Jack pulled a wry face. ‘This isn’t for real. I just hope Molly likes it.’
‘Don’t you worry. I’ll wager she’ll love it. And if she doesn’t, well, I don’t think you will be lacking company for long dressed like that.’
‘If she doesn’t like it, I won’t hang around. I’m not risking getting a bloody flogging for nothing.’
‘She’ll love it and you won’t get caught. None of us will peach on you, and if you do bump into any of our lot, I doubt they’ll be in a state to even speak to you, let alone catch on that it’s you behind all that flummery.’
‘I hope you’re right.’ Jack still looked doubtful, but his friend’s confidence was infectious. The two of them had concocted the scheme that morning. The performance for the rest of his messmates had been Pike’s idea, a rehearsal for Jack in his assumed role. It had paid off, his realistic display the final preparation he had needed before risking appearing in town in the full finery of an officer.
Jack was convinced he had to do something to show Molly how he felt about her. Impersonating an officer for an evening and taking her into town as his lady was dangerous, but it was worth the risk if it persuaded her of the seriousness of his intentions.
The plan was simple. Jack would leave the barracks dressed in his own best uniform, the borrowed officer’s clothing hidden deep in a knapsack. Once past the guard, he would find a quiet spot to change and to stash his knapsack until he could collect it later.
He shivered, the anticipation of what was to come setting his nerves on edge. He thought about what he was trying to do and forced any last doubts from his mind. There were two things that he had to have. The role as Sloames’s orderly was as good as his; not even Colour Sergeant Slater could go against the wishes of the officer concerned. That just left one other ambition, one desire that he could not consider leaving unfulfilled. He wanted Molly. He knew it would take something special to convince her that it was worth gambling her future on an ordinary redcoat. The charade he had planned would show her that he meant what he had said when he had claimed not to be the same as the rest of the soldiers who begged for her favours.
‘I’d better go. I just hope Molly will be waiting for me.’ He thought of the cryptic note Pike had delivered on his behalf.
‘She’ll be there. I told you she was up for it. As for luck, well, you don’t need luck, Jack my lad. You’re an officer now. If anyone doubts you, then damn their eyes and give them a dressing-down. If that doesn’t do it, then run like fun!’ Pike chortled at his own wise advice before his face became serious once again. ‘You don’t have to worry. You were born to do this, Jack, absolutely born to it.’
‘My eye! Would you look at you!’
‘Good evening, ma’am, I do trust you have enjoyed a most enjoyable and diverting day.’ Jack bowed low and doffed his shako as he greeted Molly in what he hoped was a suitable manner. He tried hard to sound like Captain Sloames, his attempt at mimicking the officer’s voice coming more easily than he had dared hope.
Her head bobbed up and down as she took in every inch of his new appearance. ‘I almost didn’t recognise you!’ She cooed with delight before coming closer, peering up in distrust at his face, as though she wasn’t truly sure that it really was him. ‘It suits you.’
‘I said I could impress you!’ Jack was enjoying her reaction. It was making it worth the risk he had taken. Twice he had considered giving up the disguise. The first time had been when passing the guard at the entrance to the barracks. He had known the two men on sentry duty, but they had still been interested in what was in his knapsack. He had concocted some cock-and-bull story about delivering a spare uniform to one of the officers lodging in town. It had done the trick, but it had left him shaking, his face slick with sweat.
He had been changing into his borrowed uniform in a quiet back alley behind a row of newly built terraced houses near the station when a pair of urchins out for no good had spied his strange antics. Only a quick exchange of pennies had bought their silence, the lads happy to leave him be once he had paid them off.
‘When your chum gave me that note, I thought it was all some scam.’ Molly was still looking at Jack oddly. ‘But he’s got a mouth on him, that one; he could sell coal to bloody Newcastle. So I came, and I reckon I’m glad that I did.’
‘I’m glad you did too.’ Jack knew he owed Pike a beer or five for his efforts. ‘So, ma’am, would you care to take a turn with me?’
