and during that time he had been able to do nothing more than any captain did on taking over his troop, which was to see that everything for which he might be held accountable with his purse was as the regimental books said they should be. He had looked at the sixty or so horses with a most careful eye, and been more pleased than he could remember — a far cry, they, from the tits and screws, the weavers and windsuckers, the quidders and crib-biters that had been their remounts by the end of the Peninsula. The private men, too, were bright-eyed, smart, and quick about things to the trumpet, and he was slowly getting the measure of the non-commissioned officers. His serjeant-major, Kendall, was a man he would not himself have chosen, but thought might just do, for he was spoken of well in his time with the quartermasters. Armstrong was first serjeant, and for that, at least, Hervey was grateful. But he was sad that Collins was no longer in the squadron, for he would have wished him for his covering- corporal again — though Collins was chasing his third stripe, so he would have had to find another coverman sooner or later anyway. At yesterday’s parade he had liked the look of an active young dragoon called Troughton, a Norfolk man with a good seat, light hand and supple wrist. Perhaps he would watch and see how he fared at the general’s drill. His trumpeter, Medwell, whose nickname in the troop was ‘Susan’ (and Hervey thought he could see why), was so flawless in his calls that Hervey supposed it would not be long before Susan was made colonel’s man. But for the time being, at least, he knew he could count on his orders being relayed exactly.
‘Does the colonel have any notion of what form the manoeuvres will take?’ asked Ezra Barrow, seeing that there was no point in grumbling any more.
Major Joynson said he did not, or, if he had, he had not vouch-safed it.
‘When is he back?’ asked D Troop’s captain.
‘I don’t know, for rights,’ said the major, growing more uncomfortable by the minute.
‘Perhaps we might address the problem ourselves,’ suggested Strickland, who seemed in better spirits than when Hervey had taken leave of him a month before.
They all nodded.
The major wasn’t sure, however. ‘I do not know his lordship’s wishes in such things.’
Hervey was baffled. It was a very fair presumption that any commanding officer would wish the best efforts to be made. He sighed to himself. This was going to be a deuced hard pull. For the moment, though, he held his peace.
Major Eustace Joynson had all but been on half-pay these past eight years, with no more responsibility than organizing supply for the yeomanry of Kent when they were mobilized for invasion duty — which, since 1805, they had never been. He was a kind man by all accounts, he meant well, worked hard and was far from stupid. But he disliked upsets. When Hervey had first joined for duty as a cornet, the then Captain Joynson was called ‘Daddy’ by his troop, and was soon shed by the colonel when they reached the Peninsula. His return to regimental duty was therefore as unexpected as it was undesirable. With a martinet, at best, for a commanding officer, and a toady for an adjutant, the last thing they needed was a major who wouldn’t say boo to the proverbial goose.
Hervey sighed. Heavens, what a change there’d been. It was a matchless regiment that had crossed the Pyrenees that winter, the year before Waterloo: Lord George Irvine commanding, Joseph Edmonds the major, and Ezra Barrow (ay, for all his brusqueness) the adjutant. Now even Mr Lincoln was being elbowed aside, an RSM the like of which the army took thirty years in the forming and could never get enough of. Hervey thought he might easily despair of his own prospects of promotion if his fortunes depended on an orderly room like this — as indeed it did. He silently resolved that, when the time came, his own troop, at least, would have the bottom.
Henrietta had spent the day writing letters to those with whom she was on calling terms, to inform them of her new quarters. These were small but comfortable, in a terrace near the heath, with a coach house to the rear and a well-tended garden. She had been content, but now she was not at all pleased.
Hervey promised it was strict necessity. ‘I have to have the troop out for a night. None of them seems to remember when last they did anything in the dark, and with the major general threatening to put us all through some scheme or other instead of just a review next week, there’s really no time to be lost.’
‘You will not be gone more than a night? I don’t much care for this place on my own.’
He assured her he would be back by the time she was breakfasting. ‘Have you taken against the house?’
‘No, not the house,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘Then what?’
‘I just do not like our being parted so soon.’
‘My darling, you would not have me sit at home when I know that my troop is in need of turning out?’ He pulled the bell rope.
She shook her head. ‘I told you at Longleat, Matthew. When you go away, I have a presentiment of your not coming back.’
Their manservant was at the door. Hervey smiled at him. ‘That will be all for the evening, Hanks. I shall not be home tomorrow. Please be especially attentive to the shutters and locks.’
When Hanks had gone, Henrietta poured more tea. ‘How important is Private Johnson to your nocturnals?’
Hervey looked at her curiously. If only he could tell her of Johnson in the Pyrenees, on Waterloo eve, or the night in the forest at Jhansikote. ‘He is indispensable!’
She frowned again, and Hervey saw her intention. ‘You mean you would feel more secure were Johnson in the house?’
‘If he’s indispensable then it is of no matter.’
‘You think you might hold him hostage to my return?’
‘You would have no harsh choices to make if he were here! Although Jessye, of course, is some miles away.’ The smile was now fully returned, for Henrietta was pleased with her tease.
‘Then you shall have him,’ Hervey replied, teasing her in turn with the impression of giving it careful thought. ‘And he would certainly prefer it to beating about the heath, especially if this rain continues.’
‘But you said he was indispensable!’
‘Perhaps I should have said that I wouldn’t be without him when the time came.’
She furrowed her brow. ‘You are funny. You are so certain of things. I could never be afraid if you were at hand.’
‘You mistake me there, my love. I’m certain of just a very few things to do with soldiery — learned the hard way, I might add. But beyond that…’
‘Shall you tell me of them?’
That surprised him. ‘Tell you of soldiery?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, I…’
‘You have
He had never spoken of it because it had never occurred to him to do so. It was one thing to like pretty uniforms and bands, quite another to be interested in their purpose. It was true that many a fashionable female would try to get a view of a battle, safe on a hilltop, but he had never met any who wished to speak of war. What a month it had been, and what a change there came in things when lovers shared at last the secrets of the marriage bed. How differently they looked to each other, and others to them. How differently they spoke, and of what things (which sometimes the morning would blush to hear). And now Henrietta would have him speak of things so wholly beyond her comprehension that he feared she might loathe a part of what he did. But they daily became more intimate, whether by a look, a word or a caress, and so he must trust now in what she had said about there being no secrets.
They sat late into the night talking. He began with thoughts, and then, secure in her estimation as he had never been before, he told her at last of deeds. He told her all that had ever troubled him — or as much as she would permit, for once or twice she stopped him and said with great tenderness that she did not have to know any more. They retired well after midnight, after some of the candles had given out, but they slept little.
It rained all next day. Hervey and Barrow were together in A Troop office ruing the weather, while outside, some distance away at the guardroom, the orderly trumpeter was struggling with the semiquavers below the staff for afternoon defaulters. A knock at the office door covered his final C, which cracked as he overblew, trying to be heard above the torrents.
‘Come!’ called Hervey, hoping it might be Johnson with something hot. But it was only the squadron
