On His Majesty's Service

‘A good chop and some warm burgundy, I think, would assist the cognitive process,’ he suggested.

Hervey nodded. It would be for the best. Better to think about these things when his breath did not freeze.

But it would have to wait. As they reached the top of the steps by the scaffolding that was the building site of Carlton House Terrace, they were witness to a most savage smash. Down the lower Regent’s Street skidded a four-in-hand dray-van, the driver on his feet at the box and hauling desperately on the reins. Had the team come straight on at the bottom of the hill and into Waterloo Place he might have halted them amid the builders’ stores, but with collective terror counteracting his frantic efforts, and the stables in St James’s Market seeming to beckon, they turned instead for Pall Mall. The speed was too great, the road too like a sled-run, and the corner too sharp: over went the van, slewing into the scaffolding of the new Athenaeum club, dragging the screaming horses with it in a tangle of kicking, thrashing legs. Standards, ledgers, transoms, boards – all the bits and pieces of the builder’s frame – collapsed on the wreckage of carriage and horseflesh, and with them a dozen men working on the new stone.

The two raced across Waterloo Place as passers-by in Pall Mall stood aghast or rushed to tend the injured, along with labourers from all corners of the building site that was the old Prince Regent’s palace. Hackneys and chaises pulled up, their occupants descending to help – or to faint at so much blood made redder by the snow.

Hervey looked about for how he might take command in the confusion of horseflesh and timber, but hard against the Athenaeum wall he saw the driver motionless and at peril of both the crazed horses and more, teetering scaffold. He pulled off his greatcoat and threw it over the head of the off-side leader, the worst kicker, Fairbrother throwing his over the off-wheeler, subduing both horses just enough to get at the traces. Hervey pulled the iklwa from its sheathing and began cutting at the leather while Fairbrother tried to unfasten the chains. They got the off-leader free soon enough – it managed to scramble to its feet and away, to be caught by one of the ostlers come up from the market – but the wheeler took longer, for both near legs were tangled in the traces, and Hervey had to slice more than once at the same strap until they were free. The gelding sprang forward, fell again, almost on top of him as he tried to subdue the near-side leader pinned by the carriage pole held fast by the pile of scaffold. Then it was up again, landing a shoe hard on his arm before bolting through the circle of labourers and off down Pall Mall. Mercifully the off-wheeler lay still, pinned yet faster by the pole, with the driver half under him.

Then he saw how its near hind was twisted – the cannon surely broken? ‘Has anyone a pistol?’ he called.

A cabman answered, offering his caplock. ‘I’ll do it if you will, sir. It’s primed, ready.’

Hervey, for all his experience of the grim trade, reckoned the man had at least as much expertise as he, and so was content to stand aside. Almost before he was clear of the litter of harness, the cabman’s shot ended the wheeler’s ordeal, the crack loud even amid the general commotion, sending pigeons aloft the other side of the street.

A crowd had gathered, with enough strength – Hervey reckoned – to haul the van’s broken axle from the wreckage so that they could detach the pole and haul the wheeler clear and at last get at the driver. Labourers, costers and gentry alike answered to his orders willingly, only too pleased that someone in the authority of a military hat would direct the rescue. Rope was got from the builders and lashed to the axle beam, and then to Fairbrother’s word of command a dozen pairs of hands began hauling on it until Hervey was able to reach the pin and disengage the pole. Now it was a matter of dragging the horse clear any way they could. But that was dealt with expeditiously by a market carter who unhitched one of his hefty drays and began tying one end of a chain to its collar. Hervey told two of the labourers to tie the other end to the wheeler’s collar, and in a minute more they were able to pull the dead weight to the middle of the street.

‘I am a surgeon, sir; allow me to pass.’

Hervey retrieved his greatcoat and gladly stood to one side. In his service he had seen sights still shocking to recall, but there was a particular wretchedness in a man going peaceably about his work in the streets of London and having his brains beaten out.

