Accidental Warrior: The Unlikely Tale of Bloody Hal

by Colin Alexander

  My God, what must I have looked like at Nieuwmarkt that he would think I’m spoiling for a fight? “I understand.”

  “Good. You know you’ll be living in the fort, not with the rest of us?” Hal nodded. “I’ll have one of the men show you your quarters. Or are you hungry?”

  The question reminded Hal of his stomach. “Hungry? I could eat a horse.”

  “And you probably have, one time or another, eh, Woodsey? All right, I’ll see that he shows you the mess before your quarters. After that, you’re assigned to Johanna when she goes out of the main fort. If she doesn’t go out, you come to me for some drill. I remember what you can do with a sword, but I also remember what you can’t do with a rifle. I’ll make a soldier out of you yet, Woodsey.”

  • • •

  Hal’s room, when he reached it, was small but comfortable, with a tiny window and a fireplace of its own. A rug covered most of the stone floor. The quilt on the bed looked thick enough to keep him warm even without a fire. Compared to his accommodations at Slade’s, to say nothing of his time on the road, it seemed like priceless luxury. He was ready to sink into that bed when a rap on the door brought him back to his feet.

  The caller was a thin young woman with a plain face and crooked teeth who introduced herself as Annelise. She was, she explained, Johanna’s maid. It was her job, each morning, to inform Hal if and when his services would be required that day.

  “Johanna’s maid?” Hal did not remember another woman with the wagon train. “Where did you come from?”

  “I come from here,” Annelise said sharply. “Where else would I come from? I have been told to serve Mevrouw Johanna as long as she is here and that is what I am doing.”

  “Ah, of course. I should have realized. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Annelise smiled at the apology. “That’s all right, meneer. No harm done.” She looked him over carefully and, judging from her expression, she approved of what she saw. “Mevrouw Johanna will not be going out today or tomorrow.” She paused. “If you like, if mevrouw has not given me too much to do, I can attend to some of your needs as well.”

  If Johanna was not going out, why had her maid gone to the trouble of coming to see him almost the moment he reached his room?

  The answer lay in the way she eyed him. So those were the needs she was interested in attending to! “Ah, thank you,” Hal said. “Thank you very much. I’ll let you know if there is anything.” He almost shoved her out the door. When it was safely closed, he let out a long sigh. God, that was all he needed—getting caught fooling around with Johanna’s maid!

  Annelise did not come by the next morning, which meant Hal was to report to Anderson for drill. He found the sergeant near the barracks. At the sight of him, Anderson gave an evil smile.

  “So, you’ll not be romping with the lovely Johanna today, will you, Woodsey? Come instead to Sergeant Anderson to learn to be a soldier? Well, let’s see if it’s possible.”

  Hal doubted that anything Anderson could teach him would stop him from being scared and probably freezing, but he had no intention of saying that. In any case, it would be a good idea to learn to shoot properly.

  “There’s more to soldiering than shooting a damn gun,” Anderson said. “Three-quarters of it, maybe more, is close order drill, so that the company holds together and so that when it does fire, it’ll have some effect. Personally, I don’t think Gustavus did you any favor by quartering you in the fort. It means I’ll only be able to drill you now and again. If you don’t learn the basics of being a soldier, you probably won’t survive your next fight. You were lucky at Nieuwmarkt, Woodsey.”

  “Captain Hayry knew all the drill,” Hal protested without thinking. “It didn’t help him.”

  Anderson’s face hardened and, for a moment, Hal thought the man would strike him. Instead, Anderson spat on the ground between them. “It happens.” He gave Hal a fierce look. “It can happen to anyone, anytime. Captain Hayry was in more fights than you could have nightmares about. You survived one, by luck; don’t bet on that more than once. I doubt you’ll be half the soldier Hayry was even if I drilled you every day for ten years, but you might live long enough to let me make that comparison.”

  Hal went cold. “Were you with Captain Hayry a long time?” he asked.

  “Nine years,” was the answer. “Fought the Mary’s Landers under his command.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Anderson spat again. “It happens, like I said. Now are you here to drill or should I tell you to find a shovel?” It was a rhetorical question.

