by Sara Fraser
‘They can go to the parish overseers for relief,’ the sergeant-major told him harshly. ‘Other woman ha’ done so when they’ve lost their menfolk.’
‘Ahr, and other women ha’ bin put in the poorhouse for doing such and have lost their home and everything else that belonged to ’um,’ the man retorted hotly, and rubbed his hand across his eyes, as he stepped back into line. ‘What be you agooin’ to do about my money? That’s what I wants to know!’ He began to shout in temper. ‘I’m not a man who’ll stand to be cheated by the loikes o’ you red-coated villains, I’ll tell you straight! You’m a load o’ bloody thieves, you redcoats be! You’m bloody scum, so you am. Scum! Thievin’ scum! Bloody scum!’
As the tirade echoed about the square, soldiers in a variety of drill and fatigue dress, and slatternly-looking women and children began to duster by the barrack blocks to stare curiously at what was taking place.
The artisan was not conscious of the commotion he was causing. He was not conscious of anything except his terrible anxieties about his wife and children which had been slowly driving him half-insane ever since his arrest and induction and through all the weeks of the long march south.
He stepped out of the rank again and advanced shouting upon the sergeant-major. ‘When be you agooin’ to gi’ me my money so that I con fill my babbies’ bellies?’ he demanded, raging and shaking his fists. ‘I wants me money . . . It’s me entitlement and I wants it! I wants it!’
Gresham’s patience snapped. ‘Knock him down and put him in the guardroom, Sar’nt Turner,’ he ordered. The heavy halberd stave swished through the air and cracked sharply against the side of the advancing artisan’s head. The man staggered, then came on in a rush. The sergeant dropped the halberd and grappled with him and they rolled biting, punching, gouging at each other across the parade-ground.
‘Call out the guard, damn you!’ the sergeant-major roared at a drummer-boy who was gaping open-mouthed at the scene from the nearest balcony. The child ran, and within seconds, more soldiers came doubling across the parade-ground with muskets at the slope.
‘Take that bugger to the guardroom, and don’t be gentle with him.’ Gresham’s cane indicated the struggling artisan. Musket butts rose and fell with dull, soggy thuds and the senseless body of the artisan was dragged away, feet first, his bloody head bumping limply across the stony ground.
‘Are you hurt, Sarn’t Turner?’ Gresham asked.
The sergeant’s face was bloodstreaked and his uniform dirtied. ‘Not really sir,’ he gasped.
‘Then stay here with this lot until the adjutant’s seen them. After that they can draw some stores and be detailed off for their quarters. You’ll take them for drill tomorrow . . . Goddamn this for a day! I don’t know how long you’ll have to wait here, the whole bloody battalion is out on a field exercise on Southsea Common. Still it won’t hurt ’um to learn how to stand still and quiet for a few hours, will it?’ He tucked his cane under his right arm and marched stiffly away, leaving the new recruits standing at awkward attention behind him.
The morning slowly passed. At midday a small drummer-boy marched out to the centre of the parade-ground and beat a call which was, the sergeant told them, the dinner call.
‘And if it warn’t for you lot, I could be eating my dinner,’ he grumbled.
Having been marched breakfastless from a small village some miles away, well before dawn, the recruits were also feeling hungry and tired. Periodically the sergeant walked up and down in front of them to break the monotony, and occasionally from the barrack blocks the sounds of children at play and women’s laughter were heard. But with the regiment away, a torpor overhung the barracks that could not be dispelled by these happenings.
‘Permission to speak, Sar’nt?’ Turpin Wright finally broke the silence early in the afternoon.
‘What d’you want, Wright?’
‘When do we get our bounty money Sar’nt . . . what’s left on it, that is?’
The N.C.O. grinned, showing badly discoloured teeth. ‘You’ll get it, never fear . . . What little’s left on it.’
‘Yes, I knows that Sar’nt . . . but when?’ Turpin persisted. ‘Arter all Sar’nt . . . wi’ respect. There’s more than us stands to benefit when we does get it.’
The sergeant winked at the convict. ‘The Sar’nt-major was right about you, warn’t he, cully. For all you’m dressed like a Methody pisspot, you’m a flash cove . . . It’s as plain as daylight that you’se follered the drum afore.’
