'And have your troop look for any wounded, if you please.’
'Sir.’ It went without saying that the reserve troop picked up the wounded. It would be a dangerous affair, though. A moon would be a kindness to both sides. He would send for lanterns. 'Mr Perry,’ he called, as he tried to make his way through the confusion of men and horses at the rear.
Eventually he found him. 'All accounted for, Hervey, save Green.’
'Green?’ Hervey sounded as worried as he was astonished.
'And his groom.’
'How? Where was he?’
'I don't think he was ever with us. I don't think he mustered. No one has seen him.’ 'Good God! Where's his coverman?’ 'In his place.’
'Well, he’d better go back and bring him. And he can fetch some lanterns. We're to search the field.'
'Very well, sir.'
Hervey shook his head angrily, but swallowed hard. 'That was smart work bringing up the troop as you did. The major is well pleased.'
'Thank you, sir.'
But one man's address did not make up for the lack of it in another. Hervey continued to seethe at Green's absence as they set about searching for any who had fallen from the saddle.
At first light E Troop stood to their horses in the rear of the other four troops, fifty yards short of the Sixteenth's firing line - the line they had held since their own stand-to-arms in the middle of the night. Their search had rendered up one dragoon killed - by a ball in the back of the neck, which had very probably come from a fellow dragoon's pistol in the black confusion of the fight - and three others with sword or spear wounds, none of them too likely to be fatal. They found eight Jhauts dead or dying, but any who had been less severely injured seemed one way or another to have crawled to further cover. There were a good many dragoons riding-wounded, patched up where they stood by the surgeon's assistants, Sledge himself having beat about the ground with Hervey. Of one man, or rather two, there was no sign, however. Cornet Green was nowhere to be found. Hervey was now almost beside himself with anger. Never had an officer of the Sixth absented himself so. The word, indeed, was desertion. And in the face of the enemy.
When the light of day let them see to the range of the telescope, Joynson stood-down the regiment and issued orders to return to camp. Hervey told him of Green.
'His groom as well? That is most strange,' said the major, bruised by the day's cannonade and weary from the night's exertions - and yet disinclined to see the worst in the report.
'I can't see what else to make of it,' said Hervey sharply. 'The man's unfit to command a picket, even.'
But when they returned to camp Hervey was obliged to consider making something else of it, for into the lines soon afterwards rode Green and his groom, both of them in field order. Propriety required that he held his anger in check; reproving an officer in front of the ranks did no one credit as a rule. But the tone perfectly conveyed his state of mind. 'Well, Mr Green?'
'Sir, I am afraid I became lost.'
Hervey's mouth fell open. 'Lost? Lost, Mr Green?'
'I regret so, sir.'
Dragoons were trying their best to watch without being caught too obviously doing so.
'Mr Green, you had better attend at once on the adjutant.'
'Sir, if I might explain—'
Lieutenant Perry cut him short. cYou may explain first to me, Mr Green,’ he said, glancing at Hervey and hoping for his leave. 'Report at once to my tent.’
Green saluted.
'And do not ride your charger through the lines, sir!’
Green dismounted sheepishly.
Hervey looked at Perry and nodded. It was the right thing to do. There might conceivably be an explanation that rendered his offence a lesser one than a regimental court martial would dispose of - though he could not imagine it.
'Private Needham, a word with you,’ said the serjeant-major to the cornet's groom. Armstrong's Tyneside conveyed an unnerving degree of affability, which fooled no one within its hearing.
Hervey concluded that his best course was to repair to his own tent to shave.
Half an hour later, as he drank one of Johnson's fortified brews from regimental china, Perry and Armstrong came to his tent. They had first compared accounts of the night's wanderings and found them in essentials to be the same. 'Green admits to failing to rise at once to the alarm,’ said Perry. 'He went back to sleep until Needham rousted him out, and then he had to prime his pistols.’
'Why were they not primed at evening stand-to?’ said Hervey.
'Because he's an indolent officer,' said Perry decidedly. 'But he appears at least to tell the truth.'
'That, or he's very calculating in his confidences.'
Perry sighed. It wasn't the sort of remark that one officer should make of another, but Green had exhausted everyone's patience an age ago. 'By the time he was ready, it seems the regiment had moved off.'
'And he spent the whole night trying in vain to find us?' The incredulity in Hervey's voice was marked.
'He said he thought we would have ridden in the direction opposite to that from which the fire was coming, on account of wanting to fall back on the guns.'
Hervey paused to consider the notion. 'Astonishing. Why might he believe that?'
'Hervey, he is, as I said, an indolent and ineffectual officer. While you or I or any other would have ridden towards the sound of the firing, he it seems works with a different instinct. But it would be difficult to say that that instinct was any more than feeble. There is nothing to prove that he was . . . well, running away.'
Hervey thought for a while again. 'Sar'nt-Major?'
Armstrong inclined his head ever so slightly and raised an eyebrow. 'It's not for me, sir, to make comment on an officer's capability. All I can say is Needham's not a bad man. He says he kept saying to Mr Green that it seemed strange they were finding no sign of us, and saying they ought to make for the firing, but Mr Green was certain of himself. And then he says Mr Green seemed to lose his notion of where they were, so they stopped for an hour or two, and it was only at dawn that Mr Green could see which direction was camp.'
Hervey sighed. An entirely plausible story. And yet he was not inclined to believe it. He didn't doubt Needham. Nothing that he knew of him suggested he would run from a fight. The opposite, perhaps. And Corporal Wainwright messed with him regularly; that was surely recommendation as to character. CI just can't see how an officer could think in the way Green did!'
Green was no boon companion of Perry's, but the lieutenant was scrupulously fair. 'If every officer's instinct were the same, sir, there would be no occasion for surprise.'
'That might be so, but I can't believe it exculpates Green. There must be something wrong with the logic, but I haven't the time to look for it,' replied Hervey, his irritation increasing.
Armstrong could see no other conclusion either. 'Sir, with respect, if Mr Green had been a corporal we couldn't bring any charge as would stick - save failing to turn out for 'alarm'.'
Hervey shook his head. 'But he's not a corporal, Sar'nt-Major.'
'No, sir, of course he's not,' replied Armstrong, looking sideways at Perry. 'But the same evidence would apply if charges were brought. That's all I'm saying.'
Hervey was silent a while. Then he got up. 'Mr Green had better pay a good sum to the widows' fund, then. And you had better put him on his guard, Arthur. I do truly believe we have a wrong 'un here; and I say thus saving your presence, Sar'nt-Major.'
Armstrong said nothing. It was a confidence he would rather never have heard, but they had been together too long for Hervey to withhold even so infamous an opinion.
Hervey looked at him sternly. Armstrong was worth a hundred Greens. No, more than that, for a worthless thing did not gain in worth by mere increase in numbers. Come what may, Armstrong and his like would never have their just desserts; no more than would Green. Hervey put down the teacup. What a powerful thing was this drink: it brought the nation to fight in Hindoostan and it paid for Green to play the gentleman. Yet Armstrong's pension, if
