It had no right to be. Hervey had seen the effects of that detachment, men dying for want of the staples of war. And if the Calcutta quality, and the clerks and the merchants, really knew how badly went things they would be busy burying their silver and taking passage home. Not that the war would ever come to this. Ava might boast of marching into Bengal, and her great general, Maha Bundula, might lead the army, but the Burmans could never prevail against redcoats. In the end, he believed there was no one who could, for however ill he was served, a redcoat - a King's redcoat - fought with the ferocious conviction of his own superiority. That was why so many of them died: they did not accept defeat, because redcoats were never defeated. Too many people had traded on that simple notion in years past. They did so now with the army in the east.
Hervey wondered how many of those good companions he had known in Rangoon had since been stilled by the enemy's shot or the fever. He scarcely dared think of how Peto was faring, for he knew that gallant man would be everywhere his sailors faced danger, be it the enemy or the country. There would be so many widows' letters, or to other kin. And none of them would say that such and such a good servant of the King had died because other servants of the King had been careless of his life. But, in the end, the merchants of the Honourable Company would not need to bury their silver. The Burmans were no martial race. Their armies had been formed neither by the British, the Moghuls nor the French. Indeed, by what right did they begin a fight they could not win?
But it would be some time. Yesterday, Eyre Somervile had come, as he had every day since Hervey's return weak with fever, and the news from the east had been as dispiriting as might have been. General Campbell's force had fewer than three thousand effectives, and the flotilla was in a poor way too, with whole crews laid low by remittent fevers - even the bigger ships (Larne was so incapacitated she had had to be replaced by Arachne). There had been some successes, but Campbell was besieged still, by Nature and the Burmans. And now there was speculation that Maha Bundula himself, at the head of his army of Arakan, twice the strength of anything Campbell could muster, might soon be marching through the Irawadi's delta.
Well, he must put it all out of his mind. Today he was to dine with Somervile and Emma for the first time since leaving for Rangoon; Ledley, the regimental surgeon, had at last pronounced him fit (Hervey had pronounced himself fit more than a week ago). It was near six o'clock and his bearer would soon be here to supervise the team of bhistis who filled his bath with hot water. The surgeon had been most explicit in his warning against any chill, for he was advised that the fever was born of the malaria of the Rangoon marshes and could recur at any time, perhaps even in severer form.
Hervey took care to put on a good lawn shirt when he had bathed, and a linen coat, for as soon as the sun set he would otherwise feel the cool of the evening keenly. He took up his brushes and smiled as he picked the strands of black hair from them. One evening soon he would dine with his bibi here - whatever the rules said. But she dared not return this evening. He would go instead to her at the bibi khana beyond the civil lines towards the Chitpore road, where the rich Bengali merchants lived. It was a comfortable and private place. He liked it there. He was pleased he kept her properly.
Emma Somervile greeted him with a kiss to the lips. ‘I never doubted you would be restored,' she said, smiling. 'But it has been many weeks, and you looked so fevered when last we visited.’
Hervey took a glass of champagne from the khitmagar and sat, as she bade him, beside her.
'Eyre will be here presently. There is an express boy come.’
'He is much occupied, I think. It must be the hardest thing to be so at odds with the Governor-General.’
Emma raised an eyebrow. 'It wears him more than I could have imagined. Oh, I do not mean the disagreements themselves, but the dismay at seeing so much going wrong when he had counselled against it from the start. And still Lord Amherst is not inclined to listen.’
Hervey frowned. 'There's a certain sort of man who would rather exhaust all his stock than admit to a wrong course and take a new one at half the cost. I fear there's many a grave that will be testimony to our Governor-General's obduracy. I'm only glad there are men such as Eyre who will expose the folly of it.'
Moments later Eyre Somervile entered the room with a look half triumphant and half exasperated. He dispensed with formal greetings. 'This is just as I had expected - worse.' He waved a letter at them. 'Maha Bundula is now in Ava. Bagyidaw's recalled Prince Tharrawaddy and Bundula is to have command of the army they've been assembling these past three months.'
'Do you have any notion how large?' asked Hervey.
'Thirty thousand - over and above the same number back from Arakan.' Somervile consulted the letter again. 'Also, three hundred jingals, the Cassay Horse from Manipur - about a thousand of them - artillery on elephant-back . . .'
'What is a jingal?' asked Emma.
'A gun,' replied Hervey, turning to her. 'Very light - the ball weighs less than a pound - but they tote them anywhere. And very destructive they are too.'
'Campbell will be thrown out of Rangoon in very short order indeed,' added her husband.
'How do you come by the intelligence, Eyre?'
Somervile seemed rapt in thought.
'Eyre?'
'I'm sorry, my dear. I was thinking how much time we had, for the report says that Bundula boasted to Tharrawaddy he would feast in Rangoon in eight days. He could not, of course - not from the time of making the boast. The distance is too great in the best of weather. I suspect he meant eight days after once besieging the place.'
Emma stayed her questions for the time being.
Hervey looked uncertain. 'Unless, that is, Bundula were to engage Campbell piecemeal.'
'That is against the best precepts, is it not?'
'As a rule, but there would be advantage in bringing pressure to bear gently on Rangoon, for Campbell's so weakened that he might seek terms—'
Emma looked shocked. 'Do you mean to say that General Campbell could surrender?'
Hervey shook his head. 'I think it the last thing he would do. But Maha Bundula might not. The Burmans do not have a very high opinion of the Company.'
'Well’ said Somervile, making to turn. 'I must send to the commander-in-chief and to Amherst. They will surely now wish to reinforce Campbell's garrison. That, or order its withdrawal. You will excuse me for the moment.'
Hervey sat down again, taking a second glass of champagne.
'Do you know the source of his intelligence, Matthew?' asked Emma. 'Is it the same as before?'
'I imagine so,' he replied, cautiously. Somervile's best intelligence had come thence, and he knew of no other capable of yielding such precise and valuable information. Not the girl herself - she had merely been the cause for the boundless gratitude of a father whose abducted daughter had been returned unsullied, an unexpected prize from Hervey's action against the war boats on the Chittagong three years before. But Somervile had played up Hervey's chivalry in the jungled hill tracts to great purpose - like Rama and Sita, he had described her rescue. Indeed, he considered himself to be an intriguer of the first water on account of it. And so a favourite of King
Bagyidaw's had become a most willing collaborator with the Company. 'And very good intelligence it is, too. Though I fear that neither Campbell nor the commander-in-chief can make the best of it.' 'How do you mean?'