Ram; being the tale of one Ramillies Anstruther, 1704-55 ..

by Taylor, Winchcombe

  Meg, however, was of sterner stuff. Her black eyes blazed and her face purpled while her heavy breasts rose and fell under her kerchief. "Got's death, 'tis strange a Queen's officer shoots poor women!" she cried in her Welsh singsong. " 'Tis no harm I wass doing yourself, I think."

  She and Dick glared at each other, yet with understanding. Last winter, while Howe's lay in quarters, he'd sometimes sent for her to bed with him. What else her faults, she was clean.

  "Plundering the enemy's permitted you whores, but murder of babes I'll not have." The child, he saw, was crawling into the wheat. "Whose is the brat?"

  "Indeet we found him in the coach, clinging to a dead bitch. We pulled 'em out, and surely your honor wouldn't have us leave a few trifles for the louse-ridden peasants to filch?"

  "Enough!" Dismounting, he secured the stalHon. Beside sacked

  clothing was a case of bandages, also a silver brandy-filled flask, which he pocketed. A dead horse lay under the coach. Another's legs were crushed and its flanks heaved with agony; the remaining two, unhurt, were still in the traces.

  He strode to the child and saw it huddled against a dead woman. Her small dark head lay at an unnatural angle, and her unseeing eyes seemed to gaze up at him piteously. His gaze roved down. These ghouls had done their work, for the slight, finely made body was nude save for a pulled-up shift and a stocking on one slim leg. As he stared, a fly skated upward in tiny spurts along a pale thigh.

  "You lumps of turd!" He spun around, cocking his pistol, needles of agony driving into his brain. He saw Ely sink on his knees beseechingly, saw Meg's mouth open in a screech. Then his head cleared. What use? The woman was dead and these vultures were no worse than others who'd come scavenging.

  Turning back to the body, he pulled the shift down to its decent length. "The gown!" He felt material thrust at him. Spreading the brocaded dress from bosom to toes, he crossed the stiffening arms,

  "Coins!" But an inner sense made him rise and whirl, Meg was behind him, coppers in one hand, a knife in the other. He smashed his pistol on her wrist. Screaming, she dropped the knife,

  "Coins—you slut!" When, moaning, she opened her palm, he took them, closed the dead eyes and placed a piece on each,

  "End that poor brute's pain," he ordered Ely and watched him go to the animal, place his firelock to its ear and fire,

  "Good," Just as well the weapon was now empty, for he knew cowardice alone had prevented Ely from shooting him.

  He remembered the child, who sat looking up at him with bewildered hazel eyes. What to do with him, leave him to starve beside the dead woman? Yet, what else?

  An idea came, making him chuckle grimly. "Hark ye, Meg, Where's your own brat—with the wagons?" She nodded, weeping and nursing her wrist, "Take this babe and get ye back. And, mark me"—his tone made her whimper—"if ye don't care for it, I'll turn every man in the company on ye. And when they've done, I'll rip out your guts with this blade ye intended for my back!" Retrieving the knife, he pocketed it.

  He tore the knot from Ely's shoulder and flung it in his face.

  "I'll have no coqDorals like }'0u, when honest men die in the Queen's cause. Now, mount."

  While he freed the two sun'iing coach horses, Meg climbed onto her stolen animal, which she rode astride, her thick legs well bared below her skirts. "The pillage," she w'hincd, but he merely glared and lifted the child into her arms. "Remember!" However, before remounting himself, he tossed the sack up to Ely.

  "We ride to the company," he ordered. "From then on you march, even if your blistered feet wear down to the ankle bones!"

  Red Brian O'Duane cantered back along the column, his blood surging. The orders were simple: Clare's must regain Ramillies and so win time for the French to re-form. Fight mounted if possible, afoot if necessary'; but the English must be driven out.

  He regained the head of his troop as the Advance sounded.

  "Way for Clare's!" The regiment cloe through the fleeing French, troopers slashing at them contemptuously. "No mercy for the lily-livered bastards! Way for Clare's Dragoons!"

  Lord Clare himself led into the burning village, bellowing: "The Sasanach are here—we root them out!"

  When the grand place opened ahead, Brian turned in his saddle to grin back at his men. "I'll flay the hide off anyone who doesn't split a Saxon skull this day!" he challenged, and was answered by the age-long howl: "Death to the Sasanach!"

  At the square's far side stood a stolid line of English foot. Swiftly the dragoons were formed in line of troops. "Remember Limerick!" Lord Clare roared as the charge sounded.

  Redcoat of Ireland against Redcoat of England!

  Rowels bit deep and 800 Gaelic throats gave tongue. Brian, well out in front, saw the flash of bayonets as enemy flintlocks came down. Fifty, forty, thirty yards! Then smoke and fire obscured the hated enemv. Balls whistled evenwhere, one struck Brian's left thigh numbingly. Yells and screams came from behind him. Twenty vards! English colors showed aboe the smoke.

  He reached the bayonets, slashed one aside. Fidele rose high and her hoofs smashed down on man-flesh. Brian glimpsed a face, felt his point jar on bone and jerked the blade free.

  He'd won through! After him came more yelling Irish. Whirling

  their mounts, they faced the backs of their foes. "To me, O'Duane!" As he shouted his slogan, he saw the Enghsh flag being borne off by a Clare's trooper. "They're ours!" he yelled deliriously. "Ours!"

  Thus taken in rear, the Sasanach melted to left and right, leaving a gap. "O'Duane! Follow!" He spurred into the opening, to widen it with his sword. Gael over Saxon—at last!

  But Englishmen were turning inward, weapons aimed. Too late, he saw the trap. There came spurts of fire, a great sound.

  Blackness.

  The blackness persisted. He became aware of a crushing weight on his chest and of something across his mouth that was suffocating him. His head ached. Bewildered, he felt his face—and encountered only a soggy, yielding mass.

  "Holy Virgin!" In sheer terror, he was sure that his eyes had been shot out and his face pulped.

  But, sanity returning, he probed further and found that the sticky mass was only his misplaced wig. Weak with relief, he pulled it free and could see. The wig was soaked in congealing blood from a long bullet score across his scalp. The weight crushing him was dead Fidele's head.

  He rolled free from the mare, but when he tried to rise, his left leg buckled under him. He remembered the blow he'd felt during the charge. How long since?

  He looked around. The sun was already low and the sounds of battle had grow distant. Bodies lay everywhere. Using a discarded flintlock as a crutch he stood up, weight on his right leg. He stared down miserably at Fidele—a gift from Marie-Elise herself—who had carried him so long and gallantly.

  He felt his left thigh. A ball had lodged in the great muscles; a hindrance, but not dangerous. He kept flexing the leg until some slight feeling returned to it.

  Lise and the boy! They were awaiting him at the Tomb with bandages, wine and food. His strength flowed back.

  Using the flintlock-crutch, he hobbled among the bodies. He groaned; there lay Des O'Mulconry, his devoted lieutenant, his skull crushed by a Saxon's musket, his saber deep in his killer's heart. Des had been one of the first flight of Wild Geese who'd left

  Ireland in 1691, after the infamous Treaty of Limerick. Brian himself had come in that flight, but as an eight-year-old orphan, brought into exile by brother Rory. It was Des who'd helped him bring away Rory's body at Blenheim fight two years ago. Now he, too, was dead on foreign soil, never again to see the Old Land. Brian wept as he prayed for the soul of his most trusted friend.

  He saw other dead from his troop, more from the regiment. Yet their number was far less than the English around them; a clear sign of victory. By now Clare's must be far in pursuit of the beaten enemy, harassing and destroying them. Well, as soon as his wounds were dressed, he must rejoin it and reassume command of O'Duane's Troop.

  Pai
nfully he hobbled from the village and emerged from a sunken road that gave onto the plateau. But there he froze, stunned, his mind refusing to accept what his eyes saw: long columns of Allies marching northward, their cavalry riding down fugitives, killing and capturing!

  Aghast, he sank by the roadside. It was Blenheim over again; defeat, disaster! God curse all French generals! Des and the rest, had they died for this? That flag torn from the Sasanach; not by French but by the Irish Brigade, exiles, aliens!

  He began to laugh quietly, then uproariously, insanely. When the paroxysm passed, it left him cold and trembling.

  Lise and the child—and half the scum of Europe looting! He must reach them, though all Hell lay between.

  A sound made him look up. A rider was coming, a peasant, his arms filled with pillage, riding an officer's fine charger.

