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Lawford’s Duty
A Passage to India: Memories, Impressions, Reflexions.
Lawford’s Duty. Copyright © 2026 by A Lady
Sable Crow who supports our fanfiction with her website SharpeTales.net.
And
Bernard Cornwell who brought Richard Sharpe into our world.
The Present: Fort St George, Madras, December, 1798.
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PARAGRAPH ONE T
Fort St George was an impressive complex of buildings with a venerable history of more than a century and a half, recently improved and now transformed by developments in the defensive arts and by modern architectural taste into a confection of an edifice resembling, William thought at first, a fashionable wedding-cake. Then he wished that he had not summoned that image, because it had prompted him to think next of Jessica, and his future homecoming in England (provided, of course, that for the next several years he survived sickness, combat and the notoriously terrible Indian climate). He never had been able to picture his wedding-day to himself – even when he had been still a child, whenever he had tried to imagine the day when he would stand at the chancel step in the parish church of the Hampshire village near which Sir Josiah Hayles had established his seat, waiting for Jessica to arrive on the arm of her father, his mind’s eye had always ended simply staring into a terrifying void. Neither, since what had happened six months earlier, could he now imagine ever going back to Durford, no matter how many years might have elapsed in the meantime. Wedding-cake or no, however, Fort St George struck him as distinctly superior to what he had led himself to expect from his study of the several old books about the history of the East India Company with which he had occupied himself from the Cape up to Madras when his time had not been otherwise claimed by the duties of his mongrel status of Midshipman and Lieutenant of Marines aboard Néreide.
The Havercakes, Bickerstaff informed William, as the party had entered within the curtain wall of the fort, had their camp within the perimeter (the barracks themselves being already occupied), and that was where he now conducted him, although about three-quarters of the Battalion, together with its Colonel, Arthur Wellesley,,Bickerstaff had adverted him, had already removed forty or so miles inland to Wallajabad, situated upon the road to Vellore. It was at Vellore and the nearby town of Arnee, or Arani, that Harris’s army was slowly mustering in preparation for the advance upon Mysore, Bickerstaff enlightened him.
Bickerstaff then left William together with his baggage by what was apparently now to be his tent: its previous occupant, one Lieutenant John Raymond, having died (William had ascertained, after anxious questioning) of some unpleasant but indeterminate disease which had involved flux and a fever, as indeed most of these horrible foreign complaints seemed to do, as far as he was able to make out. East or West Indies, it seemed to make little difference to the fate of the British officers and men who, sent to do their duty in these places, sooner or later contracted these diseases. Often they survived, but just as often they did not, although from what William had so far been able to learn, India did not harbour any sickness half so immediately deadly as the fearsome Yellow Jack which made the islands of the Caribbean Sea and the lands which three-quarters enclosed it a graveyard to men of all races, no matter the colour of their skins. William’s predecessor at least had not expired in the tent, Bickerstaff reassured him before he went away to his other tasks, but in the fever hospital. Lieutenant Lawford need not fear: it had been thoroughly fumigated.
The reason why the Light Company and two other Companies of the 33rd, together with a small detachment of cavalry from the 19th and 25th Light Dragoons, had been held back at Madras, Bickerstaff had explained, before he and his detail had finally left William alone, was that the Governor-General of Bengal, based in Calcutta (the foremost of the three Presidencies of the East India Company), the Earl of Mornington - Richard Wellesley, Arthur Wellesley’s elder brother - had had a notion that he might accompany Harris’s army westwards to Seringapatam, as he had been instrumental in formulating the plans for the assault upon Tippoo’s power-base, and was very desirous of seeing them carried through in person, so would accordingly need an escort to conduct him to Vellore if it was indeed decided that he would travel with the horde. So far those arrangements had still not been finalised as Mornington, who was supposedly on his way by ship from Calcutta, had yet to arrive at Madras.
As things were to turn out, on the last day of December his ship had at last been espied standing in below Fort St George; but after several further days of uncertainty, and the intervention of his brother Arthur, it would eventually be decided that Mornington would not be accompanying the Army after all, so the remaining units would at last set off westward without him, the companies of the 33rd marching in quick-time to catch up with their comrades before the campaign began in earnest.
