by Angus Donald
He followed her and found her alone in the small room stacking loaves in long dusty shelves, ready for the patients’ dinners that afternoon.
‘Caroline,’ he said. ‘I was very much hoping to see you here today.’
‘Is that so?’ she said, in an unfriendly tone. ‘What can I do for you? Are you perhaps here to warn me that you are planning to bombard the castle and reduce it to a smoking ruin?’
‘No, not at all, the castle is already in our hands. Why would I do that? I just wanted to say . . .’ Holcroft was at a loss for words. He stared at his boots. He looked at the rows of floury loaves for inspiration. Then he said, in a rush: ‘I came to say goodbye. I’ve been kicked out of the Ordnance.’
Caroline said, ‘Is that so?’ again in a completely indifferent tone and carried on with stacking the loaves on the shelf. Holcroft stared in anguish at the back of her head. Eventually, she turned, saw the dejected look on his face and said: ‘I am sorry to hear that, Captain Blood. I know how much you cherished your guns. You must be rather upset. So . . . what will you do now?’
‘I’ve been sent to Inniskilling to join a militia regiment – Tiffin’s Foot.’
‘Oh, yes, I’ve heard of it. My brother knows Colonel Tiffin, I believe.’
There was a long awkward silence.
‘Well, I should probably be going now,’ said Holcroft.
‘Yes, I think that’s best. It’s a long ride to Inniskilling.’
‘So, then, uh, goodbye, Caroline.’
‘Goodbye.’
Holcroft went to the pantry door, he opened it, and paused in the doorway. He tried to think of something else to say.
‘Caroline,’ he said. She turned, a loaf in hand, a streak of white flour on her cheekbone that made her dark hair and bright eyes stand out even more.
‘What is it, Captain?’
‘Would you mind if I wrote to you, from time to time?’
‘What would you want to write to me about?’
Holcroft wanted to wipe the flour from her face. And then seize her and kiss her. ‘I could tell you about the doings in town of Inniskilling, about Tiffin’s Regiment, the officers, the men, our battles . . . It might be diverting for you.’
‘Very well, you may write to me, if you wish to. I do not promise to reply.’
‘Thank you very much, Caroline.’
‘Goodbye . . . Holcroft.’
*
Holcroft only became fully aware that his company disliked him after three full weeks in his new position. He had vaguely noticed that the men always stopped speaking whenever he was near them and that they were slow to move when he gave them a direct order. If he thought about it, which he rarely did, he put their behaviour down to their lack of military experience or ordinary stupidity and sloth. And when the officers and NCOs demonstrated that they did not wish to engage him in conversation beyond the barest civilities, he was, in fact, rather relieved. In truth, he was acting like an automaton and merely going through the motions of inspecting the company on parade in the courtyard of Inniskilling Castle every morning and dispatching occasional foot patrols in the local area under Sergeant Hawkins or Ensign Waters. But the collective animosity of the fourth company was made plain when a big bald ox called Joe Cully barged into him while he was walking through the north barracks in Inniskilling Castle one evening in mid-September seeking out Hawkins about some minor matter of company administration.
Cully hit him in the upper left chest with his shoulder, a solid strike, as he was walking past, mumbling, ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ as he moved away.
The heavy blow came as a shock to Holcroft and for a moment he did not comprehend what had occurred. Then he glimpsed Cully’s sly, triumphant grin to his mates as he moved away down the barrack room, and saw a dozen men seated on their beds, watching like a theatre audience. He recognised some of them by name – Burns, McNally, Watson – and the realisation of this slight, no doubt boasted about beforehand, shocked Holcroft like a bucket of water dashed into his face.
He reacted instinctively. He took a step after the departing Cully, seized him by the shoulder of his coat with his right hand, turned him and smashed his left fist into the centre of the big man’s smirking face.
Cully was hurled backwards, stumbled, tottered . . . but did not fall. He regained his equilibrium, wiped the blood from his suddenly leaking nose and with a bear-like roar he came charging at the officer with his big fists swinging.
