Warrior

He smiled, if not wholeheartedly, then thankfully. 'I will indeed, ma'am.'

The vespers bell began chiming. It was nearing five o'clock. Holland Park was but a mile away: he could call on Kat, and begin to prepare the ground. And he could return thence to Hanover Square before the evening invited too much intimacy.

He took his leave, and for all his earlier despair, he rode from Hammersmith with a heart that was indeed beginning to lift.

PART TWO

THE GATHERING STORM

VII

INDEFINITE LEAVE OF ABSENCECape Colony, early September

The great paddle wheels began churning in the swell off Robben Island, whither the colony's worst miscreants were banished. The noise, like a giant blanket, smothered all conversation on deck.

Hervey braced himself to the vibration of the engines, which took a minute or so after firing to reach their full speed. The Enterprise had not had much recourse to them during the passage. The wind had been favourable. The engines' purpose, explained her captain, was to get them in and out of port against contrary airs (they would have been waiting at Gravesend, still, so strong had been the south-westerlies). The captain was very decided in his opinion, and although a man of scientific bent, he was certain that the wind would ever be the motive power of the high seas, for it failed only rarely, it was health-giving (no one, not even Peto, who was convinced there was more to steam than they saw at present, would laud a sulphurous chimney stack) – and it was free.

Hervey was gladdened by the sight of Table Mountain. It had been fifty-four days only – faster than he had first come out with Leviathan, but slower than his return home six months ago. The Enterprise would continue on to Calcutta in a day or so, another six weeks, perhaps, making the India passage in fourteen, a good month quicker than the rule, especially at this time of year before the south-west monsoon was come.

For a moment he wondered how he would feel if he were going on too, back to Bengal, to take command of the Eighty-first – had they been there and not Canada. Did he wish that they were? He had spent the better part of seven years in India. They had been extraordinary years, impossible to explain to any who had not set foot in that land. But it had been, as it were, a parade which was marking time, waiting interminably for some part of it (which he could not see) to come into line, and only thereafter the order 'Forward!'

And while they had been marking time in Bengal, the ranks had thinned. Some had fallen nobly, like the commanding officer, Sir Ivo Lankester (Kezia's husband), leading his men in battle. More – many more – had died of the cholera, or of any number of strange diseases which defied the surgeon's learning. Some had died by their own hand, to lie in everlasting dishonour in the suicides' corner of the cantonment cemetery. And yet, no matter how they met their end, they would all be but bones now – the ultimate comradeship of the regiment, of every one of the dragoons who had died with the colours in four continents:

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, And we shall be changed.

And he wondered, as often he did, how, when the trumpet sounded, they would all be mustered.

No, he did not wish the Eighty-first were in India, for all the country's easy pleasures and the thrill of its warfare. He was glad – at least for the time being – that the regiment slept in their beds at Fort York. Canada would be a painful return for him, of course, the place of Georgiana's birth. But then, when he had told her, she had been animated by the prospect. And if Georgiana was content in going to the place whence her mother had marched for that fatal reunion, then he must be too – for all that it might remind him of a bliss too great.

For now, however, there were other things to disquiet him: Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Before long, he would see Serjeant-Major Armstrong. And an evil it most certainly would be. He had tried to imagine how he would tell him of Caithlin; but there was nothing he could with confidence settle on.

The crew were shortening sail. The wind seemed to be a point or so east from south, but he always found it difficult to judge these things. And for all that Peto had attempted to instruct him in the science of sailing, in the setting and trimming of sails his old friend had merely shown him a mystery.

Yes: he had a high regard for the naval profession, even when it was made easy by steam engines and paddle wheels.

He cupped a hand to his mouth. 'Ngathi kuza kunetha,' nodding to the threatening cloud.

Fairbrother screwed up his face and shook his head. The cloud was too high; it would not rain today – 'Akuzi kuna namhlanje!' He clasped a hand to Hervey's shoulder, and then looked down at the water. 'Siyacothoza.'

Hervey had to think before he could compose a worthwhile reply: the ship was indeed running in slowly, but . . .

For six weeks his friend had instructed him daily in the language of the Xhosa. Hervey did not expect that he would stay long in the Colony (the troop had orders to return to England in the new year) but Somervile's letter had prompted him to acquire what in India they called a 'scouting tongue' – enough of the language to enquire the way ahead and what it held. In fact, Hervey had acquired rather more than the scout's portion: while he could hold no discursive conversation, his vocabulary was broader than the here and now. He had in fact found the language of the Xhosa, while not easy, surprisingly rich and subtle. He would have chosen to learn that of the Zulu instead, had there been the means; but the two were close enough, as he had discovered in the prelude to the affair at the Umtata River.

In another quarter of an hour the crew had taken in all but the topgallants as the Enterprise turned to larboard and, with the wind abeam and the cold Benguela Current no longer directly opposing her, picked up speed.

Hervey smiled to himself. How effortless this all was. How different it would have been aboard one of Peto's