The Last Horseman

by David Gilman

  Radcliffe and Pierce sat hunched in the shade of a barn. The black horse, unsaddled and rubbed down with straw, munched from the nosebag Radcliffe had fastened across its head. Once the horse had been attended to he had squatted down with Pierce, who had cooked a one-pot meal. Pierce dipped the spoon into the meat stew and grimaced. ‘Horsemeat isn’t beef, that’s for sure, but it’s better than what most of these men have. Damned pen-pushing logistics can’t get field kitchens up here yet; most of the men have only biscuits and tinned meat.’

  Radcliffe didn’t eat; he was squinting into the sun-baked distance at Lawrence Baxter, who walked towards them with a slovenly Mulraney trying to keep up and stay in step, skipping once or twice as he tried to match his officer’s footfall, and to stop his over-sized sun helmet from falling over his nose. Despite his vaguely comical appearance Mulraney’s tunic and hands were caked in dried blood, testament to the happy-go-lucky soldier’s fighting during the battle.

  Radcliffe and Pierce got to their feet.

  Lieutenant Baxter half raised a hand. ‘Gentlemen, please don’t get up. I didn’t mean to interrupt. God knows we all need food and rest after what we’ve been through.’

  Neither Radcliffe nor Pierce sat down. Mulraney cast a mournful look at the pot of food. He licked his lips. ‘Poor bloody horses give their all. I’m surprised we don’t prise off their horseshoes and chuck them at the boojers. And they don’t smell like proper stew neither. Still –’

  ‘Shut up, Mulraney, no one asked for your opinion,’ said Baxter curtly.

  Mulraney nodded and took a step back, behind the eyeline of his officer. ‘Stay where you are, for God’s sake,’ Baxter ordered him, the weariness as obvious as his change in character since fighting toe-to-toe with the enemy.

  Radcliffe looked at the young man who only weeks earlier had yearned for the excitement of war.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about your father,’ Pierce said. ‘He extended me every courtesy.’

  ‘Thank you, Captain Pierce,’ Baxter said respectfully. ‘His body is being brought down with those of his men. He will be buried with them, as it should be.’ Baxter paused and addressed Radcliffe. ‘There is no sign of Edward on the battlefield. I personally went and checked the dead in the Boer positions. He was not among them. Thank God.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll move up the line and keep looking,’ said Radcliffe.

  Baxter hesitated, uncertain how best to continue. ‘I may have some news. There’s something you should know.’

  Radcliffe involuntarily squared his shoulders, as if expecting a blow from an assailant. Baxter’s words were tinged with regret.

  ‘The man who had Edward’s knife was Private O’Mara. He’s since died of his wounds. I’ve questioned his friend Flynn and can confirm that there were no irregulars fighting near his position where he was wounded. Mulraney, tell Mr Radcliffe what you told me.’

  The soldier took off his helmet, as if at a funeral. His sweat-matted hair clung to the white band of unburned skin on his forehead. ‘We was on a farm clearance a while back. Shifting a woman and her little ones off to one of the holding camps. There was a Boer who fired at us. Came at us full gallop from the foothills. He must’ve been the woman’s son or something. We put him down. Scouse O’Mara and another lad went out to scavenge, and by the time they got near him, there was a whole bloody horde of riders firing down at us. They was out of range, but we didn’t wait until they weren’t. We put the devil on our heels and went as fast as we could –’

  ‘That’s enough, Mulraney,’ Baxter interrupted. ‘Return to your section and get yourself some food.’ Mulraney nodded and replaced his helmet, but hesitated as he turned away. ‘I’ve missed grub, sir, seeing as how you needed me here.’

  ‘Very well, then tell Corporal Hurly I said you must be given rations.’

  ‘He died up on the hill, sir.’

  Baxter barely managed to hide the pained expression at forgetting one of his section commanders had not survived. ‘Yes... so he did. Quite right, Mulraney. Very well, tell Sergeant McCory.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, lieutenant.’ He looked at Radcliffe and Pierce. ‘Major. Captain.’