‘Well, I arn’t admitting to that, S’ar’nt, but I will say that I knows how to look arter them gennulmen who looks arter me,’ Turpin Wright winked back.
‘That’s fair enough, Wright,’ the N.C.O. told him. ‘You should be drawing ten guineas of it, this afternoon. Captain Ward will ha’ give all your bounties to the paymaster, Lieutenant Garmston, and he’ll advance you ten guineas on it.’
‘What about the rest of it Sergeant?’ the Morris dance squire asked shyly.
‘It’ll be kept safe for you, cully, doon’t you fret. Not that there’ll be much left. But the colonel doon’t like the ’cruities to ’ave too much money all at once. It gi’s men funny ideas, and apart from that, there’s a lot o’ the knowing lads who’ll soon strip the Johnny Raws o’ their rhino, wun’t they Wright?’ the N.C.O. joked heavily.
‘Ahr, that’s for sure, Sar’nt,’ Turpin laughed.
Eventually a pair of mounted officers trotted through the main gate behind and to the side of the officers’ mess, and, negligently returning the salutes of the gate sentry, headed towards the stables. Sergeant Turner called the recruits to attention and hurried to present them to the adjutant.
‘Goddemmit,’ the Honourable John Coventry drawled. ‘Cannot a man get any peace at all in this demmed regiment?’
Even in uniform he continued to look like a dandy. His crimson waistsash a little finer and its dangling tassels a little curlier than other’s. His silver braiding and epaulets a trifle richer and heavier. His shako plumes a little longer and more swaying, and his clothing a fraction better cut and tighter. Beside him, Matthew Purpost was drab in his plain braidless coat and black feathered cocked hat. The surgeon chuckled at his companion’s droll manner and said,
‘Now, John, it will only take a moment or two to look them over. They are all in good physical condition, I examined them myself,’ his gaze strayed to the tiny beggar and then the flat-nosed drover, ‘though I must confess that there’s one or two of them ain’t as pretty as they might be.’
By this time they had reined in their mounts directly in front of the line of recruits, and the smell of the men’s unwashed bodies and clothes reached them powerfully.
‘Phhheeewww! Devil take me!’ The Honourable John wafted a finely laundered scented handkerchief in the air and put it to his nostril. ‘They ain’t so sweet smelling as they might be, either.’ He glanced along the rank and then wafted his handkerchief in the direction of Jethro and Turpin Wright. ‘What are those two tall ’uns? Methodist praters? Demme! They’re dressed dull enough and look sour enough to be, don’t you know!’
Jethro didn’t catch the quip the surgeon made in answer to the young exquisite’s scathing comment, but his resentment and anger rose quickly at the mocking laughter the two officers indulged in at his expense.
‘What gives useless fops like these the right to sneer at men who are powerless to make any reply?’ he demanded of himself, and the answer came rapidly enough to his mind. ‘No right, that is justly earned.’
‘March this rubbish away Sar’nt, for God’s sake,’ the adjutant drawled. ‘I’m sure Sergeant-Major Gresham would not wish his beloved parade-ground to be soiled a moment longer than is absolutely necessary . . . Take them to the stores and give them their necessaries, or throw the buggers into the sea . . . I care not a demm either way . . .’
Chatting and laughing together, the two officers rode away. The sergeant hurried the recruits from the parade ground and into a large, freezing cold, bare room
in one of the stores buildings.
‘Strip off,’ he ordered, ‘and put all your clothes in one pile and all your shoes in another . . . Not you, you little turd!’ he told the beggarman. ‘Your’n will all ha’ to be burned.’
‘What happens to our clothes?’ Jethro, still smarting beneath his humiliation on the parade ground, didn’t bother to sound humble. The sergeant looked at the young man speculatively, and said slowly.
‘I’ll gi’ you a word o’ warning, Johnny Raw. I was watching you when the orfficers was by you. You wants to keep that temper o’ yourn under control. The Sar’nt-major liked the look of you, you could do well in the army, if you works hard at it . . . But you looks to me as if youse got a bit o’ the rebel in you,’ he paused and shook his head warningly. ‘It doon’t pay to show a rebel spirit here, my lad . . . It doon’t pay at all.’
‘With respect Sergeant,’ Turpin Wright spoke up. ‘This is my mate, and he’s a good ’un, wi’ plenty o’ fire in his belly. He’s got a hot temper, I know, but there’s no harm in him, and he’s as sharp as a needle, I’ll tell you. He’ll not put a foot wrong, if you leaves him wi’ me.’
