The Killing Man

by Andrew Wareham

  Sam found no difficulty with the pistols, simple weapons requiring a modicum of care, easy to clean and keep in good condition. The musket demanded a little more, but was essentially no more than a long pistol, need take up just a few minutes of every day.

  The straight sword was a different matter, the blade, almost a yard long, demanding oil and work every morning and the hilt, unnecessarily ornate with a basket guard, requiring a stiff brush and careful rubbing down and drying, and the brass wire on the hilt to be buffed as well. Holding the sword in a sweaty hand would instantly tarnish the brasswork and destroy all of the morning’s effort in making it smart.

  “Damage it on campaign, Trooper Heythorne, so that it must be replaced as new on returning to barracks. Better things than polishing to do with an hour on an evening when we are busy chasing wicked rebels against our sovereign lord the king!”

  “Yes, sergeant. What about keepin’ it sharp?”

  “Put it across a grindstone when you can. Get your own lump of sandstone and rub it up the edge every day. Work the point as well, quietly like. Chisel point, supposed to be, single edge all the way, for cutting with. Most blokes quietly works the back three or four inches of the spine so it’s double edged to a point, sort of like a spear. Don’t show up good on parade, but no bugger’s going to look when we’re out chasin’ they Scottish men. If you do make a spear point, I ain’t goin’ to see it, but you got to make sure it gets broke when we gets back to barracks.”

  They promised to be good.

  The following morning saw the troop at its final strength – one lieutenant, one sergeant and eighteen men, riding in pairs.

  They walked out, following the road leading to Manchester and then to go north to Preston where they were to report.

  “Keep your backs straight. Upright in the saddle like soldiers!”

  They rode formally until they were out of sight of the town, dropping into the woodlands of the western dales, following a heavily rutted road, behind the bulk of the army.

  “Cannon and baggage train, mostly. Cuts up the road something cruel. They goes slower nor us, overtake them tomorrow, most like. Get to the army before them, then get sent out in front, being as we’re only a small unit. Can’t go charging at the enemy, so we gets sent out to scout out the land and see what’s what. Easier, too. No Generals shouting at us. Out of sight, following our noses where we fancies.”

  Twenty men could put up in a barn, resting dry of a night, unlike the bulk of the army who were forced to sleep in the open under single blankets. For men who had no expectations of their food, were content simply to fill their bellies, and who had never known a dry, warm house, the life was more than tolerable. They sat around their fires, talked quietly, sang a little, worked up their swords, learned about the life and what was expected of them, what they must and must not, could and could not do.

  “Soon as we gets up to Scotland, then it’s a free hand, for they’s the enemies. In England, we got to behave ourselves.”

  Sam was not sure what Sergeant Wright meant, but he was sure he would discover when the time came.

  They reached the rendezvous at Preston and were sent north immediately, the army short of cavalry and having no real idea of the location of the retreating Jacobite forces.

  Lieutenant Wakerley brought the men together in the barn they were using as a billet, told them to listen carefully.

  “We are to ride north and inland, up onto the higher ground, the moors, seeing as we come from Derbyshire and know our way around the hills in winter. I have been able to lay my hands on six packhorses, four of them to carry rations in packs, and two for extra powder and ball and to carry dry wood for kindling – never be able to start our fires otherwise. Keep your eyes open for more wood. If we get caught out in a snowstorm up on the tops, then we’re all likely to die if we haven’t got shelter and a fire.”

  They nodded solemnly – they all knew of folk who had been caught out in the open, and who had survived and why.

  “We will split into two sections – I have one, Sergeant Wright the other. Corporals to act as our seconds will be Troopers Heythorne and Merton; I will speak to you later. We shall be looking for the Jacobite army. It has probably split up into smaller brigades to make its way north, foraging over different ground as they go. When we spot them, we need to know how many of horse, foot and gun, and what if any baggage train is following them. Count them as well as you can. Don’t fight them if you can avoid it. You may meet up with foragers – if you can kill them and take what they have stolen off them, well and good. Use your sense.”

