Flashman and Madison's War

by Robert Brightwell

  “That is it? That is all you know, a quote from Ephesians?” I remembered that her mother had died and so perhaps there was no one to tell her what to do.

  “Please, it is not…we should not discuss such things.” As though paying the penalty she reached up and slowly removed her bonnet and placed it in her lap. I saw a tear trickle down her face. I reached out and gently held her hand. I felt a swell of affection for her, but also anger at how her community had sent her out so unprepared. “One of the women told me that the things he would want to do would hurt,” she whispered and then she started to cry. I put my arm around her and pulled her towards me.

  We held each other for a while and then I bent down to kiss her. At first she responded but then she pushed me away. “I can’t, not with you. You are a man of violence.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I tried to comfort her.

  “You killed two men this morning, have you forgotten? Does killing come so easily to you?”

  I smiled and then laughed when I saw her shocked expression. “I did not kill anybody. My Indian friends and I staged the attack so that I could meet you. The guns were not loaded with ball. God, a fifty yard musket shot fired while running combined with a twenty yard pistol shot – it would never happen. Did you not see Smoke Johnson’s overly dramatic death throes?”

  “No, I was too busy rescuing Duncan.” She paused, looking astonished. “Do you mean to say that you did all of that just to meet me?”

  “Yes, you quite took my breath away the moment I first saw you, just after your man Duncan shot at Johnson.”

  “You were there too, and you really didn’t kill them?” She reached round for her Bible and thrust it towards me. “Swear on the Bible that you have not killed anybody.”

  “I swear on this Bible that I did not kill those two Indians,” I said staring into those clear blue eyes and carefully editing her requested pledge. But before she could notice I added, “They are both alive and well. Ask Renton next time you see him for he saw that those were impossible shots. If you like I can bring the warriors back here to visit.”

  I did not get any further before she threw her arms around me and started to smother me with kisses.

  “I am so pleased,” she sobbed as she held herself tightly against me. “I felt so alone.”

  By George, I thought, what a capital transformation. Kissing her back, I held her with one hand and started to undo the buttons down the front of her smock with the other. As soon as there was room I slipped a hand inside her clothes and cupped one of her splendid breasts. For a moment her body tensed and her fingers dug into my shoulder. Then her muscles relaxed and she pressed her face into my neck. “Now that,” she whispered huskily in my ear, “is very unseemly.”

  Chapter 7

  That night in the little cabin by the fork in the river was one of the best of my life, and without being one to boast, I would venture that it was for Magda too. Before that night, while she had known her Bible, when it came to the carnal act she did not know her Deuteronomy from her Leviticus. That changed as I gently initiated her into a myriad of different pleasures. The sun was high in the sky when we finally emerged, and as no one was around, we washed naked in the river.

  As we splashed about I was shocked to discover that she still intended to go through with the marriage. She viewed her betrothal as a binding contract that she could not break without shaming her family. I tried to persuade her to come back to the Indian village with me but she would have none of it.

  “You will go back to war,” she pointed out, “and then what will become of me? You have given me a wonderful night and I am grateful, but now I must take up my responsibilities.”

  I argued with her for ages but she could not be shifted. At length, by early afternoon, we were dressed and walking up the cart track, holding her trunk between us. Half an hour from the river we found a large log cabin with the name ‘Johannes’ burnt onto a plank by the front door. There was no answer to our knock and a search of the meagre farmstead revealed no trace of the fortunate groom. I had hoped to find the bastard dead in some field, but while the place was deserted it had not been abandoned. There were still clothes and boots in the cabin and a large Bible with the names of Johannes’ family written inside.

  “He would not have left this behind,” said Magda noting that her name had already been added beneath that of his late wife, whose grave we had already found behind the empty stable. “He must have ridden into the nearest town and been delayed.”

  “Well I am not leaving you by yourself,” I told her. “When he comes home we will tell him that I replaced the man your father hired after he was injured.”

  We waited all day, fed the chickens and did other chores around the farm, but there was still no sign of the man. As darkness fell we lit lamps and went inside the cabin. I thought that he was unlikely to try and make it through the surrounding forest on horseback at night and so I took Magda once more in my arms and led her into the small bedroom at the end of the cabin. We were busy working our way through the Gospels of St Flashy when we heard the neigh of a horse right outside the front of the cabin.

  “Oh my goodness, it is Johannes,” gasped Magda. “He will find me in bed with you.”

  “Just buy me some time to get away,” I whispered getting up and throwing open the little shuttered window in the bedroom.

  But already I could tell that there would not be time to climb through the opening; the eager husband’s footsteps could be heard thumping up the path to the front of the house. “Magda, is that you who has lit the lamps? I am so sorry I was not here to meet you.” The door of the cabin banged open. He must have quickly scanned the dimly lit room for people, missing my sword and musket leaning in the corner, and turned immediately for the bedroom door. “Here I am, my darling,” he called as he raised the latch and started to enter. I only just got my shoulder to the other side of the door in time. I slammed it shut and heard a surprised cry as he landed on his arse on the other side.

  “Please, my husband,” Magda called out. “I need to prepare myself for you. I have a specially embroidered nightdress that I want to wear when we spend our first night together.”

