A Call to Arms

my dear sir! I am so glad you have come! I am so very glad we meet at last!’

A man perhaps ten years older than him, about his height and build, with the fine, unmistakably patrician features of the brother who had once been his idol, advanced with a broad smile and outstretched hand. Hervey took off his hat, smiled as broadly and took the hand. ‘I am very glad to be back, Colonel. May I present—’

‘Miss Hervey, I presume? My brother spoke of you.’ Sir Ivo Lankester bowed.

Elizabeth curtsied, returning his easy smile. She had met Hervey’s erstwhile troop-leader in Ireland, and had liked him very much. His brother appeared to her to have all Sir Edward’s good manners, and perhaps even more of his charm. She at once concluded that Matthew need have no concerns on his commanding officer’s account, at least.

‘Would you care to come into my office, Hervey? And Miss Hervey too, if that would not be too tedious. I shall send for coffee. Or perhaps you would prefer tea, Miss Hervey?’

Elizabeth was sure she would not find it in the least tedious to accept the invitation. ‘I should be very glad of coffee, sir.’

‘Capital,’ Sir Ivo exclaimed, turning to the side and indicating the open door.

It was Elizabeth’s first encounter with so intensely masculine a room, and she was evidently much taken with the buttoned leather chairs, the sabres and spurs, the drums, the oils of bloody battles and illustrious officers, for she quite failed to catch the commanding officer’s enquiry.

‘Elizabeth?’ prompted her brother.

‘Oh, yes, er …?’

Sir Ivo smiled. ‘I merely asked, Miss Hervey, if your time in Rome had been agreeable. I myself was there for some months before Oxford. I own that I might never have returned home had war not resumed.’

‘Oh, I liked it very much too, sir, very much,’ she replied, now repossessed of her former senses. ‘I liked its gaiety above all, I think, though they say it is nothing compared with Naples, but alas we were not able to travel there because of brigandage.’ She glanced at her brother; the explanation would suffice.

‘Who are the captains, Colonel?’ asked Hervey briskly.

‘Rose has A Troop, Barrow has B, Strickland C. And D is sold to a man from the Bays whom I have not yet met. Yours will be E Troop.’

‘So there are to be five troops only?’ Hervey’s voice betrayed a certain disappointment.

‘Five, yes. That is to be the Indian establishment. I confess it dismayed me to begin with, but so it shall be.’

Hervey glanced at Elizabeth, who seemed not greatly to care about the Indian establishment, engaged as she was by the intricate wirework on a shabraque laid over a chairback settee. ‘And who shall be my lieutenant?’

The commanding officer hesitated for a moment, as if he could not recall. ‘There is none at present.’

That need be no bad thing, thought Hervey: he could soon have a new lieutenant on the bit. ‘Cornets, Colonel?’

Colonel Lankester looked discomfited. ‘I regret there are no cornets either, Hervey.’

‘Oh.’ Hervey could not conceal his surprise at the squadron’s being without any officers whatsoever.

‘No, well … you see, Hervey, I’m afraid there is no troop in being. Third Squadron was disbanded nine months ago. I rather thought you might know this. I imagined that … well, no matter. We must raise a full troop inside five months before we embark for Hindoostan. That is why the colonel was so very particular in wanting you to return to duty.’

Hervey’s heart sank fast. A troop of widows’ men to command, and five months only to find recruits and remounts: he might as well be with the Eighty-second and yellow jack in Jamaica after all.

CHAPTER SEVEN. THE SERJEANT-MAJOR

They left the barracks an hour later, Elizabeth in good spirits, her brother tolerably so. He leaned out of the window when they were well clear of the gates and called to the postilion to ask if he knew the Windsor road. He did, and so Hervey bade him put the pair into a trot as soon as possible for the Spread Eagle at Datchet.

Well might Elizabeth look pleased, Hervey mused. She had received much flattering attention, and seen the regiment in hale condition. All he had been able to see was blank troop-rolls and empty stalls. True, he had been told that he could draw on Mr Lincoln’s seniority list of corporals, and that Lincoln also had a promising list of chosen men. And Sir Ivo Lankester had been straight and fair with him. ‘I will sign any reasonable promotion order,’ had he not said?

At once Hervey had sought to probe what was reasonable to Sir Ivo’s mind. ‘I should wish for Serjeant Armstrong to be my serjeant-major, Colonel. I trust that would not go badly with the seniority rule?’ he asked squarely.

Sir Ivo had shaken his head. ‘Promoting Armstrong would not go badly with the seniority rule,’ he had replied. ‘That is, it would not go badly if Armstrong were with us still.’

Hervey was stunned. The colour drained from him in an instant. ‘I … I had no idea that … When did he die, Colonel? Where is his family?’

‘No, no — not dead, not at all dead. I mean that he was discharged these six months and more.’

Hervey’s relief was palpable, but the very idea of Armstrong unbooted was only a partial consolation. ‘Why did he have his discharge, Colonel? He had made a fine recovery, had he not?’

The lieutenant-colonel furrowed his brow. ‘I don’t rightly know. I had not been in command many months — weeks, indeed — when he applied. Mr Lincoln says he had become listless. Perhaps if he had returned to a troop instead of light duties with the quartermasters …’

‘And how goes he now? Do we have word of his family?’

‘Again, Mr Lincoln would best advise you. I know that he keeps a posthouse near Eton.’ Sir Ivo knew because he had himself arranged for it, though he did not say so.

Hervey knew that it was not a time to explore his own culpability in Armstrong’s listlessness, nor in Armstrong’s estrangement from the regiment, which he had made his family when his own had been destroyed by a firedamp explosion fifteen years before. But guilt pricked him hard nonetheless. No matter how pressing his duty here, and to his own family in Wiltshire, he must see for himself that Armstrong was sound in soul as well as body. He glanced at Elizabeth. ‘With your leave, Colonel, I should like to take a look at Mr Lincoln’s promotion lists and then make a start for Wiltshire. I should like, if I may, a fortnight in which to set affairs right at home, and then to report for duty.’

Sir Ivo smiled indulgently. ‘Of course, Hervey, of course. Take as long as you need. There’s no profit in having you begin before you can give it your heart.’

Hervey had known Sir Ivo but a half-hour, yet he thought he had known him an age, so thoroughly regimental was his view. He could have been Lord George Irvine, Joseph Edmonds or Sir Edward Lankester for that matter. How right Lord Sussex had been, if not entirely fulsome with detail, when he had said that he was certain the Sixth were restored. Hervey rose and took up his hat, and held out a hand to Elizabeth. ‘I shall spend a little while with the adjutant and Mr Lincoln, then, Colonel, and afterwards drive west.’

‘I cannot prevail on you to stay to luncheon?’

Hervey had glanced at Elizabeth, as a courtesy, but he had then declined.

‘Then while you are with Assheton-Smith and the RSM, allow me at least to show your sister the horse lines.’

Elizabeth had accepted without waiting for her brother’s leave.

Hervey left his sister to take in the sights of the Berkshire countryside while he himself sat back to contemplate the reunion ahead. He had no very clear idea of what it was he would say to Armstrong, a man he counted more than just his erstwhile serjeant. There was so much he could say: what he owed him, what he had failed him in, what he might do for him yet — confused notions which swam before him as the chariot picked up