by Paul Finch
“Did the crew lose many that day?” Tom asked.
“Just the one. Young fella name of Davy Cranshaw. French captain put a pistol ball through his skull.”
“What did he do? I mean, what was his job?”
Sam chuckled. “What do you think? Who do you think you were posted to replace?”
Tom pondered this as they approached the gun-line. Despite the warm June day, with its twittering birds and myriad scents of the woodland, the air here was smoky and tacky, befouled by a stench of powder.
“You two malingering wretches double up and get your damn arses over here!” Sergeant Kilgariff bellowed. “There’s a hundred and seventy-five rounds to fire yet!”
They hurried along, the rough tussocky ground hampering the wheels of their carts.
“It must be a grand thing,” Tom said, “to have fought in a big battle and be able to say you survived.”
Sam laughed. “You may get your chance yet, Tom-Tom.” He’d taken to calling Tom ‘Tom-Tom’ as a mark of affection. “Boney escaped once before. He could do it again.”
Tom wasn’t sure whether he hoped for that or not. Though he’d long been enthused by tales of derring-do – his grandfather had been at Minden and Warburg – his own arrival in the colours had been forced on him by circumstances of poverty, destitution and brutality. Had he been older and wiser, he’d have realised that for someone so young his own life had already been an odyssey of human experience, most of it arduous. Even so, he couldn’t imagine anything to compare with Sam Clegg’s terror as he stood in the Mont St. Jean battery and watched thousands of French horsemen come thundering up the slope towards him. But then, neither would anything that he, Sam, or for that matter any of the rest of the gun-crew had experienced compare with the terror they were all due to face before the end of that warm summer day in 1816.
*
The gun crew were a rough and ready bunch, but they had that unique camaraderie that is only forged in the crucible of war.
Tom’s immediate superior was the ‘loader’, Corporal Ned Flint, a tall, thin Yorkshireman, hard and knotty as wood, his hair bleached and skin burned nut-brown by the suns of the Sub-continent and the Spanish peninsular. Flint could be a martinet when the mood was on him, but much of the time was affable; he was also a master of his trade, and had been complimented by the Duke of Wellington himself after outstanding work in the batteries at Salamanca.
The rest of the crew consisted of equally notable characters. The gun commander and aimer was Sergeant John Kilgariff, who was as broad as he was tall, and had a thick red mane and a huge pair of red mutton-chop whiskers. The ‘spongeman’ was Gunner Edward Alker, a stocky, balding chap who, despite his advanced years, was physically strong and very wily; he was also the most knowledgeable of them – he’d forgotten more about the art of gunnery than many senior ranks had yet learned. The ‘ventsman’ was Gunner Dominic Grubber, another short, squat figure, also of considerable strength (in truth, this was a prerequisite for the gunner’s daily tasks), but given to japes and tom-fooling; his grinning ape-face and thatch of spiky ginger hair only added to his non-too-serious air. Last of all was the ‘fire-man’, Gunner Joshua Bytes, perhaps the only member of the crew that Tom had still to make friends with. Bytes was a surly sort, darkly handsome with close-cropped hair and sideburns cut into sharp diamonds, but he rarely had a good word to say, and almost never smiled. Several times during Tom’s first few days, Bytes had snarled at him for his incompetence, and threatened to take a fist to him.
“Bytes thinks he should be a sergeant at least, by now,” Sam Clegg confided to Tom. “He can’t abide officers, but despises himself for being part of the lower orders. Fella like that, he’ll never find a place he can be happy.”
“Gun commander, elevate a little,” came the thin, wooden voice of Lieutenant Silverwell, who’d observed the last discharge from horseback a few yards away. “You’re falling short.”
Sergeant Kilgariff didn’t argue. In actual fact they were not falling short. Over six-hundrfed yards away, the cloth screen suspended between two hazel trees, which provided their main target, had only been struck cleanly a couple of times because heavy rain had fallen a few days previously and the heath was soft. Many shots were burying themselves at first impact rather than skipping on. Nevertheless, he produced his quadrant and plummet, and the twelve-pounder’s barrel was elevated to a fraction above forty-five degrees.
