The Killing Man

by Andrew Wareham

  “Sergeant Wright! Goin’ out to look at a bit of colour, left of them rocks, look.”

  Wright glanced across, gave permission for the pair to go.

  “Watch it. Might be a stiff or could be laid up waiting with his musket. Might be others hidden in the rocks and him showing hisself deliberate like.”

  “Watch the rocks, Simon. I’ll go straight for ‘im.”

  Slowly, for picking their way between the clumps of gorse, they walked the horses the hundred or so yards, increasingly cautious as they came into musket range. Sam eased out his carbine, hand over the pan to keep the powder dry.

  There was a man lying flat and a second sat beside him. Both carried open slashes across their backs from the dragoon swords. The sitting man raised his hands, painfully, said something in a foreign language.

  “Anyone else up in they rocks, Simon?”

  “No. They ain’t big enough to hide no bugger there.”

  “We can’t take prisoners, Simon. Nothin’ to do with ‘em.”

  Sam tucked his carbine back by the saddle, spent a moment wrapping the rag safely around the lock.

  “Pistol, mate.”

  He drew the long horse pistol, cocked it and leaned down in the saddle, shot the sitting man through his head; the man made no protest, did not move or shout – perhaps he saw a bullet as a mercy.

  Sam sat in the saddle and carefully reloaded, saw Simon doing the same after shooting the other man.

  “Better just see if they got anything on ‘em, Simon.”

  They had almost nothing worth the effort of taking – a useful knife and a few pennies was all. They had old muskets, worn and probably dangerous to fire, and not of army calibre in any case. Their powder horns were half empty, contained a far coarser black powder than the army issued. They took them to show to Lieutenant Wakerley – he might find the powder interesting.

  “Home made stuff, I would think, Corporal Heythorne. Buy in the brimstone, for not finding it in Britain. Make up their own saltpetre, the scrapings from under pigsties and cattle byres soaked in water and the stuff drained out to dry in the sun. Burning their own charcoal is the only easy bit. Unreliable stuff and not much of it – makes it sensible to rely on the sword and the charge.”

  “Can’t find the money to buy in saltpetre, sir?”

  “Costly stuff, saltpetre. The Honourable East India Company brings it in by the ton – hundreds of tons, in fact. Brimstone comes in from volcanoes, by trading ships. The way we are cutting down the forests, it won’t be long before we are bringing in charcoal, too. All paid for by trading, Corporal Heythorne. Look after traders always. No traders mean we will soon run out of the powder we need. How many were there, by the way?”

  “Just two, sir. Cut across the backs, sir, couldn’t get any further. Goin’ to die tonight or tomorrow any’ow, sir. One cold night without no fire, sir, would finish them.”

  “So it would. Don’t waste powder. Use the sword when you can.”

  Sam said he would, returned to his place in the little column.

  The track took a turn downhill, into a bigger valley than most. Lieutenant Wakerley looked at the sky and gave the order to go down to the lowlands.

  “There’ll be two foot of snow up here by the morning, Sergeant Wright. We need to find shelter, at a thousand feet lower.”

  They found the army, its eastern division, and were sent to winter quarters in the small town of Hexham, not far south of Hadrian’s Wall and Scotland itself. They took over an inn and its stables, as ordered, and settled down for three months of idleness, drinking too much to make up for eating too little – food being thin in the town and ration wagons reaching them irregularly.

  Sam learned far more of horse management during the idle days and discovered how to parade and the proper way of using the straight sword. That took up three or four hours of the day, the rest was spent more or less in idleness.

  They stood sentry-go, just in case the Scottish men, who lived on top of wintry mountains, might attack under the cover of snow; they polished their muskets and pistols and worked on their swords. For five or six hours of every day, they played cards or tossed dice.

