Redcoat

by Bernard Cornwell

  “To give us our freedom?” Martha suggested.

  “You have never been unfree, never! Freedom is wealth, my girl, nothing else! Wealth comes from trade. Trade feeds you, clothes you, and keeps you and your daughter out of the slums and in the luxury you’ve never worked for. And trade is London!”

  “And we must be ruled by London to trade with London?” Martha asked drily.

  “If London won’t trade with us, then we are nothing. Nothing! My God, why can’t you understand?”

  Martha did suddenly understand one thing, and it occurred to her with the peculiar force with which a younger person sees a weakness in an elder who, hitherto, has always seemed so sure and strong. She understood that her uncle was frightened. He had nailed his colours to the royal mast, and now the guns could mean a rebel victory. “Poor uncle, I shall say a word for you if your friends lose today.”

  “I don’t need your pity!” Abel Becket was stung by her kindness. He stooped and plucked the letter from the carpet. “What I do ask of you is family loyalty. I wish you to write to your brother and enjoin him to give up this madness! Tell him he’s been encouraged to foolishness, but that he can relent. He pays attention to your views.”

  “Not always.” Martha, noting that her uncle’s threat had decidedly softened, shrugged. “He doesn’t take every piece of advice I give him, uncle. I told him he shouldn’t marry the Fisher girl, but it’s clear he intends to.”

  It was also clear that Jonathon had not informed his uncle of his proposed marriage. “That slut?” Abel Becket erupted.

  Martha wished she had not mentioned the girl’s name. “So he tells me.”

  “He’s mad! He has to marry someone of advantage!” Becket took two frustrated paces, then turned again. “She’s nothing!”

  “I’m beginning to be fond of her, and I assure you she’s no slut.” Martha frowned suddenly. “Did Ezra Woollard sink her shallop?”

  Abel Becket was disconcerted by the sudden question, but his face clearly showed that he knew nothing of the sunken boat.

  “On the day the British arrived,” Martha explained, “Caroline Fisher’s shallop was holed with blocks of masonry thrown from the wharf. She believes Ezra Woollard did it.”

  “The girl’s talking nonsense.”

  “The boat was certainly sunk! I had to buy her another.”

  “Then you’re a fool. You think money’s to be thrown away like old bones?”

  Martha smiled sweetly. “How am I to communicate with my friends beyond the city if I have no one able to cross the river? Or how am I to write to Jonathon?”

  “You write to him.” Abel Becket put the letter on an inlaid table. “He listens to you. So write to him and tell him that he is to return immediately! Immediately! Or else he is not a member of this family, and he forfeits all hopes of me if he disobeys. You tell him that!”

  “If he believes in victory,” Martha demurred, “I doubt he’ll listen to such threats.”

  “Then tell him that his victory will make a crippled country, and what future will a lame boy have in such a broken world?” Abel Becket gestured towards the windows that suddenly shook under a renewed attack of gunfire. “You’ve sent your brother to die for nothing!”

  “Jonathon is doing what he believes to be right.”

  “He’s diseased, ma’am, diseased. His head’s been turned by the ignorant prattle of foolish women. Tell him to return. Tell him to abandon the madness! Tell him I will forgive him, but only if he returns instantly, because I will not share the profits of my labour with a rebel. Nor will I have my family’s reputation fouled by rebel allegiance.”

  Martha smiled. “Do I foul it?”

  “You are a woman, and a woman is not held accountable for her whims. Now, ma’am, will you write to your brother?”

  Martha picked up the crumpled letter, smoothed and folded it, then held it out to her uncle. “You must tell him your own message, for I will not. I don’t believe he should be fighting, but nor can I recommend him to abandon a cause in which I believe,” she paused, seeking to soften her refusal, “however whimsically. Write the letter, uncle, and I will guarantee its delivery.”

  Abel Becket refused the proffered letter. “You won’t help wean him from this insanity?”

  “How can I, if I share it?”

  “Then I shall account you responsible for his destruction. Good day, ma’am.” Becket snatched up his hat. “I doubt we have further business.” He slammed the door as he left, leaving their former affections torn. They were enemies.