Along with the tent, William found that he had also inherited from the deceased officer, his apparent predecessor, a native servant called Anil (a name which he later learned signified ‘wind’ in Kanarese – not inappropriate, considering that Anil’s signature dish had been a highly-spiced goat kari, or curry). William had not been expecting that at all. He had not thought about a servant, and was not at all sure that he was pleased with this development. He had looked forward to taking care of his person and his gear himself, as he had aboard Néreide, where all the officers apart from Captain Watkins had got along pretty well without servants, except at formal dinners in the Captain’s quarters. He did not like the thought of being fussed over by a strange attendant, having received the impression from casual talk which he had overhead in places such as Bath and London, and from reading the newspapers (once the Viscount and Charles, Henry and Francis had finished with them) that native servants were generally sly and untrustworthy in addition to demonstrating a tendency towards unsettling obsequiousness. He could have dismissed Anil, of course, and had had half a mind to do so, but then it had struck him at that of course the man needed the job and the little pay which went with it (William pictured to himself an elderly and possibly sick widowed mother and a unmarried dependent sister or two) and that if he could do anyone a good turn then he must consider himself obliged to lay aside his personal preferences and acquiesce in the arrangement.
However, it was soon to become apparent that Anil, in addition to being punctilious in the discharging of his duties (though definitely not obsequious), was honest, open in his manner, polite and courteous. He spoke excellent English, albeit after his own quaintly formal and old-fashioned manner (no doubt learned from a grandfather or a great-uncle who had served in the Army of the East India Company half a century before) and soon proved in any case to be good company. Those months aboard Néreide had left William very much in want of that (he had liked Bellingham and his fellow-Mids; they had been almost without exception excellent young fellows, and mature beyond their years, but he had known very well that he could not possibly make them his friends owing to the disparity in age which had existed between himself and most of them). So, wary and cautious as he was at first, William did his best to be polite and courteous back, but feared that he probably failed miserably - at least in the beginning - because his shyness and self-consciousness rendered him brittle and anxious and inclined to speak in short, sharp peremptory half-sentences which he was very afraid made him seem cold, formal, brittle - even arrogant.
Happily however, Anil, seeming to discern the reason for his awkwardness, persisted, and not even a week would pass before William would come to find that Anil had become indispensable to him. Better still, as Anil discovered that he was in the process of winning William’s favour, little by little he became sufficiently confident to offer him advice, as he had seen early on that his new officer was struggling to find his feet in the strange land in which he had arrived. William in turn was soon noting that he had begun to listen to it, and to trust to Anil’s guidance in most matters, at least in those pertaining to his relations with his fellow-officers. This was to be an immense help to him as he strove anew to re-establish his place in the 33rd.
Anil would prove himself to be intelligent and clever, knowledgeable, and best of all, wise. William did not know much about the world, notwithstanding that he had just spent the better part of half a year sailing not far short of a quarter of the way around it, in avian terms. The sea-passage had been twice the distance. In many ways, notwithstanding all that had happened during that last momentous spring and summer, he knew that he was still naïve beyond anything he had a right to be at his age, but in his short life to date he had at least learned enough about human nature to know that there were important differences between intelligence, practical cleverness and knowing a lot of things learned from books, and that all three were qualitatively different again from wisdom. Whilst these first three attributes often manifested themselves usefully in the same individual, quite often the fourth did not; but William knew that when all four desiderata were present together, then that quite exceptional individual was worth his weight in gold. Uncle Hector was one such - William had known that since the age of twelve, although at the time he could not have said why he had. It was soon to strike him that Anil was another. William, who in the light of the events at Durford before his departure had every reason to suspect that he himself, although intelligent and possessing a great store of book-learning, and having worked diligently for many years to acquire several desirable practical skills, was nonetheless deficient in wisdom, felt, even upon so short an acquaintance, that he would soon come to value Anil for his conversation and counsel as much as he would quickly learn to value him for the constant small services which Anil, with such quiet efficiency, and often all unprompted, would render to his new officer.
