Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service (14 page)

Fairbrother raised his hands in a gesture of ‘no matter’.

‘No, I was looking forward to it keenly.’ Hervey smiled at the thought. ‘I’d promised you we could shoot bustard.’

‘There’ll be another time. When we’re returned.’

Hervey inclined his head, doubtfully. ‘There may not be. Bustard are very few on the Plain these days.’

‘Then we must trust there’ll be a brace that survive until your homecoming.’ Fairbrother suddenly remembered: ‘Oh, and there’s this,’ he said, holding up a sheet of writing paper with finger and thumb to reveal the embossed coronet at the head. ‘You are summoned this evening by Princess Lieven.’

‘Princess Lieven?’

‘The Russian ambassadress.’

‘I know who is Princess Lieven,’ said Hervey, and rather more sharply than he wished he had. ‘What business have I with her – or she with me?’

‘I rather fancy it must be something to do with your going to the Russian war,’ replied Fairbrother, sufficiently drolly as to exact a penalty for his friend’s brusqueness.

‘At what hour am I expected?’

‘Nine. Johnson is laying out your court dress.’

‘I suppose I’d better go. She’s by all accounts an arch-intriguer. I fancy she’ll have some scheme she would have me embroiled in. But if she can give me an introduction to a decent horse-coper in Petersburg I shall count the evening worthwhile.’

Fairbrother smiled knowingly. ‘Her reputation
is
formidable, is it not? “An ambassadress is an honest woman sent to lie abroad for her country”?’ (Princess Lieven had kept an influential drawing room when the Congress of Vienna had removed to Verona in later years – and, it was said, an even more influential bedroom.)

Hervey frowned, taking the letter from him at last. ‘You are very clever. But I sometimes think that before we met you did nothing other than acquire gossip.’

‘That is precisely what I did!’

‘Well, I fancy that that said of Princess Lieven is no more than what is invariably peddled of a woman with a mind of her own.’

‘That is very
liberal-minded
of you.’

Hervey shook his head. ‘It exasperates me that a woman must be so particular to guard her reputation – no benefit of the doubt, none of the …
latitude
that a man is permitted.’

‘My dear fellow, what has come over you?’

Hervey sighed and sat down in a leather tub beside the writing table. ‘Nothing has come over me. I had wanted a little time to … pay a call this evening. That is all.’

‘May I make the call in your stead? I had intended supping in Covent Garden, but I am at your disposal.’

Hervey smiled indulgently, extending a hand to the bell-pull next to his chair (the club’s system of springs and wires made for more agreeably effortless communication with the servants’ hall than in the former premises). ‘No, you have done enough. In any case, at this hour it’s perhaps better to be calling on the garden than the convent. I had intended speaking with the nun I told you of, at Hammersmith.’ In the chaise down he had conceived the notion that the convent might be the source of advice he knew he needed; on the last occasion, the counsel had been incomplete, interrupted by the call to the Cape.

‘That, I own, I should find beyond my powers.’

‘You mistake the matter. You would find it easy to speak with Sister Maria.’

Fairbrother leaned back in his chair. Though they had spent the greater part of their time in each other’s company these past eighteen months, there were yet matters marked ‘out of bounds’. It puzzled him, troubled him in fact, for it was alien to the freer and easier world that had been his youth. ‘I have not said it before, Hervey, but you intrigue me by your partiality for popery. You’ll forgive the word.’

Hervey was certain he would forgive his friend anything. Nevertheless he looked askance at the proposition. ‘I have no partiality for popery, as you call it, only that I have found its adherents to be uncommonly attractive. Not, I mean, the superstitious creatures I observed in Spain, although their religion did them no great harm, I suppose. Nor even, for that matter, the wretched people in Ireland. I confess, however …
yes
, there is something reassuring in the skirts of a nun, or indeed of a priest.’