Molly clapped her hands in girlish glee as Jack held out his elbow for her to take. ‘Why, thank you, kind sir. To whence are we going?’ She laughed as she tried to echo Jack’s clipped upper-class tones.
‘Well, ma’am, I thought it would be rather diverting to take a stroll about this charming town.’ Jack made a play of looking at the sky. It was getting dark and he did not want to be out too late. ‘Then perhaps I can walk you home.’ He smiled. It did not sound like the most entertaining of evenings, but he knew there were limits to his disguise. A short walk around the quieter parts of town followed by a quick scurry back to his hidden knapsack was the order of the day. He just hoped it would be enough.
‘Blow me, Jack.’ Molly shook her head in amazement. ‘How do you do it? You sound just like one of them.’
Jack shrugged. ‘Just one of my many natural talents.’ He laughed at the pomposity of his reply before he bowed. ‘Shall we?’
‘Aye, aye, Captain.’ Molly offered a mock salute and took his arm. ‘You can take me anywhere dressed like that.’
‘Now that, ma’am, sounds like a most excellent plan.’ Jack looked down into Molly’s admiring face. She was fairly glowing with pleasure. To be an officer’s lady, even if just for a short while, was everything she had dreamt of. Looking at her, Jack knew then that he had made the right choice. The gamble had been worth it.
‘Bollocks!’
‘Did you step in something?’ The question was slurred.
Sergeant Attwood lifted the heel of his boot and peered at its underside, his arm outstretched so that he could hold on to the wall of the nearest house to prevent himself from keeling over. ‘Yes I fucking did. Right in its shitty centre.’
Colour Sergeant Slater lurched closer. ‘Get one of the men to clean it off. No, better still, get that prick Lark to do it. He wants to be a fucking orderly. He can start by serving us.’
Attwood clapped his hands at the idea. ‘Now that is a damn fine idea. I always reckoned we should have our own fucking orderlies. We do more work than any of those damned Ruperts.’
The two men staggered on through the dark street, clinging to each other for mutual support. It had been a long evening of drinking, and now their only thought was to make their way back to the barracks. With so many of the officers away at the ball, the two sergeants had slunk off for a quiet night in town. A dog fight had been arranged in the cellar of one of the pubs the sergeants favoured, and they had both fared well, the money they had won invested in a dozen bottles of claret that had been drunk without ceremony.
‘Dear God, who the hell is that?’ Attwood peered through the murk as he saw the outline of two figures walking towards them. It was not late, but it was still dark enough to make it difficult to see. The sergeants were taking a route back to the barracks away from the town’s more popular thoroughfares. In the quieter streets there were no gaslights, and the darkness was left to envelop the houses unmolested by modern devices. Now Attwood spotted what looked to be an officer and his lady, and he screwed up his eyes as he tried to ascertain who it could be.
Slater reeled to a halt at his side. ‘It cannot be one of our mob. Must be a visitor or something.’ The huge sergeant was fighting through the haze of alcohol. ‘What colour are his facings?’
‘How the hell do you suppose I can tell that?’ Attwood screwed up his eyes in an attempt to see the bands of fabric at collar and cuff whose colour would denot
e the wearer’s regiment, but it was too dark and he was too drunk to make them out.
‘Hush, you fool.’ Slater did his best to stand straighter as the two figures came closer. Even through his drunken fug he recognised the taller of the two as an officer. Attwood tried to mimic Slater’s pose, but he swayed on his feet before staggering to one side, coming up against the house wall that flanked the pathway. Here he gave up any pretence of sobriety and rested his forehead against its reassuringly solid face.
The two figures had seen them. Slater blinked hard. He saw the officer pause as he took in the sight of the sergeants, their gold chevrons bright enough to be seen even in the darkness. Slater straightened his spine. The habit was deeply ingrained, the immediate obedience buried deeper than even six bottles of claret could reach.
‘Good evening, sir.’ He snapped off a salute, his body moving like some new-fangled automaton. The sound of Attwood puking up his guts did not help the dignity of his pose, the contents of his fellow sergeant’s stomach splattering noisily on to the pavement.
