The surgeon was a wise and kindly man; he produced a quart Winchester of laudanum, poured out a two ounce glassful and held it to Price’s lips, repeated the dose to bring him to a coma.
“’Twill kill him the faster, but he won’t feel it this way,” he commented. “I would cut his throat and put him out of his misery if I had my way, but people do tend to object to such a course!”
He did not bother to clean the wound at all, merely took a cursory glance and slapped a dressing over the entrance hole. “He’s fighting the laudanum now, the extra pain of dragging out ball and cloth might serve to waken him, and it would do no good at all, in any case – no treatment of mine will save the young fool.”
Price held out for three days; Bennett, at the colonel’s contrivance, had taken ship westward from Cork in two. Bennett’s family did not have the thousands to fee lawyers and the magistrates were becoming increasingly ill-mannered about those who killed in duels. Bennett’s commission would be sold and the money realised would reach him at the correspondents of the colonel’s bankers in New York; the Mess drank to his future as an American citizen, and then forgot him.
Lieutenant Smith was transferred to C Company and Septimus was given the duties, though not the rank, of Bennett; Howton said it would serve to keep him busy, if he chose to do the job properly.
Marching back from Price’s muted, low-key, rather embarrassed funeral, Howton made determinedly light conversation, discussing oddments of company business, training, drill, musketry, rationing, before suddenly bringing up the duel again.
“Not a word from you, Septimus, not a quiver. All the rest of us horrified, you just collecting and cleaning your pistols. Were you not shocked, too?”
“They went out to kill, sir. That was the whole point of the thing, surely?”
“So, why be distressed or surprised when they succeeded, eh? You’re a hard young bugger, Septimus!”
Howton laughed, said no more, but reserved judgement until he had seen the boy under fire – he wondered if he would still be so cold-blooded then.
There was a busy autumn ahead of the battalion. The price of wheat was edging up on the markets, the long series of bad harvests of the last decade having worn stocks down and the turmoil in France nibbling at dealers’ confidence, and the demand for beef and cheese from the English middle-classes was just taking off as industrialisation created prosperity. More and more Irish landlords and rack-renting stewards began to see the golden advantages of putting their land to big fields for the plough and of fencing their uplands for animals to graze. Tenants with their tiny acreages of potatoes and their few shillings in rent were a nuisance now and it made sense to evict the bulk of them, make the few remaining into wage-labourers. It was a process similar to that of enclosure in England, and with the same justifications, but in the Mother Country there was the great expansion of manufacturies with their demand for bodies to soak up the surplus of agricultural hands; in Ireland there was nothing except the Army – the English Army – or emigration, if you had the fare, or starvation in the gutters of the nearest town. A few, far-sighted, landlords chose to hire emigrant ships and hustle their tenants aboard willy-nilly; most just called for the services of the military.
A few of the dispossessed refused to move, fewer still rioted; the trouble needed be put down before it could spread, so the regiments in Ireland were sent out in companies to garrison the small towns or tramp from village to village, their muskets a reminder of what had happened so often in the past. There was political unrest in Ireland and the authorities considered ‘politics’ to be synonymous with ‘bloodshed’ in Irish eyes – ‘never trust a Catholic’, they said. The near-success of the Jacobite Rising in 1745, less than half a century before, was still fresh in government’s mind and there had been a realistic threat of another invasion in ’59 and half-hearted, and -witted, conspiracies since, and the treachery of Catholics was a known fact, to the government. Reform was too great a risk, the policy was now exclusively to be ‘coercion’ – the application of such force as might be necessary to cure the Irish of their unfortunate tendency towards violence – ‘who loveth, chastiseth’, the Bible said, and the Irish were about to discover, again, just how much the English loved them.