But on that first day, when William had been feeling lost and disoriented and confused, and half-wishing that he had still been aboard Néreide, where he had grown in confidence as he had come to understand his duties and his proper place in the ship’s hierarchy during the course of the passage – now in a foreign and exotic land which, moreover, did not heave up and down and side to side with reassuring regularity beneath his feet, but remained stubbornly immobile in a way which had come to him to feel almost unnatural - Captain Morris, the former Lieutenant Morris, whom he had instinctively and instantly disliked from his earliest days as a seventeen-year-old Ensign back in Ireland in ‘94 (possibly, initially, because Morris’s Christian name had been Charles - but then had rapidly emerged more rational and pertinent causes to dislike him) came to harass him almost at once, pushing his way unannounced through the tent-flap and catching him in a state of undress, for William had been changing out of his sea-soaked clothes and attempting to smarten himself up before he showed himself around the encampment.
“Lieutenant Lawford!” Morris said, with what sounded puzzlingly to William like sarcasm, until he remembered that Morris had always seemed incapable of opening his mouth without giving the impression that he was being deliberately sarcastic. “Welcome back to the Battalion! I hope you had a pleasant voyage.”
“Thank you, sir,” William made himself say. It was jolly hard, he thought, meanwhile, to maintain his composure whilst he was having to hide behind his wash-stand holding a hastily-snatched-up handkerchief to his crotch whilst Captain Morris was looming over him dressed in full military fig, hat and sword and pistols and all. He felt at once at a distinct disadvantage - menaced – intimidated, even. “It was – “
“I’m just off to see what the Light Company is about,” Morris continued, cutting across him. “You had better come along too, show yourself around the place.”
“What – now, sir?” William said, aghast.
“Get your breeches on first, of course. Don’t want to literally frighten the horses, haha! It’s an odd sort of business.”
“Odd sort of – “
“Punishment detail.”
William said nothing, but briefly considered. In terms of status, the Light Company was second only to the Grenadiers in the Battalion hierarchy. The two élite flanking Companies - the tall, strong, bold Grenadiers, the Tow-Rows, on the right of the line and the slightly-built, nimble and (allegedly) more intelligent men, the fast-thinking Light-Bobs on the left of it – these were the twin ideal to which the men of the remaining eight companies of the Battalion’s two wings were supposed to aspire. The Light Company was being punished? That was shameful – assuming it was in fact deserved? But he remembered enough about his first time in the 33rd to know that injustice and arbitrary unmerited punishment was rife in the Army, just as it was in British society at large. The fact that they were in India made no difference. The 33rd had brought Britain, and in particular, England, with them on those transports out of Southampton in the April of ’96.
Meanwhile Morris appeared to be waiting for him to speak - probably, it occurred to William suddenly, so that he could cut him off again, to show him who was in charge. As if William had any doubts on that score. But Morris always had had a sense of self-worth as fragile as glass, William thought, having come to see that in the months of illness and convalescence when he had had time to reflect upon his experiences in Ireland and in Flanders and then back in England before they had been sent on that disastrous voyage to the West Indies in the autumn of ’95 at the height of the Atlantic hurricane season. Morris’s habit of constantly putting down other men, presumably in order to feel better about himself, could probably be traced to that, he decided. William reflected now that he had never thought of that when he had been an Ensign in Cork, a boy of seventeen but newly arrived, and even more wet behind the ears than he was now, if such a thing had been possible. Lieutenant Morris then had been generally considered a vulgar contemptible scrub, of deficient character and deservedly poor prospects, and William had simply gone along with that consensus without really thinking about it at all. Morris, he remembered, had been rumoured to come from a very obscure background, and apparently with no connections of which it had been worth speaking. He had hardly ever seemed to have any money. Moreover, as soon as ever he acquired some (if he won at cards, say) he had always spent it at once on liquor, or on gambling upon the outcome of another game of cards, which he had invariably lost.
William, still declining to speak, merely gave Morris an enquiring look.
“Drunk and disorderly in the town last night, so Hakeswill says,” said Morris at last, sounding slightly irritated, presumably goaded by William’s silence. “Sergeant Hakeswill, that is. Brawling with locals.”
