The Soldier Brat (Man of Conflict Series, Book 1)

by Andrew Wareham

  Septimus was taken aback, overwhelmed by the report and failing to understand it – why should George buy salt fish in Canada to sell in Portugal? Could not the Portuguese do so themselves? It made no sense to him – but enclosed farmland did, that was real wealth.

  “Would you do me another service, George? Dispose of these for me?”

  He produced the little wash-leather bag, tipped out the emeralds and pearls, commented briefly on the ‘spoils of war’, gave no further detail.

  “Taken originally from the Spanish, no doubt – the French buccaneers were busy less than a century ago, I am told.” George whistled, a fascinated forefinger touching the stones, turning them to catch the light. “Abrams is our man for these, newly come to Winchester, from Brussels, he says, family, stock and knowledge fled ahead of the revolutionaries and as good as any man you will find in London. We will go to him tomorrow.”

  Cook had to be seen so that she could take an old retainer’s privileges; Cooper was there, invited to sit by her fire, a rare honour, but he served her darling, too. Septimus fled as soon as he decently could – he had grown up, he felt, while he was still her spoiled little boy.

  Abrams was a man of fifty or so, tall, upright, fair hair rapidly greying, dressed like any other businessman. Septimus, whose only knowledge of Jews was Shylock, was disappointed in him – he had looked for the exotic in his first Hebrew. He did have a faint accent, but hardly sufficient to compensate.

  “Six pearls, blues, of fine colour, large and perfectly matched. Truly of the best quality, Captain Pearce, as good as any I have ever seen. They will form the centrepiece of a first rate necklace, and I have a customer for them. I can offer you nine hundred pounds for them, sir.”

  George nodded, from the little he knew it seemed a very fair price. Septimus accepted on the instant.

  “The emeralds are a different matter, for I have no taker for them, would wish to move them in London where I am sure they will excite no little interest. They are good stones, the pattern of inclusions in three remarkable, the fourth very fine.”

  He passed his loupe across, pointed out what he meant.

  “What I would like to do, gentlemen, is take them up to Town – actually, my son will be the messenger – and sell them to the trade there – it will do my name a lot of good, to be associated with these stones. I would suggest a commission of three per centum?”

  “Thirty pounds on the thousand, a very reasonable rate, I think, Septimus”, George replied.

  Just before the end of his leave Abram’s son came to George’s office, solemnly handed him two bills of sale and bank notes to the tune of three thousand two hundreds; Septimus’ potential acreage doubled its size, to at least four hundreds.

  There had been an Assembly during the month which Septimus had made a point of attending, though George, with a pregnant wife, had intended not to appear; it seemed to Septimus that he should be seen and remembered by the County, especially now that he was becoming a landowner, even on a small scale as yet. He danced with the merchants’ daughters, towards the end of the evening stood up with the Honourable Lucasta Everholt, noticing her now to be a strikingly good-looking young lady.

  “She must be nearly twenty by now, George,” he commented idly as they drank a glass at the buffet.

  “Aye, still unwed and likely to remain so.”

  “What? Why? Did you not say sixty thousands to me, once?”

  “Brother, the late and unlamented Viscount! Shot himself just over a year ago, she’s only just back into colours. Gambled his money and all of hers. House sold up and the estate gone – part of it will be yours now, a few fields. The mother had ten thousands secured to her and they might have saved as much again from the wreckage – but the poverty and the scandal have done her no favours at all.”

  “Pity – attractive girl and she talks sensibly.”

  “She’d not follow the Colours, brother! I doubt she would make a wife for a serving soldier.”

  “I was not thinking of her as such, George,” Septimus chuckled. “Not her nor any other until I am major, which will probably be in about five years, bearing my age in mind – I am no titled sprig to be a colonel in my twenties and lounge in Bond Street – a major must be able to take his whole battalion into battle when need arises, and I am not sure I am ready for that yet. Still, a good campaign and I may be pushed forward, ready or not.”

  “India?”

  “Is there a prospect of war there, George?”

  “There is talk – the French have colonies there still, so it is possible, but I have no inside knowledge.”

  “We need a politician or two in the firm’s pocket, it would seem, George.”

  “It would be useful, but the Tories are in power and like to remain so – small chance of a Whig administration.”

  “Then support the Tories, George – they must be short of merchants, so making you the more valuable.”

  The orchestra struck up again and they returned, in duty bound, to the floor, Septimus instantly forgetting his light-hearted comment. George remembered, however, made tentative contact with the Member for the County, was amazed at just how soon a gentleman connected to Prime Minister Pitt came into casual conversation with him. The relationship cost George several thousands of pounds in ‘loans’ and outright gifts over the years and gained the firm government contracts worth ten times as much in profit as well as offering less tangible benefits of influence and inside knowledge; George gained a respect for Septimus’ intelligence as a result – he would never have considered any involvement in politics otherwise.

