Today Matthew and his serjeant left for Ireland, and the house is once again silent. Matthew is grown to manhood yet somehow there is an innocence about him which, though endearing, is cause enough for concern. His serjeant is a fine man, however, and devoted to him, and I think no ill should become him while he has such a man to serve with. Of any expectation that we had of Matthew and Henrietta we must no longer speak, for he showed not a moment’s feeling for her, or, rather, no ability to convey any feeling if feeling there were — though hers for him was plain to see.
CHAPTER EIGHT. THE LESSON OF HISTORY
‘Have you
Serjeant Armstrong leaned over the weather rail and retched loudly again. ‘For God’s sake, Mr ’Ervey, never ’ave I known ought like this crossing. Even Biscay after Corunna was no match for it. I’ve been throwing up me accounts ’alf the night.’ And he leaned over the side again and retched even louder.
Strong south-westerlies had made St George’s Channel no place for a soldier in whom the gentlest of swells invariably induced nausea. The Bristol merchantman which regularly plied this route — no longer in convoy now peace was returned — had hove to for a night in Carmarthen Bay rather than risk entering the channel with St Gowan’s Head on a lee shore. However, by this, their fourth morning, the winds had backed and moderated to no more than a fresh breeze which now took them effortlessly into the great harbour at Cork. Three men-o’-war — a first-rate and two frigates — lay at anchor under the sentinel of the gun batteries on the headlands, in scale no more than daisies on the lawn at Horningsham. And the land itself, distant though it still was, looked as green as legend had it.
‘Do you know what day it is, Serjeant Armstrong?’
‘If you said Judgement Day, I’d believe you,’ he replied, still clutching the rail for all he was worth, though there was but the merest swell now.
‘It is the anniversary of the battle of Worcester.’
‘Is that right, sir?’ Armstrong sighed. ‘And what might that ’ave been about?’
‘The Civil War — you must surely know of the battle of Worcester? After Worcester the king was a fugitive, and his officers, too. I was thinking of Captain Thomas Hervey: he came here, to Cork, after the battle.’
‘And what then?’
‘He lived peaceably in Dublin, so I understand, until the plague carried him off. He had been a cavalryman, with Prince Rupert.’
‘That’s right cheering, Mr Hervey,’ said Armstrong, a little colour at last returning to his face.
Hervey continued to peer at the distant hills through the small telescope he had purchased from a French artillery officer captured at Salamanca. ‘Did you have any family in that war, Serjeant Armstrong?’ he asked, seeming not to notice, still, Armstrong’s indifference to conversation.
‘I ’ave no more idea than Adam,’ he replied. ‘I ’eard tell my grandfather was a collier, but further back than ’im I ’aven’t a notion. My father’s younger brother were a tar, died of fever in the Indies — that’s all the service I know of.’
Hervey closed his telescope and looked at his serjeant standing squarely and very much the better for the sheltered waters of the Cove. ‘I beg your pardon: I did not mean any show by it. It seemed uncommon chance that we should be sailing into Cork on this day, that is all.’
‘No offence taken, as usual, sir.’
‘I wonder how living in barracks shall suit us,’ Hervey continued, but changing tack.
‘A novelty sure enough. It might suit the Guards and Marines, but I think I should prefer the old way,’ Armstrong replied with a shrug.
‘Doubtless the Horse Guards would, too,’ agreed Hervey, ‘but billeting in Ireland is an altogether different matter. It is one thing to discompose a few English farmers and innkeepers, quite another to foist troops on a sullen population. No, there have been barracks here, and fortified too, since Cromwell. We shall have to take their measure.’
So large was the anchorage that it took a full hour to see them berthed, and it was a further hour before they reached the Royal Barracks. Armstrong was first to remark on their size, larger, as they were, than even the Guards’ in St James’s. Built not ten years before, there was space for over one hundred and fifty officers and two thousand men. On this day they were half-empty, however, only a small rear-party from the Sixth occupying the cavalry quarters. The rest of the regiment, explained the quartermaster in charge of rear details, had sailed to Dublin a fortnight earlier for a review. It was no use Hervey’s trying to join them, he insisted, since they were expected back within the week.
Hervey might have been glad of some breakfast, but the regiment’s mess was closed, and although he could have messed with the Fusiliers, the other occupants of the barracks, he felt disinclined to be too sociable at such an hour. Instead he went to the stables to see Coates’s bay brought in from the harbour by one of the ostlers. Armstrong had already been collared for duty by the rear-details serjeant-major.
‘’Ey up, sir!’ called a voice from the hayloft as he entered the otherwise deserted stables. Johnson clambered down the ladder to cast an eye over the new charger. ‘He looks a good ’un, but tha won’t be able to call ’im Brandywine, he said, looking at the nameplate on the headstall.
‘Why not?’
‘Because t’adjutant’s just bought one an’ called ’im that. Tha should know ’e were at t’battle o’ Brandywine ’imself!’
Hervey sighed. Johnson had brought him rudely back to the trying niceties of regimental life. ‘Very well, then —
Johnson did not hesitate.
‘You reckon he may be a Derby runner?’ laughed Hervey. ‘Well, why not? Harkaway it is, then. What is the news otherwise?’
Johnson was always abreast of the news, be it from the orderly room or from the canteen. ‘Quartermaster Hill has died of an ague,’ he began.
‘Oh,’ said Hervey, ‘I am right sorry — a good man and an honest quartermaster.’
‘Ay, t’canteen raised a fair sum for ’is widow. There’s a new vetinry an’ all.’
‘How so? Has Mr Selden retired at last?’
‘No — ’e was caught in fleegranty,’ replied Johnson breezily, as he got to work with the curry-comb.
Hervey looked more than a little surprised, but easily the master of Johnson’s pronunciation. ‘What, with a woman from the town?’
‘No,’ replied the groom as he continued brushing. ‘With that blackie in the band.’
‘Great heavens!’ said Hervey, abashed, ‘I had no idea that—’
‘And who do ye think the general is in these parts?’ added Johnson before Hervey could elaborate on the extent of his surprise.
‘I have no idea.’
‘General Slade!’
‘Oh!’ he groaned, before checking himself in front of a subordinate — and then quite forgetting himself. ‘Oh, that is very ill news indeed.’
They talked for an hour or more. But only when Hervey said that he must go to find lodgings in the city did Johnson remember that there were rooms ready for him in the mess — he had a key, and there was an invitation to dinner waiting there, too.
