Rumours Of War h-6

by Allan Mallinson

  He bowed. ‘At your service, ma’am.’

  She was a handsome woman, in her late fifties perhaps, tall and forthright. She held out a hand. ‘I am Susan Forbes, Major Hervey. My husband you have already met.’ She indicated the chargé d’affaires, still receiving his guests.

  Hervey nodded. ‘Ah, indeed, ma’am. And who is he that would make my acquaintance, for I believe I know of no one in Lisbon that would have my name?’

  ‘She, Major Hervey,’ replied Mrs Forbes, and with a most engaging smile.

  Before the lines of mystification could quite leave his forehead, Mrs Forbes had taken him to the other side of the room, to a group of Portuguese ladies, who curtsied at their approach.

  Hervey bowed.

  One of them, markedly younger, about his own age, was smiling more than merely politely.

  ‘Doña Robert Broke, Major Hervey.’

  Hervey hesitated. He had some recollection of her face, but the name . . .

  ‘You may remember better Doña Isabella, Major Hervey,’ explained the woman, her eyebrows raised and her head slightly tilted to emphasize the possibility. ‘As do I better Cornet Hervey.’ She held out a hand.

  Hervey was astonished. He smiled; and very fully. ‘Isabella Delgado,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘I remember very well indeed!’

  Mrs Forbes began chatting obligingly to the others in Portuguese while Hervey sought to recover the intervening years.

  ‘I recall, too, that then we spoke only in French,’ he began.

  ‘My late husband was English, as you may perceive,’ she explained, without losing any of the happy animation in her face. ‘He was consul in Oporto.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear you are widowed, ma’am. Has it been long?’

  ‘Five years, though I have a daughter to remind me daily of our former happiness.’ She maintained the smile throughout. ‘And you, Major Hervey?’

  ‘I, too, ma’am, have a daughter. I was myself bereaved some years ago.’

  Isabella Broke’s smile disappeared. ‘I am sad to hear it.’

  Hervey was not minded to dwell on it, however. ‘Your father, is he well?’ (He recalled her father was long widowed when he had first met him.)

  Isabella’s smile returned. ‘He is very well, Major Hervey. He lives here in Lisbon yet.’

  ‘I am glad of that. Please give him my greatest respects when next you see him – if he remembers the regiment, that is.’

  ‘I am sure he does, Major Hervey. Your regiment did him great service.’

  The Sixth had rescued the Barão de Santarem and his daughter as the army had fallen back into the lines of Torres Vedras. There had been many another daughter whom Sir Arthur Wellesley’s men had brought into the fold behind those formidable defensive lines, but it was doubtful that any had engendered a more devoted following by a regiment’s subalterns than had Isabella Delgado. And Hervey could almost see that daughter now, for despite the passing of a dozen years and more Isabella Delgado’s complexion was the same smooth ivory, her cheekbones prominent still, her hair as black and shining, her figure if anything a little sparer yet fuller-breasted. She had indeed grown very handsomely into womanhood.

  ‘Major Hervey?’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Forbes, I did not—’

  ‘I remarked that you will have the pleasure of Doña Isabella’s company at supper when the reception is ended.’

  Hervey smiled appreciatively.

  ‘If, that is, you are able still to stay, my dear?’ added Mrs Forbes, turning to her.

  ‘With much pleasure,’ replied Isabella, bowing her head.

  ‘Then I shall adjust the placement at once.’

  When the chargé’s wife was gone, Isabella drew Hervey to one side, with an assurance quite marked, so that he began to imagine she was a practised visitor at the embassy. ‘Major Hervey, it is very good to see you after all these years. I had not known that you were to be here.’

  Her English was estimable, but Hervey was uncertain as to whether or not their mission was expected. ‘Well, ma’am, it is doubly a pleasure in my case, for I believe you may recall that I had a true fondness for your country?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I recall as all the officers enjoyed their time in Lisbon.’

  ‘And I trust we shall again,’ replied Hervey, uncertain what exactly she did recall (he trusted not his own youthful infatuation).