  “You are so strong, darling,” muttered Johannes appreciatively from the other side of the door, before adding, “but be quick as I am anxious to see you and hold you in my arms.”

  Magda threw open her trunk, while I cast around for my breeches. Once those were on I dropped my boots and other clothes out of the window. I blew a farewell kiss to Magda as she struggled to pull a nightdress over her head and then I dropped silently to the ground outside. I had to get my sword and musket back and so I crept around to the front of the cabin where the door still hung open.

  “You can come in now,” called Magda. As I heard the door to the bedroom open I slipped into the other room of the cabin and moved swiftly and silently on bare feet to where my sword and musket were resting against the wall. Of course, I had forgotten that the first thing a randy old goat of a husband would want to do with a new young wife is to see what she looks like.

  “Oh I have so looked forward to this moment,” babbled Johannes. “Please come this way so that I can see you.” Holding her hands in his, he backed out into the main room of the cabin, where the light from the lantern slowly illuminated the couple. I saw Magda’s eyes widen in alarm as she looked over her new husband’s shoulder and saw her lover standing in just his breeches in the corner of the room. I ducked down behind a high-backed wooden chair, but I doubt Johannes would have noticed if I had danced a hornpipe behind him. The effect of Magda’s beauty on him was the same as it had been on me and I heard him gasp as she came into the light. Then after a moment he whispered, “You are so beautiful; God is very kind to me.”

  “You are kind to me also, husband,” replied Magda dutifully. While I could not see, I imagined her gazing at the narrow high-backed chair I was crouching behind before she added, “Now husband, please let us go back into the bedroom.”

/>   The horny bastard did not need asking twice. “Yes, yes, if that will please you,” he muttered virtually pushing Magda back towards the bed. I was up in a moment, sword and musket in hand and was out of the cabin before the bedroom door had fully closed. I had no wish to hear Magda and her husband together and so I grabbed my boots and clothes from beneath their bedroom window and sprinted off into the night before getting properly dressed.

  Even though I found a comfortable bed of straw in the stable, it was a miserable night, full of sour thoughts about the honeymoon couple. The next morning at first light I made my way back down to the little jetty by the water. There was always some traffic on the river – it was the easiest way to pass through the forest – and by lunchtime I had caught a passage with two Indians in a canoe back to Brant’s Ford. Returning to Norton’s cabin I struggled to get Magda off my mind. I took out my frustrations on Norton’s vegetable patch, providing a sterling example for the warriors as I hacked through weeds, and as it turned out, a line of plants that Norton had wanted to keep.

  Over the coming weeks the weather got colder and it was clear that there would be no major campaigning until the spring. The village seemed as good a place as any to spend the dark cold months. It was well supplied and sufficiently far from the border to be immune from any cross-border raids. The Iroquois also made me feel very welcome.

  If I am honest Magda was the other reason I did not want to stray far from Brant’s Ford as my thoughts often drifted to that little farm just ten miles to the north. Twice that autumn and winter I travelled all the way up to see her, but I did not let her see me. The first time I went by canoe and the second, when the river was frozen, on horseback. On each occasion I watched through my telescope as she and her husband bustled about the smallholding doing chores. Seeing him properly in the daylight, Johannes did have the fuzzy hair that her father had described, but it was now half grey. He looked a grim and slightly forbidding figure. I could well imagine him shouting about hell and brimstone from the pulpit, if they had pulpits in Mennonite churches. I kept searching for any sign that Magda was happy with her new life; if she had been then I think I would have been able to forget her. After all she was right; I was a soldier and although she did not know it, I already had an estranged wife in England. But not once in the time I watched, even when they walked past each other, did I see a smile cross either of their faces.

  Now, readers of my earlier memoirs might be forgiven for wondering why a man, who had enjoyed more than a few women in a lust-filled career, was getting so sentimental over some slip of a girl. Well you are right, I was getting maudlin about Magda, but if you had seen her, looked into those crystal clear blue eyes and spent a night in the cabin with her, well I rather think you would be feeling maudlin too.

  To help cheer me up Norton ensured that there were plenty of Christmas festivities in the village. No more than half of the Iroquois were Christians, but it seemed that the Great Spirit was not averse to celebrating the passing of mid-winter either. It was the first time I saw a Christmas tree; the custom had been learned from German immigrants to America. A large fir was cut down and installed in the church and every Christian household in the village helped decorate it with painted feathers, strips of cloth and candles. A service was held in the church at midnight on Christmas Eve with the candles lit and hymns sung. Most of the congregation, including me, were drunk and the singing was raucous, but the service was more spirited as a result. As I gazed at the decorated foliage under the church beams, I could not help but wonder if Magda with her German ancestry was looking at a similar tree. The following day instead of what, for me, was the traditional Christmas goose for dinner, we had turkey. Several large birds were cooked by the women in a big clay oven; there were even roast potatoes, which were not a traditional Iroquois staple.

  As the twelve days of Christmas stretched into the New Year, I was left to reflect on what 1813 might bring. I had started the previous year in Portugal and had endured all manner of adventures since then. I had no wish to throw myself unnecessarily into the fray again and so when Norton left with a small war party to see what was happening to the west I let him go without me. He was back a couple of months later, having achieved very little, but he brought news.

  He told me that an American general called Harrison had marched with a large force to try and relieve Detroit. The ground he had to cover was wild and remote; it was hard going in summer never mind in the depths of winter. Indian scouts had monitored their progress and the advance guard of this force had suffered a particularly tough time. When they had entered an area grimly known as the Black Swamp, they had struggled to get any supplies through at all. They barely made five miles a day as horses and wagons floundered in the mud. Morale was low; they had not been paid for three months and were desperately short of warm clothes, food and medicine.

  Eventually this beleaguered advance guard managed to capture the British outpost at a place called Frenchtown, on the River Raisin, just twenty-six miles from Detroit. But the men were so exhausted they took no precautions against a counter attack and a few days later a British force under its western commander, General Procter, routed them. The Americans lost nearly three hundred dead and six hundred taken prisoner. Harrison was forced to withdraw the rest of his force. What Norton omitted to mention was that after the battle Procter had neglected to provide enough guards for the wounded American prisoners. The Americans had raided several Indian villages on their march and now a group of drunken Indians murdered some eighty of the wounded prisoners in revenge.

  While Norton had been away, the men from the Canadian Indian Agency had visited the village with cartloads of gifts for the Indians. These included blankets, clothing, pots, pans, weapons, gunpowder, flints and all manner of other necessaries. I had discovered that the British used the gifts as a means of controlling the Iroquois and ensuring their dependence. There was friction between Norton, who had close links with the army and who was encouraging the Indians to become more self-sufficient, and the Indian Agency, who wanted to maintain their control. This year Norton had been promised by the army extra gifts as reward for their participation in the war but only some of these were delivered. The Indian Agency also ensured that Norton and his supporters got fewer gifts than the families that were dependent on handouts. The few warriors who had joined their women in farming their own land to increase its efficiency viewed this as unfair. It was a deliberate attempt to undermine Norton’s authority with the tribe and when he returned he was furious.

  General Sheaffe was then in the town of York, (now known as Toronto) and Norton planned to visit him, remonstrate over the missing gifts and seek permission to lead a war party to the west. It was now March and having hidden away all winter I thought it was time I made an appearance. So I offered to accompany him. I cleaned and pressed my army coat but the regulation army britches had long since been torn and worn out. I had taken to wearing buckskin trousers instead. We set off north along well-used paths. We passed within a mile of Magda’s farmstead but I resisted the urge to suggest a visit. From there we skirted around the shore of Lake Ontario until we came up on the meagre fortifications of York.

  The town was the capital of the southern half of Canada. It was an isolated place with a long beach to the west of the town that would be ideal to land troops. Its only defence to such a landing was a battery containing two condemned guns clamped onto a log base. They could fire, but only in a fixed direction. Sheaffe was busy strengthening the defences and foundations for a fort had been dug but it would be months before it was complete. The only other sizeable structure was the dockyard where work was underway to build a new ship, named for General Brock.

  We found Sheaffe in his office at Government House and this time I did get to meet him despite his obstructive aide, Fforbes, being on hand. As Norton informed Sheaffe of the missing gifts, the general’s annoying aide turned to me. “You appear to be going native on us,” he sneered when he noticed my deerskin trousers. “Su
rely that is not proper dress for a regular officer; it would barely be acceptable in the militia.”

  “Among the many gifts that the Indian Agency failed to deliver,” I told him, “was a replacement officer’s uniform for me.” I turned to the general. “I thought buck skin would be preferable to buck naked.”

  “Quite so,” laughed Sheaffe. “Fforbes, sort out some replacement uniform for Captain Flashman and then get a despatch written from me to the Indian Agency about these missing gifts. With the Americans set to pour over the border in all directions, now is not the time to offend our valued Indian allies.”

  “Yes sir,” said Fforbes giving me a sour look as he left the room.

  “I thought I might take a war party to help General Procter in the west, sir,” suggested Norton. “Once the extra gifts have been received, the men will be keen to fight again.”

  “No, no,” protested Sheaffe settling into a chair by the fire and gesturing for Norton and I to do the same. “Procter has enough Indian allies in the west; it is here I need the Iroquois. The Americans could come over the Niagara at any moment. I need your men at the river now.”

  “Sir,” replied Norton diplomatically, “the ice floes on the Niagara at this time of year would make any crossing of the river by boat almost impossible. It will be at least a month, possibly two, before they could consider an attack across the Niagara. That is why I suggested to General Procter when I met him in January that we might be able to help him during the first part of the year.”

  “No,” repeated Sheaffe. “I admire your fighting spirit, Norton, but I need your men here. My people tell me that the Americans are gathering men for an attack in the east. There are at least two thousand men at their naval base on Lake Ontario and possibly another two thousand more on the way. If they do not attack across the river they could simply sail past the river mouth on the lake and attack Fort George from the rear.” Fort George guarded the British side of the Niagara River where it flowed into Lake Ontario and was a prime American target. The discussion continued but Sheaffe could not be moved and eventually Norton agreed to bring as many men as he could to Fort George.