Redcoat

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Are you an officer?”

  “I don’t think so.” The boy grinned weakly.

  “You should know, shouldn’t you?” Sam teased him.

  “I was an aide.”

  “I should call you sir,” Sam said, trying to keep the boy’s spirits up.

  “Jonathon,” said Jonathon Becket. “My name’s Jonathon Becket.”

  “Like the archbishop, eh?” Sam said.

  “He died,” Jonathon said weakly.

  “Don’t be soppy,” Sam said sternly. “I’m Sam, that’s Nate. We’re twins. I was born first, and I got all the brains.” Sam was suddenly glad that this was not the horseman who had fallen to his panicked volley. Sam had seen that man lying dead, so Jonathon must have been hit by another bullet fired elsewhere in the misted confusion. “You ain’t too bad,” Sam said with rough comfort. “Leg’s torn up a bit, but the bone’s not broken.”

  “He’s a doctor.” Nate grinned at the American boy. “Joined the army ‘cause he couldn’t stand the sight of blood.”

  Jonathon laughed, and it made him flinch with sudden hurt. “It hurts, Sam. It hurts.”

  “You shouldn’t join the army if you can’t take a joke.” It was the oldest jest of soldiers, but it worked. Jonathon opened his eyes and gave a smile.

  “You’re going to be all right.” Sam was staring at Jonathon’s wounded leg, and he saw beneath the blood that the leg was twisted and that its foot, encased in a grotesque boot, was clubbed. God help the rebels, Sam thought, if they were sending cripples to war. “I’ve seen worse wounds,” he said to encourage the American.

  “That was on horses, Sam.” Nate said chidingly.

  “I mended a horse that speared itself on a fence post once,” Sam said, “and I had it trotting like a winner in a month! I’ll have you on your feet, Yankee.” He saw Jonathon shiver and so Sam took off his thick woollen coat, his red coat, and draped it about his enemy’s chest to keep him warm.

  “My first battle,” Jonathon said. He looked as if he were about to cry, not with pain, but with the shame of failing so signally in his very first battle.

  “You’ll have other battles,” Sam said.

  “Not if I lose the leg.”

  “What are you talking about? That wound’s nothing!” Sam’s scorn was both kindly and truthful. “I reckon you must be an officer if you’re making a fuss about a little scratch like that!” Sam knew the wound was far worse than a scratch, but Sam also saw how his enemy was needing this comfort, and was, indeed, clinging to every word with a desperate hope.

  Jonathon seemed to laugh. “It wasn’t much of a leg to start with.”

  Sam smiled. “It was the one God gave you, Yankee, so you might as well hang on to it. You’ll fight again, Johnny. I’ll have you on your feet, I’ll have you fighting, even if it is for the wrong bloody side. I promise it!”

  Sam had made a promise while about him, in the smoke thickened fog, the rebel army marched on.

  Thirteen

  Captain Christopher Vane had begun to believe that God intended great things for him; why else would providence have let him survive the first hours of a battle in which he, Christopher Vane, had seen things that before this day had only dwelt in nightmare?

  He had watched the advancing rebels savage at the retreating Light Infantry. No prisoners had been taken as the attack flooded down Germantown’s main street, for the memory of the night attack at Paoli’s was still fresh. Men chopped and stabbed and skewered with bayonets. Vane had seen the enemy’s bared teeth, heard the hiss of their breath and the grating of their bayonets on ribs. He had seen a Redcoat begging for mercy and watched the man pinned to a tree with such violence that his killer’s bayonet had bent in two. Vane, spurring his mare forward, had slashed his sabre across the American’s skull, then, in the macabre dance of death, Vane had slithered away from the man’s battle-crazed comrades whose dawn attack threatened to drive clean into Philadelphia itself.

  A musket ball had plucked at the skirts of Vane’s coat, another had thumped on its hide-stiffened shoulder and had ripped off an epaulette, while a third had drawn blood from the back of his hand. He stayed with the retreating Light Infantry, obeying Sir William’s instructions, and twice he had fended off bayonets with his sabre, the second time riposting with such speed that he had taken the American in the eye and sent the man reeling and clutching at his face. He had shot two men with his pistols. The world had become a small, stinging circle of fog in which men panted, screamed, shot, stabbed, and died. Time was chaos in which Vane was once again astonished by the exultation of battle. Each moment was a challenge, and each danger survived a victory.