  Baxter waited until the shambling soldier was far enough away. ‘Mr Radcliffe, I was in command of that clearance. We... we thought we were under attack from a Boer. The commandos were all over the place. As Mulraney said, my men shot him. God help me, I never saw the body, you understand. It seems O’Mara looted the knife from the rider.’ He shook his head regretfully. ‘I had no idea. Why was Edward here?’

  ‘We believe he came here looking for you,’ Radcliffe answered.

  Baxter nodded; it made sense. ‘If that rider was Edward, he couldn’t have known it was me. I don’t know why he shot at us.’

  ‘I can’t guess either. Where was the farm?’

  *

  Radcliffe and Pierce followed the rail line as far as they could, the iron tracks leading them across a broad plain before disappearing into the hewn rocks of the low hills. They spurred their horses up through the broken ground until they emerged on to another plateau, a seemingly endless pan of scrub and stony ground. Somewhere beyond the indistinct horizon would be the ruined farmhouse and the possibility of finding Edward’s body. A veil of rain obscured the line between earth and sky several miles away, a line that never seemed to get any closer until finally the wind swept the rain away and showed them the uneven crocodile spine of mountains in the distance. It was a two-day ride until they found the abandoned stone farmhouse. It was gutted, its timbers blackened from fire. Radcliffe and Pierce pulled aside the timber ribs and searched the wreckage as best they could. There was nothing to be found of any worth or to tell them anything about the lives of those who had lived there. Scattered pots lay abandoned as if spilled from a burst sack; a torn piece of cloth clung to a rusted nail like a flag of despair. The remains of a cow’s carcass, rotten and stinking, ripped apart by predators, sprawled, still tethered by rope to a corral post. The burned-out shell revealed only its forlorn loss of human inhabitation.

  Pierce gazed across the veld that stretched to the blue-tinged hills whose shadows clawed down from the ravines. ‘Maybe this ain’t the place,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe not,’ Radcliffe answered. ‘God knows how many farms they’ve burned. Irregulars could have been coming through here. Might not be just regular troops burning out the Boer women and children. What if the boy was riding with them?’

  ‘Edward wouldn’t have any part of them,’ said Pierce.

  ‘You get yourself into a war you break all the promises you make yourself,’ said Radcliffe.

  Both men had once been caught up in a war of attrition. Both knew the savagery that it spawned. Pierce shielded his eyes and pointed to something that looked like a clump of small boulders a few hundred yards away. They rode forward until they reached the remains of a dead horse, its brown skin drum-tight across its ribs, its eyes, tongue and innards long taken by scavengers.

  Radcliffe looked from the farmhouse behind him to the hills in the distance.

  ‘Baxter said the rider came from the hills before he was brought down.’ He looked at the grim remains and then at his friend. ‘This tallies.’

  Radcliffe tried to imagine his son galloping towards the soldiers. And here at his feet was where he fell.

  ‘Where do we look now?’ said Pierce.

  Radcliffe shook his head. It was a vast country where thousands of men fought across a dozen fronts.

  Pierce slapped the dust from his hat. ‘Seems they’re burning every farm they come across.’

  Radcliffe remounted and gathered the reins. ‘Maybe they got the idea from us,’ he said.

  Pierce walked once more around the dead horse and looked back at the charred skeleton of the farmhouse. ‘What? Sherman burning his way down to Atlanta? The English have a lot to learn. Damned if that man didn’t know how to start up a fire.’

