Warrior

He laid aside the sheets for the ink to dry. He would rise early and write another letter in its place.

XI

THE CONSEQUENCES OF INACTIONNext morning

Hervey had slept soundly. He rarely slept ill, but the second night in a bed instead of a hanging cot was perfect repose. A Malay bearer woke him with tea.

He lay listening to the morning: a native voice here and there, collared doves calling peaceably, the labouring of the water carrier. He turned and looked at his half-hunter on the bedside table, and cursed. He rose at once, but it was later than he intended.

The bearer came back with hot water.

And then a knock at the door announced the picket commander. 'Sir?'

'Is the camp under attack, Corporal Hardy?' asked Hervey, with a mock frown.

'Sir, sorry, sir, but this message just came from the castle, and the hircarrah said as it was urgent, so I brought it myself rather than give it the picket officer. Sir.'

Hervey smiled. In that briefest of explanations Corporal Hardy had revealed so much of what he esteemed in the Sixth. Would the picket commander of the Eighty-first have acted upon such initiative? Likely as not he would have waited until the serjeant had come, and then the serjeant would have sought out the picket officer . . . Perhaps he was being unfair.

'Is the hircarrah waiting on a reply?' he asked, as he opened the despatch from the lieutenant-governor's office (hircarrah, like backshee, was another word the regiment had brought back from India).

'No, sir.'

Hervey read the hand he knew well from many years' acquaintance: Would you be so good as to come hither post haste, and with you Captain Fairbrother. There is ripe intelligence from Natal . . .

'Corporal Hardy, have Toyne bring Molly, if you please, and my compliments to Captain Brereton but I shall not be able to attend first parade.'

He shaved, dressed, and set out without breakfasting for the castle, but via Fairbrother's house by the Company's gardens.

An old Hottentot was watering the window boxes there; another was sweeping the stoep. For a moment, Hervey imagined how Georgiana would have loved it.

The door was open.

Inside, Fairbrother's housekeeper greeted him warmly as an established friend of the quarters.

'Is he awake, M'ma Anke?'

'He was after I'd waked him, Colonel.'

'I perceive that you believe him not to be awake now. Perhaps you would bring coffee for me to take in to him?'

'I will, Colonel,' she sighed. 'He did ask for me to wake him early, but this morning he said as he wished he hadn't because he had stayed late at his desk.'

Hervey smiled.

'Not as I sees any sign of what kept him there,' she added, with a pronounced roll of her eyes.

Hervey sat down to await the coffee. On Fairbrother's writing table was a vase of flowers, blue and yellow. They were fresh, placed there this morning. What sort, he did not know, only that it was a woman's touch, delightful – the estimable M'ma Anke. A most agreeable fusing of native and colonist was she. But in what combination or sequence, Fairbrother said, not even she knew. Hervey wished he might find another of her capability, for his own establishment – saving Johnson's protests, of course (and, perhaps, Kezia's).

He stood up as she returned with a small basin of steaming black arabica. 'We must leave for the castle as soon as he's dressed, M'ma Anke. I know he's indifferent to breakfast.'

'Not so much indifferent as contrary, Colonel.'

Hervey smiled. She most certainly had the measure of 'the master'.

The house was on one floor only, Fairbrother's room on the east side. Hervey opened the door without knocking, and was surprised to find the curtains drawn back, the window full open and his friend sitting up in bed reading the Jamaica Courant and Public Advertiser.

'Good morning,' said Fairbrother without taking his eyes from the newspaper.

'My dear fellow, I believe I shall drink this coffee myself, for you evidently have no need of it. Come; we are bidden to the castle.'

'In good time,' he replied, intent on his news.

Hervey knew that hurrying him was fruitless. He put down the coffee and found himself a chair. 'What detains you there?'

Fairbrother lowered the Courant a moment or two later. He appeared lost in thought. 'News of my father.'

'Not ill news, I trust?' Besides comradely concern, Hervey had formed a high opinion of his friend's father, evidently a plantation owner of enlightened views and kindly disposition: to have raised a bastard son as his own must have been no small thing in that confined society. He hoped one day they might meet.