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In England, the new government is facing protests against the attempts of the Tory-dominated House of Lords to thwart the passing of the Reform Bill.

In India, relations are increasingly strained between the presidency of Madras and some of its neighbouring princely states.

Having taken command of the action to restore order in Bristol after one of the bloodiest riots in his country’s history, Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey finds himself pilloried by the Radical press and out of favour. But an old friend, Sir Eyre Somervile, offers him a career lifeline: a return to India in order to strengthen Britain’s military presence at the East India Company’s headquarters in Madras.

And so Hervey and the Sixth are ordered to the state of Coorg, where the Rajah has broken his bond with the Company and the Crown. Called upon to crush this rebellion, Hervey wonders whether he and his men will get out of such a perilous campaign unscathed, and with their reputations restored.

The Passage to India marks Allan Mallinson’s welcome return to fiction – and to his redoubtable hero, Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons.

About the Author

ALLAN MALLINSON was a soldier for thirty-five years, serving first with the infantry and then the cavalry. He began writing while still serving. His first book was a history of four regiments of British light dragoons, one of whose descendant regiments he commanded. It was followed by A Close Run Thing, the first novel in the acclaimed and bestselling series chronicling the life of a fictitious cavalry officer, Matthew Hervey, before and after Waterloo. His The Making of the British Army was shortlisted for several prizes, while his centenary history, 1914: Fight the Good Fight, won the British Army’s Book of the Year Award. Its sequel, Too Important for the Generals, is a provocative look at strategy and leadership during the Great War. Allan Mallinson also writes for The Times, is history editor for UnHerd.com and reviews for the TLS and the Spectator. He lives on Salisbury Plain.

MATTHEW PAULINUS HERVEY

BORN: 1791, second son of the Reverend Thomas Hervey, Vicar of Horningsham in Wiltshire, and of Mrs Hervey; one sister, Elizabeth.

EDUCATED: Shrewsbury School (praepostor)

MARRIED: 1817 to Lady Henrietta Lindsay, ward of the Marquess of Bath (deceased 1818). 1828 to Lady Lankester, widow of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Ivo Lankester, Bart, lately commanding 6th Light Dragoons.

CHILDREN: a daughter, Georgiana, born 1818.

1808: commissioned cornet by purchase in His Majesty’s 6th Light Dragoons (Princess Caroline’s Own).

1809-14: served Portugal and Spain; evacuated with army at Corunna, 1809, returned with regiment to Lisbon that year; present at numerous battles and actions including Talavera, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vitoria.

1814: present at Toulouse; wounded Lieutenant.

1814-15: served Ireland, present at Waterloo, and in Paris with army of occupation.

1815: Additional ADC to the Duke of Wellington (acting captain); despatched for special duty in Bengal.

1816: saw service against Pindarees and Nizam of Hyderabad’s forces; returned to regimental duty. Brevet captain; brevet major.

1818: saw service in Canada; briefly seconded to US forces, Michigan Territory; resigned commission.

1819:reinstated, 6th Light Dragoons; captain.

1820-26: served Bengal; saw active service in Ava (wounded severely); present at Siege of Bhurtpore; brevet major. 1826-27: detached service in Portugal.

1827: in temporary command of 6th Light Dragoons, major; in command of detachment of 6th Light Dragoons at the Cape Colony; seconded to raise Corps of Cape Mounted Rifles; acting lieutenant-colonel; Umtata River; wounded.

1828: home leave.

1828: service in Natal and Zululand.

1829: attached to Russian army in the Balkans for observation in the war with Turkey.

1830: assumes command 6th Light Dragoons (Princess Augusta's Own) in substantive rank of lieutenant-colonel, Hounslow.

The
PASSAGE
TO INDIA

ALLAN MALLINSON

Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Allan Mallinson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Also by Allan Mallinson

The Matthew Hervey titles

For more information on Allan Mallinson and his books, see his website at www.allanmallinsonbooks.com

PART ONE

A TIME OF PEACE

ornament image

It is an old observation, that a time of peace is always a time of prodigies; for as our news-writers must adorn their papers with that which the critics call, ‘The Marvellous,’ they are forced in a dead calm of affairs, to ransack every element for proper amusements, and either astonish their readers from time to time with a strange and wonderful sight, or be content to lose their custom.

