Redcoat

by Bernard Cornwell

  “I don’t care what Maggie wants,” Scammell said. “It’s what I want, innit? She’s mine, boy, mine!”

  “If you know where she is,” Sam tried feebly, “then why don’t you get her?”

  “’Cos the old cow who runs her won’t let anyone in, will she? Officers’ territory, that, too good for a bleeding sergeant, but your Jack-pudding sends you to fetch his doxies, don’t he? So the old cow’ll let you in, Sam, and you’re going to bring Maggie here.”

  Sam said nothing. Scammell laughed. “This is what you’re going to do for me, Sam Gilpin. You’re going to Mrs Taylor’s and you tell her that your Jack-pudding wants Maggie now. Then you bring her to me instead of him. You understand?”

  “She mayn’t want to come, Sarge.” Sam shifted slowly. In one of the deep watchcoat pockets he had the small pistol that he usually carried about the city. He inched his right hand towards the pocket, but Scammell’s knee obstructed him and any untoward movement might alert the Sergeant to the weapon’s existence.

  “She’ll come,” Scammell said, “’cos you’ll make her come, boy. Who’s your whore, Sam?”

  “She ain’t a whore.”

  Scammell chuckled. “They’re all whores, Sam, every last damned one of them. Watched you, I did. Saw you with her! Pretty thing, isn’t she? Maybe I’ll take her instead of Maggie.”

  Sam heaved and Scammell, ready for it, slapped a handful of gritty mud into Sam’s face. The filth slopped into Sam’s mouth and Scammell, as he forced the foul mixture into Sam’s face, chuckled again. “That’ll keep you quiet, Sam.”

  Sam choked, gagged, and spat, but the bayonet twisted, pressed, threatened, and he lay still, listening.

  Rain slapped and pounded in the alley. It gushed and ran from the gutters of the college and swirled in the open drains. Sam, moving his hand as slowly as a stalking cat, tried to reach the small pistol, but Scammell, sensing the movement, twisted the blade and again Sam went very still.

  Sam heard the window go up. He braced himself, but Scammell’s fingers groped for his eyes and pressed beneath the sockets in a threat to jab down and Sam knew he was beaten. He lay still. The window thumped down. A dog whined and its chain rattled on cobbles.

  He could just see the silhouette of the wall’s top where the blanket lay folded, and he watched it, fearing to see Caroline’s shadow, but wondering if her coming would distract Scammell for a second. Then bolts on the gate squealed and grated.

  “George!” Scammell hissed the word, and Sam instantly knew who the other man was.

  George Cullen, who boasted of having killed three women before running to join the army as an escape from the justices. Cullen, who delighted in pain and who always volunteered to wield the red-hot iron with which men who stole from their comrades were branded. Cullen, who loved every flogging and who crouched in the bivouacs like a mad dog with a lolling mouth and wild eyes. Cullen.

  The gate opened. Sam spat the mud from his mouth, twisted his head away from the pressing fingers, and heaved with his right leg. “Caroline! Run, run!”

  The bayonet sliced up Sam’s jawbone as Scammell was jerked forward. Caroline screamed, then the scream was abruptly cut off as Cullen draped her with a greatcoat and forced her down into the alley’s mud.

  Sam was thrusting up to throw Scammell over. He clawed with his left hand for the sergeant’s face, but his right was plunging into the pocket and scrabbling for the pistol. The sergeant chopped down with his left fist, then laid the seventeen-inch blade across Sam’s throat. “If you don’t stay still, fucker, I’ll take your whore now, in front of you! Is that what you want?”

  Sam went still, but the pistol was in his hand now. The weapon was tangled in the cloth, but, very slowly, Sam eased the flint back as he tried to twist the short barrel towards Scammell.

  Caroline was squirming and kicking, but Cullen slapped her twice through the thick wool of the sopping coat, then contemptuously picked her up and slammed her against the brick wall. She gasped with the sudden pain, then gave up the struggle.

  “Right, Sam!” Scammell, victorious, chuckled. “She’s your whore, right?”

  “No.”

  “I watched you, boy! Mooning after her. She’s pretty, too. I know officers who’d pay a pretty price for a little girlie like her. You like her, George?”

