The Nizam's Daughters

by Mallinson, Allan

  ‘I surmise that you are sceptical by nature, sir,’ replied Hervey, still smiling.

  ‘Like the philosopher, Captain Hervey, I deny nothing but I question everything.’

  ‘In what do you place your faith, then?’

  ‘I always strive to gain the weather gage and the first broadside!’ Peto said it with such relish that it made Hervey blink. ‘But I am forgetting myself: I have a very passable Bual that I think we may enjoy before our dinner.’ Champagne was evidently not the captain’s ultimate pleasure. He opened a locker and took out a bottle of Madeira from an inclined rack made to keep them fast in the heaviest of seas. He drew the cork deftly and poured two glasses. ‘It will not need tasting: Blandy has never failed me. My first captain had barrels of the stuff as ballast. Two or three times across the Atlantic and the Equator and it was very finely matured indeed.’

  ‘You buy direct from the island?’

  ‘Captain Hervey, Madeira has been my second home these past three years, for that was my station during the American war. And, I might say, it was the place of some fortune, for we took a frigate and two merchantmen in a year.’

  ‘That would mean prize-money, then?’ Hervey was gaining his ease.

  ‘Do not think ill of it, sir: the greater part goes to the officers, but then so does the enemy’s shot!’

  Hervey assured him he meant no disrespect. ‘You have bought a handsome estate somewhere, no doubt?’ he added.

  ‘Not at all. It is invested in Berry Brothers in St James’s Street: a good wine, sir, will have a better return than bricks and mortar.’

  ‘You do not have a wife?’

  ‘Captain Hervey, I have scarce spent seven successive nights ashore since leaving Norfolk to be a captain’s servant, and I should scarcely wish to spend any more with a wife!’

  Hervey laughed. ‘Well I, too, am not well acquainted with soft pillows. The army has not been idle these past years.’

  ‘Bah!’ said Peto; ‘I have followed events with the closest attention, and it seems to me that if your Duke of Wellington had shown a little more address you would have been over the Pyrenees two years before. And he was humbugged at Waterloo, I hear.’

  ‘Oh come, sir!’ spluttered Hervey, but still with a broad smile. ‘You can have but an imperfect conception of the difficulties the duke faced at Waterloo. He had few battalions which had seen service – most of those were in America. And his allied regiments were – at best – untried. It is astonishing that he did as he did.’

  They had moved to the steerage and a very handsome table of salt-pork collops, a veal pie and crabs dressed with olive oil. Peto poured him burgundy again. Here was no less generous or attentive a host than poor d’Arcey Jessope himself, thought Hervey – though that delightful Coldstream dandy, killed stone dead by a tirailleur’s bullet at Waterloo, had been almost self-mocking in the fare he offered. Captain Laughton Peto would have been mortified by any want of gravity. For him the table was a serious affair, comparable, it seemed, with the very business of seamanship itself.

  Peto was keen, however, to press his censure. ‘But the duke’s attachment to purchase, Captain Hervey, and his favouring of fellow nobles, his promoting their sons: is that conducive to efficiency?’

  Hervey sighed to himself again. What was he meant to do – defend the inexplicable, though it worked nonetheless? ‘I think,’ he began tentatively, ‘that the duke has always been in want of men in whose capability he could place confidence. It is the Horse Guards who appoint officers to command, and sometimes these appointments are inapt. I myself have served a brigadier who was both a coward and an incompetent. The duke ensures that at least his own staff are of his mind. But he’s by no means closed to the appointment of men who have recommended themselves by service.’ He paused briefly to sip his wine and crack open a claw, and he wondered to what Peto’s questioning might be tending. He thought it prudent to rehearse the duke’s opinions a little more fully. ‘And as to purchase, it has its iniquities but yet its recommendations: I think it well to have officers with a stake in the country when the army is the means of maintaining public order – and might indeed be the means of overthrowing the government.’

  ‘And yet the nation may entrust its wooden walls to officers with no such stake, only patriotic sentiments!’ countered Peto, unimpressed.

  ‘Does the navy not have its patronage too?’ asked Hervey, hoping the doubt sown might allow them to pass on to other things.

  ‘Not for the advancement of knaves and imbeciles, that’s for sure. Do you know our system?’

