Rumours Of War

dressing.

‘Perhaps,’ replied Strickland, who had also been turning over the implications. ‘But I thought you placed great store by the new one?’

The regiment’s colonel, Lieutenant-General the Earl of Sussex, had died that summer, before the Sixth’s return from India. His successor in this proprietorial but increasingly honorary function, Lieutenant-General Lord George Irvine, had been gazetted two months later, but his duties had so far detained him in Ireland, and his first levee as colonel would not be until the New Year.

‘I do most certainly. I think Lord George will be an attentive colonel, but Eustace doesn’t know him. He’d gone home from Spain before Lord George came to us.’

‘Well, we must hope he is attentive enough to who is to command next.’

It was the single most important function the regiment’s colonel fulfilled, for it was he who had to approve the appointment of a lieutenant-colonel to the executive command, no matter how much a man was prepared to pay for it.

Hervey put down his glass in a manner that suggested resolution of something troubling. ‘Strickland, have you thought what might occur if Eustace, or whoever succeeds him, were to die in command?’

Strickland looked puzzled. ‘Graveney is senior major.’

‘Ay, and he is soon to go on half pay, and might anyway refuse it.’

‘Unlikely that he’d sniff at such a windfall.’

‘May be. He has his other interests, though. But suppose he did. Then what?’

‘You mean that I should advance to lieutenant-colonel?’

‘Just so.’

‘Ah, but – the Test Act.’

‘Indeed.’

During the wars with France, the Test Act had been all but formally set aside as far as the army was concerned, but of late, with trouble in Ireland once more, the whole question of Catholics holding Crown office had become of moment again. The Stricklands had not taken any oath but temporal loyalty to the King in three hundred years, and Major Benedict Strickland was not going to be the one to dishonour their recusancy now, even for the prize of commanding the 6th Light Dragoons (supposing that he could find the means).

‘This cursed man O’Connell and his agitating; he makes mischief for us all.’

‘Well, that aside, how do you regard your prospects?’

There were no other officers at mess, yet. Strickland smiled. ‘Are you asking me to sell you my majority, Hervey?’

‘No. And you would hardly expect me to be so lacking in art if I had intended it. I was merely pondering our inauspicious prospects.’

Strickland now pulled a face. ‘Hervey, I can scarce credit it. We have been these last seven years in India, beyond what many would consider decent society; we are fresh returned, close to London, and with few duties to detain us. Can that really be so disagreeable? I should have thought you of all people would have welcomed such a respite!’

To some extent it was true. Hervey had been introduced into some engaging society these past months in London by Lady Katherine Greville, or his old friend Lord John Howard. And respite he perhaps deserved, for he had had a ball in the shoulder at Rangoon, and had cheated death several times at Bhurtpore. He had a daughter, too, of rising nine years, with whom he must re-acquaint himself. But he was not inclined to concede his principal point. ‘My dear Strickland, I am thirty-five years old. I am captain in His Majesty’s Sixth Light Dragoons, with brevet rank of major, which carries with it neither pay nor regimental seniority. I meet men in London ten years my junior who are lieutenant-colonels. You will allow that I am not inclined to enjoy the pleasures of the station for too long.’

Strickland drained his glass. Other officers were now coming into the ante-room, and he must draw their conversation to a close – for the time being at least. ‘Hervey, I cannot figure your devices. You are offered a half- colonel’s brevet in Calcutta, and with a man whose opinion of you was so high that further promotion was sure to follow. Yet you turn it down, almost on a whim, and now you bemoan your situation. Do you in truth know what you want? And if you do, is there not a little price in pride worth paying?’

For all the uncertainty that Joynson’s news portended, lunch was an agreeable business, an hour of companionable table. It was the custom following the weekly exercise on the heath to have curries and rice – as a rule, beef, lamb, chicken and, occasionally, as this week, fish – with cold grouse for those whose taste for spices had been sated in India or who had not had opportunity to acquire one.

Hervey himself was taking especial care of his diet, for he was to dine in London that evening and his appetite was still diminished by the remittent fever which had plagued him twice since the regiment had left Calcutta seven months ago. The fevers did no more than lay him low for a day or so, as might a bad winter’s cold, but for weeks afterwards he found his digestion impaired and his capacity for wine reduced.

Talk at table was, indeed, of little but Eustace Joynson’s announcement, in particular of who his successor might be. The names were legion. In theory it might be any major with one year’s seniority on the active list, just as long as they could raise the money and meet with Lord George Irvine’s approval – which meant, of course, to be in possession of such further means as to be able to maintain the regiment’s standing in the eyes of society and the rest of the army. Hervey suggested too that the Duke of Wellington’s opinion might soon have to be taken account of. The Duke of York had exercised little interest these past years, but the duke when he became commander-in- chief (as everyone knew he would before too long) might have strong objections to those he considered lacking in aptness. Except, he had to agree, the duke had long appeared to have an unaccountable facility to suffer certain fools, especially if they had a title. ‘Black Jack’ Slade had not been so much as a baronet during the Peninsular campaign, Strickland reminded him, and he was as useless an officer as ever they had seen; yet the duke had let him remain in command of the hussar brigade even as he stumbled (and considerably less than bravely) from one mishap to another. How would Slade have done at Rangoon and Bhurtpore, Strickland asked. Hervey knew the answer: he would have botched things, even if he had been at the head of a troop only. But Slade was now lieutenant-general, by all accounts. Where was the justice? Where was the sense? The whole table agreed, new and old alike; they all knew Slade one way or another.

After coffee, Hervey settled into one of the comfortable leather tubs by the window in the ante-room. ‘Yes, Strickland, I know full well what I want.’ He declined the cigar his friend was offering. ‘And you suppose that I turned down Combermere’s patronage solely because he retains half the prize money from Bhurtpore for himself.’

Strickland held his peace. Lord Combermere had outraged the army of India – there was no other word for it – when he had defied custom and kept his share rather than give it to the lower ranks and the widows.

‘That is true,’ said Hervey, gazing out of the window. ‘Though I cannot wholly claim it is on but a point of honour that I did so. What do you suppose might be Combermere’s standing in popular eyes? Well I for one do not intend to be cast out bag and baggage when Combermere’s star proves to be of the shooting variety.’

‘A little ere the mighty Julius fell?’ Strickland smiled wryly and blew smoke towards the ceiling.

Hervey turned back to look at him directly. ‘Just so.’

‘My dear friend, when it comes to the time for me to sell out there would be no happier man than I, should you be the one to buy my majority. Meanwhile, I at least intend taking my ease – in decent measure, of course. And I hope that others will do likewise, for they have earned it. And when the trumpet bids us to do battle in the name of the King, be that sooner or later, I trust that we shall do our duty again just as keenly as we have always done.’

Hervey smiled. He had no wish to gainsay anything of his old friend. Strickland had exchanged into the Sixth from the Tenth just before Waterloo, and had at once become as the others, remaining faithful throughout the miserable tenure of Lord Towcester’s command, and the dusty, tedious years in Bengal. No, Hervey would pick no fight with him. ‘We are not so very distant in our opinion. It is only that I fear I cannot wait for the trumpet.’

‘And therefore?’

Hervey took a sip of his Madeira, as if about to impart something confidential. ‘Greece. That is where we shall be tried next. The Duke of Wellington’s mission to Russia – there has been some compact, of which we perforce know little, and without doubt it will mean an offensive against the Turk. I have heard that Lord Hill has been