The Nizam's Daughters

by Mallinson, Allan

  There was nothing for Hervey to do. He had led them in. He was a hindrance now. He turned for the breach, but a blow like a prizefighter’s knocked him flat on his back. The Waterloo stars and the dancing lights were back, and the blackness rolled in as a cloud. Like a wounded animal, writhing in hopeless rage, he blindly slashed this way and that with his sabre. It made no contact.

  ‘Are ye all right, sor?’

  Sometimes a voice was as welcome for its tone as what it brought. ‘Yes,’ groaned Hervey; ‘I’m all right, thank you,’ cursing inaudibly in language fouler than even Joseph Edmonds might have been tempted to.

  Private McCarthy helped him to his feet and out through the breach. ‘Have a care here, sor,’ he warned as they ducked the lintel – the same that Hervey had run full tilt into.

  Outside, his wits were restored soon enough. The shako had taken some of the force, and spared him an open wound, but his pride bore a bruise much worse than his forehead. Then it was all shouting again – Allez! Allez! – and those officers who had not taken Cambronne’s words literally were bustled out at the point of steel.

  Later, the town major and the mayor expressed fulsome gratitude, the mayor assuring them that Le Havre wanted no truck with what remained of Bonaparte’s ambition. ‘Do not be too dismayed at the 104th, Captain Hervey,’ said the major; ‘they are not a bad regiment. I stood close to them at Hougoumont, but they lost a good many of their best officers and NCOs there.’

  Hervey did not doubt it, and felt meanly for having condemned them so roundly. The Line battalions had, after all, borne the brunt of Bonaparte’s onslaught all that day in June. Waterloo had changed things. He knew himself to be changed. The army was now divided into two distinct parts: those who had been there, and those who wished they had been. And to those who had been there, the world would never be the same again; for they each knew they had escaped death by the chance of the fall of shot or the line of a musket ball, and were determined either to enjoy their deliverance to the fullest or to learn why fortune had favoured them above other men.

  * * *

  Hervey returned to the Nisus at six o’clock with three carts in tow. On the first were two one-hundredweight sacks of bran and five more of barley. On the second, a much bigger waggon, was the best part of two tons of hay, and on the third the same of straw. Nisus had come alongside one of the wharves, and her crew, under the eagle eyes of her marines, now made light work of stowing the forage. They showed a pleasure in doing so, even, with more than one nod of respect sent Hervey’s way, for the assault on the gendarmerie had been retailed through the ship.

  Peto shook his hand as he came aboard but allowed himself few words on the affair. Hervey expressed himself much taken by the skill and speed with which the carpenters had erected a most solid-looking stable for Jessye – with a roof that would carry rainwater over the side, and the gunport allowing for good circulation of air – adding that he had not imagined they would have it done so quickly. But Peto had resumed his former peremptory manner. ‘Great gods, Captain Hervey!’ he spluttered. ‘My carpenters are not country cabinetmakers: their business is with battle damage!’ And a short time later his sensibilities were even more severely assaulted by the arrival of Private Johnson and a travelling horsebox, for when the cochers let down the ramped door to the rear, and Johnson led out Jessye, her lack of blood was at once apparent. Neither was she on her toes – and her ears were flat. Indeed, the effects of her fortnight’s chill were all too evident, so that the contrast between what was expected to emerge from the box and what in reality did was all the more pronounced.

  And to compound the affront to Peto’s notions of good and handsome order, Hervey’s groom now hailed Nisus’s quarterdeck, only just remembering to touch his shako peak: ‘Bloody ’ell, Mr ’Ervey! What was all that firin’?’

  Peto looked askance. ‘Does he address you, sir – aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington?!’

  Hervey shifted uneasily at the rail, making awful comparison in his mind with the captain’s steward. ‘Yes,’ he replied simply, ‘we have been together some time.’

  ‘Most singular indeed!’ concluded Peto, shaking his head as he turned for the other side of the deck.

  Hervey glanced back to the quayside. So unmilitary a sight, indeed, was Johnson, and so unprepossessing did Jessye look, that he could find no reply.