  Cullen laughed. His right hand, pressing through the greatcoat, was pinning Caroline’s throat against the wall. With his left he lifted her skirts.

  “Very nice,” Scammell said. “Very nice. So listen, Sam. You go for Maggie, and you bring her back to me. If you don’t, Sam, then you won’t see this doxie again. I’ll have her, and George will have her, and I’ll sell her to every poxed Jack-pudding in the battalion. You want that, Sam? You want the officers riding her?”

  Caroline suddenly twisted because Cullen’s hand was groping around her waist. Cullen grunted as he slapped her head against the wall, then pushed his left hand back beneath the coat. “Little bitch was going for this.” He pulled out her knife and tossed it on to the ground.

  “You’ve got an hour, Sam,” Scammell said.

  “Maggie might be working!”

  “Then you’ll have to find her, won’t you?” Scammell eased the bayonet away from Sam’s throat. “Are you going to do it?”

  Sam pulled the trigger.

  He did not dare leave Caroline with these men, even for a minute, let alone an hour. He had to fight now, and he prayed that the clinging cloth of the pocket would not trap the flint’s fall, and he prayed that the rain had not soaked through the coat to turn the powder in the pistol’s pan to grey sludge.

  The pistol fired.

  The report was muffled by the cloth and by the seething rain.

  Flint sparked on steel, the fire travelled to the charge, and the bullet was driven up through the layers of thick wool and felt to be deflected by a metal button. The small lead ball seared across Scammell’s inner thigh like a red-hot whip lashed on to the tender flesh, and the Sergeant jerked back. Sam heaved up, pushing Scammell upwards and away, and tore the pistol free of his smouldering pocket. The bayonet slashed at him, missed, and Sam hit Scammell in the face with the pistol, hit again, and suddenly was free. He threw himself to his left and scrabbled for one of the two muskets.

  Scammell, the pain and blood spreading from his thigh, clawed at Sam’s legs, but Sam kicked him, found a musket, and hauled himself to his feet.

  “One fucking move and she’s dead!” Cullen had his own bayonet at Caroline’s neck. Caroline, hearing the fight, had tried to break free, but had only succeeded in shedding the coat which had muffled and blinded her. In the tiny light that seeped from the streets her golden hair, from which her shawl had been torn, seemed very bright.

  Cullen had pinned Caroline to the wall with his left knee that he had raised to thrust into her belly. Scammell climbed to his feet, bayonet in his hand. “If you want her back, Sam, you fetch Maggie.”

  Cullen grinned because he had saved Scammell’s careful plan, then suddenly yelped as a pain stabbed through his leg and clawed down his flesh. Caroline, in the flurry and noise of her bid to escape, had cocked the scarificator. Now she thrust it against Cullen’s thigh and pulled the trigger. She dragged the blades down, gouging blood-seeping grooves of torn flesh that made Cullen instinctively snatch at the pain’s source. As the bayonet left her throat, Caroline twisted away. “Run, Sam!”

  Sam hammered the musket’s butt at Cullen’s head as Caroline tore herself free, then Sam abandoned the weapon and ran with her. He took her hand and pulled her along. He turned left at the alley’s end, away from the guardhouse, and they sprinted up Fourth Street. A dog barked. A patrolman, seeing the dark running figures, shouted.

  Sam twisted at the corner of Arch Street. Scammell and Cullen were on the pavement, both men limping, but the sight of the patrol drove them back into a doorway.

  “Come on!” Caroline tugged his hand. She has seen another patrol in Arch Street and she dragged Sam further
up Fourth, then twisted into Race Street past the gloomy German Reformed Church. Caroline was laughing. The rain was on her face, the wind in her cheeks, and the Redcoats were chasing her.

  “Here!” Sam had seen a half-open gate and he tugged her towards it. They lost their footing, skidded in the mud, then fell through the gate into a pitch-black alley that was covered with a pitched timber roof. Sam pushed the gate shut and crouched, listening, but could only hear the pounding of blood in his ears and the sound of breath in his throat.

  Then a voice, speaking dose behind, made Sam gasp and turn. “Who are you?” It was a man’s voice that came gently from the alley’s thick darkness.

