Hervey looked glad of it, for where to begin? ‘If St Alban’s told you, then you may be assured there’s no more to tell.’ He got up again. ‘See here, Parry, I’m deuced weary, but nothing that a bath and a razor won’t amend. Join my family party in an hour, and we’ll talk the more. Tomorrow I’ll want to make plans – three plans, no less: in case we march in one week, in two or in three and more. You might in the meantime make up the march tables for each. Oh, and we’d better have the commissary come.’

‘Very good, General; I’ll begin at once. And thank you for the invitation to dine.’

‘Speaking of which, you’ve not yet met Colonel Dennie?’

‘Of the Somersetshires? No, I called on him this morning but was given my congé till tomorrow. He was at orderly room and not to be disturbed. I judged it best on that occasion to make nothing of it.’

Hervey sighed. ‘No doubt it was for the best, but there can be no repetition.’

For a brigade major bore the brigadier’s authority, and he, Hervey, would not put up with the door being closed to it. (He did, though, rather admire the assurance it signified.)

‘No, indeed, General. By the bye, sir, I was given to understand Colonel Dennie is not enamoured of “Somersetshires” – that he insists instead on “Thirteenth Light Infantry”.’

Hervey sighed. ‘Yes, I too was given to understand it. Colonel Dennie said there weren’t a dozen men from Somersetshire in the regiment, and that he was damned if he even knew where the place was.’

Parry smiled sympathetically.

Hervey smiled too. ‘Oh, it served: I said I hoped that as light infantry I could count on their increase in celerity.’

XXI

Imperious Duty

Sthambadree, four days later

The Sixth, dismounted and in their red, were drawn up in hollow square on the maidan below the great fort, while the 55th (Westmoreland) and the 3rd Madras Native Infantry, likewise red-coated, provided the outer picket which would keep the spectators at precisely the distance Sleeman wanted – close enough to see the act, distant enough to threaten no part in it. They’d come from all quarters of the city and from the country miles about, for an execution was a pageant, and their lives anything but.

Sleeman had ordered the arrangements very exactly. The year before at Nagpore, the condemned men had turned the tables on their executioners, and to the watching crowd become the heroes. No sooner had they ascended the scaffold but they’d declaimed it was an everlasting disgrace to die by the hands of the common hangman, and each had taken hold of the rope, pushed his head into the noose, tightened the knot and then jumped off the beam into eternity.

But this time there’d be no opportunity for display, or for any declamation within earshot of the crowd. Nor would they, as at Nagpore, be able to receive gifts of money and clothes from the onlookers, useless as such gifts were – succour from the belief that a man about to meet his maker imparted a holiness to all he touched, thereby gaining reverence. No, Sleeman meant business. It was the Company that brought true peace to the people of this land, and he’d have the people know it.