While Turpin spoke, Jethro’s thoughts had been racing towards the realization that now he was in the army, he must act as the army expected. Also, after witnessing what had happened to the artisan, he knew already that he could not hope to challenge the system of discipline, and survive.
He swallowed hard, and said civilly, ‘I meant no disrespect, sergeant.’
The N.C.O. nodded his satisfaction and his manner softened.
‘All right lad, that’s a better attitude to take . . . Your clothes ’ull be sold to the Jew pedlars and you’ll get the money for ’um,’ he grinned, ‘that’s if you’m lucky.’
Once the clothes had been piled and the men were stripped to the skin, the sergeant opened the door leading into the stores proper and bawled,
‘Barber get in here. There’s some ’cruities to be cropped.’
There was a dumping of boots across the dusty wooden floorboards and one of the biggest men Jethro had ever seen, clad in a brown canvas smock and pork-pie forage cap, entered the room. In his vast hand he carried a pair of clippers such as were used to shear sheep.
‘You lot get into line and kneel down wi’ your heads bent to the front,’ the sergeant ordered, and told Turpin Wright and the bald-headed beggarman, ‘No, not you two. There arn’t enough grass on your ’eads to fill a sparrow’s belly.’
The big man worked along the line, attacking the bowed heads as he would have attacked a sworn enemy. Brutally pushing and twisting them this way and that and cursing foully as the locks of hair fell. Jethro, feeling curiously vulnerable in his nakedness, hissed in pain as the hair was almost torn from his scalp by the blunt shears and wondered why men who were expected to fight for England should be treated as if they were criminals.
Shorn, sore-headed and shivering they were then herded into a long high-ceilinged room where rows of shelf racks were packed with every conceivable necessity of clothing and equipment. An elderly, pot-bellied quarter-master sergeant with a gin-nose presided there, aided by white fatigue-jacketed acolytes.
‘The adjutant says that they’m only to draw the necessaries now, and the rest tomorrow,’ Turner stated.
The quarter-master sergeant was half-drunk and bleary-eyed. He belched in greeting, spreading gin fumes liberally around him. ‘Stand agen the wall theer, you ’cruities. Readman?’
A thin weedy ‘chosen man’, or lance corporal, with a pimpled tallowy face appeared from some hidden recess.
‘Look arter these men, ’ull you, Readman. Me and Sar’nt Turner ’ull be in my office if you needs me. And you’d better not had.’
The blue-nosed man then stumbled away between the racks of shelves. Before following him, Turner warned the recruits,
‘Any noise or skylarking, and it’ll be the Black Hole for you. Arsk Wright theer what that is, no doubt he’ll know.’
The weedy chosen man started to make a great show of authority, shouting at and abusing the recruits. He ordered them one by one to the tall desk he sat at where, aided by a private who fetched and carried for him, he threw on the floor for each man in turn, two coarse shirts, two pairs of stockings, one pair of shoes, one pair of grey trousers and a black leather neck-stock with brass clasps attached to it. Turpin Wright touched Jethro’s shoulder and indicated that he should stand last in the line and follow himself. Jethro obeyed without a word and watched with mounting indignation the stores clerk’s bullying of the other men.
‘Step lively you! What’s your name?’ Readman’s pale face was mean and spiteful as he ordered the Morris dance squire up to the desk.
‘My name is Wilder, zur . . . Isaac Wilder,’ the squire answered docilely. His simple honest face was still as confused now as it had been when he had been the only member of the dance side to be taken for the militia. Readman, a product of a lifetime spent mainly on counting stools, mimicked the countryman’s thick accent. ‘Oi-m a hayseed, oi be, an’ moi name is Izzzaaac Wilder, zzzur.’ He sneered. ‘Can you write your name, Chaw-Bacon?’
The countryman’s face burned with shame and he shook his head. ‘Oi canna, zur. I never ’ad no book-learnin’.’
‘Then make your mark here, yokel. Where I’m pointing my finger, you bloody numbskull.’
