The King's Bounty

by Sara Fraser

  The centre officer of the three, who all wore scarlet coatees with yellow facings and silver lace, rose to his feet. For a moment he toyed pensively with the white frontal plume of his shako, which was set in front of him on the table, then sighed impatiently and answered.

  ‘Very well, sir, you leave me no choice. I shall inform the Lord Lieutenant of the county that you three, the high steward, the recorder, and yourself Mr Best as high bailiff of Kidderminster, have refused to obey the lawful commands of your sovereign.’

  Best’s drink-purpled face turned greenish with apprehension. ‘Now that arn’t true, Captain Ward,’ he said hastily. ‘We drew the ballot nigh on two weeks ago. ’is no fault of our’n if the men drawn are not fit for the militia service.’

  Captain Joseph Ward ran his hand through his close-cropped, lightly powdered brown hair, which even now in his forty-sixth year held no tints of grey. His high-cheek-boned face was calm, belying the anger in his eyes. When he spoke his speech was clipped and controlled.

  ‘Mr Best, I am the Captain of the Grenadiers company of the Third Worcestershire,’ he indicated his silver shoulder epaulets, each with its flaming grenade insignia and white fringes. ‘I am not a silly young ensign. Surgeon Purpost here,’ he nodded to the officer on his left who wore an enormous black-feathered cocked hat of his military profession, ‘is a highly experienced medical man. The people of this town who were drawn for the militia have been buying substitutes to go in place of themselves. I do not particularly object to this practice, unpatriotic though it may be, if those substitutes are young men sound in wind and limb. But I do object when they are the very dregs of the weaving trade, consumptives who can hardly draw breath, let alone march and drill. It will not do for me, Mr Best, and it will not do for the Third Worcestershire Militia. Surgeon Purpost has quite rightly rejected the last batch of offered recruits as being totally unfit for the service.’

  ‘I have indeed, sir,’ the surgeon’s bluff red face was set and stern, ‘and might I add to what you have said, Captain Ward?’

  Ward nodded. ‘You may, Matthew.’

  ‘Thankee.’ Purpost directed himself to the high bailiff. ‘I may tell you, sir, that I regard it as an insult to my professional capabilities when attempts are made to pass into the army such pitiful wrecks of men as those that this town has presented for examination and induction during the past weeks.’

  ‘But what can I do, gentlemen?’ the high bailiff almost pleaded. ‘The men originally balloted are many of them the sons of respectable tradesmen, and others are yeoman farmers. Then there are the married men with families and positions and properties to maintain. What can I do?’

  ‘Do, sir?’ The surgeon gave no weight to the other’s excuses. ‘Do, sir? Why, send me men who are fit and agile, and who have some strength in their bodies. I am no quack sawney to be fobbed with rubbish, sir. I know my craft, and take a pride in it. It won’t do, it won’t do at all.’ He shook his head firmly.

  Captain Ward took up the attack. ‘We should have been back in Portsmouth with the new recruits more than a week since, Mr Best. The battalion is carrying the main burden of the garrison duties there, and is badly under strength as it is.’

  The officer sitting on the right-hand side of Joseph Ward laughed scornfully. ‘God dammit, sir! You must either find good substitutes, or them damned pot-bellied respectable burgesses o’ the town must do their own soldiering, and be damned to them!’ Captain Josiah Patrick was not noted in his regiment for his diplomacy.

  ‘In God’s truth, sir!’ the bailiff exploded. ‘The cursed militia will bleed this town of every decent man we have.’

  ‘In God’s truth, sir!’ Josiah Patrick flung back at him. ‘The militia has troubles enough of its own with being bled of men for the regulars. The Quota Act is destroying the Army of the Reserve, sir. Destroying it!’ While they glared at each other across the table, Henry Perrins knocked on the door.

  ‘Come in, blast you, whoever you be,’ Best shouted.

  The bellman removed his hat and bowed obsequiously. ‘Might I have the honour of a private word with you, high bailiff?’ His manner was fawning.

  ‘Damn your eyes, man! Cannot you see we are in conference here?’ the bailiff shouted blusteringly.

