Warrior

Hervey, for all his dismay – anger, even – at the late events in Natal, could not but pity his old friend's situation, especially now he had lost his best supporter in Whitehall, though even had there been a telegraph line from the Colonies Office to the Cape there could scarcely have been a dismissal communicated so fast. 'You acted as you saw best in the King's interest,' he replied firmly. 'Things might easily have gone our way. Fortune was not smiling on us that day.'

It was true, except that Fortune was not ultimately against them: they had made their escape from kwaWambaza, when few others – Ngwadi included – had done so.

'But now there is a chief on that throne who is ill disposed to us. For all that we know, Dingane may be gathering his strength even now.'

'I think it unlikely,' said Hervey, taking his coffee and moving to a chair by the open west window of the lieutenant-governor's office. 'It was in part Shaka's prolonged war-making that sowed the seeds of his fall. Dingane will likely as not wish a period of peace to consolidate his succession. It is, after all, a precarious one.'

Somervile rose from his desk and limped to the sideboard to replenish his cup. 'Your appreciation of the situation would do credit to a diplomatist. I wish only that my essay as a warrior had been as acute.'

'I think you chastise yourself unfairly. The warrior's trade is a difficult one even for the most practised. I never had a harder fight than at kwaWambaza.'

Somervile took a sip of his coffee, and stifled a sigh. 'The warrior's trade, as you reduce it thus, is not slaying, but being slain. That is why our nation – I might add, the world – honours the warrior, because he holds his life at the service of the state.'

'Perhaps "King" rather than "state" might be more . . . lyrical?'

'Do not dismiss the notion lightly, Hervey. You placed your life at the service of the nation, and I fear the nation will not repay you.'

Hervey half frowned. 'I have generally settled for penury in that direction in the past – as have we all in the service. Beggars in red, Somervile.' He knew, though, that in recent weeks Somervile had placed his own life in the service of the King, but that his old friend believed he would not now see the gilded appointment in Canada which Huskisson had promised him.

'I am especially sorry that . . . Shaka's favourite,' (he had noticed that Somervile had not been able to pronounce Pampata's name since kwaWambaza) 'should have perished, and in such a brute way.'

Hervey turned his head to the window. He had been trying for a month to put away both the fact and the image of her death. 'It is very hard not to think of this country as but one enormous brute place. I confess I will be well pleased to leave this fairest cape, for all its sunsets and sunrises.'

'And your dragoons?'

'They will not be mine for much longer . . . But, yes, they too are glad to be recalled. Though we leave behind a good few of them in the ground.'

Somervile knew that there were as many buried from natural causes as by hostile hand, but he honoured them just the same. 'How shall you proceed in the case of Captain Brereton?' he asked, his brow lined.

Hervey turned his head back. 'With recourse to the cardinal virtues.'

'The Platonic virtues, I trust you mean; not the Patristic excrescence.'

Hervey suppressed a smile. 'Indeed.'

'And to which of the two appropriate virtues shall you have recourse: prudence or justice?'

'Prudence.'

'The only one for which experience is required.'

'Just so.'

'And Brereton will therefore be placed in the pantheon of regimental heroes.'

'I see no offence against God or man in that.'

'No. Nor do I.'

'I must see to it, though, that Fairbrother has his laurels – and Collins too. It does not bear thinking how events might have been without their admirable address.'

'Admirable, admirable.' Somervile took his chair once more. 'And, I might add, you have made a very great ally in Colonel Smith. His despatch – if mine does not – makes clear your own peerless service.'

Hervey nodded, obliged.

Somervile heaved a considerable sigh. 'And so, you will take Friday's packet and be in London in a month. And I, meanwhile, shall await the new governor . . . and my fate.'

Hervey rose, and began making to leave, glad at least that he would be going to meet his fate, as a soldier ought, rather than awaiting it as his poor old friend must.

As he rose, he remembered the letter from Kezia, in his pocket; it had come that morning by one of the Indiamen, much delayed, and he had still not opened it. 'Well, we all dine together tonight, do we not? That is no occasion for low spirits. I shall take my leave until then.' He held up the letter. 'Matters to be addressed . . . Canada, and all.'

An hour or so later he had attended to his most pressing correspondence. He picked up the sheets of paper and began reading them over. His account of events in Natal was – even he recognized – flat in the extreme, but he had no wish to trouble Kezia with details in which she would scarce be interested, and he certainly would give no account which included the sanguinary particulars. All of it she would be able to read, no doubt, in the pages of The Times, if she wished, for the official despatches now seemed to find their way into print with alarming speed.

He lingered over the final page, wondering about both its contents and manner of expression:

And now, my dearest wife, I return to the subject of the lieutenantcolonelcy of the 81st. Events here, of which I have only been able to give but a very incomplete account, have led me to the settled conclusion that I must take the commission. In doing so I know it to be contrary to your wish, and that you have every good reason to set your face against it, Canada being a place of some primitive society yet, and I therefore can neither insist upon your accompanying me nor even hope for a change of heart, for I see that such would be unconducive to your music and therefore to your happiness. I shall therefore bear the deprivation for as long as needs be, in the sure hope that it will not be excessively long, and that we shall soon be reunited in a station more agreeable to you.

He laid down the sheet, and groaned. What other way might he express himself? He rose, and paced about the room. Ought he perhaps not to write at all? Should he wait until he was back in London to explain? But the sloop-of-war left on tomorrow's tide, and would likely make the passage a week and more faster than would his packet. There was no excuse not to take the opportunity to write, and if he were to write, there was no excuse not to disclose his settled resolve. Besides, there were letters for Georgiana and his family, and others (one, even, for Kat); it was insupportable that there should not be one for his wife too.

He sat down at his writing table once more, scratched a few signatory lines, and placed down the sheet to dry. He would now change into undress uniform and go to the hospital to see how were his sick dragoons (he still thought of them as his, even though he would soon be taking off his blue coat for good). Some had been most grievously sick by the time they had made it back to Port Natal.