“You and him to The Devil and be damned. I came for a fight, not some kind of dance. I fought with my sabre, so don’t complain. He said no quarter. I could skewer him now and there could be no argument. It’s done.”
Carr walked forward, roughly shouldering Hopgood out of the way. Kerriack handed Carr a wad of bandage, which he pushed inside his bloodied shirt, over the still bleeding cut, then Kerriack bound a strip around the bleeding forehead. As Carr began walking back to the coach, Kerriack and Rogers fell in beside him, but slightly behind. Neither spoke a word to Carr, but both exchanged glances. Rogers handed Carr his coat, but did not look at him. Once in the coach, all sat in silence, Carr staring fixedly out of the window, his expression grim and angry. Kerriack wrapped both sabres in the grey linen in which they had travelled. After a while, Rogers broke the silence.
“Duelling has a strict etiquette, Henry. I know the rules talk of only using your weapon, but it means the point or edge, nothing else. Templemere’s a rotten piece, I know, but he did stick to the rules, at least as gentlemen understand them. You struck a foul blow. I’m afraid your name is sullied. Because of this you won’t be welcome in the Mess.”
Carr made no reply and no one spoke further. Clearly, they knew nothing of his resignation, but what did that matter? The coach pulled up at Carr’s lodgings, he gathered his sabres and stepped out, but paused after the step down and turned to look back into the coach.
“I thank you both for your support. If we meet again I hope that it will be in friendship.”
Both the remaining occupants nodded in acknowledgment, but made no reply. Carr closed the door and the coach drew away. He watched its diminishing form, focusing on the rear window, black with its drawn down blind. He entered his lodgings, found some clean cotton and stitched up both cuts himself. He then began to pack.
oOo
Seth Tiley had found what he needed. For a march of two days he had been thoroughly examining the ground over which he was being led. Limited though his powers of intellect were, cunning came as second nature. He had grown desperate, which made that cunning wholly focused and intense, himself knowing that the barracks, the same to him as a prison, could not be too far into the future. When at last he spotted what he sought, he pretended to stumble, sprawling full length upon the road, his tether rope jerking down the man in front, the ex-Reverend Percival Sedgwicke, pulling him also to the ground, the rope cruelly straining around his neck and throat. The nearest guard, Tom Miles, swift into temper, quickly ran over.
“You great clumsy ox, Tiley. They taught you to thieve, but not to walk.”
All was accompanied by kicks and blows from the musket butt, but Tiley had what he wanted. His rough hands had closed over a small shard of metal that had gleamed at him on the road, unnoticeable now within the palms of hands already bound together. That night, another spent in the shelter of a field wall, he had patiently used a flat stone to grind an edge to one of the sides. The morning check of their renewed bindings now past, he was ready. Feigning a long call of nature, he had manoeuvred himself to the end of the line, one man in front, none behind. The day’s march began and, taking every opportunity, the blade held in his teeth, he had cut at his bonds. If a sentry seemed too near, he transferred the blade into his cheek. Only once did a sentry notice Tiley’s hands going often to his mouth.
“What be up with thee, Tiley? Summat wrong with thy face?
“My nose is wet. I got an ague. Leave I be.”
The reply was no more than a guffaw, but Tiley was making progress. The edge was keen and now naught by a few strands remained of his bindings. The question now was when and Tiley had clear in his mind the kind of country he needed. An hour more brought them to the hills of South Somerset and, as the road topped a gentle gradient, Tiley saw what he needed. The road ahead followed the contour of the side of a well-defined valley; the down side to the right separated from the road by a low stonewall. Beyond that, the slanting field fell down to a wood that was narrow, but seemingly dense. The valley bottom deepened back in the direction they had come, then curved away into the distance. This was perfect, but he needed the last sentry between him and the wall to be just in front, not behind. He began to jerk on the rope. The prisoner in front lurched back, pulling back the man before him. Soon the whole line had extended back and Tiley was just behind his guard’s left shoulder, just out of his sight.
He jerked his arms apart and the last strands gave. He was free, but his cunning told him still to hold the rope and give no appearance of no longer being bound. His next move was to edge right, until just behind the guard. With a prodigious strength made greater by the desperation strong inside him, he brought his huge hands, locked together, down onto the exposed neck of the soldier, who collapsed to the road senseless. Big, but still agile, Tiley was over the wall and running with huge strides down the descending hill, rapidly closing the distance between himself and the wood.
