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

expedition – for one, Captain Fairbrother of the Cape Rifles, whom I should very much wish to present to you, sir.’
    ‘By all means, Hervey. And stand easy.’ He turned to Colonel Youell. ‘Have Captain Fairbrother’s name entered for the next levee, would you?’
    ‘Certainly, my lord.’
    Hervey cleared his throat. ‘My lord, Captain Fairbrother has accompanied me from the Cape, and indeed he is here with me this morning. I had hoped you would receive him.’
    Lord Hill frowned. ‘That is most irregular, Hervey. I stand not on great ceremony but I cannot have the business of the Horse Guards conducted with a complete absence of it.’
    Hervey felt suddenly discomposed; he had evidently misjudged matters – overreached himself, even. ‘I beg your pardon, my lord.’
    Colonel Youell now cleared his throat. ‘There is time before Prince Lieven’s, my lord.’
    A smile displaced the commander-in-chief’s frown. ‘Very well. We shall receive your Captain Fairbrother. But first sit you down, Hervey. Take some Madeira.’
    Hervey removed his forage cap, took a glass from the tray which an orderly brought, and sat in an armchair half-facing the commander-in-chief’s desk and the windows which looked out on to the parade ground. Snow was now falling so thick as to make St James’s Park at the far side quite invisible.
    Lord Hill observed it too. ‘You were not with us on that blessèd trudge to Corunna, were you, Youell?’
    ‘I was not, my lord.’ Youell did not add that he had been fevered on Martinique with General Maitland, a gentleman volunteer not yet seventeen.
    ‘Damnably cold, and the army behaved ill – not every regiment, not by any means, but too many. Badly served by their officers, some of them, and scandalously ill-provisioned. But that was no excuse.’
    None of this could have been unknown to Youell, reckoned Hervey; and he wondered at Lord Hill’s purpose. ‘All of them fought well at Corunna, though, sir,’ he tried, risking rebuke in speaking unbidden, and seemingly to contradict.
    But Lord Hill better than most knew how well they had fought that day, for he had commanded the brigade on the left flank, astride the road to the town. ‘The point is, Hervey, if the retreat had continued another week we’d scarcely have had an army left to fight with at Corunna.’ He looked out at the snow again. ‘Look here, you will dine with me this day week, and we shall speak then of your duties in the east. There’s nothing arising from your Cape despatches of which we need speak now; they are admirably clear. But I have to tell you one thing – and though it is not for me to do so, I feel the obligation since it was I who selected you to command of the Sixth.’
    Indeed it was, Hervey knew – and without purchase. ‘I have not had opportunity to thank you, my lord.’
    Lord Hill looked uneasy. ‘Yes, yes, that is all very well – and I do not need thanks for doing my duty – but matters are not as they were. I am fighting a damnably bloody war of retrenchment. I have had to give orders for the Sixth and two other regiments to be reduced, to be placed en cadre – a depot squadron, a hundred men, no more.’
    Hervey felt his stomach turn as badly as it could before a fight. ‘For how long, sir?’
    ‘Indefinitely. They’re supposed to be disbanded: that is what Hardinge asked, but I’ve managed to persuade him that the economy in placing them en cadre is almost as great, and the general situation too uncertain to risk complete disbandment – far easier to re-raise than if they had been wholly struck from the list.’
    Hervey was now on the edge of his chair. ‘But, sir, why the Sixth? Our seniority, our late service in India, our—’
    ‘Colonel Hervey,’ warned Youell, firmly but with a note of respect nevertheless.
    ‘Forgive me, my lord, but it makes no sense to reduce a regiment which has acquired such expertise in its trade. Why cannot those late sent to India be