‘I’d be pleased by even the moderately good, for my bearer made a very indifferent breakfast,’ replied Fairbrother, handing his reins to one of the syces who’d doubled from the guardhouse.

‘Then we must find you a better bearer. Or else you might reconsider the invitation to lodge with us.’

Fairbrother shook his head. ‘You keep very early hours.’

‘That is true,’ replied Hervey, with a wry smile, ‘but we keep late ones too. It’s remarkable what India does for the constitution – inasmuch as fauna and infirmities permit.’

The syces led away the horses. They’d get a drink, a good rub down, some corn, and a few hours’ rest, but Fairbrother’s looked a shade tucked up.

‘I shouldn’t worry,’ Hervey assured him. ‘These mares can bear it. And these fellows could rub a dead horse to life.’

In the two years the regiment had been in Madras, Hervey had re-horsed half with ‘New South Walers’, as the riding-master called them. A dozen or so years before, the Madras cavalry board had turned down the remounts that the Bengal studs were sending them, and looked south instead. It was a prodigious journey from Australia, but only half that from England, where they might otherwise have found the improving blood (for there was only so much the Arab could do with the native breeds). His own charger, Minnie (her stable name; she was entered as Minenhle – in the language of the Zulu ‘beautiful day’), was a three-quarter-bred, foaled at the Cape and brought to Madras as a two-year-old, turned away for eighteen months and then broken. She was rising ten now, and could outpace all but the full bloods. She’d strolled off with the syce as if the exercise had been nothing. Hervey reckoned that the regiment was at last, as they said of plants, ‘acclimatized’ – men and horses. Blooded, too, in the late affair at Coorg.

The question was, however, what use would there be made of them? What time would be left to make profit of their acclimatization and blooding now that the new Act turned the East India Company into administrators rather than merchant adventurers?

But there was no profit in excessive thought for the morrow, as Somervile was fond of saying; ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ For the moment, he would enjoy the simple pleasures of this fierce and fickle land. He sipped his Arabica and crunched the chikki – how complementary were the tastes, bitter and sweet – and was gratified to see that Fairbrother appeared to think the same.

‘Eppotum nallatu, Ram Kumar.’

‘Nanri, sahib.’

Indeed, the coffee was so good he would ask for more; but suddenly from a window high on the other side of the courtyard came Somervile’s habitual ‘Salaam!’

Hervey smiled. ‘The pro-governor does not stand on ceremony, as you see.’

This Fairbrother knew well from the Cape, when Somervile had nearly met his end – at least once – by excess of enthusiasm. But it had been some years, and he looked forward to more of his company again, elevated though it now was. Not least if he were truly an advocate of steam.