The soldier had gone down with a clatter; musket, boots, and accoutrements hitting the road with a noise that turned all heads, all to see Seth Tiley disappearing beyond the wall. Tom Miles ran to the wall, cocked his musket and fired, but Tiley never even heard the ball sing three feet over his head into the trees. He was well over 100 yards down the slope, bounding on further, well over the accurate range of a Brown Bess. Deakin issued his orders.
“Tom, follow him. Harry and Peters, go round right, stay high, out of that wood. Keep him moving left. Pat, you’re in charge.”
With that, he took himself over the wall and set off left to skirt around the higher end of the valley that lay ahead to the right. Whilst covering the remaining prisoners with a cocked musket, Mulcahey went to the downed soldier, lying ominously still. He feared him to be dead. Irish temper rising he raised his musket to his shoulder.
“Lie down, the damn lot if you! Lie down.”
All obeyed.
Tiley was in the wood. In the centre, at its lowest point, was a stream, fast flowing in a narrow bed. Just beyond that was a track, the drove that came up into the field, hidden from above by the trees. He leapt the stream, got to the firm ground beyond and onto the track. Beyond the track the valley side was much steeper and covered in thick undergrowth, he had no choice but to turn right and use the track, wherever it led. He ran on down, the stream to his right, his route curving to the left, as it followed the valley bottom. One gate, then another, slowed him up, but he could hear nothing of any pursuit. However, the track, once firm and level, now turned into rutted channels of thick mud, that sucked at his boots and slowed his running to little more than a staggering lope, his feet treacherously sliding away into the ruts at all the wrong angles. The track had reached its lowest point, continuing its leftward curve but from now on it went upward. However, Tiley saw what he was hoping for; another way off that led sharply to the right. With all the speed he could muster, he headed for the near corner and turned in.
Tom Miles was Light Company. His red jacket had shoulder “wings” and his shako had the hunting horn badge with a green plume on the circular peak. Wiry, strong, and with lungs that could cope with any kind of running, he reached the stream quicker than Tiley had managed, but still some time behind. However, skirmishing experience told him that a streambed gave firmer running than any muddy track. He leapt into the shallow stream and began his run, always keeping an eye on the track in case it separated from his chosen course. His running was unimpeded by neither mud nor gates, but there was yet no sight of Tiley. Nevertheless, expecting some kind of a fight with his quarry, with practice borne of years of service, he drew his bayonet from its scabbard and fixed it to his musket on the run, his pace barely slackening.
Tiley turned into the new opening and stopped dead. It was a track out of the wood, but it led through a cattle pen that was, as was its purpose, full of cattle. Worse, the penned animals had churned both the streambed and their pen into a deep quagmire. He stopped to ponder his next move. It was made for him, because one red figure, then ano
ther, was running down from the valley side beyond. He could not get through and make enough time to affect an escape. However, not unused to making an escape from authority, criminal guile told him that a return to the main track would leave the two pursuers to fight their way through the nervous herd and the knee-deep mud. A shout of recognition from one of the red figures spurred him into action and so he turned and re-joined the main track.
This ancient way now ran up and through a deep gully. The bed, worn by centuries of wheels, feet and hooves through the soft red sandstone, was firm but deep, within steep sides that were almost vertical and at the top grew thick undergrowth. Tiley had no choice but to continue on up, apprehension growing. He liked a choice that would give pursuers the dilemma of “which way did he go?” and himself the chance to make a smart move, but now there was no choice but to keep climbing.
Miles heard the shout from up ahead by one of his comrades, which told him that Tiley was indeed up ahead and perhaps not too far. He saw the red figures coming in from the right and so he left the stream to join the track, calculating that Tiley would be found on it, not in the stream. However, when he reached the turn to the cattle pen, he felt disappointment. Tiley was no-where to be seen and his two comrades were making little to no progress through a pen thick with panicking cattle and thicker mud. He saw the gully leading up and resumed his running pursuit, hoping that Tiley would also have taken what seemed to be the only way.