  Hervey indicated that he knew it but imperfectly.

  ‘I was taken on as a captain’s servant at fourteen – or “volunteer” as we were by then more properly known.’

  ‘And how was that arranged?’ Hervey interrupted.

  Peto smiled. ‘By Lord Nelson’s recommendation to Captain Blackwood, but . . .’

  ‘So influence has its place in the navy, too?’ smiled Hervey by return.

  ‘There must be a start somehow, Captain Hervey. All that Lord Nelson did, though, was to recommend me as from an honest family, that I was clean-limbed and eager! From volunteer, advancement is on merit alone. I was a midshipman the following year – 1805 – though in truth I had not spent the regulation four years at sea. But yellow-jack had carried off three of our mids. I passed for lieutenant at nineteen – the earliest I could do so – and was appointed to a first-rate almost at once . . .’

  ‘But again, Captain Peto,’ Hervey pressed, ‘there must be more midshipmen who pass for promotion than there are vacancies for lieutenants? How are appointments thus made?’

  ‘Some by favour, to be sure; but no captain would appoint an officer in whom he could not have confidence.’

  ‘How did you obtain your appointment?’

  ‘By Captain Blackwood’s recommendation. I was one of his signalling midshipmen on Euryalus at Trafalgar. But as I was saying, I was first lieutenant on Amphion at Lissa, and from that action got my command the following year. And do not forget that promotion is ever open to those of ability on the lower deck: both Cook and Benbow served before the mast.’

  ‘Trafalgar was hot work for you?’ asked Hervey (he intended, firmly, to deflect the conversation from purchase).

  ‘Not for Euryalus: we had done our work during the night, keeping contact with the French and signalling to the fleet, to let Nelson bring them to battle at daylight on terms of advantage.’

  ‘So you saw little of the action?’ Hervey asked, with a note of disappointment.

  ‘On the contrary,’ smiled Peto, ‘we saw everything. We were in the thick of things throughout.’

  ‘Then how might you not describe it as hot work?’ said Hervey, surprised.

  ‘Because in a fleet action a first-rate does not fire on a frigate unless fired upon first.’

  Hervey looked puzzled.

  ‘Captain Hervey, do you have any conception of the firepower of a first-rate compared with that of a frigate?’

  ‘Well,’ began Hervey awkwardly, ‘evidently I have failed to grasp the magnitude of the difference.’

  ‘Just so; a first-rate has three times the guns, and her lower-deck battery has thirty-two-pounders – almost twice the weight of mine. At the Nile, there was a French frigate that opened fire on the Goliath – who was but a seventy-four. Goliath fired back, and with a single broadside dismasted her and shattered her hull so that she sank at once.’ Peto took a sip of Madeira with intense satisfaction at the thought. ‘No, from a line-of-battle ship a frigate must stand away, and she may invariably do so with ease and honour both. At Trafalgar Euryalus repeated the flagship’s signals and so on – first for Nelson, and then for Collingwood – and we helped several ships which were otherwise disabled: we towed off Royal Sovereign – she was dismasted. But we had no damage ourselves.’

  ‘I did not know of the convention,’ admitted Hervey, taking another long draught of Peto’s excellent burgundy. ‘But I can see its pur
pose, now. It is very gallant: tirez les premiers!’

  ‘Gallant? I tell you I would have none of it were I Admiralty. A frigate is an instrument of war as much as is a first-rate. Fighting chivalrously is always at someone’s expense – and usually those who are least able to afford it! All this tirez les premiers is so much cant. Fontenoy it began at, did it not? “We do not fire first, gentlemen: we are the English Guards!” ’ Peto made a loud huffing sound.

  Hervey thought there had been something pragmatic in the Guards’ invitation but could not recall the particulars, and, in any case, it was Trafalgar he wished to discuss, not Fontenoy. It was not every day a man might hear of it from so close an observer. And so they sat well into the night, Hervey pressing him to every detail of the battle, with more burgundy and Madeira than he had ever drunk at one sitting. When at last he rose, unsteadily, to retire to his quarters, he put a final question to his host. ‘How came it about that Lord Nelson was able to recommend you to Captain Blackwood in the first instance? Are you from a naval family, sir?’

  ‘No, I am not,’ replied Peto with a smile. ‘Not, that is, in the literal sense. Lord Nelson’s father had the living at Burnham Thorpe, and my father was once his curate. At the time of my going to sea he had the neighbouring parish.’

  ‘Then,’ smiled Hervey, ‘we have something in common.’

  They began comparing their relative ecclesiastical fortunes, but since the tithes were either impropriate to the patron or modest, the comparison was brief.

  ‘So we each must seek for our prosperity in uniform,’ concluded Peto, dabbing with a napkin at the Madeira which had found its way to his waistcoat.

  ‘Just so,’ smiled Hervey, ‘and at a time when there is peace on earth!’

  ‘Ah,’ said Peto, shaking his head optimistically, ‘but there is little goodwill towards men!’

  Next day

  The wind had backed, and a moderate westerly was making the air chill. Hervey had on the thinnest cheesecloth shirt, yet he was sweating. Half an hour’s brushing followed by another’s strapping would maintain his own hale condition as surely as it would Jessye’s. And he had just been struggling to remove her shoes too, for they served no purpose standing on deep straw. He looked up to see Peto eyeing his labours intently. Feeling the need to say something, for he knew the business must gravely offend the captain’s sensibilities, he thought he might express his gratitude once more. ‘I do very much appreciate what a trial this is, sir,’ he began.

  Peto surprised him by his reply, however. ‘Captain Hervey, I should not have risked the regularity of my ship had I thought your horse posed any danger,’ he smiled. ‘On the contrary, a horse has a most civilizing effect. The hands feel better for seeing her. I would be chary of that, perhaps, were there not peace on earth, but I see no cause now for keeping the crew quite as tight as the bowstring they have been hitherto.’

  He seemed in excessively good spirits this morning. Hervey smiled with some relief.

  ‘We see eye to eye, I think, on many matters. When you are quite finished with your day’s exertions join me, if you please, on the quarterdeck. I wish to apprise you of something.’

  Hervey put on his cloak before leaving the shelter of the waist. Sail was stretching fuller in the freshening westerly, and spray was now visiting the deck. No land was visible, even by telescope, and seabirds were fewer by the hour. Peto was wrapped likewise in a cloak and stood alone at the stern rail, legs braced a little apart, a hand fastened on one of the shrouds. Hervey walked as close to the rail as he could without actually placing a hand on it, the ship’s motion sufficiently pronounced now to make him a shade insecure. Peto smiled as he reached the stern. ‘Worry not: in six months you’ll be rushing to the tops like an old hand!’

  Hervey looked unconvinced, and then not a little anxious as it occurred to him that Peto might have summoned him to begin this very practice.

  The captain’s preoccupations were otherwise, however. ‘Since you are evidently an officer of singular attachment to your profession, I judge that you might be an availing interlocutor in the art of war.’

  Hervey had no idea of what he alluded to. ‘You flatter me greatly, sir—’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes – but do I suppose correctly that you have an eye for more than a horse?’

  He smiled. It seemed that the duke, at least, believed so. ‘Try me, sir,’ he replied.

  ‘Certain notions of warfare, acquired these past six years, I am minded to commit to the page.’

  Hervey wiped the stinging salt spray from his eyes and pulled his shako lower. ‘Notions particular to war at sea?’

  Peto thought a moment before replying. ‘At first I should have considered them so, but I am no longer sure, for it seems to me that the general precepts ought equally to apply on land. What do you know of the affair at Lissa?’

  Hervey now had his legs braced twice as wide as Peto’s, and a tighter grip on a shroud line. ‘I know that an English squadron defeated a French one twice its strength.’

  ‘Just so, Hervey, just so.’ Peto’s voice was beginning to rise against the wind. ‘Four of the French’s were forty-gun frigates, too – though to say French is not entirely true, for one was Venetian, and another couple of thirty-twos as well. A damned fine fight they put up, though!’

  Hervey made respectful noises.

  Peto now revealed he was writing a memento. ‘I gave a public lecture on Lissa – at Gresham’s College in the City. A publisher approached me thereafter.’

  His evident pride in both was endearing. Hervey nodded in appreciation.

  ‘I intend, in a supplementary chapter, to draw lessons from the action, developing a more general theory,’ he added.