  Anderson had four other men from the company waiting and used them to form a line of five with Hal second from the end. Then he set them to marching around the courtyard, forward and back, left and right. At first, Hal was always out of step, wrong foot forward, stride too long, stride too short, out of place when they turned. He felt clumsy and he knew he looked clumsy. Although the other men were silent, Hal could read their thoughts in the looks they gave him. He got better with repetition, though, and Anderson saw to it that there was a lot of repetition. At long last, Anderson called a halt.

  “I’ve seen worse, Woodsey, though for the life of me, I can’t remember when. Never mind, we’ll teach you. Enough of that for now. Naamena,” he called out to one of the others, “fetch me a rifle. You three are dismissed.”

  When Naamena returned with the weapon, Hal assumed they would have target practice again. Anderson dismissed Naamena, then turned to Hal. He held the rifle in one hand as easily as if it were a stick.

  “I know you’re expecting to shoot it,” Anderson said. “Not yet. I had you shooting in Gap, but that was a different situation. There was no time to do anything else. Now, we’ll do it right.”

  He proceeded to demonstrate for Hal the correct way to shoulder the weapon, how to present arms, how to change it from one shoulder to the other. Hal found all of it awkward, as though he was swinging a length of lumber around. It was worse when Anderson started him marching. There is no way that I can possibly carry this for mile after mile. Anderson kept him at it, however, and, as with the marching, his movements became more fluid, although the weight of the rifle seemed to increase over time.

  When Anderson called a halt, sweat was running off Hal’s face and soaking through his shirt. “Ground your rifle,” Anderson barked.

  Hal brought it forward from his shoulder, then down to the ground without landing it on his foot.

  “Do you see this?” Anderson held up what looked like half a rapier: eighteen inches of black metal that tapered from a small triangular base to a very sharp point. A metal stem attached the base to a metal ring.

  Hal nodded.

  “Good. This is a bayonet.”

  Hal stared at it. He’d seen pictures of bayonets, but they hadn’t looked like that.

  “This ring fits around the muzzle of your rifle,” Anderson continued. “With it on, you have a good weapon for a charge. It’s not as easy to handle as a sword, but you can’t handle a sword and shoot a rifle.” Anderson paused to spit. “When they first made bayonets, they put the blade on a plug that fit into the muzzle. Stupid. You had to take it off to shoot. Never mind. Let’s practice putting it on without cutting your hand off.”

  When he was satisfied that Hal could fasten the bayonet quickly, Anderson showed Hal how to attack with it. Over and over, Hal ran across the courtyard, finishing each charge with a violent thrust of the rifle into a bale of hay. When it was over, his chest was heaving and his arms felt like they were going to fall off.

  “That’s enough for today,” Anderson said. “I know you’re assigned to Johanna, but you come to me when you can. You let me teach you, Woodsey, and you’ll be all right in a fight.”

  • • •

  The next morning, loud rapping at his door pulled Hal out of a sound sleep. He tried to ignore it but it would not go away. When he did not respond, Annelise’s voice came in a forceful whisper.

  “Hal Christianson
! Mevrouw Johanna will need you today. You need to meet her at Gustavus’ rooms in two hours. Do you hear me?”

  Hal called out, “Two hours? So why wake me now?”

  “I thought I could bring you something beforehand.”

  Oh God. He could guess exactly what she had in mind. “There’s nothing I need now,” he called back.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. Just let me get dressed in peace and tell Johanna that I’ll be there.” Hal made no move for several minutes, not until he was sure he heard the sound of feet moving down the corridor.

  “Jesus, do I have to paint ‘No’ on the door?” he asked the empty room. He pulled himself out of bed slowly, discovering aches in his legs and arms, spreading all the way across his shoulders to meet at the back of his neck. Gingerly, he stretched one limb at a time. Maybe they would all ease up once he started moving around. Of late, he rarely stayed sore for long.

  He had planned to start his search for an authority on Magicals that morning, but apparently, it would have to wait again.