JOSEPH ADDISON

(with Thomas Steele, founder of The Spectator, 1711)

The Words of the Preacher

‘I TAKE AS my text, the Book of Ecclesiastes, chapter three: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven”.’ Hervey settled a little lower into his pew. It was no church parade; there were no officers to whom he must give an impression of attentiveness, no serjeants to whom he must display an upright bearing; nor need he concern himself with what the regiment’s chaplain was saying – what its consequence to the listening dragoons (or what the thoughts of the unlistening ones). Besides, from long experience of the pulpit in Horningsham he was certain that no great tumult or misunderstanding was likely to ensue from his father’s homily. And the words of Ecclesiastes – ‘The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem’ – he knew by heart; and their poetry at least was ever easy to the ear.

The Archdeacon of Salisbury, or Sarum as his father preferred, ever mindful of the time before the Reformation (that wretched word ‘Reform’ under another guise), looked up and over the lectern, the tallows in their glass sleeves lighting his face as well as his sermon book – a face of some age, now, but still one of distinction, and kindly – and glanced to left and right to the opposing choir stalls, where sat the major part of the congregation as well as the choristers and vicars choral; and, trusting to the abat-voix and the stones to magnify his words, began the roll call of every thing and purpose to which there was a season and a time.

‘A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted …’

The first of the roll call had never given Hervey cause for contemplation, for the one was past, and the other was the prerogative of the Almighty. True, he himself might have been dead a dozen times and more – one dozen dozen – were it not for his own skill and address, but these he knew (in his better moments) to be a gift, a gift of the Almighty; and it was blasphemy to believe otherwise – as well as, perhaps, hubris.

‘A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up …’

This, as a rule, did not disturb him either, for the one, literally speaking, was the soldier’s profession – the killing and the breaking down – and the other was the thing of the settled life. His father, he knew, would say that the Preacher spoke figuratively also; but it did not serve the soldier to contemplate too keenly the figurative, for in him it was – in the words of the Bard – action that was eloquence, the eyes more learnèd than the ears.

‘A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance …’

Perhaps tears and laughter were figures of speech too, though he’d known both very literally. And in truth he had never been able to shed entirely the mourning band – thirteen, rising fourteen years that it was since Henrietta perished (and so cruel a death, in the white wastes of Canada – terrifying, lonely, and on his account). True, it had not made him continent – Lady Katherine Greville remained a standing rebuke in that regard (there was no expiation of sin in old General Greville’s being an absentee husband) – but did he let Henrietta’s memory haunt him to excess, such that from the outset, and without his knowing, it had somehow stood between him and the second Mrs Hervey? Might Kezia’s rejection of him, now, have just cause – rather than, as he supposed, arising from some deficiency in Kezia herself?

A ‘time to dance’ … He smiled to himself again, if ruefully. Certainly he did not now dance with much grace. Indeed he danced very little these days. There had been a time, very briefly … But there he was again, harking back: Henrietta – why did he torment himself so?

‘A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing …’

Casting away stones, then gathering them? This his father had always said was wanting understanding. There were those who held that it was to mar an enemy’s fields by casting stones upon them, as the Israelites had when they invaded Moab; but none could be sure. And the Preacher spoke not solely of conjugal embraces, but of parents embracing their children – as Jacob had his – and of one brother embracing another, as Esau had Jacob; and one friend another. Yet why should conjugal embrace be regulated by season? There were some, he knew (or, at least, he fancied he knew), who lived each day in warm embrace; why had his own seasons been so short?

‘A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away …’

He sighed irreverently. Nothing was permanent, or so it seemed. In truth it were better not to get, so as to be spared the struggle to keep, and the pain of losing. Should he chide himself for so mean a thought?

‘A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak …’

He sighed again, this time almost audibly – and then checked himself: he might be in a plain coat, with none of his dragoons behind him, but it would not serve for the family of the Succentor, and Vicar of the Close, which were Archdeacon Hervey’s other preferments (how sudden these pluralities had come after so many years in that tumbledown parsonage at Horningsham), to appear in dissent. But this was indeed a time of rending. The country was in as divided a state of passion as any time he could recall. ‘Reform!’ – as if a single measure might right every ill of which its advocates complained. Reform had claimed already the best of men – the Duke of Wellington, no longer His Majesty’s first minister because he had set his face against it. Yes, the system as it presently stood was imperfect, but yet it served. Who knew what injury might be done in some Jacobin-like amendment? Just half a league from where they sat now was a bare hill, ‘the green mound’ as the Reformers contemptuously called it – Old Sarum. Once it had been the city itself – castle, cathedral and all, the place in which that great and terrible king Henry Plantagenet had kept prisoner his queen – Eleanor of Aquitaine – for having incited her sons to rebel against their father. Since Edward the Second’s time Old Sarum had returned two members to parliament. That it did so still when occupied by no other than sheep was, it was true, an anomaly; but no system could be raised to a state of perfection. That its two members were brothers who had made their fortune in India, come home and ‘bought’ the borough was an anomaly too; but ought a thing that had served the nation for four centuries now be cast aside by the demands of ‘progress’? If the country’s forefathers, who strove so manfully to make a parliament, chose to dispose the seats in this way, who now should gainsay them?

