On His Majesty's Service

man of evident learning and eagerness, and there was no reason why he should not come with him to the war. Hervey supposed that the Horse Guards would have no objection (Agar could surely pay his own way), and nor in the circumstances could Lord Holderness. Malet would anyway be able to say how needful they were of a cornet not long passed-out of riding school and skill-at-arms – which, he imagined, was not at all.

He nodded several times, thoughtful. ‘Very well. I shall have Malet speak with Lord Hol’ness.’

‘Thank you, Colonel Hervey.’ Agar bowed, and made to withdraw.

‘One more thing.’

Agar looked wary, as if Hervey might have second thoughts. ‘Sir?’

He wanted to be absolutely sure that this ‘cornet of letters’ was no chancer. ‘You were very decided in your opinion on the Sybil. Ampulla … You are certain it was the word? Or is it what you suppose it would have been, were you correct?’

Agar seemed genuinely perplexed. ‘Nam Sibyllam quidem, Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi, in ampulla pendere.¹ Petronius, sir.’

Hervey was reassured. He was also doubly impressed, and not a little intrigued. ‘I don’t know of these things, yet I don’t suppose Petronius was a standard text at Oxford?’

Agar smiled (he had never dared tell his tutor what he was reading). ‘No, indeed not. But in truth, the prescribed texts were lofty in their subject and language; I wanted to learn also how and of what the unheroic Roman spoke.’

Hervey raised an eyebrow. ‘That is singular, Mr Agar. My compliments to you.’ But he wondered if this cornet took interest in the world other than from a scholarly perspective; he would not be at all surprised if his enthusiasm waned with the miles from Oxford.

Agar bowed and took his leave, and Malet and Fairbrother rejoined him.

‘What amusement your wagers book affords,’ said Fairbrother, smiling as if about to reveal a confidence. ‘Mr So-and-so wagers Mr So-and-so that the latter’s first charger cannot beat his first charger over a quarter of a mile on the flat. Mr Someone-else wagers Mr Likewise that the first issue of Caleb’s concubine Ephah was called Haran. Mr Black wagers Captain White that the Duke of Wellington will not be prime minister beyond Lady Day.’

Hervey returned the smile. ‘The hours can sometimes pass excessively slowly.’

‘I’m not sure the latter wager should have been allowed,’ said Malet, suddenly looking stern.

‘Probably not,’ agreed Hervey. ‘In any case, I think “White” is safe. There was talk at the United Service last night: even Peel’s now an emancipator. The duke will have his majority.’

‘And what a conversion that was,’ said Malet, in a tone not altogether approving (which was why ‘politics’ was a subject disallowed at mess): ‘“Orange Peel” himself prepared to sit next to a Catholic in parliament!’

Hervey nodded, equally diverted by the notion.

‘You know,’ continued Malet, his brow furrowing in a sign of more sincere wonder, ‘since Mrs Armstrong’s funeral, several dragoons have been taking instruction of the priest here.’

‘The Catholic priest?’

‘Ye-es. You don’t have objection, do you, sir?’

‘No objection, no. Merely am I taken aback by my own astonishment – if such it is. The funeral was a very singular occasion.’

‘And there’s an officer, too. Takes his instruction quite openly.’

That, perhaps, was of rather less note, if greater consequence, for there had been Catholic officers in the regiment since Hervey had been cornet (if only a couple) – and Strickland had been a most exemplary officer, too. His death had gone hard with the mess. ‘Who is he?’

‘Rennell.’

Hervey looked surprised. ‘That will go hard with his people. His father’s dean of Winchester.’

‘What a compendious knowledge you possess,’ said Fairbrother, in as much astonishment.

‘My father and he received their ordination at the same time. They visit together, in London, still.’

‘I meant of cornets not clergy.’

Hervey was momentarily abashed, but the clock on the chimney piece began chiming the half-hour. He put down his cup. ‘We must go.’

Fairbrother slept during the journey back. Hervey, for once, would have preferred to think aloud, but he could hardly chide his friend for assuming otherwise. He made himself think with system, therefore, rather than allow thoughts to come as they pleased.

Above all, there was the good news that Armstrong was set on the road to restoration. Command without his old NCO-friend would be wanting indeed; and the thought of Armstrong and his children in some orphan household would have been truly dispiriting. But the prospect was blighted by, as it were, the farrier’s axe. How could the Horse Guards – he could not bear to think that Lord Hill was himself responsible (in truth was it not the Secretary at War?) – contemplate the reduction of a regiment such as the Sixth, a regiment whose officers wagered on the prowess of their horses and discoursed on classical texts? They had stood in the order of battle since 1759; the experience of the French wars and lately of India (and his own troop at the Cape), hard won, made of them a regiment that knew its business second to none. Not one in ten of those dragoons ’listed now had heard a French cannon, he supposed, but the understanding of all who had gone before them, whether to the grave or discharge, was in some way communicated to the newest recruit, so that in but a few months a man believed himself to be not just a member of a body of veterans but a veteran himself. It did not matter if he had been but a boy at the time of Waterloo; he somehow thought of himself as truly having been there. The quill-drivers in the Treasury might scoff at it, but how otherwise to explain whence came a regiment’s elan?

Waterloo was of diminishing memory, however, Bengal and the Cape a long way away. Hervey sighed. England, he must conclude, was overgrown with peace. Had he the stomach for such a place?

¹ For with my own eyes I saw the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a bottle.

VI

TOUCHES OF SWEET HARMONY

Hertfordshire, the next day

The sound of Kezia’s distant piano commanded silence as Hervey entered the panelled hall of Walden Park. The servant holding open the door bowed mutely and, taking his coat, made no enquiry after his post-horses and boy (they were, however, being attended to efficiently, he saw with a backward glance); there was no eruption of butler, housekeeper, or of any one of the family, in welcome. It was as if the morning hour – hours – of practice at the keyboard required the Great Silence of a monastery.

Hervey could not call himself a music lover. He loved the sound a band made, he enjoyed a song, and he could be entertained by an opera if its absurdity did not overcome the melody. He had never learned the fortepiano, as his sister had (and as Georgiana was learning). He would admit he knew very little; but he had recognized that Kezia’s talent both with hands and voice was of an unusual order – much greater than that of Elizabeth; much much greater. Whether or not it compared to those who earned their living thus, he could not know; but he did not suppose that Signora Colbran, whom he had heard sing in Rome, or Herr Moscheles, who played one evening at Apsley House when he dined there, could practise more.

He stood listening, not sure what to do. The music sounded not so … severe as it sometimes did. Indeed, he listened with increasing pleasure, for poor ear though some might say he had (his sister, for one), his taste was not confined, as Elizabeth teased, to marches. What Kezia played this morning was not music to dance to – or rather, he could not imagine her lowering herself to play jigs – but dance was exactly what the music invited. And it was strange, for as a rule Kezia would spend an age in scales, chords, arpeggios and all the other exercises of the keyboard which he knew of from his sister’s practice, but rarely anything to which the exercises were a prelude. It was almost as if her music were to be kept, so to speak, in a vault, to be taken out only on some special occasion, and under strict guard. He was fully conscious of the need for drill, of course – for constant practice was the foundation of execution, whether before an audience or the enemy. But to practise to