“What – Lord Clive’s people, sir?” (5)
Morris gave him a freezing look. “Of course not! Natives!”
“Oh!”
“Quite. You never met Sergeant Hakeswill, did you, Lawford?”
“No, sir; at least, I never had cause to be formally introduced, if ever I had chanced to be in his vicinity: but I have retained a fair idea of who he is, nonetheless. I recollect that I used to hear his name mentioned with quite surprising regularity, given that at the time he was still based at our Halifax depot, where he had charge of the recruiting parties. He was not with us in Flanders, I am certain.”
“Two years you have been away, is it not?” Morris said, rather pointedly, William thought.
“A little more than that, sir, I am sorry to say, although one year of that absence was taken up in voyaging to and from England.”
“Then I am quite struck that you remember him, or at least, the idea of him! But I suppose one never forgets a name like Obadiah Hakeswill.”
Hakeswill. William had heard things about him in Cork and in Flanders, and at the barracks at Warley and at Lymington, and on that wretched transport in which he and three Companies of The Pattern (that had been the 33rd’s eke-name twenty years before, in the days of the American war – they had come down from those lofty heights somewhat since that time, and were now just the Havercakes) had nearly drowned. Dark things. His heart had already sunk, as indeed had one of those transports, taking about a quarter of their strength with it.
“Best recruiting sergeant the Havercakes ever had,” said Morris.
“So I gathered, sir, when first I heard of him. But that being the case, might I ask why is he here in India and not still at home recruiting, if that is where his chief talent truly lies?“
“You might ask, Lieutenant. That is your prerogative as an officer - although in my opinion it is somewhat presumptuous of you to do so, given your junior standing and the fact that you have only returned to this Battalion - after an unconscionably lengthy absence from it, might I point out - but recently. And it is my prerogative to reply that in the opinion of some he has other talents, which it was high time he was permitted to exercise in the service of His Majesty elsewhere than in the recruiting party (1). You will meet him shortly. He was in the Sixth but I had him transferred to the Light Company after Stackpole died on the way up from the Cape. Bickerstaff has been made up from Corporal in Stackpole’s place but of course he had not sufficient seniority to run the Light Company. Specialist job, that.”
“I was under the impression that you were in command of the Light Company, sir,” William said, a shade too pointedly, having bristled somewhat at Morris’s words drawing attention to his junior status and his lengthy absence.
“You know what I mean, Lawford,” Morris said, more than a hint of displeasure in his tone. Telling himself that he must take care to place a guard upon his tongue – he had indeed been away too long - William said,
“So… what is it that you have them doing today, sir, to pay for their indiscretions of last night?”
“Various fatigues. All of it hard labour. Well, all labour is hard, in this climate. Tasks for which these scourings of the work-house and the gaol-house and the hiring-fair are properly fit. Hakeswill has taken care of the details. Some of them, I know, are lime-washing walls. Some are fetching and carrying supplies from the beach – Néreide was not the only vessel to stand in this morning. And there’s that hoary old favourite, of course - the latrine trench. Hakeswill always enjoys that one, in particular. He likes to supervise in person when he’s got the rogues digging out the jakes. He’ll be making them sweat for their sins. No doubt but he’ll have his three favourite miscreants there under his eye, too.”
Morris chuckled. The sound reminded William unhappily of rain-water impeded in its passage along a gutter choked with filth which he had once had the misfortune to encounter in an alley off Drury Lane. He still regretted those boots, which had been quite ruined. “He’s a first-rater. Make him your friend, Lawford, and you won’t go wrong.”
“I shall consider it. Sir, it strikes me suddenly that I should apologise. I have been remiss.”
“How so?”
“I have so far neglected to congratulate you upon your Captaincy.”
Morris stared at him then with what William deemed to be hostility, causing him to recoil a little. He had genuinely wished to be polite and offer his felicitations to Morris on account of his rise, and in addition had been painfully aware that he ought to have done it sooner. He had honestly been trying to make amends for his lapse. Yet Morris seemed to have taken offence. How had he offended him? “An aunt died,” said Morris, harshly matter-of-fact. “Marvellous things, aunts.”