  Because they were so few, and knew each other, there was no opportunity to cheat – the games were invariably honest. Sam soon found them to be simple as well. The variations of brag and twenty-one demanded very little of the player, other than a feeling for probability and a memory for the cards already played. The dice games were all about chance – there was no skill at all – and that became wholly a matter of knowing what was the probability of making a throw and when it was better simply to drop out of a round. Observation showed Sam that he was brighter than any of the others, and would win from them over time, simply because he was cleverer. Common sense told him not to win too much, too often, to occasionally lose when the luck was favouring him too greatly.

  The others discovered that Sam was a lucky player, but that he did not empty their pockets, put them into debt to him. As a result, they passed the time in winter quarters without a fight, not one of them going to the flogging post.

  When there was no card school, and the weather kept them under cover – it snowed for most of the second part of the winter – Sam borrowed books from the landlord of the inn. He had more than a dozen on a shelf in the smaller public room, mostly what Sam thought of as ‘stories’ – tales of the foreign lands across the seas. He did not believe them, although his father had once mentioned the existence of other sorts of peoples. Lieutenant Wakerley, who had possession of the single room the inn kept, told Sam that the stories were, if not wholly true, then more or less similar to reality.

  “You should think of going to the Americas, Corporal Heythorne. A young man of ability can make a fortune there, so they say. The Sugar Islands especially have opportunities for men who are willing to make their own way.”

  It was a thought, Sam admitted. There must, however, be other ways of making a small fortune, he suspected; he merely had to discover what they were. For the while, he needed to entertain himself.

  The landlord was a widower, possessed of a single daughter, Tabitha, a girl of much Sam’s age and showing herself smitten by his good looks and wild air – not that he thought of himself in that fashion, but the others, Simon especially, let it be known that Sam was a fierce man of blood. Even a small inn had a number of dark corners where a mildly adventurous lass might bump into a young man for a minute or two.

  Tabitha had rarely ginger hair and sparkling greenish-blue eyes and Sam thought she was far prettier than Simon’s sister, who had attracted his attention in the months before he had left the farm. A kiss and a cuddle only strengthened his liking; a visit to her room after her father had gone to bed more than usually full of his own beer confirmed his opinion.

  When the time came to ride out again Sam was in the habit of spending two or three nights of the week entertainingly engaged with Tabitha.

  “Will you come back, Sam?”

  “As soon as the Army will let me, little lady. I got possibly eighteen months service yet to do and am not me own master till they be over. Soon as I can, I shall see thee.”

  “I shall wait, Sam.”

  The column formed, Lieutenant Wakerley at the head, Sergeant Wright at the rear, and rode out, upright in the saddle, backs straight, uniforms as smart as they could make them, the picture of the cavalry off to chastise the foe. A mile down the road and the word ‘easy’ was passed down from man to man and they slumped comfortably.

  They stopped after two hours, gathered together in a brief parade at the side of the road.

  “At ease. No need to tell the folks back in the town what our orders are. We are to go back up to the tops, to our own sort of country, but keeping in sight of the sea, where we can. The General – the Duke of Cumberland now – believes the Jacobites have fled far north and is to march for Inverness, slowly. We are to look out for stragglers and to clear the countryside, and especially to be sure that none of them rema
in with the intent of coming around behind and cutting up the baggage train. If we discover a regiment or two, then we must take the word to the army.”

  Simple stuff, they thought – much of the same as they had been doing before the snows came.

  “Will you be coming back to Hexham, Sam?”

  “Whatever for, Simon?”

  “Well… I thought you might want to come back to see Tabby again.”

  “Nah! Comfortable armful for a month or two, but no sense coming back again. Poor town and I ain’t going to make me fortune round these parts. There’s more for me to do yet, Simon – places to go and things to do and money to make. I ain’t in the way of settling down yet.”

  “Handsome lass, though.”

  “So she was. There’ll be others in different parts.”

  Chapter Four

  The Killing Man

  The troop crossed the border into Scotland or assumed they had done so – it certainly ran somewhere in the vague general area. The countryside looked slightly different, in Sam’s opinion. The moors changed a little, became more of a series of craggy hills than a high but flat plain.