  Martha went back to the window and tried to read a message in the soft pummelling of the guns, but she could not tell from such dull sounds who gained the day. She listened and she grieved for her family which, just like the seaboard itself, was riven, not just by rebellion, but by civil war.

  Eleven

  Sam’s reveille was the blistering crack of gunfire in the dawn, followed by urgent shouts as sergeants ran through the bivouacs. No one knew what was happening, but that it was more than nervous picquets firing was made obvious when the great ear-thumping crash of cannon fire began.

  There was no time for any breakfast, only a milling confusion as men struggled into their packs, boots and belts, then fell into rank. Some of the battalion’s women came running to the parade with scraps of bread and flasks of rum for their men. Small children cried, scared by the cannon’s thumping from the clinging fog.

  Maggie came timidly towards the company. “Nate’s over here, darling!” Corporal Dale called aloud to provoke laughter, but Sergeant Scammell, busying himself at Captain Kelly’s side, did not hear.

  The girl smiled shyly towards Nate, but did not approach him. Instead she held out a cloth-wrapped bundle that the Sergeant snatched from her as he paced towards the company.

  Nate watched his enemy approach, then leaned confidingly towards Sam. “We’re running today,” Nate whispered.

  Sam looked at his brother in amazement. “It’s a bloody battle. Don’t be a fool.”

  “She’s going to hide over by the woods. I’m going to join her. Easy in a battle, isn’t it? No one knows what the hell’s happening.”

  “If Scammy gets killed today she’ll be yours, anyway,” Sam said.

  “The Yankees can’t kill Scammy,” Nate said.

  “They’re killing someone. Right bloody row they’re making.”

  A staff officer sped past, then a flurry of orders turned the battalion towards the north and, in columns of companies, they marched up a mud-slick road in the fog. The staccato fury of the musketry never ceased to Sam’s left. He tried to gauge what was happening in the blanketing, distorting fog, but it was impossible to tell.

  The battalion wheeled right into a rough pasture where two light galloper guns were deployed. As the battalion was brought to a halt, and faced front, both guns fired. They kicked back with shocking force, digging their trails into the mud so that the wheels bucked off the ground as the vast gouts of grey-white smoke thickened the fog. Then, though there was no reply from the north, nor any indication of what effect the two cannon balls might have had, the crews limbered up the guns, whipped their horses, and slewed back towards the encampment.

  Captain Kelly, mounted on his mare Cleo, rode to a point fifteen paces ahead of the company. “Load.” His voice was quite soft, almost apologetic. Sam took out one of the thick, paper-wrapped cartridges and bit the bullet off. The black powder was gritty and saline on his tongue. He lifted the musket’s frizzen and put a pinch of powder into the pan, closed the lid, then upended the musket on to its butt so that he could pour the rest of the powder down the barrel. He stuffed the crumpled paper after it, spat the bullet into the muzzle, then drew out the long, brass-tipped rammer that he thrust hard down the barrel to compact bullet, paper and powder in the breech. The rammer went back into its hoops, and he brought the musket up for inspection. Scraps of powder were left on his lips.

  Sergeant Scammell, looking wolfishly pleased at the thought of action, tugg
ed at Sam’s flint, flicked the frizzen, then moved on to Nate. “You’ll look after your brother, Sam?” He stared into Nate’s eyes as he spoke to Sam.

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “We don’t want to lose our little lover boy, do we?”

  Scammell laughed, walked on, and Ensign Trumbull who, at thirteen, was the youngest officer in the battalion, paced down the face of the company. “Let’s hope we can use the bayonets, Sergeant Scammell.”

  “Indeed, sir. Nothing like the spike, sir!” Scammell gave an exaggerated salute to the youngster, sweeping his hat off until it touched his right thigh. Ensign Trumbull seemed oblivious to the mockery. The men grinned.

  Captain Kelly’s mare staled steaming urine on to the grass as the Captain stared gloomily into the fog and put a pinch of snuff on to his hand. Sam could hear the percussive hammer of the big guns firing, but there was no indication of where they fought, or which side had deployed them. The Captain sneezed.

  “We fixed it,” Nate whispered again. “Maggie found this place, you see, where we can hide?”

