Fairbrother, stripping finally to the flesh, and with but matches and candle in an oilskin tied at his neck, braced to attention. ‘Permission to cross, my lord?’ he asked, wholly unselfconsciously.
Lord Holderness took his flask and gave it to him. ‘You may find the brandy restorative. Good luck to you,’ he said nodding, and then to Collins.
Instead of firing the carbine from where they stood, however, a few yards back on the bank, as Hervey had expected, Collins remounted, gave a hand down to Fairbrother and hauled him astride behind him. ‘Keep paying out the rope, Smiddy. Give me plenty of slack,’ he said to the farrier, just as they had planned it. Then he pressed to the water’s edge, raised the carbine above his head, and forged into the river.
By God, reckoned Hervey: Collins knew his horse! He could count on one hand the regiment’s troopers that would take so tractably to water at night. As he recalled, Collins’s had been cast as a roadster on the Bath mail, having thrown a leg over the traces on the long incline to Chippenham, stumbling and almost bringing the whole team to grief; the gelding had never taken willingly to the harness after that. The remount officer had bought him unwarranted but at a good price, thereby, and Collins had taken him on as his second trooper, remaking him, evidently, with great patience.
Hervey smiled to himself: for once, capability and patience had been richly rewarded. Collins and Armstrong were neck and neck as serjeant-majors, in his judgement; it was but Geordie Armstrong’s seniority (and, he must admit, their long years’ association) that to his mind placed him first in line behind the RSM. For a moment he wondered how was Armstrong, and the detached troop, in that southern autumn. Whatever their fortune, with Armstrong the troop was in good hands; of that he was sure . . .
‘A really rather remarkable sort of man,’ said Lord Holderness, lighting a cheroot.
Hervey snapped to in time to see Fairbrother slide from the trooper’s quarters and grasp a stirrup leather as the animal began swimming freely. He held his breath as he watched the current begin taking its hold, swinging the three of them towards the middle of the river, exactly as the branch had behaved when they tried it in the afternoon. Collins lay almost prone along his trooper’s neck, carbine held high, until he reckoned they were at the point when the horse would have to swim hard to make headway, the current no longer working in their favour. He raised himself in the saddle, pointed the carbine at the far bank, high, and fired.
Hervey saw the grapple arching into the darkness, and Collins turning his trooper (or rather, letting him be turned) downstream. He could not see Fairbrother, though he searched with his telescope (it amplified the light); he could only pray the grapple held fast and his friend was able to haul himself across. He could barely see Collins, now: they would, please God, be striking for the home bank, taking advantage of the slack water on the outside of the bend – but a struggle, a prodigious effort, nevertheless. How far downstream they would make their footing he did not know. Even so, he felt like cheering.
‘What do you see, Hervey?’ asked Lord Holderness, searching with his own glass.
Hervey could see nothing: the rope was anchored, for sure, but Fairbrother’s head and shoulders were hardly a mark in such a flood. ‘I can’t make him out, Colonel. But—’
‘ ’E’s done it, sir, the serjeant-major,’ came an unmistakable voice from the shadows. Private Johnson, with a telescope of the usual provenance, was lying full length at the water’s edge. ‘’E’s just climbing out.’
‘Who is that?’ asked Lord Holderness (it was, to his ear, an unusual report).
Hervey cleared his throat slightly. ‘Johnson, my groom, Colonel.’
‘Ah, yes, Private Johnson.’
Hervey thought it better not to ponder on the reason the commanding officer might know Johnson’s name. ‘A good eye, he has.’
‘He puts us to shame observing in silhouette,’ declared Lord Holderness, now crouching to try the same perspective of Fairbrother.
‘Indeed, Colonel.’ Hervey took a few steps nearer the edge. ‘Is the sar’nt-major out yet, Johnson?’
‘Reckon ’e is, sir: can’t see owt o’im now for them trees. Ah reckon Cap’n Fairbrother’s gooin all right an’ all cos t’rope’s theer.’
‘You can see the rope?’
‘Ay, sir. It’s ’angin from a tree.’
Hervey sighed with no little relief: if the rope were truly fast, Fairbrother would make the bank.
‘Admirable
The sound of hoofs signalled Serjeant-Major Collins’s happy approach. ‘Johnson, hold that rope fast,’ he barked as he cantered up, seeing the farrier was now tying the return rope to the tow. ‘Drop it and you’ll go in after it.’
‘Right, Serjeant-Major,’ replied Johnson wearily (he had no ambition for rank, but occasionally he had to bite his lip: the serjeant-major had joined the Sixth a month after he had).
‘By, but there’s an undertow midstream, sir,’ said Collins, slipping from the saddle and rubbing his gelding’s muzzle.
‘How does it run, Sar’nt-Major?’ asked Lord Holderness.
‘It’s nothing you can’t make headway through, Colonel, but a nasty enough surprise. You will have to keep your charger’s head at the far bank or his quarters’ll swing right round, downstream.’
‘Perhaps you should tie a line round yourself, Colonel, as well as Rolly’s neck.’
‘Too many lines, I think,’ he replied, unbuckling his sabre to attach to the saddle.
‘We can’t use the return rope, sir, or we might not get the tow back,’ explained Collins.
‘There’s the reins, Hervey; that’ll do,’ insisted Lord Holderness.
Hervey nodded, if reluctantly. He had seen scores of upsets in the Peninsula (as indeed must have Lord Holderness too), but the memory of Chittagong, and the Karnaphuli, weighed heavily with him still. There they had lost Private Parkin, a Warminster man, one of ‘the Pals’, in sluggish water and broad daylight . . . ‘All of the party are swimmers, Sar’nt-Major?’
‘Ay, sir.’
It was as if he had never been away – the application of duty, the habit of command. He searched anxiously again for Fairbrother, though in this was an element beyond mere obligation (as there had been, too, with Collins).
There was a flicker of light on the far bank – the safety match – and then the steady flame of the candle, the signal that the tow rope was secure; and, moreover, that Fairbrother was also.
‘Ready, Colonel?’
‘I am,’ replied Lord Holderness, climbing into the saddle. His big thoroughbred, manners perfect, moved not a foot.
‘Colonel, wouldn’t it be better if I held your sword?’ asked his groom doubtfully.
‘It would, Corporal Steele, but who will hold the dragoons’ swords?’
‘Colonel.’ Steele knew as well as the rest that the commanding officer was intent on giving a true lead.
‘The tow, Johnson.’
‘Right, Serjeant-Major.’
‘The reply is “sir”, Johnson.’
Hervey cringed, feeling somehow responsible (though he knew Johnson ought to have known): there were three officers on parade.
‘Right, sir.’
‘Just “sir”.’
‘Sir.’ Johnson put the return rope over his shoulder, and handed the tow to the serjeant-major.
‘Colonel, with permission,’ said Collins, slipping the tow loop over the charger’s neck. ‘Keep his nose at yonder bank, sir, and be ready for the current to swing ’im round, about thirty yards in.’
‘Thank you, Sar’nt-Major. And I should have said: that was smart work.’
‘Thank you, Colonel.’
Serjeant-Major Collins counted himself especially fortunate that the commanding officer had witnessed it: in these days of peace there was little enough opportunity for distinction, and without distinction there was no alternative but the dead hand of seniority when it came to the promotion stakes.
Lord Holderness urged Rolly to the edge of the bank. The gelding paused only to take a look, curious, at the moon on the water and then slid gently into the river with scarcely a sound. As Rolly began swimming, Lord