  There were tracks in some of the little valleys, and it seemed that they might as well follow one as wander with no destination. Lieutenant Wakerley put two troopers ahead by half a furlong and then followed after. They rode slowly, no more than a walk, seeing no point to exhausting the horses.

  Midday saw Smithy turning in his saddle, raising his musket horizontal over his head, the sign of a farm or hamlet or village in sight but with no hostile activity. He stopped and waited, his partner, Henry, venturing a few yards further. Lieutenant Wakerley kept to the walk, not wanting the sound of galloping horses to give the alarm, quietly joined the pair.

  Smithy pointed downhill.

  The valley took a turn round the side of the hill, giving an expanse of south-facing fields with scrub timber above that sheltered them from the wind. It was a fertile pocket in the wasteland and there was a small village, the better part of twenty cottages on a single street with a little church.

  Lieutenant Wakerley was suspicious.

  “Nothing burned. Either the Jacobites did not come through, or the village was friendly to them. Sergeant Wright, your section to draw carbines and hold the rear. Corporal Merton, hold the men ready. Forward.”

  As they appeared the very few people in sight hurried indoors, children pulled off the street, shutters slamming up against the windows. They walked cautiously down the street towards the smithy, the sound of a hammer drawing them.

  Lieutenant Wakerley sat his horse, waved the smith out.

  “What place is this? Jacobite or loyal to your king?”

  The smith looked up, grunted, pointed to his mouth; he turned back to his work, pushed the bar of iron he had been beating back into the burning charcoal.

  Lieutenant Wakerley bridled at the insult.

  “Dummy, sir!” Sergeant Wright called.

  Lieutenant Wakerley relaxed, hand coming away from the hilt of his sword.

  “Thank you, Sergeant Wright.”

  “Over on the left, sir. Next to the church.”

  A man had appeared, dressed in the oldest of fashions.

  Sam stared at the breeches and doublet and long white collar; he wondered just what this apparition might be, having never seen anything like it before. White stockings and heavy shoes with steel buckles, polished and gleaming. No sword, nor a belt to carry a weapon – so not claiming to be a gentleman.

  “God’s blessing on thee, soldier. How can I help thee this day?”

  Lieutenant Wakerley repeated his question.

  “Loyal men all, soldier. None of the householders of Howlaw have gone to the ranks of the rebels against our Protestant king. Tainted by Popery, the Stuarts, and our community of saints will have none of they, except as mercy demands.”

  “Puritans,” Sergeant Wright whispered to Sam. “Heard of them, never seen ‘em before.”

  “Never ‘eard of ‘em, Sergeant.”

  “No loss, boy.”

  Lieutenant Wakerley picked upon the pastor’s final words.

  “What demands have mercy made upon you, sir?”

  “There are four lost souls here, sir, who came across our village in the midst of winter. Starving, sick, near to death, frozen with the cold. We took them in, for how could we do otherwise?”

  “Bring them out. Now!”

  The villagers were unarmed, had never gone to war or seen battle. The pastor knew that to refuse the soldiers was to kill many of his flock, and possibly to see the village burned out as traitors. He turned away, called to his wife to bring the four out.

  Three healthy young men, in their early twenties, wearing the remnants of red coats; a fourth limping, unable to place his right foot firmly to the ground, toes lost to frostbite, also in scarlet.

  “Deserters?”

  “No, sir. The Manchester Regiment, sir, what was ordered to join the rebel army, sir, by our officers.”

  The speaker seemed hopeful that he might be forgiven, offered pardon – he had done no more than obey orders, he implied.

  “There were nearly five hundred men in your regiment. Barely two hundred followed the traitors to join the Jacobite rebellion. The better part of three hundred refused the order and presented themselves to the King’s Army when the opportunity arose. You are traitors. Sergeant Wright, these four into arrest. Tie them.”

