‘Is it so very urgent?’ asked Fairbrother from deep in his book, and enjoying yet another perfectly ripe fig. ‘Can we not wait until evening? Besides, I shall understand nothing. Acton will be returned in an hour or so; he will bear your armour.’
Hervey shook his head. ‘I can’t wait on him. If we can intercept Müffling there’s a chance he might speak frankly with me.’
Fairbrother looked at his friend somewhat askance. But then, with the greatest show of reluctance, he laid aside Guy Mannering, carefully placed the remaining figs in his small pack, and buckled on his sword.
XIX
DIE BEIDEN FREUNDE
Later
The heat of the day was at its greatest, and the labourers of the field, if they had not fled towards Constantinople, had sought the shade. Hervey and Fairbrother saw no one in their ride to Iskender except the outlying pickets at the start and at the end. They rode at a walk and leisurely trot to spare the horses, so that what might have been covered at a gallop in half an hour took two.
General Budberg had planted his pennant atop the caravanserai on the old Justinian road, where Müffling and Moltke also lodged. Tents filled every quarter, and there were more in the pasture beyond, the bounty of a happy interception of Turk baggage bound for the capital. Budberg – von Budberg – was from an old Westphalian family; his father, Count Andrei, had been Tsar Alexander’s foreign minister but had resigned when Alexander signed the treaty of Tilsit (for none had mistrusted Bonaparte as much as he), and had died, vindicated but in despair, a week before Borodino. The general spoke German with the accent of Riga, the family’s seat, but clear enough, and he greeted Hervey with the warmth of three months’ shared campaigning.
Hervey explained that he was come to meet Moltke at the request of Princess Lieven (he saw no reason to conceal the fact; indeed, he believed it would speed the meeting), but that he understood General Müffling was also here, ‘And I would wish to pay compliments since I had the honour to attend on him at Waterloo.’
This latter was by no means untrue, but Hervey used the word – bedienen (attend) – at the extreme of its meaning to lay claim to an audience.
Budberg frowned and shrugged: he was entirely sympathetic, he explained, but Müffling was heavily dosed with laudanum, having contracted a fever in Constantinople which had very materially worsened since arriving here; ‘But Moltke you may see at your leisure, Colonel. His quarters are on the other side of the courtyard.’
Hervey thanked him.
And then after a pause, in which his look turned quizzical, the general asked, ‘What is this Moltke’s business? Does he disguise himself in a junior rank?’
Hervey shook his head. ‘I do not know the answer to either question, General, but they are exactly, I think, Princess Lieven’s questions too.’
‘Very well. I hope that you do not think me mistrustful; you have shown your loyalty again and again.’
Hervey smiled uncomfortably, and took his leave.
Outside, Fairbrother waited with his customary air of unconcern, though as ever it masked activity. ‘Why do you suppose Müffling is come so far from Constantinople, and so ill?’
‘How did you know he was ill?’ replied Hervey, sensing the portents of dramatic revelation.
‘His surgeon.’
‘He speaks English?’
‘French. He is French. Müffling engaged him in Paris when he was Tolly’s chief of staff.’
‘You mean Blücher’s chief of staff.’
‘No, Tolly’s. Müffling was at the Russian headquarters after the fall of Paris – the first fall. He got to know Diebitsch well.’
‘Indeed? Upon my word, Müffling coming to see an old colleague. That is ripe intelligence – though it doesn’t necessarily bode anything untoward. Well, I can hardly present my compliments to him when he’s prostrate, so I’ll go to see this Moltke instead. He is, by Budberg’s reckoning, scarcely much older than Agar.’
‘Then while you’re attending on boys, I shall take a tour of the camp, and then I shall find a pleasant tree and sit beneath it to finish my book.’
Hervey’s disappointment at finding Müffling hors de combat was lessened by his realizing that it might serve to his advantage, for why would an English colonel come to see a Prussian lieutenant? That he could say, in all candour, he had come to see the general would surely serve to disarm the object of the Lieven curiosity. Why a lieutenant should be such an object had puzzled him since first she had asked him to make contact, and he could only conclude, and not without sympathy, that it was Moltke’s very lack of seniority that made his mission intriguing. What special expertise did he possess; what connections? It was, indeed, fortunate that Müffling’s presence here provided him with the pretext for his call. Yet within a few moments of their meeting, Hervey concluded that the young Moltke was shrewd enough to take nothing at face value.
Leutnant von Moltke was a man of spare build, not very tall, his face thin but intelligent, almost hawk-like, and – Hervey supposed – a year or so short of thirty. He admitted his visitor to his room with the greatest civility rather than formality, and he did so in English – very fluent English. Indeed, Hervey found him charming. There was coffee and lemon sherbet, and a readiness to talk that was the very opposite of the taciturn Teutonic spy of his imagining. His coming into the King of Prussia’s service was by an unusual route, Moltke explained. He was born in the duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in the year that the young General Buonaparte (he pronounced it in the Italian way) crossed the Alps and won his first great victory at Marengo. His father was in the Danish service, and five years later settled in Holstein, but was soon impoverished by the burning of his country house by the French and the plunder of his town house in Lübeck. He had grown up therefore in straitened circumstances, and at the age of eleven had been sent to the cadet school in Copenhagen. In 1818 he was commissioned into the infantry, and through the influence of his father, who was by then a lieutenant-general, he became a page to the king. Three years later, however, and for reasons he did not disclose, but which Hervey thought he perfectly understood, he resolved to enter the Prussian service.