  But Isabella was not inclined merely to small talk. Suddenly her brow furrowed. ‘Your coming gives us all great hope, Major Hervey. You cannot imagine how alarmed are the people here. Many have left already for Brazil again.’

  She spoke in a confidential way. Even so, Hervey was surprised their mission was known of so publicly. ‘How did you hear of our coming, ma’am?’

  She smiled. ‘It is no secret. There have been reports in all the newspapers. I fancy they just wait for The Times to arrive and then serve up the intelligence.’

  Hervey was not sure. Yet if His Majesty’s envoy in Lisbon trusted Doña Isabella Delgado Broke, then who was he to doubt her?

  ‘And, Major Hervey, we have all hoped. My father and others have been pressing the embassy here these many months, as has the Marquez de Palmella in London. The princess regent has been . . . at pains – do you say? – to reassure the people, and to . . . confound those who oppose the new order.’

  She had spoken fluently hitherto, and Hervey wondered if her search for words revealed more than merely a desire for precision. But he dismissed it as an unworthy notion; and, more to the point, altogether too speculative.

  ‘Do I recollect, ma’am, that you had an uncle or some such at court?’

  She smiled again, impressed by his recall. ‘My uncle was at court, yes. He is now the bishop of Elvas. You will know where is Elvas, Major Hervey?’

  Indeed he did – Elvas, the great fortress, counterpoise to Badajoz the other side of the border. It was at Badajoz that he had put a ball into a Connaught man’s chest, deliberately and without hesitation, although ever since he had grieved for the need of it. But Elvas was of easier memory, a transit camp, no more, albeit his first time there he was awed by its sheer conception and proportion.

  He nodded. ‘Yes, Elvas. A handsome place as I recall.’

  During dinner, Hervey found any resentment of Isabella’s confidence steadily abating. There was about her an openness that reassured. She was, after all, the widow of a British official, her father was a fidalgo and, she told him, in spite of his advanced years an officer of the ordenança, the Fencibles. And Hervey had the assurance of his own memory too: the Barão de Santarem had been the staunchest of men during that winter’s siege a decade and a half ago, when only the lines of Torres Vedras stood between the French and the accomplishment of Bonaparte’s design. Yet he knew it would be foolhardy, for the time being at least, to place absolute trust in anyone, despite Isabella Delgado’s appeal. The opposition to Dom Pedro’s ‘new order’ – the child queen, a princess regent and a liberal constitution – came first from within the country. And the ‘absolutists’, those who would have Miguel as absolute monarch rather than a strong Cortes, were rooted in the aristocracy and the Church, whose continuing power and influence derived from royal favour. Why, then, should not the Barão de Santarem and his brother, the bishop of Elvas, be Miguelistas?

  Two days of inactivity followed for the mission, except for Colonel Norris, who had chosen to conduct his deliberations with the embassy in private. And while this seemed to Hervey and the others an unnecessary exclusion (indeed, something of an impediment to their real object), they had to concede that remonstrations were useless. It was the same with the Negócios Estrangeiros e Guerra, the ministry for foreign affairs and war, and the Conselho da Guerra, the council of military officers charged with the daily administration of the army; Norris seemed jealously to guard his position.

  Hervey wasted none of this unlooked-for time. He engaged a calash (a rickety contraption, he thought, and so small compared with an English chaise) and a guide, and set abo
ut exploring the city, so that on his second evening in Lisbon he was able to write home at length.