‘A party at Princess Lieven’s or a tryst in a cold convent: can there truly be any choice? I doubt there’s an officer in the Sixth, or the rest of the cavalry, for that matter, who’d deem it worth a moment’s consideration.’

Hervey frowned again, sensing his own absurdity.

A waiter came, allowing him to change the subject.

‘Shall you take a little wine? Or spirit?’

‘I thank you, no,’ replied Fairbrother.

‘You are unwell?’

‘I am excessively well. But I should like to finish these drafts before repairing to the theatre, and I should not care to fuddle my head any more than it is presently.’

‘Well, I have no intention of fuddling mine either, but unless I take some restorative I fear I shall be of no use to Princess Lieven. Brandy and seltzer, please, Warley.’

‘I wonder if Metternich fortified himself thus.’

‘Metternich? I don’t follow.’

‘You are slow this evening. The
Congress
System.’

Fairbrother said it gravely; and then, with the suggestion of a smile and the arching of an eyebrow, signalled the pun.

Hervey began laughing. ‘Infamous,’ he protested; ‘but really very funny.’

Before leaving for Dover Street, the residence of the ambassador of His Imperial Majesty, Autocrat of all the Russias, to the Court of St James’s, Hervey spent a profitable half hour in the United Service’s library. His Serene Highness Prince Khristofor Andreyevich Lieven, or Count Lieven as then he was, had been first a soldier: some seventeen years Hervey’s senior, he had been with Tsar Alexander at Austerlitz and promoted lieutenant-general but two years later – not yet his thirty-third birthday (Hervey had shaken his head in some despair). Two years later, in December 1809, he had been sent to represent the Tsar at the Prussian court, and then when Bonaparte prepared to march on Moscow, and Britain and Russia became allies once more rather than enemies (if half-hearted enemies), he was appointed to London. And there he had remained ambassador, receiving the title Prince three years ago when his mother was created the first Princess of Lieven.

And yet it was the ambassadress who possessed the greater distinction among London society. Hervey knew a little of her reputation, especially as an unbending patroness of Almack’s assembly rooms (which had once turned away the Duke of Wellington himself for wearing trousers rather than breeches), but he had not before required to know more. Again the United Service’s library supplied him with notable detail: Dorothea (Darja) Christorovna Benckendorff was born on 17 December 1785, at Riga, where her father, a general of infantry, was military commandant (a branch of the family of the Markgrafschaft of Brandenburg had settled in Esthonia and entered the Russian service). General Benckendorff had taken a German wife, nevertheless, Baroness Charlotte Schilling of Cannstadt, confidante of the Princess Maria of Wirtemberg, who afterwards became the wife of Tsar Paul I. On Charlotte Benckendorff’s death in 1797 she had commended her four children to the Tsarina’s care, whence Dorothea’s bounty then flowed. Hervey had to count the years twice when he calculated that she had married at fourteen, and that her husband, though even then a major-general, was but eleven years her senior.

A few minutes after nine o’clock, therefore, he presented himself at Number 30, Dover Street, feeling himself possessed of enough information by which to judge any proposal that came his way (he considered himself to be already embarking on the commander-in-chief’s service – or even that of His Majesty himself). Prince Lieven was not at home, however, both to Hervey’s disappointment and surprise. Princess Lieven’s had been the invitation, but he had assumed this to be merely the customary form. Now he realized that it was she herself who gave the soiree, and for a moment he contemplated turning on his heel, for if the evening were to be an imitation of Almack’s, he felt insufficiently in sorts to stay. But there were already a dozen couples gathered, with more carriages queuing without, and he imagined therefore that it would be easy enough to make his introductions, take a turn about the room and then leave without offence.

He was announced in a high, almost singing voice to (as it were) the room rather than simply his hostess – ‘Colonel Hervey’ – though mispronounced, Bristol fashion, and he noticed several men in uniform, and others, glance his way, so that he did not know whether it was on account of his own reputation (the newspapers had made free with his exploits among the Zulu) or the presumption that here was a representative of that talented but tainted family.

