Hervey 08 - Company Of Spears (29 page)

Hervey saw a fine-looking man, as fine – and as white – as any he might see in the United Service Club.

‘My mother.’

Hervey could not entirely hide his surprise. The likeness was of a black woman, unquestionably a pleasing-looking woman, though frankly no more than pleasing. ‘I … I am not at all clear what is your purpose in this.’

‘You might wish to ask yourself, Colonel Hervey, whether I am my father’s son or my mother’s.’

Hervey no longer concealed his surprise. ‘You are both, I should imagine! Why should it be of any concern to me?’

Fairbrother took back the miniatures and replaced them in the writing desk, as if drawing a veil over his vexing provenance. ‘You may not be certain of my ultimate loyalties. Colonel Somerset for one would doubt what would be my true feelings towards the Xhosa, cousins of my mother’s people, albeit distant, that they are.’

‘Great Gods! You took the oath to King George and all his heirs and successors did you not? And I imagine there was not a doubt when you were with the Royal Africans?’

‘Hah! The Royal Africans – a greater gathering of rascals as ever you’d find. The scum of the earth – your Duke of Wellington’s words – or rather, the scum of the scum of the earth, amenable to no discipline other than by the lash, and with no courage other than by drink. And yet, Colonel Hervey,
and yet,
every man of that infamous corps would have considered himself to be my superior on account of his fair, if pock-marked skin.’ He shook his head. ‘No, Colonel, the doubts about me in the Royal African Corps were not as elevated as to concerns about my loyalty. They were rather, I imagine, of my humanity.’

Hervey shifted awkwardly in his chair. These were depths with which he was unhappy, certainly on so recent an acquaintance. But his instinct was to sympathy nevertheless, even if sceptical. ‘The officers – your fellow officers, I mean – they were not of an entirely prejudiced disposition?’

‘My fellow officers, Colonel Hervey? Did you
meet
any officers of the Royal African Corps? Unread men. Not, I imagine, the sort that would grace the table of the Sixth Light Dragoons. That
is
your regiment, is it not?’

‘It is. How did you know?’

Fairbrother tilted his head. ‘I keep myself informed. I see the
London Gazette’
He paused. ‘I now know exactly who you are.’

Hervey decided it was time to bring affairs to a resolution, moving to the edge of his chair as if to rise. ‘Then you are at an advantage, sir, for I know next to nothing of you. And I do not think I care to unless you are prepared to accompany me to the frontier. It would otherwise be mere idle gossip.’

For the first time Fairbrother looked discomfited, as if realizing he had momentarily lost the initiative. ‘Very well, Colonel Hervey, if you would have it so immediately—’

Hervey drove home ruthlessly his sudden advantage. ‘I would indeed. I have more than sufficient business to be about.’

Fairbrother quite flinched at the sudden display (and reminder) of martial briskness. ‘Very well, Colonel Hervey, you shall have my answer at once. I will accompany you. But in the situation of gentleman, not of any military rank.’

Hervey sat back in his chair. He smiled cautiously. ‘Of course. And you may begin at once by omitting
my
rank too.’

‘I’m obliged – very much obliged.’

Hervey, smiling more confidently, crossed his legs. ‘Would you tell me of your people now?’

The lieutenant-governor’s sitting room, as familiarly furnished as had been that same room in Bedford Square, was made all the more comfortable by a good fire and the warmth of Hervey’s report. The lieutenant-governor drained his glass, rose from his writing table and nodded as if contemplating his assent.

‘Truly, Somervile, he is a most intriguing man, and most engaging too – at least after the initial haughtiness is put aside. And, I believe, he may be a most discerning guide. He declined all rank.’

Somervile poured himself another glass of sherry, seeing Hervey’s was full still. ‘A mulatto having the King’s commission – I never heard of it. The Duke of York was evidently of purer fire than I imagined.’

Hervey at last sipped a good measure of his sherry, content now that Somervile was of a mind with him. He would therefore tell him rather more of what he knew of Master Fairbrother. ‘His story is really quite winning. His father – his
natural
father – owned extensive estates in Jamaica, and formed an attachment – I mean an attachment, not merely in the usual way – with one of his slaves, who does sound to me to have been a most agreeable woman. Be that as it may, the young Edward Fairbrother – a most unfortunate name, of course – played happily with the real Fairbrother heir, was raised with him indeed, schooled with him, and then the young master died of a fever when he was ten years old, the same age as our Fairbrother. At which the father formally adopted his natural son and sent him to school in Kingston – where I must say he appears to have had rather a fine schooling – and then bought him an ensigncy in the Jamaica Fencibles, and thence the Royal Africans.’

Somervile looked puzzled. ‘I wonder, with his adopted father’s money, why he was not able therefore to advance in rank.’

Hervey inclined his head and raised his eyebrows, as if to signal that it was ‘the old story’ again. ‘He told me his father lost the greater part of his fortune in imprudent investments. He now lives on a modest annuity and his half pay – and such business as he can transact importing rum; though he says that now Cape brandy is improved, the commissaries are buying it for the ration rather than rum from the West Indies. He is of some independent means, however, and most certainly of independent mind; I believe we shall get on tolerably well.’

The lieutenant-governor nodded, this time unambiguously. ‘I am glad to hear it. Just so long as he and Colonel Somerset do not ride together.’ He finished his glass and reached once more for the decanter. ‘I must say too that I am increasingly ill-disposed towards the colonel. His manner this morning at the quayside was really most improper, and I’ve heard murmuring from the colonial staff too. He is decidedly against the idea of the Mounted Rifles, apparently. He believes proper cavalry’s what puts the fear of God into a black man. When General Bourke is returned I may ask him of Somerset’s humour.’

