Nizams Daughters

though even here he could not be certain that their conversation would remain private. There was little he could do about that, however, and, in any case, he proposed to say nothing — nor even did he think anything — that might not be laid before the rajah without embarrassment. That some of the rajah’s establishment were in the nizam’s pay left him no alternative, indeed.

Somervile seemed pleased, but not surprised, to see him, and beckoned his khitmagar to bring him coffee. ‘These are momentous times, are they not, Captain Hervey?’ he asked, smiling.

‘I am beginning to think that I might not see otherwise in my lifetime,’ replied Hervey, sighing.

‘I learn that the Duke of Wellington is having a little difficulty in Paris, too.’

‘Oh?’ said Hervey. ‘How so?’

‘He has been assailed in the street. It seems that there is some resentment that he commands an army of occupation. The royalists feel that now the usurper Bonaparte is gone France should be returned to the French. And, I hear tell, there is trouble with one or two husbands…’

‘I am sure that the duke is able to bear these things with fortitude,’ smiled Hervey. ‘How are things with Lord Moira?’ he ventured.

The collector looked baffled by the enquiry. Hervey wished he had not made the connection so directly, for Somervile was quite astute enough to draw the inference.

‘Lord Moira is, it seems, in the very best of sorts. He is quite determined on vigorous action in order to have peace from these Pindarees, and I understand that he now has the support of Leadenhall Street and the government. Or at least, there is quiescence in those quarters. I have it on the best authority, even, that he is soon to be ennobled with a marquessate.’

Hervey sensed that his next words were crucial to preserving his cover, but before he could speak the collector demonstrated the perceptivity of which Lucie had made so much.

‘Captain Hervey, did you suppose that the Duke of Wellington were somehow to be translated here at the expense of Lord Moira? Are you in some manner his scout?’

Hervey was aghast.

The collector laughed. ‘My dear sir, I have known as much since first we met! You forget that it is my business to be in the minds of men. You suppose that what in London is plausible will be equally so in the Indies. Well, I may tell you that it is not. You may, so to speak, have a parade of Grenadiers pass muster on the Horse Guards, but in India the sun is so bright that the merest speck on a tunic will stand out like an inkblot on parchment!’ He laughed again, calling to his khitmagar in confident Telugu for more coffee — and then to leave them alone. ‘Captain Hervey, you would be an adornment in Calcutta — for sure — but more importantly, you would come to see India as I do. And, since the wretched affair of Warren Hastings, there are fewer men each year who are prepared to see India as it is, rather than as it might be were only its rulers Englishmen.’

Hervey was not immediately convinced. ‘Do you not confuse our purpose in the East, sir?’ he asked boldly.

‘ “Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live”?’

Hervey all but scratched his head. ‘That is familiar, but—’

‘Milton,’ he replied.

‘Oh, Milton. My major was wont to quote Milton, but he had a decidedly melancholic turn. It does seem apt, though.’ Then he had second thoughts. ‘But have we not fought Bonaparte these past twenty years on that very precept?’

The collector frowned. ‘Would that you knew your Milton better, for it is less contrived at polity than with private morals!’

‘I think it dubious to suppose there is a distinction…’

‘Oh, Captain Hervey!’ groaned the collector, and then declaimed as if on the boards: ‘ “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.” ’

‘Milton again, sir? And what is your meaning by that?’

‘Dust and heat — the essence of India!’ said the collector, surprised.

Hervey looked blank.

‘Captain Hervey, I shall speak plain: if you are the man I believe you to be, you will ever think meanly of yourself if you refuse the rajah’s request.’

‘Forgive me, sir, but I think you must perceive my difficulty at least. Such a course would be to stray a very great deal from that which I was meant to follow. I took a gamble in coming to Chintalpore because I believed it would be most expeditious to my mission. I must have the greatest care not to compound an error. And in any case, how do you know of the rajah’s request?’ he added, indignantly.

Somervile chose to ignore the question. ‘Captain Hervey, officers are appointed to the staff of great men to exercise their judgement, being in the mind of their principal. There is nothing uncommon in your exercise of initiative in coming to Chintalpore. I dare say that you are in a better position today to instruct the duke in the actuality that is Haidarabad than if you had dutifully ploughed your way first up the Hooghly river!’

‘Perhaps,’ replied Hervey, mollified slightly; ‘but how did you know of the rajah’s request?’

‘It is of no matter,’ replied the collector dismissively.

‘I consider that it is, sir!’ insisted Hervey; ‘I wish to know what collusion there has been in this concern!’

The collector smiled. ‘Captain Hervey, you must not suppose there are spies everywhere. I said before that it was my business to know what is in men’s minds. I knew perfectly well that that would be the rajah’s stipulation.’

Hervey sighed again. ‘See here, Mr Somervile, I make no admission by this, but the duties given to me by the Duke of Wellington do not permit of it. Nor, I believe, may a King’s officer be so employed on Company business without express authority.’

The collector sighed too, and more wearily. ‘The latter is but the refuge of the legalist. The former — well, I do not suppose that the duke is entirely illdisposed towards initiative.’

‘There is a perfectly able King’s officer here in Chintalpore who could exercise command with equal address as I.’

‘Who?’ enquired the collector, incredulously.

‘Mr Locke.’

‘Locke? That potulent officer of Marines? From what I hear you would have the greatest difficulty hauling him off his little nautch girl!’

Hervey frowned in dissent. ‘That is unfair. He fought like a lion at Jhansikote.’

‘Hervey,’ said the collector, his voice lowered in conspiracy, ‘there will be no shortage of lions. What the rajah needs is a lion with the acuity of a mongoose!’

XV. FEVER

The following day

Hervey walked with Emma Lucie in the water gardens before the heat of the day drove all but the unfortunate to seek the shade. Despite the collector’s best efforts she had insisted on staying in Chintal for a further week, for it was the first time she had seen a princely state (Mysore she dismissed as merely an outpost of Madras). Hervey was glad she had stayed. He was, perhaps for the first time, feeling acutely the want of support that was the community of the Sixth. Private Johnson was a greater strength than ever he could have imagined, but he could hardly share his doubts with a man whose life rested so completely in his hands. There was Locke. But somehow Hervey was unable to confide. There ought to have been Selden, but Selden protested that he supposed him more capable than he was. ‘In the end I am a horse-doctor, that is all,’ he had lamented. And Selden was abed with fever