‘No, I think not,’ he replied, much pleased with the fullness of its taste.
‘It is mackerel, brought fresh from Rajahmundry.’
‘Mackerel?’ said Hervey, curious.
‘Yes, the rajah is inordinately fond of them. And they’re so much fatter than those you will find in England. The warmer waters make them lazier.’
‘And the special taste they have?’
‘One of the rajah’s cooks is from Bombay. He has a clever way with a marinade — coriander and other spices. I tell you, the rajah’s table is second to none.’
He was becoming happily accustomed to good tables, declared Hervey.
But the most fulsome praise was reserved for what followed. ‘Pig!’ exclaimed Selden, as two khitmagars advanced with the spitted bulk of his delight carried high on their shoulders. ‘There is no better sport than spearing pig, Hervey, and the more so because he tastes so fine. Shooting tiger is nothing to hog-hunting!’
Great slices of meat were hacked from the boar’s loins, and soon both Locke and Hervey were confessing that they had never had such choice game. The meat was fine-grained, not at all coarse — darker, more promising than pork, but not offensively strong.
‘You had better have some claret with it to appreciate its fullness,’ said Selden, beckoning to a khitmagar holding a magnificently chased ewer. ‘I could eat pig every day. Have some of this too,’ he continued, nodding as another khitmagar proffered a bowl of preserve. ‘Sev, aroo, aur kubani ki.’
‘Apple…’ began Hervey, racking his brains for the other words.
‘Apple, peach and apricot — chatnee. And some of this — there’s nothing more sensuous than dhal!’ A tall, loose-limbed youth, clean-shaven, with effeminate features, dabbed at the little beads of sweat on Selden’s forehead, smiling confidentially as he did so. Selden returned the smile before waving him away with a playful gesture.
Hervey affected not to notice.
‘He is the most amusing boy,’ said Selden, ‘a Bengali I engaged in Calcutta when I came back here last year. A trustworthy bearer is a prize, Hervey.’
‘Indeed,’ replied the latter, taking another slice of pig. ‘You will recall that I found it thus with grooms. With me still is the very same dragoon from that last winter in Spain.’
Selden nodded approvingly. ‘Tell me of this battle — Waterloo. Not how went it, for I was never much occupied by fighting — but how the regiment fared.’
Hervey recounted the tally of officers, and the men whom Selden might recall.
The veterinarian heard it in silence, here and there shaking his head at a name. But Joseph Edmonds’s brought more. ‘The major was a humane man. He treated me with not a little kindness.’
Hervey supposed he must be referring to events on campaign, and latterly to his manner of leaving the regiment in Cork. ‘I owe Major Edmonds everything, perhaps, too,’ he confided; ‘no man I ever met combined such zeal for perfection in his profession with such benevolence towards an individual.’
‘Indeed?’ smiled Selden with an irony that was lost on his visitor. He had always regarded Hervey as having excess of both.
By the time coffee was brought by the khansamah, Henry Locke had slid deep into his chair and a profound sleep. He made little noise, however (beyond the occasional snuffle), so that Hervey and Selden were able to continue without distraction. ‘Well,’ said the latter, with a sudden and curious insistence, ‘you have not spoken one word of your purpose in coming to India. I don’t suppose it was anything I said in Toulouse when I recommended this course to you? And I don’t suppose you have voluntarily quit your precious dragoons.’
Hervey smiled. ‘No, I have not left the regiment. I am with the Duke of Wellington’s staff. I am here to study the employment of the lance with a view to its being taken into service in our cavalry.’
Selden looked puzzled. ‘The duke’s staff, you say; in what capacity?’
‘I am aide-de-camp.’
He now looked positively wary. ‘So you are Captain Hervey?’
‘Yes.’
‘Forgive me,’ he continued, his brow furrowed, ‘but when last we met you had not two sovereigns to spare, and there was some general or other after your hide. This is a remarkable change of fortune, is it not?’
Hervey smiled again. ‘I have been fortunate, yes. In the wake of the battle there were many positions to be filled.’