  Winter clamped in, ferociously cold, snowing heavily in November, ice forming across the river mouth and blocking out the coasters, something not heard of in years and a disaster in itself, for the town depended on the Newcastle colliers for much of its winter firing. They were forced to put charcoal braziers into the barracks and keep them alight night and day – the flimsy, jerry-built, single-skin brick buildings let in more than enough draughts to disperse the noxious fumes. They gave consideration to the purchase of extra blankets for the men’s cots, but the funds were not to hand and in any case it was highly unlikely that all of the shops in Christchurch together could have mustered half of the number they would need. They were forced instead to increase the men’s rations, half a dozen superannuated ewes a week to provide tough, greasy, mutton stew, bulked out with barley and roots to fill the hungry, cold bellies. The men survived, for the most part, the bulk of them seeming to thrive – it never occurred to Septimus that the farm labourers’ cottages most had left were colder and damper even than the barracks and that very few of the lowest paid came close to an adequate food-supply in winter, that for most of the men this was the best cold season they had ever had.

  Training continued and the consumptives and weaklings disappeared from the ranks into their graves while the half-wits became competent or killed themselves in accidents. Black powder muskets with unreliable flintlocks were no friend to the really stupid, those who forgot that they were already loaded and put a second charge into their barrels, or mistakenly primed their pans before ramming their powder home, or even peered down the barrel to see if there was a charge in there.

  Jacky Wilson remained, apart, on permanent fatigues because he could no longer stand up straight and could not parade. He should have been discharged as unfit but they kept him, silent, shambling, always in the background, a half-living advertisement, a reminder to would-be thieves and deserters, slowly sweeping his way round the paths and drill square, tears sometimes running down his cheeks, a Jonah who nobody would try to speak to, sleeping separately now on a pallet in the cookhouse; he terrified the new recruits when they came in and, in the nature of things, asked who and what he was.

  Drill became excellent, the men moving as one, trusting each other, working together, and they began to perform the more complicated evolutions necessary in the field, shifting from column of route to line, to square, back to line, into open order th
en closing up again, forming single rank, double or triple with an efficiency that became unthinking as practice made them into automata. Musket drill took up more and more of each day, loading and firing until they could produce four volleys a minute, all together, firing as one, learning to cradle the clumsy musket tight so as to protect their shoulders from bruising and gaining the dark blue scarring to the right cheek that came inevitably from the flintlock’s repeated flash an inch or two from the flesh. A few exceptional men were earmarked for the Light Company, given extra tuition by Barnes and Dowdy to make them into more accurate shots and equipped with the best muskets in the armoury. The biggest and strongest were noted to be posted to the Grenadier Company, no longer equipped with grenades or stinkpots as they had been in a previous century but often used to lead a charge or protect the Colours and expected to be especially handy with butt and bayonet in close fighting. The great majority were brought to simple obedience and given the belief that they were ‘better’ – they belonged to a ‘good’ battalion, one that did not get beaten, one that killed the King’s Enemies, whoever they might be, wherever they were found; they were told that one New Forester was as good as two Frogs and better than any number of Dagoes, and the confidence they gained went some way to making it true. The battalion became their family, their squadmates were their kin, the values repeated by their sergeants became their way of life - look after each other, to hell with civilians, never run, never inform, obey their officers and tell them nothing, fight and win – it was in many ways a simple, easy life, provided they were neither too stupid nor too intelligent.

  Drafts came into the barracks every two or three weeks, ten or twenty at a time brought in by the recruiting sergeants who patrolled the fairs and markets of the small towns and villages; these were mostly farm labourers come to join the regiment they regarded as their own. Boys of sixteen or so who wanted to escape the plough or could not find a farmer to take them on; slightly older youngsters who had got a girl’s kilts up around her waist and now wanted to escape the consequences; young men who had poached incautiously or fought when they were drunk or had slaughtered a sheep or calf for no better reason than that they or their families were hungry; men of an age who had answered back to squire and found they had neither job nor roof the next morning – a few were stupid and some were silly, but most had itchy feet, a need for horizons containing something more than the parish pump. Almost all of them made soldiers.

  At less predictable intervals, individuals, pairs, once a group of six, came in under escort of the parish constable, sent from courts all over the south and west of Hampshire, few from the West Country itself, they mostly going to Devons or Dorsets. A few were debtors, sent away as spendthrifts who needed a master to look after them, but most were criminals. Gaols were meant to hold prisoners on remand, were not envisaged as long-term places of confinement and the Bench often found itself with a choice of binding-over – freeing a man on promise of good behaviour; imposing a fine that a poor man could not pay other than by theft; hanging him; or sending him to serve in Army or Navy. Transportation was possible again, Botany Bay having taken the place of the Americas, but there was no regular system of prison ships going out and the experience of Hampshire on the Second Convoy to Australia was such that the magistrates had taken against it – more than half of the Hampshire men sent on the Second Convoy had died, mostly from brutal ill-usage by guards and other prisoners; the result was that prisoners tended to go to the King’s service, irrespective of their merits, unless it was felt that they really ought to hang.

