A Call To Arms

by Allan Mallinson

  Hervey was all too fearful of this latter. But McCarthy had his talents, for sure. If he could not learn to ride then there were other places he could serve – though it was sabres the troop had need of most. ‘The Sisken business was a miserable affair. The first time in the regiment.’

  Johnson screwed up his face. ‘ ’E pissed ’imself that often everybody wondered if ’e knew where t’ ’eads were!’

  ‘Johnson!’ But Hervey knew it was little use protesting, even mildly, at the soldier’s black humour. It was, in any case, equally the soldier’s strength when times were bad. But whatever had driven Private Sisken to hang himself in the ship’s heads, it was a poor thing that a dragoon – even one only partially trained – should reach such a state of mind without his fellows or his superiors knowing it. Armstrong, for all his rough tongue, had felt the unstated rebuke as keenly as had Hervey.

  But why Sisken had made a crude noose of hemp for himself, when drowning was the easier and surer way, had been the question on everyone’s lips. A watery grave was anyway what the man got the following day, the chaplain commending himself to the dragoons by ignoring the statutes against Christian committal of those who had taken their own lives. Indeed, the chaplain preached as perhaps he had never done before, calling upon the assembled company to ‘give thanks to Almighty God that he has given us, his unworthy children, the strength to endure where his servant Jeremiah Sisken had insufficient’. So that next day, for the first time, he was received below decks with some regard rather than with mere toleration.

  ‘I should like you to come with me to look at the remounts,’ said Hervey, suddenly determined to change the conversation. ‘You can ask Mr Seton Canning’s groom to stand evening stables for you.’ Johnson saw no cause to object. He trusted Lingard better than any man in the Sixth to stand his duty with the chargers. ‘Where will they be?’

  ‘The adjutant says they’ll be corralled somewhere out here.’ Hervey scanned the plain around him, shading his eyes against the low eastern sun as he turned. To north and west the country was empty but for the odd scrubby tree. The earth was baked and fruitless, for there were no cuts from the Hooghly here by which a ryot could irrigate a little patch for his maize and beans, and no grass that even a goat might subsist on. East of them lay the military lines and the Chitpore road, which ran north from the Company’s city to the ‘official’ native quarter, with its temples and the prominent houses of grand Bengali merchants. They were whitepainted like those of the Company sahibs, and a curious mix of styles – Mahommedan chiefly, the inheritance of the Moghuls, and Grecian, the influence of the Portuguese. ‘But I’m dammed if I can see a solitary fence post,’ said Hervey, lowering his telescope.

  ‘Which way are they coming?’

  Hervey pointed. ‘Lucknow. There’s a veterinarian who’s set up stud farms all over the Company’s territory. Apparently Lucknow is his best.’

  ‘Would that be Mr Moorcroft?’

  Hervey was impressed. ‘Yes. How had you heard of him?’

  ‘One o’ t’sutlers used to work for ’im. ’E said that ’e used to keep goin’ off into t’’ills an’ comin’ back wi’ ’orses. An’ ev’ry time they got smaller.’

  ‘What do you mean, “every time”?’

  ‘Ev’ry time, ’e came back wi’ smaller ’orses.’ Johnson sounded disapproving.

  ‘You don’t think he might have been prescient in his breeding policy, then?’ said Hervey, trying to suppress a smile at his groom’s absolute determination in the matter of size.

  Johnson merely shrugged.

  By late in the afternoon, the part of the plain where they had stood that very morning was transformed into a sight reminiscent of many a horse fair in England.

  ‘Not exactly as I had imagined,’ sighed the commanding officer, casting his eyes left and right dispiritedly. ‘I’m not sure that any of them are up to weight.’

  Threescore horses stood tethered in running lines, a tail swishing here and there at the odd persistent fly, but otherwise motionless. They were tired from the march, and from the sun which, though low now in the west, had not lost quite all of its formidable strength. The syces had brought them south from Jessor in five days – eighty miles of flat, lush country, at least to begin with, but with two sizeable rivers and a dozen smaller ones to cross. Had the horses been copers’ stock, the syces would have rested them another day to let them pick up sufficiently to win the buyer’s eye, but these animals were the progeny of the Company’s stud department. They were for issue, not for sale.