  “Move yourself, sir, move over!” the voice bellowed at Vane. “Move, sir, damn you, move!”

  Vane turned in his saddle and was astonished to see a British battalion drawn in tight formation across the road with their three ranks of muskets aimed at his horse. He spurred to the battalion’s flank, clearing it just as their first massive volley pulsed smoke and flame into the fog.

  “Who are you?” he shouted at a lieutenant.

  “40th, sir!”

  These, then, were the men Sir William had placed to check the rebel thrust, and Vane felt a fierce joy as the battalion went into the deadly rhythm of platoon fire. Now, instead of single volleys, each half-company fired separately, immediately after the half-company to their right, so that the muskets spat in unending ripples of flame down the long front. The men worked with an apparently soulless precision. They fired, reloaded, rammed, fired, reloaded, rammed, and the only untoward movements were the flickers as red-coated men fell backwards from the enemy’s fire.

  “Close up! Close up!” the sergeants shouted, and the men, with scarce a glance at the wounded who were either dragged backwards or thrown forwards, shuffled again into their locked formation without breaking the tempo of their work. The front rank knelt on their right knees, the centre rank stood behind with each man’s left foot hard against the right foot of the kneeling man in front, while the rear rank locked their right boots against the centre rank’s left feet.

  The muskets pumped smoke to thicken the fog through which, their blood roused by imminent victory, the Americans charged. They paid for their temerity. This was not Light Infantry, scattered in a skirmish line, but a drilled, formed battalion that could hammer bullets in a rhythm of death that would spew gouts of blood into the muddy street.

  “Close up! Close up!” A sergeant dragged a wounded Redcoat from the line and threw him, bleeding, to the rear. A bandsman dropped his drumsticks and ran to help the casualty.

  The battalion’s colours of heavy, fringed silk jerked from bullet strikes. Sergeants armed with wide-bladed halberds guarded the precious flags. “Steady!” the colonel shouted. “Well done! Well done! Steady now, lads!” He pushed his horse between two files of men to stare into the smoke-fouled fog. “Cease fire! Cease fire! Load!”

  The battalion went silent. Those men with unloaded muskets bit into cartridges. Ramrods rattled and scraped in barrels. Enemy fire still spat through the fog, and men still twisted and jerked back, but the platoon fire had repelled the first rebel attack. The colonel, studiously ignoring the musketry that was aimed at his gilt-bedecked coat, drew his sword. “Fix bayonets!”

  “Fix bayonets!” the sergeants echoed the command.

  The Americans had withdrawn into the smoke-pearled fog to regroup. Now, with a cheer, they made a fresh and spirited charge. Vane heard them before he saw them. He heard the cheering and the slop of boots in mud, then, in the whiteness, he saw the rebel ranks coming at a run. Their ordered ranks, denied the practice of their red-coated enemies, had shaken into a looser formation, but their outstretched bayonets looked foully businesslike.

  “Wait!” the colonel shouted. “Wait, my boys! Wait!”

  The American cheer seemed to rise into a howl of blood lust and hatred that rang until, just as it seemed to Vane that the 40th’s colonel had left his volley too late, the sword flas
hed down and the command was shouted into the sky. “Fire!”

  Seven hundred muskets flamed together in one terrible stinging volley that threw the attacking line into ruin. Vane saw men fall and jerk like bloodied puppets. “Front rank rise!” The colonel was standing in his stirrups now, sword raised. “Battalion will advance! On my word!” The sword pointed forward. “March!”

  The shining halberds swung down and the Redcoats went forward, not in a loose running mass like the rebels, but with a ponderous and deadly efficiency. Wounded rebels were silenced with bayonets. Not a Redcoat cheered, not a man shouted, not a man broke the slow, blade-tipped and silent advance. The surviving enemy did not wait to contest the charge, but edged warily backwards.