Selden looked sceptical. ‘Well, whatever your business in India,’ and he seemed not yet inclined to believe that it was entirely stated, though he would ordinarily have staked his last rupee on Hervey’s candour, ‘I am very glad to see you again. You will know of the circumstances of my leaving the Sixth in Cork. It’s better that we have it out.’
Hervey made some protest, not without embarrassment, but Selden bade him stop.
‘I freely admit that my tastes have been seduced by years in the tropics,’ he continued, ‘and it’s as well that I am returned here where they cause less offence — indeed, go entirely unremarked.’
‘And better for your health?’ asked Hervey, grasping the opportunity to change the subject.
‘That I do not know, but I don’t imagine that I should have enjoyed many winters living beneath a fountain — which is what it seemed to me that Cork was.’
‘How did you come to this employment?’
‘By letters of introduction from the Company in Calcutta. I had once been their buying agent there.’
‘And the rajah wished to have a veterinarian?’
‘Someone to buy horses — that, yes, but more: I am become his adviser in other, general matters. He has a most efficient dewan — minister, that is — and a sound treasury. Which is as well, for he has much wealth, but he has made no treaty with the Company and there is no resident, therefore.’
It was now Hervey’s turn to look puzzled. ‘But if he is so afeard of the nizam, as I hear tell, why does he not conclude such a treaty with the Company?’
‘He values his own sovereignty, of course, and there is always a fear among the princes that a resident is but a covert viceroy. But principally he fears that the very act of approaching the Company would provoke the nizam into invading Chintal. And since we know that Haidarabad is presently at the mercy of the nizam’s lunatic sons, I shouldn’t wonder but that he is right.’
Hervey paused thoughtfully before making what seemed the obvious retort. ‘But the rajah could surely conclude his treaty in secret, and then it would be for the Company to protect Chintal.’
Selden smiled — laughed, almost. ‘My dear Hervey, you have a very great deal to learn about India. War is made here with bullocks, money and spies. The rajah would not even be able to think of such a treaty without the nizam’s hearing of it. Several of the rajah’s own khitmagars are in the pay of the nizam!’
‘Surely if you know that, then—’
‘Hervey, it is better that we know who the spies are than that we dismiss them and begin again.’
‘Perhaps so,’ he conceded. And then he frowned, as if something troubled him. ‘Bullocks, money and spies, you say. What about guns?’
‘Battle is made with guns. You of all people know that!’
They lit cigars, yet not even the smoke made Locke stir. ‘Not, I fancy, an officer of your fastidiousness,’ suggested Selden, contemplating his repose.
‘There are two suppositions in your saying so, and I am not inclined to remark on either,’ replied Hervey with a smile. ‘He is a most gallant and faithful officer.’
‘As you please,’ conceded Selden.
‘One more thing, however: what manner of forces does the rajah possess?’
‘About five thousand of infantry and two risallahs of cavalry — five hundred each.’
‘And guns?’
‘A few siege pieces hardly worth the name; and each risallah will have a brace of gallopers. The Company has always been anxious to see as few cannon as possible in native hands.’
‘I have heard that
a galloper gun deployed with some address might have considerable effect here, though — the mutiny at Vellore? I was sorry on more than one occasion in Spain for their passing.’
‘Indeed,’ nodded Selden, ‘but the nizam has copious artillery, including a battery of siege pieces that seem able to go where even our own horse-gunners would have difficulty. They blew apart the rajah’s forts on the Godavari river a decade ago when he tried to levy tolls on Haidarabad trafficking. The nizam’s beautiful daughters, they are called.’
‘Yes, I had heard. I should very much like to make their acquaintance, but as a friend of course,’ laughed Hervey.
Selden frowned. ‘Hervey, as I remember, you once professed to having little facility with women — though I believed I had observed otherwise. Do not suppose that you will find any woman in India fathomable, not least one belonging to the nizam!’
Hervey blushed.
‘But why, in any case, should you be so interested in these details?’
There was nothing in Selden’s tone to cause him alarm, but he thought nevertheless to dismiss the matter with a certain lightness. ‘You once chided me, too, for being excessively interested in my profession — and that it would do me no good if I wished to be advanced!’
Selden smiled. ‘That I did! Though I did say, also, that the Honourable Company would take a different view of your aptness, did I not? I even urged — as I recall — that you throw in with the Company and see that aptness rewarded!’
Hervey was content that his diversion had worked, even if at some cost to his pride. Locke made a loud snorting sound, then whimpered, like an old dog dreaming of rabbit-chasing, and slid even further into his chair.
‘It is the custom of the Hindoo to take to his charpoy for an hour or so after such a meal,’ said Selden, looking with some amusement towards the lieutenant. ‘Your friend will be honoured by the khansamah and his staff for so doing. Do you wish to do likewise?’
‘Not especially,’ replied Hervey, looking about him; ‘I am not in the least tired and there is so much of interest hereabouts that I should very much like to see more.’
‘In that case,’ said Selden, sitting bolt upright and with a glint in his eye, ‘let us ride out across the kadir— the river plain. We shall very probably see pig, and you’ll be able to observe from how they run what manner of sport I speak of. I tell you, Hervey, there’s nothing of its like. Chasing the fox is for dullards when you’ve run after pig!’
Hervey was all attention.
‘And, then, perhaps, before too long, we might get you to carry a spear.’
Now he was all eagerness.
After a half-hour’s respite — so that, in Selden’s words, they would not get the colic — he went to make the arrangements. Hervey watched him stride purposefully across the maidan towards where the syces were taking their ease in the shade of a huge palmyra. That he seemed so well in both body and spirits was a happy thing indeed. In Spain and France he had never looked more than well enough, and there had been times when he was far short of that — Toulouse, notably, after the battle, when the hot and cold remittent fevers, his malaria, from years in the Indies, rendered his diagnoses so unreliable that more than one troop-horse escaped destruction only by the hand of Providence (or, in one case, by Hervey’s own). He was at times the very model of black bile. Yet here in Chintal his humours seemed wholly restored. The irony — that India had been the cause of his original ill humour, and was now the restorative — seemed apt. Concerning the manner of his leaving the Sixth, details of which Hervey knew only through Private Johnson (for no one in the mess seemingly had much stomach for them), he was content to let things lie. It was a pity that Selden’s proclivities in that direction had been further complicated by a specific taste, and it was a cruel temptation, therefore, that in the regiment’s band there should have been a cymbalist from the Ivory Coast who, had he been in skirts, would have passed pleasingly for a young woman. In these parts it was of no particular matter, however: there were no interests of discipline to be attentive to, nor even propriety, and Hervey could simply enjoy the company of a man whose fellowship had sometimes been disdained by the mess but whose knowledge of horses he greatly admired.
Selden returned with two Arab ponies, and two of the same breed built bigger. Hervey had never ridden a pure-bred Arab, though he had ridden many a horse that had profited by Arab blood in its lines. Jessye, indeed, Welsh crossed with thoroughbred, had in consequence such blood on both sides. All the rajah’s hog-hunters were Arabs or Turkomans, explained Selden. The Chintal kadirs were trappy country compared with those in the north, and with a jinking pig, as long as the cover was not too heavy, a pony was a better bet, though if it came to a straight gallop then the pony would naturally lose. Those who could ride under twelve stone, said Selden, were therefore at an advantage, and it was ever to his consternation that the rajah, who rode considerably in excess of that, should find himself so often defeated by even an elderly boar.
Hervey tried one of the two ponies, a flea-bitten grey about thirteen hands and three inches. The saddle was English, as he would have chosen for the hunting field at home, yet never had he felt less secure as he cantered her in a large circle, for even with Jessye he was used to having shoulders in front of him. This little mare — Gita — seemed unusually high on the leg, and narrowchested. But he could feel the power beneath him. She had a good length of rein and her mouth was a deal less hard than he expected: he managed to turn her so sharply at one stage that he was almost parted from her. He expressed much satisfaction, and Selden said he should be pleased with his choice for that was the rajah’s favourite, which no-one as a rule but his own daughter — the raj kumari — rode. Hervey voiced surprise, and then admiration, that the rajah’s daughter should trust so active a horse with a side-saddle. And he admitted even greater surprise when Selden told him she rode astride.