  ‘They appear tractable, at least, Colonel,’ suggested Hervey.

  Colonel Lankester nodded, and then smiled. ‘But Hugh Rose won’t like it much. Especially not when you’ve had first pick.’

  That Captain Hugh Rose had come with his troop to India had been a surprise to many, for it had been assumed he would exchange with some impecunious officer in another regiment and pay the difference (the price of his troop had plummeted as soon as the Sixth had been warned for the posting). But Rose had regained his appetite for the field in Canada, and now wanted to see the east – for a year or so at least, he said. Leaving his bays behind had not been easy, however. Though D with its chestnuts had been unquestionably the prettiest on parade, A Troop had been the more striking, especially when coats were shining with sweat. And there was nothing that Hugh Rose had liked better than to trot them past at a review and hear the admiration of the onlookers, especially if they were female. He had, after all, put no small sum of his own into his troop’s horses.

  Well, sighed Hervey to himself, the leader of A Troop was not going to enjoy that acclamation with these for remounts. ‘I think I will leave him the biggest, though, Colonel. From what I observed before, the smaller breeds are the better doers here.’

  ‘And that is what I have heard, too,’ said Lankester, sounding hopeful. ‘But as the Company expects us to make an impression, I am rather perplexed.’

  Hervey did not respond. Big men on big horses might impress the country powers at a durbar, but that might not be enough. Instead he turned his attention to a dozen or more little Marwaris at the end of the line, a mixed bag of colours, none of them standing much above fourteen hands. ‘Pit ponies,’ Johnson was no doubt thinking. ‘I’ve seen these before, Colonel. They’re very tough.’

  Colonel Lankester looked at them curiously. ‘What extraordinary ears!’

  The Marwaris’ ears were turned in so much that when they were pricked they almost touched, giving the appearance of horns. ‘I don’t know why it is so,’ replied Hervey. ‘There’s a lot of Arab in them, but that can hardly be the cause.’

  ‘What is your opinion, Mr Sledge?’

  The veterinary surgeon stepped forward, still minded to speak only when spoken to, even with so agreeable a commanding officer as Sir Ivo Lankester. ‘I know nothing of their ears, Colonel, but I would not be inclined to regard it as an unsoundness. I would be more troubled by what I am given to understand is their tendency to sickle hocks, and their reputation for uncertain temper.’

  Hervey was as impressed as the commanding officer by Sledge’s research.

  ‘But sickle hocks you can recognize easily enough, can you not?’ Sir Ivo suggested.

  ‘Oh, indeed, Colonel. Anyone may. And if I were buying for myself I should not take such a case: the risk is not worth it. But a fault of conformation is not necessarily an unsoundness.’

  Sledge was of the new stamp. Whereas Veterinary-Surgeon Selden, the Sixth’s sulphur-tinged veteran of the Peninsula, had turned to the fledgling science from a Guy’s Hospital dissecting room, David Sledge, a son of the manse, was a product of the new Veterinary College in Camden Town. Why he had eschewed a lucrative civil practice in England for the indignities of one in the service was unclear, for his prospects, even under a colonel like Lankester, could not have been greatly appealing. Although he was classed as a cornet for the first ten years of his service, he was on a par with that rank only for the purpose of allotting
quarters. And it would be a full twenty years before he could be classed as a captain. For the time being, however, Mr Sledge was an active and diligent veterinarian, and had won an unusual degree of respect among both officers and the ranks alike.

  The commanding officer turned to Hervey. ‘Am I to take it, then, that you would have these as first preference, subject to Sledge’s approval?’

  ‘Yes, Colonel. There seem to be a score or so of them. The rest I should have to search the lines for, but there look to be some promising types.’

  The commanding officer now turned full round to Private Johnson. ‘And what is your opinion?’

