Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service (18 page)

As he left them to the rest of the muster parade, he resolved to write his first despatch to the Horse Guards that evening. Though there was little to report by way of true intelligence, he would render in writing how and by what means he had come to the seat of war without His Britannic Majesty’s ambassador (for it was in the ambassador’s suite that he had been accredited). It did not matter to the mission on which he was engaged, he supposed, but if anything were to go wrong in the course of it, it were better that he did not first have to explain how he had come to be travelling other than in diplomatic company. If Lord Heytesbury chose to remain in St Petersburg with the Tsar, who had returned to his capital at the close of the former campaigning season, then what business could it be of the Horse Guards?

As he side-stepped yet another filthy pool, Hervey began forming in his mind the impressions of which he would write to Lord Hill. First, however, he must present his compliments to the Cossacks.

*

He watched with the others from the edge of the
maidan
on the old causeway which (said Cornet Agar) linked what had once been an island, where Apollo’s statue had stood, to the mainland, although it now had all the appearance of a natural peninsula. Siseboli was not without charm. Some of its houses were substantial, even elegant by provincial standards, and the rest were well found, although to the landward end of the peninsula they became rather meaner, and some were little more than shanties. The people, those that had stayed when the Russians landed – Bulgars, in the main – were swarthy but upright, and for the most part they looked to the sea for their fortunes rather than to the land. They had been ruled by Constantinople for so many years that they no longer thought of any other condition but servitude – or so Wachten had told him. They were not (yet) as the Greeks, clamouring for their liberty.

About the Cossacks’ exercise ground – ‘parade’ ground seemed wholly inappropriate for so irregular a band of troops – lounged the bearded horsemen on whose legendary exploits so much of the Tsar’s military reputation rested. No two of them were dressed the same, as far as Hervey could see. Most wore dark blue overalls with a broad red stripe, but some wore looser bags; many were bare-headed, some wore a sort of forage cap, but others had on a fleece shako pulled to one side
alla Turca
. Some were in the short, blue summer shell jacket, some wore the winter
cherkesska
smock still, with its rows of cartridge loops, while others had on just shirts, and of several different colours. There was but one common item of ‘uniform’: as it was the hour of repose after the midday dinner of mutton and the issue of
kvas
, every man had his pipe lit. When Hervey had first learned what was the strength of the garrison, he asked the
esaul
, the Cossacks’ captain, why there was only a squadron (
sotnia
) of them, two hundred lances, to which the reply had been that they were Chernomorski – Cossacks of the Black Sea Host – and that one Black Sea Cossack was equal to three from the Don.

Seeing now the approach of the
Anglichanye
, the
esaul
rose from his camp stool, and, with his
sotnik
(lieutenant), bid them welcome. He was a burly, dark-skinned man of indeterminate age (Hervey knew little of him other than that he had been at Borodino, and then Paris) who spoke the worst Russian, so Wachten’s chief of staff told him, of any officer in Siseboli. He certainly spoke no other language Hervey knew, though Cornet Agar, by a combination of Persian, Greek and bazaar Turkish, was able to communicate with his
sotnik
.

They had looked over the Cossack horses soon after landing, and Hervey had made admiring noises to the
esaul
, for they were hardy animals, fifteen hands or so, and evidently good-doers. They were bred (if Agar’s understanding was correct) out of Kabardin mares from the Caucasus, put-to by Turcomans and Arabs, so that they were equally at home on the wide steppe or tricky mountain paths.

While Hervey and the
esaul
saluted, embraced, shook hands, exchanged mutually incomprehensible greetings and generally made like officers of rank, Agar and the
sotnik
spoke in tongues.

‘The
sotnik
says that all the arrangements are made for us, sir,’ said Agar, after some explanatory gesturing. ‘They will bring our horses as soon as it is light.’

‘You are sure not before?’ asked Hervey. ‘The general said they were to leave before dawn. I don’t wish to find myself late on parade.’

There followed another exchange with the
sotnik
, who then spoke to the
esaul
, bringing broad smiles from both.

‘The
esaul
says he wants the whole place to see them march out.’

Hervey smiled too. He perfectly understood – not least that General Wachten’s command was not absolute when it came to Cossacks.

The
esaul
spoke again: Hervey heard the word ‘
kvas
’ and braced himself to the challenge. He would not be picking up his pen for an hour and more. And he wondered how prudent it would be to do so when he did.

IX

THE
ESAUL

Next day

At a quarter past five the signal guns on the old walls called in the pickets for the morning stand-to-arms – three shots, five seconds between. Hervey was standing ready for parade outside the house where his party was billeted, taking in the pure air of the pre-dawn, looking forward keenly to his ride in the country, away from the rankness of the camp and its confining defences. Beyond the outworks it would be spring, whereas within there were only the few signs of it. Bugles began sounding reveille. In twenty minutes the sun would be rising, the pickets would be in and the guards stood to. In twenty more, the rest of the troops would muster by companies and battalions, and another day of garrison routine would begin. Now came the sound of hoofs – the
sotnik
and a dozen men bringing horses. His heart beat faster; he would soon be in his element again.

