Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service Read Online Free

died?’
    Hervey nodded again, his friend’s eclectic knowledge ever diverting. ‘And where did you come by that?’
    ‘I read it in Bishop Burnett’s history.’
    Hervey shook his head in part despair. ‘I confess I have not read him, but my good and late departed friend D’Arcey Jessope was always inordinately proud of the march, which he somehow placed on a par with Bonaparte’s on Moscow.
    ‘“A cold coming they had of it. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off in solstitio brumali , the very dead of winter”.’
    Fairbrother inclined his head, his turn to be impressed.
    ‘A sermon on the Nativity,’ explained Hervey, ‘by another bishop. My father is wont to preach a deal of it each Christmas.’
    ‘Which bishop?’
    ‘I don’t recall. Is it of any moment?’
    ‘Everything is of some moment, is it not? You yourself have said so in matters of soldiery.’
    ‘I concede. But I can’t remember.’
    They were half-way across the parade ground before Fairbrother voiced his doubts about their destination once more. ‘You are sure Lord Hill would wish to see me?’
    Hervey shortened his step only very slightly. ‘If he wishes to see me then there can be no doubt that he will wish to see you. He is a most affable man, and besides, your repute has gone before you in those despatches from the Cape.’
    Fairbrother had saved the life of the lieutenant-governor in the desperate skirmish with Mbopa’s warriors. Hervey was sure that this alone would secure him entry to any drawing room in London.
    Fairbrother made no reply.
    They walked a few more yards in silence. ‘And it was Bishop Andrewes. Lancelot Andrewes.’
    ‘I shall make enquiries of him,’ said Fairbrother in all seriousness. ‘What fine words, they: “The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short”. I only wish I might hear them from your father’s pulpit.’
    Hervey smiled. ‘I’m sure you shall. The parish is very fond of the sermon. They would have him preach no other at Christmas. Perhaps we might resolve here and now that if we do not Christmas next at Hounslow then we shall do so at Horningsham. There; does that serve?’
    ‘It does most assuredly.’
    ‘And you shall come with me to Wiltshire as soon as we are finished here and wherever we must – to ride the Plain again, and shoot bustard. Just as I promised we would.’
    ‘Agreeable in every respect.’
    Fairbrother felt a warming in his breast that no brandy could induce. In truth his studied nonchalance and contrary passion masked a great want of companionship, which Hervey had come unexpectedly to supply, and which Fairbrother by return supplied in like manner, though in Hervey’s case the want arose not from birth on the other side of the blanket but by the steady falling away, for good reason and ill, of those with whom he had seen service.
    It was more than that, however. In Fairbrother, Hervey recognized a quite exceptional aptitude for the sabre and the saddle, a sort of ‘sixth sense’ for the field. He himself had been taught a good deal as a boy – in a boyish sort of way – by Shepherd Coates, who had lately been trumpeter to General Tarleton. But it seemed to him that Fairbrother’s talent was not merely acquired; there was something that came with the blood – and he was sure it must be that part of the blood which came from the dark continent of Africa. Fairbrother’s mother was a house-slave of a Jamaica plantation, and therefore but one generation removed from the savagery of her tribe – the savagery and the wisdom. When the two friends had faced that savagery together, at the frontier of the Eastern Cape, it had been Fairbrother who had known, unfailingly, what to do. But more: he had then been able to execute his own advice, to take to his belly to out-savage the savage. And yet, too, such were Fairbrother’s cultivated mind and manners – which his father, the plantation owner, had seen to as if Fairbrother had