Nizams Daughters

the King’s enemies.’

‘Just so,’ laughed Hervey, ‘just so.’ He recalled him well enough now — a kindly senior to serve for a term, but no favourite of the masters’ common room, for sure. ‘I hardly saw you when first I came aboard at Chatham.’

‘No, I was ashore at musketry. We joined by cutter once she was under way.’

‘Ah,’ said Hervey, now comprehending; ‘I was being most handsomely entertained at your captain’s table by that time.’

‘No matter. But that was a famous action this afternoon. Are you recovered of your blow?’ he smiled.

‘Yes, thank you,’ he coughed (mortification was perhaps too strong a word for his condition).

‘The cannonade was your idea, I hazard?’

‘Yes, it seemed best,’ he replied lightly, relieved to be let off the subject of his collision with the lintel. But the affair of the gendarmerie could hardly be counted a great stratagem.

Locke’s expression indicated otherwise. ‘You are deuced lucky Nisus is a frigate: even a seventy-four would not have done.’

Hervey was puzzled. ‘How so?’

‘Hah! You should see those first-and second-rates at gunnery: they simply lay alongside the enemy and blast away — broadside after broadside. There’s no science in it: there’s hardly need. “Engage the enemy more closely”: that’s what an affair of big ships amounts to.’

‘Oh,’ replied Hervey, disappointed — not to say disconcerted — by the intelligence. ‘I had imagined their gunnery to be more expeditious than that.’

‘Then you are in error. It is not to be compared with Woolwich. Don’t mistake me, mind: the celerity with which those guns are served is magnificent. But it’s broadsides — volley fire.’

‘In a frigate less so, however?’

‘In a frigate less so, yes. But that was rare shooting this afternoon — very uncommon shooting indeed. You know that Captain Peto laid the gun himself?’

Hervey did not.

‘Peto is that sort of captain.’

‘I am full of admiration. I had not supposed he took so great a risk firing on the gendarmerie. And that he should shoulder the responsibility so personally is, as you say, singular.’

‘Just so, Hervey. I doubt there is any bolder frigate captain in the navy. But let us to other matters: what brings you to Nisus?’

Faced with his first occasion for subterfuge, Hervey all but foundered. ‘Well, er, yes… you may. You see, I am to go to India to study the employment of the lance with the native cavalry regiments. The Duke of Wellington intends raising lancer regiments and wishes to know how best they should be ordered and trained.’

Locke seemed puzzled. ‘The cavalry leads a queerer life than the Johnnies, that’s for sure. It seems a deuced mazy way to find how to carry a spear!’

Hervey smiled. ‘The duke is very particular about things.’ How easily came the deception now.

‘Well, we must get your mare aboard. Yon crane and hoist — see? A dozen marines is all it should take.’

And, indeed, a dozen marines was all it took to hoist Jessye aboard. She lay in the sling with neither a swish of her tail nor a whicker (but looking, thought Hervey, distinctly sorry for herself) as she was first hoist aloft and then lowered into the waist. No more trouble than a gun barrel, said the boatswain. The sling’s fastenings loosed, she stepped into her box as if from the paddock, and was promptly rewarded with carrots by Johnson, his face now changed from one of anxiety to satisfaction. A promising beginning, said Hervey, though he knew it by no means certain she would survive the passage. Nevertheless, she had enough space to turn about freely and to lie at full stretch — which was more than the horses to and from the Peninsula had had. The stall was airy (it could hardly have been otherwise), yet there was enough shelter from rain and spray. Not too heavy seas to begin with — that was what he prayed for.

‘You are prone to seasickness, then, are you?’ asked Peto, though the tone was of indifference rather than sympathy.

‘Oh no, I manage quite well. It’s my mare I have a care for, since a horse has not the facility to vomit. They get the colic instead, and in the worst event they die.’

Several hands had gathered about the stall, intrigued by the addition to Nisus’s complement. One of them held out something in his palm, but she only sniffed at it and snorted disapprovingly.

‘What’s tha givin ’er?’ demanded Johnson.

‘Only baccy,’ replied the hand.

‘Tha daft bugger!’ frowned Johnson. ‘An ’orse doesn’t chew t’bacca!’

‘Will’e ’ave a bit o’ salt-pork?’ asked another.

‘Saints alive,’ cursed Johnson, ‘tha’s as daft as ’im! An ’orse doesn’t ’ave meat! And “he’s” a she!’

Peto, observing from the quarterdeck and by now much diverted, hailed his first lieutenant. ‘Mr Belben, I think the boatswain should be advised to instruct the crew that this important animal be given no titbits!’

‘Ay, ay, sir,’ replied Belben, with a long-suffering raise of the eyebrows.

Later that evening, while Peto attended to his papers, Hervey went up to the quarterdeck to take the air. First he stopped at Jessye’s stall. The feverish chill, the long haul from Paris and the hoisting aloft would have put many a blood on its side, but Jessye stood square in her stall chewing hay with slow but regular rotation of the jaw, grinding out the goodness from the Timothy. He had nothing to trouble himself about.

On the quarterdeck he found Henry Locke leaning on the taffrail and gazing out into the busy channel that was the estuary of the Seine. The light was failing fast, but a dozen vessels of various sizes could be observed under way, and as many more lay at anchor. The steady light from a lantern threw the lieutenant’s features into sharp relief, the hollow of his nose and the empty space that had once been his strong chin all too apparent in profile. Hervey shivered a little, and then hailed him.

‘Good evening, Hervey,’ replied Locke without looking round. ‘Might one ever tire of such sights?’

Hervey perceived the ambiguity in the question but could not be certain that it was intended. ‘I can see why some do not, though I am a landsman,’ he said. ‘Is this what drew you to the Marines?’

‘No, but it is one of the things that keeps me: Worcestershire is not notably a naval county. So, we’re all set fair for the Indies?’ He did not alter his gaze as he changed the subject.

‘Yes. Do you know India?’

‘Only from the telling of others. A place where a man might live like a prince on a lieutenant’s pay.’

Hervey smiled. ‘So I hear. You have not been tempted, then?’

Locke turned to him. His face, insofar as his disfigurement permitted any range of sentiment, bore an expression of melancholy. ‘I have only one desire, Hervey, and that’s to win back Locke-hall.’

Hervey was intrigued. ‘Do you wish to speak of it?’ he enquired solicitously.

‘Gambling debts mostly.’

Hervey sighed to himself — an old story. ‘You gambled away your inheritance?’

Locke stood upright and looked at him with a frown: ‘No! It was gambled by my father in his dotage. I was to have a cornetcy in the Blues: every penny for it went on the tables.’

‘And that is why you went to sea?’

‘I tried my hand at one or two ventures, but I have no head for business and no stomach for a profession. Admiral Jervis was a cousin of my late mother’s, and it was on his recommendation that I received a commission.’

‘You said win back Locke-hall?’

‘Ay, with prize-money. But since a lieutenant of Marines ranks merely with a navy warrant officer for pay and prizes, we shall need to capture a treasure fleet!’

‘And we are at war with no-one.’

‘Ay, just so. Do you have a wife, Hervey?’

He explained his circumstances, and now the hope — vain as it sounded in retelling — that Henrietta might at any moment appear with the gallant Corporal Collins.

‘She sounds to have capability,’ replied Locke. ‘Ward of the Marquess of Bath, d’ye say? Money, too. Well, let us hope this letter you say you wrote is sufficient. Many a woman would suppose herself proper jilted by a lover who runs off to the east. All her grand friends will have to be told… explanation after explanation.’