“Sir?”
William thought suddenly of Owen Hughes, and his visit to Durford more than twenty months since. Suddenly he wished very much that it had been Hughes there speaking with him now, instead of Morris.
“I’ve never had anything handed to me on a plate in my life,” Morris said. William could not help but hear the unspoken conclusion to that sentence – unlike you. Morris had gone on, “You know that a captain’s commission in most line regiments is priced at fifteen hundred pounds, and I know you’ve been wondering how I could have afforded the nine hundred and fifty pounds’ difference between my lieutenant’s commission and a captaincy. Well, my aunt obligingly died at just the right moment and left me a modest legacy, enabling me to purchase the captaincy after Hughes succumbed to the flux. And so here I am.”
“Sir, I – “ William said, blushing to hear Morris speaking so openly of money, and feeling ashamed for him.
He had heard before, of course, that Morris was no gentleman, and that in the past he had often demonstrated distressing vulgarity of manners, but to experience it for himself - ! But he then had to admit to himself that he had, indeed, been wondering exactly that. The only difference between them, therefore, was that William had hypocritically tried to dissemble, to hide his own venal interest in such matters behind a socially acceptable façade of politeness and pretended indifference. Morris had seen through him. Morris was clever - and therefore dangerous. It struck William then that he could very well do without Morris smoking any more of his secrets. Hughes had obviously near wholly-guessed the chiefest of them, of course, but William had received the impression that, whereas Hughes had signalled sympathy and a degree of understanding, so that he had not so much minded the thought of the captain’s having an inkling, somehow the thought of Morris discovering it – which he suddenly thought very likely - was utterly dismaying. What if Morris found an opportunity to take advantage of the knowledge in some horrible way? He had already had cause to reflect that Morris was not a gentleman. Anything could happen, if that scrub found something to confirm his suspicions and decided to act upon them. Suddenly he felt his vulnerability, standing there as good as naked barely a yard from the menacing presence of his commanding officer, very acutely.
“It is all right. Hughes dies, suddenly Morris is climbing the greasy pole – bloody Morris, who no-one ever had time for! Everyone wondered. Everyone like you, anyway - the gentlemen amongst our exalted fellowship, the suave fellows in the Mess, the ones who can afford a proper decent tailor and who can always produce two or three cases of first-rate claret and champagne out of their hat if needful, and who ride to hounds when they’re at home. I suppose you ride to hounds, Lawford?”
“I have done so, sir. I was made to ride out with the Hambledon hunt for the first time when I was ten, on a pony. Of course I could not keep up with the field – the pony could not leap the hedges and the ditches, and besides, I had neither the skill nor the experience then, so I was obliged to take the longer way. It was all over by the time we arrived at the scene of the kill - the groom and I. But the, the, my father had wanted to – to blood me, as it is called. Everyone had waited, to see it. It was quite horrible. I was almost sick. But it was something our tenants and our neighbours expected. After all, my three elder brothers… but Francis has given it up now that he is ordained. Since that time I have only ever gone out because of that, the expectation, keeping up tradition, to please our tenants and neighbours. It is like hosting the Harvest Home or giving the Christmas feast for the tenant farmers and the labourers. One is obliged. And in difficult times, especially, these things provide a sense of – “
“Of course they do,” Morris said, his tone heavy with a strange burden which had seemed, to William, expressive both of envy and contempt at once.
“Nevertheless, sir, to return to my previous point - I do tender my most heartfelt – “
“I consider myself duly congratulated. Now get your clothes on, Lawford. I’ll give you five minutes.”
“Yes, sir, but…” said William, reddening.
“What? Oh, if you insist. To indulge your blushes this one time I shall wait outside. I shan’t countenance such missishness in the future.”