  Merton was older than Sam, came from a village closer to Leek, four miles distant and unknown to Sam.

  Sam and Corporal Merton reported to the two seniors, saluting and showing willing.

  “First thing, why you? Simple, you can read and write, and we must have men who can produce a report of all they have seen. Both of you are good soldiers in the making. You know what we are doing. If either of us is killed, then you are to get the reports back to the army – that’s what you are here for. Corporal Merton, you are mine. Corporal Heythorne, you to Sergeant Wright.”

  Sergeant Wright nodded to Sam to walk a distance away from their billet.

  “Picked you acos of how you knows what to do with a musket or a blade. Your mate Simon says as how you’ve killed more nor a handful of they Scottish blokes already, and I believes ‘im. You got the look of a killing sort of man, Sam Heythorne, and that’s just what I wants riding at my back. Now, you going to tell me you didn’t set out to kill nobody, it just happened and you didn’t have no choice. That, young man, is true – but it only happens to killing men. It don’t happen to other sorts, acos of they don’t stand up for their selves when the need comes. All I got to say is, don’t go looking for trouble, but when trouble finds you, get in hard and deal with it, like what you done already. Your mate Simon is in our section, don’t make sense to split you up, and the others ain’t bad. Just have a quiet word with them, remind them that any bugger a man kills is his – go through the pockets and knapsack or whatever. Anything they got, they’ll have pinched, so it’s yours. If they’ve got a good military musket, bring it in – we needs them, the army being short of all it ought to have for there being a lot of militia who wasn’t properly equipped in the first place.”

  “Right, Sergeant Wright. Do we ride out together, or do we split up into two sections to cover more ground between us?”

  “Together while we’re up high. If we gets to low ground where we don’t have to worry about snow so much, then maybe we split up.”

  They rode out into Westmoreland, thinly populated at the best of times and with few roads. The farms they passed in the valleys were without exception burned out and empty, the invading army having passed through on the way south.

  “Nothing for them to thieve on their way back again, Sam. That’s the trouble with living off the land, like what they did – you can’t come home the same way you went out. They didn’t expect to come back, I suppose, because they thought to go all the way to London. Now they’re marching on empty bellies for their pains. Keep an eye out on the barns and bothies, Sam. Pass the word to the lads. Wounded and sick men fall out when they’re travelling hard and hungry. They’re traitors, remember, who have risen in arms against their sovereign lord and king.”

  Sam nodded – there was only one penalty laid down for treason. He passed the message to the section.

  “What about if they’re too ill to march back as prisoners, Sam?”

  “No mercy for traitors, Simon. You seen what they done to the farmers hereabouts, ain’t you. You knows what ‘appened to Squire and his womenfolk back at Hucklow. If they go back, there’s only a noose awaiting them.”

  Simon agreed, there was nothing other than death for traitors. He settled back to working on his sword, grinding away with a block of hard gritstone he had picked up on the track.

  “Pass us that blade of yours, Sam. Might as well give that a
going over while I’m at it.”

  “Thanks. Grub smells good tonight.”

  “Barker spotted half a dozen leeks what was growing in a bit of a garden at that place we passed mid-afternoon, Sam. Still good, they was. Must ‘ave been too small when they burned it out, grown big since.”

  “Well done, Barker! Does us all good when you keeps your eyes open like that.”

  Barker, a boy younger than either of them, flushed red with pleasure at the praise.

  Sam noticed his reaction, realised that Sergeant Wright had made sense when he had told him to offer a few words of thanks or commendation whenever he could – the men liked to be valued, and to be told that they were good soldiers.

  “The Lieutenant reckons we must be close on the ‘eels of the stragglers by now. Says that there’s goin’ to be old men or weak ones what can’t keep up with the battalions and we needs to keep a sharp eye out for they. Can’t leave they hanging about to turn into highwaymen and such.”