The officer looked to his companion. Slater saw the gloved hand that patted the lady’s arm in reassurance.
‘Your companion seems to have been taken ill, Colour Sergeant.’ The officer snapped the barbed comment, his disdain obvious. His comely companion’s sharp intake of breath made it clear that he was not the only one shocked at the state of the two men who were so obviously feeling the effects of an evening’s drinking. Her distaste was followed by a barely audible giggle as her tall companion bent his head low to whisper a comment into her ear.
The officer turned back to face the pair of sergeants. ‘I suggest you return to your barracks as soon as is practical.’ His tone was glacial.
Slater could do nothing but stand to attention and try not to fall over. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘You are drunk, Sergeant.’ The officer paused and ran his eyes over the pitiful pair. ‘If you were in my regiment, I should be ashamed to have you in my command. It is badly done. Badly done indeed.’ He said nothing further as he led his lady away from the disgraceful sight of two sergeants well in their cups, his loud tut of disapproval his final comment on the matter.
Slater watched with relief as the handsome couple left, holding his breath long enough for them to turn the corner of the next street before he allowed himself to relax.
‘Have they gone?’ Attwood acknowledged the sound of disappearing footsteps with equanimity, his head once again pressed hard against the brick wall to the side of the path. He straightened up with a groan.
Slater turned and slapped his companion hard on the back. ‘Fucking officers.’ He needed to say nothing more. ‘Come on. Let’s get back before some other fuckwit of a Rupert wanders along.’
Attwood managed to nod in agreement. Neither sergeant would dwell on the encounter. So long as the officer belonged to another regiment, there was no harm done. They both knew an officer’s opinion was about as important as a sack of piss and wind.
They stumbled on, their boots scraping noisily on the ground. The officer and his lady were already forgotten.
Jack patted Molly’s hand, which still gripped his arm in panic. The moment he had recognised the two sergeants had not been pleasant. His heart had thumped hard enough to burst and he had felt Molly tremble at his side when she too had spotted them. She had buried her head in his arm to shield her face from Slater’s gaze, whilst his own instinct was to flee, to pull Molly around and run into the night in a desperate bid to escape. Then he had spotted the sergeants’ uneven gait and he had known at once that Attwood and Slater were as drunk as lords. His fear had evaporated and he had relished a God-given opportunity to get one over on the vicious pair.
‘My eye! Oh my eye! Did you see the look on their faces?’ Molly gazed up at him and gabbled the words, the excitement of the encounter still surging through her.
‘They never knew! Molly, did you see? Did you see?’ Jack had stopped only when they were a good few hundred yards away from the site of the encounter. He felt safe, for the moment at least, and he let his emotions run free.
‘We did it, Jack. We just did it!’ Molly’s face was flushed, two high points of colour on her cheeks. ‘If I hadn’t seen it for myself I would never have believed it possible. Me and you, Jack. Me and you playing at lords and ladies, and them two dozy fools never spotted a thing!’
Jack laughed his joy aloud. ‘Did you see Slater’s face? He looked like he had just swallowed a turd.’ He grabbed Molly’s hands and swung her around in a wild, swirling jig. ‘I said I could do it. Didn’t I say I was different? Slater never suspected it was me. Never!’
‘I didn’t believe you!’ Molly was laughing along with him. ‘But you showed me, didn’t you just. You did it!’
Jack pulled her close, pressing her hard into his body, too excited to care for propriety. Everything was working out just as he had hoped. He was taking the future for his own, and he knew for certain that Molly was his. Unable to contain himself, he whooped aloud, shouting his success to the heavens. He had done what he had set out to do, and it felt glorious.
‘Mud?’
‘What do you want, Trussler?’ Jack was tired. He had just finished a two-hour stint at sentry duty and was in no mood to chat.