When Isaac Wilder had with great concentration and effort, made a crude cross against his name in the ledger, Readman took the gear from his helper’s arms and tossed it on to the floor. ‘It’s easy for these damned yokels to bend their backs, ain’t it. That’s all they’m good for, to bend and pick turnips and such-like all their lives. Get dressed over there, Chaw-Bacon.’ He jerked his thumb at the corner of the room where the others were getting dressed.
Bemused and intimidated by what they had seen since entering this new environment, no one had the audacity to challenge the bullying of the stores clerk, or to question why they should be given the worn-out dirty clothing he had issued them, and not the new clothes that were on the racks.
‘You! Get up here!’ Readman pointed at Jethro, but Turpin Wright’s arm came across the younger man’s chest holding him back, and Turpin went forward himself.
The chosen man’s spiteful face twisted in anger. ‘I called the dog, not his vomit,’ he said.
Turpin smiled pleasantly at the clerk. ‘Did you now, Spindle Prick? Well, I’se come instead.’
Readman’s narrow jaw dropped and his eyes widened in shocked surprise. Turpin went round the desk to meet the private coming from the rear of the shelves with an armful of clothing.
‘Hold hard, cully,’ the convict growled, and stiff-armed the small-statured private to an abrupt halt. He picked up the articles of dirty worn clothing one by one, and after examining them, hurled the lot to the rear of the stores. When he had done that he came back to the desk where Readman sat as if transfixed and snarled menacingly.
‘Does you take Turpin Wright for a bleedin’ flat, you spindle-pricked little bastard? I’ll not take “dead men’s” clothes.’
The clerk tried to recover himself and blustered. ‘What d’you mean by saying that I’m—’
Turpin’s clenched fist slammed on to the desk top causing the pewter inkwell to jump and the black ink to spill across the neat columns of the open ledger.
‘I means that I takes you for a slimy, arse-crawlin’ turd,’ he growled. ‘Well, you might be able to mount a rocking horse and play king wi’ these others, but I’m no Johnny Raw.’ He swung to tell the other recruits. ‘Theer’s three kinds of issues, mateys . . . Theer’s what you get from the King, hisself. And that’s just your musket, bayonet, and pouch. Then the colonel kindly gives you your breeches, coats, caps and shoes. But! Everythin’ else you gets, you pays for yourselves out on your bloody stoppages! This skinny turd here, is trying to come the flash cove wi’ us. He’s giving us what’s called “dead men’s” gear, that was first give to coves who’se since run, or died.’ He pushed
his hard fierce face against the weak features of the chosen man, and hissed, ‘Who’s pocketing the rhino, cully? And how much does you cheat the sar’nt out of? Becos’ it looks to me as if he’s drunk most o’ the time and doon’t know what’s agoing on from dawn ’til dusk. I reckon I ought to report this to the lieutenant quarter-master hisself, and to the adjutant.’
Readman looked stricken. ‘Now hold hard, matey,’ he croaked. ‘Hold hard, I’ll see you’m all right. There’s bin a mistake made, that’s all . . . Just a mistake.’
‘I know well there has.’ The menace left Turpin’s manner and he beamed benevolently at the frightened man. ‘But then, a small mistake like that is easy to put right, arn’t it, cully?’
The clerk’s face was a sick mixture of relief and disgust as he nodded agreement and beckoned to his helper.
‘Get some new stuff for this man.’
‘For all on us, cully . . . For all on us,’ Turpin Wright reminded him pointedly.
Readman smirked in anguish. ‘For all on ’um,’ he croaked to the private.
When Sergeant Turner reappeared, alone and stinking of gin, the recruits were waiting quietly for him. All dressed alike in new shirts and trousers. Their leather stocks strapped chokingly around their necks and their stout new boots already beginning to pinch their feet. Their outer clothing was folded under their arms and there seemed to the sergeant’s experienced eyes to be more there than there should have been. Turner hid a grin and spoke to Turpin Wright.
‘You’ll go far, you ’ull, my bucko . . . You’ll go far.’
*
The day was nearly done when Jethro and his fellow recruits were finally taken to their various barrackrooms. When the paymaster had given them enough silver coins and paper banknotes to make up their ten guineas advance, Jethro had noticed Turpin Wright slip some money to the sergeant. Afterwards, the convict whispered to Jethro, ‘You and me ’ull be put together in the same quarters now, matey. You just follow what I does and you wun’t goo far wrong . . . Give us a guinea.’