lashman and the Golden Sword

by Robert Brightwell

  I was bed-ridden for days and roaring drunk for much of it. Apart from O’Hara, no one came to visit, and I could not blame them for that. When I was sober enough to think, I imagined that they would be fighting off the Ashanti without me. I made the Irishman promise that if our defences failed he was to get me on a ship at all costs. Thinking back now, I doubt a captain would have risked letting me board and infect his ship. I would have been left to perish.

  Chisholm finally came to see me as I started to recover. I had already made it out to the balcony overlooking the nearest courtyard. It contained no more than half the number of people there that I remembered from before, but if anything, the latrine stench was even worse.

  “It is good to see you getting back on your feet,” the major grinned. “O’Hara has been giving me regular progress reports and claims that your recovery is entirely due to his homebrew.”

  “Well I am glad he is telling you things as he has refused to tell me what is going on outside. He says I’m not to worry until I am better. But as you are here, I take it that we have beaten the Ashanti?”

  “Heavens no, we are still waiting for them to attack.”

  “But I don’t understand. They were on the verge of attacking when I got ill. I must have been on my back for a week… What day is it now?”

  “It’s Friday the ninth of July, you were on your back as you say, for nearly two weeks. Are you well enough for a walk up to the battlements? Here, take my arm.” He led the way slowly up the stone steps. As we went he explained that a lot had changed while I had been out of action. We had received some reinforcements by ship from Accra down the coast as well as some Fantee warriors. Chisholm thought that the latter had come to protect themselves from Ashanti raids rather than to help us. He had put them on our left, furthest away from their lands to reduce the chances of them running as soon as any battle started. When we got to the top of the walls I saw that there was another ship in the bay, a large frigate. “That is HMS Thetis,” Chisholm explained. “Her guns will be invaluable in covering any withdrawal and she has added her marines to our defence, I have put them to help with your tower on the right.” He sighed and gripped my shoulder before adding, “The lieutenant in charge of them has no experience of organising a battle, in fact none of us do apart from you.”

  “That’s nonsense,” I protested. “You and Rickets have faced off to the Ashanti far more times than I have.”

  “We have fought them in the jungle and in ambushes like Nsamankow. But this will be a battle on open ground with artillery and the closest we get to ranks of infantry. Your knowledge of where to place the guns so that their fields of fire overlap and anticipating what they will do next has been invaluable. I don’t think we can win without you, which is why I am damn glad to see you back on your feet again.”

  I could not think what to say to that. Perhaps I was too ill or empty to feel that all too familiar churning of fear. I just felt numb as I was thrust forward into the gaping jaws of danger again. I gave a grunt of acknowledgment. Almost of its own volition, my hand reached into my jacket for the bottle of O’Hara’s raw tonic that he now insisted I carry with me. I took a swig and gasped as it burned through my insides, but at least I felt a little better. I looked around. A few people were moving around the charred walls of the town and I could see that some had chosen to rig temporary shelters rather than stay in the castle. Near the beach a handful of soldiers were working industriously around a fire. “What is going on there?” I asked.

  “Many of our new recruits from Accra and the Fantee did not come with arms or ammunition. We have given out what we have, but we are low on ball. We are melting all the lead water pipes in the castle to make more.”

  I gave a wry grin, “Sutherland won’t like that – he was complaining about the flooding before.”

  “Thankfully he has stayed out of our hair. He has only been ashore twice while you have been ill. And anyway, it has not rained for over a week.”

  I continued to survey the land around me and stopped suddenly when I saw the funeral trench. It was now well over a hundred yards long. “Good God,” I exclaimed, how many have we lost?”

  “Around twenty soldiers and far more from the town. With the overcrowding they were dropping like flies. Corporal Evans has gone, did you know him? Mr Jarvis and John Henderson have both perished, oh, and Hannah McCarthy finally succumbed too.

  “So that poor lad is an orphan now.”