Holcroft deflected the first massive right with the outside of his left forearm and, coming inside and under the man’s swinging left – letting it hiss past his right ear – he whipped his forehead hard into the enraged man’s face, crashing his skull ridge into the soldier’s already bloody nose. Cully was knocked back a step, and Holcroft belted him with his right, a great pounding blow that mashed the man’s lips against his teeth. Still Cully did not go down. Screaming and spitting blood and phlegm, throwing haymakers left and right, he charged Holcroft again. One blow landed, a hard whack on the muscle of his right shoulder, but Holcroft hunched down low, avoiding the second wild swing, and plunged two hard jabs, left, right into Cully’s midriff, knocking him back once more before ending the fight with a colossal left cross, followed by a pistoning right to the point of his chin. Cully flew up and backwards and landed on his back, all the air expelled from his lungs in a loud, ‘Huh!’
Holcroft took a step forward and looked down at his enemy. ‘Stay down,’ he said, aiming a finger at the soldier, ‘or I will knock you out of this world.’
He looked around at the Inniskillingers on the bunk beds, all gaping at him. The smell of the barracks hit him then for the first time: old sweat, cheese and gun oil. He felt as if he’d awakened from a deep sleep: a muzziness clearing. His fists throbbed where he had walloped the man on the ground.
Holcroft swung his head left and right; he met every man’s eye with his own, a direct personal challenge – and one that was refused every time. Their eyes slid away, or his stare was met with weak, conciliatory smiles. Holcroft steadied his own swift breathing, then he said slowly and clearly, so that every man in the packed barracks room might hear him: ‘I believe that Private Cully has had an accident. He seems to have slipped and fallen. He may be hurt. You will see he is treated for his injuries. However, I do not wish to hear any more of this business, ever again. Is that understood?’
One man got up; he was a small, dark, wicked-looking corporal, an Ulsterman who boasted he’d travelled to England and beyond, one of Sergeant Hawkins’s cronies. Holcroft recalled his name from a duty list: Horace Turner.
‘It’s you,’ he said, pointing at Holcroft. ‘You’re the one. Officer of the redcoats, in the Liberty. You’re the one who thrashed Paddy Maguire with his fists.’
He turned to his friends and said, ‘Told you all about that mill, lads, I told you . . . I saw him with my own two eyes, last autumn in London, in the Liberty of the Savoy, and I swear I’ll never see a fight like it again. I saw Captain Blood here knock seven bells out of the hardest man in all London. Mashed him to a pulp. It’s him, boys, same fella, and you all just saw him fight Joe Cully.’
He beamed at Holcroft. ‘I thought I recognised you, sir. I’d recognise that big right hand of yours anywhere. But you were in command of a half company of fusiliers, searching for French spies, if I recall. How come ye to be here?’
Holcroft vividly recalled the brutal fight against Patrick Maguire in a notorious London slum the year before which had resulted in Maguire’s death and his own disgrace and imprisonment in the Tower. There had been a large crowd that night, several hundreds of folk crammed together in the barely lit street, who had witnessed his victory. He did not recognise this small Ulsterman who claimed to have been there too.
‘You are quite wrong, Corporal Turner,’ he said slowly. ‘There has been no fighting here this evening. Cully has merely tripped and injured himself . . .’
Holcroft went over to Cully who was sitting
up mopping his bleeding face. ‘Is that not correct, Joe? You fell over, did you not?’
The man stared at him as if he were mad. Holcroft let out a long frustrated breath. He’d been rather proud of himself for this piece of quick thinking. Lying went against the grain with him – indeed, he hated all forms of dishonesty. But, despite his natural aversion, he had trained himself over the years to tell untruths when it was absolutely necessary. He was just not very skilled at the art – far from it – but surely even someone as bone-stupid as Cully must see what he had intended with this obvious falsehood.
‘Because,’ continued Holcroft, speaking as if to an idiot child, ‘if there were to be a fist-fight between a private soldier and, say, a captain, the private would be charged with striking a superior officer for which the penalty is death.’
Cully was still gawping at him.
‘Oh yes, sir, indeed!’ said Corporal Turner grinning at him. ‘Private Cully fell down and hurt himself. The dozy ox. We all saw it, lads, didn’t we?’
