'I'm sure we understand that, General.'
Sir Edward nodded. 'Hervey will soon be at Dehli, I should imagine?'
'The troop left on Tuesday. Hervey goes tomorrow.'
Sir Edward nodded again. 'A good choice, Hervey. Ochterlony will like him.'
Joynson raised an eyebrow. 'And what's equally to the point, General, Hervey will like Ochterlony!'
Sir Edward smiled. 'Oh, yes, indeed. That is equally important!'
CHAPTER TEN
THE RESIDENT
Dehli, three weeks later
Sir David Ochterlony, the Honourable East India Company's political resident at the court of Shah Mohammed Akbar Rhize Badshah, the Great Mughal, was sixty-six years old. He had entered the Bengal army when he was not yet twenty and had spent his entire service in Hindoostan. He had fought the French, the Marathas and the Nipalis, and each time he had added garlands to his reputation as both a soldier and a diplomatist. He had been a major-general since 1814 and resident since 1803. His name was held in the highest esteem - venerated, even - throughout India, although it was the opinion of some members of the Bengal council, and Lord Amherst himself, that his retirement was overdue. Indeed, if any man gave the lie to the oft-heard native lament that a grey hair on the head of a European was never to be seen in India, it was Ochterlony - although, ironically, he had been born and bred in America.
Hervey reported to the residency towards the end of the afternoon, within an hour of entering the great old Mughal capital, but already he had formed the strongest impression of decay and ruin in Dehli - of desolation, even. The city walls, half of stone, half of brick, were in poor repair, tombs and mausoleums were everywhere in dilapidation, grass grew long all about. In places there was a smell of corruption as bad as in Calcutta, and his guide told him there was not a house from where the jackal's cry could not be heard of a night. The centuries of depredations, the sackings and the looting, the sieges and the slaughter had brought the once sumptuous imperial city to little more than a tract of dreary and disconsolate tombs.
'Sahib, here nothing lasts,' said Hervey's guide. 'There is much tribulation and little joy. In years past, the living thought only of reposing after death in splendid sepulchres, and their descendants have thought only of destroying what was intended for eternity.'
And Hervey had half shivered in the chill of that judgement.
But the guide had not been melancholy. He had spoken with the indifferent acceptance of fate that was the mark of his religion. And indeed there was cheer in his judgement, for he told Hervey that things would have been immeasurably worse without Sir David Ochterlony. 'Ochterlony-sahib is greatest man in all of empire after Great Mughal himself, sahib.'
Hervey considered himself well used by now to native blandishments, whether from gholam or pandit. Perhaps, though, in the living memory of Hindoostan - and certainly that of his guide
- Sir David Ochterlony had a reasonable claim to greatness. It had been he who had kept Jashwant Rao, the Holkar of Indore, the most powerful of the Maratha chiefs, at bay two decades before, while the Wellesleys made war on the Scindia and the Bhonsla. Greatness, indeed, did not seem too inapt a word as Hervey now contemplated the residency, a classical palazzo on Chandnee chouk near the Lahore gate. It spoke of a confident power, for it had nothing to do with the art of the empire of Tamerlane, only that of the Honourable Company.
As he rode up to its gates, the quarter-guard turned out and presented arms. The havildar saluted and stood his ground, so Hervey dismounted and obliged him by inspecting his men
- smart Bengali sipahis, red-breasted, bare-legged, straps and pouches whitened, muskets burnished. Then a young ensign, very fair-skinned, came. He wore a frock coat and forage hat, as if on picket duty at St James's, and he saluted as sharply, introducing himself and then conducting Hervey to Sir David Ochterlony's quarters. It was, truly, just as if he were arriving at the Horse Guards again.
For weeks Hervey had wondered what he would find at the residency, so many had been the stories. But all he knew for certain was that Sir David was an elderly major-general, and so he composed himself accordingly: the usual military formalities, the stuff of any general headquarters - a brief interview, the presentation of compliments, and so on and so on. But instead of being bidden to wait in an ante-room and then being announced at the door of the resident's office, as he would have expected, the ensign showed him at once into a sitting room furnished in the Mughal style with cushions and divans about the floor, in the middle of which sat a barefoot major-general in a bamboo armchair, wearing a florid silk dressing gown, with a hookah to his mouth.
Hervey rallied quickly enough. 'Good afternoon, Sir David. I am Captain Hervey of the Sixth Light Dragoons.' He had considered the mode of address carefully, concluding that as Sir David Ochterlony was the political resident it was more appropriate to address him by that style rather than as 'General'.
Sir David did not reply at once, nodding as if in a dream.
Hervey stood at attention but removed his cap, uncertain how the interview would proceed. Without doubt, there was here before him what in Calcutta they called a 'mofussil eccentric', one who had been overlong in native India. Any reference to military rank seemed incongruous, and the display of military normality that had attended his arrival only served to make the situation seem more absurd. It was not entirely true to say that his heart sank, but it was not nearly so light as when he had begun his assignment. 'I have the honour to report for duty, three officers and fifty-three dragoons at your service, sir.'
Sir David took the pipe from his mouth and beckoned a khitmagar to bring a chair. 'And a pipe,' he called after him in Urdu, or something very like it, for Hervey grasped its meaning.
'No, thank you, sir. I am, in truth, rather parched.'
'My dear boy, my dear boy!' Sir David took the pipe from his mouth again and bellowed, ‘Quai hai! Sherbet for Captain Hervey-sahib!'
Hervey took his seat and waited to be spoken to, doubts crowding in apace.
The silence continued. Sir David, pipe to his mouth once more, was content to sit and contemplate the new arrival.
At length he seemed satisfied. He took the pipe from his mouth and nodded. 'How are things in Calcutta?'
It was a not unreasonable question, except that Hervey had scarcely moved beyond the confines of the garrison save to the Somerviles' house at Fort William since coming from Rangoon. He trusted that the resident had no more appetite for drawing-room gossip than he. 'In as far as I can say, Sir David, the war with Ava goes badly. There is news, or rumour perhaps would be the better description, that Lord Combermere shall succeed Sir Edward Paget next year. Beyond that I fear there is little I know.'
Sir David's expression of surprise was very pronounced. 'Calcutta has become an exceedingly dull place these late years if that is the extent of your intelligence!'
Hervey sighed inwardly; this was very like keeping company with an ageing parent. He would have to try hard not to become by turns impatient or indulgent. 'In truth, Sir David, I have been laid low these past months, and confined largely to the military lines.'
Sir David looked vexed. 'Laid low? Laid low with what?'
Hervey forced himself to remember that he was speaking to the hero of Nipal. 'I received a ball in my shoulder at Rangoon, Sir David, and thereafter contracted the fever.'