  Simon laughed, said that if they met them near a tree they could leave them hanging about as a warning to the rest to behave. The others laughed, but warily – they had concluded that Sam and Simon were a hard pair, not for anything they had said, but for what they had not. They knew that the two had met up with foraging Scottish men and had come out of the business better-off than they had started – and that said they had bloody hands, even if they did not care to boast about the fact. The older men had explained to young Barker that blokes what didn’t boast about what they had done had generally done a lot more than the ones with big mouths.

  “Bloke who don’t need to tell you just what a killer he is, that’s the sort who’s likely to cut your throat as soon as look at you – acos of, ‘e ain’t worried about another stiff to add to the list. Keep a wary eye on they two, Barker. Watch ‘em!”

  They did not tell Barker why, not wishing to explain to the lad that he was not a killing man and should not attempt to turn himself into one.

  Chapter Three

  The Killing Man

  Dawn came late further north in mid-winter and the days were short. In practical terms, even riding out at first light gave them barely six hours before they needed to look about for shelter for the night. They could not often find a barn or sheepfold up on the moors of Westmoreland and generally simply tried to find a valley twenty or more feet deep, the sides tall enough to shelter them from the wind. There was normally a beck and always gorse and heather, occasionally dry bushes of one sort or another as well. They could make a fire from the dead stuff underneath the gorse, always plenty of small sticks there, and could often come up with larger branches from the stunted trees of the fells. A little of patience would allow them to cut heather to interweave into the gorse and make a windbreak and a pad to lie on. It could not be called comfortable, but they were protected from the worst of the weather, at least until snow came.

  The other advantage of the valleys was the presence of grass, sufficient normally for the horses to get a feed with just a little of grain added in their nosebags.

  They would put out three sentries on three-hour stints, one up the valley and one down, the third up on the edge, looking in both directions. They were probably safe from night attack – it would be hard to locate them – but it was wiser to be cautious. Add to that, there was a chance of seeing the fires of an army in the distance.

  Sam stood in the middle of the night, up on the top of a deeper than normal valley, a good forty feet and steep sided; he was part-protected from the wind by an outcropping of boulders, four and five feet high. He remained wide awake, watching all round, conscientiously, nervous, and proud still of being a corporal. There was no sign of firelight in any direction, but he doubted he could see as much as a mile for sleet showers, thickening almost to snow and then dying almost to nothing. It was cold, but not too much so, not dangerously, keeping him awake and uncomfortable rather than lulling him into a sleep from which he might never stir. He was thinking, idly, about what the men had said, wondering if he really was a ‘killing man’. He had to admit that he had killed his share of the Scottish men, and that he had not been deeply disturbed, then or since, but he was not convinced this reflected on his own character. He really could not imagine that he was a bad sort of chap, and that meant he was not a killer by nature – the logic was indisputable.

  He whistled a little song, a favourite of his mother’s, ‘Robin Adair’, barely loud enough to be heard a yard away; he took a look around, stepping carefully up onto the top of one of the boulders, easing his way down slowly, knowing that a fall could cripple him, out in the wilds with no way to treat a broken bone.

  He settled down to think again. It wasn’t his fault that he had killed those men. If they had never come to steal from his Da’s farm, then he would never have been put in the way of shooting at them. It was their choice, not his. As for going hunting to get his cows back – they had taken them first. The flock of sheep was a different matter, as was the wagonload of foodstuffs, but they had started it; if they had stayed home in Scotland, he would not have killed a man in all of his life, he was sure.

  He was not a killing man, he was simply a man who had been forced to kill – there was a difference. Probably. It didn’t stop him from sleeping, and that was all that was important, really.

  The sleet passed over and the sky cleared a little, sufficient to show a faint light a little distant, much like the fire he had spotted when finding the sheep thieves. He picked up three small rocks, put them in a line on top of the nearest boulder, an exact bearing on the fire. They could do nothing till the morning, travel across the moors in darkness was a certain way of crippling the horses; there was no point to calling an alarm, he would tell Sergeant Wright when he was relieved from sentry-go.

