Hot bread in silver bowls, piping hot coffee from silver pots, and then chilled porter from bottles wrapped in white linen – the khitmagars were practised at their art, bowing as one to be dismissed. Somervile could hardly wait for his guest to pass the spoons to him.

‘And so, tell me, Captain Fairbrother – I’m excessively intrigued: your good friend and mine was for once at a disadvantage in battle? What do you suppose would have happened had it not been for the presence of the good major – La Longue Carabine?’

Fairbrother sighed. ‘Mr St Alban would likely as not be dead, Colonel Hervey and his coverman much hurt, but the tiger killed nevertheless.’

‘Quite probably so.’

The truth was, as well they knew, Hervey had several times before been at a disadvantage (how might it be otherwise in a lifetime of making war?) but always there’d been a man to cover him.

Fairbrother smiled. ‘La Longue Carabine indeed; Major Garratt was already called “Hawkeye”.’

Somervile tapped the table approvingly. ‘I’m very glad you’re come, Fairbrother.’

‘To breakfast?’

‘To India. Our friend is in fine spirits – and he has a major at last worth the name; but – and I’ve known him these twenty years, almost – he is never better than with you at hand.’

‘I am glad to be here. But how long is not for me to say. Hervey thinks the Company will dispense with his services – and the rest of the reinforcement – very soon.’

‘My days are spent trying to persuade Fort William otherwise, though until late I’d thought Hervey’d be recalled on promotion. Now that Melbourne’s prime minister, however, I fear the call won’t come – not, at least, for some time. That pleases me as governor, of course, but not as a friend.’

It was only the day before that Fairbrother had learned that Earl Grey was no longer prime minister, and he’d thought the news favourable to his friend.

‘How so? I understood that Lord Melbourne commended his action in Bristol, that the city would have fallen to the mob had not he taken command.’

‘That is true, on both counts, but Lord M is so very contrary – a Tory masquerading as a Whig no less. No sooner was the danger to the King’s Peace gone but he began loathing the means of quietening that danger. Hervey ought by rights to be general now. The French do these things much better.’

Fairbrother smiled. ‘And yet we beat the French always.’

‘I grant you that, yes, but perhaps if we arranged things better we might do so more expeditiously, more economically? Be what may, we are most fortunate here to have his services. His subduing of Coorg – its rajah – was most brilliantly done, and at very little cost.’

‘I’ve heard the same from everyone, although he himself is still much affected by the death of his brigade major. He’s lost some good young men of late, and feels it keenly. And the business last evening … St Alban would for certain have succumbed without Garratt’s shot. War is one thing, Sir Eyre, but …’