Hervey accepted more sherry and unbuttoned his coat a little, warming to the atmosphere in every sense. ‘May I ask of your own humour? Can you give me yet any enabling order for the frontier, and the limits if there be any?’

The lieutenant-governor sat back in his chair again, looking satisfied. ‘I can. You may take them with you after dinner, together with, I am prodigiously pleased to say, some very serviceable maps. But let me tell you now of what I have in mind, in the broadest of terms.’

Hervey listened keenly as Somervile began. They had known each other, and indeed had worked together, long enough for the one to inform the other of his intent without recourse to many words, and for the one to know precisely what the other had need of hearing. Somervile did not therefore itemize his requirements, as if a list for attention by a quartermaster (though he made sure that such detail was recorded in his written orders for the benefit of his staff and the record); instead he told Hervey what was his mind regarding the Xhosa. He wished to know, if it came to a fight – and he earnestly hoped that it would not – what was the best course of victory. He wished to know if in that regard the Cape Colony was in essence like India. If it were, then he, the lieutenant-governor, would have no concerns: if his pacific policies failed then he would rely on the correct application of his military resources. If it were not like India, then he would first have to recast that military strategy before gambling with his ‘diplomatic’ means. And this, he confided very readily, he would do on and with the advice of his old friend rather than by that of any general.

XVI

THE SETTLEMENTS

Algoa Bay, 23 August

With the fairest of winds, the passage from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth was ten days. Assisted by steam, as Hervey and his party were in the
Fortune,
a brig with just enough room to ship five horses as well as half a dozen passengers comfortably, the passage was made in six even though the winds were at times light.

They messed together during that time: Hervey, Fairbrother, Corporal Wainwright (whose lance rank had been another casualty of the change of command), Private Johnson and two Cape Dutch merchants returning to Port Elizabeth, whose English was limited to the needs of their trade and who therefore kept themselves much to their own society. Fairbrother himself, perceiving some antipathy towards him initially on the merchants’ part, was quick to pick a fight with them in their own language – some trivial thing, a little matter of history concerning the settlement of the Cape, but enough to promote an atmosphere of unease – although after two days they managed to bring themselves to some repairing civility, which made Fairbrother content. Hervey observed in this both a combative streak, which was admirable in a soldier if kept under strict regulation, and a propensity to see insult at every turn, which in combination was tiresome and altogether too volatile. What he also observed, however, was the effect of Fairbrother’s sharing a table with Wainwright and Johnson. At first it was all polite formality, but after a while Fairbrother noticed the happy familiarity between the two dragoons and Hervey, the warmth, the confidence, the mutual trust and respect – all the things that at one time he had thought the mark of an Englishman in his dealings with another. For as Hervey had already concluded, Fairbrother thought himself first an Englishman. That, indeed, had been his education, his upbringing – to begin with as the half kin and inseparable companion of a fair-faced Fairbrother, and then as the adopted heir of one who seemed to him the personification of all that Shakespeare and the misty-eyed poetry to which he was drawn spoke of distant England.

Fairbrother in turn spoke of it to Hervey as they neared their harbour.

‘You know, Hervey, I have observed much in the past few days that restores my spirits. These men of yours are vastly different from those of the Royal African Corps. You may not believe how so.’

Hervey could believe it only too well: he doubted that Edward Fairbrother had ever had to put a ball into the chest of a man in a red jacket, as
he
had at Badajoz. ‘I do not know what conclusion you draw from that observation, but it would be perilous to be sentimental.’

Fairbrother smiled. ‘Oh, you must permit me a little sentiment, if it is of the good sort. It is merely that I marvel at your way with these men, almost as if they were fellow officers indeed.’

Hervey knew what Fairbrother meant. He had himself observed the stiffness, the necessary distance between officers and men in the ranks of red, but he was intrigued to know more of this impartial observer’s opinion, for such things were ever flattering. ‘The regiment has always been under very strict regulation, but never by the lash.’

‘Of course, in my former corps the men were enlisted for ignoble reasons – to escape the hulks, or the gallows even. We were little more than a penal battalion. They were men from, as I believe, the more disagreeable parts of England.’

Hervey now smiled, and clapped a hand to Fairbrother’s shoulder. ‘Do not imagine that because mine is a regiment of cavalry we invariably recruit a nobler sort! Johnson is from one of the meanest cities, a workhouse pauper, a refugee from the coal pits; and Wainwright I myself found in the filthiest of hovels that would disgrace, I imagine, a plantation in Jamaica.’

‘Then your regiment has made of them a very great deal, Colonel Hervey. That, or Nature would claim them as her gentlemen.’

Hervey smiled the more. ‘Come now, that is a little high-blown; though I concede they are men of special worth. Wainwright has enough courage for a whole troop.’

Fairbrother shook his head to re-emphasize the point: ‘I do not think I have admired anything so much as what passes between you and them. It is as if rank has become of no need. I once heard it said that in an English regiment, the superior officer, if he is a gentleman, will never think of it, and the subordinate, if he is a gentleman, will never forget it. I am sorry to say that I did not observe as much in my former corps. And now it seems to me that it is possible to omit the word “officer” from that dictum.’

Hervey squeezed Fairbrother’s shoulder again. ‘You are a very delightful observer, if perhaps susceptible to sentiment. But I cannot laugh at that. I am glad you think the Sixth thus; I am proud, indeed. And I must say that I have greatly enjoyed these past days. You are – I
will
say it – exceedingly agreeable company. I would not have better conversation in my mess than I have shared with you at table.’

‘You mean you have been agreeably surprised by the conversation of one who wears the shadowed livery?’

Hervey withdrew his hand, and frowned very pointedly. ‘Fairbrother, I will speak plainly, for I have known you now long enough. If you persist in this resentfulness you will drive away any friendship and embitter yourself terribly. Give it up!’