  Radcliffe eased his horse away and Pierce followed. Somewhere beyond
the horizon was Edward Radcliffe.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Far from the confounding heat and rain in Natal, South Africa, another struggle for survival had been resolved. The soft Irish rain bore no warmth and its misty cloak sheltered both killers and informers – those who squirmed through the underbelly of Dublin slums, who heard whispers and separated rumour from fact and were well paid for it. Yet it was those who wielded power and influence who would be the ones to come through the conflict to kick the English out of Ireland, and Kingsley was just such a man: he had both. He had used the Dublin whore, Sheenagh O’Connor, to betray the Fenians, and one of their commanders, the gunman Malone, had gone hunting for the girl. Gone all the damned way to South Africa, and if he found her it wouldn’t take much for her to confess who had fed her the information about attacking the garrison, about how the armoury was ready to be plucked. She’d spill her guts before the killer cut her throat. Kingsley had learned of Malone’s hunt for vengeance and used every channel he could find to betray him to the English. They would be grateful if they snared the Fenian and Kingsley would live, providing the stupid bastards pulled their finger out of their arses and acted like real soldiers instead of in-bred aristos who thought war was a step up from a Boxing Day hunt. He played a dangerous game. Truth was he wanted to live to enjoy it.

  Kingsley gazed out into the mist-shrouded darkness. If the English failed there’d be a dozen men coming to his door. They’d use knives and hatchets on him, taking him apart piece by piece. They’d slaughter his beloved horses and dogs first and probably burn down his stables with his lads still inside. Brutal fucking killers who deserved to be taken behind the wall and shot through the head. An act he would gladly do himself but which he could not. Not when you played both sides. Thank God for the money he had and the influence he enjoyed. So, Malone had taken passage to Durban, had he? Gone looking for the girl. Gone for revenge and information so he could have his bastard friends come at Kingsley in the night. Well, fuck ya, Malone. Kingsley swallowed the whiskey. He’d got to him first.

  *

  The field prison was in an old adobe building. It had thick walls to keep the heat from the rooms, but the effect was lost because of the corrugated iron roof which turned one room in particular into a sweatbox. Two big men, both of them sergeants, were stripped to their undervests, their khaki braces stretched taut across their broad backs. A battered man sat tied to an old chair that had fallen over more than once from the severity of their beating, but each time they had picked him up and worked on him again until bones broke and an eye that had been swollen with blood had finally succumbed to complete blindness. They had been careful not to kill him but had inflicted more pain from their flat-knuckled pugilist fists than a man could bear. Their undershirts clung to them, soaked with sweat. One of them stepped back and threw a bucket of water over the beaten man.

  In an adjacent room, which was cooler than the prison cell, Freddie Taylor, the intelligence officer, sat at a desk watching cigarette smoke curl towards the slatted reed ceiling that helped keep the heat at bay. The piece of paper in his hand was the confession extracted from their prisoner. He tapped the desk pensively, a hint of anxiety in its rhythm, as he decided how best to proceed. If he was not careful he could be dragged into this mess. The confession gave Taylor vital information about the attack on the Dublin garrison. It would do his career no harm to see Malone tried and hanged, but the damned Fenian had spewed his guts and mentioned a name that caused Taylor’s stomach to knot. He knew that what he had discovered could have far-reaching repercussions. What he needed now was some-one who would wish to protect his own skin, and was ruthless enough to succeed.

  He called out to an orderly: ‘Find Captain Belmont.’

  *

  Sheenagh O’Connor eased the blood-clotted dressing away from Edward’s wound. The discoloured skin seemed less inflamed now and the boy had more strength to him. Some of the dried blood caught the dressing and he winced as she tried to tug it free without hurting him.

  ‘I’m sorry, lad, it’s a bugger of a wound, I know, but needs must. A tad to the right and you’d not be in any position to be hurting. Yer brains’d be splattered in the dirt.’

  ‘How long can I stay here?’ Edward asked. The curtained-off area was private enough, though the curtain would be little use if anyone came uninvited into the room.

  She dabbed his torn scalp with more antiseptic; it must have stung like a bee swarm but the lad held steady. ‘Hold that dressing there for a minute,’ she told him and put her arms around him to clean the back of his head where the blood had congealed in his hair. The smell of carbolic soap fought the cheap perfume she wore. Her breasts pressed against him and despite the pain he contemplated reaching out and pressing his hand against them. He resisted, the thought of rejection and the possibility of her abandoning him overriding his boyish desire.