The crew made ready. Gunner Alker sponged out the bore, making sure to quench any remaining embers before the new charge was introduced. Corporal Flint then inserted the powder bag and the ball, Gunner Alker ramming them into place. While this was happening, Gunner Grubber used his soot-blackened thumb to block the vent hole and stop any draught from fanning a flame. Once the gun was fully loaded, Grubber pricked the bag through the vent, and poured in the ignition powder. The men stepped back into their places, and – usually at a nod from Sergeant Kilgariff, but on this occasion from Lieutenant Silverwell – Gunner Bytes lit the powder with his slowmatch.
The detonation was furious, the resulting cloud of white smoke at first all-enveloping. But restricted vision was no excuse, and the crew went quickly back to work. On each drill today they were expected to fire twenty-five rounds per hour, and each time hit the target as cleanly as possible. All along the gun-line, other crews – thirty-five in total – were going through a similar routine. Normally such practise would occur on Woolwich Common near the Thames. But many new men were being inducted into the regiment during the course of this summer, and experienced crews, such as Sergeant Kilgariff’s, had journeyed up from London to make way. They were currently on Colton’s Field, a patch of rough untenanted pasture some two miles outside Cirencester, which had recently been acquired as an additional training ground.
It was hot, tiring work, for which reason the men had stripped down to their breeches, braces and undershirts. Needless to say, Lieutenant Silverwell hadn’t. He remained cool and unruffled throughout, resplendent in his blue dress coat with the red cuffs and lapels, and his tilted bicorn with its black cockade and white plume. As the end of the drill approached, he sat rigid on his horse, one eyebrow raised as he regarded his pocket-watch. The moment the hour expired, and all twenty-five rounds had been fired, the guns fell silent, and Sam and Tom were again despatched across the heath with their carts and shovels. With an officer of artillery watching, they hurried, mopping the sweat and grime from their faces with their neckerchiefs.
This time they didn’t have to stop en route to dig balls from the ground. And in fact when they reached the target, which was maybe twenty feet wide by sixteen tall, they saw that a number of new holes had been punched in the cloth, many of them charred around the edges. Behind it there was a huge embankment of sandbags, and most of the projectiles lay at the foot of this. The lads gathered them as quickly as they could. Again, it was hot work. They would never be able to transport them all back in one go. Six or seven cannonballs were as much as either lad could manage in a single journey, but they assembled the rest in a small stockpile – and at this point realised they were several short.
“Curse that bloody Silverwell,” Sam said. “I could tell Sergeant Kilgariff thought we’d elevated the barrel too high. They’ve gone over the bags.”
That seemed unlikely to Tom even with his inexperience. The sandbag embankment must have been eighteen feet tall, yet there was no denying it – they were missing three roundshot. They wandered around to the rear and, thirty yards beyond it, spotted a birch trunk which had been freshly gashed. One of the missing balls lay beside it.
“We’ll pick that up on the way back,” Sam said.
They threaded through the trees, scanning the dense June undergrowth.
Sam scowled. “We’ll have the devil’s own job finding any bugger in this.”
“Sam!” Tom pointed.
The belt of woods was only thin and bordered more open heath-land. Before that there was an immense mound covered in lush gras
s. It rose steeply until it was maybe forty feet at its apex, but it was a good eighty or ninety yards in breadth and depth. At the front of it, on a part of the slope in line with the target, two black, roughly circular holes were visible.
“They’ve embedded themselves in that hill,” Sam said, stating what to Tom was rather the obvious. “Better go and get a shovel.”
Tom did as he was told. When he returned, Sam had climbed up alongside the holes, and was examining them. They were about four feet up from the ground, and located less than a foot apart. When Tom reached him, Sam was sniffing at the air, and looking puzzled. Tom realised why: the usual smell of hot iron was absent.
“They must’ve gone a long way in,” Sam said, thrusting his arm into the first hole until it was almost at shoulder depth. His puzzlement turned to surprise. “I can’t feel anything, Tom-Tom. I mean nothing. Nothing at all.”
