Nizams Daughters

He assured him that he had every intention of doing so.

‘But how shall you keep this enterprise secret?’ pressed the captain. ‘Do you intend dressing as a native or some such thing?’

Hervey smiled. ‘No! If news of the duke’s appointment precedes us — as well it might — I shall go about my business openly. If, however, there is no such news then I have letters from the duke requesting that Calcutta lend me every facility to make a study of the employment of the lance. The duke was much taken by the French lancers at Waterloo and wishes to equip some of our regiments of light dragoons so. And in India are some of the most proficient lancers — in Haidarabad especially.’

Peto looked sceptical. ‘You do not think that some might suppose it would have been easier to go to Brandenburg to see the Uhlans, or even to Warsaw?’

‘That is as maybe, though we are not on entirely the best of terms with the Prussians. However, I think mine a plausible enough mission — do not you?’

Peto took this to be rhetorical. ‘Here, have one of these sweet sisters of the vine; they are come from Turkey — the Locoum variety, very much better than the pressed ones.’

Hervey took a fig and again voiced his appreciation of the quality of the captain’s fare.

‘Well, I must tell you that it’s unlikely to remain thus in so long a voyage. It will be pocket soup and biscuit by the time we reach the Cape.’

Hervey replied that, for his own part, he was perfectly accustomed to any hardship in respect of rations, but his horse could not be expected to fare well on a long voyage without a proper regimen. ‘And I must ask your leave to go ashore soon, sir, to attend to it. I need to find hay and straw, and hard feed.’

Peto said he was happy to accompany him, ‘For there are things of which I have need, too.’

‘Shall you have to find extra provisions?’ asked Hervey without thinking.

The arched eyebrows told Hervey at once that he had somehow impugned Admiralty efficiency. ‘Captain Hervey, I have heard of the dilatorious condition of the army’s commissary department, but I would have you know that a frigate is provisioned so that she might sail without interruption for six months!’

‘Very well, then, Mr Ranson,’ said Peto once he had seated himself.

The crew of the captain’s gig pulled with a good rhythm, seen to by a midshipman who looked not very much older than Hervey when first he had left Horningsham for Shrewsbury. Nisus lay three cables from the quay. Peto kept his eyes fixed ahead and said not a word during the seven minutes which it took for Ranson to pilot the gig through the slack water. As it neared the quayside steps, Peto rose before the midshipman had ordered ‘easy-oars’, and then stepped confidently to the landing stage even as the gig ran alongside with oars just raised. He was almost at the top of the steps before Hervey dared trust himself to alight from the now motionless boat. Hervey thanked the midshipman, who looked startled by it, and raced up the steps to regain Peto’s side, pausing at the top to replace his spurs which, as was the custom, he had removed aboard ship.

‘From your parts, young Ranson,’ said Peto as Hervey caught him up; ‘Somerset. A pity he’s unlikely to see a fleet action ever. But it can’t be helped. He cut his teeth in the 1812 affair: blew off a Yankee’s head with his pistol, right in front of me, though the damned thing broke his wrist! And he club-hauled a prize lugger from a lee shore off Madeira. A little too inclined to drop his head and escape the bit, as you would say, but he’ll do.’

Oh, such a man would do all right, thought Hervey. Some officers needed driving with long, rowelled spurs; most with the touch of the whip; very few needed the curb. And it did not do to judge from a man’s aspect which were the proper aids. Ranson, for one, looked no more like a plunger than did his father’s first curate. Peto’s matter-of-factness intrigued him, though. Studied, perhaps? He had not seen the like except perhaps in Adjutant Barrow. And with Barrow it was more a device to compensate for having risen from the ranks. With Peto he could only suppose it a self-imposed distance, a necessity for command in otherwise close and familiar quarters. It seemed he might be in for a somewhat oppressive six months, the hospitality of the table notwithstanding.

Hervey changed step to walk in time with his senior, spurs ringing on the cobbles while Peto’s heel struck the ground in the less emphatic way that was the sailor’s. It was a sound that always gave him a certain prideful satisfaction. ‘I saw a corn merchant on the way here, a little further along this street,’ he tried.

‘Space is pressing in a frigate, Captain Hervey — even in peacetime. I do not wish it too filled with oats,’ replied Peto peremptorily.

‘No, indeed not,’ said Hervey, taken aback somewhat. ‘I have calculated very precisely how much she — my charger — shall need for a six-month passage.’

‘She? Captain Hervey — a mare!’

Hervey sighed to himself. This was to be heavy going. ‘Yes, a mare, but not a chestnut, you will be pleased to know.’

‘Captain Hervey,’ frowned Peto, ‘any mare, with any number of legs, is much the same to me: I have little use for them.’

He chose to ignore the proposition. ‘I trust that mine will be no trouble, sir.’

‘I trust not, too,’ replied Peto, still looking straight ahead. ‘Just so long as you do not fill the orlop with oats.’

‘I shall give her no oats whatever,’ replied Hervey, sounding surprised, ‘otherwise she will likely as not suffer setfast.’

Peto turned his head and eyed him quizzically. ‘I can keep a horse between myself and the ground tolerably well, Captain Hervey, but beyond that I make no claim.’

‘Setfast is sometimes called Monday-morning sickness, which describes the symptoms aptly. The horse shows great stiffness; in extreme cases unable to move.’

‘Why Monday morning?’

‘It generally follows from inactivity after vigorous exercise — a day’s rest on Sunday after a Saturday’s hunting is common. There can be muscle damage, which is evident if the blood becomes azotous — discoloration of the urine, I mean. And then the kidneys may fail. Mares seem especially prone.’

‘Captain Hervey, my surgeon would be intrigued to hear of such a systemic catastrophe resulting from a day’s rest, for he is a great advocate of them!’

‘I make no claim to know anything of human physic, sir,’ countered Hervey, not immediately catching the attempt at humour.

‘No,’ smiled Peto at last, ‘I am sure you do not. I am, however, impressed that your veterinary knowledge goes beyond that of many of the run-of-the-mill officers I have met.’

Hervey said nothing.

‘So, your horse—’ he continued.

‘Jessye is her name, sir.’

‘So, Jessye — a fine thoroughbred no doubt — how shall she maintain condition during the passage?’

‘She is not a thoroughbred. Indeed, were she to be one I would as soon see a caged beast aboard. No, she has some good Welsh Mountain in her, and she is, therefore, just sufficiently tractable for the adventure. I shall give her hay ad libitum to reduce the risk of colic or her gut twisting. No doubt we shall have to pay over the odds — it’s not a good time to be buying old hay, and I dare not risk new to begin with. But if we can find good Timothy it should keep her in modest fettle. I shall feed her some barley each day — say, three pounds — and a pound of bran with chop to keep her interested.’ He took out a notebook and opened it to consult his earlier calculations. ‘We shall need, therefore, two hundredweight-sacks of bran and five more of barley, and forty hundredweight of hay.’

‘Great heavens, Captain Hervey! I haven’t the—’

‘I have resolved on deep-littering her, you will be pleased to hear, and so I shall need only the same again of straw. Barley straw unless we can find no other, for she has a partiality to eating it, and wheat straw can blow her up something dreadful.’

Peto halted and turned full towards him. ‘Captain Hervey,’ he said, portentously; ‘I am full of admiration for the attention you lavish on your mare — by your own accounts, a female of not especial breeding. Is that affection returned, do you suppose?’

Hervey wondered where this line of questioning was leading. ‘I do suppose — yes.’

Peto nodded. ‘I had imagined thus. See, therefore,Captain Hervey, the distraction that affection demands,’ he