Hervey smiled. ‘You made the whole Ashanti royal family prisoner, did you not?’
Fairbrother acknowledged the wit: ‘I am hoist with my own petard.’
‘I have observed that powder is a most indiscriminating commodity . . . Just smile at them alclass="underline" they will be vastly charmed. We “proper” officers shall have to be more formal.’
Hervey, as senior major, though not on parade as such, was presented first. ‘Major and Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Hervey, Your Majesty.’
He saluted. ‘Your Majesty.’
The King bowed (or rather, nodded) – a somewhat peeved return, thought Hervey, almost disapproving, as if there were a smell beneath his nose. However, the royal eyes fell on the Bath ribbon worn inconspicuously about his neck inside the tunic collar (Hervey was sure he detected some flicker of regard).
‘Hervey,’ said the King, nodding slowly, as if weighing the name and what he saw.
Hervey regarded it as entirely rhetorical, yet silence by reply would have seemed inadequate. ‘Yes, sir.’
There was what seemed a long pause, and then: ‘Waltham Abbey.’
Hervey, though taken by surprise, and not knowing whether the recognition was by way of approval or otherwise, answered clearly (and some thought a shade defiantly), ‘Your Majesty.’
After a further interminable moment, the King made an unmistakable bow of dismissal. Hervey saluted, reined back three steps, turned to the right and began his return to the rear. As he passed the first of the two carriages – a pony phaeton – drawn forward of the rest, he turned his head left and saluted. Its occupant, a child of about Georgiana’s age, with long ringlets and a large velvet cap, smiled. Hervey, taken by pleasant surprise (a relief following the King’s uncongeniality), returned the smile with a will, which he then found himself embarrassed by when turning his salute to the occupant of the second carriage, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Coburg. She looked at him with amusement, having seen the smile which Princess Victoria had drawn, as if in some conspiracy of indiscipline. It was a look he might have seen in the face of Henrietta.
When all the officers had been presented, and had retaken their places – Fairbrother the last – the King and his party began taking their leave.
‘Dragoons, three cheers for His Majesty the King: hip, hip, hip!’
‘Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!’
The carriages wheeled right, the King raised his hat, and the trumpeters sounded the royal salute.
‘Not an especially happy king, I should say,’ suggested Hervey, recovering his sabre.
‘I do not suppose I would know,’ replied Fairbrother, a little archly. ‘Was the “Merry Monarch” so very cheery?’
‘You are at times very contrary.’
‘I could not admit it. But I would say that Princess Augusta will be an adornment to you all.’
When the formal dismissals were made, Lord Holderness assembled his principal officers under one of the many great elms in the home park, and read them the general’s orders for the manoeuvres:
Information. The enemy is in possession of the whole of the country to the North of the R. Thames, and has a lodgement to the depth of half of one mile to the South of the bridge at Dorney. All other bridges up and downstream to a distance of thirty miles are destroyed.Intention. 6th Lt Dgns accompanied by section of 1st (Chestnut) Trp RHA are to seize the bridge at Dorney by first light tomorrow and hold it until relieved. In the event that the bridge cannot be held against superior forces, it is to be destroyed . . .
He continued through the various special instructions, the method of communicating with the divisional headquarters (as the general’s orderly room was to be known), the limits of manoeuvre, paroles and the like. Hervey could not but mark how different was the scene from the old days, in the Peninsula and Belgium, for every officer was studying his map, and a good map too – one of the Ordnance Survey’s admirable new sheets. They had had nothing its like in the French war.
‘How great an obstacle is the river?’ whispered Fairbrother. The two sat to the rear of the active officers (his friend already beginning to fret at his status as a mere observer).
‘You saw it as we crossed at Eton, though not so wide as there,’ whispered Hervey in reply. ‘But the rain will have swelled it to some consequence.’
Lord Holderness now laid aside the orders. ‘Well, gentlemen, as you perceive, a straightforward enough assignment, though by no means easy – which, I conclude, is the general’s purpose. We have a bridge to capture, three or so leagues upstream, and by five o’clock tomorrow morning. That is the long and the short of it. I would hear your opinion in the matter.’
It was not unknown for a commanding officer to consult with his troop leaders before action; nevertheless Hervey thought such candour augured well, for many a new man (and this was Lord Holderness’s first manoeuvres with the regiment) would have wished to display early his own mind and will.
Captain Myles Vanneck, in temporary command of First Squadron, spoke at once to the essence of the matter. ‘Colonel, do we believe the “enemy” is of a mind that the river is impassable? Since if he does, he will expect that we have no option but to make a direct assault on the bridge.’
Lord Holderness nodded. ‘As soon as I learned the general scheme of things this morning I sent the riding-master and his staff to reconnoitre the river as far as they might, and to look for boats. They report that every one has been tied up on the far bank or else placed in bond, so to speak, by the general’s staff. The riding-master believes that swimming is too perilous an undertaking: the river is swelled to a great speed. He likens it to the Esla.’
There were few in that gathering who had been at the near-disastrous crossing of the Esla that day, fifteen years ago, when the Duke of Wellington began his final push to evict the French from Spain, but ‘Esla’ was seared deep in the collective memory of the regiment. And it was not, after all, a true enemy that was to be attacked: was the enterprise worth a single dragoon’s life? Hervey was keen to hear the verdict.
‘It seems to me,’ said Captain Christopher Worsley, in temporary command of Second Squadron, ‘that it is above all a test of our powers of éclairage in the dark, if such a word is not thereby inappropriate.’
Lord Holderness smiled. ‘I think, in a way, the word is really most apposite. Shall we say au clair de la lune?’
There was polite laughter.
Fairbrother was intrigued by the jousting; but Christopher Worsley, he knew, had been with Hervey at Waltham Abbey – had been shot down, indeed – and by comparison, a ride through the night in peaceable Berkshire must be nothing. ‘There is a moon, I take it?’ he whispered.
They had not seen it in a week, but the tables declared there to be one. ‘Yes; and fullish,’ replied Hervey.
Myles Vanneck spoke again. ‘But we may expect for sure that the Grenadiers will be picketing every approach to the bridge. One of their company officers told me they would be nine-hundred strong in the field.’ The First Guards, the Grenadiers, were the principal element of the opposing forces, and Vanneck did not underestimate them, for all that their days were tied to parades in the capital. ‘Do we know where the rest of the GOC’s force is, Colonel?’