Company Of Spears

brevet major in acting command, could hardly be addressed as ‘Colonel’, but neither did it seem correct for the officers – the more junior ones at least – to answer to him familiarly. Instead of ‘Hervey’ he was therefore ‘sir’, the form used by the dragoons for any officer, and for a serjeant-major too, as well as for any NCO when there was an officer on parade. As for the veterinarian, whose rank was always anomalous, the Sixth had for many years had their own custom: the officers called him by his Christian name.

Veterinary-Surgeon Samuel Kirwan was a ‘respectable’ practitioner. Indeed the Sixth had been lucky for twenty years in this regard, having been spared rough ‘cattle doctors’ little better educated than the farriers, getting instead men of learning from the new veterinary schools. Sam Kirwan had come to the regiment on its return from India, six months before. His father, a naval surgeon, had died after the Nile, his mother not long after that, and the orphan Kirwan had lived five years in the Yarmouth workhouse before a distant relative had claimed him. He had worked his way through the London Veterinary College and joined the artillery as assistant veterinary surgeon, until the vacancy with the Sixth gave him his own regimental practice. He was a little older than Hervey, but wholly inexperienced in campaigning, unlike the Sixth’s past veterinarians. He appeared not to have the instinct of a Frederick Selden, who had seen them so sour-tongued through the latter part of the Peninsula and Waterloo, nor the hands of a David Sledge, who had lately endured with them in India; but there was something in him of the science of John Knight, the man who had elevated veterinary surgery in the regiment to a position of indispensability (though – a great mercy in Hervey’s opinion – Sam Kirwan did not have John Knight’s dyspeptic nature).

He gave the thermometer to the orderly, entered the mare’s temperature in his own notebook, and turned to the acting commanding officer. ‘Not at all encouraging.’

‘How certain are you it’s farcy, Sam?’

The veterinarian took off his spectacles as he turned. ‘That would not be my diagnosis.’

‘Indeed? It is entered in the adjutant’s book.’

Sam Kirwan smiled thinly and shook his head. ‘I reported only the symptoms. The farriers are quick to their conclusions.’

Hervey was encouraged. ‘Then the symptoms…?’

‘The inflammation is as described in the farcy, but there is also, in two of the cases, inflammation of the pituitary membrane which lines the partition along the inside of the nose. It is discernible only by digital examination.’

Hervey approached the mare, took off a glove and, holding her muzzle down with his left hand, probed gently with his second finger. ‘I don’t know that I can discern anything, Sam.’

‘Unless you are in the habit of such an examination, sir, it is unlikely to reveal itself. I would that you washed your hands now in that vinegar-water yonder; the disease – if it is farcy – is very contagious.’

Hervey did as he was told. ‘Shall you put a name to it?’

Sam Kirwan sighed. ‘I could, but it would be better instead to refer only to the symptoms, for this virus, if it is the type I have seen before, works in a mazey way. If I tell you it is glanders you will be alarmed.’

Hervey’s jaw dropped. ‘Good God. If we so much as suspect it then we ought to shoot every one of them!’

‘I said you would be alarmed. No, I do not recommend that we shoot them, not now that they are in here. I’ve had sulphur pots placed between the lines. I’ve ordered them lit at dusk. They’ll scrub the air well enough.’

Hervey shivered. An outbreak of glanders or farcy: besides the depredations on the order of battle (and the inconvenience and expense that would arise) there was the ignominy, the yellow flag flying at the barracks gate, the line in District Orders and all. It was not the thing of which a successful tenure of command was made.

‘If there is the slightest risk of contagion then I am of a mind to shoot them forthwith.’

But Sam Kirwan shook his head. ‘It would not be scientific to say that there is not the slightest risk, but I would not think it probable. I have observed that in such cases the virus takes a hold in the air even before the sick animal is removed, or even in the blood, yet does not show itself for several days. I very much fear that if it is glanders then A Troop’s horses will be already infected. The important thing will be to keep them from the others. But I am unconvinced that it is glanders, only less so than that it is the farcy.’

‘The two are horribly of a piece. Have you spoken to the adjutant so?’

‘I have. He has given orders, I understand, for exercise at different times.’

They looked at the other occupants of the infirmary in turn, and then parted respectfully, though Hervey left the lines by no means certain they were following the right course. Destroying three troop horses which might perfectly well recover, which might indeed have nothing worse than a cold, was not something to be ordered lightly; but the well-being of four hundred more was his principal responsibility. What was certain was that his reputation would never recover if his troopers did not. He would consider it carefully and speak with the veterinarian again in the morning.

By the time he reached his quarters in the officers’ house, the picket had alerted Private Johnson, and a good fire was taking hold in the hearth in his sitting room.

‘Ah thought tha were comin back afore now, sir. Ah didn’t know what to do.’

Perhaps it was the separation – Hervey was not usually without his groom for more than a day or so – but the vowels of Johnson’s native county sounded particularly alien. It was curious: Johnson had left those parts twenty years ago and more, had never returned save once, and very briefly, and heard them only in the speech of Corporal Stray and a few others, yet they had not moderated in the slightest. Indeed, Hervey was quite convinced that they had become more pro-nounced of late, as if Johnson took some sort of perverse refuge in them.

‘I was caught by the fever again, I’m afraid. Nor was I sure you would be still here.’

Johnson’s brow furrowed. ‘What’s tha mean, sir?’

‘The Bow-street men.’

Johnson muttered indistinctly and began poking the fire.

‘Well?’

He stood up, though his shoulders remained hunched. ‘T’serjeant-major says ah’ve got to go there in t’mornin, to Bow-street, ah mean.’

‘What for?’

‘Don’t know, sir.’

‘What do you mean you “don’t know”? They must have given a reason.’

‘Ah’ve got to see t’magistrate.’

‘What for?’

‘Don’t know.’

Hervey sighed. Long experience told him that when Johnson was in such a mood it was better to drop the subject. He would speak with the sarn’t-major in the morning. Even before the veterinarian.

‘Will tha be eating in t’mess, sir?’

‘I think, very probably, yes.’ But he had not yet read Lord George’s letter; and there was Peto’s to reply to … and Kat’s. ‘There again … I’ve work to do, and it was a hard drive. Come back at five with tea, would you? I’ll decide then.’

It was ten minutes before Johnson was satisfied that the fire had taken a good hold and the lamps were properly trimmed. He opened a bottle of claret, decanted it, poured a glass and set it down on the wine table beside the fire. He cleared a space on the writing table, muttered something about hot water, made to leave, and then remembered something. ‘Oh, ah’m sorry, sir. This express came for thee about an ’our ago.’

Hervey stifled a curse. But he was easier when he saw the hand: Somervile’s – most welcome. He nodded. ‘You might fetch me cake, or some such?’

When Johnson was gone, Hervey sat in the leather armchair by the fire, took a long draught of the claret, and broke the express’s seal.

Bedford-square