Somervile had been taken aback. 'But Lord Amherst, the ultimatum has been given. We cannot withdraw now. The Company would suffer an irreparable humiliation. Every native power the length of India would look at once to take his opportunity. I-'
'Impossible, I say! I cannot be mired in by Ochterlony's intemperate declarations. The only alternative is to let him try with his ten thousand.'
'But Hervey's view is that victory cannot be guaranteed thereby. There must be reinforcements to carry the day if audacity fails!' 'Hervey? Hervey? Who is he?'
Somervile had at once regretted his lapse. 'The captain of Sir David's escort, Lord Amherst. He-'
'Captain of the escort! Great heavens, man, have you lost your senses? No, no, it will not serve. Sir David's offensive would be a gamble on his reputation for success. Yes, that is the way it shall be done. I shall send word at once for Ochterlony to withdraw. Indeed, I shall issue immediate orders for the recall of Sir David Ochterlony to an appointment of greater prominence here!'
Somervile had felt obliged to concede defeat. 'Very good, Lord Amherst. But with respect I must give my opinion that none shall see such a recall as anything but the most peremptory reprimand for the resident. Including Sir David himself.' Colonel Anburey, the engineer, now looked pained at the thought of the heavy pounding that lay ahead, though the same thought seemed to please Colonel Macleod, the gunner. 'You give your opinion very decidedly, sir,' said the former.
'I endeavour always to speak as I find, Colonel,' replied Hervey, with absolute certainty.
'Well, so be it, gentlemen,' said Lord Comber-mere briskly. 'I shall, of course, make my own reconnaissance, but for the time being I intend proceeding upon Captain Hervey's admirable appreciation. The question then turns on when is launched the – as Hervey has it – coup de main. I am prepared to order affairs a great deal in favour of its success. However, there is no profit in seizing these dams if they are only to be recaptured before I am able to send a reinforcement. Quite the opposite, indeed, for the enemy would be at once alerted to our intention and would instantly open the sluice-gates. And yet, if I delay too long we shall anyway have full moats to cross instead of dry ditches.'
The colonels of engineers and artillery looked somehow relieved that their own decisions turned only on what was technically feasible rather than fine judgements of this order.
It was left to Hervey to speak to the commander-in-chief's dilemma. 'I have been considering this, General. The flooding of all the moats would be a great inconvenience to the population. Durjan Sal would not order the dams open until it were strict necessity. We must therefore be circumspect in our concentration. I believe that your lordship would wish to assemble his forces at Agra – and I truly cannot conceive of a better place – but any advance west of there would unquestionably signal to the Jhauts our intention to invest the city, for it is a march of but a few days, and if my own intelligence of the time it would take to inundate the defences is correct, the enemy would be obliged to cut open the bund at once.' Lord Combermere nodded.
'I fancy that two squadrons of light cavalry with galloper guns might dash from Agra to Bhurtpore in a night, before the garrison were properly alerted. They could seize the bund before dawn, until our engineers came up, and would have the advantage of daylight to beat off the immediate sallies.'
Lord Combermere at once saw the sequence perfectly. 'And the relief to attend on them by dusk.'
'It would be hazardous if they were not to be reinforced by then, General. If the enemy did not overwhelm them in the darkness, they would surely mass during the night and do so at first light.'
'Very well,' said Lord Combermere, nodding slowly, as if turning over the facts one more time.
Hervey judged that his services were now done with. He picked up his shako and began making to leave.
'Thank you, Captain Hervey,' said Lord Combermere, looking up. 'Your information has been most valuable. You shall have the honour of leading those two squadrons. And you had better have the rank for the affair, too, once we take to the field.'
Hervey left the commander-in-chief's office with the promise of a local majority. It would give him the authority he needed for his limited command, but in terms of seniority it meant even less than a brevet. He wondered when that recognition might come his way again, if ever. He wondered even more when the next regimental vacancy might occur, though he could not begin to contemplate how he might find the means to buy it. Advancement in times of peace and retrenchment was a snail's gallop – they all knew that – so he had better make the most of his temporary command. He would go at once to the adjutant-general's office to discover for himself the exact order of battle for this, Lord Combermere's first sovereign campaign.
