Hervey knew both what he wanted to say and what he must, but took a moment or two nevertheless to wrestle with himself.

‘My dear doctor, I am ever in your debt, but on this occasion there can be no question of where duty lies.’

Milne nodded, with a look of resignation. It was as he’d expected, if not as he’d hoped – not perhaps as he’d hoped, for while as a man he would have admired his commanding officer’s devotion to his wife, as a man under authority he might surely have thought the decision unfitting.

‘Very well, Colonel. I shall look forward to the change of air.’

Hervey always found Milne’s gentle Buchan reassuring. ‘You’ll not have dined. Will you sup with us? Kezia can’t be very long returning.’

‘That is most generous, as ever, Colonel, but there are two men sick in the hospital that I would see before staff parade. Nothing serious in the acute sense, but …’

Hervey smiled, though to himself. Milne: if there was a single dragoon bedded down he wouldn’t pass the evening without attending.

‘Of course, but nothing to trouble the chaplain with.’

Milne raised an eyebrow. ‘No, there’ll be no call for burials, but if only the chaplain had been able to close the door ere the horse bolted, so to speak … but I’m afraid it’s now a case – two cases – for mercurous chloride.’

‘Ah.’ Many a dragoon consulted a ‘sleeping dictionary’ too, but in their case the vocabulary was all too limited.

‘I’ve spoken to the sar’nt-major. The particular house will be made known.’

‘And these two: the prognosis?’

‘They’ll be back at duty in a day or two. They could do duty now, indeed, but they’ll be bilious with the mercury. Then it will recur at some distant time, as it always does.’

Hervey sighed. Milne had addressed every troop on the subject of what he called ‘public hygiene’, admonishing them that if they couldn’t control their carnal desires, like wild beasts, they should at least satisfy them ‘in armour’. When it came to the pleasures of the bazaar, however, in the management of men – some, at least – a surgeon (or a chaplain) might as well speak to the hand.

‘How many is that now?’

‘Forty-seven, Colonel.’

Hervey sighed again. The better part of a troop; it was unconscionable. His only consolation, perverse as it seemed, was that it was worse in the foot regiments.

Then he inclined his head in irony. ‘Strange, is it not, that many a dragoon will now live longer for chasing thugs and making war in Chintal, for I doubt there’ll be opportunity for such comforts in many a month.’

* * *

‘Well, lass, that’s about it an’ all. Six months, the colonel reckons, mebbe more.’ Armstrong said it matter-of-fact, but to reassure; it was best to square up to these things.

The punkah swung silently, and Mrs Armstrong poured him more tea and spread dripping on another slice of bread – his staple no matter what the heat. Six months at least – and only a week ago they’d been talking of next summer in the hills. Mrs Armstrong was not a one to fling her arms around her man’s neck, but five children and two dozen dragoons’ wives and their children were going to be a handful.