Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service by Allan Mallinson Read Free Book Online Page B

parliament’s prorogued?’
    ‘I did not,’ replied Fairbrother, making an even larger pile of the fish than did his friend.
    ‘Yes, at Greenwich. They sail down there and eat whitebait at the Old George. At least I think it’s the Old George. We should do so ourselves.’
    ‘Admirable custom. Capital idea.’ Fairbrother had already taken up knife and fork.
    ‘I doubt there’s whitebait in Gibraltar,’ said Hervey, frowning.
    ‘We could enquire.’
    Hervey nodded. ‘I suppose we could,’ he replied, not very enthusiastically.
    The whitebait was consumed hungrily and in silence except for appreciative asides.
    And then the burgundy was replenished, a sturdy steak and oyster pudding was laid before them, and a dish of Savoy cabbage, and Fairbrother could at last begin the serious business of interrogation.
    ‘Where do you suppose one might buy a pistol like that cabman’s? I’m resolved never to go on campaign again without a capped weapon.’
    Hervey smiled knowingly. He owed his life to the percussion cap – at Waterloo, possibly the only capped carbine in the field that day. Yet the Board of Ordnance saw no reason, still, to put it into the hands of the rank and file. ‘Flayflints,’ he said, with a sardonic smile at his pun – and to Fairbrother’s mystification. ‘There’s a gunsmith’s in Leicester Street, the other side of Covent Garden – Forsyth’s. We might visit there later. Did the cabman say who was the maker?’
    Fairbrother inclined his head. ‘In truth I found him difficult to comprehend, for he said several times that it was dirigé , but I could not understand dirigé by whom. It is French, we may suppose?’
    ‘It’s possible. Forsyth’s will know.’
    Fairbrother helped himself to more burgundy, and became contemplative. ‘But let us suppose we return from this war twixt Turk and Russian sound in wind and limb; what then? Shall you put on a red coat, for it seems clear to me that a blue one will scarcely be worthwhile if all you shall have to command is a hundred dragoons?’
    The matter was unconvivial, but Hervey welcomed the opportunity to rehearse aloud the arguments he would otherwise have to make to himself. ‘I confess it is a bitter blow. And if the die is cast, then so be it, but I have a mind that there’s much water yet to flow under this particular bridge. Lord George Irvine may yet make his weight felt. I shall go to see him as soon as may be.’ The colonel of a regiment, although no longer the proprietor he once was, carried nevertheless a deal of influence, with the King especially; and Lieutenant-General Irvine, a Waterloo man and now entrusted with command in Ireland, was not an officer whose opinion could be set aside lightly.
    ‘But if all else fails and your regiment is indeed reduced, what then? You surely wouldn’t wish to preside over a squadron?’
    ‘I would not wish it, no, but I might bear it,’ answered Hervey cautiously.
    ‘But what would it profit you, in both satisfaction and advancement? I’ll wager it would profit you nothing in either.’
    Hervey took a deep breath. ‘There would always be some satisfaction in the proximity of men with whom I’d served long years.’
    Fairbrother nodded, almost spilling his wine. ‘That, I grant you, but you wouldn’t wish their captain to be forever looking over his shoulder? And might not you and they tire of the proximity, confined to Hounslow, even with an occasional calling to clear the streets of “tumultuous assembly”?’
    ‘I think, were that to threaten, I should seek a temporary assignment elsewhere – as this mission to the Russians.’
    Fairbrother nodded again. ‘That might serve. What, though, would it do for your prospects?’
    Hervey thought especially carefully before answering. There was nothing base in the desire for promotion; it was woven, so to speak, into the fibre of every officer’s coat – or ought to be. ‘Sir George Don would be, no doubt, an agreeable commander