Company Of Spears

you are at an advantage, sir, for I know next to nothing of you. And I do not think I care to unless you are prepared to accompany me to the frontier. It would otherwise be mere idle gossip.’

For the first time Fairbrother looked discomfited, as if realizing he had momentarily lost the initiative. ‘Very well, Colonel Hervey, if you would have it so immediately—’

Hervey drove home ruthlessly his sudden advantage. ‘I would indeed. I have more than sufficient business to be about.’

Fairbrother quite flinched at the sudden display (and reminder) of martial briskness. ‘Very well, Colonel Hervey, you shall have my answer at once. I will accompany you. But in the situation of gentleman, not of any military rank.’

Hervey sat back in his chair. He smiled cautiously. ‘Of course. And you may begin at once by omitting my rank too.’

‘I’m obliged – very much obliged.’

Hervey, smiling more confidently, crossed his legs. ‘Would you tell me of your people now?’

The lieutenant-governor’s sitting room, as familiarly furnished as had been that same room in Bedford Square, was made all the more comfortable by a good fire and the warmth of Hervey’s report. The lieutenant- governor drained his glass, rose from his writing table and nodded as if contemplating his assent.

‘Truly, Somervile, he is a most intriguing man, and most engaging too – at least after the initial haughtiness is put aside. And, I believe, he may be a most discerning guide. He declined all rank.’

Somervile poured himself another glass of sherry, seeing Hervey’s was full still. ‘A mulatto having the King’s commission – I never heard of it. The Duke of York was evidently of purer fire than I imagined.’

Hervey at last sipped a good measure of his sherry, content now that Somervile was of a mind with him. He would therefore tell him rather more of what he knew of Master Fairbrother. ‘His story is really quite winning. His father – his natural father – owned extensive estates in Jamaica, and formed an attachment – I mean an attachment, not merely in the usual way – with one of his slaves, who does sound to me to have been a most agreeable woman. Be that as it may, the young Edward Fairbrother – a most unfortunate name, of course – played happily with the real Fairbrother heir, was raised with him indeed, schooled with him, and then the young master died of a fever when he was ten years old, the same age as our Fairbrother. At which the father formally adopted his natural son and sent him to school in Kingston – where I must say he appears to have had rather a fine schooling – and then bought him an ensigncy in the Jamaica Fencibles, and thence the Royal Africans.’

Somervile looked puzzled. ‘I wonder, with his adopted father’s money, why he was not able therefore to advance in rank.’

Hervey inclined his head and raised his eyebrows, as if to signal that it was ‘the old story’ again. ‘He told me his father lost the greater part of his fortune in imprudent investments. He now lives on a modest annuity and his half pay – and such business as he can transact importing rum; though he says that now Cape brandy is improved, the commissaries are buying it for the ration rather than rum from the West Indies. He is of some independent means, however, and most certainly of independent mind; I believe we shall get on tolerably well.’

The lieutenant-governor nodded, this time unambiguously. ‘I am glad to hear it. Just so long as he and Colonel Somerset do not ride together.’ He finished his glass and reached once more for the decanter. ‘I must say too that I am increasingly ill-disposed towards the colonel. His manner this morning at the quayside was really most improper, and I’ve heard murmuring from the colonial staff too. He is decidedly against the idea of the Mounted Rifles, apparently. He believes proper cavalry’s what puts the fear of God into a black man. When General Bourke is returned I may ask him of Somerset’s humour.’

Hervey accepted more sherry and unbuttoned his coat a little, warming to the atmosphere in every sense. ‘May I ask of your own humour? Can you give me yet any enabling order for the frontier, and the limits if there be any?’

The lieutenant-governor sat back in his chair again, looking satisfied. ‘I can. You may take them with you after dinner, together with, I am prodigiously pleased to say, some very serviceable maps. But let me tell you now of what I have in mind, in the broadest of terms.’

Hervey listened keenly as Somervile began. They had known each other, and indeed had worked together, long enough for the one to inform the other of his intent without recourse to many words, and for the one to know precisely what the other had need of hearing. Somervile did not therefore itemize his requirements, as if a list for attention by a quartermaster (though he made sure that such detail was recorded in his written orders for the benefit of his staff and the record); instead he told Hervey what was his mind regarding the Xhosa. He wished to know, if it came to a fight – and he earnestly hoped that it would not – what was the best course of victory. He wished to know if in that regard the Cape Colony was in essence like India. If it were, then he, the lieutenant- governor, would have no concerns: if his pacific policies failed then he would rely on the correct application of his military resources. If it were not like India, then he would first have to recast that military strategy before gambling with his ‘diplomatic’ means. And this, he confided very readily, he would do on and with the advice of his old friend rather than by that of any general.

XVI

THE SETTLEMENTS

Algoa Bay, 23 August

With the fairest of winds, the passage from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth was ten days. Assisted by steam, as Hervey and his party were in the Fortune, a brig with just enough room to ship five horses as well as half a dozen passengers comfortably, the passage was made in six even though the winds were at times light.

They messed together during that time: Hervey, Fairbrother, Corporal Wainwright (whose lance rank had been another casualty of the change of command), Private Johnson and two Cape Dutch merchants returning to Port Elizabeth, whose English was limited to the needs of their trade and who therefore kept themselves much to their own society. Fairbrother himself, perceiving some antipathy towards him initially on the merchants’ part, was quick to pick a fight with them in their own language – some trivial thing, a little matter of history concerning the settlement of the Cape, but enough to promote an atmosphere of unease – although after two days they managed to bring themselves to some repairing civility, which made Fairbrother content. Hervey observed in this both a combative streak, which was admirable in a soldier if kept under strict regulation, and a propensity to see insult at every turn, which in combination was tiresome and altogether too volatile. What he also observed, however, was the effect of Fairbrother’s sharing a table with Wainwright and Johnson. At first it was all polite formality, but after a while Fairbrother noticed the happy familiarity between the two dragoons and Hervey, the warmth, the confidence, the mutual trust and respect – all the things that at one time he had thought the mark of an Englishman in his dealings with another. For as Hervey had already concluded, Fairbrother thought himself first an Englishman. That, indeed, had been his education, his upbringing – to begin with as the half kin and inseparable companion of a fair-faced Fairbrother, and then as the adopted heir of one who seemed to him the personification of all that Shakespeare and the misty-eyed poetry to which he was drawn spoke of distant England.

Fairbrother in turn spoke of it to Hervey as they neared their harbour.

‘You know, Hervey, I have observed much in the past few days that restores my spirits. These men of yours are vastly different from those of the Royal African Corps. You may not believe how so.’

Hervey could believe it only too well: he doubted that Edward Fairbrother had ever had to put a ball into the chest of a man in a red jacket, as he had at Badajoz. ‘I do not know what conclusion you draw from that observation, but it would be perilous to be sentimental.’

Fairbrother smiled. ‘Oh, you must permit me a little sentiment, if it is of the good sort. It is merely that I