He had lost a wife. It was ten years ago, but her memory – and the cause of her death – was ever with him, if routinely shut out. It had been his fault that Henrietta had died. Others might be blamed, but it had been his actions that had brought it about. He could not escape the fact (and he had never tried). He had a daughter, for whom he barely made provision beyond the material. How might he ever be father-hero to her when he did not see her from one year to the next? He slept with another man’s wife – or rather, he had slept (and how much did he wish she were by his side now?). When the tribunal here had finished with him, and the court martial in Whitehall, he might yet be named in the high court by a cuckolded husband. He would never be able to show his face to his family again. How could he even decently face the day?
He had been apprehensive that first time, the court martial at Badajoz, but not truly fearful, as now. It was not that his memory failed him (he was certain), rather that to be arraigned as a cornet was one thing, and quite another to be tried as brevet-major, Companion of the Most Honourable Military Order of the Bath. The irony in how things had turned out could not escape him. No doubt the one-time Cornet Daly would this day be hunting freely from his rackety estate in Galway, a careless, bibulous local hero, who regaled his fellow squireens with stories of slaying the French. Doubtless, too, he wrecked a good horse every season, and thought nothing of it beyond the cost of replacement. For what was an animal’s distress compared with his pleasure?
Why was it that some men had no sense of shame, no true sense, while others could be eternally burdened by it? Daly’s face when the court martial had pronounced without withdrawing – how could it not have registered abject shame? Hervey could see it still, the brazen scorn at the judge martial’s plain words: ‘A man of violent temper wielding a cautery is no little threat. I direct that the case against Cornet Hervey be dismissed.’ Then, when the court reassembled half an hour after withdrawing to consider its verdict on the remaining charges, Daly had marched in for all the world as if he were come to buy a horse at Tattersalls. And when the president read the words, ‘To Charge One, Guilty! To Charge Two, Guilty!’, there remained about him a defiant air, as if the proceedings, the regiment, the entire army, did not ultimately matter, for he, Frederick Keevil Daly of Kilconnell, would jaunt on. Even when the president announced punishment, ‘that he be dismissed the service’, his only thought – his question to the court, indeed – had been whether he might recover the value of his commission.
Now, at such a distance, and for an indulgent moment, Hervey might admire the man, for where had his own unbending principles landed him? But in truth he was resolved that if he escaped his present predicament, and if he escaped a court martial, and the attention of Sir Peregrine Greville, he would amend his ways. He would amend his ways so thoroughly, so root and branch, that there could be no possibility of finding himself in a contingency such as this again. Nor, indeed, would there be any neglect of the Commandments or the proper regulation of family.
It was a very remote prospect, however, his ‘deliverance’. That, he acknowledged. But the very thought of amendment lifted his spirits, as if, indeed, he were at some meeting of Methodists. He smiled, and thought of his sister. And then he chided himself again: had Elizabeth ever been wrong in her estimation of things? Had she ever had other than a right judgement? He had laughed at her for her evangelical principles, but they had never let her into deep water. Elizabeth would show him the way; he could trust in that.
He picked up his Prayer Book and opened it again at the collect for the previous day, for it had anticipated his new-found resolve: Mortify and kill all vices in us, and so strengthen us by thy grace, that by the innocency of our lives, and constancy of our faith, even unto death, we may glorify thy holy Name.
If only Joshua could be so apt! In these last, empty days, he had read Joshua closer than ever, almost as if the book might reveal his means of escape. A great soldier was Joshua, a cunning soldier, a soldier who overcame as much on his own side as on that of the enemy. But he knew no Rahab in Badajoz to let him down from the walls, no spies to find such a person within the city.
Dr Sanchez came at noon. He did so full of apology for his absence, for his failure to keep his promise of an early return. ‘It has been a difficult time, Major Hervey, difficult for me to explain. I beg you would forgive me and trust that it was not through choice that I did not come earlier.’
It did not matter to Hervey what had prevented the physician’s visiting, for whatever he had imagined were the possibilities in their recent intimacy, he had begun to conclude that Sanchez was not a man for turning: no honourable man could hazard his family by such a thing, and the physician was nothing if not an honourable man. ‘It has been an idle time, I confess, sir.’
Sanchez glanced at the open bible on the table. His face softened as he drew up a chair and sat down. ‘Joshua, Major Hervey?’
‘Joshua, yes. A great soldier.’
Sanchez unbuttoned his coat, despite the chill which the new-laid fire had not been able to dispel. ‘Do you believe, Major Hervey, that Joshua’s trumpets alone brought down the walls of Jericho?’
Hervey was intrigued. He thought to answer obliquely. ‘With God, all things are possible?’
‘Fie! Major Hervey! I had thought your study of Scripture would yield some more profound insight.’
Hervey smiled again. Was Sanchez merely making conversation? It was a curious attempt at diversion. ‘If you wish, señor, I will tell you what I understand may have happened at Jericho.’
‘Indeed I would hear it. It seems apt, here in Badajoz, don’t you think?’
Hervey was even more intrigued. Did Sanchez mean the aptness was historical or of the moment? ‘Apt? Possibly. Unlike the French, however – or, I imagine, your countrymen now – the Canaanites were terrified at the prospect of meeting the Israelites. They were resigned to their fate even. Does not Rahab the harlot say, “Our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man”?’
‘Go on, Major Hervey.’
Hervey hesitated. The subject was closing to home. ‘The first object in laying a siege is to persuade the besieged that resistance is futile. The walls of Jericho would have meant little if the defenders had not had the courage to fight.’
Sanchez nodded, but with the appearance of sadness. ‘Would that the hearts of the defenders of Badajoz had melted!’
Hervey presumed he meant the night they had stormed the city. But he supposed it just possible that Sanchez referred in a roundabout way to the Miguelites. He would lead a little more. ‘Yes, would that they had. But Jericho was sacked, as you recall, and all but Rahab’s family put to the sword. It was an offering to God, was it not – a first fruit of the conquest of Canaan?’