  Reeves’s Hotel

  Rua do Prior

  Lisbon

  3rd October 1826

  My Dear Elizabeth,

  You will be happy to learn that we had a very good and fast passage here, and that I am put up in good quarters run by an Englishman, very clean and comfortable. We had a good view of the city from the Tagus river, which we sailed up a fair distance, so that I sit writing this now not two furlongs from where I set foot ashore. Perhaps the first impression I had of Lisbon on this occasion – the first time I was here it was all so very strange that I think I had nothing with which to compare it – is how little smoke there is compared with London! I do not know why this is so, unless it is that so little of the fires are burned with coal. I do not recall having the same sense when we were in Rome, but there the city is so much smaller. Here, according to my cicerone, an excellent man, a teacher from the university, there are two hundred thousand souls! But the city has nothing of the feel of antiquity that Rome had, though there are many fine buildings, all of them of the Baroque. The earthquake which destroyed so much of the city’s finery was all of seventy years ago, but everywhere there is evidence still, sometimes in piles of rubble where a house had collapsed and never been revisited, elsewhere in the broken façades of the churches and public buildings. And yet there is fine building anew, not half a mile from me now a great basilica built to give thanks for the birth of a royal male heir, though he died of the smallpox before it was finished. There is, too, a feel of the Indies in many a street, just something in the shape of a window or a door, which reminds of where the wealth of this country is found. But oh! – the streets are as dirty and mean in places as visitors have complained, though I must say I have seen streets as bad in London, and for a reason I cannot suppose, the stench is not nearly so bad as before. I did not say that, unlike Rome, the houses are mainly white, except for the grandest which are painted very decorative, and some that are faced with tiles of different colours. There is a cold wind, but the sun is very hot when it shines, which it has today for a full eight hours.In the afternoon I went to the Poor Syon House, which is a nunnery of the order of Bridgettines, which was begun in England and then left three centuries ago and came to rest here in the quiet part. Major Strickland’s sister is there, Kitty, and I had promised Strickland I would take with me letters, money &tc, and give my news of her brother. I was very well received, with tea and cakes, but all conversation had to be transacted through a grille, which I confess I found tedious, and quite unlike the practice of my earlier years in the country and Spain, where most of the nuns were quite free in their association. But the Bridgettines are, I believe, a most austere order. It was difficult for me to see plainly through the grille, but Sister Kitty wore a veil with a white woollen cross quartered like a piece of medieval armour. I told her of our time in India, and what the regiment did now, and explained as best I could what I did now in Portugal, but throughout she said nothing, nor did she ask any question. I have a thought that the prospect of war again makes them fearful. But they stayed throughout the French wars, although Sister Kitty herself did not take her vows until two years after Waterloo. Their convent is very pleasant, quite green and leafy, almost like an English house. It was destroyed, they say, in the great earthquake, but quickly built again, but I cannot know how agreeable it is for them to be in Lisbon, save for the climate. I wanted to ask her if they would go back to England if the laws forbidding them to do so change, as many say they will, but I had not the chance. For my part I hope the laws will change, for it must go hard with their families not to see them. Strickland, I know, has not seen his sister in so many years that he could not recall it last. What harm could these women do, sequestered like this?

  But Hervey knew such a consideration would never of itself serve. The papers were full of it – the Tory papers at least. Repealing the Test Act would only invite trouble in Ireland, and there was not an army to safeguard both Ireland and the colonies. That, at least, is what the King thought (so it was said), and all his ministers, even the Duke of Wellington. And Hervey fancied that the trouble lay in too great a fear of the past, and too great a remove from the effects of the penal laws on humble folk trying to better their lives but in conscience. Sometimes Hervey found it hard to warm to the duke’s politics. The sooner the great man went to the Horse Guards, to the position for which the last thirty years had been perfect prelude, the better. There he could bring the army back to its former efficiency and avoid the rank world of placemen, rotten boroughs and political deals. That had been Hervey’s settled opinion for some time now, and the sight of his friend’s sister in exile for her faith only settled it deeper. But he was able to close the letter on a happier note at least:As to my military duties, I cannot tell, for we are idlers at present awaiting orders from the colonel (a tiresome man, but I will not belabour you with more of that). So for the moment I am pleased to receive an invitation for tomorrow to the house of the Baron of Santarem, whom we all knew so well for his hospitality and sensibility when first the regiment came to Lisbon . . .

  Next day, early, Hervey once more engaged a calash and made his way to Belem in the western outskirts of the city, where the Delgados had their town house.