Tiley was a huge man, immensely strong, but his bulk and strength made for neither speed nor endurance over distance. His breath was laboured through aching lungs and his hammering pulse was surging in his ears. His well muscled legs, useful in a fight, but not in a running escape, seemed to grow in weight as though slowly being cased in lead. He was slowing badly, but the gradient was lessening and the nearness of the horizon told him that the flat of the top could not be too far.
Almost all houses in all villages in that deeply rural part of the South West kept dogs. All bred and kept for speed and aggression, dogs that could bring down rabbits, hare, or even deer when working together with the dogs of neighbours, were a valuable addition to any family and worth their place at the fireside. Most were cast-offs from the local deer pack, but still strong, agile, and aggressive. At the top of the drove there dwelt a small hamlet, some cottages, some little more than hovels, but each could show the family hound lolling or sitting just by the door. To the villagers this was a home; to the dogs, the road was pack territory.
The panting, large, and threatening figure of Seth Tiley set off a cacophony of indignant barking and defiance that brought the rest of the local pack from back yards and dark rooms. He found himself surrounded by ten to twelve sets of bared teeth and angry eyes that poured aggression at him from large heads above powerful necks and shoulders. The pack had formed and were mounting an offence enough even to make a man of violence such as Seth Tiley halt and hesitate rather than attempt to fight his way through such a surging, leaping, wave of black and brown, all with the clear ambition to sink their teeth into whichever part of him was in reach. Two fastened to his loose trousers, each taking their own leg. He could make no further progress. Kicks and swinging ham-sized fists did nothing to make a way through. He was trapped against a cottage wall.
Miles heard the uproar ahead over the brow and knew that he had made the right choice. Soon the buildings grew in size above the horizon of the track surface and soon he saw Tiley’s beleaguered figure surrounded by the barking and berserk dogs, fending them off with kicks and no small amount of noise of his own. Miles came in behind the dogs, bayonet extended, but he could get no nearer to Tiley than the width of the street. His arrival gave some relief to Tiley, for this new additional stranger gave the dogs a new target for their aggression and some, distracted, turned their attention to Miles, who had to hold them off using the bayonet at the end of his musket. Tiley kicked off one of the fastened dogs, clubbed the other senseless and used the reduction in their numbers to inch his way along the wall to the cottage door. This immediately yielded to the pressure of so heavy a shoulder and Tiley was inside, soon he had closed the door against two baying dogs that were both intent on following him in.
Miles ran around to the back of the cottage, scrambled over the logs and barrels and then around the privy. Then he saw the back door and stopped. Tiley had emerged, but he was not alone and screams were heard amongst the noise of the still barking dogs. Held in the crook of his left arm was the petrified figure of a small girl, a terrified face above a filthy shift, thin arms dangling from wide sleeves and dirty legs dangling down beneath the tattered hem. Mother emerged immediately after, grey apron gripped in tight fists, all raised to a face fixed in an agony of fear and terror; above the fists were eyes wide with panic and horror. Miles stopped, musket and bayonet pointed to Tiley, but he made no further move. In Tiley’s right hand was the sharp metal shim, held against the jugular vein exposed by the small tilting head.
“Keep away, don’t you move, you bloodyback bastard! One step more and I’ll slit her open, wide open. Well enough to see her life all over these cobbles. You stay back.”
All the while he backed away himself, threading his way through the barrels, pens, and rubbish that cluttered the back of the rank. The dogs, confused at the front, were no longer there to impede his progress. Miles shifted his gaze, to Tiley, then to the Mother, and then to the child, she rigid with terror, but Miles held his place. He had little choice, for Mother’s thin hands were pushing at his chest and shoulder, her shivering voice, between gasping sobs, imploring him to go no further. Miles knew that Tiley would kill her if he showed any move that would threaten capture. Mother was still frozen to the spot between them, her head furiously working to both look at her child and then turn to ensure that Miles was making no threatening move. By now Tiley had edged along the back wall and had reached the last alley between the last two buildings. Laughing with triumph and still holding the girl, like a doll within the crook of his huge left arm, he dodged into the alley and regained the street. Throwing the girl over this shoulder, he ran across the front of the last building and gave a last look back before turning the corner that finished the houses. He then ran smack into the expertly wielded musket butt of Jed Deakin, the brass soleplate connecting conjointly with the point of his chin and his misshaped nose. He staggered back and slumped to his knees, his eyes seeing nothing but flashing lights and his mouth tasting the blood from his nose that mingled with that of his split lip. The released girl ran off in a flurry of bare feet and whirling arms.