  “McCarthy told me that he has a sister,” responded Chisholm. “Perhaps she would look after the boy if we can find her. He said that she married a French officer and is now a countess. She is already guardian to one of his sons born here.”

  I stared gloomily at the trench which was still open at its far end awaiting yet more occupants. With a chill I realised that I could so easily have ended my days inside it too. No stone monument in an English churchyard, just a foot or two of space in an overcrowded ditch that would probably soon get dug over by wild dogs. “What about Reverend Bracegirdle?”

  “No, he is still hanging on, but he cannot survive much longer.”

  I transferred my gaze up the valley between the hills towards the enemy. Smoke from cooking fires was visible, drifting above the treetops, but beyond that, no sign that a huge force was hidden there. “Do we know why they have not attacked yet?”

  “No, their king arrived well over a week ago but apart from raiding the countryside around us, they have made no serious move on our lines. Just a few firefights with our skirmish parties. The only thing I can think of is that it has not rained. Perhaps they really are worried about those repeating weapons you regaled them about.”

  Not for the first time, I wondered whether all my stories about Collier-style artillery and rifles had been a blessing or a curse. When I had first started to recover from the fever I assumed that we must have beaten the Ashanti while I was unconscious. I had felt considerable relief that for once I had missed a battle in circumstances that were beyond reproach. To say that I was disappointed to learn that the maelstrom of their attack was still to come, is something of an understatement.

  I was even more distraught the following day when, with O’Hara’s help, I slowly made my way up to my tower on McCarthy Hill. When I had last been there I had taken considerable comfort from the hundred-yard-wide swathe of traps that lay between me and the enemy. Back then they had all been hidden under puddles on waterlogged ground and under a carpet of leaves and foliage. Nearly two weeks of unrelenting sunshine had undone all the hard work of Hercules and his men. The ground had dried up, the covering leaves had shrivelled in the heat and now virtually every single trap was clearly visible. You would have to be blind to fall in one. But just in case, I saw that the Ashanti had been busy during the dark evenings, for there was now a large gap in the line where I guessed that the stakes had been removed and all the holes had been filled in with fresh earth.

  “Christ, will you look at that,” I said to O’Hara as I leaned on his arm. “That gap is on our side of the valley. If fifteen thousand of the bastards pour through there, we do not stand a hope in hell of stopping them.” All we had to oppose such an attack were twelve, six-pounder guns thinly spread between four batteries, two thousand of Appea’s soldiers, forty marines from HMS Thetis, and, if they made it up the hill before we were overrun, around two hundred men from the garrison. “They will tear us apart,” I added as I turned to look back down the hill to the sea. It had taken me half an hour to climb up the slope. In my weakened state it would probably take half that time to go back down again. Even if my fishermen were waiting offshore, I would almost certainly be overhauled by the enemy on the way to them. If I did somehow manage to reach the sand, I doubted that I would be in any condition to swim.

  All of my preparations and planning were likely to come to nought. I had a nasty feeling I would soon envy those unfortunate souls buried in the ditch. If I survived the battle, I doubted that the king of the Ashanti would be the forgiving sort.


  I spent most of the day up on the hillside – it was good to be away from the fetid stink of the castle. I introduced myself to the commanding officer of the marines, a Lieutenant Drew, who happily admitted that he had not been to Africa before. “Will many of them have firearms, sir?” he asked. “Or will they have spears and bows and arrows?”

  “They will all have bloody muskets,” I warned him. “Few bayonets, though, and they shoot wildly, but with fifteen thousand of the buggers coming at us, some of the devils are bound to hit something.”

  I took a sadistic pleasure in watching the colour drain from his cheeks. “Fifteen thousand,” he repeated softly and then he looked around at our paltry defences. Then I remembered all the times some evil swine had said something that had sent my bowels chattering in terror and began to feel sorry for him.

  “Well lad, if we get through this, you will have a story to tell all those army veterans that boast of being at Waterloo. Mind you,” I added quietly, “it would be a good idea to give your men some practice in firing volleys while moving backwards. There is a reasonable chance we will have to conduct a fighting retreat back to the beach.” It seemed only fair to warn him and as my skin would rely on the effectiveness of that withdrawal, I wanted it as robust as possible.

  “Don’t worry, sir,” he grinned at me, seeming to recover some confidence. “We have been practicing manoeuvres with those soldiers of the African king.” He pointed to where Appea’s men had built some long open-sided shelters on the slope facing the sea from some of the wood they had cleared from the battlefield. “They are getting quite good, but of course we have not been able to fire ammunition as supplies of ball are short.”

  I wished him well with his endeavours but did not hold out much hope. In the heat of battle, fingers always fumble loading a gun. The only way was to drill men so that they went through the motions automatically like machines, and to do that you needed to fire the guns for real.

  As the day progressed I felt a little better and was strong enough to eat a hearty lunch of some bushmeat stew. Back on the beach I even went for a short swim – it was good to wash the dirt of sickness from my skin and feel clean again. As I dried myself on the sand, lying in the rays of the late afternoon sun, I reflected that at least the good weather meant that we might be safe a while longer. But surely it would rain sooner or later, or the Ashanti king would grow impatient.

  I should have known that with my luck things would change, for as I lit the candle in my room that evening, I heard the first distant rumble of thunder.

  Chapter 27

  I lay in bed that night hardly able to sleep. The rain thundered down on the roof, sounding like a waterfall just the other side of my chamber. The removal of the lead piping meant that a torrent of water was smashing into the stone flags outside and soon it was coming under the door too. I must have slept for a while, but when I awoke at dawn it was still pouring. I undid the door and could barely see through the rain to the huddle of poor wet miserable villagers that were crouching under a roof on the far side of the courtyard.

  I took my time getting ready – I half hoped that the Ashanti would launch their attack as the sun rose, then I could go straight to the boats and forget about my hill. But I dare say that they could not see what they were doing either.

  O’Hara brought me some breakfast and some of his ‘fortified’ coffee. It did not taste too bad and he proudly told me that it was made from fresh rainwater, “before the bugs and shit had a chance to mix in it.”

  It soon grew lighter and I knew that I would have to reluctantly climb to the tower and face whatever came. I hung my new gold sword over my shoulder and put my refilled flask in one of the pockets. We set off; I was soaked to the skin in the first minute. The rain was so heavy, I thought if I turned my face upwards I would probably drown. We passed the end of the funeral ditch where half a dozen men were standing by three corpses lying on the ground. They were staring disconsolately into the hole at the end of the channel, which was now flooded with several feet of water. I thought they would have to abandon the burial, but as we moved away I heard a splash as one of the bodies was thrown in. O’Hara chuckled as he looked over his shoulder, “The bloody fools are learning the hard way that ye have to weigh a body down to bury it in this weather.”

  As we moved to the side of the hill, I looked down the valley towards the distant forest, but all I could make out through the rain was the dark smudge of foliage. It was impossible to tell if the Ashanti were in the trees or indeed if they had started their advance. We were already splashing through ankle-deep mud but moving over the flat land was nothing compared to ascending the hill. For every three paces we climbed, we generally slipped back one. At some points we were forced to use our hands as well as our feet to keep a grip, for much of the grass and other plants growing on the hill had been cleared by the building work and there was little on which to anchor ourselves. Now little rivulets of water poured down the slope like small streams.

  I sprawled flat on my face once and was aware of someone stepping to my side to help me up. As a huge hand reached around my arm, I looked up into the face of a grinning Hercules. He led us to one of the shelters where his men were standing. The grass roof kept them dry and more importantly, their muskets were stacked out of the rain too. The soldiers about us looked curiously at the mud-stained, sunken-cheeked Englishman that was destined to lead them in the coming battle. Compared to the strapping and healthy Hercules, I must have seemed a poor specimen. Four young boys eased their way to the front of the crowd, not bothering to hide their disappointment at my appearance, but the sight of them gave me an idea. I turned to the interpreter, “Tell those four boys to follow me to the tower. You had better come with me too.”

  The man gave the order, but Hercules stepped in their way to block them and addressed the interpreter, his smile giving way to an expression of anger. “He wants to know if you are going to use the boys as a sacrifice for our victory,” the translator said.

  I laughed. “No, their eyes and ears will be younger and better than ours. I want them to stand at the tower and to watch and listen for the enemy’s approach.”

  Hercules beamed in delight. I later learned that one of the boys was his son, which explained his concern. He came with us as we climbed the rest of the way up the hill. The gun positions were half flooded, but they also had roofs of straw to keep the powder charges dry. The naval gun trucks rested on wooden planks and while the wood was submerged, it would be much easier to move the guns on them than through liquid mud. I placed the boys on either side of the tower and told them through the interpreter what I wanted them to do. They beamed with delight at the responsibility. We had once used the sharp eyes of a boy in Brazil to spot the enemy and I hoped that the trick might work here too, but I could only see clearly for a few hundred yards and I doubted that their eyes could see that much further.

  We stood there all morning. At one point, Chisholm sent a runner to report that our skirmishers had sighted some enemy soldiers moving at the far end of the valley, but we saw nothing. Then at last, around noon, the rain began to ease. Slowly but surely, we began to see further across the valley until we could clearly make out the canopy of the trees. The boys saw them first, shouting out in their excitement. Lieutenant Drew of the marines heard them and ran up the ladder to see what had been revealed.

  “They can see men moving under the trees,” called the interpreter. “Near the gap in the line of traps.” We all stared in that direction and soon we could see them too, like an ominous dark tide of humanity washing around the trunks of the trees.

  “Should I get the men to stand to, sir?” asked Drew anxiously.

  I laughed. Suddenly I found the whole situation absurdly funny. My reaction may have had something to do with the fact that I had nearly finished the flask of O’Hara’s tonic as we had waited during the morning. “No, leave them be.” I told him. “They and their weapons would be better keeping dry until the enemy are climbing the slope
towards us. Anyway,” I slapped the young lieutenant on the back and grinned, “they might be over there intimidated by the numbers we have. There is no need to terrify them just yet by showing them your forty marines.”

  I chuckled again as Drew ran off down the ladder and drained the last of the liquid in my flask. “You know,” I said to O’Hara, “this last batch is all right. Very smooth.”

  He sighed and then replied, “By the saints, ye must be as drunk as Father Maguire. It is the very same batch that a few days ago you swore felt like a wire brush tearing up your insides. Now, sir, do ye want to sit down afore you fall down?”

  “I’m fine.” I waved him away and then stared curiously to our front. “Look,” I pointed, “the rain has flooded all the traps and half of them are hidden again.” Hercules had noticed the same and was shouting the information to his men in the shelters behind us. The centre of the valley was completely water-logged and even their cleared path was under water. Only away to our right were the traps still visible.

  “Yeah but they know they are there now sure enough and where their path is, even if they do have to get their feet wet,” grumbled O’Hara. As he finished speaking I heard the first of the Ashanti horns; they were summoning their regiments to the attack, just as they had done at Nsamankow.

  I turned to the three gun crews on top of the tower. “Right, gentlemen, we will have some customers for you presently, so load with roundshot and aim for just beyond where their path is. It will be full of their soldiers in a minute and I don’t want any of them getting here to ask for their money back.” I did not feel drunk, but I must have been as, for once in my life before a battle, I did not feel afraid. I leaned over the parapet and gave the same instruction to the battery on the left of the tower, who now started to remove the cut down bushes that had hitherto covered their guns. Hercules was about to climb down the ladder to his men, but I held him back and turned to the interpreter. “Remind him not to release his men to charge until the Ashanti are at the top of the hill. I don’t want them blocking the guns. Let the cannon and the mud do their work before we fight them.”