Hervey felt reassured: Sir Edward appeared genuinely solicitous. And he had come to trust that whatever appeared to be the case with Sir Edward was indeed the case. He did not like the advice, but he could not resent it. ‘Sir Edward, I thank you for your good opinion of me, but I have no thought other than to advance in the Sixth. I already feel it as a family.’
Private Bancroft came with the half-made coffee. Hervey now saw that its purpose was to sustain the interview rather than anything else.
Sir Edward took his cup, and a sip, then pulled a face and set the cup aside, sharing Bancroft’s opinion on lukewarm coffee now that its original purpose was passing. ‘That is as it should be, Hervey. As long as you’re content with its price, that’s all. And when you speak of family, have a care: let me remind you that to become too close to any man in our business is folly when you must send him to his death next day.’
Hervey marked very carefully what his troop-leader was saying, wondering if he displayed some tendency in this direction. He was not aware of any. Indeed, he had rather feared that the opposite had been true during the retreat to Corunna, for he had been zealous in his duty as he saw it (not least over the matter of Serjeant Ellis). ‘I shall endeavour always to maintain a proper distance, sir.’
‘Mm.’
There was a long pause. Hervey tried his coffee again, thinking to show appreciation.
‘What do you think of Armstrong?’
Hervey at once assumed that he must be guilty of the offence of which Sir Edward had just spoken. Nevertheless he would give his opinion plainly. ‘I think of him very well indeed, sir.’
‘Good. How long will it take before he is ready for serjeant?’
Hervey brightened; evidently he was not guilty in this regard. On the contrary: it appeared that Sir Edward valued his opinion, though he scarcely imagined his troop-leader had need of it. He contemplated the exemplars of serjeant’s rank in the regiment, quickly dismissing Ellis as wholly aberrant. Armstrong certainly looked the part – the authority that came with the indeterminate age of the non-commissioned officer, the voice that commanded attention, the way of moving, purposeful, confident; and that something extra, an understanding of what it was the officers were about, so that he stood not in opposition ever, while being entirely true to himself. Armstrong, for all his rough-hewn qualities, was ‘regimental’, as Daniel Coates called it, an attribute defying precise definition in a handy volume, if at all. Hervey was sure of it: ‘I venture to say, Sir Edward, that were he required to act in that rank today he would do so very creditably.’
‘You think him worthy of promotion over the heads of his seniors?’
That was a different question. It called for a judgement in more things than simple quality. ‘I have not the wherewithal to give a safe opinion on that, Sir Edward.’
‘Mm. Then you are indeed a shrewd officer. Well, I would have Armstrong given every chance to display himself. He has not the seniority to advance otherwise than by some act of distinction.’
Hervey made no reply.
Sir Edward began polishing the silvered spurs again, breathing on them then buffing on his overalls. After a while he stopped and looked at Hervey directly, as if he were turning over another matter of promotion. ‘I do not know how Wellesley fights,’ he said, with the air of a man who considered it right that he should know.
Again, Hervey was surprised more by the sharing of a confidence than by its substance. It was generally supposed that Sir Arthur Wellesley knew the business of fighting and would make his intentions clear enough. He remained respectfully silent.
‘Wellesley’s got up here quickly, no doubt of it. I’d feared we would delay on the Mondego a good many weeks. But by all accounts his opinion of cavalry is not great. He may yet favour the cautious way, whatever intelligence we are able to bring him.’
Sir Edward paused, as if to weigh again his surmise.
Hervey inclined his head, expecting some conclusion, some course of action which followed from the estimate.
Instead, Sir Edward leaned forward, pushed the spurs back into the heel-boxes, and stood up.
Hervey rose at once.
‘Have a mind of it then, Hervey!’ Sir Edward said it almost absently as he picked up his Tarleton and stepped briskly for the door.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE CHANCE TO DISPLAY
Later
It did not take him long to be ready for the task of escorting one of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s observing officers. Sir Edward Lankester’s last order to the squadron had been to off-saddle but remain booted: there were no French this side of the Douro any longer, they were assured, and the Portuguese dragoons had a vidette line on commanding ground between the river and the assembling army. In any alarm the squadron could be stood-to in but a few minutes. Hervey had saddled Jessye in no time, and by his own hand.
Not that he knew exactly how close was the main body behind them. For the past three days he had watched as the Portuguese cavalry danced about Soult’s, and all the while Sir Arthur Wellesley’s redcoats had been marching up from the Mondego. Recalling the stumbling, dispirited retreat to Corunna, he had imagined their pace would be slow; he had quite forgotten how fast the infantry could march when it was towards the enemy. However, he knew where the contact points were, and that was what mattered.
He watched as the escort of six dragoons mustered under Corporal Armstrong. They were tired, if not quite so tired as he was. They fumbled a bit, taking longer with straps and buckles, but it did not look too bad. Armstrong was as a rule unsparing with his tongue, but now he encouraged rather than cajoled. He knew the dragoons, and he knew if they were ‘laking’. It did not profit an NCO to bark if there could be no response. He would bark loud enough when the last bit of spare effort was required, effort a man did not know he possessed until squeezed from him by his corporal.
Hervey smiled to himself. He was content – very content. He had recognized in Armstrong a special man, a man he might trust entirely, rely on to the ultimate degree, just as Daniel Coates had told him he would, although the old dragoon had warned that it might take many a year to find such a man. It was Sir Edward’s opinion, too, that Armstrong was special, which made Hervey doubly content.
But still the talk of transferring to the infantry troubled him. Why had Sir Edward even broached the subject of selling out and buying into another regiment? Was that really to be the only way of advancement in this war? He knew it had been the way already for some – for Sir Arthur Wellesley himself in his early years (there was no secret to it). But now that the army was so decisively, indeed desperately, engaged with Bonaparte, the old way could not stand too long? Hervey shook his head. Truly, it was mystifying what Sir Edward had intended. Had he, when he spoke of Armstrong, been saying the same again, indeed – that promotion would not come without some particular act of courage? Hervey trusted he would have sufficiency of that quality (he had never even imagined the want of it). Was he supposed to seek out the opportunity rather than wait for it to be presented? Was that what Sir Edward meant? He began wondering if Joseph Edmonds would have been quite so elliptical in his advice. He imagined not. But there again, said the cognoscenti, Captain Sir Edward Lankester knew his way in that world, as did Lieutenant-Colonel Lord George Irvine; Major Joseph Edmonds did not.
Hervey shook his head. What a repugnant business it was! How different from Edmonds’s injunction when first he had joined his troop at the Canterbury depot: ‘Do not trouble to impress me, Mr Hervey; it is they you must inspire,’ he had said, pointing to the dragoons at skill-at-arms on the square. Hervey hoped now that he would continue to try to do so, not least because they were all tired and the man they were about to escort would form his impression of the regiment by what his little command did this morning. Their charge was no ordinary staff officer; he was an observing officer, one of the men whom Sir Arthur Wellesley relied on for intelligence of a certain kind, that which not even the most vigorous scouting by cavalry could provide. As a rule, such officers did not wear uniform, since their business was behind the enemy’s lines. ‘Spy’ was a word not infrequently used of them, if loosely – and, moreover, dangerously, for by the usages of war a spy might be shot out-of-hand, whereas by those same usages a man in his country’s uniform enjoyed the protection of his captors. Hervey quickened at the thought.