Enchanting Cold Blood

by Petya Lehmann

  He suddenly toppled over backwards upon the grass and in another minute was soundly and quite harmlessly asleep again.

  Chapter XXII.

  Half-an-hour later, the tucket had sounded, and the soldiers, having all been collected together, were being marched away through the forest, with their pikes trailing and calivers primed. Lieutenant Fenwick was ambling along a side track, where there was a little more room for his horse, the rest of the party having to force their way as best they could through brake and briar under the charge of Sergeant Bunce, while a few had been told off to take charge of the captured cattle.

  Hugh Gaynard, upon being unfastened from his tree, had been tied to a soldier, by whom he was dragged along over rough and smooth with remarkably little ceremony. Though not any of them deep, his wounds hurt uncommonly, a cold wind which was blowing through the trees causing shoots of pain to fly over his whole body. His narrow escape from death — a death which seemed probably still ahead of him — had produced a sort of sick, distracted condition of mind, which was not fear, but a sort of horror and loathing of the daylight. He felt as if he were walking in his sleep, sometimes as if he were dead already. The green landscape flitted to and fro before his eyes, like the background of a bad dream; the endless tree-trunks seemed to be nodding and moving along with him. The soldiers in their red and blue coats looked odd and phantasmal, and their voices reached his ears in a confused painful buzz.

  They were engaged at that moment in their usual occupation of grumbling against the trees and briars, which kept entangling themselves in their clothes. But soon the steps went quicker, the sulky looks cleared like magic. The reason for satisfaction was that their labours for the moment were nearing an end. They were coming to a fresh clearing. Lieutenant Fenwick had reined in his horse at a point where two paths met and was waiting for the stragglers to collect, so that the whole party might march into camp together in a little more regular order.

  Opening his miserable eyes to see what was going to happen to him next, Hugh Gaynard perceived that they had come to a new clearing, a good deal larger than the one they had left behind — a black puddled space, on either side of which ran a row of cabins, smoke-stained and windowless, with roofs in every stage of dilapidation, yet plainly inhabited, for smoke was at that moment coming out of the tops of several of them.

  A number of soldiers in stained jerkins were standing about in front of these cabins, engaged in cleaning their weapons. At the end of the street or road, if either street or road it could be called, stood a cabin a trifle larger and more solidly built than the rest, where a couple of sentries were pacing to and fro. A large red and white silk flag, a good deal bedraggled towards its edge, but still gorgeous in the middle, waved from its staff and was reflected gaily in all the filthy little paddles below. A middle-aged officer was sitting in front of this cabin, with a piece of board before him supported on a couple of trestles. This was all Hugh Gaynard had time to see, for with as little ceremony as before he was shaken loose by the man he had been tied to, tumbled on to the ground, his legs fastened together and himself half dragged, half shoved into one of the empty cabins. Then, observing that there was no means of securing the door, the man went off for a staple and, having hammered it into the wall, passed a rope through it, made the other end fast to his prisoner's cords and pulled the whole so tight that Hugh could hardly breathe. Then, with a satisfied glance around him, he went whistling away to join his comrades.

  Lieutenant Fenwick had meanwhile got down from his horse and walked along the village street towards his commanding officer, standing before whom, in an attitude of attention, he was giving in his clear, low-pitched voice, through which there pierced somehow an indefinable shade of mockery, an account of the morning's proceedings.

  Captain Peters, who was in charge of the detachment, was a stout, bull-necked Englishman, of a type which has changed little probably from century to century. Like a good many of the men he commanded, he was originally from Yorkshire, but had been so long soldiering and had returned home so seldom, that the camp, wherever it might happen to be, had become to all intents and purposes home to him, and he had almost forgotten that he had ever had any other. His morion was laid aside, showing a head rapidly getting bald and a forehead creased with a multitude of small transverse creases. A kindly enough pair of eyes looked out under the shaggy eyebrows, and the whole face wore an aspect of dull honesty and well-meaning irascibility. But alike in age, looks, and above all in distinction, he certainly presented a marked contrast to the brilliant impersonation of youth, good looks, and intelligence who stood before him. It was a contrast of which both men were thoroughly aware.

