Hervey 10 - Warrior (18 page)

He returned the salute smartly.

Inside the residence, candles and lamps burned bright. Jaswant, the khansamah, and others of the Somerviles' Indian servants, as well as black faces, were got up in reds and blues, as if for a levee.

'Good evening, Colonel sahib!'

Hervey smiled by return, and gave his hat to a khitmagar. 'Good evening, Jaswant. How good it is to be back, and to see you.'

'Mehrbani, Colonel sahib,' replied Jaswant, bowing. 'And good evening also to you, Captain Fairbrother sahib.'

Fairbrother returned the salutations with rather more ease than he had formerly been disposed to.

'There are others to dine?' asked Hervey, nodding to the finery. He had expected it to be just the four of them.

'Sahib. Colonel Bird and his lady are here, and Major Dundas, and Colonel Mill. And Colonel Smith and his lady.'

The names he was well acquainted with (Bird the colonial secretary, Dundas the military secretary, Mill the Fifty-fifth's colonel), except the one. 'Colonel Smith?'

'He is new deputy quartermaster-general, Colonel sahib.'

'General Bourke, and Colonel Somerset – are they not here, too?'

'General Bourke-sahib is gone home to England for leave, Colonel sahib, and Colonel Somerset-sahib is being in Graham's-town.'

That was pleasing to Hervey's ear. He held Bourke in due regard, but the presence of the general officer commanding would always tend to circumscribe conversation with his old friend the lieutenantgovernor, for all that Somervile did not feel himself obliged to observe the usual distinctions of rank. And although after Umtata there was a certain respect between Colonel the Honourable Henry Somerset (the former governor's son), commander of the eastern frontier, and he, Hervey would not yet choose his company without necessity.

'We had better go in,' he said to Fairbrother. 'Say nothing of the Shaka mission unless Somervile first makes mention.'

'Of course, Colonel sahib.'

Hervey pulled a face.

Jaswant announced them, not to the room but to Lady Somervile, who was standing talking to Colonel Mill, splendid in the scarlet coatee of the 55th Westmoreland, with its distinctive dark green facings.

Emma turned, all smiles.

Hervey at once forgot his cares. He had known Emma for as long as he had known Somervile, since before the two were married. He supposed he might tell her anything. He supposed he might spend any amount of time in her company without regret. She had a keen mind. She was a most pleasing-looking woman, not yet Kat's age (for all he knew, she was his junior; it was just that he had always found her sensibility superior to his), and the fierce Indies sun, and now that of the Cape, had served only to increase her attraction rather than wreak its more usual havoc. She had kept her figure, too, in spite of children and her husband's inclination to the pleasures of the table. And, ever important, she enjoyed his, Hervey's, company in like degree. He kissed her, smiling broader than he had since leaving England.

Fairbrother bowed.

'How delighted I am to see you returned –
both
of you.'

'Eyre's letter was most persuasive.' Hervey's smile was now mock rueful.

'I hope it did not suspend any pleasure that cannot be recovered,' said Emma, her look now mock indignant.

'I am certain it has not.'

She turned to the Fifty-fifth's colonel. 'You are all three well acquainted, so I have read.'

'Indeed we are, Lady Somervile,' said Colonel Mill, bowing in return to Hervey.

'The fellowship of black powder?'

They all shared her smile.

'Eyre would give anything to be admitted a full member,' she said, shaking her head. 'I am certain of it. He is increasingly fretful at office.'

As a rule, Emma Somervile gave nothing away except to those she counted the surest of friends. Hervey detected more than jest in the remark, and so concluded that Colonel Mill had gained the Castle's confidence. And he was glad of it, for Mill was an officer of unimpeachable fighting record – the West Indies, the Peninsula, Waterloo; and now Umtata.

'I should have thought the recent affair at the frontier enough to satisfy anyone, at least for a while,' said the Fifty-fifth's colonel, looking like a man who considered such things occupational hazards rather than sport.

Emma sighed. 'I fear it has merely whetted his appetite.'