  “Don’t be a clod!”

  “No! I can find it! You can come, Sam!”

  Sam turned and stared at his brother. “I don’t want to come, Nate. I don’t mind it here! There’s worse things than being a soldier.”

  “This ain’t a bleeding parish meeting!” Sergeant Derrick shouted from behind the company. “Keep your bloody tongues still.”

  Another staff officer, this one mounted on a grey horse, galloped mysteriously past the battalion’s front and was swallowed into the fog. “Stand easy!” Captain Kelly called. He brought out a watch, clicked the lid open, then yawned hugely.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Elliott trotted his horse to Kelly’s side and the two officers bent their plumed heads together. Their sudden laughter was oddly comforting to Sam. It was only when action threatened that all the battalion’s officers showed themselves; most of the time the men were left to the care of sergeants, but the presence of the officers seemed to brace the battalion for what might come. And Kelly was a decent man to follow, quick with his praise and always ready to give a man the benefit of the doubt.

  “What’s happening, Sergeant?” a man called George Cullen, one of Scammell’s cronies, called out to the sergeant.

  “You think Mister Washington’s told me, George? How the hell do I know?”

  Sam borrowed a stone from Liam Shaughnessy and obsessively sharpened the tip of his bayonet. He felt strangely confident. He believed he had earned the red hackle that he wore so proudly. Before, at the battles around New York and at Brandywine, he had been scared of the enemy, but now he felt that the enemy might be even more scared of him. He was not entirely fearless; no bravery could protect a man from a cannon ball or a well-aimed rebel bullet, but Sam felt as good as any man he might face this day; even better, for he wore a red hackle. Around him the usual small jests sent ripples of laughter up and down the ranks. A man in the next company, suffering from a hangover, vomited, while another man seemed to shake uncontrollably. But Sam felt good. Sam felt like a soldier.

  Elliott turned his horse. “What will you do to them, lads?”

  “Kill them!” The replies were ragged.

  Elliott cupped his hand to an ear. “I can’t hear you!”

  “Kill the bastards, sir!” Scammell shouted, and the men first cheered, then took up the shout.

  Elliott laughed at their defiance. “They’re rebels, lads, and they need a lesson taught them. You’re going to do it! You’re going to show them how real soldiers fight! You’re doing it for your King! For good King George, and for those, lads, those!” Elliott pointed to the heavy silken sheets of the battalion’s colours that had been drawn from their leather tubes and unfurled to the damp air. The sight of the fringed colours made the men cheer once more, and Sam suddenly felt surrounded by the fellowship and love of his comrades. He forgot Nate’s plans to desert in the chaos of battle, for this day Sam knew that the Redcoats were unbeatable and he prayed for the enemy to appear from the fog so that the Bloodybacks could prove again that there were no soldiers on God’s whole goddamned bloody earth who were better at the slaughter of their enemies.

  Sam’s spirit was fired, his musket loaded, and he was a Redcoat who could not be beaten. Sam was ready.

  A huge cheer sounded to Jonathon’s right. It was a regiment of Virginians, flayed to ardour by their colonel. They fought, the Virginian colonel said, for liberty, and to make widows weep in England. This day they were going to humble the damned English; they were to kill the fribbles and fops and send the skipjackets home in shameful defeat. “For what are you?” the colonel shouted.

  “Americans! Americans!”

  “So kill the bastards! Kill the bastards! Kill the bastards!” And the Virginians took up the cry like a great yell of defiance that challenged the clinging fog.

  Jonathon was lost, confused, excited, and terrified. None of his competence as a merchant could help him in this, his first battle. He was not entirely sure that this was a battle, though Colonel Jackson Weller, who had appointed Jonathon as his aide, said it was, and the other officers spoke excitedly of the massive attack General Washington had planned this day. For the first time ever the Continental Army, reinforced with the States’ Militia, outnumbered the enemy. The Patriots would advance in four great phalanxes to strike at the British line and the British, Weller had said, would not know where the Americans came from. As soon as General Howe thought he had found the main attack, another would slice in from another road and, in just a few hours, the lobsters would be carved, cooked, and served as a delicacy for General Washington’s delectation.

