Free A Regimental Affair by Allan Mallinson

admiration. ‘She is more punctilious in her observance than any but the wardens. And then afterwards she will go to her own chapel. She is the finest of women. You were very right and clever to see the opportunity in her bereavement.’
    ‘Has she formed any friendships, do you know?’
    ‘She has dined with us on more than one occasion, but she keeps a distance. In truth, I’m sorry for it, but I cannot but respect her wishes. As for more intimate attachments, I know that one of the farmers who attends her chapel has made her an offer, but so far she has not been inclined to accept it.’
    ‘Has she spoken at all of her situation? How her husband came to be . . .’
    ‘Killed? Yes.’
    Hervey felt uneasy. ‘What exactly did she say?’
    ‘She told me that you somehow felt you bore a responsibility for his death.’
    ‘She said that?
I
never told her so!’
    ‘Oh Matthew! Sometimes I think you have not the slightest notion of what a woman can see. Why did you not tell me of it when you came home?’
    It was a fair question. What was the purpose of close kin if not to share such doubts? Why did he suppose that, just because the death of Serjeant Strange was on the field of battle, a woman might have no understanding of the turmoils of conscience that followed? And yet perhaps a woman could only see so much. Indeed, a
man
who had not known the face of battle could only see a little. He looked at Elizabeth and saw a sensibility that could not – and should not – ever understand what the prospect of death in battle made of men. Sudden, violent death; by a hand that was in a frenzy to sever the spirit from its body. That, or else to make the body a cripple: to impale on the bayonet’s point; to stab or slash or cut with the blade; to shatter with the musket’s ball, therifle’s bullet; or disembowel with the cannon’s shot. How could he even look at Elizabeth – close as she was to their Saviour’s commands as anyone could reasonably be – and not feel he had quitted a part of her company for ever?
    ‘Matthew?’
    He hesitated; and then smiled. ‘We must allow that Mrs Strange is a perceptive woman.’
    ‘Then why don’t we walk together this afternoon, and we shall see her. We might call on her, even.’
    ‘Yes,’ said her brother, smiling still. ‘I should like that very much.’
    Jessye lifted her head from the early shoots of spring pasture and looked at her master without a sound. Hervey had been watching from the gate of the old glebe meadow for a full five minutes before she saw him. The mare was content, at her ease. Somehow, he supposed, she must know that she was back in the place where first she had stretched her legs to a trot – and then more – all those years ago. When was that? All of twelve years before. She had certainly seen and endured more than any village horse hereabouts ever had. Now, as March went out like the lamb, and before the summer swarms of flies had come up from the water meadows, there was no pleasanter place on earth for her to be. And, thought Hervey, Jessye deserved it. After what she had been through only this last year she deserved it. He had vowed months ago that never again would she have to attend the call of the trumpet, let alone the bugle, and now he was sure of it, even though she was the best age for a charger – beyond the worry of splints, her bones being stronger with each year. He would never find another like Jessye for agility and bottom, he told himself, and perhaps even for honesty. But if he cast her now from service she could take her ease without the broken wind and lameness that was the fate of many a trooper which had served too long. She could sate herself on the Wiltshire pasture instead of haphazard campaign fodder, enjoying good timothy from the Longleat hay meadows through the winter, and fresh water from the chalk streams of the downs.
    ‘I’m going to put a stallion to her, Dan,’ he announced.
    Daniel Coates smiled. ‘Now