Howton’s company was thought to be the best disciplined and most efficient of the battalion so he was given effective independence, sent farthest from Cork to march for days at a time over the low, rich hills, past the golden sweeps of cereal, below the brown-vined potato patches of the stony uplands. Septimus stared at the turf-roofed pigsties, thought they could not be so poor, keeping so many swine, was amazed when he saw children playing outside one and realised that he was looking at the cabins of a hamlet.
He called Howton’s attention to them, commented how sad it was that the Irish knew no better than to live like animals. Howton shook his head, said nothing, simply kept up the pace. The officers were marching with the company, horses left behind – they would be staying at the manors of the richer landlords each night, felt it might be seen as impolite to demand the services of their grooms and access to their feed stores.
The men slept in barns, the officers were fed and given a bed in the big houses, welcomed by the rich folk who lived with an ever-present, if slight, fear. They were held back at their third call, the family absentee but the factor, a Lowland Scot, doing the honours and begging their presence while he slighted a village ‘wasting valuable land’.
“I hae waited till their crop cam’ in. They’ve food eno’ for the winter, sir.”
Howton made an acknowledgement; Whiteside would have been within his rights to roust them out at the end of the previous month, to have appropriated their potatoes, for they had no tenancy, merely paid casual, monthly rent. The estate’s pigs could have been fed free over winter.
There were fourteen cabins, each a pit dug into the hillside, stone and dirt walls thrown up, brushwood laid across, turf on top for a roof. They were all single roomed, the biggest twelve feet long by five broad; a man could stand upright in none of them. Most had a trench cut round the lower end to take the rainwater away and a very few had a separate small bothy for pig or goat, but most animals had dwelt with the families, their warmth welcome in winter. The people were clustered on the track now, sacks and crates of potatoes at their feet, animals on strings, silent as they saw the eighty redcoats marching towards them.
They were thirty miles from Cork and it was starting to rain; they had nowhere to go and could not stay.
Whiteside’s labourers took crowbars to the roofs, tumbled them into the pits, knocked the walls in on top. It was an end; a few of the old and young wailed, most simply picked up their loads and shuffled away, silent, not daring to offer protest or defiance – they knew that the hard roads would kill some of them but that the army could kill them all, chose what seemed the lesser fate.
Septimus turned to Whiteside. “Would you wish us to escort them from your land, sir? We could make sure they all left quickly, if you wish.”
“Nae need, thank ye, Mr Pearce, but your offer is much appreciated, sir.”
Howton led the company out in silence, ten miles to their next billet, a quiet three hours march. After a while he turned to Septimus, asked why, precisely, he had volunteered the company to further persecute the victims.
“Property has its rights, sir. We should be tender of them, surely?”
“And what of the Rights of Man, Septimus?”
“Treasonable nonsense, sir! That traitor, what was his name? Paine, that’s it! He should have hanged, sir!”
Howton said no more, reflecting that little more could be expected of a merchant’s son – perhaps the boy would grow up to be his own man, but then, perhaps that man would be of the same opinions – the bias taken in with his mother’s milk might prove to be everlasting. The boy was not from a class renowned for its love of humanity in the abstract – the pursuit of profit, though possessing possibly a nobility of its own, was not, it seemed, conduc
ive to a liberality of opinion.
They patrolled another week, marching in a circle back to Cork. A fortnight later, after harvest, they were sent out again, more to the westward this time. On the third morning they saw smoke in the distance.
Marching across the flatlands, past the scythed wheat fields, along a grassy track, unhedged and shadeless under a warm September sun, sweating into the thick serge of their uniforms. The pace had to be maintained and it was good practice for the war with France that now seemed inevitable. March fifty minutes, rest ten, three miles to each hour, thankful the hills were far and away. Two hours and they could see a property, a manor house burning to the ground. Towards the end of the third hour they found the house, old, greystone, gutted, gable ends remaining; around it were the barns and Home Farm, looted, no wagons, no horses, no corn, the people run away except in the biggest barn where there was a man, hanging by his neck from the ridge pole, and a young woman sat weeping at his feet.