  ‘Indeed, high bailiff, I most humbly beg your pardon for intruding, but I assure you it’s a matter of the gravest urgency.’

  ‘Oh very well, blast you,’ Best grumbled, and excusing himself went to stand outside the door with the bellman.

  The men left inside sat silently, each immersed in his own thoughts; and the only sound was the measured ticking of the great grandfather clock that, apart from the table and chairs, was the only other article of furniture in the room. The low murmur of voices sounded for a little time through the door then Best’s voice came clearly, raised high in excitement.

  ‘God’s truth, Perrins, but you’re a good fellow! I’ll not forget to see you rewarded for this. Go to the petty constable straight this instant and tell him what he must do, tell him that my orders are that you be obeyed in this matter. I’ll follow on to the Guildhall myself directly.’

  The door opened and the bailiff re-entered the room, grinning broadly. ‘How many men do you still have to take from here Captain Ward? Seven was it not? Well, be of good heart, Captain. We shall have them for you in a very short time, and all prime specimens, you may be assured on it.’

  *

  Back in the Bullring, the dancers had made ready to begin. Three of the men were ranged to one side: a fiddler, a drummer, and a man with a tin whistle. The remainder of the group formed two lines facing each other and produced white kerchiefs which they held in each hand. The squire checked the lines then called, ‘Come, lads, let’s start wi’ the Maid o’ the Mill.’

  The tin whistle trilled out a jaunty tune which was taken up by the fiddle and the drum stacccatoed the tempo. The men began the dance, moving lightly and gracefully in and out of intricate formations. The knee-bells tinkled musically and the ribbons swirled in cascades of bright colours as the dancers performed the age-old half-gipsies, hooks, capers, and galleys which were the steps of the dance. More people gathered to watch and the Morris men warmed to the work. They symbolically beat each other with the kerchiefs, then broke away and pirouetted around a circle, stamping and leaping high, then formed and stamped, broke and formed again. The watchers clapped their hands to the beat of the drum and hardly without pause the squire shouted the melodic names of fresh dances as each one ended. ‘Bobbing Joe’. ‘The Lads o’ Buncham’. ‘Jockey to the Fair’. ‘Constant Billy’. The whirling kerchiefs gave way to short sticks and the air clattered to the rapping of the mock fights.

  Jethro felt himself drawn into the ancient ritual of colourful flowing movement that had taken place in this land of England from times immemorial. There were those who said that John of Gaunt had brought the dance back from the Moors of Spain in the Middle Ages. But men, whose roots were deep in the rich black earth of England, sensed that the dances were older by far. That they were born in the vast green forests that shrouded the mysterious tribes of Albion long ages before the empires of Rome, or even Egypt, ever existed.

  The fantastically clad clown went through the spectators, collecting the copper coins, pathetically few, for hunger was no stranger in these mean streets. Then he capered back amongst his fellows, belabouring with his bladder any that faltered or flagged.

  The ritual finally ended. The fiddle and tin whistle died away and the drum ceased beating. Panting for breath, the exhausted dancers halted and stood staring at each other, and in spite of the strained faces and tired muscles it seemed to Jethro that these men were experiencing a triumphant joy. A recognition that the spirits of their forefathers were in communion with them, and that no matter what alien manners had been imposed upon the people of England, the ancient ways still lived on.

  The squire took the collection from the clown and counted the coins.

  ‘We’uns ’ull not get rich
in this town, lads,’ he told his side.

  ‘No, cully, and neither ’ull we, and we lives here,’ a young weaver shouted waggishly.

  The crowd and dancers laughed together and then the spectators began to disperse, most going back to the looms where they spent so many weary hours.

  The squire saw Jethro and came over to speak with him.

  ‘Will you show we’uns the way from here, marsters?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye, that I will,’ the young man told him. ‘For our roads run the same for a few miles and we’ll be glad of your company . . . How did you do for wages here?’

  Before the squire could answer another voice broke in, ‘They did well enough I’m sure, and they’ll need to ha’ done to pay the fine.’