As if this were not an inauspicious beginning enough, things went rapidly downhill from there. It was the smell which struck William first. Was not this supposed to be a fresh trench? Had there been some kind of misunderstanding? His instinct was to come to a halt and step backwards in dismay, but Morris was still going forward at a great pace, so that option was not open to him. Matching his stride to that of Morris, then, William held his course onwards towards the fatigue party which he could see in the middle distance. He made out someone whom he assumed to be Hakeswill, the only smart figure visible in the scene presented before his eyes, in his scarlet coat and cocked hat, his clubbed and powdered hair, his brilliant white cross-belts and spotless trousers and smartly-buttoned gaiters and gleaming polished black shoes, pacing up and down beside the long gash in the ground. He could hear the Sergeant shouting indistinctly, hectoring the bent-backed shirtless hatless men who stooped half-hidden within the trench, swinging pick-axes and thrusting downwards with shovels and crow-bars and entrenching tools. Hakeswill was flourishing some kind of implement himself - a weapon, presumably - which looked to William, at this distance, like a half-pike; then suddenly the fierce sunlight of approaching noontide struck what was apparently a broad blade at its head, and a brilliant gleam as from polished silver flashed like a lightning-bolt towards the approaching party. Lawford was temporarily dazzled, the after-image persisting in the backs of his eyes for several seconds. Surely, he thought, that weapon could not be a halberd? A pole-axe? Those mediaeval monstrosities were supposed to have become obsolete well before the 33rd had embarked for Flanders five years earlier, let alone for India!
Captain Morris and Lieutenant Lawford, together with Sergeant Bickerstaff, whom Morris had ordered to accompany them – William did not know why; perhaps it was just because he could, and found the idea of being seen progressing around the camp with an entourage in attendance upon him gratifying to his vanity - came up to Hakeswill’s fatigue party, which William could see now consisted of about a dozen men, all of whom, as if by consensus, stopped what they had been about and stood upright at attention even before Hakeswill could shout,
“Officers present – ‘shun!”
William glanced briefly at the men, who all seemed to be covered in a thin layer of mud composed of sweat and the red dust cast up by their vigorous assault upon the parched soil and the dehydrated detritus of what had lain buried beneath it. At once he compared them unfavourably (and unfairly, it was to strike him later, to his shame) with the clean and neatly-turned-out sailors of Néreide, many of whom had passed their hours of leisure whilst at sea in beautifying their best Sunday clothes with coloured ribbons, and skillfully embroidering the borders of their collars and cuffs. In depressing contrast, almost all of these soldiers struck him at once as very nearly repulsive. Even had they been washed and scrubbed and in their cleanest and least shabby garments, they would, he thought, have made an unsavoury spectacle; but as things were they were, almost to a man, quite disgusting - an offence to the senses: low in stature, poorly formed, grizzled (probably) by drink and cured by tobacco and the tropical sun, and lacking any appearance of the dignity and bearing which amongst other classes of society was generally held to distinguish the representatives of mankind from specimens of the greater apes. Again, he compared them unfavourably with the sturdy well-made sailors of Néreide. (It was only later that William had reflected that the men of the Royal Navy on the whole enjoyed a far better diet than did the common soldiers, so long as the supply ships could reach them without the interference of the enemy; also they carried their provisions - which were more plentiful and varied in any case - with them in their floating barracks and were seldom at the mercy of the logistical vagaries to which the commissariat wagons which served the Army were routinely subjected).
William looked at the men again. It really was a most depressing sight. Almost none of them looked like a soldier, capable of picking up a musket and doing something useful with it. Except for perhaps two or three. That one, for example, it suddenly hit him. That one looked like he could do the job. That tall, striking, dark-complexioned youth, a young man of about William’s own age, he supposed - the one with the hard, lean, well-knit body and the long hair which William could see was black notwithstanding the regulation plastering of grease and flour-paste, which had half-escaped from the club around which it had been wound, on account of the exertions of the hard labour which he was being made to undergo. That one at least looked like a proper example of a human being made in the image of God. He might have been Adam an age or two of the world ago, newly-expelled from the Garden which had been set by God between the rivers in the Beginning and now required to earn his bread in exile by the sweat of his brow. At the moment, William thought, he certainly looked as if he had been formed from the clay which had given Adam his name. Then, impatient at and angry with himself, William exerted his will and cut off that train of thought with as much of the brutal implacable finality of the descending blade of a guillotine as he could summon. No more of that! He reminded himself that he had resolved that he would no longer permit himself to respond to such sights in ways which were disgraceful and unbecoming. He had done with all thoughts of that kind of thing. He really could have done without that unexpected apparition, however.