“My husband, sir. Factor to Lord Rosscool, and him in London town. They came yesterday afternoon, men from our estate and from some of the villages around, and said he would not evict them, and when he swore it would be so, they laughed and hanged him. They never touched me, just made me to stay here while they took everything. I saw them break into the house and they came out with the guns my lord had kept against trouble, locked in the strongroom he had made. The womenfolk and their children are all gone, I saw them walking down the track yesterday evening, they would not stay for the soldiers to come. I think the men set off into the hills with their guns.”
Howton was mildly annoyed, half a dozen fowling pieces could be a nuisance, he supposed.
“Smith, your half-company to the north, no more than five miles up the track, turn west into the hills if you find nothing. They can’t have taken the carts far off of the beaten track, not loaded, but they may have split up into smaller parties. I shall go south and then west. Firing or signal smoke, the unengaged to come at the double.”
Smith saluted, gave brisk orders, set off with his two sections and Sergeant Hatchett.
“Do you know where they might have gone, ma’am?”
The factor’s wife was at her husband’s side, the body having been cut down, was closing his eyes and composing his arms, with some difficulty, so that he could be tidy in death, the last service she could perform for him.
“Ma’am?” Howton called again.
“Into the hills; I think, towards the sea. There were two dozen of muskets and a duck gun and three fowling pieces, sir, and they had a few guns when they came, as well as their pikes and axes and billhooks.”
The nuisance suddenly promised to be a first rate disaster; a duck gun was a young cannon and in ambush with some thirty other firearms it could rip a half-company to messy shreds. Forty soldiers, each with a musket or pistols as prizes, could be lost in a single action and the pursuit that would follow. He had to chase, it would take three or four days to get a message back to barracks and bring reinforcements, long enough for the rebels to submerge into the mass of the population, their loot hidden and them laughing and recruiting Fenians with food and the promise of a gun.
“Ensign Pearce, take Sergeant Mockford and half of his section as an advance party, never out of sight, checking all as you go.”
It would do the boy good and Mockford was an experienced sergeant who could be trusted not to lose his head or be too brave. He took Septimus to one side.
“Four hours to nightfall, Ensign Pearce. I will wish to bivouac by water at least one hour before sunset, so after eight miles or thereabouts you must look for a sheltered campsite, ideally where a large fire can be hidden and ambush is impossible. Take Mockford’s advice.”
Septimus saluted and joined Mockford at the head of his men.
The factor’s widow, seeking vengeance, pointed the most likely way for the loaded wains to have gone and they quickly found a rutted, muddy track, almost collapsed under the unwonted traffic and leading more or less directly up into the hills. Cooper was with Septimus, had assigned himself to Mockford’s people and was apparently very welcome; Septimus knew him only as a servant, was surprised to hear Mockford asking his opinion of the lane they followed.
“Lots of wheels and hooves, sergeant. Dunno about the feet.”
“That’s what I reckoned, Cooper,” Mockford replied.
Septimus waited, was forced to ask for more.
“They might be riding in the wains, the Paddies, that is, sir. Or maybe they ain’t with the wagons at all, could be off to one side or gone ahead or stayed behind. Maybe they went off to do another big place, sir.”
Septimus nodded unhappily, looked about him at the open, unhedged lane they were passing along.
“They can’t ambush us here, but we can be seen for miles.”
“That’s right, sir. No surprise on either side,” Cooper agreed.
They marched on across the bottom lands, fields and bog equally, past peat workings, empty of hands, and onto higher, firmer but still open ground. A small stream came trickling off the hills, almost ten feet wide but barely ankle deep. Septimus saw that it curved round a rare coppice a half mile in front of them, that there was a steeper slope with rock outcroppings above the woods.
“We could camp above the stream, on the hillside looking down on its valley. There should be places among the rocks there where we could hide our fires. Plenty of wood from the trees there.”