There was a slow chorus of approval. Someone said: ‘Clumsy bastard.’
Holcroft took a step towards Cully. He leant towards him, extending his right hand. The soldier shrank away as if expecting another blow. Holcroft seized his left forearm and hauled the big oaf to his feet.
‘Right,’ Holcroft said. He looked at Cully’s broken nose, gory mouth and shocked expression. ‘No great harm done. I’ll bid you gentlemen good night.’
*
The fight in the barracks in September marked a turning point in the relations between Holcroft and the fourth company of Tiffin’s Regiment of Foot. The private men began to treat him with a wary respect. Ensign Waters – whose company nickname Holcroft had discovered was Weak-as-Waters – now looked on Holcroft with something approaching hero-worship. Corporal Horace Turner appointed himself Holcroft’s personal champion among the rank and file, and prowled around after the captain ensuring that his orders were swiftly obeyed and barking out threats of dire punishment at any hint of insubordination. Sergeant Hawkins, while remaining correct in his manner at all times, condescended to treat the captain as a being of almost equal merit to himself.
Holcroft also changed. He realised that for weeks he had been sorely neglecting the company of men for which he was responsible. He recognised that they were dirty, slovenly and frequently drunk. That their uniforms were uncared for, their weapons were a mismatched combination of different kinds of old-fashioned muskets. They could not march together as a company in step or do even the most basic forms of parade-ground drill. And it was his fault.
So Holcroft put aside his own guilt and misery and went to work.
With the help of Sergeant Hawkins, he began to drill the company twice a day, two hours at dawn and two at dusk. He taught them to march, to turn left and right, to turn about completely, to advance rapidly, halt and fire their pieces. He did not attempt to teach them anything more demanding – the crack Dutch troops of King William, his famous Blue Guards, for example, had devised a system of platoon firing that meant that a regiment could bring an almost continuous rolling fire down on an enemy line. Holcroft deemed that too complicated to begin with. They would start with the basics.
The great virtue of these Ulstermen was their fiery spirit, their wild and reckless courage in battle – which they had amply demonstrated at the Battle of Newtownbutler in July when a force of two thousand irregular Inniskillingers under Brigadier-General William Wolseley had routed a far superior number of Jacobite regulars under Viscount Mountcashel. They were brave men, natural warriors, but they lacked discipline, Holcroft decided. He could remedy that.
So he and Sergeant Hawkins woke them an hour before dawn and they practised infantry drill until breakfast. Breakfast was followed by fitness-building exercises and then cleaning the barracks, and maintenance of their kit, weapons, clothes and themselves. Then lunch. After lunch they practised firing with their weapons and close quarter combat and after that, sometimes, they were allowed an hour’s rest before a full dress parade in the castle courtyard in the late afternoon and another two hours drill before dusk. He issued new clothes for those who needed them, and made them wash their coats and uniforms and keep one set clean at all times – Corporal Horace Turner gleefully supervised extra drill after supper for those who came on parade with less than immaculate attire – insufficiently shiny buckles being his particular bête noire.
When Holcroft felt they were beginning to look more like a company in the regular English Army, he rode to Belfast Castle – which was once again the Williamite headquarters, now that the two sides had gone into their winter lodgings – and paid a large bribe in gold to Quartermaster Vallance to ensure that fourth company of Tiffin’s were issued with new flintlock muskets to replace the ancient matchlocks and wheel-locks most of them had been using. He used his own personal money for the bribe, since he was a moderately well-off man, and feeling somehow that he owed it to the men he commanded to get them the very best weaponry available. And, despite his deep loathing of army corruption, he knew this was realistically the only way to achieve his aim. Since the regiment possessed no pikemen – a blessing as far as Holcroft was concerned – he further persuaded Quartermaster Vallance to equip his company with sixty-two of the new plug-bayonets, as well.
These instruments were basically knives with a nine-inch double-edged steel blade, a steel crossbar, and narrow tapering hilt that fitted snugly inside the barrel of a musket to make the weapon into a makeshift spear or half-pike. The gun could not, of course, be fired when the bayonet was plugged into the barrel but each man was transformed into a pikeman capable of inflicting injuries on enemy infantry and, in tight formation, keeping horsemen at bay.