He smiled to himself. He recalled how he had put that very question to Cornet St Alban – Lieutenant and Adjutant now, and the best of men – during their Norfolk sojourn two winters ago. The younger son of the Earl of Bicester had asked as they passed Castle Rising (which also, like Old Sarum, the Reformists called a ‘rotten borough’), ‘Truly, Colonel, how can it serve that green mounds return a member – two members indeed – and a place such as Birmingham none?’ And when Hervey had put his own question by way of reply, St Alban had countered very elegantly with ‘Colonel, are not members of parliament meant to be lawmakers, not antiquarians?’

Few things had pleased Hervey more than the society of this newcome officer of light dragoons, though he supposed he would not have that pleasure for long. Officers with such connections and means were not much persuaded of the distinction of long service – unless the vainest, most empty-headed kind, like Brudenell in the Eighth, who’d bought his way from cornet to half-colonel in six years, and would doubtless have a regiment soon (without hearing a shot fired but at his own partridges).

His eyelids were growing heavy though. He’d posted through the night, nodding a deal of the way but waking at every change of horses, then stopping on the old Roman road just beyond Figsbury Ring – yet another ‘green mound’, though one at least that did not return a member to parliament – to watch as the last-but-one sunrise of October revealed the great cathedral below, which was to his mind the finest building in all the world (and he had seen and wondered at the Taj Mahal); and on arriving in the Close he had scarce had time to shave and breakfast before he dutifully attended Morning Prayer – ‘Matins’, as his father mischievously preferred – and afterwards walked with him a little in the cloisters to promote the circulation, walked next with his mother to the college of matrons to dispense alms and counsel, and then in the water meadows with the old spaniel who’d outlived his former master in the canonry. Evening Prayer – ‘Evensong’, as the archdeacon also insisted – he would not as a rule have attended; once of a Sunday, these days, he found enough to be reminded of the eternity of damnation that followed from sin. And as the light faded in that glorious space, the nave and choir, he gave himself leave to close his eyes, for was it not said unto them ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath’?

But now came the most tumultuous of the Preacher’s seasons, ‘A time to love, and a time to hate’, in which he thought his father’s voice wonderfully conveyed first the sadness of the opposing passions, before, with a dramatic effect that he’d not formerly witnessed, the Venerable Thomas Hervey pronounced the concluding ‘a time of war, and a time of peace’.

War: his (Matthew Hervey’s) profession, one way or another, and pretty much all he knew. He’d been born into it. When he was but a babe in arms, the French had cut off the head of their king and broken down their neighbours’ fences, setting alight all Europe and beyond, so that it smouldered still. As a boy he’d known the peril of invasion right enough, riding the Plain eager to see the beacons that stood ready to rouse the nation to arms. As a youth at Shrewsbury, all ink-fingered, he’d cheered when the tide turned against the would-be invader, when Nelson’s ‘wooden walls’ had emptied the camp at Boulogne of the presumptuously named ‘Armée d’Angleterre’. And then, as Britain found a lodgement at last on the continent, to become Bonaparte’s ‘Spanish ulcer’, he had himself put on the King’s coat, which he had with one brief interval worn ever since. Indeed, he had bloodied his sword with such regularity that he could think of it as nothing. It was as well that war was so terrible, otherwise he would grow too fond of it. But there was no avoiding war; it sought out the timid and the unprepared. It could be postponed only to the advantage of others.

Yet all was now determinedly peace, and soldiers in peace were like chimneys in summer. What therefore was his profession now?

IT WOULD BE a good night for glaziers. For carpenters and joiners too; likewise plumbers and bricklayers. For locksmiths, cabinetmakers, and any sort of handyman who could knock up a cot, a bench or a board. For drapers, upholsterers and sellers of china – even for wine merchants (that is, if their cellars had survived the tumult). Indeed, for any artisan or tradesman capable of securing or restoring the fabric, fittings or furnishings of the objects – civic and private alike – of the mob’s destructive vigour.

