Man Of War

Lord Holderness’s voice recalled them: ‘Dragoons!’ That cautionary word of command, the familiar ‘Dragoons’ rather than ‘Regiment’ – by which the Sixth, standing or sitting easy, was brought to a more uniform position of ‘at ease’ – was the privilege of the commanding officer. Hervey wondered whether it would ever be his. He turned his head forward, the time for chat over.

‘Dragoons, atte-e-enshun!’

Hervey braced.

‘Dra-a-aw swords!’

Out rasped three hundred blades. Hervey saw from the corner of an eye the procession of carriages. So did Fairbrother: ‘I thought he would be mounted,’ he whispered.

‘Sic transit gloria . . .’

The carriage procession and its escort of Life Guards drew up in front of the regiment.

‘Dragoons, royal salute, prese-e-ent arms!’

The officers’ sabres rose and then lowered, and the Sixth’s trumpeters sounded the stuttering middle Cs and Gs of the royal salute.

‘Recov-e-e-r swords!’

Back came the sabres to the carry.

Lord Holderness rode forward, saluted and presented his regiment to the occupant of the foremost carriage. ‘Your Majesty’s Sixth Light Dragoons, three hundred sabres, are ready and awaiting Your Majesty’s inspection.’

The King raised an ornamented walking stick in acknowledgement, as a field marshal raised his baton, and the phaeton began its drive along the double line of dragoons. When it passed the supernumeraries of the serrefile Hervey was at last able to observe his sovereign at close hand, the man who as Regent had been second only to Bonaparte in the life of the fashionable young officer. Bonaparte was dead, however, and the Regent was King, but it would be difficult to picture this sad, bloated man, immobile though by no means ancient, as victor. Hervey felt repelled. He had expected better. He had detested what his poet-friend had once written of the prince – the dregs of their dull race . . . mud from a muddy spring – but oh, what a falling away there had been, what decay since Waterloo. What decay in the army, indeed. So many regiments disbanded, so many reduced. There were a hundred dragoons at the Cape, but even so . . . The regiment mustered a mere three hundred sabres now, scarce enough to see off the mob. ‘Sic transit, to be sure,’ he lamented.

The trumpeter blew the officers’ call. ‘You, too,’ said Hervey, nodding to Fairbrother as he pressed his gelding forward.

When, the day before, Lord Holderness had said he must meet the King, Fairbrother had protested that it did not seem fitting, though he was eager enough to be presented. He had wondered if the graciousness were not somehow a means of subordination, a display of effortless ease in welcoming the outsider, as if nothing could touch the superiority of the 6th Light Dragoons; but as the day and then the evening had worn on, the graciousness had seemed wholly genuine, so that he told himself he was bewaring of shadows once more (as Hervey had told him more than once at the Cape). ‘A king and two princesses in the one day: can any officer of the Royal Africans before have boasted such a thing?’

Hervey smiled. ‘You made the whole Ashanti royal family prisoner, did you not?’

Fairbrother acknowledged the wit: ‘I am hoist with my own petard.’

‘I have observed that powder is a most indiscriminating commodity . . . Just smile at them all: they will be vastly charmed. We “proper” officers shall have to be more formal.’

Hervey, as senior major, though not on parade as such, was presented first. ‘Major and Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Hervey, Your Majesty.’

He saluted. ‘Your Majesty.’

The King bowed (or rather, nodded) – a somewhat peeved return, thought Hervey, almost disapproving, as if there were a smell beneath his nose. However, the royal eyes fell on the Bath ribbon worn inconspicuously about his neck inside the tunic collar (Hervey was sure he detected some flicker of regard).

‘Hervey,’ said the King, nodding slowly, as if weighing the name and what he saw.

Hervey regarded it as entirely rhetorical, yet silence by reply would have seemed inadequate. ‘Yes, sir.’

There was what seemed a long pause, and then: ‘Waltham Abbey.’

Hervey, though taken by surprise, and not knowing whether the recognition was by way of approval or otherwise, answered clearly (and some thought a shade defiantly), ‘Your Majesty.’