‘Was it just tiredness?’
‘There’s summat up wi’ ’im. Some o’ t’others were knocked up when we got to Nottingham, but they were right by morning.’
Hervey ducked under the bar of Harkaway’s stall. ‘Did you see any blood at his nostrils at any stage?’
‘No, sir, not once.’
Hervey had no doubt that Johnson would have noticed the slightest bleeding. ‘What did the veterinary officer say?’
‘Just to physic ’im, which I’d done anyway.’
‘Well, let’s give him another mash tonight, with some nitre.’
Johnson pulled the bar back across the stall as Hervey stepped out. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I just didn’t see anything. ’E’s been in as good a fettle as any o’ t’others up to now.’
Hervey smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘We’ll have him to rights soon enough.’
They left the stable and began walking to the officers’ house. A dozen or so jackdaws were picking at the droppings in the yard. ‘
Hervey smiled again as he watched them carefully selecting the uncrushed grains. ‘Oh, there are others, too. I had rather a nice meeting with the chairman of the bench earlier on.’
‘What d’ye reckon, then, sir? It’s a lot quieter than I thought it’d be. We’d all thought we’d be on riot duty t’first night.’
Hervey confided that he’d expected the same, though he was grateful to have been wrong. ‘Maybe it’s just our numbers. Or maybe the ringleaders are biding their time. There’s more machinery being brought from Birmingham in the next week or two, and that might be a cause for trouble.’
Johnson nodded. ‘We were wondering if we’d be allowed into Mansfield.’
Armstrong would be asking him that too, no doubt. It would be safer not to let his men associate with the citizenry, for besides the usual fights, it did not do to have the very force sent to coerce the populace drinking with them the day before. But Mansfield was hardly seething, and it was not the populace as a whole that was to be coerced. Hervey imagined there would be more peace caught from the dragoons than sedition caught from the townspeople.
‘I’ll have a word with Serjeant Armstrong. In any event, it should help the posse the magistrates are getting up.’
‘A pussy?’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake, man!’
‘You just said—’
‘I said posse.’
Johnson looked genuinely baffled, and then began to smirk, a thing he did infrequently enough to induce a similar reaction in Hervey. ‘And what are they going to do with the pussy?’
Dragoons about the yard were now glancing their way. ‘They’re organizing a watch,’ said Hervey, managing to regain a reasonable composure. He told him about the Bow Street men too, not that he expected to see them inside of five days. The letter to London would go express, by Sir Abraham’s pocket, together with a letter of credit so that the detectors might post to Nottingham with all speed. But they would have other business in the capital, no doubt, and he couldn’t expect them to abandon those duties at once.
Meanwhile, he concluded that his best course was a vigorous show of force throughout the district, by day and by night.
Hervey was fast asleep when Johnson banged on his door two nights later.
‘It’s ’Arkaway, sir. ’E’s down.’
Hervey sprang out of bed, pulled on his overalls and boots and snatched up his field coat. They ran to the stables, where the picket corporal was lighting oil lamps as fast as he could. ‘How long has he been down?’
‘I don’t know for sure, sir,’ said Corporal Sykes. ‘But he was up at midnight when I did the rounds.’
As a rule, no one patrolled the lines themselves during the silent hours, for horses needed their peace as much as dragoons, but some of the barley feed that day had been fusty, and there were fears for the odd case of colic. But Harkaway had not had the barley. He lay quite still, his breathing shallow, with no sweating. The veterinary officer was twenty miles away, and Hervey was at a loss to know what to try.
Serjeant Armstrong arrived. He watched, silent, until Hervey pressed him for an opinion. ‘I just don’t know, sir. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a horse down and as still as this.’
‘He can’t have picked up any poison. He’s been all but in tandem with Gilbert the past two weeks. Mr Gascoyne thought he was just off his form, tired after the march.’
‘We’ve all seen horses drop dead with fatigue, but not like this. Could his gut have twisted — or got a block?’
Hervey knelt by Harkaway’s head and listened close to the shallow but regular breathing. ‘Perhaps. But look at him: he’s not sweating, and he’s not trying to nip at the pain.’ Hervey looked up as the farriercorporal entered the stall. ‘What do you make of him, Corporal Perrot?’
The farriercorporal got down by the gelding’s side and felt along his flank and belly. There was nothing unusual — just as Hervey had found. ‘It’s queer, sir. He’s not sweating, or showing any pain. He looks like an old horse snuffing.’ The farriercorporal’s soft Dorset was an emollient, even if his words were not. ‘It can’t be colic?’
Hervey shook his head, unsure.
Perrot sighed. ‘Has he had colic before, sir?’
Hervey and Harkaway hadn’t been together all that much: the Irish splint was the only thing he knew of to have bothered the veterinary officer. ‘I believe not at all. Do you think we should dose him with salt water?’
The farriercorporal looked undecided. ‘Might it be
Hervey shook his head again. ‘I’m at a loss to know what it might be, Corporal Perrot. I don’t want to dose him if we don’t have to, not lying like this — and we’d never get him on his feet.’
‘I’d best have a look — if you don’t mind, sir?’
Daniel Coates had once shown Hervey how to examine for impacted colic, but he had never had cause to. ‘Yes, I’d be very obliged if you would, Corporal Perrot. And I’ll send for Mr Gascoyne meanwhile.’
The farriercorporal asked for some whale oil, took off his tunic and shirt, then rubbed the oil over his right arm. ‘Pull his tail clear for me, Johnson,’ he said, rubbing a little oil on the anus. The picket corporal brought a lantern closer. ‘What bloody good’s that going to do, Sykes?’ rasped Corporal Perrot, sliding a hand inside the rectum.
Corporal Sykes coloured up, and even Hervey managed a smile. Harkaway barely moved a muscle at the intrusion. Corporal Perrot pushed on gently until his forearm had disappeared, and then began carefully probing the abdomen to locate any blockage.
A full five minutes passed before Perrot pronounced that there was no obvious obstruction. Hervey was disappointed, for although an impacted colic was a deuce of a thing to treat, they would at least know how to start. All they could do now was wait for the veterinary officer to arrive, and they knew he couldn’t do so before morning.
‘I’ll stay with him, then, Johnson.’
When Johnson was gone, Hervey looked long at the gelding, and with a growing sense of despair. Never before had he been at such a loss to know what to do. All he could do, indeed, was watch.
A little before first light, Harkaway gave up breathing. Hervey did not see the actual moment, for the gelding’s respiration had become so shallow by the end that it was almost imperceptible. One minute Hervey knew he was alive, and the next he knew he was gone. And it was an end with relief as well as melancholy, for Hervey had known for several hours that nothing could put life back into so weak an animal. He did not get up at once, apprehending a forceful command to remain at Harkaway’s side — an awe, numinal, powerful, which he had known once or twice in the Peninsula. It had not been something he had enquired into, or later denied. He waited reverently for several minutes, until, quite distinctly, he felt his restraints slip away. Then he rose, took a blanket and laid it over Harkaway’s head, and went out into the morning.
Johnson was as grieved as Hervey, in some ways more so. He had seen enough horses die from wounds and malnourishment, strangles and staggers — from any number of causes, indeed — but never once reflecting on his own husbandry. It was as much to assuage his groom’s dismay, therefore, that Hervey asked the veterinary
