Company Of Spears

Emma frowned. ‘It sounds to me as if the Xhosa have more to fear from the Zulu than we have from the two combined.’

‘Unless,’ began her husband, in the manner of someone considering the proposition as he spoke it, ‘the Xhosa believed that, in becoming Shaka’s vassals, they would recover their former territory here in the Cape. Would they rather live independent but in reduced circumstances, so to speak, in their present territory, or as a tributary to Shaka in their old lands? Do we know what that answer might be, Colonel?’

Somerset shook his head. ‘I for one do not, Sir Eyre.’

After dinner, while the lieutenant-governor was called to read a second ‘Most Urgent’ dispatch (but which touched only on finance, and was urgent only as far as the sender in Whitehall was concerned), and while Emma spoke with her staff, Hervey and Somerset took their coffee into the garden, Somerset (Hervey sensed) rather reluctantly.

Between the two there was little to speak of in age, and but an inch in height, though Somerset’s hair was thinning somewhat and receding notably at the temples. In other respects they had little in common. Colonel the Honourable Henry Somerset was grandson of the Duke of Beaufort; he had first held a commission with the 72nd Highlanders, seeing no service to speak of, and had obtained a troop in the Cape Regiment through the patronage of his father, the then governor of the Cape. He had seen a little skirmishing in the frontier war of 1819, he had advanced rapidly by purchase and further patronage to major, and was appointed Commandant of the Eastern Frontier by his father in 1825 in the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He and Hervey did share a willingness, perhaps even propensity, however, to disregard the opinion of superior (not to say senior) officers – perhaps even to disdain it. But while Hervey’s occasional disagreements and sometimes more deleterious disputes were ever on matters of military expediency, Somerset’s were of the nature of petulance, and self-serving. Edward Fairbrother had told Hervey that not half a dozen years before, Somerset had been placed in arrest for insubordination to General Donkin when the general had failed to appoint him landdrost of Graham’s Town, and that his father had flown into a rage at Donkin’s presumption, exacting considerable revenge by placing both his sons in superior positions. Fairbrother had said he did not know all the particulars, but that it was well known throughout the Cape: Colonel Henry Somerset was a man to be wary of, not least because his ambition and experience were ill-matched.

But Hervey also knew that for the time being he must get on with the Commandant of the Eastern Frontier. Neither did he want ill-favoured reports reaching London, for he must presume that any letter of Somerset’s would, via his father, reach the hand of Uncle Lord FitzRoy Somerset, now secretary at the Horse Guards. ‘Colonel, may I say to you at once that I am entirely at your disposal,’ he began, though in a tone far from submissive. ‘My commission is to the raising of the Mounted Rifles, but I have known the lieutenant-governor for many years, and it is only natural that he uses me in a rather more ranging capacity. I am conscious, however, of my inexperience here at the Cape, and by contrast your very great knowledge of this place. I will speak plainly: I do not wish to be your enemy in this or any other thing. Besides ought else, I have the greatest respect for Lord FitzRoy, whom I had the privilege to meet before Waterloo.’

Hervey had calculated carefully. The word ‘Waterloo’ excited admiration and resentment in equal measure in those who had not themselves been there. He had no idea of Somerset’s opinion of ‘Indiamen’ (Somerset’s own service in the Cape Colony indicated, however, that he might not share that of a Brighton fashionable), and he did not want to be thought of as a mere dust and heat soldier.

Somerset gave little away by reply. ‘I imagine your work with the riflemen will be taxing enough. A year, your commission?’

Hervey took a sip of his coffee expressly to display a measure of insouciance. ‘That is the expectation, as much to do with the detachment of the troop from my own regiment as with the requirements of the Rifles.’

‘Mm. Your troop – their horses in a bad way.’

There seemed something just a shade censorious in the manner that Somerset expressed himself, but Hervey chose not to take offence. ‘I have a most excellent veterinary surgeon.’

Somerset did not at once reply. When he did, his tone was almost icy. ‘Colonel Hervey, let me be rightly understood. I do not take kindly to officers ranging at the frontier as you did, and I do not approve the conversion of the Cape Corps into a bunch of English burghers in green coats. Raise your Mounted Rifles as you will; it will be regular discipline that checks these savages.’

PART III

THE WOLF ON THE FOLD