  A while later there was a whistle from below and Henry, another of Sergeant Wright’s section, made his way up the slope, following the rope they had tied from top to bottom to give them a direction.

  “Don’t knock they three stones, Henry. They’s pointing towards a firelight. Do you see ‘un?”

  Henry peered along the line, was satisfied that something was there.

  “I’m agoing to wake Sergeant Wright, Henry. I’ll bring ‘im up to take a looksee.”

  Sergeant Wright came out of deep sleep at the first touch on his shoulder, was instantly alert.

  “Firelight? How far distant? A big camp or a small picket?”

  “Don’t know, Sergeant. Couldn’t see nowt till the sleet cleared away, so more nor a mile, at a guess. Don’t seem to be too many fires, but maybe more nor one – bit of a glow, like.”

  Sergeant Wright picked up his carbine – he would go nowhere unarmed, had been too long on various campaigns to do that – and trudged his way up the slope.

  “Getting too bloody old for this game, young Sam. Let’s ‘ave a look.”

  Sam pointed out the rocks giving the line.

  “Clever! Wouldn’t ‘ave thought of that meself. Let’s ‘ave a gander, now… No more than two miles. One big fire, I reckon. Might be a farm what ‘ad a winter log pile ready, seen it all go up in flames in one night, poor sods. Could be they found a bit of a coppice, with a goodly bit of dead stuff. Might even be coals, for all I know. They gets coals up in the North Country, digs ‘em out of pits in the ground, so they do. Could be a company, but I reckon they might make three or four fires, one for each platoon, so they could huddle round the easier. My guess is no more than two platoons, or a couple of wagons from the baggage train. I’ll rouse Mr Wakerley, so that we can pull out at first light, if that’s what ‘e wants.”

  Lieutenant Wakerley stared at the firelight and decided they must do their best to find out what and where.

  “Corporal Heythorne, you and one other to walk out now, on foot, to make your way cautiously towards the fire and, if possible, discover what’s there. Very carefully. There’s the better part of four hours until daylight, time to make your way to a height at a distance from them. We’ll bring y
our horses, no need to come back. Take a look, then find a bit of shelter at a distance from the fire and wait for us to join you.”

  Sam stirred Simon, who had had first sentry-go and five hours of sleep since and gave him the good news. There was hot tea to hand – the bucket they brewed up in left next to the fire all night, keeping warm and stewing.

  “Bloody Christ! That’s awful stuff, Sam!”

  “Keeps you awake, Simon. No bugger’s likely to sleep after half a pint of that stuff. That’s why the Army has it, so I reckon. Bring the carbine and both pistols. Leave the sword – not much use in the night.”

  They checked that the pistol flints were sparking and then loaded both, the big holsters dangling from their belts. Lieutenant Wakerley had a final word with them, confirming they knew exactly what he wanted.

  “Not carrying the sword, Corporal Heythorne?”

  “Not at night, sir. Likely to get caught up in the gorse, a yard long and dragging from the belt, sir.”

  “Stick it across your back, hilt over your shoulder. Tie a bit of cord high and low on the scabbard rings. Better to have a silent killer on you if you stumble over a sentry.”

  “Sir.”

  Sam thought it was likely to be no more than a burden, but officers were to be obeyed. Ten minutes and they were scrambling up the northern side of the valley, trying to remember the line to follow once they were a few yards out into the blackness.

  There was occasional moonlight through brief breaks in the clouds, and the very top of the moors was generally bare turf, except when it was a sliding scree of fist-sized rocks or a tangle of waist-high gorse. Sam thought they might be making good a mile in an hour, which gave them time and to spare to cast around and find all that was there.

  “Track underfoot, Sam.”

  “Shepherd’s path, Simon. Covered in sheep whinnits.”