Company Of Spears

you.’

The adjutant interrupted Hervey’s enquiries. He looked not entirely disapprovingly at the seated Johnson, but with something of a frown nevertheless. ‘If I may, sir – the express.’

Hervey took it, saw the unmistakable, neat, round hand, and forced himself to keep the mask at his face for a little longer. ‘Thank you, Mr Vanneck,’ he said, with a polite note of dismissal. ‘And you, Johnson.’

The adjutant waited for Johnson to leave, however, and then approached Hervey’s desk, confidentially. ‘Just before you read the express, Hervey, I thought I should say that apparently there are two Bow-street men coming here to interview Johnson.’ He had to clear his throat. ‘I understand in connection with a serious crime against the Revenue.’

Hervey was astonished. ‘Johnson? Revenue? He’s …’

‘As I said, it is only what I understand. Until they come I can have no perfect idea. In the meantime you might like to ask him … there again you might not.’

Hervey shook his head. ‘I thought there was something, but hardly serious. The most I’ve ever known him do is take a case of brandy from a commissary waggon – and that was in snow up to your belt.’

‘Let us hope that Bow-street and the Revenue have mistaken their man then.’

Hervey nodded, but none too assured. Vanneck took his leave.

When the door had closed, Hervey broke the seal on the express and opened the waxed envelope, steeling himself to the death, or expected demise, that it would reveal. Both his parents, though active still, were beyond their allotted span. It could not have been his sister, for hers was the hand. He trembled at the alternative; but Georgiana had been in good health for all of her nine years…

Horningsham

11th March 1827

My dear brother,Do not be troubled for your kin by this letter, for we are all in the halest condition and most excellent spirits. I am sorry to have to tell you, however, that Daniel Coates is grievous ill and Dr Birch does not consider he will survive the week. He was found by one of his men the day before yesterday on the plain near Wadman’s Coppice, where he had fallen from his horse, Dr Birch believes of a stroke. He was brought back to Upton Scudamore but has scarce spoke a word nor eaten anything since, and Dr Birch is of the decided opinion that his condition cannot amend. I do not imagine that your duties will permit of any early visit, and I shall, dearest brother, endeavour to let you know by the speediest means if there is any change to Daniel Coates’s condition.Be assured of our love now and at all times,Ever yr most affectionate sister,Elizabeth.

Hervey sat down. Dan Coates: ‘the shepherd of Salisbury Plain’ as Archdeacon Hervey had dubbed him in the image of Hannah More’s creation of pastoral wisdom and simple piety; first, foremost and forever to Hervey, though, riding-master, instructor in sabre and firelock, in fieldcraft, drill and in the lore of campaigning – a priceless understanding which Coates had gained in the ranks of the 16th Light Dragoons and as trumpeter to that able but much maligned general, Sir Banastre Tarleton. Could Daniel Coates be brought to this – a fall on Salisbury Plain – after the American war and the sick and muddle of the expedition to the Low Countries? Daniel Coates was not so very old; not an ancient, not so many years his father’s senior; and he rode the plain every day tending his sheep. His flocks were not so extensive now, not since the end of the French war when demand for wool had fallen; but Daniel Coates had made his fortune during that ‘never-ending war’ and he had been astute enough too to sell half his sheep before Waterloo. He lived a godly and sober life, prudent – modest even. Poor Dan Coates: his fortune had in many ways made him unhappy, for he always felt keenly the loss of his wife, the more so because she had died so many years before he had been able to afford her more than a shawl and a mean grave.

‘Mr Vanneck!’

The door to the adjutant’s office opened. ‘Hervey?’

‘I shall go to Wiltshire this afternoon, after orderly room. Would you give my compliments to Captain Shute and inform him that the regiment will come under his orders?’

III

LAST POST

Horningsham, 13 March

The journey to Wiltshire, a hundred miles almost to the furlong, took nine and a half hours, the fastest time he had ever posted. The regimental chariot, lightly loaded, two excellent roadsters from Leicestershire for the first twenty miles, fair flew along the turnpikes, the estimable Corporal Denny astride the leader with scarcely a half- hour but in the saddle. Denny, a twenty-year dragoon who had been the chariot-man for the past five, knew the road as far as Andover well, so that Hervey had only to be alert for the last stretch across Salisbury Plain. Fortunately there was a good moon and the way was clear. They changed horses at Amesbury, the last posting house before the dozen miles of barren, hard chalk downland, a lonely tract of sheep and of isolated settlements where families kept themselves to themselves in a sturdy but sometimes unholy way.

They passed the Great Henge, an eerie, heathen place of, it was said, ancient sacrifice, though now but a silent, woolly fold. Then, slowing to a walk, they descended to misty Shrewton, still and dark but for the odd candle in a window, and the oil lamps of its empty inn. The loneliest stretch came next, five miles of high, windblown, rough grazing, the road rutted and pot-holed, only partially mended after the icy winter rains. They took it at a jogtrot, scarcely better than a good, stretching walk on metalled going, and in an hour slowed again for the steep descent into forlorn Chitterne, not a light to be seen, not a barking dog to proclaim any life at all, passing the dark shapes of dwelling houses every bit as ghostly in their stillness as the monoliths at Stonehenge. Then it was up to the high chalk again for the straight league and a half to graceful Heytesbury, off the plain at last and on to the rich plough of the Wylye valley, a village as different from its downland neighbours as a blood to a cob. In Heytesbury there were lights, in the street, in the upper windows, and in the lower ones too; and the sound of the fiddle from one of its inns, despite the steady approach of midnight; and one whole window of Heytesbury’s abbey church was lit as if a dozen monks were yet saying compline within. The chariot picked up speed, on turnpike once more, rattling into Warminster as the clocks were beginning to strike the hour, and thence to skirt the great estate of Longleat, the seat of Henrietta’s guardian, until at twenty minutes to one o’clock of the new day they were in Horningsham poor, pretty, well-regulated Horningsham, the village of the Bath estate, the parish of the Reverend – indeed, the Venerable – Thomas Hervey M.A. (Oxon.).

They went first to the Bath Arms to arrange hay and a roof for the horses, and a bed for Corporal Denny, then Hervey walked with just his small-pack the half mile or so to his father’s darkened vicarage, where he crept without a sound into the stable, lay down in the straw, as he had so many times as a boy, pulled his cloak about him and slept without stirring until dawn.

When he woke, the household was still abed (it was a little after six), so he shaved and bathed under the stable pump, and generally made himself presentable for the family’s reveille before giving the stable’s sole occupant – his father’s driving pony – a peck of oats and an armful of hay. At seven o’clock, as had been the rule at the vicarage for as many years as he could remember, the door to the servants’ hall was unbolted and thrown open, and the routine of the morning was begun.

The vicar of Horningsham did not keep a large establishment; he had not the means. There was a cook, Mrs Pomeroy, the same Hervey had known in his nursery, a housemaid, a manservant, a scullion and a gardener cum groom. Neither his mother nor his sister had a lady’s maid, something Hervey had tried on several occasions to