  A tall man dressed in grey and carrying a long staff with a wooden crown carved on its top end, pushed between Jethro and the squire. Behind the tall man followed Henry Perrins; he too carried a similar staff.

  ‘What’s that you say?’ the squire’s worn, honest face was puzzled. ‘What’s this talk about fines?’

  ‘You’ll know soon enough,’ the tall man replied brusquely. ‘You lot must all come along o’ me. You’m all under arrest.’ He pointed the crowned staff at Turpin Wright who was trying to sidle away. ‘That means you an’ all, my buck. There’s no use you trying to run. We’se got every road covered.’

  Jethro looked about him. Small groups of cudgel-wielding men blocked every exit from the Bullring. He tapped the tall man on the arm.

  ‘Who might you be?’ he questioned.

  The tall man’s face was arrogant as he held his staff up in front of Jethro’s eyes. ‘I be Gregory Watkins, petty constable o’ this town,’ he said loudly. ‘I’m the King’s Law here, my buck and I want no sauce from the likes o’ you. You might be dressed like a preacher but Gregory Watkins knows your sort . . . You and these coves in their heathenish gewgaws and ribbons. You’m a load o’ gypsies, that’s what you be, a load o’ rogues and vagabonds. I can tell!’

  Jethro’s resentment came powerfully. The petty constable’s smug, stupid face seemed in that moment to epitomize all that Jethro had been taught by his father to hate and struggle against. Lifting his arm he struck the crowned staff away from him.

  ‘You stupid bugger!’ he swore. ‘These are not rogues nor vagabonds either, but honest men, driven to dance in the streets for a pittance to feed their families. At least they are trying to support themselves and not applying to the poor rates for money.’

  ‘That’s only what you say, and anyway it means naught to me,’ the petty constable scoffed.

  ‘Oh yes it does,’ Jethro told him forcefully. ‘Because if the government and the gentry couldn’t find stupid fools like you to do their bidding, then perhaps we could create a just system in this land and good men like these would not have to beg for pennies, but could find well-paid work in their own districts.’

  Henry Perrins poked his staff into Jethro’s ribs. ‘You’m talkin’ like one o’ them bloody Radicals,’ he said threateningly. ‘And we knows how to deal wi’ such nonsense in these parts, I’ll warn thee.’

  Jethro’s patience snapped as the wooden crown again thrust painfully into his chest. He snatched the staff and lifting it with both hands brought it down across his knee, cracking and snapping it in two parts. He flung both halves at Perrins’ protuberant stomach, causing the man to cry out in pain.

  ‘The next man to lay hand or stick on me will get his head broken,’ Jethro warned, and stood poised and ready to put his threat into effect. The tall constable abruptly retreated a couple of paces.

  ‘You’m making things a lot harder on yourself, young man,’ he blustered. ‘And on your mates here as well. It ’ull goo a lot easier on you all, if you comes along quietly.’

  The squire and his team of dancers stared anxiously at Jethro. He met their frightened eyes and his anger fell away, to be replaced with a sense of hopelessness. These men had had all spirit driven from them by their lives of poverty and toil. The landowning gentry and farmers, aided by enclosure acts and penal laws, had ensured that the once wilful and turbulent rural peasantry of England had become for the most part a docile breed of forelock-tugging beasts of burden.

  ‘And what right have I to blame the poor devils for being as they are?’ Jethro silently castigated himself for despising these countrymen. ‘I’ve no wife or children living in a tied cottage, dependent on the whim of some cider-swilling pig of a farmer for the very roof over their heads and with only the poorhouse and a pauper’s grave to look forward to when the strength to slave like a brute has gone from their bodies . . .’

  ‘Very well,’ he said aloud. ‘I’ll come with you. There’ll be no trouble from me, providing you keep tongue and hand to yourself.’

  The palpable relief in the Morris men’s eyes was such that for an instant Jethro had the overwhelming urge to shout at them . . . ‘Don’t be so damned slavish. Get off your knees and stand on your feet like men, for once in your miserable lives.’ Then the memory of the wives and children waiting in those distant villages calmed him once again. He shrugged his shoulders and allowed the constable’s deputies to shepherd him along with Turpin and the Morris men in the direction of the Guildhall.