There, he was at once astonished by the scale of the undertaking. The body of cavalry was the largest, it was certain, since Waterloo: a division of two brigades, each comprising a King's regiment, three of the Company's and two troops of horse artillery, the whole under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Sleigh of the 11th Light Dragoons in the rank of brigadier-general. Hervey was content enough with that; Sleigh he knew from Peninsula days, and considered him a good man. But it was the Devil's own luck that Sir Ivo Lankester should have prolonged his furlough, for his seniority would have given him a brigade. And the only reason Sir Ivo had prolonged his stay in England was to coax His Majesty into appointing a royal colonel-in-chief to the Sixth. An expensive adornment that would be, mused Hervey, if it cost Sir Ivo the opportunity of the sabre's edge at the head of his regiment.
And the two divisions of infantry were strong ones, too, each of three brigades, with two King's regiments – the 14th and '9th Foot – and the Company's 1st Bengal European Regiment. There were a good many troops of foot artillery, as well as the experimental brigade with their rockets, and strong detachments of the Bengal Sappers and Miners. The strength returns were not yet received in full, said the officiating adjutant-general, but his estimate was that the army would take to the field in excess of twenty thousand combatants.
Hervey scanned the order of battle keenly. The last regiment he came to gave him especial satisfaction, and did as much to assure him of victory as any other. Two rissalahs of Skinner's Irregular Horse would accompany the army, unbrigaded. He resolved at once to enlist them in his independent command. In the afternoon he sent Corporal Wainwright with a dozen sicca rupees to buy provisions for the budgerow which would – he hoped – soon be taking them back up the Ganges. 'Calcutta will be no place to be these next weeks,' he said, smiling wryly. 'Not for sabres, that's for sure. You haven't seen an army assembling for the field, Corporal Wainwright. It's a grand affair of adjutants and quartermasters and serjeant-majors. Parades, lists, inspections – no end of a business!'
Corporal Wainwright hid his partial disappointment. The oldest sweat in his barrack-room had told him many things when he had first joined, not least that a dragoon should never volunteer for anything. Yet Jobie Wainwright would have liked to see the serjeant-majors and the adjutants and the quartermasters about their business, for he himself wanted one day to fill their boots, and how was he to learn if he did not see? But he was his troop-leader's coverman – Major Hervey's coverman, indeed, though he did not yet know it -and he went only where he might parry the cut or the thrust directed at his officer. That next meant to Dehli, or perhaps straight to Agra.
But his officer had a prior duty, one that could not possibly be spoken of between them. When Wainwright left for the bazaar, Hervey went to the Chitpore road. The whole of native Calcutta, from nabob to bhisti, knew now that the army of Bengal was mobilizing. And every bibi knew likewise. They also knew that the army's object was what Lord Lake had failed to accomplish, and what had been the shaming cause of Sir David Ochterlony's death. Would John Company rise in triumph this time to the old taunt 'Go take Bhurtpore'? It was the talk of the princely palaces and the havelis of the Chitpore road, debated in the more modest dwellings of the Brahmins and around the bazaars. And in the bibi khanas; especially in the bibi khanas, for they knew all about Bhurtpore – 'the Pride of Hindoostan'. Was the fortress not impregnable? Did not the Futtah Bourge, the tower of skulls, stand as reminder to all who would forget it? No, it was impossible that a man should leave for Bhurtpore without visiting his bibi to bid her a proper goodbye, and to receive the soldier's farewell in return, and to assure her of the arrangements he had made for her well-being should he not come back.
Hervey now spoke the words that a bibi needed to hear, but they could never be enough. She loved him. She thought him the world itself. She also understood that in the army's hands lay the Company's honour and prestige, and it made her doubly fearful, for she knew what honour meant to her sahib, and the price he would be ready to pay if it were necessary. She would not say so -it would only distress him – but if his body were brought back to Calcutta she would throw herself into the flames of his funeral pyre in the duty of suttee. Except that for her it would not be a duty, rather an end to interminable grief.
She pleaded with her sahib to let her go with him to Bhurtpore; even to walk among the dhoolie-bearers and syces if she could not be with him. But tempted sorely as Hervey was, his soldier's duty stood all too clear: she was not welcome in the cantonment, and she could not be welcome on the campaign.
But leaving her was harder than he had supposed. He did not for one moment imagine he would not return (she