  Sam bunched himself to fight this new threat, but Caroline hushed him. “We’re running from the lobsters,” she said.

  “I know all about running away,” said the strange man. He sounded elderly. “I’m just locking up, children. You will find the gate easy to climb when the soldiers are gone. God bless you.” The man shuffled past them, the gate closed, and. Sam heard a key grate in a padlock. The footsteps of the closer of the two patrols were loud beyond the arch, and Sam heard the old man bid the soldiers a courteous good evening. No, he had not been troubled by any hooligans.

  “Where are we?” Sam whispered to Caroline.

  “It’s the city synagogue,” she whispered back.

  “The what?”

  “Never mind!” She took her hand from Sam’s and laid a finger on his lips. The rain drummed on the boards above them and dripped through the gaps in the crude roof to splash on the flagged alleyway.

  Sam sat with his back against the synagogue wall. Caroline sat beside him. She was shivering so he took off his heavy watchcoat and draped it about her shoulders so that, encircled by the coat and his arm, she had to lean against Sam and he could smell her wet hair and feel the warmth of her face close to his cheek. He put his other arm around her and she buried her face in the cloth of his red uniform. It all seemed so natural. Sam hugged her tight and close, warming her, holding her, while beyond the alley’s gate the footsteps faded away.

  “We shouldn’t,” Caroline murmured into his coat.

  “No” – though Sam did not move.

  Caroline pulled away, forcing Sam to release one of his arms. She had been laughing as she ran from the Redcoats, but now she sniffed as though close to tears. “Jonathon’s terrible, Sam. They’re murdering him!” She suddenly threw the scarificator, which she had clung to throughout their escape, across the small alley.

  “He’ll get better.” Sam spoke with an absolute confidence. “I’ve never known beestings to fail.”

  Caroline seemed not to hear. “I told him he’d go back to the army, but he never will, Sam. Never! I’m telling lies to make him better.”

  “That’s a good thing to tell a lie for,” Sam said staunchly, “and he’s got you to live for, hasn’t he? Better than beestings, that is!” His right arm was still about her shoulders, yet Sam knew Caroline could never be his for they had both made their promises to Jonathon, and promises could not be broken. “He’ll get better,” Sam said, “’cause I’ve said he’ll get better.”

  Caroline smiled at the obstinacy in his voice. “Do you ever give up, Sam?”

  “Never.” There was a glimmer of light from carriage lamps as a coach splashed past the synagogue. Sam waited until the sound had faded. “If you give up, the Green Man will get you.”

  “The Green Man?”

  “A sprite, a Jack-in-the-woods.” Sam’s voice was soft in the darkness. “He has a devil’s soul and a green skin. He lives in the woods, see, and he eats you if you get frightened. You can hear him sometimes. He has feet like great tree boles moving in the leaves, and a voice like a gale.”

  Caroline listened to the conviction in his voice and supposed that the Green Man was the terror which English country mothers used to get their children to sleep. “The Green Man lives in England?”

  “I never heard of him here,” Sam said, “only in England. My grandad saw him once up in the top woods. A girt thing he was.” Sam’s voice took on the burr of his native village as if, for a moment, he thought he was back there. “A great thing shifting among the dark trees, but if you don’t fear it, it won’t trouble you.”

  Caroline was silent for a while. She seemed content to leave Sam’s right arm about her shoulder and even eager for the security of his closeness, for slowly, almost tiredly, she leaned against him once more. “Do you miss England, Sam?”

  He smiled. “Not now.”

  “No?” She sounded disbelieving and Sam, although he knew he should not, answered Caroline by gathering her into his arms again and Caroline, though she knew she should not, let herself be drawn into their safe encircling embrace again.

  “I promised Jonathon,” Caroline’s voice was very small, “that you’d help find us horses when we go.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Perhaps the river would be better, though.” She sniffed.

  “Boat would probably be a good idea,” Sam said.

  “But we’d have to wait till spring.” Caroline said it softly. “There are rapids between here and Trenton.” She paused, then shrugged in Sam’s arms. “He shouldn’t go back to the army, not with one leg, but he insists. Maybe he’ll change his mind.”

  “Maybe,” Sam said.

  “Martha says he should study law. She says it doesn’t matter if a lawyer’s only got one leg.”

