would have taken the advice without question, but it seemed to him risky beyond reason. ‘It will profit us nothing to know the cause if we lose a troop’s worth of horses.’
‘I am of the opinion that the virus will be already abroad in the troop. As long as any sick horse’s confined to the infirmary then I’m sure there can be no serious chance of the contagion’s spreading. If I can observe what is its true nature then I might treat any others that fall sick.’
The veterinarian’s proposition was logical. The alternative, as he said, was to shoot every animal when it showed the first sign of sickness, no matter what; and if it were a virulent but curable malady then the cost could be great – as well as needless. It all depended on how strict might be the quarantine. But in any case, if the virus was abroad in one troop, could it be contained there as well as in the hospital lines? Hervey shook his head, though not in dissent as much as dismay at the unhappy alternatives before him.
‘Very well. But we had better make a quarantine of A Troop’s lines as well.’ He looked his veterinary officer straight in the eye. ‘I have to turn this over to you, Sam. I have other business, and I tell you frankly, I cannot afford to misjudge it.’
VIII
GUNPOWDER, TREASON AND PLOT
At one o’clock, Third Squadron paraded under the command of Captain Christopher Worsley, F Troop leader. Hervey watched from the edge of the square with the RSM, Major Dalrymple and Nasmyth, the Home Secretary’s man. Behind stood the commanding officer’s trumpeter, Corporal Parry, the best of the trumpet-major’s men, with next to him Private Johnson and the ‘redbreast’, a lantern-jawed man in the black top-hat, tail-coat and breeches, and bright red waistcoat, of the Bow Street Horse Patrol. Johnson was intent on keeping his distance, although the patrolman, formerly serjeant in the 15th Hussars, was disposed to be friendly.
Hervey decided not to address the parade. Although as aid to the civil powers went this commission was a shade unusual, the men were practised enough. He knew that the troop leaders had spoken to them on the necessity of at first trying the flat of the sword (‘Peterloo’ was ever in the forefront of an officer’s mind when sent to do the magistrates’ bidding), and the dragoons looked eager and capable. He saw no occasion for eloquence therefore. But the parade was his, and he rode forward to take the command.
‘Third Squadron – five officers and eighty-eight other ranks – present in marching order, sir!’
Captain Christopher Worsley was a soft-spoken officer, not given to display, rather dull some said. He had joined the Sixth after Waterloo, gone with the regiment to India, but had come back after three years on account of a recurrent dysentery which defied every medical authority in Bengal. After extensive cures in Germany, he had returned to the Active List, bought F (Depot) Troop just before Bhurtpore, and brought them from Maidstone to Hounslow when the Sixth had returned in the autumn. Hervey had never got to know him well, for Worsley had been a bookish subaltern in D Troop, while he himself had spent a good deal of time on detached duty with E. But, dullness apart, Worsley was held in general respect among his fellows, and he possessed the very marked advantage of having a young and most active serjeant-major. Troop Serjeant-major Collins had been born the same year as Hervey, although there was a discrepancy of two years in the age on his attestation papers and that in the baptismal rolls of the parish in which his father, a miller, was churchwarden. Collins had, without his father’s leave, enlisted in the Sixth the year before the French had invaded Portugal. He had given his age as eighteen rather than sixteen, and his first name as John rather than Angel, an early sign of his prudential judgement Hervey considered. Hervey was indeed the one man in the regiment who knew of these delinquencies, for he had once visited the Gloucestershire mill on his way to Ireland the year before Waterloo, where he had found a proud father and a good woman, his wife, long since reconciled to their only son’s chosen way, happy that they received (as they always had) regular letters and assurances of his well-being. Hervey had told them – as far as he could without making it appear that their son had been exposed to excessive danger – of young Corporal Collins’s courage and skill, and that he was certain to come home one day with a serjeant-major’s stripes. That had been all of thirteen years ago. It had perhaps taken longer to get the fourth stripe than Hervey had then imagined, for the reductions in the cavalry after Waterloo had been savage, but Alderman Collins had at last been able to see his son with four chevrons on his sleeve. In a week or so he would give a party in the great tithe barn at Ampney to celebrate the promotion, and the engagement to marry, both of which Alderman and Mrs Collins had long hoped for. Hervey fully intended being there.
He looked long at him, now. Serjeant-major Collins was every inch what a colonel in a fashionable regiment would want. He possessed that invaluable cavalry quality ‘a good leg for a boot’. So did Mr Hairsine. Armstrong did not. Armstrong’s leather and brass may have gleamed more, but Collins’s was a frame made for a tailor. In fighting quality there was nothing to choose between them. In experience Armstrong had the better of his junior by a couple of years, in age by half a dozen. Hervey began to wonder if the old principle of promotion – seniority tempered by rejection – would indeed serve the battle-scarred Geordie Armstrong, or whether it would now favour instead the immaculate Angel Collins. He knew that with luck (and justice), the decision would be his, but it would not be easy, although seniority favoured Armstrong, and there could never be rejection of that record of service.
‘Leave to carry on, sir?’ Worsley sounded uncertain.
Hervey realized he had kept him long. ‘Carry on.’
A march was a good time to think, to mull things over, especially if there was a reliable guide and no chance of ambush. Hervey was grateful of it. ‘What path of glory’s to be had in Hounslow?’ Somervile had asked; yet here they were now, bent on saving parliament or the King himself from popish plotters and their gunpowder. Hervey could not wholly rejoice in the mission, however, certain as he was that no
They marched by way of Ealing, Brent and Enfield. As standing orders required, although the distance to Waltham Abbey was only half the daily march rate, they took the first ten miles slowly, with horses led in-hand the first half hour, and then, mounted, at a steady trot. Hervey had seen no reason to vary this, although the appearance of dismounted dragoons was of some curiosity to the population of Hounslow. After ten miles, nearing Brent, they halted on the common for the prescribed fifteen minutes, and gave each horse a handful of water to wash the mouth, and a wisp of hay. The dragoons themselves were allowed water but no pipe. The next six miles were done at a fast trot, and after forty-five minutes on short reins the regiment halted in the outskirts of Enfield. Here they rested for half an hour, the horses off-saddled and rubbed down, given a peck of corn and some water, and the dragoons allowed tobacco. It was nearing five o’clock as they set off for the final ten-mile stretch, the first fifteen minutes horses led in-hand again, and then a brisk trot as before. In an hour and a half, as the sun began closing to the horizon, they rode into a big field of spring pasture at the Four Swans in Waltham Cross, the furthest point of the Bow Street man’s daily highway patrol, and there they dismounted.
While the RSM went with the ‘redbreast’ to negotiate with the landlord for the green fodder, and beer for the dragoons, Hervey took off his shako, put on a plain lowbrow hat and a plain green cloak, and unfastened the throat plume so as to make the bridle less military-looking. ‘I want to spy out the road,’ he said to Dalrymple and Nasmyth, looking at his watch, then springing back into the saddle. ‘Is Colonel Denroche to meet us here?’
‘He is,’ said Nasmyth, looking at his own watch again. ‘In an hour.’ He gathered up his reins to
