A Close Run Thing

of her order. ‘I know of the name “Carmelite”, Sister,’ he continued, ‘but nothing of your origins or rule.’

‘Our roots are in Palestine, Mr Hervey, among the hermits of Mount Carmel. When the Holy Land was overrun by the Turks they moved west and began living in community, but always poor and solitary communities. Perhaps when you were in Spain you saw, or heard of, the city of Avila — near Madrid, I think?’

He knew where the city was but had not been there.

‘Well, if you had been there you would have seen the place where our greatest saint, Teresa, lived — a little time after St Ignatius. She wrote a new rule for our order, and it is that which we follow here in Toulouse. She lived by the simplest of precepts.’

He nodded and made as if to ask a further question, but she instead raised a hand. ‘Forgive me, Mr Hervey, but I must go now: there are duties for me as there are with you.’

He rose and made a bow after the fashion of the King’s Germans. She smiled, and there was warmth in her eyes.

* * *

‘Mr ’Ervey sir,’ — how Johnson’s attitude to aspirates stood in sharp contrast to Sister Maria’s — ‘adjutant wants to know straight away if tha wants t’ go t’Staff Corps.’

Hervey sat up and rubbed his eyes. ‘What time is it?’

‘About seven o’clock. Tha’s slept all night. Why didn’t tha tell me about America?’ he added in a distinctly resentful tone. ‘Last thing I want to do’s roust off there.’

‘Because I heard only yesterday,’ Hervey replied. ‘In any case, I am not going. And why must you be so damnably crabby?’

Johnson chose to ignore the question (it was not difficult to see, sometimes, why Rawlings and Boyse had dispensed with his services, thought Hervey). ‘Well, thank God for that, Mr ’Ervey, but wouldn’t it ’ave meant promotion?’

‘Private Johnson, may we revert to the usual practice of officer and groom in this regiment?’ he replied with a wearied sigh.

‘Suit thi’sen, Mr ’Ervey sir — I’ll wait till I’m spoken to!’

The adjutant seemed less surprised than Johnson on hearing Hervey’s decision. Edmonds would be disappointed, he said, but he really did not think the major had expected him to take the American option anyway. ‘We’ll just ’ave to sweat things out for a day or so until we hear about the petition,’ was his verdict.

Edmonds had calculated that it would be three days, perhaps four, before they would know if the ruse had worked. It would take Slade a day fully to comprehend the options; it would take him another to come to terms with the indignity of the compromise, and it would be the third day before his brigade major would press him for an answer (if they did not forward it within three days, they would be in default of Advocate-General Larpent’s standing orders for redresses, and to be in default of Larpent’s instructions was to invite the wrath of Wellington himself). Sure enough, just before evening stables three days later, Heroys, the brigade major, himself arrived at the convent to offer the reciprocal arrangement that Edmonds had predicted. And Heroys knew full well whose stratagem it was: ‘Oh, and by the by,’ he added casually, with a smile that might just have been described as conspiratorial, ‘I was surprised not to see young Hervey’s name put forward for the Corps. You have heard, incidentally, that General Slade is being recalled to England?’

No, he had not! The most capital news it was, too, and Edmonds had no qualms about saying so. But Heroys’s next news was not.

‘The brigade is to commence the march for embarkation in five days’ time,’ he began. That in itself was not bad news; but they were not, as everyone had expected, to sail from Bordeaux, where shallow-draught claret- boats, which made excellent horse-transports, would be able to get right up from the mouth of the Gironde.

‘Boulogne!’ exclaimed Edmonds when Heroys revealed the port at which they would embark. ‘For heaven’s sake, man: that must be all of eight hundred miles!’

‘Nearly nine,’ replied Heroys, matter-of-fact.

‘What in God’s name is Slade thinking of?’

‘Not his doing.’

‘Cotton?’

‘I should not think he was even asked.’

‘But has he protested? Damn it, I’ll go and see Wellington myself!’

‘I think that would be foolhardy even by your standards, Edmonds. You have not exactly endeared yourself to Slade. I know I said that he has been recalled, but stick your neck out any further and … well, let us just say that in the present scheme of things I counsel extreme caution. Even Sir Hussey Vivian is having a hard time of things with Wellington.’

Edmonds accepted Heroys’s advice with reluctance and had set about readying the Sixth for the long march north. Lankester forbade Hervey to take part in any active duty in the hope that his leg might thereby stand the journey. Instead he arranged for him to receive each morning a pile of French documents — of which there seemed no end in the prefecture — to scrutinize for anything of intelligence value. But they proved to be of a mundane nature, with nothing of military interest. His work was made less tedious, however, by the assistance of Sister Maria de Chantonnay whose Ignatian catechism had to be conducted in snatches while they sifted through endless titles and land deeds confiscated over the previous two decades. Come the third day she had, by degrees, revealed the circumstances of her life before entering the convent. Her fine English she had learned from her nurse, the daughter of Lancastrian recusants, who had lived with them in the Vendee. Hervey’s own French, he told her, had been acquired in the same fashion, for his governess had been of an old Jansenist family from Alsace, and she had taught him German, too, although it was not quite so fluent perhaps as his French. At this Sister Maria laughed, and mocked his Alsatian accent: ‘But you would almost certainly pass for a Frenchman if ever it suited you, Mr Hervey.’

‘An unlikely requirement now, I think, Sister.’

And she agreed. ‘I think so. I surely pray that there will be no more fighting between our countries. And what of you, then, Mr Hervey — what are your intentions?’

Only three days before, he had rounded on Johnson for wanting to know his business, yet now he was content to tell all to this nun — about his family, about his joining the Sixth and his hopes for promotion, and how these were suddenly in doubt with the news of his brother’s death.

‘It seems very strange to me, Mr Hervey, that a man must pay for his position in the Army. Any man with aptitude in France may become an officer: it does not turn on a question of money.’

‘No, sister, it is strange, and I for one would not long defend it, but it is supposed that it has its merits — besides, that is, making the Army a good deal cheaper for Parliament.’

‘What might be these merits, Mr Hervey?’ she asked sceptically.

‘Well, I think if you knew of the dread in which any return to the late Commonwealth is still held in our country you would own that by having officers with so tangible a stake in the system there was less chance of their throwing in with some dictator.’

‘You are suggesting that such a system in France might have stayed a republic?’

‘France is not England, Sister, but such a notion is not infeasible.’

‘Is this notion not at heart dishonourable, though? Is it money only which commands loyalty in England? Would not an oath suffice?’

‘Sometimes the best of men are subverted by evil ones who are able to confuse them as to where their duty lies.’

‘That is well said, Mr Hervey,’ and she laughed.

He liked her laugh. He admired her mind and her soul, but her laugh made both accessible. ‘Sister, do you suppose there might be anything in these documents of the slightest import to matters of state?’ he asked, reflecting the smile.

‘Not especially,’ she replied. ‘In fact, not at all, I should say.’ Her look turning to one of conspiracy.

‘Then I believe we might permit ourselves some respite. Would you like to take a turn about the horse lines?’

‘Indeed, I should,’ she replied, still smiling.