  Johnson did not hesitate for a moment. ‘Well, Colonel, it won’t be so far for t’recruits to fall, that’s for certain. But Cap’n ’Ervey says these things is right good doers, so I reckon we should be pleased.’

  Johnson’s display of both independence and loyalty pleased captain and commanding officer alike. Hervey was especially heartened to hear a private man speak up so, and use ‘colonel’ to his commanding officer, as had long been the Sixth’s custom until the late unhappiness. ‘I fear there shall be some rib-bending in this, however,’ cautioned Lankester, smiling still. ‘You may yet be known as the pony troop, Hervey.’

  ‘Handsome is as handsome does, Colonel.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. But you may wait a deal of time before you have a chance to prove them handsome doers.’

  Hervey knew it all too well. The review was closer at hand than they could possibly manage.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A GREAT TAMASHA

  Two weeks later

  That fortnight was a time of back-breaking toil for both men and horses. Hervey’s troop got the last of their remounts, more Marwaris, only five days before the brigade review. They looked puny even before they stood next to those of the other troops, who could at least form a decent front with their English troopers. But if any dragoons in the other troops had taunted them, E Troop could not have heard, for they were roused a full hour before the rest of the regiment and turned in a full hour later. Yet even by such means – a working day of sixteen hours – the troop was scarcely able to advance in column of threes at more than a walk, and the leading rein, about which Armstrong and others had joked, looked more and more likely to be their deliverer. And the sick list had grown – no malingerers these, for the NCOs would only let them report sick if the farrier had first given his opinion. And only a week ago poor Smith, ‘the Boiler’ as all and sundry had called him, had fallen to a fever after evening stables and was dead by first parade next day.

  ‘They’re so small we could walk next to ’em and at three ’undred yards it’d look as if we were mounted!’ Johnson had opined early on.

  Hervey had replied that it was not so bad an idea. ‘We are dragoons after all.’

  The day of the review was on them, however, and finely run it was, for the gathering clouds spoke of the south-west monsoon which would before long engulf this last dry corner of India. On the cusp of what seemed bearable and what was not, the quality and the fashionable of Calcutta were driving out onto the plain north-west of the city to see the review of the 1st Bengal Cavalry Brigade. There could not have been a nabob or a potentate anywhere in the Bengal Presidency who would not be there, as well as many from the adjoining princely states. That, at any rate, was Lord Hastings’s intention.

  And it seemed that the Governor-General had likewise deported from the city every piece of canvas. For a week and more, bullock carts and elephants had trudged back and forth to the review ground, by a different road so as not to rut the one to be used by the guests, with marquees and rugs and hangings, tables, cushions and chairs, and all manner of little comforts so that the princes and powers might see the wealth to which the Honourable Company had resource. And the Bengal Sappers had constructed a canvas pavilion where the guests might ease themselves, served by fresh running water the like of which no ryot could imagine, the whole bedecked with streamers and bunting so that it might have been the marching pavilion of the Great Moghul himself.

  What choice food and wine was to be served, Hervey could only guess; but the whole regiment knew that since midnight the elephants had been porting yakhdans filled from the Fort William ice houses. The dragoons themselves at this minute would have pledged themselves to hefty stoppages of pay for the contents of those hay-boxes, for although their canteens were full, the water in them was warm. They would enjoy the same spectacle of the review as the nabobs, albeit from not so good a vantage point, but without shade or punkahs they could scarcely hope to enjoy it nearly so much.

  Orders for the review itself had come at dusk two evenings before, and Sir Ivo had assembled his troop-leaders to discuss how best to expedite them – a sensible course, the captains agreed afterwards, and one which only a commanding officer secure in his own position would have contemplated. The scheme was straightforward enough. Compared with some of the field days they had known at Hounslow it was indeed easy, not to mention the real evolutions many of them had performed for the Duke of Wellington that memorable day five years ago. Save for one thing: the state of training of the remounts. For the first four troops it was not perhaps so great a problem since the dragoons themselves were seasoned, but Hervey faced a compound difficulty of greenhead dragoons and greenhead horses. More than once during the two weeks which had passed since that conversation with Sir Ivo he had found himself wondering why the colonel had not spread the new recruits of both species across the regiment. From a commanding officer’s point of view it was better, probably, to be sure of four troops than to be not so sure of five, but Hervey had felt the price of that surety very keenly as he realized that all E Troop might do was stand and watch.

