In the front rank sat the five troop leaders, numbered from the right, A to E (the sixth, F, Hardy’s, would remain on detached duty in Coorg for a good few months more). Vanneck – the Honourable Myles Vanneck – perhaps the most experienced, sat with his order book resting on a foreleg crossed confidently over the other. Hervey hadn’t expected him to come out to India, for he’d money enough to arrange a transfer and stay in England, and he was unmarried (India could offer him little prospect in that regard, even if plenty of consolation). To his left sat B Troop’s leader, Christopher Worsley, hardly less experienced, and even more agreeable. Hervey hadn’t expected him to come either, for he had a wife used to finer society than she’d find in Madras (but then, so had he such a wife …). Then Lord Thomas Malet, C’s captain, who’d been his adjutant when he’d assumed command – the best of men. His coming here too had been something of a surprise, although he was not yet of an age when dutiful thoughts of matrimony intruded. And to his left was Hayes, lately come on exchange from the Royals, wanting a troop – a quiet man, but whom the Chestnuts (although D now, like the other troops, were a mixed bag of remounts) seemed pleased with, their efficiency much improved of late. Then E, Oliphant’s – Leslie Oliphant of Bachilton – another extract, exchanged from the Ninetieth, who but for some long-disputed entail would have been Clan chief and inheritor of ample acres in Perthshire, but who instead had to eke out a modest annuity in service overseas. Hervey had yet to get the measure of him; he seemed quick of temper but not so quick of thought – though it might have been mere native prudence, for the Ninetieth were after all light infantry, meant to cut about. F Troop’s lieutenant, returned from Coorg with the monthly states, stood in for the captain.

In the rank behind sat Lieutenant & Quartermaster Collins and the rest of the regimental staff – Gaskoin, the veterinarian, unpolished but skilled; the surgeon, Milne; the paymaster, Cowper, grey-haired, untroublesome; the riding-master, Kewley, come to the regiment in Hounslow full of the gospel of St John’s Wood, delighting in his new commission after twenty years in the ranks of the 7th Hussars; the chaplain, Coote, a Welshman, a widower of some years come from a battalion leaving Madras for home, a literate rather than a graduate, which occasioned some disdain in the mess at first, but who had endeared himself by his work on the comforts committee.

And at the rear – his post on parade, whether mounted or on foot – and this morning ‘resting’ on the silver-topped Malacca cane brought out on special occasions instead of the day-to-day whip, stood the serjeant-major. For twenty-five years he’d braced-up dragoons for Hervey to address (in section, then troop, then squadron, and now regiment), and for twenty-five years Hervey had taken his counsel – for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. (The old sweats said ‘until death do them part’.)