  “Halt! Reload! Front rank, kneel! Wait for my word!” The colonel waited as the ramrods rose and fell. His sword went up. “Rear ranks only!” The blade seared down. “Fire!” Another full-throated, heavy volley coughed and flamed, this one slashing into rebel ranks already disordered by the 40th’s murderously disciplined fire. This was infantry work at its awesome best, but it was not enough. The colonel, his front quietened for a moment, trotted round to his right flank where he saw Vane. “You’re Kit Vane, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Glad you became an aide?”

  Vane laughed. “Yes, sir.” He was exulting in it.

  Colonel Musgrave watched his two rear ranks finish their reloading. “Buggers are turning my left flank. Nothing I can do about it.” He peered into the opaque whiteness. “The bloody Yankees have got their tails up this morning, haven’t they?”

  Vane smiled. “Indeed, sir.”

  “So I’m going to earth.” Musgrave gestured towards a substantial, brick-built house behind him. “Cram the lads in there and invite ‘em to dig us out. Perhaps you’d tell Sir William?”

  “Of course I will, sir.”

  Colonel Musgrave, his wig in place and his white stock impeccably tied, stared northwards. “I suspect this is their main lunge, Vane. I could have sworn I saw Fat George. Ugly bugger, and he sits on a horse like a pregnant fishwife, but he’s brave enough.” Musgrave took out a snuff box, opened the lid, and offered a pinch to Vane. “But after that little lesson I suspect they’ll bring up their cannon, don’t you? So I think the house is the best thing. Try and relieve us when you can.”

  “Of course, sir.” Vane refused the snuff, then twisted in his saddle. “You think they’ve got behind us?”

  “No doubt about it. You’ll have an exciting ride, Vane. Death or glory, eh? Good luck.” Musgrave laughed grimly, then cupped his hands. “Left flank, incline to the rear! Smartly now!” He shook his head proudly. “They’re good lads, Vane, the very best, but it’s time I got them tucked up safe. You’ll give my compliments to Sir William?”

  “I will, sir.”

  “Tell him he owes me a pipe of port if the 40th live through today.” Musgrave, instead of retreating in front of the rebels, planned to turn a brick house into a fortress. He might be trapped there and ground to mincemeat, he might be forced to surrender, or he might make his name as the man who checked a victorious enemy attack.

  A half-mile behind the house, the Commander-in-Chief waited in the centre of his main defensive line at the southern edge of Germantown. Sir William fidgeted with his watch, then cast an irritated glance at the fog which showed no sign of lessening. Sir William wondered whether Mister Washington was also irritated by the weather, then was besieged by the irrational superstition that somehow, perhaps by prayer, the Americans had arranged for this fog to blanket the battlefield. The Americans were very fond of prayer, it was one of their few habits that rather irritated Sir William. He had been amused by Christopher Vane’s pungent observation that, for a people which put such stock on reason, the Americans’ dependence on prayer was quite illogical.

  John Andre, horse lathered, galloped from the fog, saw Howe, reined in, and let his horse slither to a quivering stop. “General Grey’s compliments, sir,” he paused to quieten the nervous horse, “and Luken’s Mill is still in our hands.”

  “Thank God.”

  “But he needs men, sir. The outposts were badly cut up. We put Elliot’s battalion in support, but he lost a good few men.”

  ‘’God help them,” Howe said, and suddenly realized that, like his enemies, he was adopting the habit of prayer.

  And prayer was needed for, if Sir William’s fears were right, then this battle was already lost. Slowly, as vaguely as the fog that surrounded him, Sir William was piecing together a picture of his battlefield, and it was not pretty. American columns were advancing down at least three roads, and the fog made their progress almost impossible to measure. At any moment Sir William feared an eruption of musketry behind him, for he might already be surrounded.

  Yet, though Sir William had once sworn never to fight against the Americans, neither did he intend to lose to them. They might hold the initiative now, but Sir William was no mean commander. The flanks, he decided, must be staunch. The right flank, deeply wounded by the rebel attack, was demanding reinforcements, but Sir William refused the request. This battle would be decided in the heart of the field, and Sir William would fatten the centre of his line and hope that the rebel onslaught did not come before he could assemble the men who must first withstand the assault, then counterattack. Sir William fretted for the arrival of men from the city’s garrison and pulled in the reserves from his flanks. He also saw the concerned faces of his entourage and, in search of some touch of normality that would calm their fears, he twisted in the saddle to look for his servant. “Evans?”

