smiled too. ‘She is more the attention of the garrison officers than ever it seemed in England!’
Sir Ivo nodded. ‘It was ever thus, I’m told, Eustace!’
At ten that evening Serjeant Collins, the regimental orderly serjeant-major, entered the wet canteen, as his orders required, to instruct the sutler to close it. It was always a tricky moment, a time when abuse had to be differentiated from good-natured banter in a split-second. Collins never looked forward to the duty, but he was one of the more practised ROSMs in the art of dealing with bibulous dragoons who fancied themselves as wits. His art was tested this night, however, by a barrage of opinion from A Troop men on the question of E Troop’s proficiency; it was taken up in turn by groups from B, C and D Troops. Collins stood his ground perhaps a little too long, as if challenging one of them to more than words. He looked about to see where were the E Troop men, to nod to them to beat a retreat before it was too late, but a swaying pug from A Troop was already making his determined way towards the bar.
‘I want another fookin’ nog, and thou’s not gooin’ to stop me.’ The jabbing finger left no doubt about who was not to do the stopping.
Collins braced himself.
‘E Troop?’ continued the pug. ‘I wouldn’t piss on ’em!’
Lance-Corporal McCarthy, sitting in direct line between the pug and his objective, put down his tankard and stood up. ‘Time for bed, Brummie.’
The pug looked at him in disbelief. What was a piece of tape compared with his brawn? ‘Fook off, yo’ thick Paddy.’
Corporal McCarthy sighed wearily, clenched both fists, feinted with his left, then drove his right into the pug’s nose.
It was the last thing that Serjeant Collins would be able to give any clear account of to the RSM the following morning.
‘Major’s compliments, sir, and would you attend on him at once.’ Scarcely had first parade finished but that Hervey was being summoned to regimental headquarters on account of the wet canteen. He thought it a little unfair that he had not yet had advantage of his serjeant-major’s reports in their entirety — Armstrong had been summoned to the RSM’s office even before muster — but in any event he did not expect to be given much of an opportunity to speak.
‘Sit down, Hervey,’ said the major, distinctly tired of the business already. ‘You’ll have heard of the events of last night, I take it.’
‘Yes, sir — in short.’
‘In short, eh? I don’t suppose any shorter than the brigadier has heard.’
Hervey looked astonished. ‘The brigadier? How might he have come to hear?’
‘Because the Skinner’s quarter-guard had to come and relieve our own while they cleared the canteen.’
Hervey grimaced. ‘Is the colonel very dismayed?’
‘Not yet. He was at a ball last evening. I don’t expect him back until tomorrow.’
‘What is there to do?’
‘Have you written that letter yet?’
‘I was just about to start it.’
‘Well, this is what you do, Hervey. You write it as if you had offended against Holy Writ. Is that clear?’
‘Perfectly.’
The major took off his spectacles and held them up to the light, before polishing them vigorously with a silk square. ‘Your Irishman will be reduced to the ranks, of course. Collins’ll be lucky, too, if he scrapes clear.’
‘Sir, we’re not going to make any great affair of this, are we?
E Troop was the butt of every dragoon’s joke yesterday. They’d become pretty resentful.’
‘Encouraged, no doubt, by their captain!’
‘That is deuced unfair, sir!’
‘Is it, Hervey?’
‘I freely admit to my anger, but I thought to have it in good check.’
‘Others may not agree. Oh, I have no very great trouble with a fray in the canteen — and neither, I should think, would Sir Ivo. The paymaster’s clerks’ll be the busier for a few weeks with stoppages, but that’s of little moment.’ The ma
jor took off his spectacles again and began rubbing them once more with the silk. ‘Are you not owed any leave you might think of taking, Hervey? Say, a month or so?’
Hervey looked pained, almost affronted. ‘If I were owed it, sir, I should not dream of taking it now.’
The major looked quite shamefaced. ‘No, of course not. Silly of me.’
Hervey said nothing.
‘You know, the trouble with these little regimental quarrels is that after a while resentment is turned towards the man at the head. Your dragoons’ll weary of having to answer on these barbs.’ Hervey was well aware of it, but still made no reply. Then he took up his cap. ‘Will that be all, sir?’
‘Yes, yes, I think so,’ said the major, apparently absently. ‘But Hervey, do be a good fellow and write that letter.’
Major Joynson called on Eyre Somervile that afternoon. They had met only twice before, but Somervile was pleased to receive him: the major’s note in advance had not been entirely specific, but Somervile had heard already of the affair of the nullah. Over tea, Joynson explained to him the extent of his — and the commanding officer’s — concern for their mutual friend. Somervile nodded from time to time, approving the estimation.
‘He will not take leave at this time — and very understandably — but he might be inclined to do so if you were to invite him,’ said Joynson in conclusion.
Somervile thought for a moment. ‘I should have said, Major, that once Matthew Hervey had determined where his duty lay, nothing would induce him to do otherwise. I am flattered that you think I might have some influence, but if he has determined that leave is contrary to his duty, then I very much fear he will be immovable.’
The major nodded slowly. ‘And I fear that he has formed that notion very surely. Might I ask you, however, to do what is in your power to divert him these coming weeks? It will not do to have him in the lines every minute of the day.’
Somervile smiled. ‘Of course, Major.’
Joynson made to rise.
‘I do have a thought,’ added Somervile, appearing to be turning over an idea. ‘Your object is principally to remove our friend from the garrison for a time, not from his troop.’
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