  The party of six together were an exception to the general rule because they were farmers’ sons, heirs to the yeomanry who had been out on the spree, had ended up in a bawdy house, in an upstairs room. One of the girls had fallen out of the window and broken her neck, exactly how was unclear, but there had been a loud argument and an exchange of insults and slaps involving several of them, and a verdict of manslaughter was not too unjust – normally they would have hanged, but their fathers had some influence and they were lucky enough to be marched down to Christchurch to swear lifetime service to the King. Most observers thought they were very fortunate, but they themselves seemed quite bitter about their fate.

  The criminals generally were townies and found it hard to fit in with the bigger, slower, stronger peasantry; many of them ran, some being successful in getting clear away, a few receiving their flogging, never more than a hundred, because none were so unwise as to carry a weapon with them.

  Septimus settled into routine, his job increasingly that of distant overseer, watching all but generally needing to do nothing, except, only too frequently, having to pull up one or other of the officers, most of them not having reconciled themselves to the new ways of doing things. Discipline of junior officers during the working day was none too difficult a problem – the system of order and admonition was impersonal - but relationships in the Mess were outside of the formalities, were guided by the code of honour, which was unwritten, impossible to state as an absolute yet was, in many ways, inflexible. Muttered comments and incivilities could be ignored, generally should be, but open insult, if it came, would have to be answered in blood, possibly creating a public scandal.

  Septimus spent a few days in Winchester every month, taking care to be seen at the Assembly; he danced with Lucasta Everholt most times, a casual acquaintance, no more; he found her arrogant and shallow beneath a veneer of polite education, but gained a vast pleasure from the fact that she could not recognise him, entertained himself by imagining her reaction if she suddenly remembered his face.

  Snow was thick on the ground, the fatigue parties out with shovels and brooms, when a messenger arrived, one of George’s servants on horseback, blue with cold and easing his back towards the big fire in the Mess hallway as he handed Septimus a note.

  “Oh Christ! Yesterday?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sarn’t Parker, my batman, please!”

  A minute and Cooper arrived, ready as soon as he had heard of the messenger.

  “Look after this man tonight, Cooper, a meal and a bed. We ride to Winchester first thing tomorrow.”

  Cooper asked his master no questions – the servant would tell him everything, and in greater detail.

  The colonel was in the anteroom, glass in hand, talking to Major Harris, as was normal, Treasure generally retiring early to his bed. Both shared a landed background, neither was happy with Trade and consequently had little in common with an essentially plebeian set of junior officers – sons of lawyers, doctors and vicars for the most part. The Army was expanding and standards had had to be lowered, they accepted, but could not really believe it was proper; perhaps a smaller army of the right sort of people might have served the country better, mere numbers could not be everything, after all.

  “Colonel, a word please?”

  The colonel had seen Septimus called out, had been informed of a messenger, was ready for the summons, paced over to an empty corner.

  “My brother in Winchester, colonel. His wife gave birth to a boy two days since, died of the fever yesterday evening.”

  “I am sorry to hear that, captain. You will wish to be with your brother. The training is going well – most exceptionally so – and there is no difficulty in your taking a month.”

  The colonel finished his drink, raised a finger to a mess-servant who scurried across with a pair of charged glasses on a tray.

  “Been thinking about you, Mr Pearce, these last few days. You’re a good officer, as your reputation says, and you have done an excellent job here – seeing it, I know that I should have made sure it was done before! My fault! Water under the bridge, however. There’s no point to you being here, not any more, I shall ensure that your system continues. There could possibly be a lot of harm to you and to the regiment in your staying, however. Some time, sooner or later, you’re going to have a run-in with one of the others, a pistols job; you will kill him when it comes to it. I know your sort – a good sol
dier and a hard man and got no time for the bad and the weak, and I know what you think about most of the people in this Mess – so do I! I used to be good; Treasure was, believe it or not! Harris ain’t, nor are most of these, fit for the depot and nothing else. The best thing will be for you to take the next draft out to the First Battalion. Two or three of the lieutenants, a couple of the ensigns, two hundred or so men, in April, on the convoy.”

  “I think that would be a good idea, colonel. It has seemed to me lately that a problem of some sort might arise.”

  “It will, for sure, captain, if you stay: one of them will get brave, probably not drunk enough for the insult to be dismissed as alcoholic maunderings, and when you hang back from a challenge will sneer that you are yellow, not recognising simple common sense when he sees it, and then you will have no choice left and will get the name of a killer. Take your leave and when you come back we will identify your men. By far the best thing, I think.”

  It was a long, slow day’s travel to Winchester, the roads not quite impassable if the urgency was sufficient. Snow balled in the horse’s hooves and the animals found the going hard and tiring; they changed mounts – expensively – in Brockenhurst and Romsey, arranging that the animals would be returned when the roads were a little better, got into Oliver’s Battery with the last of the daylight.

  Septimus entered the house of mourning, shutters and blinds pulled to, the rooms dim lit, wreath on the door, at a loss for anything useful to say or do – he had to be there, he had to bring some comfort to his brother, but what could he offer?