  “Won’t stop him counting the money, will it?”

  Caroline stirred and her face looked palely up at Sam. “But lawyers live in the city, don’t they?”

  “Some live in the country,” Sam said.

  “Not Jonathon. Whatever he does, he’ll be the best, and the best lawyers aren’t in the country.”

  Sam supposed she was right. “I couldn’t live in the city,” he said. “I’m glad to have seen one, but I couldn’t live in it. Like being in prison!”

  “Yes.”

  There was silence again between them. Caroline still shivered and Sam held her very close and gently stroked her hair, but with a touch so light that Caroline could almost persuade herself that it was unintentional. She rested her head on his shoulder again as the rain crashed on the flimsy shelter above and rippled down the wall opposite.

  “Will you stay a soldier, Sam?”

  “I don’t have a lot of choice, do I?”

  “But with those two men?” Caroline shuddered.

  “They ain’t all like that. I had a decent officer, Captain Kelly, but he got killed. He was a nice fellow. Most of them are decent sorts of fellows. Weavers.”

  “Weavers?”

  “No work back home, you see, so they join the army.” Sam grinned. “We have enough weavers to put a blanket over Philadelphia.”

  She pulled away from him again, but not so far that he must let go of her. “But do you really want to stay a soldier, Sam?”

  The new urgency in her voice made Sam hesitate. “Not like I used to, perhaps.”

  “What do you want?”

  Sam hesitated again. What he wanted was what he had now – this girl in his arms – but that was something that could not be said because of a boy who lay in sweating sickness. Sam shrugged. “I want to be left alone, I suppose.”

  Caroline frowned. “You don’t want liberty?”

  Sam smiled. “It’s just a word, isn’t it? Means nothing.”

  “People fight for it.”

  “Liberty’s a pot of ale, your own hearth, and a full barn.”

  “Is that what you want, Sam?” Again she was insistent.

  This time Sam looked at her. “A piece of land wouldn’t be a bad thing, and a few mares to breed from.” He paused for a regretful second. “I sometimes dream about that.”

  “You can have it here, Sam!”

  “Three hogs and fifty acres?”

  Caroline frowned, not understanding. “Fifty acres?”

  “That’s what the rebels offer us, but they don’t give it you. Leastw
ays, I hear they don’t.”

  “But suppose they did?”

  “I can find a rough old bit of land in England, if that’s what I want. But it isn’t.” Caroline kept silent, not because she did not want Sam to continue, but because she wanted him to say what it was that he desired, and she wanted him to say it without invitation. She wanted that gift on this cold night, and Sam, pensive beside her, offered it. “What I want I can’t have.”

  Caroline’s voice was very quiet. “So you do give up sometimes? The Green Man will get you, Sam, and gobble you up.”

  “Will he?”

  They had come too close to the forbidden subject and, in her unhappiness, Caroline shrugged. “I don’t know, Sam, I really don’t know.”

  And Sam, because he could not help it and because he wanted to, kissed her.

  He only had to lean forward a few inches. He did it slowly, letting her withdraw if she wished, but she stayed still and he kissed her wet cheek, then put an arm around her shoulders and drew her face to his as though he would warm her and comfort her and hold her against the dark for ever. Caroline sighed and stayed. The dirt on Sam’s face was harsh on her skin, but she felt comforted.

  Sam could smell her hair. He could feel a pulse in her neck throb beneath the fingers of his right hand.

  He held her dose, but had nothing to say, for he knew, and she knew, that there was nothing to say. Instead, they must keep their promises to Jonathon, and the kiss was just a moment stolen from what might have been, but which could never be, and so they clung to each other and the rain beat like a fury across the sleeping city, and seethed on the black river, and drenched the far dark woods where, except for the rebels, no Green Man stalked.

  Twenty-Eight

  The dead season came.

  Winds brought sleet from an aching sky above a frozen land. The river was grey as Welsh slate, promising ice in the long dark silences of the American winter. Philadelphia’s straight streets, bereft of their trees, were bleached to a stark paleness in which the red-coated soldiers, shrunken by the wind, moved slow and shivering. The wind cut at faces, made skin raw, and chilled fingers blue.