Company Of Spears

Somervile had been in Cape Town barely a fortnight more than Hervey, but the best part of two decades in Madras and Bengal had given him a keen judgement in these matters (as well as a taste for powder and the edge of the sword). Hervey had long been certain that he would rather shoot tiger with Eyre Somervile than with any other man – save, perhaps, Peto. ‘I would imagine that Bourke will be only too keen to address himself to the military side alone. Are you content with what he has proposed for the new regiments?’

Somervile answered very decidedly: ‘I am, but I should wish for more of that article.’ He indicated the platoon of the Fifty-fifth marching towards the castle.

Hervey nodded knowingly. It was good to see a regular regiment of Line here. Native troops – black, white, brown (or even, he supposed, yellow) – were all very well, but there was something about a red coat and the King’s crown on the helmet plate. It was like seeing a brick-built wall, properly laid and pointed, when all else was undressed stone, or mud and daub. The Fifty-fifth he had never encountered before. They had not been in the Peninsula, nor at Waterloo, but they had sweated away in Jamaica and had been at the Cape for five years. He could not but suppose they were hardened to ‘colonial’ fighting. ‘Indeed. It would be difficult to have excess of them. Except, you know, I’ve been reading that engineer officer’s report of his exploration of Kaffraria, and I wonder whether such regulated drill as theirs is most apt.’

‘They have a light company, do they not?’

Eli was now on her toes, sensing a return to quarters, so that Hervey had to sit deep again to try to collect her. ‘Yes, and most usefully. It is merely that I imagine the country hasn’t changed greatly since the exploration, and the sort of scrub he describes is the devil for manoeuvring in close order; you recall the like in Madras? I’ve been here but a week, but by all accounts the Xhosa fight from behind cover of the scrub, in which case I should sooner have a company of riflemen who snipe than three of muskets who volley.’

‘Well, you may see the country for yourself right enough.’

‘Just so. And I’m content to leave the Rifles recruits with Streatfield, their major, for the time being. They’ll not be ready to begin mounted work for a month at least.’

As he settled Eli into a proper walk before starting on the long cobbled ramp to the gate, he glanced left and right about the curtain wall of the Castle of Good Hope. It would have been easy to imagine himself in Spain again, for the pentagonal fortress, with its bastions and ravelins, scarps and glacis, looked for all the world as if Marshal Vauban himself had been here. It looked, indeed, like the fortress at Badajoz. Hervey had a sudden moment’s doubt, then told himself that Badajoz was all in the past, and kicked for Eli to walk on with more address.

It was a solid affair this place. It was not as big as Badajoz, but it was serviceable, although it had not saved the Dutch when the British had landed here to wrest the station from them in the early years of the French war. Already Hervey had spent hours in the castle library learning of it what he could. He knew each of the bastions by name, and why they were so called – Leerdam, the western bastion, followed clockwise by Buuren, Catzenellenbogen, Nassau and Orange. He knew that the bell above the gate was cast in Amsterdam in 1697 and weighed more than a quarter of a ton. The Dutch had used it to tell the hours and to warn of danger (it could be heard two and a half leagues away, said the librarian). Inside the walls were all the offices of an outpost of the Royal Dutch East Indian Company – church, bakery, storehouses, magazines, cells, workshops and living quarters, and all painted yellow to reflect the heat while minimizing the glare. It had been built with the utmost permanence in mind, the maritime replenishment station of the same undertaking as Britain’s own John Company. Yet Hervey did not feel himself far-flung from the engine of affairs in London, nor excluded from the great enterprise in India; rather he felt – as he supposed must Somervile – that he was at a prime gearwheel in the vast machine that was the Honourable East India Company; a gearwheel that was set to expand somehow – and which at the same time was threatened with violent interruption. No, he did not feel himself to be without the opportunity for distinction; not here.

He woke. ‘I beg your pardon—’

‘I said that I feared Colonel Somerset was unfriendly. Scarcely a word to be had from him. He did not appear to share your pleasure in seeing a fine regiment landing its horses.’

‘Ah, Colonel Somerset.’ Hervey smiled, mock-pained. ‘The army is divided into two classes of men: those who were at Waterloo, and those who were not.’

Somervile returned the smile, though wryer. ‘I thought you were going to say those who are Somersets and those who are not!’