  Hervey asked if he would be challenging any Admiralty document thereby.

  ‘There are the Standing Instructions, yes. And these are added to by fleet instructions. Lord Howe’s are still the basis for our fighting.’

  ‘And these are deficient?’

  Peto looked rather irritated. ‘They don’t want for quality! I wish merely to develop a general design for captains of frigates – and it’s only of frigates I speak, for the future is with them.’

  ‘And the import of Lissa?’

  Peto looked happier again. ‘In the Royal Navy it is a precept, by which an officer is taught, that navigation precedes gunnery.’

  Spray was now beginning to reach high, yet Peto was not inclined to move. Hervey pulled up his collar and further inclined his ear towards him.

  ‘Captain Hoste prevailed at Lissa because he handled Amphion superbly, not because her gunnery was superior – though it was. He placed his ship where her fire might be to greatest advantage, and he drove the French onto the shore. That is working a frigate, Hervey!’

  Despite the distraction of having to keep his balance, Hervey saw how it must be so (indeed, he wished they were a little closer to the shore themselves). In any case, there could be no doubting the captain’s aptness for such a treatise, for Peto had walked the quarterdeck with Hoste, who had himself walked the deck with Nelson.

  ‘And I tell you this,’ he continued, now so fired by his subject that his voice had risen well above the wind, ‘there is wonderful pleasure to be had cruising, but it’s nothing to manoeuvring to advantage in shallow waters. The Nile was, to my mind, the most famous of victories!’

  Hervey would not have gainsaid that.

  ‘Do you recall Bonaparte’s lament? “Wherever you find a fathom of water, there you will find the British!” Oh yes, Hervey, believe me: it’s shallow waters that truly test a captain.’

  ‘I shall remember it,’ he replied, smiling. ‘A fathom only, you say?’

  ‘It is all that I should need,’ Peto asserted. ‘Come below and I’ll read you my account of it.’

  Even in the cold and the spray – and the effort to stay on his feet – Hervey could see the vigour in Peto’s thinking. And if he could pass just a little of his time at sea in discourse such as this he might well inc
rease his own fitness for command, for it was evident that in the handling of a frigate and a troop of cavalry there was more than a little similitude. As to this being any more than a theoretical fitness, however, he could only confide, for everywhere, they agreed – even in India – there was peace on earth.

  IV

  A PROSPEROUS VOYAGE

  Approaching the coast of Coromandel, 6 February 1816

  Hervey had written so many letters during his otherwise idle hours that they filled one of his hatboxes. But to one man he had yet to commit his thoughts, for Daniel Coates was neither family, nor regiment, nor superior. Daniel Coates was a man who would wish to hear of his thoughts as they touched upon his military condition, so that he might compare them with his own experience, which, in the space of the ten years he had been Hervey’s self-appointed tutor in practical soldiering, he had shared unsparingly. Daniel Coates, formerly General Tarleton’s trumpeter in the first American war, had lived peaceably on Salisbury Plain for twenty years, first as shepherd, then as agister, with sheep so numerous they had made him rich even by the wool standard of that county. Hervey would hold that he owed his life on a dozen occasions to that veteran’s generosity and tireless instruction – and never more so than at Waterloo, when Coates’s clever new carbine had been all that stood between him and a French lancer’s bullet. He had left the letter until this time so that he might reflect properly on the half-year he had passed in the wooden world.

  My Dear Daniel,

  I write this as the end of my passage to Hindoostan will soon be come. You will know, I trust, since my father will have told you, of my great good fortune. Of my affiancing I can say nothing but that it is more than I ever thought possible, and I pray daily that its consummation will not be too long delayed. Of my attachment to the Horse Guards, you may be sceptical, but I believe I may assure you that on that account you need have no anxiety, for I come here to do the bidding of the Duke of Wellington, about which more I am unable to say in this present but that the duties seem fitted to me. I do confess, though, to some unease, for, having pondered on my orders these past months, I feel the need of more intelligence than that to which I have been made privy. However, I can have nothing but the utmost faith in those who have despatched me hither (as they must have reposed their faith in me), and I am confident that when I attend on the offices of the Honourable East India Company in Calcutta I shall be given every facility and courtesy, and that all shall be well.