Company Of Spears

FIRST FOOTINGS

Cape Town, 9 August 1827

Teams of sweating Hottentots heaved on the ropes at the quayside, and one by one the horses of the 6th Light Dragoons were hoist from the Leviathan’s hold like so many jack-in-the-boxes. Out swung the booms, horse suspended mid-air in a canvas sling, yet calm as may be in its unaccustomed element, and then back edged the straining teams to lower the animal to the greeting hands of its dragoon and his corporal, and thence to join the growing circle of led horses stretching legs that for eight weeks and more had remained confined and idle. Besides the occasional whinny of delight from a trooper liberated from its Stygian stable, the only sounds were the barked commands of the NCOs and the unison grunting of the Hottentots. Hervey was pleased with what he saw. This was not a bustling harbour scene of the civilian kind, all last-minute coming and going, tearful embraces and lubberliness; here it was all good order and military discipline. Even the merchantman’s crew cut about like hands aboard a man o’ war, after two months at sea as fearful of Serjeant-major Armstrong’s tongue as was any dragoon.

Hervey, impatient of the formality that acting command of the regiment had formerly imposed, made his excuses to Somervile standing beside him, got down from the saddle, gave the reins to Johnson and walked to the quayside. Dragoons braced or saluted as they saw him, the older ones hailing him by name, and he returned the greetings similarly, glad once again to be on the more familiar terms of troop rather than regiment, where he knew each man better than did his own mother, and in many cases loved them a good deal more.

‘Not at all in bad condition, Sam!’

The veterinary surgeon turned, and smiled. ‘Colonel Hervey, good morning!’

They shook hands. ‘A few of them tucked up, but not nearly as bad as I’ve seen. How was the passage?’

Sam Kirwan gave him a favourable report. No voyage was ever without incident, however clement the weather, and the Leviathan had had its share of heavy seas. It was a springlike day at the Cape, bright sunshine and a gentle westerly, but Hervey had seen the South Atlantic five times in a dozen years, and perfectly understood the picture the veterinary surgeon painted.

One of the led horses, a bay gelding, stopped and began to stale. An orderly ran up and interrupted the flow with a big enamel bowl.

Hervey turned to Sam, quizzical.

‘I’ve been taking samples since embarking. I want to observe what changes there are.’

Hervey nodded, pleased that the veterinarian was having his scientific satisfaction. ‘What orders have you given for shoeing?’

‘I understand it’s but a mile or so to the barracks, so they can be led, and the farriers can make a beginning tomorrow on the fitter ones. You don’t intend turning them away for a week or anything?’

‘Not unless you advise it, Sam. I’d rather they began light work as soon as possible, while the weather’s still mild.’

‘Just so. Ah, here’s Fearnley.’

‘Good morning, Colonel,’ said Hervey’s lieutenant, saluting formally. ‘And congratulations.’

Fearnley’s boyish good looks and smile were a tonic, though tonic was scarcely needed; Hervey smiled by return and touched the peak of his forage cap. ‘Thank you, Mr Fearnley. I perceive the exercise of command has been efficacious.’

‘Yes, indeed, but never so easy.’

Hervey could imagine it. What with Sam Kirwan and Serjeant-major Armstrong there could hardly have been a decision to make, but Lieutenant Conyngham Fearnley, nephew of Lord George Irvine, the same age as Hervey had been at Talavera and eager for his first action, had clearly relished the independence, with its ‘powers of detachment commander’ giving him the disciplinary authority of the lieutenant-colonel himself. Hervey had known he could rely on Fearnley to exercise those powers prudently. In any case he had spoken on the matter very carefully beforehand with Armstrong.

Armstrong: there was rarely so ill a wind as did not blow some military good, Hervey had long concluded (exactly as his own disappointment in command gave way now to renewed appetite for sabre-work). If his troop serjeant-major was not to become the serjeant-major … well, there was the compensation now of having his old NCO-friend at his side once more. Rather, indeed, like the satisfaction of having Sam Kirwan with him. Sam’s announcement that he wished to leave the Sixth in order to study his veterinary science in a tropical clime had come at exactly the right moment: the Cape Colony was no Indian furnace, but it had its attractions in this respect.

‘Come and tell me of it,’ said Hervey, nodding to the veterinarian as they left him to his samples.

Lieutenant Fearnley gave a full and enthusiastic account, as favourable and encouraging a report as Sam Kirwan’s had been – yet with detail that Sam had modestly omitted.

‘And Sarn’t-major Armstrong?’ asked Hervey, as a matter of form rather than true enquiry.

Fearnley halted in his stride. ‘You know, Hervey, in all truth I would count myself worthy if I thought I were but half the man that he is.’

Hervey turned to his lieutenant. Some things could still take him by surprise, not least the humility of a subaltern officer who otherwise and in the best sense had all the appearance of effortless superiority. He put a hand to his shoulder. ‘If you are capable of thinking that, you are on the right road at least. Now, tell me of Cornet Beauchamp. He looked likely, from the little I was able to see of him…’

With both eyes fixed on the looming presence of Table Mountain beyond the castle, Hervey swung his left leg forward so that the knee was almost crooked over the saddle holster, and reached down to loosen the girth strap. He reckoned he had done well to bring Eli with him rather than leave her to come with the rest of the troop on the Leviathan. Eli – Eliab – was Jessye’s foal, now rising nine years, fifteen hands three, a handy charger with all her dam’s sturdiness, and a fair bit of bone, her Welsh Mountain blood evidently still strong although but a quarter. Eli was ‘a good doer’ as the saying went – she did not lose condition too quickly on changed or reduced rations. She had had a good passage, too. The steamer Enterprise had brought them from the Thames to Cape Town in fifty-four days, the fastest passage Hervey had ever made over such a distance, whereas Leviathan, all sail, had set out a week before her and had arrived this morning a fortnight after. Hervey had therefore been able to ride Eli to the quayside with the lieutenant-governor to watch them disembark, with his mare looking every inch as if she had been at the Cape for a whole season.

‘Yes, I thought them in very creditable condition,’ said Sir Eyre Somervile, having the greatest difficulty making his little kehilan walk rather than jogtrot. ‘A week, perhaps, before they’re ready for work?’

‘A week, yes, to begin on lightish work. This is mild and bettering weather. In any event, they’ll be fit enough by the time you’re ready for us.’

‘I shall still want you to go to the frontier meanwhile.’

‘Of course. Fearnley knows what to do.’

The lieutenant-governor managed at last to get his mare to walk. Her flanks glistened, Somervile’s face ran with sweat, and Hervey observed the spreading dampness under the arms of his long white coat and between his shoulder blades – and this despite the fact that they had done no more than trot for about ten minutes. Somervile was a good two stone plumper than when they had first met (and even then he had been carrying more weight than any handicapper would require). His opportunity for exercise these past months had not been what it had in Calcutta; but he had lost nothing of his gameness – nor his little arab mare her bottomless stamina. ‘I’m determined to join you there just as soon as General Bourke is returned. I must meet him first.’

‘I ought myself to be meeting him first, perhaps,’ said Hervey, with more circumspection than usual. He had no wish to begin on the wrong foot with the general officer commanding.

Somervile waved a hand airily. ‘Yes, yes, but I can attend to all that. The sooner I know your opinion of the frontier the sooner I can begin—’