by CL Skelton
‘I’m going to get a woman before we go back. I’ll bet you a week’s pay that I do,’ said Angus.
‘You’re on,’ replied the corporal. ‘It’ll be the easiest money I’ve ever earned. Man, you won’t have a chance.’
‘I would na mind one of these Maori women,’ said another.
‘They’re too fat,’ said the corporal.
‘Aye, I ken that, but they’re comfortable. I’ll bet ye that,’ said Angus.
They were interrupted by the arrival of Sergeant Major Mackintosh.
‘Corporal MacMilan,’ he roared, ‘take half a dozen of these men and relieve the sentries.’
‘Sir,’ replied the corporal. ‘Come on, you’ll do for one,’ he said, indicating Buchannan.
Angus spat and muttered something about being picked on.
‘Watch what you’re saying, sodjer,’ said the corporal, who proceeded to detail off the other five men he required and marched his little squad off to relieve the sentries.
Angus complied with the order with ill grace. His mind was on other things. He was thinking of Maggie and her plump little body; what would he not have given to have her there just then. They had one thing in common, Angus and Maggie; they both loved sex and in this each had found a satisfactory partner. It held them together when there was little else that they had in common, and Angus was feeling the ache which the long years of near-celibacy had produced. ‘I fancy that the wee whore isn’t going short of a man,’ he would mutter to himself. And this was unfair, for Maggie had settled down at Cluny and was proving a most efficient housekeeper to Maud Westburn, and though they never spoke of it, they both spent many hours dreaming of their men across the seas. Andrew, of course, was in both their thoughts; Maud still trying to decide whether she loved him or no, and Maggie working up an increasing resentment towards him for failing to keep his promise and get her man out of the army.
Angus, of course, knew nothing of this as he marched off to spend a dreary four hours staring at nothing in the moonless blackness of the night.
The colonel had decreed that they would leave a dozen men to guard the camp and march the remaining four miles to the Pa, carrying only rifles and ammunition. Headquarters Company led by Captain Chisholm and the R.S.M. would make the initial assault, C Company being held in reserve with orders to back up five minutes after Headquarters Company had entered the village. Once the village had been taken and casualties had been dealt with, they would have a break for rations, and if the village was in reasonable condition, they would spend the night there. The following morning, they would burn the village and march back to New Plymouth and their ship.
Reveille was sounded at five-thirty the following morning, and within an hour, they were on their way. It was an easy march over the pleasant green rolling meadows of the New Zealand countryside. By eight o’clock in the morning, they had arrived at the river facing the Pa. Lieutenant Arkwright had uncovered his gun and as soon as the battalion got there, he opened fire. After some fifteen or twenty rounds, there was a sizeable breach in the stockade surrounding the village, and Colonel Maclaren gave the order for Headquarters Company, with Captain Chisholm at their head, to advance in open order.
Andrew stood with his men watching as Headquarters Company made their way across the river and up the far bank. The distance they had to cover was no more than a couple of hundred yards. But it was quite eerie; not a single shot was fired until they arrived on the opposite bank. There was a volley, and as far as Andrew could see, three men of Headquarters Company fell, and then silence. He watched them as they went, with bayonets fixed, cautiously through the battered stockade and out of sight into the village.
He checked his watch as the last man disappeared inside. In five minutes, his men had to start moving in. A kilted figure appeared at the gap in the wooden wall and waved to them. It was an obvious request for C Company to move up. Andrew gave the order to advance. He checked his Colt, drew his broadsword, and started to move forward cautiously. One could never be sure. The stillness and the silence reminded him of the day they had entered Cawnpore, and he started to think about Maud. Almost before he realized it, they were fording the river. It was not deep; at no point did the water come above knee height. And then they were scrambling up the opposite bank.
‘The colonel says to bring in the casualties,’ shouted a voice from the stockade. ‘There’s nobody here.’
Andrew ordered Willie Bruce to detail a few men to bring in the three casualties, and went on ahead himself and through the gap in the wall. There he was greeted by his father.
‘All right, men,’ called the colonel. ‘You can relax, there’s no opposition.’ Then he turned to Andrew. ‘Andrew, I want a thorough search of the whole village. If they find any food that’s worth eating, they can bring it back here, and if we get enough, they can have a meal. Then we can start moving back. It looks as if we’re going to get home a day early.’
The village itself consisted of a cluster of houses, one in three of which seemed to be used as a food store. Most of the houses seemed to have only one door and one window. The whole village was encircled by not one, but two palisades, both of which had been breached by the cannon fire. There was no sign of any pots or pans or any form of cooking implements. In the centre of the village, there was a shallow hole in the ground filled with the dying embers of burnt wood on top of which were piled red-hot stones. On some of these stones, strips of mutton had been laid, and the men were picking off the pieces of hot meat and cursing as they burned their fingers in the process.
Andrew went to the colonel. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘where have they gone?’
‘What are you talking about, Andrew? Where have who gone?’
‘When you went in, there was a volley of shots fired, but there’s nobody here. The place seems deserted.’
‘Yes,’ replied the colonel. ‘I’m damned if I know what’s happened to them. They’ve just vanished.’
‘It often happens,’ said Arkwright. He had joined them unobserved. ‘They just seem to disappear. They won’t come back. They won’t build here again once we have burned the place.’
They looked out over the rolling moorland. ‘But where the devil could they go?’ demanded the colonel.
‘They’ll not be far away,’ replied Arkwright. ‘They’ll be behind one of those ridges, watching us.’
‘Oughtn’t we to go after them?’ said Andrew.
‘Not really much point,’ said Arkwright. ‘Besides, there’ll be women and children with them.’
In all, there would have been between twenty and thirty houses in the compound. Andrew started to wander around these, glancing into each one as he passed. They were, as Arkwright had indicated, completely deserted. He was about to give up his search ‒ it seemed a waste of time ‒ and return to the colonel for further orders, when he heard a muffled cry.
It seemed to be coming from one of the huts in the far corner. He ran over towards it, tugging at his Colt as he went. He burst through the door of the hut from which the sound seemed to be coming. The sight that met his eyes was not a very pretty one. The body of a dark-skinned man dressed in a feather cloak lay in one corner of the hut. His throat had been slit, and there were bayonet wounds in his chest. He lay there on a mattress of his own blood. A rifle with a bloodied bayonet lay near to him. In the opposite corner of the hut was a half-naked woman struggling fiercely as one of the Highlanders tried to mount her.
The man struck the woman across the face. ‘Take that, ye bloody bitch. I’ll slit your bloody throat, too, if you don’t open up,’ he snarled.
Andrew rushed over to them and kicked the man’s bare behind as hard as he could. ‘Get up, you filthy swine!’ he shouted.
It was Angus Buchannan, trying to win his bet. Andrew aimed his Colt at the man.
‘What are you going to do?’ Angus panted, and there was real terror in his eyes.
‘I’m going to shoot you, you bastard, and that’s more than you deserve!’ Andrew hissed the words a
t him.
‘Why do ye wanna do that, sir? She’s only a nigger. She doesna matter.’
Slowly and deliberately Andrew cocked his revolver.
‘Don’t do it, sir,’ said a voice. ‘Don’t do it.’ It was Willie Bruce, who had entered the hut unnoticed.
‘You keep out of this, sergeant,’ said Andrew.
‘No, sir,’ replied Willie. ‘There’s no use in getting yoursel’ into trouble over that,’ contemptuously indicating the cowering Buchannan. ‘There’s a law that takes care o’ this kind. I have him covered, sir. You’ll no need your gun. Come back beside me.’
Andrew lowered his revolver and stepped back to where Willie was standing, holding his rifle.
‘Buchannan,’ said Andrew, ‘you are under close arrest.’
‘I think we’d better do something aboot the lady, sir,’ said Willie.
There were a few blankets lying in the hut. Andrew took one of these and handed it to the girl. Then he took another and covered the body of the man. He was all right now, the sudden anger had passed. He went to the door of the hut and called to two men who were passing. When they came in, Willie turned to them.
‘This man is under close arrest. You two bring him wi’ me. We’ll find a hut to keep him in until we’re ready to move out.’
As they left, Andrew turned to the woman. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Is there anything I can do to help you? The man who did this dreadful thing will be punished.’
The woman, cringing against the far wall of the hut, pointed at the blanket-shrouded figure on the floor. ‘Me husband, very sick, man kill,’ she said. ‘Not speak English.’
Andrew made signs to her indicating that she should wait. He had had an idea. It was possible that either Arkwright or one of his ratings would be able to converse with her and make arrangements to get her back to her people. This proved to be true. One of the ratings, a petty officer, said that he could speak a little of the language. Andrew took him to the hut. When they got there, the woman had gone. The body of the man still lay where they had left it, but there was no sign of her.
‘She’ll have gone back to her people, sir,’ said the petty officer.
‘But how did she get out?’ asked Andrew.
‘Same way they did, sir. They always seem to have an escape route.’
Andrew went in search of the colonel to report. He found him grim-faced and solemn.
‘The sergeant major’s stopped one, Andrew,’ said Colonel Maclaren before Andrew had a chance to speak.
‘Mr Mackintosh?’ said Andrew. The thought of that indestructible little man ever becoming a casualty had occurred to none of them. ‘Is it bad, sir?’
‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Andrew. ‘Damned sorry. What about the others? I saw three go down.’
‘They’ll be all right. Nothing serious there. I think you had better organize a burial party.’ And then as Andrew hesitated, ‘Get on with it,’ said the colonel and he turned to go.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Andrew stopping him, ‘but there is something else. Sergeant Bruce has just placed Private Buchannan under close arrest.’
‘Oh, my God,’ said the colonel. ‘What has he been up to?’
‘I think the charge will be murder and attempted rape, sir,’ said Andrew. ‘I’m sorry, but I cannot discuss it with you, as I shall probably be the principal witness.’
The colonel looked grim. This was no slight matter and he had no desire to set his mind to it at that moment. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll get Captain Chisholm to take the summary of evidence. It will have to wait until we are on board ship; I cannot convene a court martial here. Where is he now?’
‘Sergeant Bruce has placed him under guard in one of the huts, sir.’ Andrew could have wept. He was aware of the almost inevitable consequences of Angus’s action, and yet he, who had almost shot the man in cold blood, could not feel totally without responsibility. If only he had been able to fulfil his promise to Maggie. If only he had managed to get Buchannan out of the army.
‘Stop daydreaming, Andrew.’ The colonel was speaking to him again. ‘There’s work to do. Carry on and organize that burial party.’
Somehow the rifle party had managed to make their weapons a bit brighter; somehow the battalion had managed to give their buttons and their boots an extra shine. There had been no orders issued, but the parade which assembled was complete, not a man was absent, and every one of them could have been mounting guard at Buckingham Palace, so immaculate was their turn-out. It was as if they wanted to tell their R.S.M. something; they wanted him to be proud of the men he had trained and forged into a fighting unit.
They laid him to his rest in a deep, deep grave, where no animal or vandal, human or otherwise, would desecrate his bones. They buried him in his kilt and feather bonnet and wrapped his hands around his broadsword, and as they lowered him into that dark hole, the piper played ‘The Fleurs o’ the Forest.’ As those plaintive notes rose on the New Zealand air, there was not a man who was not back home again in Scotland.
The colonel opened his battered Church of Scotland prayer-book and read, ‘I am the resurrection and the life, said the Lord, he that believeth …’
And the men held back their tears. And when the colonel had finished, the rifle party fired a volley over the grave, and someone, no one ever knew who, started to sing:
The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want,
He leadeth me down to lie …
And they all joined in, five hundred Scottish voices softly, and with the magic which springs from great emotion, sang the Crimond.
When it was all over, they marched out heading for New Plymouth with Angus Buchannan in chains. Andrew could barely look at the man as they led him out. He was thinking of Maggie again, and that he might have to be the one to tell her, and he felt sick at heart.
Thirty-six hours later, they boarded the Himalaya. The ship cast off as soon as they were aboard, stood out to sea, and pointed her bow towards Scotland. At last they were going home.
Three days out from New Plymouth, they hanged Angus Buchannan from the foremast yard.