  Rising, Brian leveled the flintlock. "Halt and dismount!"

  The boor gaped at sight of his tall figure, with his cropped auburn hair and his face streaked with dried blood.

  "Monsieur, I meant no harm!" he gasped. "A few trifles—"

  "Dismount, I say!" Brian flung him a gold coin. The man slid down, clawed up the money, then scurried off, dropping a trail of looted uniforms and equipment behind him.

  Painfully, Brian mounted. He scanned the endless columns moving across his front, pondering how to pass through them. Then, inspired, he spurred the charger.

  One against Marlborough's hordes!

  Why not? Wasn't he The O'Duane, an Irish chieftain, lord of vast acres on far-off Connemara? True, the Sasanach had robbed him of his heritage, but soon there'd be a reckoning!

  Briefly he regretted that he spoke no English; but already he was approaching a regiment of Dutch horse. "Malbrouck!" he shouted in heady defiance. Men stared at him with battle-glazed eyes as he spurred through their ranks.

  As he'd hoped, because of his red coat they'd mistaken him for some arrogant English aide-de-camp! A wild song came as he raced across the fields. Soon he'd be with Lise.

  Twice more he had to pass through enemy columns, and each time the magic "Malbrouck!" opened his way. Now he was passing the Tomb and nearing the Louvain road. He stared through the dusk. The coach must be near; his orders to Jacques had been specific. He reined in. The road was deserted, though discarded equipment told that many had fled along it. There was no sign of the coach; no doubt shrewd Jacques had driven well off the road to be clear of the rabble—perhaps down yonder track that likely led to last night's inn. He turned along it.

  An overturned vehicle there in the wheat! He veered toward it, fighting back panic. Other officers kept coaches close during action, why assume it was his? His mount shied away from what seemed a bundle of rags. Brian looked down. The Thing was Jacques! The body was smashed horribly, but the face was recognizable.

  "Lise!" He reached the coach and flung himself to ground. A terrible cry—half prayer, half scream—broke from him as he found his wife. Time stopped. There was only a great roaring in his ears.

  Toward dawn he entered Louvain, unaware that all made way for him in superstitious horror. Nor did he realize that during the night he'd overtaken the whole of the pursuing army and the rearguard of the pursued. But for months afterward men told in a dozen tongues of how a ghostly rider on a gray horse had ridden past them, carrying a nude woman on his saddlebow.

  When his exhausted mount was forced to halt by the press of humans in the grand place, he was equally unaware that around him were generals without commands, colonels with mere fragments of once-proud regiments, and corporals even without privates.

  None of this he knew, for his eyes were upon the still, dark head against his shoulder and he was whispering into a pale ear. "The inn's full, beloved, but soon there'll be room for us."

  He didn't even hear the shocked cry: "Jesus, 'tis the Captain himself! Give aid here, boys!" Hands, gentle with pity, tried to ease him of his burden, but his arm locked the harder around the stiffened waist.

  "Soon, beloved, we'll sleep," he murmured.

  That he and his dead had been lifted down, but that he alone was carried to a makeshift hospital, he did not know. Nor that later Clare's own chaplain stood by a new grave and prayed for the soul of a noble lady.

  How could he, since now he'd found a room in the inn and Lise and he were sleeping in each other's arms?

  CHAPTER 2 FLANDERS,

  1706-08

  "It won't do." Frank Edwardes paced the room protestingly. "If you must pose as a father, get a younger brat."

  "No," Dick refused, swigging hot spiced geneva. "I'll not find a handsomer one in all Flanders."

  "Think! You're writing you married a Holland wench who died in childbed and her parents kept the babe till they was lately carried off by plague, so now you've had to take him. Well, we guess this one's past two, and you must count you was wed at least nine months before his birth. Yet you've writ your mother once a year, but never before told of the marriage. Bah!"

  "Pox take her!" Dick scratched his balding head. "She robs me

  of my patrimony so's she can increase the farm. God's name, I don't want wealth in my dotage, but hard money now! Should I die, brother Will inherits, and he has kids. But if I'm a live father, she'll have to be more tender of my interests." "Let's see what you've writ." Frank picked up the letter.