  “What do you say the rascal called himself?” he inquired, when his subordinate had ended by giving an account of the reasons which had induced him on this occasion to spare a prisoner's life.

  Then when Fenwick had repeated the name — “Gaynard,” he exclaimed in a tone of surprise, “Gaynard! I know that name perfectly. Gaynard! 'Tis no Irish name. 'Tis plain Yorkshire, an' I mistake not. Call here Sergeant Bunce. That fellow is a regular pocket table of the whole county. Faith, I believe he holds himself to be gossip, if not own father, to every Jack fool that ever was born in it!”

  “Names are easily assumed,” Lieutenant Fenwick suggested in a tone of deference, but without moving to obey.

  “Assumed? Why the devil assume 'tis assumed?” the Captain asked testily.

  “For safety, plainly.”

  “Safety? What a' God's name should a naked Irish wood-kern, or such savage, know of Yorkshire or Yorkshiremen?”

  “As to what naked Irish savages are like to know I were loath to put my own acquaintance with them against yours, Captain, you being both the older soldier and more accustomed to the ways of this country than I am,” Fenwick replied in that tone of precise, somewhat exaggerated deference which he was fond of assuming. “Nevertheless, unless I have been greatly misinformed, these runagates are specially expert in picking up something that is like to be of advantage to them, nay, I have been assured that they will often hang about a camp undiscovered for days, secure of being able at any moment to get away into their woods.”

  Captain Peters looked perplexed and rubbed his hand once or twice irascibly over his bald head.

  “What would you do with him, then?” he inquired.

  “Surely hang him, what else?” Fenwick replied in a tone of mild astonishment.

  Had Lieutenant Fenwick shown any special desire to respite the prisoner, it is quite possible that Captain Peters, from sheer contradictoriness and by way of vindicating his own authority, would have felt it his duty to have him hanged at once. Now the Captain was all for mercy.

  “God's body! There is hanging enough, meseems, in this land to content you or any man,” he exclaimed, pushing the board in front of him petulantly away with his foot. “What harm can it do you an' one poor devil escape the rope awhile? Answer me. Lieutenant Fenwick. What harm, I ask, can it do you?”

  Lieutenant Fenwick merely smiled, lifting his brows slightly at the same time, as if in appeal against this uncalled-for vehemence and did not even trouble himself to point out that he had never said or suggested that it could do him personally any harm. Either the look, the smile, the silence, the air of superiority — something, at any rate, about the younger officer's bearing — decided the elder one finally upon the side of mercy.

  “Well, I will not hang him, strike me dead if I will, therefore, content you, Lieutenant Fenwick,” he said irritably. “Bid Bunce see that the fellow escape not. I will examine into his case myself when a fitting time comes.”

  Lieutenant Fenwick bowed. “Be it so,” he said. “You will bear me witness that I have surrendered the fellow alive and bound into your hands. Should after this harm come by his means, or should it displeasure Sir Nicholas that the army be cumbered with him, you will do me the justice to say that 'twas by no contrivance nor yet recommendation of mine.”

  “Justice! Curse me, t
here is small fear of any man on this earth failing to do you justice, Lieutenant Fenwick,” retorted his superior.

  The young man's expression seemed to say that he regarded this assurance as a compliment, for he continued to smile with the utmost amiability. The mention of Malby's name, on the other hand, had produced upon Captain Peters a sudden doubt of his own discretion, for Sir Nicholas was not a man whoso orders could be disregarded safely, and his directions about the non-retaining of prisoners had certainly been precise to a degree. There was the annoyance, moreover, of feeling that this exasperating youngster had come best out of the encounter.

  Fortunately, his wrath was able at that moment to find a new channel. Sergeant Bunce had come along the road and was standing at the end of the double line of cabins, looking out over the country beyond, scanning it up and down and to right and left, evidently in search of some straggler who had failed to come in at the recently sounded bugle-call.