  “We’re going to win, Johnny!” Jack Weller had said, and Jonathon had agreed, but now, in the fog, he could not make head nor tail of what was happening.

  He knew that Colonel Weller’s men had the task of keeping the two most easterly American columns in touch with each other. As the columns advanced, so the horsemen would zigzag between them, but the fog made what had seemed like a simple duty into a terrifying mystery. Neither column was in motion now, though somewhere on the battlefield there was action, for Jonathon could hear gunfire that seemed to come from the east. The sound was a great rumbling and tearing noise that quickened Jonathon’s heartbeat and seemed to catch the breath in his dry throat. He was imagining the horror of great guns smashing his already-crippled body with roundshot.

  “Remember all I told you, son?” Sergeant Spring walked his horse to stand beside Jonathon’s and leaned over to tap the drawn sabre in Jonathon’s hand.

  “I think so, Sergeant.”

  Spring was a fatherly man and an expert horseman who was also a Methodist preacher. He hated Colonel Weller’s swearing, chided Colonel Weller’s drunkenness, prayed earnestly that Colonel Weller’s womanizing might be forgiven, and followed the Colonel with an avid loyalty. Sergeant Spring was said to have killed six Redcoats in a single skirmish after Brandywine. “He said a prayer over each one, didn’t you, Spring?” Weller teased his sergeant.

  “They’re the Lord’s children, even if they are English.”

  “They’re the spawn of skunks and hogs,” Weller said, “and every one I kill makes me feel better.”

  Now, on the verge of battle, Sergeant Spring put away his New Testament and smiled at Jonathon. “Are you prepared?”

  “Yes,” Jonathon lied. The truth was that his mouth was dry, his stomach churned, and a muscle in his good left leg flickered uncontrollably. His clothes were dirty, damp, and uncomfortable, his thighs were chafed to rawness by a night in the saddle, and his unfamiliar sword slings kept snagging on a torn edge of his saddle. He wanted to vomit, he wanted to empty his bowels, but he was keeping up a bold appearance.

  Sergeant Spring, who had learned about young men going fresh into battle, recognized the bravery. He leaned over and took Jonathon’s sabre into his own hand. “Use the edge, son, not the point. Hack with it, don’t spear with it, and let your horse do the work.”
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br />   Jonathon was grateful for the reiterated lesson. “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “And keep your weight off your right stirrup. You don’t want to tumble by leaning too far.” The advice was the sole and tactful reference to Jonathon’s twisted leg. “If you can’t reach the enemy, then go for a closer man.”

  “I will.”

  Spring smiled and handed back the sabre. “And don’t chop your horse’s ears off, son.”

  “No, Sergeant.” Jonathon was suddenly terrified he would do just that. He had been feeling strangely guilty about the mare, wondering if he would be accused of stealing it from his uncle, but Colonel Weller had said that horse-thieving was a small transgression in a man who fought to steal a whole country from the tyrant.

  And this day, God willing, Jonathon would strike a blow against that tyrant, and his battle shout would be, not Liberty, but the name of the girl he loved. Caroline had written Jonathon one letter which he had combed for a sign of affection. He had found that sign in her last words where, once more, she promised to wait for his return. So now Jonathon rode for her, and the memory of her had given him courage in the damp discomfort of a horse soldier’s life.

  It was a life in which Jonathon had never worked so hard, been so sore, slept so briefly, nor been so happy. His leg had been an obstacle to those who had given him advice in Philadelphia, but here, among the fighting men, it did not seem to matter. If he was slow in reaching the horse lines he was mocked good-naturedly, but no one called him cripple, or wondered why he had volunteered for the fight. He was accepted, and today he would reward his comrades’ friendship by showing that a wealthy young city boy could fight as well as any man.

  “Johnny! Johnny!” demanded Colonel Jackson Weller, galloping from the fog.

  “Sir?”

  “You know where Forrest’s scoundrels are?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s more than most people do.” Weller was scribbling with a lump of charcoal on a sheet of paper. “They’re militia, so the buggers probably can’t read. Ignorant country bastards, they are, but don’t tell them I said so.” He turned the paper over and kept writing.