A Call to Arms

again.’

‘You don’t sound so sure.’

Armstrong shifted in his seat. ‘Look, sir, every man in the Sixth knows what went on in Canada — and before, for that matter.’

‘Well? You’ve nothing to fear in that respect.’

‘I’m not afeard of anything, least of all what the canteens are saying. I’m just not sure it’d be the same.’

Hervey was even more puzzled. ‘Nothing’s ever the same. But you and I are no worse soldiers for all that happened.’

Armstrong shook his head. ‘I’m not so sure about that. That savage got the better of me, from behind — me not seeing him even. That should never have been. I’d have bawled out a recruit for not watching ’is back like that. And they all know it at Hounslow. It wouldn’t be fair on you.’ He did not say that in that lapse he had let his captain down. But Armstrong believed it. That no one else even thought it, let alone believed it, would never be consolation to him.

Hervey pictured the scene of Armstrong’s undoing — his raging, perhaps for an instant losing that field sense which keeps the good soldier alive. And he saw Henrietta, perhaps more terrified still by the invincible Armstrong’s destruction before her very eyes. He shook himself. ‘Look, we had all this out a year ago. Theory’s one thing, but it can’t always be. I got that spontoon in my leg at Toulouse in the same way, but it didn’t mean I was finished in the eyes of the troop. Everybody knows you went single-handed at a bunch of savages and fought like a tiger. That’s what they think of Geordie Armstrong, not that one of them got the better of him.’

‘Ay, maybe.’

‘Look, you used to admonish me when I said I couldn’t be done with the shame of Serjeant Strange’s death. Well, it’s the same now with you.’

The pot boy came in with a tray. Hervey took his glass in silence, Armstrong likewise. A long time they sat, without a word, sipping occasionally. This was not a matter to be rushed, and Hervey was not inclined to be the first to speak. He would wait, however long, to hear the evidence of what had truly become of Geordie Armstrong.

CHAPTER EIGHT. HOME TRUTHS

Salisbury Plain, a week later

Hervey eased himself into the ash dugout which Daniel Coates regarded as the chair of honour. The room had moved on to oak and then mahogany over the decades, but still that piece was Coates’s pride, for he had fashioned it himself from windfall when first he had married. It was all, indeed, that now materially remained of those days. There was a way of sitting in it which was tolerably comfortable, and Hervey, having bent to take off his spurs, shuffled until he found it, and then took the glass of purl which Coates’s manservant brought.

‘Tell me what are the designs regarding your widow’s troop,’ Coates asked.

Hervey looked at him, quelling a smile. They had just ridden the downs together and the old soldier had pressed him every minute of it to details of the regiment and his imminent fortunes. Yet, even now, there was more that Coates would know. It was the same Daniel Coates of his boyhood, without a doubt. The hair was white and thinned, the cheeks sunken and the back a little bent, but in all else Coates seemed as he had always been.

‘Matthew?’

‘I’m sorry, Dan; what—?’

‘How shall you raise the men? And where shall the horses come from?’

Hervey sighed. ‘Well, the second question’s a sight easier to answer than the first. There’ll be no remounts until India. And as for recruits, I’m very much afraid it will be the usual fashion. The colonel’s made a start sending out parties under the more active serjeants, and he’s offered a special bounty to any man who’ll enlist his own brother. He’s very much of the opinion that brothers exercise a beneficent effect on each other.’

‘I only ever saw one lot myself, and they was the biggest pair of rogues in the regiment. They were both in chokey at the same time at one point. But I think they ’listed as a pair, though; nobody was to know.’

Hervey had no cause to dispute it, but he supposed the colonel was a discerning man when it came to brothers. ‘Well, he’s confident of filling the ranks ere the summer’s out. He told me he believed my concern would be drill and not recruiting.’

Coates looked puzzled. ‘How are you to drill dragoons without troopers?’

Hervey raised his eyebrows. ‘I suppose the riding master must have sufficient to introduce them to the saddle, but there’ll be no jockeys this side of India, that’s for sure. It doesn’t much matter, says the colonel, for we’re hardly going to the seat of war. Hindoostan has been quiet these past three years since the Pindarees were seen to.’

Coates did not look entirely convinced. ‘It’s always a business taking over another regiment’s horses. You’re better off with roughs nine times out of ten.’

‘And I think roughs are what we’ll get, for I gather the regiment there has been on a much reduced establishment.’

‘Ay, well, your work’ll be cut out, Matthew.’ He took a match and relit his pipe, letting the smoke rise a while before breaking the comfortable silence. ‘And how’s that yearling of yours? Haven’t seen him in months.’

‘He’s as fine as you could want. He’ll make a charger all right.’

‘And Jessye: have you had her under the saddle yet?’

‘We hackneyed through Longleat park yesterday. And she would have had a good run if I’d let her.’

‘I should put the stallion to her again, Matthew. Never has the demand for roadsters been greater. The mails are running up and down the turnpikes like quicksilver these days. She’d make you a pretty penny.’

Hervey nodded. ‘Perhaps if I were staying …’

‘That groom of yours going to India too, then?’

‘He is indeed.’ Private Johnson would have preferred to keep his cosy billet in Horningsham, of that Hervey was sure, but as Johnson himself had said when first Hervey had told him of his intentions, beggars could not be choosers. Johnson’s only fear, which was his only secret too, was the workhouse. ‘I thought of attaching him to my father, but …’

‘I would take him, if you like.’

Hervey smiled. ‘Now you’re gainsaying your earlier counsel, Dan. I gave him the choice, and he made up his own mind, though it was probably Hobson’s choice.’

Coates inclined his head, as much as to say there was more to Hervey’s observation than perhaps he thought. ‘Hobson’s was not a bad choice, Matthew. It was to spare his horses, if you remember.’

‘Yes, I do remember, now.’

Both of them knew also that Johnson had been as devoted to Henrietta as a groom might be. Coates, at least, knew that this bound him more fast to his master now than ever. ‘Shall you stay for a bite of dinner?’

‘I thank you, Dan, but no. We have Mr Keble calling on his way back to Oxford. You remember him?’

‘I do. He made that pleasing sermon at your wedding. I shouldn’t forget ’im.’

Hervey looked forward keenly to seeing John Keble again, but he knew that wounds would probably reopen thereby. ‘It will be the first time since the wedding that we have met.’

Daniel Coates was not for treading lightly about the subject. ‘And how are things at the big house, Matthew?’

‘You mean with Lord Bath?’

‘Ay. It can’t help, that son of ’is running off with yon Harriet Robbins.’

The elopement of the Marquess of Bath’s son and heir with the daughter of the turnpike-keeper was the talk