  “Sir?”

  “Is Hamlet safe?”

  Tom Evans, mounted on one of Sir William’s spare horses, held up the General’s dog. “Quite safe, sir.”

  “Good man. As long as he’s safe we can’t lose, eh?” Forced laughter sounded as Sir William turned back. In front of him a battery of artillery pointed down the wide, fog-shrouded main street, but the waiting barrels were still masked by red-coated infantry that sniped at enemy skirmishers flitting past like phantoms in the whiteness. Then, between those enemy skirmishers, and riding like a man set to win a fortune on a steeplechase, came a single red-jacketed officer. His horse, hooves spewing mud, had bared teeth and white eyes. The British cheered him and John Andre, standing in his stirrups to watch, suddenly laughed. “God, but he’s having a high time!”

  “That’s Vane?”

  “That’s Kit, sir.”

  The fog closed behind Vane who, hat awry and epaulette torn by a bullet, slowed his mare first to a canter, then to a trot. He bowed left and right to the Redcoats who cheered him, then, face beaming with the delight of the day, he took off his hat to Sir William. “Good morning again, sir! They’ve pushed Musgrave aside.”

  “Have they now?”

  “But he thinks this is their main lunge. He’s fairly sure he saw Mister Washington with them.”

  “Our intrepid George is never far from the main action, is he?” The scrap of information was useful to Sir William, for it confirmed his suspicion that the struggle in the village would decide the battle, but it was small comfort. He had nothing like enough men assembled yet to check a determined thrust. “And Musgrave?” Sir William asked.

  Vane turned in his saddle to stare down the village street. “He’s gone to ground in a large house, sir.”

  “They’ll march straight past him.” Sir William said it gloomily, for he had been relying on the 40th to blunt the rebel attack. “Did Musgrave hold them at all?”

  “He gave them hell for a while, sir.”

  “Let’s hope they need an hour to reform.” It seemed a vain hope on which to pin victory, but it was the only hope Sir William had at this moment.

  Vane, who had ridden and fought amidst horrors all morning, was yearning for an acknowledgement of his achievement from Sir William. He thought that praise was coming when the Comman-der-in-Chief noticed Vane’s bloodied uniform, but, before Sir William could utter a
word, a spent musket ball fluttered between the two men. Sir William frowned like a man irritated by a wasp, then twisted as a yelp sounded from behind. Tom Evans had been struck by the ball. It had only bruised him, but the shock was sufficient to make him release Hamlet who, barking and brisk, scampered towards the enemy.

  “Stop him!” Sir William shouted. “Stop him!”

  There was a maelstrom of gunners and Redcoats diving at the dog which barked, swerved, then ran free into the fog. It disappeared.

  “Christ on his bloody cross! Can’t you do anything right?” Sir William wrenched his reins round. “God damn it, Evans!”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” Evans was massaging his bruised shoulder.

  “God’s teeth! You bastard!” Sir William’s temper was an awesome thing. The dog had been a gift from his Boston-born mistress, and the loss of it struck sore. It also tempted fate because of Sir William’s jest that had tied the dog’s safety to the battle’s outcome. Soldiers were notoriously superstitious, and Sir William’s glib remark had invited disaster. Christopher Vane, who had never seen Sir William’s rare anger before, was appalled by the force of it, then he wondered if it was really prompted, not by the dog’s loss, but by Sir William’s knowledge that only one thin and unsettled line of troops lay between George Washington and victory.

  The General brooded behind the guns while his aides waited further back. John Andre frowned at Vane’s breeches. “Are you hit bad?”

  “Someone else’s blood,” Vane said shortly, and the thought of his dead servant reminded him of the bitter loss of his young stallion. “Billy makes a kerfuffle over a lost dog and I’ve lost my spare horse.” Vane said it angrily as he and Andre dismounted by the gun limbers. “A hundred guineas gone in the fog!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “A hundred guineas! I shouldn’t have bought the damn thing. And I lost my watch!”