  ‘We’ll get ourselves off from here to Bergfontein. There’s a camp full of women and kids there, and an Englishwoman who can look after you better than m’self.’ She finished swabbing away the blood.

  ‘Is that where you sell the medicine?’ he asked.

  She stood back from the bed and washed her hands in the bowl on the nightstand. ‘I give it to them,’ she said.

  He felt awkward, uncertain of what to say or how to say it. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ he said finally.

  She dried her hands, looking at him, as if weighing him up.

  ‘I can make my own way, you know. I don’t want to put you in danger, and I swear I won’t say anything about Liam,’ Edward assured her.

  She rummaged in a chest of drawers and chose two shirts, sized one up and replaced the other. ‘And when you’re picked up? Who’ll you say shot ya? The English? In their eyes that makes you a spy. You fired at them first.’ She tossed the clean shirt to him.

  ‘Only to draw their attention,’ he said defensively.

  ‘Aye, ya did that right enough. So you’d have to lie and tell ’em it was the Boers that’d done the shooting. Then they’ll know you have information about them.’

  ‘I can keep my mouth shut,’ he insisted.

  She involuntarily brushed aside a fringe of his hair. ‘But why is what everyone will want to know. Now, we have to get out of here. If you get stopped you tell them there was a shooting in town. The provost marshal’s office can’t keep up with what goes on here.’

  Edward steadied himself and pushed the shirt into his trousers. ‘I understand,’ he said.

  ‘I hope you do. I’m risking my neck for you now as well. Jesus, you play this wrong and they’ll have me in front of a firing squad.’

  *

  Taylor stubbed out the tenth cigarette he had smoked since sending for Belmont. The cavalryman arrived and he watched as Belmont gave his reins to a soldier. The raider was caked with the fine dust that a man could never seem to wash free from his nose and ears here. It tormented men’s eyes and demanded that a soldier adapt quickly and not let it work for the enemy.

  Belmont walked past the outer sentry and into the room. It was obvious to Taylor the man was exhausted. Belmont nodded in greeting and bent down to pull open one of the desk’s drawers. He took out a bottle of whiskey.

  ‘I need this more than I can tell you. You don’t mind?’ he said. He went to the water carafe and tossed what water there was in the glass out of the door. Taylor said nothing, just watched him pour a stiff drink and then swallow it in one go. Belmont refilled the glass.

  ‘You sent a runner after me, so I am presuming that you have some sort of vital intelligence that’s going to be of help. We had a bad time of it. Marsh is dead, along with a dozen more of my men.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Taylor matter-of-factly. ‘He was a good man.’

  ‘As were the others, Freddie. He’d have lived if he’d listened to me but... there it is.’ He swallowed another gulp of Jameson’s. ‘We’ve raided damned near a thousand miles since we got here and my men are still ready t
o take on the Boer, so don’t keep me away from my duty. What is it you want?’

  Taylor’s quiet sense of self-satisfaction was obvious. He had reached a position of authority and influence and that meant the likes of Captain Belmont could be reined in.

  ‘We captured an Irishman,’ he said, tapping each end of another cigarette on his silver cigarette case. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, would you care for one?’

  Belmont shook his head. ‘Given that half of Ireland seems to serve in the British Army while the other half fights for the Boers I wouldn’t have thought that too difficult. Even for you. Why do I sense this one is something special?’

  ‘We were tipped off and we thought him a spy,’ said Taylor, blowing the plume of smoke and picking a fleck of tobacco from his tongue.

  Belmont pulled a chair back from the desk and propped his feet on it. He sipped the whiskey. ‘Not a very good one by the sound of it,’ he said.

  ‘He bargained for his life,’ said Taylor.

  ‘Ah, a sensible spy at least.’

  Taylor fussed the knitted khaki tie at his collar. ‘He told us he was part of the raid on the Dublin garrison. He was looking for those who betrayed them.’

  Belmont watched him. Taylor had not yet made his point and seemed intent on stringing out the information that he had. Belmont, too, was prepared to wait. The whiskey and the sanctuary the room afforded from the incessant heat outside was worth it. For a while.