  He was blowing into her nose and pulling her ears as the marines’ commanding officer approached. ‘I took you for a dandy,’ the lieutenant laughed; ‘your horse tells me you are not!’

  Hervey had not cared for the look of the lieutenant on the crossing to France, though he had seen him only at a distance, and his impression had not changed when he had come doubling along the street with his marines. His face – knocked-about and horribly scarred – was that of a pug rather than an officer. But how he could fight! He had gone at the breach with as much vigour – and even more strength – than Serjeant Armstrong would have. And his smile was not the sneer Hervey had first thought, but a warm, almost familiar one. ‘I will wager she could beat anything you have seen over two miles!’ smiled Hervey back.

  ‘I don’t doubt it for a minute. Why else would the Duke of Wellington’s aide-de-camp have such a hack?’

  He was about to try another riposte when the lieutenant laughed out loud. ‘You have scarce changed a jot since Shrewsbury, Matthew Hervey!’

  He stared back blankly.

  ‘No, you do not recognize me! You were once my doul, but I was bonnier then. A Yankee frigate did for me – grape sweeping across the forecastle just as we boarded her. Lucky to keep my sight. Locke – Henry Locke, of Locke-hall in the county of Worcester.’

  Hervey remembered – indeed he did. But a boy whose looks were the envy of his house at Shrewsbury. ‘My God,’ he started, before checking himself. ‘I mean . . . no, I should not have recognized you. But how very pleased I am to make your acquaintance again. What are you doing in His Majesty’s Marines?’

  ‘I might ask you the same manner of question. And I believe the answer to both is that we have been fighting the King’s enemies.’

  ‘Just so,’ laughed Hervey, ‘just so.’ He recalled him well enough now – a kindly senior to serve for a term, but no favourite of the masters’ common room, for sure. ‘I hardly saw you when first I came aboard at Chatham.’

  ‘No, I was ashore at musketry. We joined by cutter once she was under way.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hervey, now comprehending; ‘I was being most handsomely entertained at your captain’s table by that time.’

  ‘No matter. But that was a famous action this afternoon. Are you recovered of your blow?’ he smiled.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ he coughed (mortification was perhaps too strong a word for his condition).

  ‘The cannonade was your idea, I hazard?’

  ‘Yes, it seemed best,’ he replied lightly, relieved to be let off the subject of his collision with the lintel. But the affair of the gendarmerie could hardly be counted a great stratagem.

  Locke’s expression indicated otherwise. ‘You are deuced lucky Nisus is a frigate: even a seventy-four would not have done.’

  Hervey was puzzled. ‘How so?’

  ‘Hah! You should see those first- and second-rates at gunnery: they simply lay alongside the enemy and blast away – broadside after broadside. There’s no science in it: there’s hardly need. “Engage the enemy more closely”: that’s what an affair of big ships amounts to.’

  ‘Oh,’ replied Hervey, disappointed – not to say disconcerted – by the intelligence. ‘I had imagined their gunnery to be more expeditious than that.’

  ‘Then you are in error. It is not to be compared with Woolwich. Don’t mistake me, mind: the celerity with which those guns are served is magnificent. But it’s broadsides – volley fire.’

  ‘In a frigate less so, however?’

  ‘In a frigate less so, yes. But that was rare shooting this afternoon – very uncommon shooting indeed. You know that Cap
tain Peto laid the gun himself?’

  Hervey did not.

  ‘Peto is that sort of captain.’

  ‘I am full of admiration. I had not supposed he took so great a risk firing on the gendarmerie. And that he should shoulder the responsibility so personally is, as you say, singular.’

  ‘Just so, Hervey. I doubt there is any bolder frigate captain in the navy. But let us to other matters: what brings you to Nisus?’

  Faced with his first occasion for subterfuge, Hervey all but foundered. ‘Well, er, yes . . . you may. You see, I am to go to India to study the employment of the lance with the native cavalry regiments. The Duke of Wellington intends raising lancer regiments and wishes to know how best they should be ordered and trained.’

  Locke seemed puzzled. ‘The cavalry leads a queerer life than the Johnnies, that’s for sure. It seems a deuced mazy way to find how to carry a spear!’

  Hervey smiled. ‘The duke is very particular about things.’ How easily came the deception now.

  ‘Well, we must get your mare aboard. Yon crane and hoist – see? A dozen marines is all it should take.’

  And, indeed, a dozen marines was all it took to hoist Jessye aboard. She lay in the sling with neither a swish of her tail nor a whicker (but looking, thought Hervey, distinctly sorry for herself) as she was first hoist aloft and then lowered into the waist. No more trouble than a gun barrel, said the boatswain. The sling’s fastenings loosed, she stepped into her box as if from the paddock, and was promptly rewarded with carrots by Johnson, his face now changed from one of anxiety to satisfaction. A promising beginning, said Hervey, though he knew it by no means certain she would survive the passage. Nevertheless, she had enough space to turn about freely and to lie at full stretch – which was more than the horses to and from the Peninsula had had. The stall was airy (it could hardly have been otherwise), yet there was enough shelter from rain and spray. Not too heavy seas to begin with – that was what he prayed for.

  ‘You are prone to seasickness, then, are you?’ asked Peto, though the tone was of indifference rather than sympathy.

  ‘Oh no, I manage quite well. It’s my mare I have a care for, since a horse has not the facility to vomit. They get the colic instead, and in the worst event they die.’

  Several hands had gathered about the stall, intrigued by the addition to Nisus’s complement. One of them held out something in his palm, but she only sniffed at it and snorted disapprovingly.

  ‘What’s tha givin ’er?’ demanded Johnson.

  ‘Only baccy,’ replied the hand.

  ‘Tha daft bugger!’ frowned Johnson. ‘An ’orse doesn’t chew t’bacca!’

  ‘Will’e ’ave a bit o’ salt-pork?’ asked another.

  ‘Saints alive,’ cursed Johnson, ‘tha’s as daft as ’im! An ’orse doesn’t ’ave meat! And “he’s” a she!’

  Peto, observing from the quarterdeck and by now much diverted, hailed his first lieutenant. ‘Mr Belben, I think the boatswain should be advised to instruct the crew that this important animal be given no titbits!’

  ‘Ay, ay, sir,’ replied Belben, with a long-suffering raise of the eyebrows.

  Later that evening, while Peto attended to his papers, Hervey went up to the quarterdeck to take the air. First he stopped at Jessye’s stall. The feverish chill, the long haul from Paris and the hoisting aloft would have put many a blood on its side, but Jessye stood square in her stall chewing hay with slow but regular rotation of the jaw, grinding out the goodness from the Timothy. He had nothing to trouble himself about.

  On the quarterdeck he found Henry Locke leaning on the taffrail and gazing out into the busy channel that was the estuary of the Seine. The light was failing fast, but a dozen vessels of various sizes could be observed under way, and as many more lay at anchor. The steady light from a lantern threw the lieutenant’s features into sharp relief, the hollow of his nose and the empty space that had once been his strong chin all too apparent in profile. Hervey shivered a little, and then hailed him.

  ‘Good evening, Hervey,’ replied Locke without looking round. ‘Might one ever tire of such sights?’

  Hervey perceived the ambiguity in the question but could not be certain that it was intended. ‘I can see why some do not, though I am a landsman,’ he said. ‘Is this what drew you to the Marines?’

  ‘No, but it is one of the things that keeps me: Worcestershire is not notably a naval county. So, we’re all set fair for the Indies?’ He did not alter his gaze as he changed the subject.

  ‘Yes. Do you know India?’

  ‘Only from the telling of others. A place where a man might live like a prince on a lieutenant’s pay.’

  Hervey smiled. ‘So I hear. You have not been tempted, then?’

  Locke turned to him. His face, insofar as his disfigurement permitted any range of sentiment, bore an expression of melancholy. ‘I have only one desire, Hervey, and that’s to win back Locke-hall.’

  Hervey was intrigued. ‘Do you wish to speak of it?’ he enquired solicitously.

  ‘Gambling debts mostly.’

  Hervey sighed to himself – an old story. ‘You gambled away your inheritance?’

  Locke stood upright and looked at him with a frown: ‘No! It was gambled by my father in his dotage. I was to have a cornetcy in the Blues: every penny for it went on the tables.’

  ‘And that is why you went to sea?’

  ‘I tried my hand at one or two ventures, but I have no head for business and no stomach for a profession. Admiral Jervis was a cousin of my late mother’s, and it was on his recommendation that I received a commission.’

  ‘You said win back Locke-hall?’

  ‘Ay, with prize-money. But since a lieutenant of Marines ranks merely with a navy warrant officer for pay and prizes, we shall need to capture a treasure fleet!’

  ‘And we are at war with no-one.’

  ‘Ay, just so. Do you have a wife, Hervey?’

  He explained his circumstances, and now the hope – vain as it sounded in retelling – that Henrietta might at any moment appear with the gallant Corporal Collins.

  ‘She sounds to have capability,’ replied Locke. ‘Ward of the Marquess of Bath, d’ye say? Money, too. Well, let us hope this letter you say you wrote is sufficient. Many a woman would suppose herself proper jilted by a lover who runs off to the east. All her grand friends will have to be told . . . explanation after explanation.’

  ‘She might yet arrive, and—’

  ‘And you would ask the captain for another berth?’ smiled Locke.

  ‘No . . . I had not thought . . . that is—’

  He smiled again. ‘A wife isn’t something to pack in a marine’s dunnage. We fight light, as they say. And I dare say, too, they don’t stow so well on a bat-horse either!’

  Hervey frowned. ‘That is a cynic’s counsel indeed!’

  ‘I myself was married once,’ replied Locke, claiming thereby a right to the philosophy.

  Hervey studied him for a second or so, trying to gauge his earnestness, and then pressed him to the details.

  ‘She took one look at my face when I returned home and away she went. She hardly took much to living in lodgings in Portsmouth in any case.’

  Hervey expressed himself sorry.

  ‘I cannot say I blame her,’ sighed Locke, ‘but I thought I had married into stock made of sterner stuff. We had known each other since . . . well, since we shared a pew.’

  Hervey did not think it appropriate to reveal that his attachment with Henrietta had an equal gestation. ‘And Locke-hall shall be without a mistress?’ he tried, curious as to the force which bound the man to his vision.

  ‘Never again should I marry, even were my wife to have us put asunder in law.’ And then he smiled: ‘But as lord of the manor there’d be lasses enough to keep me content. As long as the candle was blowed out!’

  Hervey smiled, perhaps less fully than he might.

  ‘Matthew Hervey, don’t you preach at me. You think on how life would be
if your fair looks were rearranged by grapeshot or a sabre-cut. Even the whores in Portsmouth run when they see my face.’

  ‘What, all of them?’ he asked in disbelief.

  ‘Well, I’ve not tried all of them, to be sure. But one whore who’s too particular is a powerful insult to a man’s . . . manhood.’

  Hervey clapped his hand on Locke’s shoulder and smiled broadly. Even through the thick serge of the scarlet coat he could feel the brawn built of hours at exercise, the cutlass-swinging for which the Royals were renowned. Locke stood an inch in excess of six feet, taller than any man aboard – a powerful, if artless, fighter held in affection as well as respect by his marines. ‘I think you are as lucky in your ship as I am in my regiment,’ proclaimed Hervey.

  Locke returned the smile as broadly. ‘Yes, she’s a fine ship. And what service she’s seen! That night before Trafalgar – she and Euryalus did work to make the meanest heart proud.’

  ‘Indeed,’ nodded Hervey, ‘there can be few who do not know it. And what poetic fortune it was, too.’

  Locke seemed puzzled. ‘Poetic fortune?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hervey; ‘that it should be Nisus with Euryalus, of all ships.’

  ‘Hervey,’ replied Locke, now looking quite decidedly puzzled, ‘I do not have the slightest idea of what you speak.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hervey, surprised, but anxious not to cause embarrassment, ‘were Nisus and Euryalus not Trojans, Trojan warriors?’

  ‘Well,’ said Locke, his brow obviously furrowed, though concealed under the roundhat; ‘Nisus was a Trojan warrior – that I know. But of his attachment with Euryalus I know not. What is the connection?’