David Harnett

David Harnett of Westmere Droves, whose cattle routes and supply reach make him as important to the appetite of Britannia’s towns as many lords who sit in Parliament.

Cattle country lies far from the towns that eat its beef — wetter meadows, upland shires, marcher grazing and rough droving roads — and the men who move stock along those roads have acquired an importance out of proportion to their titles, which are usually none. David Harnett of Westmere Droves is among the foremost of them: as important to urban appetite as many lords seen in Parliament.

He is a working cattleman rather than a polished gentleman, heavy-set and weathered, more at ease in a stockyard than a drawing room. The drove roads know him for keeping his own tallies, for riding a stretch of route himself before committing a herd to it, and for a long memory of which tolls, fords and grazing rights were honoured last season and which were not.

Companies meet him as an employer when herds go missing on the long roads, when a toll or grazing right is disputed, or when a drove must pass through country where escort matters more than paperwork. He pays by the head delivered and says so at the outset.

In person

Harnett is a heavy-set, physically strong man in his fifties, dark hair heavily greying, with a thick moustache, a short beard and a broad drover’s face marked by wind and sun. His brown eyes are steady and his large hands scarred by years of rope and stock. He dresses for the road in a heavy drover’s coat, leather waistcoat, broad hat, gloves and high muddy boots, with a tally book and a heavy staff close at hand.