A khitmagar advanced with a tray of champagne.

As Hervey took a glass, Emma turned to him, confidentially. 'I am so very sorry to hear about poor Caithlin Armstrong. Most distressed, indeed. The loveliest of people. And the serjeant-major . . . You have told him by now, I suppose?'

Hervey nodded.

'I simply cannot imagine what will now be the fate of those children. Shall they go back to Ireland, do you think?'

Hervey's sigh echoed Emma's. 'I don't know. For the time being the Lincolns – you remember? – have charge of them, but I fancy it can't be too long an arrangement. The elder boy will go to the Duke of York's school, and the second one in a year or so. The girls . . .' (he shook his head) 'Armstrong has no family.'

'Shall he have to leave the service?'

Hervey's eyebrows rose. 'Great heavens, I hope not. The service is exactly what he needs to bind himself to after such a thing!'

Emma was a little taken aback at Hervey's surprise, for he himself had quit the service in like circumstances (not that it was a course she approved of). 'Well, he is fortunate in having such friends as the Lincolns. And, I might add, you.'

Hervey swallowed. What friend might he be in Canada with the Eighty-first?

'And now,' said Emma resolutely, squeezing his arm, 'I must introduce you to our new arrivals.'

'Colonel Smith?'

'And his most intriguing wife!'

But Emma's guests scarcely needed introduction. Although 'Smith' was a commonplace of the Army List, and Hervey had not seen the colonel's lantern-jaw in many a year (and certainly not since Waterloo), he would have known him anywhere. As for the arresting Latin features of Mrs Smith, a Peninsula-bride of just fifteen, his acquaintance was entirely by repute. But everyone in the army knew Harry and Juana Smith.

'May I introduce Colonel Hervey, who commands the Cape Mounted Rifles,' said Emma.

The colonels bowed, and Mrs Smith curtsied.

'Hervey, I fancy we must have met?' said Colonel Smith confidently.

'We have. I think at the Bidassoa.'

Colonel Smith was perhaps half a dozen years Hervey's senior, and wore the dark green of the 95th Rifles, in which corps he had risen largely by field promotion in the thick of the fighting in the Peninsula and the two Americas. 'I fancy it must have been,' he replied. And then, breaking into a wry smile, added, 'You, however, would have kept your feet dry, I imagine?'

The army had crossed many rivers in Spain, but the Bidassoa had been a considerable splash. 'I imagine I did,' conceded Hervey, content on this occasion to allow the infantry its customary sense of superiority in bearing privations.

But Colonel Smith was no conformist in that regard. 'I read of your exploits of late at Badajoz. An extraordinary business.'

'You could call it so, yes. I had not thought to see the inside of that place again.'

'Indeed.' Colonel Smith turned to his wife. 'My dear, Colonel Hervey was made captive by Miguel's men last year, and had to cut his way out of the castle.'

Juana gave a little gasp. '
Madre mia!
You must tell me of it, Colonel.'

Emma was quick to oblige. 'I have placed you together at table, my dear Mrs Smith. Colonel Hervey will be able to tell you all. It is, in truth, a most thrilling story!'

The Somerviles were yet maintaining their Indian habit, observed Hervey as they went into dinner. On the table were grapes and jujubes, pawpaw, oranges peeled and dusted with ginger, fingerlengths of sugar cane, and slices of coconut and Bombay mango. It troubled some, he knew – Kezia was one of them – to begin a dinner with such sweet things, but in truth he was never much bothered with the precise progression of tastes. He recognized, certainly, the culinarian art when at its highest, but he did not fret for the want of it. Indeed, a dinner had to be of the most pronounced indifference – the meat rank, perhaps, the side dishes salty as sea, the bread very stale, and the sauces utterly congealed – before he would admit any remark. How might it be otherwise after years at Shrewsbury and then on campaign?

'And so were you long kept in Badajoz, Colonel?' asked Juana, her accent in large part gone but still with the exaggerated aspirates of her native tongue.

