Hervey felt a moment’s unease at the intimacy of the endearment, though he had seen it on the page often enough (and, heaven knew right well, elsewhere too). Kat would expect him to drive this very evening to Holland Park, but that was out of the question. He must show himself at mess, and there was a field day tomorrow. And besides, was he not resolved on … regularizing his life?
He laid the letter aside and opened that from Peto, which he saw had been delivered in the day’s London post.
Hervey was much cheered by the revelation that his old friend was ashore and close at hand, and by the prospect of seeing him again so soon. He would reply first thing in the morning.
He picked up Lord George Irvine’s letter again. It could not, of course, contain the positive information that the command was his, but he was confident that no matter what the Horse Guards’ new regulations said, in practice all that was required was for the colonel of a regiment to make his wish known to the commander-in-chief, and the appointment was then but a formality. Yet he baulked at breaking the seal nevertheless. There was duty to attend to first – District Orders and the occurrence book; he could not simply pick the cherry from the cake. In any case, and despite all reason, he still felt uncertain. He laid down the letter once more and turned open the file of orders.
In ten minutes he learned that nothing had materially altered in the London District during his absence, and that nothing was likely to do so – no notice of reviews, general officer’s field days, levees nor the like. He looked at the copy of
Hervey smiled broadly. He knew Eyre Somervile to be worthy of any honour, but why so
He read on: a report on the royal assent to several Acts of Parliament – ‘An Act to amend and enlarge the powers and provisions of an Act, relating to the Heckbridge and Wentbridge Railway’; ‘An Act for providing a further maintenance for the Rector of the parish of St John, Horslydown, within the town and borough of Southwark, in the county of Surrey’; ‘An Act to enable the Birmingham Coal company to sue and be sued in the name of their Secretary, or one of the members of the said company’, various Acts for more effectually repairing and maintaining roads in the Midland counties and Lancashire, various Acts relating to financial instruments (he shook his head: these were tedious details to detain him); and finally ‘An Act for fixing, until the twenty-fifth day of March one thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight, the rates of subsistence to be paid to innkeepers and others on quartering soldiers’.
Hervey nodded at that. He considered himself more than a little fortunate to be in temporary command of a regiment quartered in barracks, for the vexations of billeting were many and unavoidable. Not least of these were the difficulties in maintaining a proper regime of feeding the troop horses, while in barracks the adjutant, the riding-master and the veterinary surgeon could cast their eyes over the entire regiment’s stables in a quarter of an hour, and as a consequence every man was a better horsemaster.
But that was all behind them. He laid down the orders and took up the adjutant’s occurrence book. He read it quickly, for it contained no more than the usual number of defaulters, routine comings and goings, receipts and issues, reports and returns. Then under the heading ‘Veterinary’ he saw ‘three horses from A Trp confined in isolation, symptoms of the farcy’.
This was something he would rather not have read. There was always a certain number of the regiment’s horses unfit for duty – lameness, sores and abrasions, thrush, a cough – albeit a smaller number, the Sixth flattered themselves, than in other regiments. But the farcy was a different business altogether, an ulcerous death, and spread like the plague.
But he was jumping to conclusions. After all, the entry read
He cursed. He had seen the farcy only once before, in a livery stables in Sussex when first the Sixth had paraded for the Peninsula. He had taken Jessye there, and two of his fellow cornets had taken their chargers too, to rest before embarkation. The symptoms in one of the post horses had gone unnoticed, and the infection had spread, so that the lairage was put in quarantine and Jessye missed Hervey’s first campaign – a thing he had always been grateful for since she would likely as not have perished with the others at Corunna. How she had not contracted the farcy there was beyond him – beyond any of the farriers even to explain. They had better pray hard that the symptoms here now were of something else. He would summon the veterinary surgeon at once.
As a rule evening stables parade was finished by watch setting, and timings being advanced by three hours perforce made no difference to the routine. The mounting of the quarter-guard, which even in barracks the regiment knew as the inlying picket, signalled the change from the day’s routine to the night’s, just as in the field the evening stand-to-horses signalled that change. It was not customary for the commanding officer to visit in the barracks during the ‘silent hours’, the regiment at this time being in the care of the picket officer, but the commanding officer could go when and where he liked, and Hervey was of the mind that these were circumstances that permitted a variation in custom.
The infirmary lines were no different from the troop lines except that they were built with loose boxes rather than standing stalls in order to allow the patient to lie down at full stretch. They were high-ceilinged, allowing a good circulation of air, they were weatherproof, clean, well drained, and they smelled of new straw and tar. These lines were as good as they came, reckoned Hervey, and they were set well apart from the others. Not a bad beginning for quarantine.
He was surprised to find the veterinary surgeon still at duty, however, when there was scarce a dragoon to be seen anywhere else. ‘Sam, I am sorry to see you here so late.’
The veterinarian was taking the temperature of one of the isolation mares. ‘Good evening, sir,’ he replied, without taking his eyes from the thermometer. ‘Up five degrees,’ he said matter-of-factly to the orderly, who duly recorded it in the book.
The Sixth’s form of address among officers was a touch unusual. All except the commanding officer, who was called ‘Colonel’ by the newest dragoon, were on familiar terms, the rank-prefix used only very formally. Hervey, a