“Yes, sir. Makes good sense, sir. I think most people would agree, sir.”
Three ‘sirs’ in a row from Cooper – always disciplined and polite, never subservient. Septimus stared at him, uncomprehending at first.
“Oh! That could be where those missing feet went, do you think?”
“Yes, sir. I might put say a dozen men with muskets up in them rocks. They fire and we fall back towards them woods.”
“Right into the duck gun and fowling pieces and another dozen or so of muskets, close to as we reform.”
“Yes, sir,” Mockford completed the tale. “And the men split up and run and get hunted down one by one over the next day or two.”
Septimus was silent for a couple of minutes, then made a performance of consulting his watch and shouting for a ten minute break, earlier than normal for their breather.
“Let the captain get closer, Mockford, so he can see what we’re doing. If I send a runner back he’ll be seen.”
“If they are there, sir.”
Mockford offered the disclaimer in duty bound, but he seemed quite sure of himself. He waited for Septimus to take the lead, the boy was an officer and it was his duty to command while Mockford, who had served with the New Foresters in the confused backwoods fighting in the last war, made certain the orders he gave were sufficiently correct. Officers received no training in field skills, were expected to be natural warriors who would apply the martial instincts inherent in the class of gentlemen. Septimus, not being a gentleman born, might not, in Mockford’s opinion, possess the expected abilities, although he might not be an inbred idiot either.
“What I intend to do, sergeant, is wait till the captain has us in clear sight and then set off on the left bank of the stream, on the same side as the coppice. We shall pass it in extended order until we are up to the first rocks; then two men can take cover there to protect our backs while the rest of us charge into the treeline and close up there. The two will join us if there is no firing and then we will sweep through the woods. If so be there are rebels there, then we shall have them between us and the captain.”
“There might be fifty or sixty of them, sir,” Mockford demurred.
“Plenty of wood in that coppice. Set a blaze and lay up overnight and Mr Smith will be here in the morning.”
“So he will, sir,” Cooper observed, blank-faced.
Septimus noticed nothing but Mockford glanced very sharply at Cooper, caught the tiniest shake of his head and eyes rolling heavenward, grunted acknowledgement. Cooper had been in America, too, was a nast
y man in a fight; if he thought Smith might be shy then he was probably right. Still, the boy was essentially correct in his appreciation of the situation and his orders made sense – they should be put into effect; he turned to the platoon.
“Dowdy, you and Barnes, cover us when we charge – you heard what Mr Pearce is going to do. You see any bugger with a gun, don’t wait on orders, fire first. Use your own sense if a fight starts. If nothing happens, close on us after five minutes.”
Two short, stocky, sandy-haired thirty year olds nodded, surreptitiously checked their priming. Septimus had noticed them before, had assumed them to be cousins for their similarity of looks; he had also seen that their muskets seemed a little more cared for than the others of the company. None of the men carried a dirty or neglected weapon but theirs were loved, the stocks heavily waxed and carved into a more comfortable fit for their shoulders. He had noticed that they had a couple of strips of sheet lead wrapped round the butt pieces, beaten to shape and tacked into place.
“Diddicoi, sir, poachers who got seen too often and joined up as volunteers one jump ahead of my lord’s keepers who weren’t going to bother with the magistrates this time. They were going to get a load of birdshot in each knee, see how much game they could take after that. Best shots in the battalion, even with Besses, though they’ve worked on their pieces, balanced them better, mostly. They got friends from their village with us so they didn’t want to join the Light Company, sir.”
Septimus was intrigued – the Brown Bess – smooth bore, heavy, mass-produced, cheap – was generally regarded as valueless at more than fifty yards, fit only for volley-firing at more than ten. Marksmanship was not a concept associated with the army musket; all of the training concentrated on speed, on knocking out a round in no more than twenty seconds and hoping that a percentage must reach home.
The Soldier Brat (Man of Conflict Series, Book 1) Page 5