But especially glaziers. No protest seized upon the attention of parliament, press, and public so much as the breaking of windows. In April, Apsley House, the residence of the duke himself, had been the mark for the London mob. Its illustrious owner had been too well accustomed to the fall of shot on the battlefield to care a rush for the fall of stones upon his floor (in regard of his own safety at least), but for reasons of public order – and no doubt, too, to damn their eyes – at the first lull of riot he had got himself iron shutters on every window, proof even against bullet and ball (whence he became to the more insolent of the press, ‘the Iron Duke’).

And for why? Because the mobile vulgus, the ‘mob’, bayed for ‘The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill.’

And in Bristol now there was many an Apsley House (Nottingham had faced the same but a fortnight before, the castle burned to a shell). The country felt tinder-dry, and whether or not fires began could turn randomly on the popularity or otherwise of a single man at the critical point of combustion. In the case of Bristol, that man was Sir Charles Wetherell, recorder of the city and member for Boroughbridge in the County of York, a seat which ‘The Bill’ would have seen extinguished; and thereby Sir Charles was an implacable opponent of Reform. Two days ago he had proceeded to the great port to open the assizes, in spite of warnings that his appearance would provoke disturbances. These warnings he had simply reported to Lord Melbourne, the home secretary, stating his intention to carry out his duty in the ordinary way, ‘whatever risk to mine own person’, and leaving the government to take precautions to protect the public peace. Indeed, it was almost with defiance that he entered the city – not privily but with a display of pomp befitting, to his mind, a judge of assize. The warnings were at once proved well founded; his carriage was received with yells, hootings, and stones, so that there was a considerable call on the constables to escort him to the Guildhall to open the commission of peace. Here he loudly threatened to commit to prison any person who could be pointed out to him as contributing to the disturbance, which though in law was proper, in prudence was lacking, not least because there was not the means to effect any arrest. Indeed, it was not so much a spark to the tinder, but a drenching of fuel to the flame of popular fury. By the time he reached the Mansion House, the mob had routed the constables and were attacking the building, so that he was only able to escape, and in disguise, by clambering over the roofs of neighbouring tenements. The mayor, himself a reformer (though little that served in trying to quell the tumult), remained in the Mansion House. Whether the mob knew it or not, they began now to tear up the iron palisades to use as levers against the brickwork of the adjoining walls to furnish themselves with missiles to hurl at every window, while others forced the entrance and brought in straw to set the place ablaze. Only the sudden appearance of the cavalry saved the situation.

The mayor’s victory was short-lived, however. That Sunday morning, the last of October, the mob returned. Without firearms or other means of defence, all that his party could do now was follow the example of Sir Charles Wetherell by making their way out of the top of the house and hiding behind the parapets, then crawling along the roofs till they reached the Customs House, clambering in by a fortuitously open window, and quietly descending into a back street to make their way to the Guildhall.

In that party was an officer of the commander-in-chief’s staff who had found himself in the city when trouble began and had volunteered his services. The mayor, much shaken by the escapade but now sufficiently recovered, turned to him and said, ‘Major Mackworth, I was assured of the military to keep the peace, but there is evidently neither the men nor the will. I beg you, if you please, to do what you can in that regard. I know not how.’

Major Mackworth was not, however, a man merely to volunteer and then await orders; he had already resolved on his course. ‘Mr Mayor, I would that you summon every constable, and as many others as may be sworn, and make this place safe as your headquarters. I myself shall go to the recruiting office to find what Colonel Brereton does. Meanwhile, I would that one of your men go to Reeves’s hotel and present my compliments and ask Lieutenant St Alban of the Sixth Light Dragoons to come at once.’

Reform

IT WAS A handsome canonry, the bounty of Queen Anne, perhaps, when that virtuous woman had appropriated the first fruits and tenths for the relief of the clergy, which before the Reformation the bishop of Rome had enjoyed, and afterwards King Henry. Or did he mistake his history? No matter; his people could now at last live tolerably comfortable of a winter, for unlike the rectory at Horningsham, here the roof did not leak, the windows fitted close, and the chimney drew well.

But not merely live comfortable; live in a manner, at last, that was their due, and proper to their riper years. Hervey’s bedchamber, as his mother had taken to calling the excellent sleeping arrangements, enjoyed a prospect of the west front of the cathedral that Mr Constable had lately made famous by his triumph at the Royal Academy, and one which Mr Turner, a painter of whom Hervey now heard tell was even greater than Constable, and long acquainted with these parts, had already done so much to proclaim. The misty dusk of this last-but-one day of October had however curtailed his pleasure in the west front, and instead he had bent to one or two letters that were outstanding. He had then bathed, and after dressing for dinner at what was the fashionable hour of the Close, descended the noble staircase to pass a quiet evening in the company of family.