He withdrew his arm, and they gazed in. Quite clearly, the two balls hadn’t just burrowed their way into a solid mass. There was an extensive cavity in there. The grassy segment between the holes sagged inwards, as if nothing was supporting it. Tom pushed at it. It sagged further, there was a tearing of roots and it collapsed backwards. The aperture left was considerable; a ragged gap maybe three feet by three, which both their heads and pairs of shoulders could fit into it at the same time.
“A cave,” Sam said.
“I don’t think so,” Tom replied. “Look there.” Daylight showed a floor, which, at roughly the same level as the ground they now stood upon, was flat, smooth and glinting with moisture. “Those are paving stones,” Tom added. He stepped back and regarded the rest of the mound with awe. “I think this was built.”
Sam looked doubtful. “Why would someone build a hill?”
“I don’t know.”
Sam gave it some thought, before shaking his head. “We ought to retrieve the iron, or our hides’ll pay.”
They kicked at the remaining grass and soil until they’d knocked so much of it down that they could stoop through. Even so, it was a minute or two before either could pluck up the courage to actually go inside.
“There’ll be nothing in there, will there?” Sam asked warily.
Tom wasn’t sure. His nostrils wrinkled at the fetid air that flowed out. It wasn’t particularly noxious – there was nothing sickly or decayed about it; but it was stale, dust-laden. He shrugged.
“Well, I suppose I have seniority,” Sam said, suddenly remembering that he was the Waterloo veteran. “I’d better go first. You stay close behind.”
Tom nodded.
The soil around the rim of the entrance was only a foot or so thick, but once they’d stepped in and their eyes were used to the dimness, they saw that it had once concealed a proper doorway; a tall, rectangular portal with an arched lintel made of red brick. If there’d ever been an actual door, presumably it had been made of wood because it had long ago perished. Any remaining fragments must now be buried under the scattered clumps of earth and grass. A passage lay ahead of them. Again, its walls were built from red brick, but its arched ceiling was festooned with dust-webs so dense they were more like hangings of black drapery. Sam ventured along it a few yards, only for his foot to disturb something on the floor – a pile of broken crockery; there was a clink of metal as well.
He crouched. Tom joined him. What appeared to be a row of ten earthenware urns, each about a foot high, had been set against the wall. The first few had been shattered, presumably by one of the roundshot – in fact a chunk of brickwork was missing from the wall at the point where the intact urns began, indicating where the shot had caromed away. A mass of ashes had spilled from the urns, but there were other items too, which gleamed in the weak light. Sam picked a couple up and dusted them off. They were coins, each one bearing a different image. The lads returned to the entrance, to examine them in full daylight.
The coins were only small, perhaps the size of half a crown, but they shone with an unmistakable yellow lustre.
“You don’t think these could be … ?” Sam said.
Tom shook his head, but more with wonder than uncertainty. The image on the first coin was a man’s head in profile. What looked like a laurel wreath bound his brow. On the other side there was an inscription. Sam couldn’t read, but Tom had had at least a rudimentary education. He’d been so sickly during his early youth that, unable to work, he’d attended a charity school run by a missionary couple. He’d only been there a brief time, but had learned more than most of his fellow urchins ever would, certainly enough to identify this writing as a foreign tongue – he suspected Latin. There was one word he did recognise: Constantivs. The second coin also bore the image of a man’s profile, though this one was bearded and wore a helmet with a plumed crest. Its inscription read: Diocletianvs.
“Roman emperors,” Tom said slowly.
“You think?” Sam looked even more amazed. “That means these are worth a lot!”
“We don’t know for sure …”
But Sam was no longer listening. He stuffed the coins into his breeches pockets and dashed back up the passage.
“What about the roundshot?” Tom said, hesitating to follow.
“That can wait.”
But it couldn’t wait. Because now a shout assailed them from the direction of the heath.
“Sam!” Tom hurried up the passage. “We can come back later. No-one knows about this apart from us, but we have to retrieve the shot.”
