On His Majesty's Service

contracted to attend to all dear Captain Peto’s needs until such time as he is able to return to his own house.’

How he wished to banish all thoughts of Lady Katherine Greville.

Well, so let it be, he prayed. He would go and see his old friend too, after Hertfordshire and Wiltshire, just as soon as he was able.

But Kat: she would not be banished, no matter how hard he willed it. If only she had dutifully followed her husband, aged though he was, all would now be different. Lieutenant-General Sir Peregrine Greville, for nigh on ten years the military governor of Alderney: he had occupied that martial outpost without (as again the Prayer Book had it) the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other – of a wife, indeed, and one whom he had elevated, if not in rank, then certainly in material condition, from the penury of a crumbling Connaught mansion, her father’s, an Irish peer. It was strange, to be sure, that so many years after the Peace, Alderney had not been reduced (in its dignity, that is; the actual garrison was long dismantled). It might even be supposed, mused Hervey, that a staff officer at the Horse Guards, lately asked what might be done with General Greville, had replied that, since he was anyway fast approaching ‘the days of our years’ (full threescore and ten), it were better to let things take the natural course. For although Sir Peregrine stood high in the gradation list, no exigency of the service would have induced the Horse Guards to appoint him to any active command.

But then Hervey smiled wryly, and soon shamefacedly: that same staff officer, had he heard the news, would now be pondering on the late-revealed virility of this general, this senex amans, for Lady Katherine was with child. In two months’ time – Hervey knew the date well enough – Kat would present Sir Peregrine with a son and heir, or perhaps a daughter, but the paternity would not be that which was entered in the register.

He closed his eyes once more and slid under the water, as if to wash away the sins, and the remembrance of them.

II

AN EMPTY COMMAND

Later that morning

It was snowing again. And Fairbrother delighted in it, the first he had ever seen, the flakes caught in the light of the post-chaise along the turnpike the night before, and then this morning from his window, the white carpet that was Pall Mall. He was fascinated by the sound of it beneath his feet as they walked to the Horse Guards, not yet feeling the chill he knew must be its consequence.

‘And so this is how you marched to Corunna?’ (thinking that at last he might understand what hitherto he could only imagine).

Hervey smiled. ‘But a twelfth part. What’s this here – three inches? There was never less than three feet on that march.’ He turned up the collar of his greatcoat as they came to the steps at the end of Carlton House Terrace. ‘My blood has evidently thinned at the Cape, though; I confess I find it damnably cold! Do not you?’

But Fairbrother was like the schoolboy, and would have taken to snowballing had the decorousness of uniform not forbidden it. He declared that he did not in the least feel the cold this morning, and proceeded to descend the steps at break-neck speed, all but sliding across the Mall, which was no longer the muddy avenue of his earlier acquaintance but a broad, white highway, before recovering an appropriate enough composure to cross the parade ground of the Horse Guards.

‘See yonder fellows at their drill as if the snow were nothing!’ (nodding to the company of greatcoats at the far side of the square): ‘Such men! Such incomparably fine men!’

‘Admirable,’ replied Hervey, feeling chastened by his friend’s heady appreciation, and trying to repair his inattention. ‘The First Foot Guards. I recall seeing them come into Sahagun after we took the place from the French. They held their bearing even then, though we were knee-deep in snow.’

‘I rather think they are the Coldstreams, the grenadier company – the officer’s white plume?’

Hervey’s brow furrowed beneath his forage cap as he peered at the guardsmen in greater scrutiny. And then he nodded somewhat abashed. ‘You are more eagle-eyed than I.I saw the bearskins and nothing more. I’ll gladly pay a sconce at dinner.’

‘Salut.’

Hervey recovered himself a little. ‘Mark, they would jib at the “s”; they will answer to “the Coldstream” or to “Coldstreamers” but never “the Coldstreams”. Though do not ask me why.’

Fairbrother smiled. ‘Touche. But I fancy they need no reason. And it is, I suppose, regimental weather?’

‘Regimental weather?’

‘Did they not march in snow all the way from Coldstream when Cromwell died?’

Hervey nodded again, his friend’s eclectic knowledge ever diverting. ‘And where did you come by that?’

‘I read it in Bishop Burnett’s history.’

Hervey shook his head in part despair. ‘I confess I have not read him, but my good and late departed friend D’Arcey Jessope was always inordinately proud of the march, which he somehow placed on a par with Bonaparte’s on Moscow.

‘“A cold coming they had of it. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter”.’

Fairbrother inclined his head, his turn to be impressed.

‘A sermon on the Nativity,’ explained Hervey, ‘by another bishop. My father is wont to preach a deal of it each Christmas.’

‘Which bishop?’

‘I don’t recall. Is it of any moment?’

‘Everything is of some moment, is it not? You yourself have said so in matters of soldiery.’

‘I concede. But I can’t remember.’

They were half-way across the parade ground before Fairbrother voiced his doubts about their destination once more. ‘You are sure Lord Hill would wish to see me?’

Hervey shortened his step only very slightly. ‘If he wishes to see me then there can be no doubt that he will wish to see you. He is a most affable man, and besides, your repute has gone before you in those despatches from the Cape.’

Fairbrother had saved the life of the lieutenant-governor in the desperate skirmish with Mbopa’s warriors. Hervey was sure that this alone would secure him entry to any drawing room in London.

Fairbrother made no reply.

They walked a few more yards in silence. ‘And it was Bishop Andrewes. Lancelot Andrewes.’

‘I shall make enquiries of him,’ said Fairbrother in all seriousness. ‘What fine words, they: “The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short”. I only wish I might hear them from your father’s pulpit.’

Hervey smiled. ‘I’m sure you shall. The parish is very fond of the sermon. They would have him preach no other at Christmas. Perhaps we might resolve here and now that if we do not Christmas next at Hounslow then we shall do so at Horningsham. There; does that serve?’

‘It does most assuredly.’

‘And you shall come with me to Wiltshire as soon as we are finished here and wherever we must – to ride the Plain again, and shoot bustard. Just as I promised we would.’

‘Agreeable in every respect.’

Fairbrother felt a warming in his breast that no brandy could induce. In truth his studied nonchalance and contrary passion masked a great want of companionship, which Hervey had come unexpectedly to supply, and which Fairbrother by return supplied in like manner, though in Hervey’s case the want arose not from birth on the other side of the blanket but by the steady falling away, for good reason and ill, of those with whom he had seen service.

It was more than that, however. In Fairbrother, Hervey recognized a quite exceptional aptitude for the sabre