It was only his second visit to the new benefice. Two Easters had passed since his father had been installed in this his only preferment worthy of the name in all his long years of service to the Church of England. That, said his mother, was because he was too unbending a Laudian, though in fact his monograph on Laudian decorum was now in its third printing and had brought him approbation in some quarters, and a little money. (Taste in the re-ordering of services had of late been tending towards that which King Charles’s faithful archbishop and martyr had endeavoured to impose.) The preferment may have come unjustly late, but come it had, and with it – Laus Deo! – three floors, eight bays, some serviceable attics and a garden both productive and pleasant (from which, indeed, the archdeacon could cast a fly on the tranquil water of the Avon). Hervey could only wish his parents long contentment here, and resolve to visit more often – which was the frequent request of his mother and the ever-repeated entreaty of his sister.

It was not as if the King’s enemies detained him any longer. It was now almost two years since his appointment to command of the 6th Light Dragoons (Princess Augusta’s Own), and but for apprehending common felons in various breaches of the King’s peace, and a largely bloodless skirmish with a patrol of French cavalry on the border of Hainaut (quite remarkably near the place where in 1815 he had seen so many homicidal Frenchmen as he wished never to see again), his command had been a most peaceful one. Even when, in the lust for Reform – or simply for glass – the mob had broken the windows of Apsley House, the Sixth in their barracks at Hounslow had not been troubled. And, in truth, although there had scarce been a year in which his sword had not drawn blood before that promotion, and might therefore be glad to rest a while in its scabbard (for who knew when the trumpet would call the regiment to arms in a foreign field?), he found the routine of Hounslow, with its alternating requirements of guard duty and ceremonial at Windsor and London, and acting from time to time as Mr Peel’s auxiliaries, tedious – enervating, dispiriting even. Sometimes, especially when he dined alone, as increasingly he found himself, he would lay down his fork and his book or pen and wonder what had brought him to this state of alienation. It was not, however, a matter for contemplation this evening.

Lieutenant-Colonel (and Brevet Colonel) Matthew Hervey, despite the slowness with which command of his regiment had been won (there were men ten years his junior now commanding who had never been shot over, though they did possess the inestimable qualification of great wealth and an entry in Mr Burke’s new Peerage), was still known to the Horse Guards as a coming man. The commander-in-chief himself, Lord Hill, was assiduous in pressing his cause and had personally authorized the brevet in recognition of his ‘address and percipient judgement’ in the affair of the ‘French joust’, as he rather archly called it. He had sent him to Brussels with half the regiment to mark with their former allies the decade and a half since the victory of Waterloo; but instead, Hervey had found himself in the middle of a revolution. The Belgae – horum omnium fortissimi, as Caesar had it: the bravest of the three peoples of Gaul – had risen in defiance of the Congress of Vienna, which had made of them a province of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, and proclaimed their independence of the Dutch king. He, Hervey, had then, largely on his own initiative, kept the probing French patrols at arm’s length, so that Monsieur Talleyrand could not make of les Belges a French province instead. He had, in the words of a letter home, gone to one country and left another without crossing any border – and received a star in the process (although, being but brevet rank, a star that must remain concealed).

He was content enough, though, for his original promotion to lieutenant-colonel had been without payment – reward for past service, contrived, it was said, by both Lords Hill and Wellington. If ever the time came to sell out, his fortune would be made (George Bingham – Lord Bingham – they said, had paid £20,000 for command of his regiment); and if promotion to general rank were to come, he could accept it without regret at losing his outlay (for on promotion to general rank, the lieutenant-colonelcy of a regiment reverted to the Horse Guards – the headquarters of the commander-in-chief – without recompense). So although he remained in command of his regiment to no great advantage in Hounslow, he held the rank of brevet colonel on the gradation list, at call to take command of a field force when the nation was next in peril. Or so ran the rule. He was most fortunately placed.

In truth, though, what he wished for was diversion. Even his particular friend Edward Fairbrother had deserted him (that is, taken leave of absence to visit with his people – on both sides of the blanket – in Jamaica). Command was a lonely business, it was said – at least, ultimately it was – and it therefore went hard with him each evening to return to a house (his residence at nearby Heston) that lacked the sort of intimacy that made command tolerable, indeed agreeable.

