connection with equines had led him into the ranks of the Sixth rather than to the infantry’s recruiting serjeant, though at that time there was more enlistment money to be had for a red coat than for a blue one.
Johnson had refused any promotion in the two decades since then, which seniority alone should have brought him (although he was not entirely without merit for corporal), convinced as he was that the extra duties and responsibilities were not worth the additional pay. In any case, he was content with his billet, so to speak, and the intimacy – the increasing intimacy – with the man to whom he had been groom for near a decade and a half. When Henrietta had died (he had been devoted to her in very high degree) he had left the colours in order to remain with ‘his’ officer; and when Hervey had rejoined the Sixth a year or so later, he had rejoined too without demur even though he was exchanging an agreeable life in a pleasant Wiltshire village for the uncertainty of one in the cantonments of East Bengal. As commanding officer’s orderly now, although ‘acting’ because Hervey himself was acting in that appointment, he enjoyed a position of some prestige, elevated above the ranks while still ‘Private’ Johnson, beyond the effective reach of any NCO since none would wish to incur the proxy wrath of the commanding officer, and yet with no responsibility beyond that which he had shouldered these past years attending to Cornet, now Acting-Major, Matthew Hervey.
Hervey handed Gilbert’s reins to him, and Johnson in turn handed them to Private Toyne.
‘There’s an express for thee, sir.’
Hervey froze. ‘From Wiltshire?’
‘Ay, sir.’ Johnson’s tone was subdued. He knew that no one sent good news express; not that anyone had ever sent
Hervey knew it too:
‘Adjutant, sir.’
It was a mark of the gravity of the news that Johnson was being punctilious in the formality of his address, and it did not escape its hearer. ‘Do you know what it says?’
Johnson was surprised: Hervey must know that an express from Wiltshire, especially one held by the adjutant for his commanding officer, would not be revealed to a mere private man, for all the elevated position of his officer. Yet he continued evenly in his reply. ‘No, sir, I don’t.’
‘Very well. You’d better come with me to orderly room. There might be need of … I might have need of you.’
Ordinarily Johnson would have protested at such an invitation. Regimental headquarters was no place to be when the commanding officer was dispensing summary justice to defaulters, which was what the day’s Routine Orders said was to follow on the morning’s drill. But he fell in behind Hervey without a word.
Hervey was not relishing this aspect of orderly room either. The Sixth, by long custom, did not ‘touch over’, as the rank and file, with delicacy, referred to flogging. Not, at least, flogging on the square, with triangle and cat and the whole regiment paraded to witness punishment. A light-fingered dragoon, or a laggard, might find himself sentenced by a ‘barrack-room court martial’, presided over by the oldest soldier, to a good strapping, sometimes on the soles of his feet. But however humane the regiment’s practice, the threat of flogging remained, for if the offence were grave a man might be remanded for a district, rather than a regi-mental, court martial; and since that court would invariably consist of officers from other regiments whose scruples might not be the same as the Sixth’s in the matter of corporal punishment, the lash did indeed sometimes ‘touch over’ a dragoon. And it was not always within a commanding officer’s discretion. The civil authorities had a right to jurisdiction for non-military offences, and where that was surrendered to the military, the courts would frequently insist on condign punishment.
‘Atte-e-enshun!’ bellowed the regimental serjeant-major as Hervey (and Johnson) entered the Sixth’s smart, new, brick-built headquarters. The RSM’s mirror-like leather and silver belied his morning’s industry, for although he had not attended the field day, remaining in barracks instead to prepare for a proper orderly room, his feet had trodden every quarter of the lines, where his eye had alighted on legionary instances of dereliction of duty, and his bark had set reverberating the spines of the rear details.
Hervey passed him by with a courteous ‘Good morning, Sarn’t-major’, but otherwise with a certain detachment, as befitted the commanding officer before orderly room. And in that form of address – ‘Sarn’t-major’ – Hervey also displayed a proprietorial right, for by long custom the regimental serjeant-major was addressed as ‘Mr’ by all but the colonel and lieutenant-colonel. When the rank of quartermaster was replaced by that of troop serjeant-major halfway through the campaign in the Peninsula, ‘Sarn’t-major’ was on the lips of every troop officer. There had never been cause for confusion or abashment, however, for although there were now eight ‘sarn’t- majors’, there remained but one
Johnson, seeing no door through which to escape, stuck close to Hervey and hoped thereby to become invisible to the one man in whose sight he ventured only with trepidation. But vainly.
‘Private Johnson!’
Johnson spun round and jerked to attention, back straight, head up, eyes front, hands pointing to the ground along the double stripe of his overalls, as perfect a figure of a dragoon as ever stood on defaulters’ parade. But then, the summons had been unmistakable.
‘When you have a minute,’ said the RSM dryly.
‘Sir!’
The RSM turned about and stalked to his office, leaving Johnson at attention in the corridor like a petrified tree. ‘Carry on, Serjeant Plug!’
‘Sah!’
The regimental orderly serjeant advanced on Johnson, licking his lips.
Johnson felt keenly the absence of his accustomed protection, but his only movement was an involuntary gulp as the ROS bore down on him.
Serjeant Plug halted half a sabre’s length from the anxious Johnson and leaned forward so that the peaks of their shakos were almost touching. ‘‘Ow’d yer like a little trip … dahn under, way of the ‘ulks in the Thames!’
‘Serjeant?’
‘We’s ‘eard as there’s some gen’l’men coming what wants a word with you … from Bow-street!’
What colour was left in Johnson’s face drained away instantly.
‘Nah, you little shirker, while we’s waiting for ’em … ’op it!’
Johnson blinked, spun round like a top, scuttled down the corridor, and seeing the open door of the commanding officer’s room, rushed in like a fugitive for sanctuary.
Hervey smiled wryly as he held out his shako for Johnson to take. ‘Was that Mr Hairsine’s voice I heard? And then … Sarn’t Plug’s?’
Johnson shifted awkwardly. ‘It were, sir.’
‘I didn’t catch what he was saying. Are you quite well?’
‘Sir.’
‘Don’t “sir” me like that; I can see perfectly well that something’s up.’
‘Nothing, sir. Nothing.’
Hervey now knew otherwise; ‘nothing’ was most unusual idiom for Johnson.
‘Sit down.’
‘Ah’d rather not if yer don’t mind, sir.’
Hervey sighed. This was rum indeed. Few men ever received an invitation to sit down in the commanding officer’s office, and there were surely none who refused it.
‘Sit down!’
Johnson looked for a chair, found the least comfortable-looking and did as he was told.
‘How long have we been together?’
‘Don’t know, sir.’
Hervey sighed again. Heavy going indeed. ‘Fourteen years, isn’t it? Just before we crossed into France. Or perhaps a little before?’
Johnson made no reply.
‘I could have you flogged,’ he tried, thinking a little gallows humour might help.
‘Ah’d better be getting thi stuff for tonight ready, sir,’ was all that Johnson replied, making to rise.
Hervey shook his head, mystified. ‘Well, I must say that I’m surprised. I do believe that if something had turned