Princess Lieven bid him welcome with a smile. And self-conscious though he had been in making his entrance, he observed that she had not done so with those immediately ahead of him. Indeed, her manner with them had appeared rather formal, as if aware of her husband’s status and her own rank. Fairbrother’s parting words, so absurdly arch, came to him: ‘Princes of such new creation are not to be excessively reverenced’. Hervey had no intention of showing excessive reverence: he would bow in the military rather than the court fashion. But the Princess’s smile threw his stride somewhat, so that he found himself returning it perhaps too appreciatively. He realized at once, and bowed quickly.

Once he was safely joined to the party in the drawing room, taking a glass of champagne, he turned to appraise her from the cover of a flank. Her manner he had already had opportunity to observe; it entirely became her reputation, and more. She was known also as a woman of striking attraction, if not of conventional beauty; and indeed he found her so, despite – perhaps even because of – her proud air. Her height and slender figure were certainly to her advantage (she might fill a dragoon’s tunic without any betrayal of her sex, her breast was so fashionably flat), and the angles of her face were made for the portraitist. She was about Kat’s age, yet appeared to him at once to be both older and younger, depending on whether he observed the mien of the ambassadress or the ringlets which fell about her swan-neck and bare shoulders, and the fringe of girlish curls. Her eyes were large and undoubtedly intelligent, and her mouth undeniably tempting. Yes, he could see that the combination of her talents and position were a priceless asset to the Tsar.

‘Colonel Hervey, good evening.’

He turned to find his recent acquaintance of the Horse Guards, Colonel Youell, in ‘the drawing room dress’ – crimson sash, white breeches and stockings – of the First Foot Guards. He returned the bow gladly. ‘I am pleased to have the opportunity to thank you for your assistance today. Captain Fairbrother told me that you showed him every consideration.’

‘It was my pleasure, Hervey, I assure you.’ He then drew him to one side. ‘You will receive your orders in writing, but we had word this evening that the Russians are to begin their new offensive sooner than we had been given to understand, and Wellington is to send a
note verbale
to Petersburg. That is why the frigate is stood by.’

‘Am I to have sight of the
note
?’

Youell seemed surprised by the question. ‘I don’t think even Lord Hill shall have sight of it.’

‘Then how am I supposed to know how to proceed?’

‘My dear Hervey, your mission is to observe the conduct of operations. It is not necessary that you are acquainted with every affair of state. It is merely the coincidence of sailing instructions that places you within a mile of the matter.’

Hervey smiled, ruefully. ‘My dear Youell, I can assure you, from considerable experience, that the moment one begins to act in such circumstances is the moment one finds one’s written orders do not extend to the actual situation that presents itself!’

Youell nodded. ‘You are right, I don’t doubt. It could surely do no harm, and quite possibly some good. Forgive me. I shall ask of the Foreign Office tomorrow – you are going there yourself, are you not?’

‘I am.’

‘But I believe they may say that it might be more expedient that you are told by the ambassador in Petersburg.’

‘Very well. I presume I am to convey this
note verbale
to him?’

‘No; that is the business of a King’s Messenger. Your berth on the frigate is but a chance consequence of its carrying him.’

‘I may enjoy the passage to Petersburg without undue anxiety, then?’

The smile which accompanied this did not entirely convince Youell that Hervey was sporting. ‘I fancy you are not one given to undue anxiety, Colonel. You forget, perhaps, that I have read at first hand your despatches from the Cape.’

Hervey nodded to acknowledge the compliment. ‘Did you, by the way, arrange this invitation?’ he asked, gesturing to the room with his glass.

‘No, I did not,’ said Youell, and with a note of curiosity. ‘I had imagined that you yourself had.’

‘Then I wonder who did. Do you know the Princess?’

‘Not well. She is inclined to be generous with her invitations: she is wont to send them to the Guards marked “three officers”, or whatever number she requires, without elaboration.’