Company Of Spears

Hervey had but one duty to detain him in barracks, and that was to render a full account of the affair at Waltham Abbey, which both custom and discretion required to be submitted to the district headquarters within the day. Behind the closed doors of his office, therefore, he penned five close-written sides of foolscap, four of which comprised an entirely factual narrative of the night’s events (with various commendations), and the last a submission that in his judgement the action of the malefactors was so strange as to make him conclude the enterprise was the work of agents provocateurs. He did not add, though he was sorely tempted, that such work was not unknown, and that perhaps the malpractices of the Home Office in Lord Sidmouth’s time, not a decade before, had not been wholly extirpated.

When he was finished, he gave the despatch to the adjutant and asked that it be copied and taken by officer’s hand to the Horse Guards. Then he went to his quarters, where Johnson had drawn his bath, and in an hour, refreshed and dressed, he set out for the United Service Club.

Corporal Denny and the regimental chariot had been engaged on business in connection with the night before, so Hervey had had to send Johnson to the post-house in Hounslow to engage a hack chaise, with four horses at five shillings a mile to make the journey fast in one stage. He was able thereby to dismiss the coachman at the door of the United Service in Charles Street at precisely ten minutes to eight, a mere one hour and twenty minutes after leaving the barracks, although at uncommon cost to his pocket.

Peto was sitting in the coffee room reading the Edinburgh Review when Hervey entered.

‘Would you not be better served by a Tory paper if you are calling on their lordships?’

Peto lowered his journal. ‘Hah! You’ve heard then: Clarence to be Lord High Admiral! As well make my chaplain pope!’

Several members – some, officers of high rank – turned their heads, but Peto did not notice; or affected not to notice. He stood, and they shook hands.

‘So you are come for admiralty orders?’

Peto grimaced again. ‘Let us speak of it suitably victualled. Sherry?’

Hervey nodded, and Peto caught the waiter’s eye.

‘A dish apiece of the club Fino if you will.’

The waiter bowed and shuffled off, and both men sank into the tired-looking leather tubs that would soon be thrown out in the United Service’s move to superior quarters.

‘What is that stink?’ growled Peto as he laid aside the Review. ‘Worse than a whaler’s bilge!’

‘The gaslight, I imagine,’ replied Hervey, with a shrug. He was quite used to it, for he was lately something of an habitue of the club, whereas Peto’s time was divided between the quarterdeck and the wilds of Norfolk. ‘You should have smelled the old oil-gas, before it was coal.’

Peto pulled a face. ‘Rank stuff, sperm oil. Not cheap either: eight shillings a gallon at Lynn!’ He huffed. ‘Well, I think ours here are very moderate quarters, I must say. I had rather be at sea in a sixth-rate.’

Hervey knew full well he would rather be at sea. Peto had spent so little time ashore that even the gentlemanly estate he had taken nearby his childhood parsonage, provenance of two decades’ prize money, could not divert him sufficiently. Not without a wife, at least; and that was an unlikely prospect by all the evidence of a dozen years’ acquaintance. ‘I imagine in Pall Mall we shall be altogether better provided for.’

‘Nero’s Palace?’ sneered Peto (the new club was rising on the site of Carlton House, which had been the Prince of Wales’s dissipated residence). ‘Deuced lot of money just to be nearer the Admiralty and Horse Guards!’

‘I don’t think that touched on the decision. You’ve seen the rooms upstairs here.’

‘I have. Tolerable, I’d say.’

Hervey pulled a face. He knew when his old friend was being perverse.

‘Now, this business at Waltham Abbey: the coffee room was awash with the crack earlier. Talk of cavalry, and fire exchanged. Do you know of it?’

‘I’m sorry to say I do. That is why I could not come before. We were most particularly engaged.’

‘A pretty kettle of fish, by all accounts. Or rather, by those accounts to be had. And by God there were plenty to be had in the coffee room. None mentioned your gallants, though. I shall be all attention. You were not discomposed greatly, I trust?’

‘Discomposed?’ Hervey sighed. ‘One of ours killed, and four more wounded.’

Peto looked suitably aghast. ‘My dear fellow. Who was your man killed, any I should know?’

The waiter returned, and they took their glasses.

Hervey shook his head. ‘A dragoon called Lightowler, not long with us, joined just before Bhurtpore. He had an uncle a serjeant. I always thought it a most pleasant name. A good sort too; never complained said the corporals. He had a blood-red right eye, most strange.’

Peto looked approving. ‘I have always admired your knowing your dragoons as men.’

Hervey looked faintly puzzled. ‘You, I recall, knew all your crew.’