Sam, who’d hunkered down and was cramming more of the spilled coins into his pockets, shook his head. “And every time a salvo is fired, it’ll penetrate this hill, and sooner or later someone else will come and they’ll hog the find for themselves. Grab your share while you can.”
“Sam, we’ll be flogged.”
“Won’t be the first time for me.”
“But if they come over here looking for us, they’ll definitely find it.”
Sam paused and considered this. It was probably true. “Alright, we come back later,” he said, standing.”
Tom nodded.
“And you won’t say a word to anyone else?”
“I promise.”
Sam grunted, not best pleased but accepting the reality of the situation. They proceeded along the passage and had gone another ten yards before they found the first ball. The daylight had almost run out here, but was just sufficient to show remnants of plasterwork on the walls. Faded images included a bunch of grapes hanging from a disembodied hand, and a brown face under a head of black, curly hair. There were also additional doorways leading to left and right, both hung with sheets of dust-thick cobweb.
“Find that second ball,” Sam said, picking the first one up with both hands and preparing to heft it back. “There’ll be no excuses if you don’t.”
“You’re leaving me to look on my own?” Tom said.
Sam chuckled, already forgetting that he himself had been unnerved before the discovery of the coins had bolstered his courage. “Scared of the dark?”
“Two pairs of eyes are better than one,” Tom replied, not wanting to admit that he thought he’d just heard something; a faint hollow sound, probably an echo.
Sam chuckled again. “Well … if I must lead, I will. That’s what I’m here for, to set you young ’uns an example.”
He dropped the ball and moved ahead. Tom followed, glancing nervously through each doorway. The passage ended abruptly at another brick arch, beyond which there was a T-junction. The fresco on the facing wall here was more intact than anything they’d seen so far. It portrayed a line of musicians, followed by what looked like a tame lion. There were more Latin words, but Tom couldn’t recognise them. The errant cannonball lay at the foot of this. He scuttled forward to pick it up – only to be surprised by something else: the facing passage ran both left and right, on the right into darkness, but on the left towards a light. They stared at it, baffled.
“Another opening?” Sam suggested.
Tom shook his head. This light was very pale, almost sil
ver, and it seemed to shimmer. Sam ventured a few yards towards it.
“Sam, we should go,” Tom said. “We’ve got what we came for.”
“There may be more coins, Tom-Tom. There may be more than coins.”
Sam pressed on, and Tom felt he had no option but to follow. He wasn’t as concerned about money as Sam. He hadn’t been in the Artillery long enough to be seeking a way out of it. This was his new life, and so far he was content with it. Wealth was something he’d never known or even imagined possible; he hadn’t even dreamed about it.
They reached another doorway, and in this case the remnants of the door were still visible: desiccated teeth of wood fixed with corroded metal to the left-hand jamb, which was made from stone shot with greenish veins. The spectral glow revealed that much; it also revealed a spacious room beyond, its walls plastered and bearing more frescoes: a priestly figure in white robes, passing judgement; gladiators in the arena; a field of wheat in which men and women, clad in peasant garb, wielded scythes. There was also furniture in : a divan loaded with purple cushions; wooden chairs, ornately carved, gleaming as if recently polished; a desk with writing materials still upon it. Yet all were sheathed in layers of dust-web, which fluttered eerily as the new-arrivals disturbed the air.
However, the most impressive item was in the very centre of the room. It was a life-size image, made almost certainly from bronze, of a man wearing a loincloth – an athletic man by his glinting, muscular frame. He was seated on a brick dais in a posture of contemplation. In his right hand he held what looked like a sceptre, also made from bronze, but weighted at one end with an orb. In his left hand, which was held out in front of him, its palm turned upwards, rested a crystal globe. It was from this that the silver light emanated.
The lads entered, all trepidation briefly forgotten.
“What is that?” Sam breathed.
Their entry again disturbed the layers of web, which also shrouded the bronze figure. As before, the air was stale – redolent of dust, parchment and all things old and crumbling.