Company Of Spears

‘And there is another thing I would have you look to. Lord Charles Somerset says in his letter of relinquishment to me – which I must acknowledge is a handsome enough memorandum – that there is an officer in Cape Town who might render signal service. If he can be persuaded to bestir himself. I thought it appropriate that he accompany you to the frontier. His name is Edward Fairbrother, of the Royal African Corps.’

Hervey was puzzled. ‘The corps was disbanded some years ago, was it not?’

They came to a halt outside the long, boxlike building that was headquarters of His Majesty’s administration in the Cape Colony. Orderlies standing ready took hold of the bridles, and Sir Eyre Somervile, and Lieutenant-Colonel (Acting) Matthew Hervey, commandant of the new Corps of Cape Mounted Riflemen, dismounted with as little ceremony as possible.

‘Five years ago, to be precise,’ said Somervile, taking the steps to his quarters with impressive bounds, even though his breath was in short measure. ‘The hard cases, I think you call them, were sent to Sierra Leone, and the officers who declined to accompany them were forced to transfer to half pay. One or two stayed here – they were made land grants on the Fish River – but most returned to England.’

‘And so Fairbrother knows the frontier?’

‘Apparently very well, and speaks Xhosa – or Kaffir, as probably he calls it. Or yet Nguni, for that matter.’

Hervey smiled. His own facility with languages was entirely practical, whereas Somervile’s delved deep into their history and character. ‘How is your Xhosa, Lieutenant-Governor?’

Somervile did not immediately return the smile. ‘I am not yet fluent, but I can converse perfectly reasonably with my fundisa. There was little else to detain me during the passage.’

Hervey nodded, chastened. ‘Then I will speak with this Edward Fairbrother. There was a Fairbrother in the Eighteenth; I wonder if they are any sort of kin?’

XV

ROYAL AFRICANS

Later that day

It began raining in the late morning, at first a mere mizzle, and then more decided, but it was no more to Hervey than the sort of late-winter downpour he had known on Salisbury Plain, though not nearly as cold. Johnson had complained about the weather since arriving. He had received the knowledge of the reversal of seasons in the southern hemisphere with considerable scepticism, believing his informants were intent on some joke at his expense (if anything, his brush with the Bow Street forces of the law had made him excessively wary). He had lit fires and worn woollens at every opportunity, and told Hervey severally that even when the weather took a turn for the worse in Sheffield in August they could at least go about in flimsy.

Hervey had quickly stayed his groom’s grumbling protests this morning, however. He was determined on seeking out Lieutenant Fairbrother as soon as possible; and with the troop engaged on its march to quarters, and the Rifles in the capable hands of Major Streatfield, there was nothing that need detain him. He therefore called for his waterdeck cape and set off on foot for Fairbrother’s lodgings, dismissing Johnson at the last minute, seeing how close were the lodgings and that he would not have need of the saddle.

He could reasonably have summoned Fairbrother to the castle, he told himself as he set off: the lieutenant was not on the Active List but he was still subject to military authority. And it might have served to do so, for it did no harm to remind a man of his duties. By convention, however, an officer on half pay was allowed the courtesies of formal retirement, and in any case, Hervey took the pragmatic view that persuading a man to do something he might find disagreeable was much the more likely if the persuader did not stand on his dignity.

The rain began to run down the back of his neck, and it troubled him that he was troubled by it. A soaking – like a baking, or a dusting or a freezing – was but a part of the soldier’s life. Had he become soft of late in Hounslow? He wished he wore his shako instead of the forage cap, for it would have kept his neck dry. And he wished too that his new tunic were made, for he had a mind that Rifle green might make more of an impression on Fairbrother than would blue – unless Fairbrother was indeed related to the cornet of that name in the Eighteenth (whom Hervey had known in the Peninsula as a very dashing sabreur).