There was, of course, Lance-Corporal Johnson, who lived in adjoining quarters – very comfortably got up, too, in what had been one of the old coach-houses – and was on hand to attend him from reveille to retreat. Unless likely to enter within the field of vision of Regimental Serjeant-Major Armstrong, who had been a ‘Hervey man’ even longer than Johnson, his faithful groom enjoyed the status of plain clothes, and was more than glad of the life of quietude after so many escapades of recent years. But there was no mistress of the house, save for Mrs James, his house-serjeant’s wife – an admirable housekeeper – for Kezia remained, as she had throughout his command, at her people’s seat in Hertfordshire. Indeed he had not seen her since his unfortunate visit at Walden in the deep chill of winter the year before.

It had been a cold coming and a cold going. He could not account for their estrangement. It had begun almost at once, at the very outset of their marriage. True, he’d proposed in haste, wanting a wife and a mother for his daughter (for Georgiana had lived only with Elizabeth, his sister, and although it suited him, he could not in his heart believe it was best); but by that token, Kezia had accepted with equal haste. Why, he could not tell. Perhaps her status as widow troubled her, for she too had a child? Her late husband, his former commanding officer, had been the best of men. Perhaps having remarried in haste she then thought it dishonoured his memory, and now repented at leisure? How could he know? At Walden she had seemed so distant, so … distrait, that he feared she was … well, not altogether of sound mind. And yet her composure that day, while icy – her practice at the pianoforte, even, as he stood listening, unseen – suggested nothing of the sort. All he could conclude was that he had married a woman he did not know. He had done so in good faith, he told himself, although it was true that he had also desired her greatly and wanted to put away Kat from his thoughts, ‘considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained … for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continence might marry, and keep themselves undefiled …’ Now he must live with the consequences, ‘forsaking all other … so long as ye both shall live’.

The vow troubled him of course. But he was of a mind to be so active always that it did not trouble him to distraction – certainly not (he trusted) in the exercise of his command. So despite there being for the most part nothing to do at Hounslow but, as he himself put it, the work of an accountant or storekeeper, which in peace gave copious employment to an army of quill-drivers to ensure that not a pound of beef was mis-eaten or a bushel of corn fed to an animal other than was on the strength, he filled his day as best he could without intruding too much on the business of his troop captains, and the evenings without claiming too much the company of his officers at mess, or indeed requiring them at his own table. Once or twice a week he would drive to London and dine at the United Service Club, sometimes with Fairbrother, whose comfortable arrangements at Hounslow he was also amply acquainted with, and from time to time there would be some sort of dinner of state requiring his presence, though not quite so many in these past twelve months with the fall of the Duke of Wellington’s ministry. More often than not, though, he found himself enjoying a solitary supper, working on his translation of a lengthy treatise on war, which an officer of the Prussian general staff, an acquaintance from his late mission in the near Levant, had caused to be sent his way. It was not an easy work to render in English, not at all an easy work (not least for its being still in proof), but it contained much with which he found himself sympathetic, and when he was at work on it, all other thoughts were banished.

He wished that Elizabeth were here in Wiltshire now, with him and their parents at table. He could not have known that London would have call on her, though he might have been more prompt in writing, and more considerate in what her first duties (that is, of a wife) entailed, rather than supposing her to be at his own call, as ever she had been. He was now even more determined that, saving for the calls of duty, he would travel to Heytesbury before next summer’s camp on the Downs was over, and stay a proper while with her and the baron. Her marriage had come late, and to a widower with children – and a wearer of the Waterloo Medal, a Freiherr (‘von und zu’), of the King’s German Legion. He liked the baron; how could he not? Though at first he’d been uncertain. He wished above all that Georgiana were here, for he supposed there was a good deal to talk about. She must be happy in so large a family and so well-found an establishment as at Heytesbury, but she was rising fourteen and must have her own mind in these matters.

He firmly resolved, there and then, to visit on her birthday – even, perhaps, to have her stay at Hounslow for a day or so. She might ride with him on the heath. It need not remind him too painfully of doing so with Henrietta.

Soon afterwards the housekeeper appeared, uneasy. ‘Please, sir, there is a Mr St Alban come to see the colonel.’

An officer of the Sixth, not yet twenty-five, upright and tall, in a plain coat which even in the candlelight showed evidence of galloping, entered and made his apologies.

‘Mr St Alban, you are wet through, sir,’ said Mrs Hervey. ‘Hill, take Mr St Alban’s coat and hold it to the fire, and search out something suitable in its place.’