  “Here, Bunce!” Captain Peters shouted at the top of his voice. “What now, Bunce? what now?” he went on in a tone of vehement anger, as the Sergeant came up saluting. “Another of yon pack of runagates strayed? Who is't now? Name the rascal, Bunce? God's body, but I will make such an example of him that his back shall rue his dilatoriness for the next month to come!”

  While all this wrath was being fired at him, Sergeant Bunce had been standing in an attitude of attention, glancing alternately at the irate Captain and past him at the smiling and impassive Lieutenant with an air of mute deprecation.

  “'Tis young Gregory Gibbs, that coom wi' the last East Ridin' baatch, your anner,” he said in a voice like the mildest and most distant thunder. “Daacent folk, hoome-keeping folk, your anner. A gude lad so a' was, was pore young Gregory Gibbs!”

  He was moving away and had begun to retrace his steps towards the village, when, turning back for one last look, his face suddenly lit up.

  “Noo, by the mortal man!” he exclaimed with a complete change of voice. “There a' be, comin' oop o' the way! A bairn? To bring a bairn into camp! Why, a wolf cub' 'ud ha been a reasonabler sort o' thing!”

  Up the green slope in front of them, a big though evidently only half-grown, young soldier was coming along, with exactly the air of a young Newfoundland dog, or other big puppy, which expects a whipping. As he came nearer, a pair of honest blue eyes might have been seen looking sheepishly out of a ridiculously youthful, freckled face, which at the present moment was red as fire, partly from the haste with which he had returned, but still more from the fact of having to make his entry into camp under the awful eyes of his superiors sitting there in judgment upon him. At his side, clinging tightly on to his leather jerkin', ran a small boy apparently not more than six or seven years old, a brown-limbed, agile little creature, stark naked, save for a pinch of red flannel, somewhat of the shape of a petticoat, which was tied about his middle, and which dangled in ragged points over his little stomach and thighs. His head was covered with a bleached mop of hair, evidently meant by nature to have been flaxen, but tanned by sun and wind to hay colour. Under this tangled thatch, a pair of bold blue eyes looked up through curling black lashes; the rest of the face consisting of a little turned-up nose and a round, red, confident mouth, furnished with small pointed teeth, which gleamed, as a dog's do, whenever he opened his lips. The child did not appear to be frightened, good reason as he had to be so. A reckless dare-devil sort of jollity seemed to exude from his whole tiny person.

  Another of the soldiers — it was the Welshman Price — happened to be passing along the same way with some firewood and stopped and stared open-eyed at this importation.

  “In ta devil's name what art you pringing there?” he exclaimed, in a tone kept low by the neighbourhood of the officers. “'Tis one of they little peastly devils of Oirish,” he went on, wrinkling his ugly face into a grimace of immeasurable disgust. “In ta name of ta devil, what made you pring him here? Send him ta join ta rest of ta prood!”

  He lifted up the heavy log he was carrying, apparently with the intention of bringing it down on the child's head, who, on his side, looked up at his assailant with a snarl, the snarl of a small fox cub that is resolved to leave the impress of its teeth upon whoever attempts to molest it.

  But the young Yorkshireman's face had grown even redder than before, impossible as the feat might have seemed, and he struck the log up with such a jerk, that it took the little Welshman right off the ground, so that he hopped perforce several feet into the air like a grass cricket.

  “Laave be, laave be, Tarn Taavy,” he muttered, half angrily, half apologetically, as he passed on to confront the two terrible superiors, who, with Bunce still in the background, sat awaiting him.

  “Here, you rascal! Here, you dunghill-reared, pitchfork-carrying young oaf you!” shouted the Captain, as soon as he was within speaking distance. “How comes it that, contrary to orders, you are not here at the sound of the tucket? Answer me, you puddle-headed son of a sow. Answer this minute, or the lash shall teach you the use of your tongue.”

  “'Twar the cony, your Riverence; the cony, your Warship,” stammered the culprit.

  “The cony, sir? What cony? I see no cony. I see a brat, though, a filthy little rebel brat, a dangerous devil's imp of a brat! Who gave you leave, sir, to bring rebels' brats into her Grace's camp? Speak, you goggled-eyed jackass,” thundered the Captain.

