Company Of Spears

Hervey was not relishing this aspect of orderly room either. The Sixth, by long custom, did not ‘touch over’, as the rank and file, with delicacy, referred to flogging. Not, at least, flogging on the square, with triangle and cat and the whole regiment paraded to witness punishment. A light-fingered dragoon, or a laggard, might find himself sentenced by a ‘barrack-room court martial’, presided over by the oldest soldier, to a good strapping, sometimes on the soles of his feet. But however humane the regiment’s practice, the threat of flogging remained, for if the offence were grave a man might be remanded for a district, rather than a regi-mental, court martial; and since that court would invariably consist of officers from other regiments whose scruples might not be the same as the Sixth’s in the matter of corporal punishment, the lash did indeed sometimes ‘touch over’ a dragoon. And it was not always within a commanding officer’s discretion. The civil authorities had a right to jurisdiction for non-military offences, and where that was surrendered to the military, the courts would frequently insist on condign punishment.

‘Atte-e-enshun!’ bellowed the regimental serjeant-major as Hervey (and Johnson) entered the Sixth’s smart, new, brick-built headquarters. The RSM’s mirror-like leather and silver belied his morning’s industry, for although he had not attended the field day, remaining in barracks instead to prepare for a proper orderly room, his feet had trodden every quarter of the lines, where his eye had alighted on legionary instances of dereliction of duty, and his bark had set reverberating the spines of the rear details.

Hervey passed him by with a courteous ‘Good morning, Sarn’t-major’, but otherwise with a certain detachment, as befitted the commanding officer before orderly room. And in that form of address – ‘Sarn’t-major’ – Hervey also displayed a proprietorial right, for by long custom the regimental serjeant-major was addressed as ‘Mr’ by all but the colonel and lieutenant-colonel. When the rank of quartermaster was replaced by that of troop serjeant-major halfway through the campaign in the Peninsula, ‘Sarn’t-major’ was on the lips of every troop officer. There had never been cause for confusion or abashment, however, for although there were now eight ‘sarn’t-majors’, there remained but one ‘the sarn’t-major’.

Johnson, seeing no door through which to escape, stuck close to Hervey and hoped thereby to become invisible to the one man in whose sight he ventured only with trepidation. But vainly.

‘Private Johnson!’

Johnson spun round and jerked to attention, back straight, head up, eyes front, hands pointing to the ground along the double stripe of his overalls, as perfect a figure of a dragoon as ever stood on defaulters’ parade. But then, the summons had been unmistakable.

‘When you have a minute,’ said the RSM dryly.

‘Sir!’

The RSM turned about and stalked to his office, leaving Johnson at attention in the corridor like a petrified tree. ‘Carry on, Serjeant Plug!’

‘Sah!’

The regimental orderly serjeant advanced on Johnson, licking his lips.

Johnson felt keenly the absence of his accustomed protection, but his only movement was an involuntary gulp as the ROS bore down on him.

Serjeant Plug halted half a sabre’s length from the anxious Johnson and leaned forward so that the peaks of their shakos were almost touching. ‘‘Ow’d yer like a little trip … dahn under, way of the ‘ulks in the Thames!’

‘Serjeant?’

‘We’s ‘eard as there’s some gen’l’men coming what wants a word with you … from Bow-street!’

What colour was left in Johnson’s face drained away instantly.

‘Nah, you little shirker, while we’s waiting for ’em … ’op it!’

Johnson blinked, spun round like a top, scuttled down the corridor, and seeing the open door of the commanding officer’s room, rushed in like a fugitive for sanctuary.

Hervey smiled wryly as he held out his shako for Johnson to take. ‘Was that Mr Hairsine’s voice I heard? And then … Sarn’t Plug’s?’

Johnson shifted awkwardly. ‘It were, sir.’

‘I didn’t catch what he was saying. Are you quite well?’

‘Sir.’

‘Don’t “sir” me like that; I can see perfectly well that something’s up.’

‘Nothing, sir. Nothing.’

Hervey now knew otherwise; ‘nothing’ was most unusual idiom for Johnson.

‘Sit down.’

‘Ah’d rather not if yer don’t mind, sir.’

Hervey sighed. This was rum indeed. Few men ever received an invitation to sit down in the commanding officer’s office, and there were surely none who refused it.

‘Sit down!’

Johnson looked for a chair, found the least comfortable-looking and did as he was told.

‘How long have we been together?’

‘Don’t know, sir.’

Hervey sighed again. Heavy going indeed. ‘Fourteen years, isn’t it? Just before we crossed into France. Or perhaps a little before?’

Johnson made no reply.

‘I could have you flogged,’ he tried, thinking a little gallows humour might help.

‘Ah’d better be getting thi stuff for tonight ready, sir,’ was all that Johnson replied, making to rise.