‘Really, ma’am, I am tolerably comfortable, now that I am come in. The rain eased as we came to Wilton.’

‘Well, I am all eagerness to learn what brings you here,’ said Hervey, ‘but first, take a chair and some wine.’

St Alban gladly accepted both, although he looked more brightened by his exertions than fatigued.

Hervey’s mother glanced at the housekeeper, who went to find him, Hervey’s covering serjeant.

St Alban nodded. ‘Bristol is in such a tumult as I never saw in any place, and I fear the magistrates lose all control. The constabulary is ineffectual, and … I am sorry to say that the military is inadequate. That is, both its numbers and its management, which is why I am come.’

Hervey was at once transformed. Indeed his instinct was to ready himself at once, but as he could not make Bristol – fifty miles distant – in much less than five hours, it would not hurt to enquire a little more. Besides, a show of serenity never went amiss. ‘Tell me of events since the beginning.’

In truth the regiment’s sojourn to Bristol ought not to have been a thing of any moment. Certainly not an affair of any heat. In the great panoply accompanying the ancient assizes, there was supposed to be little for them to do but add lustre to the King’s justice, the prospect of which had made for a pleasant change from the tedium of Hounslow. In any case, the city lay within an entirely different major-general’s command – the Western, rather than the Home, district. It was only Hervey’s brevet that had recommended him to the authorities of England’s second city – as they were jealous to call it – and it had been but his own (very proper) pride that had made his presence the occasion for an escort. The adjutant, with the serjeant-major and their suite, had therefore proceeded to the city two days before and taken quarters in College Place.

‘I ought first to say that I spoke with Major Mackworth, who sends his compliments and bids you hasten.’

St Alban nodded. ‘He’d been in Clifton and came to the Mansion House on learning of the commotion.’

‘We hadn’t long been in the city before it became apparent there was a very great objection to the recorder,’ he began.

Archdeacon Hervey’s ears pricked. ‘Wetherell? I don’t doubt there is objection. He made the most intemperate speech in parliament against Reform, just before the dissolution. “Jacobinical and revolutionary” he called the bill. And his father as obliging a man as I ever knew – late dean of Hereford before going back to Oxford, and—’

He checked himself, not so old and cosseted in the cathedral close as not to recognize superfluity of detail.

‘I can’t comprehend what it should be to the people of Bristol, however,’ said Hervey, frowning. ‘As I understand it, the city returns two members – both of them Whigs – and stands to gain no more under the bill.’

As ever on the subject of reform, St Alban found himself in an awkward position. He was no Radical, but – to Hervey at least – his Whiggish views tended in that direction. But of all the subalterns, Hervey found him the most thoughtful. The Honourable Edward St Alban, though not long commissioned and only lately promoted from cornet, had shown much address the year before, both at Windsor and in what London was now pleased to call Belgium.

‘The feeling for Reform as a principle is strong,’ he said, not quite as if he were at a political meeting, ‘but …’ (There followed a discourse on the Bristol Political Union, the pertinence of which Hervey did not entirely see, though he thought it eloquent.) ‘And it doesn’t help that the bishop cast his vote against it too. And with the usual influx of roughs, the city was not a pleasant sight. I went to see the recorder’s arrival yesterday. He came along the Bath road to the city boundary, where he was supposed to transfer to the sheriff’s carriage for the processional entry, but there was a most violent welcoming committee, hurling stones at the coaches, which the constables could only get away with some difficulty. I followed – on foot – the entire way to the Guildhall, and I never saw so many people and such a tumult. Several constables suffered ill in the rain of brickbats.’

‘The mayor applied to the Home Office a fortnight before, and three troops of cavalry are at hand, if much under-strength – two of the Fourteenth, from Gloucester, and one of the Third heavies, from

Trowbridge; fewer than a hundred in all. They’re under the orders of the inspecting field officer of the district, and … with respect, I fear he has not the mettle for it.’

‘With respect’ was ever a convenient device for avoiding a charge of insubordination, but with adjutancy it was different. Hervey had told St Alban – as he had his predecessor – that it was no use his being adjutant unless he knew the mind of his commanding officer, and that he might always speak his own with absolute candour.

‘Brereton … There was a Brereton at the Cape, as I recall, not long before I was there. Fairbrother knew him, I believe, from his time in the Royal Africans. I should have thought him capable, if it were he. Lieutenant-Colonel, I imagine?’

The point was of the essence: no matter what Brereton’s seniority as a lieutenant-colonel – which must be considerable – Hervey’s brevet would make him the superior officer.

‘Yes. Though I don’t know he is the Brereton you describe, Colonel, for he wore but a plain coat.’

‘I’m afraid I do not,’ replied the archdeacon. ‘And I cannot imagine where to enquire after one at this hour. I could, perhaps, send to the chapter clerk.’

Hervey shook his head. ‘No, let’s not trouble him. I don’t in any case recall the African Brereton’s Christian name, but I’ll proceed on the assumption they’re one and the same. Carry on.’

St Alban told him of the mob’s assault on the Guildhall and attempt to fire the Mansion House.

Incendiarists, in his judgement – and to his certain knowledge that of the duke (though what sway the duke carried now he did not know) – could be dealt with but one way.

‘Just so, Colonel. However, I believe Colonel Brereton thought the mere presence of the dragoons would have effect, which to begin with they did, but—’

‘No. Colonel Brereton expressly forbade it, or pistols. Late last night I was able myself, with the sar’nt-major and Sar’nt Acton, to get into the Mansion House and announce ourselves, and soon afterwards Captain Gage of the Fourteenth came, much annoyed, for his troops had come under a great hail of stone and iron in the streets leading upon the square, and he wanted the mayor’s leave to use carbines.’

‘I know Gage somewhat, and to be a capable man. He must have had just cause.’

‘The mayor thought so too, but then Colonel Brereton came and spoke strongly against the order, urging that if the mob were let alone, the hour being late, they would disperse of their own accord.’

Hervey shook his head, wondering by what precedent Brereton believed it might be so. More likely he was minded of another precedent. ‘The shadow of Peterloo cast long, no doubt.’

St Alban raised an eyebrow. ‘Peterloo’ was before his time, a dozen years ago, but no officer of cavalry could be unaware of it. A great gathering of people – by various estimates fifty or sixty thousand – at St Peter’s Field in Manchester, come to hear ‘Orator’ Hunt, with many banners proclaiming ‘Reform’, ‘Universal Suffrage’, ‘Equal Representation’ (and even ‘Love’). Fearful of revolution, however, the authorities had at hand two troops of cavalry – one regular, but the other yeomanry – and when the magistrates ordered the latter to arrest the speakers they had got themselves in such a disorder that the dragoons had to rescue them, with much damage to life and limb.

St Alban took another good measure of claret, as if to fortify himself. ‘Matters only became worse, however, and much later – I believe at the urging of the mayor – the colonel cleared the square with the flat of the sword, and Gage’s men shot one dead who’d assailed them. I should add that by this time Sir Charles Wetherell had left the city.’

‘No indeed. I observed him on several occasions and he showed much coolness. It was a little after the square had been cleared that Major Mackworth came to the Guildhall and at once took charge of the constables and arranged a watch and reliefs, and sent for me and asked that I present his compliments to you and request you come and take charge as soon as may be.’

‘Have Serjeant Wakefield bring the chaise, if you will,’ said Hervey. ‘We leave for Bristol this night.’

III

The Rash Fierce Blaze of Riot

Serjeant Wakefield’s voice carried strong above the two-time of hooves and the growl of wheels on macadam, but it failed to wake his commanding officer. Having dictated a letter for the Horse Guards, which St Alban had been able to take down – and even correct – by the light of the carcel lamps brought back from Brussels, Hervey had closed his eyes just after Wylye and slept soundly through two changes of horses. (‘When a soldier has no other duty to perform, it is his duty to sleep.’)

Then he saw for himself. Had they been posting east, and some hours later, it might have been but the shepherd’s warning, but a red sky in the west was a different matter.

The word and a hand to his arm was all that was needed. Hervey sat bolt upright. ‘Bristol?’

About the Book

About the Author

MATTHEW PAULINUS HERVEY

The
PASSAGE
TO INDIA

ALLAN MALLINSON

Also by Allan Mallinson

The Matthew Hervey titles

CONTENTS

PART ONE

A TIME OF PEACE

I

The Words of the Preacher

II

Reform

III

The Rash Fierce Blaze of Riot

About the Book

About the Author

MATTHEW PAULINUS HERVEY

ThePASSAGETO INDIA

ALLAN MALLINSON

Also by Allan Mallinson

The Matthew Hervey titles

CONTENTS

PART ONE

A TIME OF PEACE

I

The Words of the Preacher

II

Reform

III

The Rash Fierce Blaze of Riot

The
PASSAGE
TO INDIA