‘In consequence, Colonel, I lost seniority,’ he was careful to make clear. ‘I became second lieutenant once more and did not proceed to the Kriegsakademie until I was twenty-three, where I followed the three years of instruction, and passed out of there almost four years ago.’
Notwithstanding this loss of seniority, Moltke was evidently held in high regard; Hervey supposed he had been marked out at the Kriegsakademie, a thing that did not occur in England, for there was no academy of that form or distinction, but which he understood to be customary practice in Prussia. ‘It is unusual, I would imagine, for an officer to be sent on detached duty so soon after commissioning,’ he said, in German.
Moltke registered no surprise at Hervey’s fluency (it was inappropriate that a lieutenant should compliment a superior officer), but took it as an invitation to speak in his own language. ‘I think it is so. But I have for three years worked on the military survey in Silesia and Posen.’
Their respective service was so unalike, and in armies whose organization and method was so different, that Hervey could not begin to think what Moltke might achieve in any appraisal of the Turks (and from what he might suppose, the Porte was not in need of expertise in survey). And yet there was in this lieutenant a seriousness of manner – even for a German – that marked him as singular. It seemed to him unthinkable that Moltke could have been sent to Constantinople except for some equally singular purpose. Yet although the late reforms were far from happily settled, no Turk ferik (general), who had come to his rank through long years of the sword, could view with equanimity the advice of a man half his age who had never heard a shot fired in anger. Was his mission therefore one of gathering topographical intelligence under the guise of some other assignment? It would seem apt for one who had spent three years at military survey. But what possible interest could the kingdom of Pru
ssia have in Roumelia?
Even after an hour’s agreeable conversation, Hervey was none the wiser, although he did form a very favourable impression of Moltke as both an officer and a man. He found himself thinking that he would like to know him better, and hoped they would meet again soon – and not merely for the purposes of pleasing Princess Lieven. As soon as General Müffling was restored, and he and Moltke came to Adrianople, said Hervey, he would introduce him to his two fellow officers. ‘You and they would have much to talk about.’
He made then to leave, and as he did so Moltke went to his travelling desk and took from it a book. ‘Herr Oberst, would you honour me by accepting this? It is a work I wrote whilst at the Kriegsakademie.’
Hervey was mystified: the work of a cadet, printed and bound … ‘With the greatest pleasure, Herr Leutnant.’
He opened it at the title page, and was at once even more puzzled (as well as dispirited, as ever, on seeing the Gothic script, which he still found both a labour and strangely hostile). ‘Die beiden Freunde. Eine Erzählung. How intriguing.’
Eine Erzählung – a fiction, a novel. Not at all what he’d expected. But a charming gesture nevertheless. He slipped the book inside his tunic and put on his cap.
‘I shall read it with close attention. Thank you, Herr Leutnant.’
‘I look forward keenly to our next meeting, Herr Oberst,’ said Moltke, bracing. And then he seemed to remember himself: ‘If you are agreeable, sir?’
‘I look forward to it, also, at which time I trust that General Müffling will be restored to health, and that we may discuss the campaign.’
They shook hands, and then with the accompanying click of the heels, Moltke bid his visitor Abschied.
‘He gave me a book he’d written,’ said Hervey when he had found Fairbrother and they were making their way back to General Budberg’s command post. ‘A novel: Die beiden Freunde – “The Two Friends”.’
‘A soldier with the sensibility to write a novel; that is very queer.’
‘Perhaps not in Prussia. Who knows; they’re a restless folk.’
‘And the novel is about …?’
Hervey reached into his pocket and took out the book, opening it at the first page: ‘“It was in the year 1762 on a fine summer’s evening whose peace so often—”’
‘Ah, the year Catherine became empress.’
‘I believe it was.’
‘Was Prussia at war then?’
‘Prussia has always been at war. It is an army with a country attached to it. Let me read on: “Two young warriors were in lively discussion sitting by the pleasant Elbe—”’
‘Would you count yourself a young warrior still?’
Hervey eyed his friend seriously. ‘I believe … in my mind, yes. I don’t think of the time when I was a cornet as of another world entirely.’
He took a few more thoughtful paces, and closed the book. ‘And how was your novel? Did you finish it?’
‘I did indeed. And it’s given me an idea. Let me read something to you.’ Fairbrother opened the Scott at the last page. ‘Guy Mannering’s returned from India a colonel, and he’s resolved to give up his house and build anew: “See, here’s the plan of my bungalow, with all convenience for being separate and sulky when I please”.’
‘It does not have the ring of great literature, so I imagine you have another purpose in reading it.’
