A Regimental Affair

‘I will not have my regiment turned into a commissary train, Captain Hervey!’ Lord Towcester objected on being told of this.

To Hervey that chafed badly. If there were one thing of which he was certain it was the business of maintaining condition of men and horses in the field. It couldn’t be book-learnt, only bought by true experience. ‘Your lordship, I was thinking of unencumbering the troop horses, else they will look like—’

‘I will not be contradicted, Captain Hervey! General Maitland shall take the salute as the patrol leaves, and I intend its looking as crack as anything he ever saw at Waterloo. Do you understand, sir?’

Hervey did — all too well. But still there remained the question of feed and rations, for the quartermaster’s art was the one that permitted the least flight of fancy. ‘Your lordship, how therefore do you wish the victuals to be transported?’

Lord Towcester was in thrusting form. ‘If needs be we shall live off the land!’

If the lieutenant colonel had said he expected them to be provisioned on the march by ravens, like Elijah, Hervey could hardly have been more shocked. His silence was not apparent to Lord Towcester, however, who was attending instead to the guest list for the regiment’s first dinner in ten days’ time. But in Towcester’s vanity and inexperience, Hervey saw an opportunity to have his way, albeit deviously. ‘Your lordship, might I make a suggestion in order that General Maitland should see us at our best?’

Lord Towcester looked up. ‘By all means, Captain Hervey.’

‘If we send horses on ahead with winter stores and all the feed, we should then be able to parade in field dress and cloaks, without even a blanket roll on the saddles.’

Lord Towcester nodded. ‘I shall consider it, Captain Hervey.’

‘Ride in cloaks only?’ Serjeant Armstrong looked astonished.

‘That is what I said,’ Hervey told him. ‘We shall propel ourselves briskly, and it will keep the weight down.’

Armstrong looked unconvinced.

‘The first stage is a good road,’ Hervey continued. ‘We ought to make the marching camp in eight hours.’

‘Not on this snow we won’t. I rode out to the picket post this morning and it’s balling worse than I ever saw. We might as well take the shoes off.’

‘It would be tempting if we knew what the ground would be like at Niagara, but it might be rocklike.’

‘Well, if that’s the best you can do, sir—’

‘I fear it is. Now, do I need to remind you that this patrol is your chance to display to the lieutenant colonel?’

Armstrong nodded. ‘Ay. The last chance.’

‘Then who shall we place in charge of the bathorses?’

‘Clarkson, I reckon.’

Hervey thought for a while. ‘Would you make Clarkson next for serjeant?’

‘In the troop? Yes. But given the choice I’d have Collins. Clarkson’s good, and he’ll be a bloody clewed-up serjeant-major in his turn. But Collins has got the stamp of a Lincoln.’

‘Do you think so? I’m not saying I don’t agree, but…’

‘That’s because Collins is the best corporal in the regiment, and because he seems every bit a corporal you wonder if he can be a serjeant. When he’s a serjeant it’ll be the same. I’ve always reckoned the best — NCOs and officers — strike you whatever rank they’re in. I never have understood the idea that someone could be a lousy troop man but a good RSM or colonel. More coffee?’

Hervey held out his tin cup, contemplating Armstrong’s proposition. If there were any other NCOs with such an opinion, he supposed they would never venture to give it. ‘You don’t believe that, because there are different qualities needed to be a troop man from those of the commissary, you could do one well and the other badly?’

‘I wasn’t saying that, sir. I don’t believe every good serjeant would make an RSM, or captain a colonel. But I do believe it goes the other way round. The best horses run well on any going.’

Hervey smiled at the imagery. ‘In principle I think you may be wrong. But I confess that in practice all I’ve ever seen says you’re right. I suspect Mr Lincoln was the finest of corporals.’

‘You can bet on it. I wish he’d come back soon.’

‘We all say amen to that.’

‘But I grant you Clarkson runs Collins close, sir. Are you to fill the vacancy, then?’

Hervey sighed. ‘It’s unfair on Clarkson if I manage to get Collins back and promote him. It’s unfair, too, to try an exchange. They’re both drawing pay of serjeant, as I understand it, so I thought I’d let things run a bit longer to see what turned up.’

Armstrong smiled. ‘That’s what Major Edmonds would have done. “First whiff of black powder and all bets are off,” he always said.’

Hervey frowned. ‘That doesn’t say much for Clarkson’s chances then. There’ll be no black powder here. And, do you know, I shall be glad of it, and so should you be. Fatherhood’s not best an absentee state, I think.’

‘Bloody ’ell, sir. Who’s been telling you that?’

‘Nobody.’

‘You mean you thought of it yourself?’

Hervey raised his eyebrows.

‘Sir, I’d be thinking about half-pay if I were you!’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I saw a pretty sort of crib being knocked up yesterday in the serjeants’ lines.’

Armstrong made an unconvincing huffing sound as he left the troop office.

In the modest but comfortable Hervey quarters, Henrietta was being stoical — as was Caithlin Armstrong in that corner of the barracks that served as the Armstrongs’ quarters. This sort of thing — the Niagara patrol — was after all why the Sixth had come to the Canadas, although both wives had perhaps thought that winter quarters would allow them the months of their confinement united with their men.

‘The captain’s lady and Molly O’Grady!’ said Hervey, smiling proudly when Henrietta declared she was not in the least preoccupied by the prospect of his leaving her.

She looked at him, puzzled.

He frowned. It was easy to forget that it had been less than a year since she had been taken on strength, so to speak. Barrackroom wisdom took rather longer to acquire. ‘ “The captain’s lady and Molly O’Grady are sisters beneath the skin.” It’s one of the things the men say. Except they say the colonel’s lady.’

Henrietta did not tell him that a day had not passed without her imagining Princess Charlotte’s terrible trial — and fate — and without wondering why she, Lady Henrietta Hervey, should expect to be spared when a royal princess, attended by the foremost obstetrician of the land, had fared no better in her labour than a beast of the field. She wondered if she would bear it well when her own trial came. The newspapers had made much of the princess’s courage, of her bearing the agonies ‘with a Brunswick heart’. Not for Charlotte the laudanum’s ease. Did she have a heart as strong as a Brunswick? She feared not. Indeed, she knew it.

‘Matthew, you will be close when the time comes, won’t you?’

He knelt by her side and took her hand.

‘Just at your duty in the fort,’ she explained, placing her other hand over his, ‘so that if… then I should feel I could bear it the better.’

‘Yes,’ he said, gently. ‘I don’t imagine there’ll be another patrol in months. When the time comes I shall remain in my office until you send for me.’

He kissed her forehead, and then she kissed his lips.

‘Matthew, if anything were to happen…’

She seemed to be searching for the words; but Hervey could not help because he was unsure of what exactly was her fear, especially as she had said not a word to him about Princess Charlotte since they had set sail from England.

‘If anything should happen to me…’

He saw at once, and put an arm around her. ‘My dear, I was not going to say anything of this, but our surgeon told me he would never have allowed the princess to go on as she did had he been in attendance.’

Henrietta looked at him, perplexed.