He began training the men in the firing of their new flint-sparked muskets at the beginning of October. He trained them hard. For weeks that autumn – rain or shine, which meant, mostly, in a continuous soft Irish drizzle – the valleys around Inniskilling echoed with the cries of Sergeant Hawkins and Corporal Turner, and the roar of sixty-odd muskets, which began as ragged popping volleys lasting for a dozen seconds, but which, over days and weeks, became a single exhilarating crash of sound.
Holcroft had the men practise one simple battle manoeuvre again and again, day after day. The company would form two lines – and by now they could do this swiftly and cleanly without the ugly barging and confusion of the first days – and would advance towards a nominal enemy formation, usually a clump of trees or the wall of an abandoned barn. The men of fourth company would go forward in step, with Holcroft or one of the NCOs occasionally darting forward and tapping a soldier on the shoulder to tell him he was dead from enemy fire. Then fifty yards from the barn or copse, they would halt, take the time to dress their ranks, close up the holes made by the ‘dead’ men, and fire off a volley from the first line, a massive thunderclap, followed by a second volley from the second line – who would fire into the smoke of the first.
Then the order would come – ‘Fix bayonets!’ – and every man would insert the plug-bayonet into the hot barrel of his flintlock and – ‘Charge!’ – they would rush forward, the whole company running together, plunging through the smoke towards the outbuilding or small wood screaming their war cries and pretending to slaughter their imaginary Jacobite foes to a man.
The company loved these exercises. The ‘dead’ cheered on the ‘living’ to greater glory. The living demonstrated their skill and valour day after day, week after week. And were lavishly praised for it. In November, Brigadier-General William Wolseley, the regional commander, came out to accompany the fourth company on their exercises one blustery afternoon, and having watched them attack and vanquish a small hazel spinney, he took Holcroft’s hand and shook it warmly and beamed at the captain’s happily exhausted men.
Holcroft paraded the company that evening in newly cleaned uniforms and spotless rig and Brigadier Wolseley and Colonel Harry Fenton inspected them with due gravity and pronounced them heroes fit for the history boo
ks. Holcroft – to his astonishment – was awarded a brevet promotion to major and told that he was now the overall commander of the other two companies of Tiffin’s Foot, the second and eleventh, which were also barracked at Inniskilling Castle.
Colonel Zachariah Tiffin, however, sent him a disobliging note, ostensibly congratulating him on his promotion but actually reminding Holcroft that a brevet rank carried no extra pay or privileges and that it could be rescinded at any time. The rank had no force inside his regiment and applied only nominally in the wider English Army. He was still a captain in the eyes of his commanding officer, the note said, and Captain Blood best not forget it. Holcroft tore up the message. Colonel Tiffin had not stirred from his governorship of Ballyshannon in the three months since Holcroft had joined his regiment. Neither had Holcroft been summoned. Indeed, he’d never even met his commanding officer.
Being busy gave Holcroft a new kind of energy and brightened his mood considerably. He was still angry, deep in his heart, that Narrey had eluded him at Carrickfergus, but he had no time to brood on his failure to kill the Frenchman. He was also absurdly pleased by the recognition that Brigadier Wolseley had given him with his brevet promotion and was determined to do his duty to the regiment as best he could, despite the churlishness of his colonel. He was eager to bring his Inniskillingers into contact with the enemy, for he knew that nothing melds a company into a cohesive whole like the fiery crucible of actual combat.
In mid-November, over a celebratory dinner in the castle with Colonel Fenton, who was visiting from Ballyshannon, and several other officers of Tiffin’s, Holcroft found himself seated in the place of honour beside Brigadier Wolseley himself. The great man was solicitous, pouring him wine and asking generally after his family in London – questions which Holcroft did his best to dodge. He had not had time to write to Elizabeth for some weeks and he was feeling guilty about his neglect. Wolseley was an intelligent and sensitive man and soon ended this line of questioning. He asked if there was anything that Holcroft required for the comfort of the men under his command.