Man Of War

He had thought there would be no inquiry. That had been his understanding when Lord John Howard had prevailed on him to withdraw his report on the incident at Waltham Abbey. Before the Africa commission, while in temporary command of his regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons, he had found himself embroiled in a savage little affair at the royal gunpowder mills. Home Office spies had discovered a plot in which an armed body of Irishmen working on a nearby navigation were to break into the mills and carry off a quantity of powder. Hervey’s dragoons had foiled the attempt, and with considerable execution, but the business had troubled him, for the actions of the Irishmen – drunk, most of them – had not suggested any serious enterprise. He had smelled fish (a parliamentary bill for Catholic ‘emancipation’ was the cause of much agitation in certain Tory quarters), and he had submitted a report implying as much. However, his friend had persuaded him to withdraw it, for an inquiry would have required Hervey’s presence in London, and the appointment at the Cape therefore would not have been his.

This compromising had further troubled him, and still did. It had not been his habit to temporize, although these days he knew that stiff-back honour rarely profited anyone – or for that matter the cause of honour itself. But in the week before leaving the Cape for what his old friend the lieutenant-governor called convalescent and matrimonial leave, a summons had arrived from the Horse Guards to attend a court of inquiry into the whole affair of Waltham Abbey. Hervey feared not that such an inquiry would heap opprobrium upon him (except, did any soldier emerge from aiding the civil power with an unblemished record?), rather that the affair would detain him in London and bring him unwelcome attention. The first he did not want, for entirely personal and family reasons, and the second he could most definitely do without, for his aspirations to command of the 6th Light Dragoons remained, even if the odds grew longer by the day, and any less-than-entirely favourable findings would do nothing to advance his suit.

The strangest intelligence had come with that summons too: the Duke of Wellington was now prime minister. Following the death of Mr Canning, and the resignation of his successor Lord Goderich, the King had asked the duke to form a government, which he had done, dutifully though not without difficulty. Hervey had learned all this on the Rochester mail from a pair of particularly loquacious attorney clerks. His informants had been unable to tell him, however, who had taken the duke’s reins at the Horse Guards, though they were able to confirm that Lord Palmerston – for all his support of Canning and his contrary stance now to the ‘high Tories’ – remained at the War Office, which news pleased and troubled Hervey in turn since thanks to Lord John Howard he had some acquaintance with the minister. But it was Palmerston who had ordered the court of inquiry.

There was a line of hackney carriages outside the post office. Hervey engaged one, tipped a boy to transfer their baggage, and bid the driver take them to the United Service Club.

Fairbrother at last fell silent as they drove along Poultry and Cheapside, and then by way of St Paul’s, Fleet Street and the Strand to St James’s, wholly transfixed by what he saw, a juxtaposition of grandeur (new and old alternating – conjoined, indeed) with dereliction of a kind he had not seen; yet a lively dereliction, not a waste, the noise and the vigour of it all beyond his former imagining.

‘So much is torn down and built each time I come,’ said Hervey as they passed yet another demolition site, scene of scaffolding and cranes straining to replace with new before the old was even wholly reduced. ‘The new London Bridge was nothing when last I crossed the old one. And downriver they are driving a tunnel from one side to the other.’

Fairbrother shook his head in amazement.

‘I must tell you again, though, the United Service you will not find more than passing comfortable. A new club is being built,’ (Hervey smiled as he realized Fairbrother must picture all London abuild) ‘and the committee has spent very little on the existing premises as a consequence. It is a pity we shan’t be able to try the new ones.’

Fairbrother turned to him but momentarily. ‘My dear fellow, it is excessively good of you to put me up at your club, no matter what its condition. I hope it occasions you no discomfort.’

Hervey frowned. ‘As I have told you before, you mistake matters if you once think otherwise.’