Fairbrother had been speaking to a foreman meanwhile. ‘Five dead. And two that don’t look as though they’ll see morning again.’

Hervey grimaced, and looked about. ‘We must get the wounded away. Where’s the foreman?’

‘Here, sir,’ answered a man with bow legs and few teeth.

‘Go and have these cabs and carriages take your men to hospital. To St George’s, isn’t it?’

‘St George’s can’t take these many, sir, cos she’s being builded again. Guy’s is best anyway: they knows ’ow to look after falls – all them steeplejacks they see.’

Guy’s hospital was a deal closer than was Brussels after Waterloo (whither they had taken the wounded), but it would be a haul nevertheless. Hervey nodded resolutely. ‘Well, there’s nothing for it but to get them to Guy’s. The dead as well. Go to it!’

He took a lighted cheroot from his friend. The officer’s art lay in determining what must be done, and the NCO’s in executing it. Hervey could only trust that a foreman of building labourers would possess sufficient of the latter’s.

‘Perhaps I should engage them instead?’ said Fairbrother.

But there was no need. Between the beneficence of the private owners and the rough, authoritative manner of the foreman, there were at once four chaises at his disposal – and to some cheering from the other labourers, who perceived that the ‘quality’ were not passing on the other side of the street.

‘There is nothing I can do for him, I’m afraid,’ pronounced the surgeon at last, rising from beside the prostrate driver and rubbing reddening snow between his hands. ‘Have a tarpaulin cover him,’ he said, nodding to one of the labourers.

Hervey asked him what was the procedure now that the injured had been attended to. Was he at liberty to go about his business, or must he find a magistrate to make a deposition? ‘I confess I am strange to this. There’s not a watchman to be seen.’

The surgeon assured him that he need not detain himself: there would be an inquest in the usual way, but the coroner would not require him. ‘Though he would wish to commend your address in trying to save the man’s life,’ he added, pulling on his gloves. ‘We must pray that Mr Peel’s men, if they are come to our streets, will have seen service.’

Hervey nodded; the compliment to the uniform was well made. ‘I bid you good-day, then, sir.’

He made to leave, looking for Fairbrother and seeing him in amiable conversation with a knot of labourers, and was taken once more by how easy his friend was with such men – as he was with men of rank. When first they had met, at the Cape, he had seemed possessed of a resentful disposition, as well as of indolence. He, Hervey, had been inclined to attribute this to mixed blood, for no matter how fine was that of Fairbrother’s father – by Fairbrother’s own account a kind and worthy man – that of his mother had been confected in the unknown regions, before her people were abducted (and Jamaica, from all he had heard, was an easygoing sort of place too). But, strangely, once his friend became animated by some undertaking, there was no end to his capability. Indeed he could not own that he had ever served with a more capable soldier, whether officer, NCO or private man. And Fairbrother’s learning – the product, he claimed, of ample hours on half pay – was so prodigious as to make his company ever a revelation. In fact he now counted that company the equal of all. He had never formed so close an understanding with any in the Sixth (even as a cornet the care had been for the day-to-day of campaigning; there had been so little opportunity for true intimacy), and after Henrietta’s death he had positively sought to distance himself from any sensibility requiring intimacy, except with the opposite sex, in whose company alone he had seemed able, or willing, to let slip the mask of command. He had looked forward greatly to their serving together once more (Fairbrother had readily consented to leave the comfort of his summer hearth to accompany him to England and thence east), and he had even entertained hopes of his coming with him to the Sixth as, perhaps, a gentleman volunteer. But how could he possibly induce him to go to Gibraltar and play the part of sentry, for that was what the garrison there amounted to, no matter with what consequence Lord Hill might try to endow it?

He hailed his friend, bid the labourers and other bystanders thanks, and then the two of them struck out together across Waterloo Place for the United Service, collars turned up, peaks pulled down, leaning resolutely into the snowy billow.

‘The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short,’ said Fairbrother, his voice muffled but just audible.

‘The sun farthest off,’ agreed Hervey. ‘What will you, then?’