Pack-saddling the camp stores did not take long, thanks to Johnson’s practice of twenty years and the deft hands of the Cossacks (expecting to be on patrol but two days and nights they rode with only light scales). Just after full light the rest of the
sotnia
came up in noisy good spirits – horseshoes ringing on the cobbles,
chaghanas
jingle-jangling, and hearty Cossack babble. But for the forest of lances, they might have been a band of gypsies breaking camp. Hervey smiled to himself at the thought: these were the men whom Bonaparte’s veterans had feared.

He would stay his opinion, however. In appearance the Cossacks had much in common with the irregular cavalry he had fought alongside in India – Skinner’s regiment especially, which he counted second to none in ranging and raiding. With English troops it was generally the rule that good appearance was a sure indication of capability, but it was not invariably so with native troops – and not, he suspected, with Cossacks. He smiled to himself again, for the
esaul
was having his way: men from every regiment were turning out to watch them leave.

‘Very well, let us join our host,’ he said to his little party, with a look of amused curiosity. The
sotnik
had brought him a compact, almost jet-black mare. He checked the girth, gathered the reins and sprang into the saddle (he would not risk his weight in the stirrup with an unknown horse).

‘It is too early an hour for puns, Hervey – even pert ones,’ groaned Fairbrother, as he took an obliging Cossack’s hand to mount. ‘Deuced early for anything, indeed.’

The
sotnia
’s exuberance was infectious, however. ‘I have always considered “reveille” to be an order to wake, not a mere notice of the hour of day,’ Hervey replied, relieved that, knowing he’d had a despatch to write, he had not stayed long drinking
kvas
– and supposing his friend to wish he had had the same pretext to quit.

He glanced at the others – Agar, Corporal Acton and the two dragoons who had volunteered as servants – and felt a curious sort of ‘cornet’s lease’, as if conscious of the sober mask of command (blue
or
red) that awaited him. In any case he liked pressing Fairbrother on points of military correctness, not least because they brought wit by return, and occasionally a counter that was worthy of serious consideration, and even approval. He had learned much from this most contradictory of men – at one moment the image of apathy, of indolence even; and at another, of the most astonishing address. He owed his life and reputation to him on more than one occasion (and one occasion alone was sufficient to forge a bond between fighting men).

They were at once into a jogging trot – not the way the Sixth would have begun a march – and his little Kabardin mare was anxious to be with the others. But Hervey knew he would just have to content himself with sitting to it and enjoying the jingling of the
chaghanas
(might the Sixth’s band have use for one?) and the admiration of the infantry. Only after the best part of a mile, with the well-wishing behind them, did they slow from the trot. There were no audible words of command; it seemed that the
esaul
transmitted his intention by some instinctive means, so that the
sotnia
simply rippled to a walk. It was unmilitary, but it was not without a certain style; and without doubt it was done with economy.

Hervey and his party marched parallel and to the off-flank, the going either side of the road flat, on good spring grass, ungrazed. In the far distance the rolling, wooded hills – mountains even – lay as a barrier the like of which he had not seen in twenty years, when the duke’s army had at last crossed the Pyrenees into France. The Balkan range, the Haemus Mons of antiquity and his schoolroom – he had never dreamed he would one day behold them.
Tunc etiam aërei divulsis sedibus Haemi
– ‘the summit even of lofty Haemus shall have crumbled’; the words he had declaimed an age ago at Shrewsbury. They were famous days, simpler days, infinite in their promise, with books innumerable, war, heroes … He envied Agar his Oxford learning and his footing, now, at the threshold of soldiery. And
such
a threshold – Haemus Mons, which no Tsar’s general had crossed since ancient times. How strange it felt to be at their southern side when still the Turk held them, as if they had come into a house basely.

‘Hervey?’

He woke. ‘I beg pardon. You were saying?’

Fairbrother smiled indulgently. ‘Only that I am excessively grateful for your asking me to accompany you. This is the first I have ridden on the soil of Europe. And deuced fine too. Yonder sea – as blue as at the Cape.’

Hervey nodded. England was, strictly, a part of Europe too, but he could only think of her so when he was in another continent altogether. It was strange, moreover, that they had waited so long to ride, that their journey hither had been so little by land. They had come to St Petersburg by frigate, thence almost at once to Riga by coaster, thereafter along the Dvina by steam to Vitebsk, then a day and a half’s post to Smolensk, and from there on down the Dnieper by sail and steam to Kherson, a mean city in which to wait for onward passage by warship, first to Varna, and finally to Siseboli. He did not complain, for they had seen much, and he had made sketches of what he thought to be of interest to the Horse Guards; they had read much, talked much and written much; except that Fairbrother had written not at all, for he saw no cause for a journal – to whom would it be of interest in the event of his death? he asked – nor occasion for letters, his father being content with but an annual report. He was, he said, and with an admixture of seriousness to the archness, content to pass without note, ‘A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown’.