  Then it struck him: he was going to see Johanna again! That thought banished all worries about Annelise or about which arm was stiffer. He pulled on his uniform, spent some time adjusting it, then spent more time trying to put a shine on his boots. Unfortunately, the only item he could use for that was the pants he had worn on the road to Nieuw Amsterdam, and they were possibly as grimy as the boots.

  He sighed at the results. The dust and dirt were off, but that was about all he could say. No doubt Annelise would know how to arrange for them to be properly shined, but being in her debt was not a place he wanted to go.

  Anyway, it was more pleasant to think about what Johanna was planning to do. Possibly she just wanted to tour around Nieuw Amsterdam, like that day, it seemed an eon ago, when she had ridden with him to the hills west of Gap. That would be fine. It would give them most of a day together, which perhaps was what Johanna had in mind. Hal dreamed up even more interesting possibilities arising from that sort of day. After all, Gustavus had seen to it that Hal was Johanna’s escort, hadn’t he?

  A loud “tick” from the timepiece in his room brought him out of the daydreams. With a start, he realized that he had only minutes left to reach Gustavus’ apartments. He scrambled off the bed where he had been sitting and was almost out the door before he remembered his sword, leaning against the nightstand. He buckled it on with fingers that had suddenly transformed into nerveless pieces of sausage, then raced for the door again. Scant minutes later, he was outside Gustavus’ door in a sweat.

  Gustavus himself ushered Hal into the apartment. Waiting inside were both Johanna and Annelise. Johanna was wearing a gown of blue velvet that puffed out at the shoulders and matched the color of her eyes. A delicate swatch of white lace was wound around her throat. Her blond hair was combed straight so that it fell across the front of the gown, down past her breasts. With Annelise standing next to her, four inches shorter and wearing a gray uniform with a white cap on her hair, Johanna looked even taller and more lovely than Hal remembered.

  Hal closed his mouth. Fortunately, Johanna and Gustavus hadn’t noticed him gaping.

  “Johanna, you remember Hal Christianson from that little inn to the west, I’m sure,” Gustavus said.

  “Of course.” She smiled at Hal.

  “He looks different, doesn’t he, in our uniform?”

  “Much better, Father.” She gave a little laugh. “It seemed, after a while out there, that everyone wore the same dirty things.”

  Gustavus turned back to Hal. “I’ve told Johanna all about the fight at Nieuwmarkt, although doubtless there are some details I’ve left out.”

  “What Father has told me is quite grand enough,” Johanna said. “You have my thanks also for everything you have done.”

  Hal stammered, “You’re welcome.” My God, it was happening. The daydream was actually coming true.

  “Well,” said Gustavus, “we should speak of today, shouldn’t we? It has been our good fortune since our arrival here that the eldest son of one of Nieuw Amsterdam’s leading families, Mister Martin Wycliff, has chosen to pay court to Johanna. He has invited her to his family’s home today. A carriage will be brought to the main gate. You will, of course, be an attentive escort, won’t you, Hal?”

  “Father!” Johanna stamped her foot to accompany the one-word protest.

  Hal was deaf to the byplay. Pay court to Johanna? An eldest son? Hal’s little daydream evaporated as quickly as it had developed. Annelise gave him an exaggerated wink from where she stood, just behind Johnna. Hal wanted to shout at her but managed to stifle the urge, thanking whatever luck he had left that he did not have to take Annelise along, too.

  Hal walked out with Johanna in a trance. He would never stand a chance, not if she was being courted by a son of a wealthy family. That made it all the worse to walk beside her, close enough to smell the scent on her hair, close enough to see every expression on her face. They were outside, in the carriage, before he thought of another possibility. Perhaps Johanna’s suitor was ugly, or smelled bad, or was a bad-tempered, uncouth lout. There were many ways that this could still end well for Hal Christianson. What was the man’s damned name? Gustavus had mentioned it, but Hal had not been paying attention at the time.

  Then it popped into his head with a suddenness that made him think he knew it. Wycliff! That was the name. Martin Wycliff. There was something familiar about it, something that tugged at him and would not leave him alone. Again, the memory came suddenly. One instant, the name meant nothing, the next, he knew exactly where it had come from.

