Allan Mallinson - A Regimental Affair

‘Shall you tell me what was said?’ asked Howard, unable to contain himself any longer. ‘Did the Duke of York have laurels for you?’

‘I didn’t see him,’ said Hervey simply.

Howard looked at him with disbelief. ‘But that is why you were come here!’

‘Yes,’ agreed Hervey absently, for the sight of the parade ground had brought to mind the last occasion he had walked here. Then, Howard had been his arresting officer, and the future had looked black indeed — until the confusion leading to his arrest was suddenly revealed. The revelation and the honours that had come with it seemed as yesterday. But he made himself rally. ‘You would scarce expect, though, that the Duke of York would be able to spare the time to see a mere captain of light dragoons.’

‘That is deliberately to demean yourself, to degrade your station as aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington!’

‘ Lately aide-de-camp. As I told you before, I was discharged by the duke.’

Lord John Howard sighed. ‘Hervey, I am truly astonished. You are appointed aide-de-camp to the first soldier of Europe — of the world indeed — and you ask to be relieved!’

‘There’s no profit in doing a job which is better fitted to others.’

‘But you scarce served beside the duke. Might you not have given the prospect a chance, at least?’

‘You are in the right there, my dear Lord John,’ said Hervey, looking straight ahead still. ‘I didn’t serve directly on his staff. But India re-salted my appetite to be with troops — and not just any troops.’

Howard shook his head again. ‘You have a most uncommon attachment to your dragoons. No good to you may come of it if you persist.’

‘And you in the Guards have no such attachment?’ Hervey’s frown implied scepticism.

‘I confess I was never able to recognize my company unless the serjeants had taken post. That is the way in the Guards. It would not do for an officer to know a private man’s name.’

‘Stuff and nonsense! I never heard its like,’ laughed Hervey. ‘You are beginning to sound like d’Arcey Jessope. I know for a fact that you visit the Chelsea hospital every week and have seen to pensions for half a dozen who were at Waterloo!’

The captain of Grenadiers stayed his argument abruptly. How Hervey knew of his charity, he could not imagine. But there was no doubting that his friend had detected his pretence at Guards insouciance. ‘I was not there, you see,’ he replied simply. ‘And if you weren’t at Waterloo…’

The point had not occurred to Hervey quite so plainly before.

‘I listen to Rees Gronow in White’s. He never boasts, of course, or says anything that might promote his part in things, but I know that being at Waterloo has changed the entire way in which he thinks. Is that not so?’

The band had broken into quick time, encouraging both men to step out. Hervey was keen to leave the subject behind. He liked Lord John Howard a good deal, and thought he might even come to like him as much as he had d’Arcey Jessope — though he could never be a true intimate because, like Jessope, Howard did not wear a blue coat and a buff collar, and the Roman six on his shako.

‘Howard,’ he announced. ‘I shall be pleased to breakfast with you.’ He took his arm. ‘Only let us avoid mention of things which are now properly in the past. There is more before us than behind: of that you can be sure.’

After their breakfast and a change into plain clothes, the aide-de-camp and the former aide-de-camp took a chaise to the City, for Hervey was determined, now that there was no duty to detain him in London, to secure a seat on the first coach for Wiltshire. The last occasion he had had for one had been the better part of three years ago, when, with Bonaparte despatched to Elba and peace seemingly come at last to Europe, he had been given his first leave in as many years to return to Horningsham and his people. And there he had met Henrietta again.

He would have a very great deal to speak about with Henrietta. He had rehearsed it the better part of his passage home from India, and the delight he was taking in the prospect of seeing her was now and again marred by the darker parts of those litanies. However, that she might throw him over — or that she might, indeed, have done so already — could not take away the pleasure just in seeing her again, for it had been all but two years since their hasty affiancing and his even hastier departure. But for the time being at least, Hervey had only practical concerns, and these were welcome as a distraction from those others.

On that last occasion for posting to Wiltshire, he had gone to the Saracen’s Head in Skinner Street, the offices of the Universal Coach and Wagon Company, to pay over the odds for an inside seat on one of their mails, a balloon coach which had conveyed him at a full nine miles an hour to Salisbury; thence, after a night’s fitful sleep at the Red Lion, he had taken the Bath stage for Warminster. And although he hoped the demand for seats had slackened in the intervening two years, this was his intention again now.

Lord John Howard was minded to go with him to Horningsham, for Hervey’s sister Elizabeth had become the object of his considerable admiration (but which fact he had not yet been quite able to tell his friend). Duty at the Horse Guards, however, would delay that pleasure a further while.

As the chaise got closer to Snow Hill, its progress was checked to an unusual degree, even allowing for the habitual congestion of the narrow thoroughfares of the City. Lord John Howard stuck his head out of the window and called to the driver for his opinion of the delay.

‘Cashman, sir! They’re hangin’ ’im at noon outside Beckwith’s gun shop in Skinner Street. I doubts as I’ll be able to get the carriage through to the Saracen’s at this rate.’

From both windows they could see men and women, in the main respectably dressed, walking with grim purpose in the same direction they were heading, though with more ease.

‘I think it better if we alight,’ said Howard. ‘This will never do.’

They stepped down from the chaise — not without difficulty — and Hervey paid the driver. ‘Straight on up here, then, sir, on across Gray’s Inn Road and you’ll be there soon enough. And mind, gentlemen; there’ll be pick-pokes and nippers all over the place.’

They thanked him and joined the flow of people eastwards. ‘Who is this Cashman?’ asked Hervey, fastening tight his coat. ‘I heard speak of him at the United Services this morning.’

‘Ah,’ replied Howard, raising an eyebrow. ‘It’s a very rum affair indeed. There was a big gathering of Radicals on the Spa Fields at Clerkenwell last December. The crowd was whipped up by agitators and the like, and then a couple of hundred of them marched into the City, breaking into some gun shops on the way.’

‘What happened when they got there?’

‘Oh, the Mayor had things properly seen to. They couldn’t make any mischief at the Exchange, so they set off for the Tower instead.’

‘And then?’

‘The Mayor had sent for the cavalry, and they dispersed them without too much trouble.’

‘And Cashman was one of the ringleaders?’

‘Heavens, no. He was just one of the poor sots to be taken in by the likes of Hunt.’

‘Hunt?’ Hervey had been little enough in England these past five years to know anything much of the troubles, let alone the names of the ringleaders.

‘ “Orator” Hunt they call him — a fearful rabble-rouser. Makes mischief all over the country at present, what with his calls for reform. He and others like him are the real villains of the piece. But it was Cashman who broke into Beckwith’s, and he stands convicted of stealing arms for the purposes of insurrection. He’s being hanged outside the very shop.’