Fairbrother smiled, grateful that his design was already half explained. ‘Well, I am minded to give up my house at the Cape and build the same, a bungalow, close to your quarters at Hounslow – close enough to stroll by of an evening, yet far enough to be “separate and sulky” when I please. What say you?’
Hervey smiled broadly, and shook his head. ‘I think it a capital idea. Except that you forget that I shall not be taking quarters at Hounslow. How well would your plan of building succeed in Gibraltar – or even, I might say, St Petersburg?’
General Budberg received them with the news that Müffling was now awake and that his temperature was a little lower, but that he was in no condition to see anyone. ‘He begs pardon.’
Hervey was entirely at his ease. He would return to Adrianople, he said, and present himself again when the general was fit to receive him. ‘I was most courteously entertained by Herr Moltke, whose mission appears to be independent of General Müffling’s.’
‘I was not aware of that,’ said Budberg, curious.
Hervey explained what little he was able, though not his speculation.
‘Why do you not stay here until the morning, Colonel? There are ample comforts thanks to the Turk.’
‘I thank you, but General Diebitsch expects me to dine this evening.’
‘As you will; only have a care. My Cossacks had a brush with bashi-bazouks before you arrived – though not on the high road. If you can wait for an hour or so, until I have finished my despatches, you may go back with my aide-de-camp and his escort.’
Bashi-bazouks had not troubled the army much. Irregulars – ‘bandits’ was the word the Russians preferred – were ever a nuisance to a campaign, but the Cossacks had dealt them short shrift early on, and the word had spread. ‘Again, General, I’m obliged to you, but I must return without delay. We’ll ride direct by the high road. We have good horses.’
But when he had taken leave of Budberg, he was astonished to find Cornet Agar waiting outside the headquarters.
‘Sir, letters have arrived for you from England. I brought them at once.’
Hervey looked at him irritably. ‘What in heaven’s name possessed you to do such a thing? You knew I was returning before dark. Who rode with you?’
Agar looked distinctly uncomfortable. ‘No one, sir. I’d given Corporal Acton and the others leave to visit the baths. And then the letters came – they were brought with the despatches from Bourgas, and—’
‘Mr Agar, that was foolhardy in the extreme. But I haven’t the time to speak of it now.’
He strode off to where they had stalled the horses, leaving Fairbrother to raise his eyebrows and shake his head in dismay. ‘You’re a damned fool,’ he said. ‘There are bashi-bazouks abroad, and they wouldn’t have been interested in your telling them their history.’ He put a hand to Agar’s shoulder consolingly. ‘Come on; we’re going back. Put the letters in your sabretache.’
They took the first mile at a walk, Hervey and Fairbrother speculating on what might be Müffling’s mission to the Porte, and Moltke’s, while Agar rode disconsolately behind. For that piece of intelligence alone – that Müffling and Diebitsch had served together in Paris – it had been worth the ride to Iskender, said Hervey. And why did Müffling come now to see him? Prussia was no ally of Russia’s in these parts: it could hardly be to prescribe the old medicine ‘’ran wie Blücher’ – ‘on like Blücher’ (old ‘Marshal Vorwärts’ never calculated much; ‘forward’ was the only way). Perhaps that was how Constantinople would be taken, though – not by prodigious numbers and scientific siege, but by just going forward; the ‘slope on which it was not possible to stand still’.
‘I do believe that if Constantinople falls it will fall thus. Moltke gave away nothing about the Turk, but neither did he say they would hold the walls come what may.’
Fairbrother was inclined to think that the Sultan would call back every man from the marches of the empire to defend the Topkapi.
But in truth Hervey had had enough of Prussians and the walls of Constantinople. He looked at his friend, quizzically. ‘You’re quite determined on building your “bungalow”, aren’t you?’ It was not really a question, rather an observation. And he was just a little ashamed that he had not recognized sufficiently the strengthening wish to build, almost literally, upon their friendship.
‘Depend upon it, Herr Oberst.’
But Hervey could not quite see its outcome.
So they trotted for the next mile in silence, a steady pace, in-hand, but enough to leave behind the flies that had begun to oppress the geldings. They passed a shepherd and
his lop-eared flock, and an old man sitting beneath a walnut tree who raised his hand but not his head, so that they supposed he was blind. But otherwise the country was as empty as before.
They slowed to a walk in the third mile, though the horses had no need of rest, and then pressed to the trot again after ten minutes of longer rein.
Not long after, they saw the cluster of horsemen – a quarter of a mile to the right, perhaps less, by a clump of olive trees in the middle of rough grazing.
‘Cossacks or bashi-bazouks?’ said Hervey, with no great concern.
‘As we have frequently observed, a bird is best identified by what it does,’ replied Fairbrother, no less composed. ‘If they give chase then we’d better work on the assumption that they’re the latter.’
‘If they’re Cossacks they may still give chase. We might look like Turks at this distance.’
They shortened reins and quickened pace.
The horsemen left the cover of the trees.
The three broke into a canter.
In turn the horsemen began to gallop.
Hervey let slip the reins. There was no prospect of being caught in a straight gallop with two furlongs’ lead. ‘Come on. Not Cossacks – no lances.’
Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service Page 28