An Act Of Courage

favoured. Laming’s Fin was a full hand higher, sleek and leggy, a beauty in a shabraque. Jessye’s dam was from the Welsh mountains, a pony. Jessye’s legs were shorter, with a good deal more bone. She looked perfectly made for a bat-horse, or a covert hack (as his fellow cornets taunted), a horse fit to ride to the meet so long as there was a decent hunter to change to for the chase itself. But the ponies of the Welsh mountains had an ancient and fiery lineage, back to the part-barbs of Andalusia; Jessye had both a turn of speed and endurance. She was honest, always; she was a good doer; she did not fret when turned out in foul weather; she had bottom. Hervey would not exchange her for a dozen Fins.

Cornet Laming affected to raise an eyebrow. ‘With pains or perils, for his courser called; Well-mouthed, well-managed, whom himself did dress; With daily care, and mounted with success; His aid in arms, his ornament in peace.’

Hervey frowned. ‘Laming, you are a very poor judge of horseflesh, if a considerable scholar. I would have you consider multum in parvo! Where is your wisdom from, anyway? I recall it, faintly.’

Cornet Laming continued in the studiously airy manner of the older hand (if only of a month). ‘Virgil. Or rather, Dryden.’

‘Ah yes,’ said Hervey, matter of fact, as he tightened Jessye’s girth-strap. ‘Not a very faithful translation, though. Or so said my tutor.’

‘But apt, and well sounding nevertheless.’

‘Indeed. But in the matter of horses, Laming, I can’t but think of the country we saw to Corunna, and I don’t suppose we shall have much better this time. I’ll wager the first Mameluke I take that your Fin will be cast before Jessye is.’

‘I am perfectly happy to accept. A thro-bred will outrun a cocktail when it comes to long points.’

Hervey smiled. ‘Then I will remind you again, Laming: handsome is as handsome does.’

The regiment stood in better stables than any in Portugal, being billeted in the royal mews at Belem. The ceilings were high, the stalls wide, the grilles and columns were painted white, with generous gilding. Hervey imagined that it gave Laming, and his fellow cornets, too ornamental a view of the requirements of a charger, and he shook his head in despair, if with some irony. Heaven knew they had had a hard enough lesson not three months earlier at Corunna.

Two of Hervey’s fellow cornets now came into A’s lines – from one of the new troops, H. They stood silent for the moment, and, Hervey fancied, with something of a superior air. He braced himself: if one of them so much as made remark about his mare, other than honest praise, he would chastise him roundly.

‘Wheell now,’ ventured one of them, a Galway squireen whose manners and pugnacity had endeared him to no one from the first day he reported for duty a month before. ‘We’re off to the city to see what the ladies there offer. Are ye inclined to come with us? We’ll be back in time for fothering.’

Laming answered for the cornets of A Troop, and coolly. ‘In the Sixth we say “evening stables”, Daly. And we have not time to be calling upon ladies in Lisbon; there’s drill to be about. We are not come back here for amusement.’

‘The divil with that, Laming! I’ll not give up my recreation for a damned Frenchman.’

‘Nor me,’ said the second H cornet, in an accent not unlike a Leadenhall street-vendor. ‘I’ll have my sport while there’s chance. That’s what we al’as say in Piccadilly!’

Hervey groaned, though inaudibly. He was about to second his fellow cornet’s opinion when Daly seemed suddenly to tire of the exchange.

‘Come then, Quilley m’lad. Let’s leave these professional officers to their own enjoyment. They’d be dull company for the senhoritas in any case.’

Hervey was a little inclined to make some riposte, but Laming merely gave them a look of such hearty disapproval that he thought it must rupture their communication permanently.

The two H cornets left without a word.

‘I cannot conceive of any exigency when men of that character might be thought worthy to join a regiment such as this,’ said Laming, having watched the two quit the lines in as brash a manner as they had spoken.

‘Nor any regiment indeed.’

Laming sighed. ‘True. I would not trust them with commissary work, even. Daly might have made a passing officer had he been introduced to any decent society ten years ago, but Quilley is an abomination. You know what was his business before he came to us? Billiard marker!’

Hervey looked incredulous. ‘What?’

‘Billiard marker – in White’s Club. His father is steward there, or some such. Seems he managed to be of assistance to a member of parliament over a matter of debts at the tables, and got his boy a commission in return.’

‘How have you learned this?’

‘Last night, at mess with the Coldstream. It’s infamous. We shall be the very laughing-stock of the army. I can’t think why Lord George tolerates it.’

‘I should be less inclined to call it infamy if Quilley showed the slightest address about his duties here.’

‘You may as well look skywards for a pig, Hervey.’

Hervey finished lengthening Jessye’s stirrups as his groom brought a pot and paintbrush. ‘Martyn said last night that their troop-leader will place them in arrest before the month is out.’

Laming shook his head. ‘The devil of a thing it must be for Warde to come in from the Tenth and find his two cornets as ill as those. Deuced embarrassment it is. I wonder what Lord Sussex had of it?’

‘A letter of nomination, I suppose; that’s all. It was the same for me: I saw no one. I can’t imagine the colonel has course to see every man before he accepts him.’

Indeed, so rapid had been the Sixth’s reconstitution, driven as it was by Lord George Irvine’s determination to have the regiment ready to return at once to Portugal, it was a wonder the regimental agents had been able to handle the commissions at all.

‘Perhaps so,’ said Laming, frowning the while. ‘Well, Warde will have his work cut out with those two in his troop, and I fear he’ll have little help from Daddy Joynson as squadron leader.’

Hervey raised an eyebrow, signifying agreement, if regretfully, then nodded to his groom.

Private Sykes began painting Jessye’s hooves with an oily paste.

Laming looked inquisitive. ‘What does he do there, Hervey?’

‘Marshmallow ointment. It will keep her feet from cracking.’

‘I did not know that. Singular!’ (Cornet Laming, though he might banter in judging a horse, was ever ready to give Hervey his due for an evident greater knowledge of equine husbandry.) ‘But why has John Knight not prescribed it?’

Hervey smiled. ‘He has. He instructed the quartermasters yesterday.’

‘Mm. You are as courant with your intelligence as I am, and perhaps more worthily.’ Laming continued to frown. ‘But no matter. Do I suppose you have heard anything of our movements?’

‘We march east these Saturday seven days.’

Laming cocked an ear. ‘Really? How on earth have you heard—’

‘A fellow with whom I was at school, on Sir Arthur Wellesley’s staff.’

‘Really?’

Hervey smiled, admitting the tease.

‘Mm. Well, I have heard that Wellesley will not set foot outside Lisbon until Beresford has whipped the Portuguese into shape. And how long do you suppose that will take?’

Lord George Irvine rose as his major and senior captain entered. ‘Gentlemen, take a dish of wine and sit ye down. We have a deal to speak of, and you shall not leave until I am content, and certain that you are too.’

The commanding officer’s quarters occupied the better part of a wing of the palace at Belem, although half of it was the domain of the regimental staff, the orderly room. Lord George’s servant, who had followed him to the Sixth from the Royals, served them glasses of Madeira and then took silent leave.

‘Well, gentlemen, I will make no bones about it: I have been pressing the regiment’s case with Stapleton Cotton, and I believe we shall have it. We may have green horses, and a deal too many green dragoons, but I believe the surest remedy is to plunge them into the thick of things without delay. I see no merit in drilling here