'A few weeks, ma'am. Not long, but it seemed longer.'

She shook her head sympathetically. 'It is a
place formidable.
'

Hervey did not feel much inclined to speak of his own discomfort at Badajoz, but knew he must be patient with one so well acquainted with the fortress-town. 'It was all a most distressing affair, concerning as it did two former allies.'

'Oh, but I trust not just
former
allies,' said Juana, raising her eyebrows as she took a pleasurable sip of Sauternes, which was chilled so much as to bring a mist about the glass.

Indeed, Hervey was not sure if she raised her eyebrows at his remark or the wine, but he would say 'amen' to her optimism. Perhaps it was for this reason that the Duke of Wellington, as soon as his new office had given him the power to do so, had recalled the force of intervention which Mr Canning had sent to Portugal the better part of two years ago, for trying to secure a peace between the two factions was as likely to end in the alienation of the victorious party as in earning its gratitude. And whatever the outcome of the Portuguese imbroglio, Spain would not be unmoved. 'Let us say that I should not like to have the Spanish guerrilleros on any side but my own!'

Juana appeared to study him for a moment. 'You do know, Colonel, that I too am Spanish?'

'Indeed I do, ma'am.'

'And I claim a connection with Badajoz, for it was there that I met my husband.'

Hervey smiled. He had wondered when, and quite how, it would out. 'Madam, I do not believe there is an officer in the old Peninsular army, nor many a private man either, that does not know of the circumstances of your meeting.'

Juana returned the smile. 'You flatter us, Colonel Hervey. But tell me, were you at Badajoz – at the time of the siege?'

Hervey nodded, gravely. 'I was. And – I speak plainly – I was never more proud of the bravery of our troops, nor yet so grieved by their conduct afterwards. I fancy you do not like to recall it much, either. An infamous episode.'

He decided, however, that he would tell her the whole story of his part in the siege a decade and a half ago, and its 'Androclean' outcome but eighteen months ago.

She listened, rapt. He told her how he had followed the storming divisions through the breaches and over the walls, how every regiment seemed to be without its officers, who had fallen in the van of the assault, and how some diabolic blood-lust then overcame those men, so that they fell upon the town and its wretched people like wild beasts. He told her how he had had to shoot a Connaught soldier who had despoiled a girl and slit her throat and had then tried to kill him, and how last year, when he had been taken prisoner in the confusion of the incipient civil war in Portugal, he had escaped from the fortress of Badajoz by the help of that very girl's father.

He related all this knowing, too, that Juana's own rescue had been scarcely less dramatic. The protecting arms of a captain of Rifles, as Harry Smith then was, must indeed have been welcome, and marriage to him, within days, sweet. Well, it was
amour courtois; amour en guerre.
Except that seeing Juana and Harry Smith now, the looks between them, their mutual ease, it was evident that what might at first have been
mariage urgent,
was now a marriage of the very deepest affection. And he was at once both warmed and discomfited by it.

After a plate of ackee, which neither of them had tasted before, Hervey turned to the wife of Colonel Bird, the colonial secretary. They were not unacquainted. He liked Bird, a shrewd and gentle man, to whom Colonel Somerset had frequently taken an open dislike (it was said partly on account of Bird's being a Catholic).

Mrs Bird, a woman in her fifties, and of maternal disposition, laid a hand on his forearm. 'I am sorry Mrs Hervey was unable to accompany you, Colonel. Her society would have been most welcome, especially now that Lady Somervile is to leave.'

Hervey smiled indulgently. He understood how Mrs Bird must find Cape society somewhat confined and unvarying. In Bengal it had been different: although there the conventions were perhaps a good deal stricter, the society itself was also a good deal larger. 'I am afraid the fault is all mine, ma'am. My return here was somewhat precipitate, and it was not expedient for my wife – or indeed my daughter – to sail with me. And, you may know, my own assignment here with the Cape Rifles, and my troop of dragoons, will come to an end in the new year. So I am afraid it would not serve for them to make the passage at all, now.'