  Wycliff was the name Bel had given him that day in the forest; he was the Provis’ Commissioner of Tolls, the man who had whipped her back into a mass of scars. She had spoken of Wycliff’s eldest son, too, the one who had tried to rape her when she was eleven and then carved up her face. Bel had said she had killed him. No, wait. She said she had run him through and escaped. Had he died? Was it possible that this was the same person? How common a name was Wycliff?

  Hal saw Bel’s face and her back again, and his stomach churned. By the time the coachman stopped the carriage in front of a large, three-story brick house, he was torn between his urge to know if this could be the same Wycliff and a desire to run back to the fort as fast as his legs would carry him.

  By the time he helped Johanna from the carriage and they climbed the three steps to the shaded porch, the front door had opened to reveal a slim young man with curly brown hair. He looked, in fact, no older than Hal, and his smooth face showed only a sparse moustache. Light brown, lively eyes were set under thick brows that were darker than the rest of his hair. A long straight nose, and small mouth that stretched quickly into a smile, completed the picture. Hal’s mood swung toward relief. This was no monster at the door. This was a youth, far too young to have been the Wycliff who had attacked Bel eight years ago. The man could not be a servant either, not with such rich clothing.

  “Johanna,” Wycliff said, “I’m so pleased that you agreed to come, so pleased as well that your father has agreed.” As his gaze took in Hal, the smile faltered.

  Johanna moved quickly to fill the momentary silence. “This is Hal Christianson of my father’s company. He is my escort.”

  “Escort? Oh, yes, of course. I had forgotten about that. Please, please come in. I should not be standing in the doorway. You come in, too, Hal Christianson. I will have one of the servants find something for you in the kitchen. I trust that this escort custom does not require you to sit with us.”

  Hal doubted it. He could not imagine Captain Hayry, were that worthy performing this function, sitting on a sofa watching boy and girl flirt. Hal, in particular, did not want to watch them flirt.

  “Of course not,” Johanna said. “He will wait in the kitchen.”

  Hal watched as Wycliff ushered Johanna into a large front room, then let himself be led by an elderly maid to the kitchen at the back of the house. The maid laid out a bowl of soup, a large pl
ate of chicken and some baked potatoes—a tastier lunch than anything the rest of the company was likely to be eating at the fort’s mess.

  As Hal attacked the food, he heard music drift from the front of the house, from a guitar perhaps. Was Wycliff singing to Johanna? He could not quite hear if a voice was accompanying the notes. The music finished at the same time as he finished eating. He was halfway through cataloging the items in the kitchen when the maid came back to clear the dishes.

  “Bored, are you?” she asked.

  “Yes. You know, our Captain Hayry would have been Johanna’s escort if he hadn’t been mortally wounded, but I can’t imagine him sitting here like this for however long this will be.”

  “I don’t imagine he would.” The old maid chuckled. “More likely, he’d bring you along and leave you to sit here while he goes elsewhere and meets you later. So, cheer up, you’d still be sitting here.”

  “Wonderful,” Hal said. “How long do you think they’ll be?”

  “For sure, I don’t know that.” She chuckled again. “Our young Master Martin, he saw her the first day she came to Nieuw Amsterdam and that’s all he has talked of since. If she’s half as taken with him as he is with her, you’ll have a very quiet afternoon. No need to worry, though,” she said quickly, “they’ll stay in the front room and I’m in there every so often. You can assure her father of that. It won’t last past dinner time. That’s when Master Wycliff returns.”

  The old woman seemed willing to talk. “Have you been with the Wycliffs long?” he asked.

  “Oh, my, yes. Maybe thirty years, I’m not exactly sure anymore. Master Wycliff was a prosperous man even under the old governor, although nothing like he is now, of course. I came to them when Catherine, that’s their eldest, was born. I’ve helped raise all of their children: Catherine, I mentioned, then Richard, Anne after him, our young Master Martin and little Peter. He’s twelve now, a surprise blessing really. I hadn’t thought there would be any more after Martin.”