  Lieutenant Wakerley looked about him, could see no tall trees, no makeshift scaffold at all. He nudged his charger forward towards the church, dismounted and glanced inside. It was a small, undecorated simple hall, but there were joists visible, the rafters depending on them.

  “Bring ‘em in, Sergeant Wright.”

  There were pews for the congregation, wooden benches, made locally with some skill but at least possible expense. Ten minutes saw the four prisoners with a rope around their necks, each stood almost on tiptoe on a bench and a soldier standing by.

  “Kick the benches away.”

  Sam was next to the crippled man, had been giving him a surreptitious hand to stand upright; he bent over and heaved the pew clear, watched as he dangled a few inches above the floor and slowly strangled.

  “So perish all traitors!”

  The troop waited twenty minutes and then mounted and walked their horses out of the village. Lieutenant Wakerley delayed by the side of the pastor.

  “You have permission to give them burial, if that is your wish. If you prefer, you may dump them in your rubbish pits.”

  The pastor shook his head wonderingly.

  “May the Good Lord have mercy upon thee, soldier.”

  “And upon you, Pastor. I have had mercy upon you already, for I should have burned your village to the ground for harbouring traitors to His Gracious Majesty. I would advise you to consider more carefully the next time you are moved to offer succour to bloody-handed rebels.”

  “I shall pray for thee, sir, and for all of those who follow you.”

  “Good thing too, Pastor. I can always use a few more prayers going upwards to balance out the curses going the other way. Farewell, Pastor, and be thankful that you did not meet a merciless man.”

  “Did we ‘ave to do that, Sergeant Wright?”

  “That or take them in for trial, young Sam. And what do you think would ‘appen to ‘em if they got put before a drumhead court, Corporal Heythorne? Ten minutes and they would have been stood against a wall and shot. At least this way was quick – they didn’t spend two or three days waiting for the chop!”

  “No pity for the enemies of the Crown, is that it, Sergeant Wright?”

  “Just that, Sam. If you set yourself up as a rebel, then you are well-advised to win – because there’s no way out if you lose.”

  “The same for ordinary criminals, I suppose, Sergeant.”

  “More so, Sam. Look at it, now. Ordinary men have a hard life of it, and womenfolk harder, when you think on it. Just making a living in a good year ain�
��t easy. They don’t need no rebels or thieves or whatever they may be taking the little they’ve got and burning out the work they’ve done. The only thing for traitors and that sort is the noose. They want a new king, then go to London and kill him – don’t come traipsing over the countryside slaughtering us sort acos of we’re easier to get at!”

  It made the argument too simple, Sam thought, but it was not wholly wrong for all of that. What use had he for kings? What did it matter to him or his folk – or to Squire and his poor daughters – who sat on a throne in London? Let them sorts get on with their games and leave his family alone.

  “It ain’t no more than an excuse, Sergeant Wright. They want to come thievin’, most of they Scottish men, and a new king made a reason for them to do it. You’re right – not that that matters, when you think of it – I got to do what I’m told and bugger the arguments about it. It ain’t my fault if they gets hanged.”

  “It’s their own fault, Sam. They chose to join the Jacobites, or were frightened not to, scared to stand up for what was right; more than half of their mates stayed loyal, so they didn’t have to. Now they’re swinging from the rafters for their pains.”

  They ended their excursion into political philosophy at that point, returned to watching the hills for more broken rebels.

  Every hamlet and village they came to for the next week was loyal – loudly so, blessing Good King George fervently. No rebels had come their way, they said, going south or coming back again, and none of their sons or brothers had joined the Jacobite cause. It was impossible to prove that men who were not there might have become Jacobites – there was no way of being certain that any young man was missing from a village in the absence of a census or list of taxpayers or of any record of births and deaths over the previous few years. Some families might have suspiciously few sons, but there was no rule that said half of their children must be boys; nothing could be proved.