“What you didn’t know, Tiley, you shitten whoreson, is that I was raised in just these very parts, and I knows every track, gate, hole and hovel. Lash the bastard’s arms tight behind him, Tom, and let’s get back to Pat and the rest.”
oOo
Henry Carr was no stranger to London, but where he was, what he saw, and what awaited, caused an uncomfortable knot of anxiety in the pit of his stomach. He was crunching his way across the gravel of Horse Guards Parade, towards the imposing Renaissance façade that was Horse Guards itself. Within his mind he was hoping that the interview that he had arranged would indeed take place and would prove fruitful. He was there to attend an 11.00 o’ clock appointment with the Secretary to the Commander in Chief. The yellow Portland stone shone pale in the weak late October sunshine as he drew closer, passing elegant ladies sitting in gleaming open landaus, engaging in languid and frivolous conversation with tall, equally elegant, Household Officers. This was the meeting place for many, prior to the ride up The Mall and onto Hyde Park and the vital drive along Rotten Row. This poor sunshine could be providing the last day of the 1805 Season. Carr’s gravel-crunching brought him close enough to reveal some of the details that existed within the shadow of the arch set in the centre, particularly a sentry guarding the main doorway, set deep within the interior. He passed through, into the chill shadow.
Immediately Carr had reached the capital he had taken himself around to this, the solemn cent
re of the British Army’s affairs, submitted his papers, and booked himself a time during which, perhaps, to resurrect his career. He had worked on his uniform long into the night. Buttons, leatherwork, and boots now gleamed, and he presented enough of an impressive sight to bring an immaculate “present arms” from the Coldstreamer on guard. With his sabre scabbard grasped in his left hand and his braided shako under his right arm he used that free hand to turn the huge brass ring to open the door and approached the desk.
“Good morning. Henry Carr to see the Secretary. I believe that I have an appointment for eleven o’ clock.
The soberly dressed man, coat and cravat as dark as his eyes, looked up. He counted all within his gaze, from the detailed plasterwork on the ceiling, down to the polished tiles, as his own command and empire and had seen many such an officer, from Ensigns to Generals, cross that floor with a look in their eyes that more often carried dread and anxiety rather than hope. The desk was his citadel; it was almost of sufficient size. With his eyes still upon Carr, he sent a bony hand on the end of a bony wrist to stretch further from the spotless white linen that emerged from his left cuff. Unhurriedly the hand reached the black leather of the plain book that held a place in the top left quadrant of the desk. Using the red silk marker the diary was opened and the page studied, enough to form a reply.
“You are correct, Mr Carr. Please take a seat and I will inform the Secretary that you are here.”
Carr nodded and backed away in retreat from the black bastion that rose on his side of the desk. He then turned to select his place, a huge, polished, winged armchair, resplendent with burnished brass studs paraded across the front of the seat, and immaculate amongst a rank of exact copies. With no mistake, caused by neither sword nor shako, he sank down and back into its soft comfort, but he was in too high a state of tension to either notice or enjoy it. Unknown to Carr, the Outer Secretary to The Secretary had been watching, hoping, for some kind of calamitous fusion, between Carr’s feet and his sword perhaps, but none came and, mildly disappointed, he disappeared off through a wide, tall, gleaming black door, to the left of the Hallway. Carr was left to himself in the total silence, relief coming only from the loud beat of the giant grandfather clock, off to his right. He studied his surroundings, noting the tall, dark, oaken panels that stood sentry around the walls, adding their height and dour colour to the military ambience inevitable in so august a place as this. A minute passed, no more than two, and to the thunderous accompaniment of the clock chiming eleven, the door re-opened and the Outer Secretary returned. He stood in the doorway and, with no words, merely gestures, waved Carr towards the imposing portal and ushered him through. He was announced.
Worth Their Colours (105th Foot. The Prince of Wales Own Wessex Regiment.) Page 5
