Company Of Spears

Fearnley halted in his stride. ‘You know, Hervey, in all truth I would count myself worthy if I thought I were but half the man that he is.’

Hervey turned to his lieutenant. Some things could still take him by surprise, not least the humility of a subaltern officer who otherwise and in the best sense had all the appearance of effortless superiority. He put a hand to his shoulder. ‘If you are capable of thinking that, you are on the right road at least. Now, tell me of Cornet Beauchamp. He looked likely, from the little I was able to see of him…’

With both eyes fixed on the looming presence of Table Mountain beyond the castle, Hervey swung his left leg forward so that the knee was almost crooked over the saddle holster, and reached down to loosen the girth strap. He reckoned he had done well to bring Eli with him rather than leave her to come with the rest of the troop on the Leviathan. Eli – Eliab – was Jessye’s foal, now rising nine years, fifteen hands three, a handy charger with all her dam’s sturdiness, and a fair bit of bone, her Welsh Mountain blood evidently still strong although but a quarter. Eli was ‘a good doer’ as the saying went – she did not lose condition too quickly on changed or reduced rations. She had had a good passage, too. The steamer Enterprise had brought them from the Thames to Cape Town in fifty-four days, the fastest passage Hervey had ever made over such a distance, whereas Leviathan, all sail, had set out a week before her and had arrived this morning a fortnight after. Hervey had therefore been able to ride Eli to the quayside with the lieutenant-governor to watch them disembark, with his mare looking every inch as if she had been at the Cape for a whole season.

‘Yes, I thought them in very creditable condition,’ said Sir Eyre Somervile, having the greatest difficulty making his little kehilan walk rather than jogtrot. ‘A week, perhaps, before they’re ready for work?’

‘A week, yes, to begin on lightish work. This is mild and bettering weather. In any event, they’ll be fit enough by the time you’re ready for us.’

‘I shall still want you to go to the frontier meanwhile.’

‘Of course. Fearnley knows what to do.’

The lieutenant-governor managed at last to get his mare to walk. Her flanks glistened, Somervile’s face ran with sweat, and Hervey observed the spreading dampness under the arms of his long white coat and between his shoulder blades – and this despite the fact that they had done no more than trot for about ten minutes. Somervile was a good two stone plumper than when they had first met (and even then he had been carrying more weight than any handicapper would require). His opportunity for exercise these past months had not been what it had in Calcutta; but he had lost nothing of his gameness – nor his little arab mare her bottomless stamina. ‘I’m determined to join you there just as soon as General Bourke is returned. I must meet him first.’

‘I ought myself to be meeting him first, perhaps,’ said Hervey, with more circumspection than usual. He had no wish to begin on the wrong foot with the general officer commanding.

Somervile waved a hand airily. ‘Yes, yes, but I can attend to all that. The sooner I know your opinion of the frontier the sooner I can begin—’

The mare stumbled, throwing her rider painfully on to the saddle pommel. Somervile’s face turned red as he struggled not to curse too foully. ‘You are content with the barrack arrangements?’ he tried manfully, hoping the change of subject would prove a useful distraction.

Hervey looked almost as pained. ‘For the horses, yes; for the men, no. One privy between twenty. We had better arrangements in India.’

‘You have spoken to the town major, no doubt.’

‘The garrison engineer’s to do something.’

‘The King of France’s horses are better housed than a dragoon?’

Hervey smiled ruefully.

‘I was delighted to see your serjeant-major again. He is a most excellent fellow.’

‘He is, and he ought by right to have been RSM now, but the new colonel wished to bring his own man, and I could not budge him on it.’

‘You have a good opinion of him nevertheless, your new colonel?’

‘Holderness? Oh indeed, he is very gentlemanlike.’

‘And this sojourn of yours here, he will not resent it when you return?’

Hervey tilted his head. ‘I do not believe so. Indeed he was most particular on that point. And I think, in a way, it is as well that I’m here, since a new man ought not to feel his predecessor – however temporary – looking over his shoulders.’

His old friend raised an eyebrow. ‘Would that it were so with General Bourke. There’s no doubt the colony is in want of true civil government, and yet it is in large part still an armed camp.’