  "Att ye siege of Menin 20 August ijo6 New Stile Gracious Mother

  Tis no doubt ye heard of ye grate battail wch my lord Duke beat ye Messieurs att Ramillies. I am still harty but have urgent need of 200 ginnies for to purchase ye Captaincy I must have for to care for my infant sonn whose poor Mother died 0 his berth these 2 years since and" . . .

  "It won't do." He flung it down. "Wait! That deserter we retook last week, didn't he act as your servant once?"

  "The provost's hanged him by now," Dick yawned.

  "Aye, but suppose before he ran you'd long entrusted him with letters home, telling of your wife and babe, but he never posted 'em? Only now, at his retaking, have ye got 'em back. You send 'em with this one and your dam'll believe all." Draining his pot, Frank added generously: "I'll draft 'em for you." He opened the door, admitting snatches of song, laughter and the hubbub from below. "Grietje!" he bawled. "Vite, apporte du genevre!"

  "Ye have it!" Dick rubbed his hands. "If the old bitch won't believe, I'll ask leave for England and go thrust 'em down her throat. I've been Toor Dick' too long. Now it'll be 'Lucky Dick,' with a son of my own so's the farm can never go to Will or his brood." He glared around. "Now, where's that slut with the geneva? Where is the whore? . . . Ah!"

  A girl had entered, carrying a flagon. Though fair enough, with a creamy skin, the discriminating might have thought her somewhat too fat. But not Dick, he liked 'em plump, ecod! He coughed pointedly at Frank. "Sir, isn't it time you inspected the men's quarters?"

  "Servant, sir." Frank left, grinning sardonically.

  Dick tossed a guinea idly in his hand. "For the geneva—and more?" he suggested in his poor French. "You understand?"

  The girl nodded. After hours of being pawed by privates, it was a relief to be up here with an officer, especially one generous with gold. Smiling, she drew closer.

  "Now, I've some duties awhile," he said, stroking her hefty thigh, "but in two hours I'll be needing another flagon to share with a pretty maid. Hey?"

  Impassively she kissed his unshaven jowl, as impassively she slid the guinea into a pocket. "Two hours. Good." Before leaving, she permitted him other minor intimacies.

  A new drink in hand, he croaked out a song Frank had taught him from Vanbrough's Provok'd Wife.

  "No saucy remorse intrudes on my course.

  Nor impertinent notions of evil: So there's claret in store, in peace I've my whore And in war I jog on to the Devil!"

  He sighed luxuriously. After weeks of chasing the French, it was good to be in snug quarters with only trench duties to do around Menin. He was spending that horse, saddle and pistols most pleasantly, even if they hadn't brought all
he'd hoped for.

  Presently he frowned. Meg should be here now with the boy, whom he'd seen only once since the battle; the wagon trains had only rarely caught up with the fast-marching army. Split me, I'll have her flogged if she ain't cared for him, he decided. Well, a squint at him, an hour for the letters, then—Grietje!

  But at that moment, and outside his very door, Frank held Grietje in close embrace. He, too, had gold—mostly won from Dick himself—and she preferred twentyish lieutenants to fortyish captains. "An hour and I'll be done with the old fool," he was promising. "Those stairs lead to your garret?"

  Nodding, she kissed him wetly. Then they had to break apart, for a woman and two children were coming up from below.

  When Meg knocked and identified herself, Dick put on his wig to make the meeting more official. She came in, subdued and dressed with near refinement. Her brocaded cloak could have graced a born

  lady. Indeed, it seemed vaguely familiar to Dick; but if it dimly recalled a gown of the same fabric and a pitiful, still face, the picture dissipated in the thick haze of geneva. "Well, Mrs. Meg, it seems the pilfering's been good."

  She smiled modestly. "Please, your honor, following the army's indeet good this campaign. The French leave much behind."

  "Where's the babe?" he demanded. "If ye've harmed him . . . !"

  She moved aside, uncovering the children. One was her own, a girl of three. Holding her hand and regarding Dick solemnly was the boy. A woman would have noted that in the three months since his finding, he'd grown, so that now his torn, soiled clothes were too small. But Dick merely thought: So, she ain't slit your throat yet! Well, now you'll help me to promotion and ease. Aloud, he demanded: "What's your name, boy?" When no reply came, he blared: "Damme, your name!"

  The child smiled, pointing at the girl. "Carla."

  "That's hers," Meg scolded. "Yours, ye brat!"