Selden himself rode at a little over thirteen stone, and took the reins of a fiery-looking Turkoman bay almost two full hands higher. He explained that, since he was not hunting, he would prefer the extra height to observe. His own preference with a spear was the other gelding — at fifteen hands, a near-perfect mount for this kadir.
‘He looks uncommonly like an English blood,’ said Hervey, admiringly.
‘The Turkoman’s breeding has much, I think, in common with the thoroughbred,’ Selden conceded. ‘Without doubt, there’s much Arab in him. And I’m convinced that the Byerly Turk — on which you know that much of the thoroughbred’s blood is founded — is in fact from Turkomania. You have only to look close at the paintings of him to see the similarity — the head, principally.’
‘And is he as fast?’
‘Not, perhaps, over so short a distance as would a blood usually race. But I’ll warrant that I could gallop this one most of the day and he would stand it well. Especially since he’s been fed on nahari for over a year.’
‘Nahari?’ asked Hervey.
‘Flour and fat: it means “never get weary”. Now,’ he began, as they left the camp, ‘the first thing on which we must be clear is that we hunt only the boar.’
‘How do I tell him?’
‘Both he and the sow have tushes, so the only way to be sure are his testises — they’ll be prominent enough beneath his tail. Now, a hog will lie concealed until he’s beaten out, and then he’ll run fast for the nearest cover — and I truly mean fast. He can go at a gallop, and you’ll need to go flat out to stay with him. That’s why you must have a horse you can trust, for you yourself will have no time to help it out of trouble. I have had some crashing falls: it’s all part of the sport. And the faster I’ve been going as we tumbled, the less damage has been done.’
Hervey nodded, accepting the proposition, illogical as it might at first have seemed, for it was indeed better sometimes to be put on the ground with no time to flinch than struggling to save oneself.
‘Remember,’ continued Selden, ‘a horse can go where a pig goes. And in this country t
here’s so much grass and dhak in the season that unless you stay right up with him you’ll lose him as soon as he makes his first cover, and in any case the pig will make a good pilot. Now, if you do lose him the golden rule is to cast well for’ard: do not look for him at the point you lost him. Cast for’ard a mile or so on the line he was running, for believe me, the pig will soon cover that distance. And then find a hillock, or a nullah, or some such feature, and wait for him to break.’
The camp was now a mile or more behind them. In the heat of the afternoon, though Selden warned him that it was not a fraction of what was to come in July just before the monsoon broke, Hervey felt the curious sensation of coming alive, like the basking lizard which manages, just, to crawl onto its warming stone and then, after sunning itself for an hour or so, is suddenly disposed to scuttle off at great speed. And though this heat was not enervating, as sometimes he had found it in Spain, neither was it a burning heat, from which, instinctively, all tried to shelter. It was an invigorating warmth, annealing the muscles of his arms and legs, and he had not felt its like before. Perhaps, he mused, this was the beginning of what Selden had said so often in France — that India sweated out the false civilization in a man (though there was as yet scarce a bead of sweat on his brow).
They picked their way through a patch of untended sugar cane, Selden falling silent and crouching low in the saddle to peer between the dhak for a sight of his quarry. ‘If you come out for pig on your own — “gooming”, we call it, as opposed to on a big hunt — it’s best to try to get on top of him before he breaks, rather than beating him out, otherwise he may get too great a start on you. Beware, mind: you’ll likely enough find a leopard in these places, and that can be tricky.’
Hervey was more and more intrigued by Selden’s transfiguration from the fever-ridden cynic he had known in the regiment. ‘And tiger?’ he asked. ‘Do you find tiger in such patches as these?’
‘Be assured, Hervey,’ said Selden half laughing, ‘if I suspected tiger were here then I should not come within a mile. You may take your chance with a leopard in thick country, but you have none with a tiger. Leopard’s not so intent on killing, merely escaping. Whereas tiger — man-eater or no — is so prodigiously strong that it makes no odds why he attacks, for he’ll crush you instantly.’
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