He placed his musket into the rack, then pulled his cartridge pouch over his head. The ten rounds of ammunition it contained needed checking, and he was reasonably certain that some of the cartridges were loose and would have to be sorted out. It would eat into his free time at the end of the day, when he had hoped to sneak off to the laundry to see Molly before she left with her mother for the house they shared near the station. There had already been talk of his joining them for tea one afternoon, the final confirmation that he had been accepted as her suitor.
Trussler stood with his hands on his hips in the central aisle of the barrack room. His face was pale. ‘Slater wants you.’ He said the words quietly, as if to utter the colour sergeant’s name would summon the devil himself.
Jack felt his gut lurch. ‘What did he say he wanted?’ He tried to sound unconcerned.
Trussler shook his head. ‘He don’t explain himself to the likes of me. He just told me to tell you to report to him the minute you were off stag.’
‘Shit.’ Jack sat down heavily on the closest bedstead. His heart was struggling to beat.
‘I told you this nonsense of yours would get us all in the shit,’ Trussler sneered. ‘Didn’t I warn you?’
‘Fuck off, Trussler.’ Jack paid his fellow redcoat no heed. His mind was racing. How had he been found out? No one outside his messmates knew of his escapade. Molly had been sworn to secrecy, and he was sure no one other than Slater and Attwood had seen them when they were in town. He looked up and saw Trussler still staring at him.
‘Did you fucking peach on me?’ He rose to his feet, his fists clenched.
‘Of course not!’ Trussler’s fear was immediate. Jack was taller and stronger, and the frightened redcoat started to back away. ‘I wouldn’t do that, Mud. You know me.’
‘If not you, then who? Who dropped me in the fucking shit?’ Jack stopped his advance.
‘What the devil is going on here?’ Pike appeared in the doorway. He had been with Jack on sentry duty but had needed to visit the latrine before he came back to the barrack room. Trussler had been detailed to clean the stove whilst the rest of the men were still busy elsewhere. There were only the three of them in the room.
‘Slater wants to see Mud.’ Trussler was the first to answer.
‘Oh God.’ Pike saw the ramifications of the summons immediately. ‘Who peached on you?’
‘I was just trying to find that out.’ Jack glared at Trussler, who took another step backwards.
‘We don’t know who it was.’ Trussler repeated his defence.
Pike sat opposite Jack. ‘Did anyon
e see you?’
‘Only Attwood and Slater.’ Jack had been quick to recount his tale. He now regretted his loose tongue.
‘You sure?’ Pike stared hard at him.
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘Where’s the uniform now?’
‘I gave it back to old Tom first thing this morning.’
Pike looked at his hands as his considered Jack’s answers. ‘Slater doesn’t know about last night, right? So this must be about something else. Knowing you, it could be anything.’ He tried to smile.
‘Are you sure?’ Jack was not so quick to agree.
‘Makes sense to me. Look, Mud, don’t shit a brick before you know what he wants.’
‘It’s my back! If he knows what I did, then I’d be better off making a fucking run for it now.’ Jack did not bother to hide his fear. A flogging was a dreadful punishment. The colonel was limited to sentencing fifty lashes, but even that could be a death sentence, the brutal punishment certain to reduce a man’s back to a gruesome and bloody mess.
‘You’ve got to go.’ Pike spoke the words slowly. He looked up at Jack, his face grim. ‘You have no choice.’
Jack stood outside the door to the sergeants’ parlour. He felt very different to the last time he had stood there. The optimism and hope for a new future had been replaced with a sour gullet full of fear. It took all his courage to rap his knuckles on the door, the sound too much like the slow, rhythmic beat of the drum at a punishment parade.
‘Ah, Lark!’
The door opened and the face of Sergeant Attwood hove into view. To Jack’s concern, he was greeted with a smile.
‘Come on in, lad.’
Jack found he could not move. He sensed that to take a single step into the room was to change his fate, and the idea frightened him more than he could have thought possible.
‘Don’t just stand there lollygagging, Lark. Get in here.’ Attwood barked the order, his pugnacious face creased into an immediate scowl at the hesitation.
Jack Lark: Redcoat (A Jack Lark Short Story) Page 6