  But the unfortunate delinquent only twisted his head backwards and forwards, rendered speechless evidently by sheer embarrassment. Bunce, who had got behind him, at that moment assisted his utterance, however, by a friendly kick of so violent a character that it seemed to send the words simply flying out of his mouth as if shot from a catapult.

  “'Twar i' yon greeny speckledy saart o' place, Saargint — your anner — an' aa war f ootin' it baak, best could, when aa spied a cony — least ways, a baastie, blue like, wi' long ears to it, an' it sprang from beyont a stone, an' away wi' it oop th' hillsoide. So aa lets a yawp, an ran arter it, but it got away oop the hillsoide, when oot o' the ground leapt Bothin in a pesticoat, an' n'er another rag on 't, an' na bigger nor a Dicky Dimmock. 'Tis a bogart for sure, thinks aa! But it whoops at me, an' it whoops at the cony, an' away wi' it, peg-legging oop ta hillsoide, as croose an' hopperty as a flea. So aa gathers both arms full o' staanes, an' when it had coomed tha cony, aa lets droive, and happen we moight ha' killed it 'tween the two o' us, only there was a bit o' broken plaace in the groand thar, yer anner, and it gat in, an' aa saw na more o' it. Then this wan, in t' pesticoat, comes oop, wi' its face all sweatin', but as breet as a bullace, an' catches hold o' me, an' shows plaan as plaan 'twas wi' me 'twas meanin' to go. So aa gives it a cloot on t' head, an' bad it ga hame, but it wud na. An' aa ran away from it, but it coom arter me, an' aa cud get shut o' it no ways, no ways at all, 'cept a'd twisted t' neck o' it round or dinged oot tha brains o' it agin a stane.”

  And the big clumsy lad rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth and looked down at his protegee with the air of a schoolboy caught with an unauthorised apple in his possession.

  Captain Peters turned away with an indignant grunt. His anger had, however, by this time subsided.

  “Take the fool away with you, Bunce,” he said testily. “And, listen! touching yon Irish kern, keep him safe till I have time to see to his matter; on your life keep him safe, Bunce!”

  Too thankful to get his charge safely away from under the eyes of his superiors, Bunce hastily pushed the young recruit before him up the road, the small boy still clinging tightly on to his protector's jerkin, with a clutch which nothing short of violence would have dislodged. Arrived at the top of the village, all three turned into one of the largest of the hovels, which had been set apart as the kitchen of the detachment, and where the preparation for dinner was then in active progress. A couple of big black pots of the ordinary native make were hanging over two roaring fires, one upon the hearth, the other in the middle of the floor, the smoke of both of them escaping without the slightest difficulty thro
ugh the multitude of holes with which the thatch was riddled.

  Soldiers, in every variety of disarray, were sitting around upon their heels, watching the progress of the cooking with an air of intense absorption. Of solid raw meat there was seldom any great lack, the very village they had just burned, for instance, having afforded not fewer than three hundred head of cattle. Bread, green stuffs, and malt were eternally in demand and never forthcoming. The victuallers were unscrupulous rascals, thieves who starved her Grace's troops and filled their own pockets. At the present moment, the “right furniture” had been promised from Bristol weeks and weeks before, but so far none had appeared, and the soldiers in consequence had only bread enough for one day in six.

  A howl of mingled satisfaction and derision greeted the safe appearance of Gregory Gibbs, the young recruit from the East Riding being at once the butt and the spoilt child of the whole detachment. Dinner, however, was just then the one absorbing interest of the moment. Upon the two pots being lifted off the fires, every soldier present claimed his share, and nothing was heard but the sound of many jaws munching and chewing at the tough meat. Thanks to the care of Sergeant Bunce, Hugh Gaynard, the prisoner, got his fair share of the rations. The “Dicky Dimmock,” as his protector called him, before the dinner was fairly swallowed, he had become in a fashion the pet animal and plaything of every soldier present. The agility with which he caught the scraps thrown to him awakened especially perfect yells of delight and approval. Even Price, the Welshman, became one of the very foremost in picking out bits of meat and tossing them, first to one and then another corner of the cabin for the “Dicky Dimmock” to race after and devour.