Chapter Twelve
During their absence, great things had been happening back home in Scotland. The most important of these was that new barracks had been constructed. After the railway line had reached Inverness, many of the labourers who had hacked and hewn the track through the Grampian Mountains had been engaged for the task of building the new headquarters for the 148th. They built it only three miles south of Beauly with huge blocks of pink Moray sandstone piled and mortared and trimmed. This was their basic building material.
There had been some argument as to whether the barracks should not have been built to cover the approaches to the Beauly Firth, but with the knowledge that Fort George did this quite adequately, and that the railway would soon wind its way north from Inverness, on through Beauly up to the very tip of Scotland, expediency had prevailed. The buildings were constructed close to the proposed tracks.
This then would be the permanent home of the 148th. A great wall surrounded it, cocooning the rest of the buildings and cutting them off from the outside world. The arched entrance was commanded by the guardroom with two sentry boxes standing outside, where, hail, rain, sunshine, or snow, two men would stand and suffer for four hours at a stretch. Inside the wall, the barrack blocks had been built as barrack blocks always were, squat and rectangular, around the parade ground. They were four-storey buildings, each destined to house a full company with little rooms at the end of each barrack room for the N.C.O.s. The sergeants’ mess and H.Q. block covered the far side of the square, differing only from the barrack blocks by the fact that they each possessed a porticoed entrance. Behind these, and set apart by a pleasant green lawn, stood the most ornate building of them all, gable roofed, white pillared, with large sash windows. This was the officers’ mess. Next to it in a corner of the area surrounded by the outside wall, there was the garrison church; th
e only place in the entire complex where all men were, theoretically at least, equal.
In the town of Beauly, there had been considerable discussion and argument, and many passionate outbursts among the town dignitaries. These had occurred in two stages; first the building of the barracks themselves, about which the town could do nothing, and secondly, about the return of the 148th, about which the town could do a great deal. The town had been split into two factions, those who considered the invasion of the ‘licentious soldiery’ an affront to the ordered tenor of their lives, and those who waited with joy and pride for the return of their ‘brave lads’! After all, these men were their men, men from the glens and villages which spread out beyond the town itself, and there were great advantages in having the regiment here within its own catchment area instead of a hundred and forty miles south.
Men would be available for special leaves and working parties. They would be able to help with the ploughing and the harvesting and the shearing, and all of those tasks that occur every year and always find a rural community short of manpower. Moreover, if things went well and recruiting was good, there would be a second battalion, and that would mean that there would always be a corps stationed at the barracks and available to help the civilian community, for any commanding officer was always only too ready to find work for soldiers employed in the dull and unexciting task of garrisoning their home base.
Most of these meetings had been presided over by Lord MacDonald of Strone. A Catholic, and one of the lairds who had ruthlessly cleared his lands, he was not one of the most popular men in the area, but none the less his position and influence were great. He had decided that the whole conception was a ‘first-class idea’. Against him were ranged the minister, staunchly anti-Rome, and his elders who also sat on the town council. However, without any increase in his personal popularity, MacDonald had carried the day. He, of course, was thinking in terms of cheap labour, but those who supported him were thinking only of the proximity of their menfolk.
And now the town had been informed that the 148th was on its way. News had reached them that the Himalaya was due to dock at Greenock and that the regiment, as soon as it had disembarked, would be travelling to Inverness overnight by train. Beauly itself was an independent burgh and proud of its status, and the vast majority of its inhabitants were proud of its regiment; after all, most of them had at least one relative who served in the 148th. So had it been proposed that special privileges should be granted to their battalion, these Highland men, on their return. Therefore, it was decreed within the council chambers that this regiment of theirs should be accorded the honour, to be shared by no other, of entering and marching through the town, with bayonets fixed, drums playing, and banners flying. After all, if Edinburgh could do it for the Scots Guards, then Beauly could do it for the 148th Regiment of Foot. So all was made ready; the strings of bunting were strung across the streets, the Union Jacks and St Andrew’s Crosses were flown in equal profusion from every flagstaff, genuine and improvised, throughout the town. And a rostrum was erected in the town square in the shadow of the ruins of the ancient priory where monks had once, centuries ago, walked in the now-crumbling cloisters and prayed in the church which now had no covering save the temperamental sky above.