  The plan which emerged from the colonel’s colloquium was for the first four troops to form two squadrons as the masse de manoeuvre on the right of the line; the two other regiments of the brigade were, after all, junior. In close order they would be an impressive sight with their blue coats and pipeclay crossbelts, white shakos and plumes (the brigadier wanted plumes, most emphatically). The trumpeters were good and well practised, and the officers were confident they could carry out the expected evolutions. Hervey’s troop, on the other hand, were to remain within sight of the noble spectators, dismounted and in reserve, and would mount only when the ‘battle’ was won, so that they could retire from the field as the squadrons rallied. There was no distinction in that, Hervey rued, but by the same token there was no danger of his dragoons being overmatched.

  And so here, the day of the review, E Troop were mustered, thirty-eight strong, standing easy, sweat glistening on horses and men alike. The NCOs were chafing at being nursemaids when they might have been galloping with their fellows in the other troops, and Hervey was trying hard to conceal his own mixed feelings. The Sixth had worked into the silent hours on their equipment, so that it shone now in the bright sunlight, whether steel or leather. And none had worked harder than E Troop who, though they were to make themselves scarce at the earliest opportunity, knew nevertheless that eyes would be upon them from the moment they led out their horses in the regimental lines.

  In troop columns of threes, the Sixth had marched onto the exercise ground behind the Bengal horse, so that when the brigade turned into line they should be on the right, as their seniority required, with the artillery to their right in turn. At any distance it was an imposing sight, speaking of order and discipline, and a disposition for concerted action which must be the envy of the country powers. At the canvas pavilions, the assembled potentates were watching to a commentary by the major of brigade as relays of khitmagars served iced champagne and sherbet.

  ‘The brigadier, having received word that the enemy is approaching, has sent out scouts to range beyond the ridge,’ explained the brigade-major through a speaking trumpet, pointing out the direction. ‘Mindful that the enemy may deploy his own scouts forward, a line of vedettes will be established to counter them.’

  The bri
gade-major handed his speaking trumpet to the officer who was to continue with the commentary, and rode down to the brigade commander – the signal for the vedettes to deploy and the horse artillery to unlimber. According to the carefully worked scheme there would be a quarter of an hour before the vedettes would signal the enemy’s approach, and so the brigadier concluded he had time for one small innovation. He cursed himself for not thinking of it before.

  Hervey observed him through his telescope – Major-General Sir Mortimer Massey, a man of whom no one had heard until New Orleans, when he had parleyed successfully with the Americans to take the wounded from the field. He was an impressive figure, tall in the saddle, plumed, scarlet-coated, riding a grey Arab that would have made Bonaparte himself envious.

  ‘Sir Ivo,’ said the general, as he trotted up to the Sixth. ‘Seeing the ground this morning, I am much taken by the possibilities of that nullah over to your right.’

  Sir Ivo looked to where the general was indicating.

  ‘I believe it ought to be possible to get a troop along it unseen to all the nabobs, to come up on the flank of the vedette line.’

  Sir Ivo glanced about the field to the points of reference. ‘I see it, General. To what advantage, may I ask?’

  The general frowned. ‘By heavens, you’re slow this morning, Lankester! As the enemy come over the ridge and the vedettes pull back, the troop can take them in the flank. It will be the devil of a surprise to the nabobs!’

  The proposition was entirely fair, though Sir Ivo wondered why, since this was a day to impress, they had not rehearsed it. Hervey’s troop might be in want of riding practice, but the other troops had scarcely had much opportunity for field drill. But he could hardly balk at so elementary a manoeuvre. ‘Very well, General. Shall you give me the signal?’