A Regimental Affair (34 page)

‘We’ve all seen horses drop dead with fatigue, but not like this. Could his gut have twisted – or got a block?’

Hervey knelt by Harkaway’s head and listened close to the shallow but regular breathing. ‘Perhaps. But look at him: he’s not sweating, and he’s not trying to nip at the pain.’ Hervey looked up as the farrier-corporal entered the stall. ‘What do you make of him, Corporal Perrot?’

The farrier-corporal got down by the gelding’s side and felt along his flank and belly. There was nothing unusual – just as Hervey had found. ‘It’s queer, sir. He’s not sweating, or showing any pain. He looks like an old horse snuffing.’ The farriercorporal’s soft Dorset was an emollient, even if his words were not. ‘It can’t be colic?’

Hervey shook his head, unsure.

Perrot sighed. ‘Has he had colic before, sir?’

Hervey and Harkaway hadn’t been together all that much: the Irish splint was the only thing he knew of to have bothered the veterinary officer. ‘I believe not at all. Do you think we should dose him with salt water?’

The farrier-corporal looked undecided. ‘Might it be
impacted
colic, sir?’

Hervey shook his head again. ‘I’m at a loss to know what it might be, Corporal Perrot. I don’t want to dose him if we don’t have to, not lying like this – and we’d never get him on his feet.’

‘I’d best have a look – if you don’t mind, sir?’

Daniel Coates had once shown Hervey how to examine for impacted colic, but he had never had cause to. ‘Yes, I’d be very obliged if you would, Corporal Perrot. And I’ll send for Mr Gascoyne meanwhile.’

The farrier-corporal asked for some whale oil, took off his tunic and shirt, then rubbed the oil over his right arm. ‘Pull his tail clear for me, Johnson,’ he said, rubbing a little oil on the anus. The picket corporal brought a lantern closer. ‘What bloody good’s that going to do, Sykes?’ rasped Corporal Perrot, sliding a hand inside the rectum.

Corporal Sykes coloured up, and even Hervey managed a smile. Harkaway barely moved a muscle at the intrusion. Corporal Perrot pushed on gently until his forearm had disappeared, and then began carefully probing the abdomen to locate any blockage.

A full five minutes passed before Perrot pronounced that there was no obvious obstruction. Hervey was disappointed, for although an impacted colic was a deuce of a thing to treat, they would at least know how to start. All they could do now was wait for the veterinary officer to arrive, and they knew he couldn’t do so before morning.

‘I’ll stay with him, then, Johnson.’

When Johnson was gone, Hervey looked long at the gelding, and with a growing sense of despair. Never before had he been at such a loss to know what to do. All he could do, indeed, was watch.

A little before first light, Harkaway gave up breathing. Hervey did not see the actual moment, for the gelding’s respiration had become so shallow by the end that it was almost imperceptible. One minute Hervey knew he was alive, and the next he knew he was gone. And it was an end with relief as well as melancholy, for Hervey had known for several hours that nothing could put life back into so weak an animal. He did not get up at once, apprehending a forceful command to remain at Harkaway’s side – an awe, numinal, powerful, which he had known once or twice in the Peninsula. It had not been something he had enquired into, or later denied. He waited reverently for several minutes, until, quite distinctly, he felt his restraints slip away. Then he rose, took a blanket and laid it over Harkaway’s head, and went out into the morning.

Johnson was as grieved as Hervey, in some ways more so. He had seen enough horses die from wounds and malnourishment, strangles and staggers – from any number of causes, indeed – but never once reflecting on his own husbandry. It was as much to assuage his groom’s dismay, therefore, that Hervey asked the veterinary surgeon, when he arrived shortly after nine, to carry out a critical dissection.

Hervey didn’t care to watch it, and neither did Johnson. As he said to Mr Gascoyne, the knife to a dead horse was a thing for the
boucherie chevaline
, or for Mr Sanbel’s new veterinary college, or even for Mr Stubbs and his palette, but he himself had no stomach for it.

The knife revealed a sad story. ‘The pathognomonic was extraordinary, Hervey,’ said Gascoyne when he had done. ‘I looked at once at the lungs, for since you described respiratory failure those were quite obviously the organs to start with. They were very morbid, indeed – chronic abscessing in the upper posterior part. I’ve never seen worse. There must have been haemorrhagia over a very long period.’

Hervey was puzzled. ‘And yet neither I nor Johnson saw any blood about the nostrils – not once.’

‘By no means impossible,’ opined Gascoyne in his gentle Devon burr.

Hervey always respected the veterinarian’s willingness to concede that there was much still to be understood.

‘In any case,’ Gascoyne assured him, ‘a pulmonary haemorrhage of this magnitude is not something for which anyone might be blamed. There must have been some defect at birth.’

Hervey expressed himself grateful, declaring, as cheerfully as he could, that it was now but a matter for the Rufford hounds.

After his meeting later that morning with Sir Abraham Cole, who was just come from the building site that was his erstwhile factory, and who expressed himself very content with the peace about the borough these past forty-eight hours, Hervey began contemplating a ride to see Henrietta. It was less than twenty miles to Chatsworth. If he set out after first parade next morning, he would be there comfortably by noon. They could at least enjoy a walk together before he returned for evening stables. And Johnson could
come, too. It would be a tonic for them both, for Harkaway’s death had cast a dismal spell over the grange.

But Henrietta had already saved them the ride. The Bath chaise was standing at the front of the grange as he came from watering parade, and only a moment’s anxiety that something might be amiss dulled his thrill at seeing it.

