As readers of my other novels will know, I love to get to the battlefields, walking Saratoga for Jack Absolute, climbing the cliffs at Quebec for The Blooding of Jack Absolute. Alas, I couldn’t get to Spain and Portugal for this one (I plead a baby boy at home!) but that was only part of my problem. The war fought there is little written about, at least in English, warranting a mere page and half in Fortescue’s History of the British Army. But this campaign was where Jack’s regiment, the Sixteenth Dragoons, fought and where John Burgoyne made his reputation for the dawn assault on Valencia de Alcántara. The Sixteenth’s regimental history gave a little more detail – and I apologise to any descendents of Lieutenant Maitland for stealing his heroics for my man, both there and at Villa Velha. After that, it was down to maps and imagination – and the Internet, of course, that wonderful resource with its myriad photographs of the various scenes. Speaking of names, I have also changed the name of the Irish regiment involved in the attempted mutiny to Traherne’s. I’m sure the stalwarts of the real Blayney’s would have got up to no such shenanigans.
As with Sheridan, I was very excited to be able to do another tribute in this book – to C. S. Forester’s Hornblower. Though I admire Patrick O’Brian, I do find some of the jargon impenetrable – and decided to therefore attempt a slight pastiche, making Jack find it impenetrable too. Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail by Bernard Ireland, and N.A.M Rodger’s The Wooden World were priceless resources, as was the hefty dictionary The Sailor’s Word Book. For privateers, the contemporary Voyages and Cruises of Commodore Walker was astonishing in its detail. I think/hope it’s all accurate but this is such a well-known field I’m sure one of you will write to let me know that I’ve braced the mizzen sail to larboard when I should have shorten’d afore!
Other aspects: for grenades, I found a marvellous period manual Royal Engineers Field Instructions. And my cavalry manoeuvres and drill were superbly set out in a Field Exercise for Gentleman and Yeoman Cavalry by An Officer of the Light Dragoons. Red Hugh’s cures are genuine folk remedies for fevers from the period – those spiders must have been much employed! As for his rendering of men unconscious –pressing the wrist at a certain point – this is a technique from Akido which I have studied (but never perfected). Japanese, I know. But I tend to believe that warriors the world over know the same tricks. For his language, I have returned to plays and discovered an original copy in the British Library of a work by Sheridan’s father, Thomas, entitled The Brave Irishman. As to the name itself – my editor was informed that McClune would have been a surname of an Ulster Protestant and thus an unlikely candidate for a Jacobite assassin. Fortunately, I did not have to shed his mellifluous moniker – I simply re-checked my Family Names in Ireland to confirm that McClune is ‘to be distinguished from MacCloon which is an Ulster variant’ while McClune is an ancient (‘Dalcassian’) and thus Catholic – name from Ballymaclune, County Clare.
Once again, I have many people to thank. Since much of the plot hinged on triumphing over a left-handed swordsman, the time I spent at the Haverstock Fencing Club, invited by their secretary Jackie Harvey and talking to countless fencers, was priceless. I am always indebted to my wife, Aletha, for good advice and help, and to my son, Reith Frederic, for starting to sleep through the night, as well as Piers Johnson for giving me shelter during the day to write. My agents at ICM were their usual calm and thorough selves, especially Kate Jones and, in America, Liz Farrell, who has broken me through there at last.
Rachel Leyshon was, as always, a great copy-editor and, this time, a great guide to Bath as well. I should also again mention my Canadian publisher, the ever enthusiastic Kim McArthur and her wonderful team of Ann Ledden, Janet Harron and Taryn Manias. While, in the UK, Susan Lamb, Juliet Ewers, Genevieve Pegg and Angela McMahon are equally brilliant and tireless.
But a special thanks must go to the man to whom this book is dedicated. Jon Wood is not only a terrific editor of the words, he is also a tireless advocate of my work whose support and friendship is one of the main reasons I can now write for a living.
Perhaps though, at the end of this novel especially, I should again acknowledge a man who has given me so much pleasure and inspiration – Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Your health, sir, wherever you are, and … oh yes, thanks for the plot!
C.C. Humphreys
London, December 2005
Copyright
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Orion Books.
First published in ebook in 2011 by Orion Books.
Copyright © 2006 C. C. Humphreys
The moral right of C. C. Humphreys to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 3858 7
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Absolute Honour Page 35