  They entered the main entrance and were chivvied down a flight of stone steps into a short passageway cut out of the strata of sandstone on which the building stood. The passage was lit by a bracketed lantern on one wall, and facing the lantern were two barred and bolted iron-studded doors. Henry Perrins bustled self-importantly forward and taking a ring of keys from the pocket of his blue coat, he made a great racket in opening the nearer door.

  ‘Get in theer, you lot,’ he ordered, and stood to one side, watching the Morris men file through the opening. When it was Jethro’s and Turpin Wright’s turn to enter, the petty constable, who was standing under the lantern, intervened.

  ‘Not you, young man . . . or your mate. I reckon you’m a different kettle o’ fish from these others.’

  Jethro met Watkins’ nervous gaze steadily. ‘Oh do you now? And what makes you think that?’ he asked.

  The man’s stupid face held more than a trace of fear, trapped as he was by the remaining dancers blocking his helpers at the end of the passage. He swallowed hard, not liking what he read in Jethro’s expression.

  ‘Now don’t get excited, young man,’ he said hastily. ‘I means only that you strikes me as being summat of a gentleman, by your manner and the way you talks.’

  Jethro’s tone was contemptuous of this man, armoured only in his petty authority. He shook his head slowly and answered, ‘I’m no gentleman, cully. I’m a labouring man.’

  The other dancers had by now entered their door and Henry Perrins slammed it shut behind them. The constable visibly relaxed when he saw that his helpers were now directly behind this pair of dangerously insolent men and as his fear lessened, his manner grew more confident.

  ‘Well, I’ve not time to argue the toss about that, young man. No doubt it ’ull all come clear when you goes afore the magistrates.’

  ‘And when is that to be?’ Jethro wanted to know.

  The constable smirked. ‘Well now! That arn’t for me to say, is it. Arter all, I’m only a humble servant o’ the law in these matters. It’s not my place to question my betters as to what they intends to do, or when they means to do it.’

  ‘No, that’s the trouble with this country,’ Jethro’s disgust was plain to see and hear. ‘There are too many arse-crawlers like yourself who are too afraid to question what their so-called “betters” are doing.’

  The man’s face reddened, and for a second he seemed about to make an angry retort, but instead he only shouted at Perrins.

  ‘Get this bloody door unlocked, will you, and let’s finish this business.’

  The second door crashed open and Jethro and Turpin went through it.

  The room they entered was about five yards long and three to four yards wide and high. Directly opposite the door was
a barred aperture that led upwards and let in air and daylight. It was unfortunate that directly beneath this aperture stood a large iron pot half full of urine and excreta which abominably tainted the incoming air. On the sides of the room, benches were bolted to the walls and on the floor were scattered heaps of straw, thick with greenish mould. Two men lay huddled along the benches and, squatting for warmth in the straw, two other men stared with interest at the new arrivals.

  ‘God blast my eyes! ’Ere’s two devout smashers come to visit us,’ one of the men in the straw exclaimed and scrambled to his feet. ‘Gi’ us a prayer, Methody,’ he jeered.

  ‘Arsk that bleedin’ God o’ yourn to split this bastard place in two and let us out on it.’

  ‘Ahr, and tell him to cause that bleeder Perrins’ balls to rot and drop orf,’ his companion added.

  One of the sleepers on the benches stirred and cursed angrily. ‘Damn your mouth! Can’t a cove get some sleep in ’ere? Shut your noise, damn you!’

  The man who had first spoken was short and stocky, roughly dressed and wearing the leather badge of a drover on his jacket arm. Beneath his shaggy mass of hair, his face bore the marks and scars of a fist fighter, and his nose had been broken so badly at some time that it spread wide and flat across his dirt-grimed face. He rushed across to the man on the bench and dragged him from it so that his body thudded on to the sandstone floor.

  ‘Doon’t you shout at me, cully,’ the flat-nosed drover stood over the fallen man, snarling like an animal. ‘Or by the Christ! I’ll kick your bleedin’ head in.’

  The other made no answer, only rolled to cower against the wall under the bench, his arms wrapped about his head.