He took the steps two at a time to embrace her. ‘I can’t
tell
you how good this is, now of all times.’

Inside the grange she condoled with him, and said how she hoped to be able to say something of comfort to Private Johnson, too, for besides Hervey’s own notice of his distress she knew from the evening in Hounslow that Johnson had developed a special feeling for the gelding. But in the end, she herself seemed in lower spirits than the news required, and this was betrayed by a rather distant look in her eyes.

‘Is everything well?’ asked Hervey, trying not to sound too anxious again.

She sighed. ‘There is no one at Chatsworth, for William is gone south. I felt the need of company very keenly.’

It seemed strange that the need of company should depress the spirits quite so much, but he presumed it was the result of her condition. ‘I was to have come to Chatsworth myself, tomorrow,’ he said to rally her.

She smiled back appreciatively, knowing that his going there was a conscious decision to leave his dragoons, albeit for only a day. But her distant look remained.

‘Tell me what is the matter, my love,’ Hervey tried again, taking her hand in a way that said he would not release it until she told him all.

‘The news from London, of Princess Charlotte. I confess it troubles me greatly. Needlessly perhaps . . . but Sir Richard Croft is bleeding her every day, and allows her so little food. I read that she is become very disheartened, and speaks of the future being joyless.’

He squeezed her hand and spoke softly. ‘Do you wish to engage a different physician? Is that your concern?’

Henrietta shook her head. ‘No. Dr Croft is spoken of everywhere in the highest terms.’

He put his arms round her. ‘My darling, there is no reason to suppose that your confinement will be as troubled.’

‘I should like to stay with you here, Matthew. I should feel better then.’

‘You could not be comfortable here, my love. And I should not wish you to stay in Mansfield, for everyone would know you were there, and if there were any disturbance—’

‘I can stay at Welbeck. The Portlands are cousins of William’s, I believe.’

There could be no more objection to one dukery than another. And, though Hervey felt a little ashamed of the thought, it would do no harm to have an advocate at Welbeck if Sir Abraham’s picture of ducal detachment were a true one. ‘I should be very happy indeed if you did. We could meet every day.’ Another thought occurred to him. ‘First you will want to send word, will you not?’

Henrietta nodded.

‘Then while that is done, will you take Johnson for a drive? You could call on Sir Abraham Cole. He’s chairman of the bench, and a very engaging man. And he has a very extensive collection of Chinese porcelain – which I confess I found rather too extensive for my taste. He lives alone a few miles out of the town, and Johnson could take some papers which he must sign.’

The prospect entirely delighted her. Her spirits seemed already to be rising.

And now, explained Hervey, he must go and write to Daniel Coates, for Harkaway was his gift, and had been very much his pride. He was overdue writing in any case, and his last had been a gloomy affair, composed when he was at the low ebb of arrest. He would have more agreeable things to tell him on that account which would, perhaps, counterbalance the news of Harkaway. The old soldier liked nothing more than news from the field, and a troop despatch – even allowing for the objectionable nature of a commanding officer such as Lord Towcester – was a thing to be savoured, wherever the campaign.

Clipstone Hall, that night

Clipstone Hall was a fine gentlemanly residence. Its stone was good and solid, its lawns well laid. It was a place to which a man might retire of an evening, content with his day’s work, whatever it might be, and enjoy his diversion and repose. As the sun began to set, the stones turned a mellow amber colour, and the big oaks, which had stood in Sherwood since before the Conqueror, cast long shadows across the lawns, in which a rabbit or a pheasant sometimes braved the remaining daylight before darkness gave them licence to browse all of the mow. Rooks returning to their high nests cawed a general retreat, and Jacobs in the park bleated the same to their imagined lambs. To varying degrees, the picture was the same for the several owners whose pleasure it was to be close to their manufactories while enjoying a tranquil country living. But once night fell, especially when there was no moon, as this night, and when so much violence stalked the lanes, their country seats became places of anxiety, sometimes of fear, and occasionally of terror.

In this dim darkness, the clock of Sir Abraham Cole’s parish
church, just the other side of the park wall, struck two. Sir Abraham himself was asleep, but on the roof was an undergardener earning a handy extra shilling. He was wide awake despite the hour, for the ruination of Sir Abraham might well be his own ruination too – and consequently of his wife and five children. But diligent though the gardener was, he neither saw nor heard the intruder. The Jacobs hadn’t stirred, nor the geese at the back of the house; neither had the two King Charles’s in Sir Abraham’s bedroom.

The intruder, his face blackened, stole across the gravel drive as if he were weightless, and reached the doors of Clipstone Hall without a soul knowing. But although he had a pistol in his belt, it was not his intention to use it. Indeed, he intended neither the house nor its occupants any mischief – that night at least. Instead, he took from his pocket a letter and pinned it to the front doors with a facing-needle. Then he slipped away as silently, so that the discovery of the letter when it was daylight might be all the more menacing. At a dozen and more houses in the borough, the same was happening.

Sir Abraham was so alarmed when his manservant brought him the letter just before eight in the morning that he drove at once to the grange. He arrived as first parade was being dismissed, but the speed of his carriage and manner of his getting out arrested the dismissal. His meeting with Hervey was conducted with the entire troop standing, horses in hand, necks craning and ears straining.

‘Captain Hervey, this was pinned to my door in the night. And it was the same at Taylor’s and Arkwright’s too – probably everyone of the hosiers’ association has them, and the bench too.’

Hervey took the letter and read the well-formed hand: