by Sara Fraser
‘Fifteen hundred,’ the adjutant told him. ‘Demn the nuisance of it.’
‘That is monstrous!’ David Warburton stated vehemently.
A month’s good food and rest had worked an almost miraculous change in his appearance, and in his good dark grey civilian clothing with its fine white linen, he was the picture of health and vigour.
‘Indeed it is!’ the Hon. John agreed wholeheartedly with the sentiment. ‘It will ruin my plans to escort Miss Jessica and her Mama to the song recital in the assembly rooms.’
Jessica Ward’s lovely eyes became unusually frosty and she said tartly, ‘I think you misunderstand dear Davy’s meaning, Lieutenant Coventry. For if I am correct, he thinks that it is the cruel sentence that is monstrous, not the ruination of your planned pleasures.’
‘That is sufficient, miss,’ her father told her sharply. ‘What the court martial chose to do is no concern of yours. The discipline of the army must be maintained no matter what the cost to individuals. The man committed a grave offence, and must be punished hard for doing so. If he were not dealt with harshly, then others would seize the opportunity to profit from their superiors’ weakness, and Lord only knows what would be the outcome . . . Don’t you agree, David?’
Warburton’s gentle grey eyes were troubled but his voice was firm.
‘I agree, sir, that discipline must be maintained . . . But I must speak the truth, as I see it. I detest and condemn the practice of flogging, for in my own limited experience I have yet to see the man that a flogging will improve. On the contrary, in the Peninsula I have seen many good soldiers ruined both morally and physically by it.’
‘Demmee! I’m most surprised that a combat veteran, such as yourself, Warburton, should be so dismayed at the prospect of seeing a rogue’s blood drawn by the lash,’ the Hon. John’s voice held a sneer.
David forced down his rising indignation at the other’s veiled imputation and said quietly,
‘Perhaps, Coventry, it is precisely because I have seen so much blood drawn by sword and bullet, that it makes me reluctant to see it spilt by the lash.’
Mrs Ward’s intervention halted any further development of this theme.
‘Gentlemen, please! This is hardly a fitting subject to be discussed when we are about to eat this dish.’
She indicated the bowl filled with thick slices of rare roast beef in the centre of the food-laden table.
Her husband laughed appreciatively. ‘As always, you are correct, my dear,’ he told her, and spoke to the two young men bristling at each other across the table. ‘Gentlemen, consideration for my lady wife forces me to forbid any further mention of this matter.’ His voice was light but there was in it a note which brooked no argument.
The tension that had arisen, lessened and disappeared in the pleasure engendered by good food and wine and even the heartfelt disappointment of John Coventry caused by the disruption of his plans, left him under the spell of Jessica’s smiling flirtatiousness. He laughed and joked and fed Mrs Ward’s pet terriers with choice titbits of tender meat and savoury gravy. Only the slightest pangs of jealousy marred his enjoyment when he intercepted the shared glances between Jessica and David Warburton.
*
At twelve noon, the rank and file of the battalion were dismissed from the drill they had been performing since seven o’clock that morning, and marched back to their barracks for dinner. In every room the women squabbled and pushed each other about, over who should take precedence at the cooking fires. In Jethro’s quarters the twenty-odd men had divided themselves into two messes, and the same scene was repeated here as Big Sadie and Bertha Morrison haggled with Annie Rourke and Toothless Charlotte, while the swarming children wailed for food.
‘My cripes!’ Turpin Wright expostulated. ‘I doon’t know why you lot o’ bleedin’ fools can’t come to some agreement about your cooking . . . Gawd save us all! You’se only got a bit o’ salt beef to boil . . . Why doon’t you put it all in the same pot and cook it together?’
The women joined ranks and rounded on him like a pack of screaming harpies.
‘Why doon’t ye keep yez long conk outta our business?’ Annie Rourke screeched, and thrust out her several chins pugnaciously. ‘By the Christ! Iffen ye meddles wit’ me, yez are going to find that I’m a match for any mon!’
‘Ahr, and that goo’s for the rest on us as well, right girls?’ Big Sadie’s great breasts threatened to spill from her unbuttoned bodice and her large fists clenched in readiness to fight.
Jethro, in spite of his bitter feelings about the court martial was forced to laugh at the expression on his friend’s face. Turpin sat chewing his lower lip and contemplating the odds against him. Barrack women were a notoriously tough breed and some of them were indeed handy with their fists and boots, if it came to a brawl.
‘Be you agooin’ to stand shoulder to shoulder wi’ me, Jethro?’ the convict asked finally.
Jethro shook his head in vigorous repudiation. ‘No, my friend,’ he chuckled. ‘It would take a better man than me to tame these beauties.’
Three of the women held soft spots in their hearts for the handsome young recruit. The fourth, Bertha Morrison, held hatred.
‘Man?’ she sneered. ‘You calls yourself a man, does you? You’m nothin’ but a bleedin’ nancy-boy, you am!’
He made no reply to her taunts, knowing too well the futility of arguing against her hatred.
The trampling of many boots sounded from behind the block as the men returned from drill, and the clattering entrance of the sections sent the women scurrying to lay out the earthenware bowls and the cobs of stale wholemeal bread for each man’s rations along the tables. Both Jethro and Turpin Wright were members of Corporal Rourke’s mess, the other mess was in the charge of Drummer Morrison. Amid a tumult of shouting, grumbling and laughter the shakos, packs and pouches were removed and hung upon the pegs over the men’s shared beds and the muskets were racked. Most of the men also took off their tunics, and while waiting for the meal to be served out, amused themselves by mocking the women and each other and playing with the excited children.
The bubbling iron pots were taken from the fire and brought to the tables. Corporal Rourke used the long flesh fork and a pewter ladle to fish the rancid-smelling lumps of yellow-fatted meat, gristle, and bone from the watery stock it had been boiled in, and carefully measured out a portion into each small bowl. The men, their stomachs rumbling with hunger, watched him closely to make sure that each portion was composed of roughly the same amounts of solids and liquids. At the opposite end of the table the surly Drummer Morrison followed the corporal’s example. When all the bowls were full, Rourke handed the pot back to his wife.
‘Break some bread into that for ye and the kids,’ he told her.
Her fat face puckered disagreeably as she peered at the small amount of greasy mess swilling about the bottom of the pot.
‘Phwat?’ she spat at him. ‘D’ye rackon that me and Charlotte and the babbies can live on such a wee bit o’ bread and water?’
Corporal Rourke was already in a foul temper. He had made mistakes in the drill orders that morning and had felt the weight of Sergeant-Major Gresham’s cane across his head. The livid welts raised by the blows still throbbed painfully and his sense of humiliated grievance rankled still more.
‘Shut yer mouth, ye ould sow,’ he hissed warningly. ‘Ye know well enough that the meat pot’s empty.’
‘That I’ll not!’ Hands on hips she faced him boldly. ‘I wants some o’ that meat for me and the babbies. Our bellies ’um empty as well.’
Her husband’s pale blue eyes narrowed and his voice rose high in anger. ‘Is it meat ye want, ye fat-bellied whore? Here! . . . Try this!’
He punched her heavily in the face and the force of the blow dropped her to the floor. He stood over her with clenched fists, his mouth snarling.
‘D’ye want some more?’ he demanded. ‘Or was that sufficient ration for ye?’
She raised herself to
a sitting posture and sat moaning and clasping her jaw. The smaller children began to wail in fright and the other women rushed to help their friend. Between them they carried the half-stunned woman to her corner, cursing loudly at the corporal and the rest of the men as they did so. Jethro had never liked to see women beaten, but it was the way of his world and he knew nothing he could do or say would stop the custom. Indeed, if he intervened, then the first person to abuse him for doing so would have been Annie Rourke herself.
The corporal shrugged and told the men, ‘All right, boys. Let’s begin . . . Turpin, will ye do the callin’?’
‘Ahr, that I ’ull, and gladly for me belly thinks me throat’s bin cut, it’s so bleedin’ empty.’ The convict went to the head of the table and standing with his back to the smoking dishes of meat put his hands over his eyes so that he could see nothing.
Rourke tapped a dish at random with the flesh-fork. ‘Who shall have this?’ he asked loudly.
‘Greener!’ Turpin answered.
The designated man stepped forward and picked up the bowl and a cob of bread.
The Irishman tapped another bowl. ‘Who shall have this?’
‘Perkins,’ Turpin answered.
The ritual went on until every man in the mess had been allotted a portion.
The system was designed to prevent unfair distribution of food by the mess N.C.O.s and worked well enough. Though if there were new and inexperienced men who joined the mess, the older hands worked out a code by means of voice tone and inflection which made sure that the newcomers always received the worst pieces of meat. Those which were mostly bone, fat, and gristle. Fortunately for Jethro, Turpin Wright’s being an old soldier and the readiness of both of them to fight for their rights, prevented their messmates cheating them in this way.
The men seated themselves at the tables and started to eat. Jethro broke a piece of the hard sour bread from his cob and dipped it into the rancid-smelling gravy. He chewed it slowly, it tasted of harsh salt and rotten flesh, but he was hungry enough to disregard these details, particularly since it would be the only food he would taste until six o’clock in the morning, when he would get his pitiful breakfast of ‘Tommy’, a bowl of black bitter coffee with toasted bread broken into it. Once the first hunger pangs had been relieved, the men began to talk about the punishment parade that afternoon.
‘Jase! But it’s a hard sentence,’ Corporal Rourke observed. ‘No doubt about it, it’s a damn tough bullet to chew on.’
‘The poor barstard ’ull not survive it!’ another man said.
‘How d’you reckon they’ll divide it, Paddy?’ a third man asked.
The Irishman pointed at Drummer Morrison, who was seated at the opposite end of the table. ‘Arsk your mon there. He’s one o’ them who’ll do the floggin’.’
All attention switched to the stocky drummer, who ignored the questioning stares. He sat hunched over his bowl of food chewing the tough meat with loud smackings of his thick lips and frequent belches. His brutish face beneath the bristles of his dose-cropped scalp showed indifference to the prospect that faced him: the flogging of a fellow human being who had done him no harm.
Jethro felt revulsion for the man. He knew that if it were he who was to rip a man’s flesh from his bones, then he would not be able to display such a hearty appetite for his dinner.
‘Well, Morrison?’ Jethro challenged. ‘How will it be divided? I’d like to hear, if you can spare a moment from your trough?’
The drummer belched loudly and smacked his lips as his scaled tongue searched the gaps of his yellowed teeth for trapped shreds of meat. Finally, he wiped the grease from his mouth with his fingers, and cleaned his fingers on the front of his shirt, then grunted.
‘Three lots o’ five hundred, I should reckon. That’s if the barstard lives.’
Some of the men blanched visibly at the answer, and Jethro could not contain his disgust at the barbarity of giving a man five hundred lashes, then waiting until his wounds healed before giving him a further five hundred, and repeating the procedure yet again.
‘It doesn’t seem to affect your appetite, Morrison. The prospect of torturing the poor bugger like that,’ he said grimly.
The drummer shrugged his broad shoulders and peered about the table to see if any man had left food in his bowl.
‘I’se bin flogging men twice or three times a week ever since I ’listed in the army,’ he answered carelessly. ‘You gets used to it, cully . . . And besides, I has to obey the orders I’m give, doon’t I . . . or I’d be on the bleedin’ triangle meself, ’uddent I?’
Jethro could find no reply to that statement, and was obliged to admit that the man had justice in what he said.
‘My Good God!’ he suddenly thought to himself. ‘Here am I getting angered at Morrison, because he can eat hearty before he flogs a man. And I’ve bolted down my own food like a pig. I’m acting like a hypocrite when I condemn the bugger. In my own way I’m just as bad as he is.’
*
At two o’clock in the afternoon the warning drum was sounded throughout Colewort Garden Barracks. The February sky was dark and heavy with snow and a cold biting wind gusted flurries of tiny snow flakes across the parade ground. The bearded and white-aproned sergeant of pioneers marched to the very centre of the parade ground and, aided by one of his section, lashed three halberds into the form of a tripod, and two others horizontally across one face of the formed tripod to create a ladder effect.
Behind the barrack blocks, the troops mustered in their companies, wearing over their scarlet tunics long grey greatcoats which stretched to the black-gaitered ankles of their blue trousers. Their splendidly corded and plumed shakos were sheltered from the inclement weather by black oilskin covers wrapped about them, and their hands were snug in warm woollen mittens. Yet in spite of all their protective clothing, many men shivered before the buffets of the icy wind. The company sergeants called the roll, and then presented their sections to the company officers.
At two-thirty, the mace-swinging, gorgeously-uniformed drum major led his drummers on to the parade ground and their bright yellow tunics were a brilliant line of colour against the all-pervading sombre greyness, as with black-gaitered calves moving in perfect unison and their deep-bodied, gaudy-painted drums swinging, they beat the thunderous call to general muster.
‘COMPANNNNY ATTENTION! SHOULLLLDER ARMS! COUNTER MARCH TO THE RIGHT ABOUT . . . QUUIIICCCK MARCH!’
The high-pitched voices of the company commanders echoed through the barrack blocks and the measured tread of hundreds of men sounded in counterpoint to the throbbing drums. The long white-crossbelted columns snaked on to the great emptiness of the parade ground and formed themselves into a hollow square facing inwards towards the triangle of halberds. The officers halted their men and as the drums fell silent their voices sounded unnaturally loud in the sudden quiet.
‘REAR RANKS . . . TAKE OPEN ORDER . . . MARCH!’ Iron-shod boots crashed down. ‘RIIIIGHT DRESS!’
Sergeants moved swiftly as the hundreds of heels battered the worn cobbles and the staves of their halberds pushed roughly against men’s chests to complete the dressing of the lines.
‘PARADE . . . ORDEEERRRR ARMS!’ Mittened hands flashed in rapid movements and musket butts clattered.
In the front rank of his company, Jethro obeyed the words of command automatically, and without conscious volition. His eyes and interest were centred only upon the triangle of halberds and the drummers next to it, busily engaged in piling their drums and loosening tunics and belts prior to removing them.
All became silent and still once more, and the only sign that life existed in the rigid, motionless ranks were the pale plumes of breath jetting from men’s mouths and nostrils as breathing quickened in anticipation of what was to come.
A gap had been left at one corner of the square and through it came the acting commanding officer, Major Thomas Burd, together with the regimental surgeon, whose black cock-feathered hat, together with the cape
d black cloaks that both men wore, gave a suitably funereal note to their appearance. Directly behind them sauntered the elegant figure of the Hon. John Coventry, who made no concession to the weather and wore his splendid regimentals without a cloak. His smooth face was made spiteful by his resentment at being there. The three positioned themselves to one side of the triangle and then, through the same gap was brought the prisoner.
He was bare-headed and dressed in an old white canvas fatigue jacket and trousers, with his arms bound behind him. In front of him slow-marched the ramrod figure of Sergeant-Major Gresham, his long cane tucked horizontally under his left arm, his right arm stretched rigidly at his side. A file of privates shouldering muskets with fixed bayonets marched at each side of the prisoner and behind the small procession, a diminutive drummerboy tapped the time of the stately paces. Two yards to the rear of the drummerboy walked the surgeon’s mate in his green apron and feathered round hat. He carried a bowl of water and a strip of towelling. His satchel of drugs and dressings was slung across his shoulder and dangled low enough to bounce against one fat buttock as he waddled awkwardly, trying to slowmarch in step with the drumbeat.
To Jethro it seemed that the prisoner was not really aware of what was about to happen to him. He looked dazed, his eyes wide and blank as he shambled along between his guards with no emotion of any kind showing in his face.
At the triangle, the procession halted. The artisan’s arms were unbound and the sergeant-major ordered him to strip to the waist. The prisoner’s tallowy pale skin pimpled and took on a bluish tinge as the wind’s freezing tentacles enveloped him. He started to shiver violently but still his eyes remained blank and his face expressionless. Drummers took him and lashed him with his wrists above his head, face forward on the ladder side of the halberds. With leather straps they secured his ankles, knees and thighs to the staves. The Honourable John Coventry took a rolled sheet of parchment from inside his tunic and, smoothing it with difficulty against the snatchings of the wind, he read out the charge and sentence. Then saluted the parade commander, and in ringing tones ordered:
