Hervey was as impressed as the commanding officer by Sledge’s research.
‘But sickle hocks you can recognize easily enough, can you not?’ Sir Ivo suggested.
‘Oh, indeed, Colonel. Anyone may. And if I were buying for myself I should not take such a case: the risk is not worth it. But a fault of conformation is not necessarily an unsoundness.’
Sledge was of the new stamp. Whereas Veterinary-Surgeon Selden, the Sixth’s sulphur-tinged veteran of the Peninsula, had turned to the fledgling science from a Guy’s Hospital dissecting room, David Sledge, a son of the manse, was a product of the new Veterinary College in Camden Town. Why he had eschewed a lucrative civil practice in England for the indignities of one in the service was unclear, for his prospects, even under a colonel like Lankester, could not have been greatly appealing. Although he was classed as a cornet for the first ten years of his service, he was on a par with that rank only for the purpose of allotting quarters. And it would be a full twenty years before he could be classed as a captain. For the time being, however, Mr Sledge was an active and diligent veterinarian, and had won an unusual degree of respect among both officers and the ranks alike.
The commanding officer turned to Hervey. ‘Am I to take it, then, that you would have these as first preference, subject to Sledge’s approval?’
‘Yes, Colonel. There seem to be a score or so of them. The rest I should have to search the lines for, but there look to be some promising types.’
The commanding officer now turned full round to Private Johnson. ‘And what is your opinion?’
Johnson did not hesitate for a moment. ‘Well, Colonel, it won’t be so far for t’recruits to fall, that’s for certain. But Cap’n ’Ervey says these things is right good doers, so I reckon we should be pleased.’
Johnson’s display of both independence and loyalty pleased captain and commanding officer alike. Hervey was especially heartened to hear a private man speak up so, and use ‘colonel’ to his commanding officer, as had long been the Sixth’s custom until the late unhappiness. ‘I fear there shall be some rib-bending in this, however,’ cautioned Lankester, smiling still. ‘You may yet be known as the pony troop, Hervey.’
‘Handsome is as handsome does, Colonel.’
‘You’re right, of course. But you may wait a deal of time before you have a chance to prove them handsome doers.’
Hervey knew it all too well. The review was closer at hand than they could possibly manage.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN. A GREAT TAMASHA
That fortnight was a time of back-breaking toil for both men and horses. Hervey’s troop got the last of their remounts, more Marwaris, only five days before the brigade review. They looked puny even before they stood next to those of the other troops, who could at least form a decent front with their English troopers. But if any dragoons in the other troops had taunted them, E Troop could not have heard, for they were roused a full hour before the rest of the regiment and turned in a full hour later. Yet even by such means — a working day of sixteen hours — the troop was scarcely able to advance in column of threes at more than a walk, and the leading rein, about which Armstrong and others had joked, looked more and more likely to be their deliverer. And the sick list had grown — no malingerers these, for the NCOs would only let them report sick if the farrier had first given his opinion. And only a week ago poor Smith, ‘the Boiler’ as all and sundry had called him, had fallen to a fever after evening stables and was dead by first parade next day.
‘They’re so small we could walk next to ’em and at three ’undred yards it’d look as if we were mounted!’ Johnson had opined early on.
Hervey had replied that it was not so bad an idea. ‘We are dragoons after all.’
The day of the review was on them, however, and finely run it was, for the gathering clouds spoke of the south-west monsoon which would before long engulf this last dry corner of India. On the cusp of what seemed bearable and what was not, the quality and the fashionable of Calcutta were driving out onto the plain north-west of the city to see the review of the 1st Bengal Cavalry Brigade. There could not have been a nabob or a potentate anywhere in the Bengal Presidency who would not be there, as well as many from the adjoining princely states. That, at any rate, was Lord Hastings’s intention.
And it seemed that the Governor-General had likewise deported from the city every piece of canvas. For a week and more, bullock carts and elephants had trudged back and forth to the review ground, by a different road so as not to rut the one to be used by the guests, with marquees and rugs and hangings, tables, cushions and chairs, and all manner of little comforts so that the princes and powers might see the wealth to which the Honourable Company had resource. And the Bengal Sappers had constructed a canvas pavilion where the guests might ease themselves, served by fresh running water the like of which no ryot could imagine, the whole bedecked with streamers and bunting so that it might have been the marching pavilion of the Great Moghul himself.
What choice food and wine was to be served, Hervey could only guess; but the whole regiment knew that since midnight the elephants had been porting yakhdans filled from the Fort William ice houses. The dragoons themselves at this minute would have pledged themselves to hefty stoppages of pay for the contents of those hay- boxes, for although their canteens were full, the water in them was warm. They would enjoy the same spectacle of the review as the nabobs, albeit from not so good a vantage point, but without shade or punkahs they could scarcely hope to enjoy it nearly so much.
Orders for the review itself had come at dusk two evenings before, and Sir Ivo had assembled his troop- leaders to discuss how best to expedite them — a sensible course, the captains agreed afterwards, and one which only a commanding officer secure in his own position would have contemplated. The scheme was straightforward enough. Compared with some of the field days they had known at Hounslow it was indeed easy, not to mention the real evolutions many of them had performed for the Duke of Wellington that memorable day five years ago. Save for one thing: the state of training of the remounts. For the first four troops it was not perhaps so great a problem since the dragoons themselves were seasoned, but Hervey faced a compound difficulty of greenhead dragoons and greenhead horses. More than once during the two weeks which had passed since that conversation with Sir Ivo he had found himself wondering why the colonel had not spread the new recruits of both species across the regiment. From a commanding officer’s point of view it was better, probably, to be sure of four troops than to be not so sure of five, but Hervey had felt the price of that surety very keenly as he realized that all E Troop might do was stand and watch.
The plan which emerged from the colonel’s colloquium was for the first four troops to form two squadrons as the
And so here, the day of the review, E Troop were mustered, thirty-eight strong, standing easy, sweat glistening on horses and men alike. The NCOs were chafing at being nursemaids when they might have been galloping with their fellows in the other troops, and Hervey was trying hard to conceal his own mixed feelings. The Sixth had worked into the silent hours on their equipment, so that it shone now in the bright sunlight, whether steel or leather. And none had worked harder than E Troop who, though they were to make themselves scarce at the earliest opportunity, knew nevertheless that eyes would be upon them from the moment they led out their horses in the regimental lines.
In troop columns of threes, the Sixth had marched onto the exercise ground behind the Bengal horse, so that when the brigade turned into line they should be on the right, as their seniority required, with the artillery to their right in turn. At any distance it was an imposing sight, speaking of order and discipline, and a disposition for