  Belem, he recalled, was the place of the navigators, whence the caravels had set off on the great voyages of discovery, returning, if they did at all, treasure-laden; a place where the kings of Portugal had built extravagant churches and monuments to those days, which three hundred years later, even after the ruination of earthquake and war, still spoke something of the riches and confidence of that age. Here, unlike Lapa’s teeming elegance, was an expansive grandeur, the colours regal, the pace sedate. Hervey found he needed no guide once they came on the royal palace, its pink stone warmly familiar in the soft sunlight of a late-autumn morning, and he felt the keenest sense of a happy return as he hailed his driver to turn up to the porticoed doors of the white house in the Rua Vieira Portuense, where once he and his fellow cornets had been so kindly and divertingly received. Almost twenty years ago; it seemed impossible.

  Yet in the barão’s greeting the years fell away at once. ‘It is very pleasing to see you again, Mr Hervey,’ he began, in French as they had always spoken. ‘Or, as my daughter informs me, it is Major Hervey?’ He held out his hand with easy informality.

  Hervey bowed nevertheless as he took the hand, and then again to Isabella, who did not curtsy but held out hers instead.

  Two brindle pointers stood close by, tails wagging. There had always been dogs at Rua Vieira Portuense, and many had been the days when Hervey and his fellows had walked game with the barão’s spaniels and perdeguerras. The latter breed, he seemed to recall, had once been so good at pointing their birds that the King had banned their use. Happy memories of a simpler time, mused Hervey; a cornet’s time.

  ‘Yes, they are pleased to see a face that might give them a little sport,’ said the barão, smiling and patting their heads. ‘I fear I am able to give them little enough myself these days.’

  ‘Your daughter was not without skill, if I remember rightly, sir.’

  Isabella smiled. ‘I should not prize my skill too greatly, Major Hervey; I have not held a gun in many years.’

  ‘She prefers, I think, the arme blanche,’ said her father, transferring his affectionate smile to Isabella.

  Hervey looked at her quizzically.

  ‘I take my exercise with a fencing master, Major Hervey.’

  ‘I am all admiration, madam.’

  He was indeed. He had not known a woman who practised the fence. At Shrewsbury the master-at-arms had long extolled the benefits. He remembered still: ‘it equalizes the circulation by forcing the whole body to be in motion, it quickens the mind, trains the eye to be alert, and – above all, gentlemen – it trains the temper to be under a right control’. Hervey had not fenced since then (the cavalry sabre was not for the sport
), and he could only envy Isabella’s possessing the qualities that he himself would frequently have been the better for.

  ‘Let us take some wine, then,’ said the barão, grasping his guest firmly by the arm. ‘We have had a fine year.’

  The Delgados’ quinta on the Ribatejo produced a dry white wine which, Hervey fancied he could recall, was better than most of the sherry they had grown accustomed to in the Peninsula. He took his glass and tested his memory. The wine was cool, and dry, and very fresh, a vinho verde. ‘It does so very much remind me of those days here before, Baron. Thank you.’

  The barão nodded appreciatively. ‘But it is a sad day for my country that you should have to come here once more in uniform, Major Hervey. Or that I should have need to search out mine.’

  There was no longer the full head of hair, nor the queue, old-fashioned though that had been even a decade and a half ago, nor the active eyes, like the hawk’s. If the barão were indeed a colonel of ordenança, then he must have a fine executive officer, thought Hervey, taking another sip of his wine while wondering how to reply.

  ‘It is a pleasure nevertheless, sir.’

  There was a brief silence. The barão appeared to be measuring his conversation. ‘I am sorry you never visited us again after you had left, though I understand your duties hardly permitted it.’

  Hervey felt the barão’s warmth, but the sentiment required a response nevertheless.

  Isabella, sitting with them as she used to, unlike so many of the Portuguese ladies to whom the Sixth’s officers had paid court, looked at him keenly.

  Hervey glanced at her, then back to her father. ‘I have been kept occupied, sir, it is true. Indeed, I believe this is the first time I have ever’ – he faltered just a little, searching for the French – ‘retraced my tracks, so to speak.’