William now deliberately looked away and considered the other rankers - runtish, stunted and unappealing as they appeared to him, many of them barely five and a half feet tall, so far as he could make out, although it was difficult to tell whilst they were in the trench. Then the thought occurred to him that there had been something naggingly familiar about that tall dark strong-looking personable young man, but in the current circumstances (the heat, the unfamiliar faces, the stubborn refusal of the earth beneath his feet to undulate in the way to which he had become accustomed in the last half-year, the stress of being in the uncongenial company of Captain Morris when he had for so long been looking forward to that of the amiable Captain Hughes, the initial alarming sight of Sergeant Hakeswill, in the flesh at last – (O God! Hakeswill! were his eyes really, actually swivelling in their sockets as he glowered at the men? – could that actually be foam at the corner of his mouth, occasioned by his last shrill stream of baroquely inventive invective directed towards the unfortunates in the working party?) William simply could not place him. The tall young fellow just then said something sotto voce which made one of his companions smile and another one chuckle aloud (both of them, like ‘Adam’, well-made and handy-looking, William thought) provoking a renewed outburst of verbally creative rage from the Sergeant.
It struck William then that Hakeswill’s flights of furious fancy were strangely at odds with the immaculate neatness of his appearance. Then his attention returned, in despite of himself and his resolutions, to the tall dark young man, who looked, it struck William now, rather like a Gypsy. William had once seen Gypsies when he had been a child – true Gypsies, not the itinerant Irish tinkers often given that name, but a clan of the Romany people. He had come upon them camped in a clearing in Durford Woods once, when he had been about seven years old, he remembered. In his mind’s eye he saw again their brightly-painted covered wagons, their colourful outlandish clothes, the women with their long wide pleated skirts and blouses with full sleeves and gathered ruching at the yoke, and tight-fitting elaborately embroidered waistcoats, and their braided black hair, black eyes, dark skin, noses like the beaks of sparrowhawks and merlins; the gold at their ears and wrists and throats and upon their fingers, for they had carried their dowries upon their persons to display their worth and status. William remembered that he should have liked to stay and talk with them, ask them about their travels - the lands they had seen, the people they had encountered, the adventures they had had in the course of their nomadic lives - but the westering sun had told him that it had been time for his supper with Miss Turnbull in the school-room, so he had had to run back to the House. When he had arrived at home, chattering excitedly about the exotic folk he had encountered in the wood, the Viscount had reacted with dreary predictability: he had mustered the game-keepers and issued the other outdoor servants with fire-arms from the locked cabinet in his study, and the Gypsies had been driven off at once with warning shots and dogs and much shouting about Magistrates and Judges and the Winchester Assizes. That had made William sad. He had remembered it for a long time. He had felt ashamed at the treatment of these people at the hands of his family, notwithstanding what he had been told afterwards about the Gypsies being horse-thieves, robbers, poachers, fortune-telling charlatans, child-snatchers - even pagans, who, some said, worshipped blue-complexioned many-armed demons: the idols of the Hindoos, proof that they had come out of India once upon a time, even if they had been called Egyptians.
William then glanced again at the other men in the detail, all of whom were, as he had previously noted, partially-clothed on account of the heat. The sight of them - most of them, as he had noted, scrawny and under-grown and prematurely shrivelled from a lifetime of malnutrition and over-indulgence in strong drink - no doubt the scrapings of the gaol-house and the court-house and the work-house and the gutter, and those who had been overlooked at hiring fairs, as Morris had said - was generally a depressing one. He was struck by the great contrast between them and – no; William was determined that he would not permit himself to pursue that line of thought. He still could not recall why his memory had been stirred at the sight of the ‘Gypsy’. Had it been a recollection from Ireland? From Flanders? England, even? Since he had fallen ill and had been away from the Battalion from the midsummer of ’96 (although it had of course been midwinter at the southern tip of Africa) when he had been made to part from his comrades at Cape Town, until now, December of ’98, two or three days before Christmas, William’s two years as an Ensign had grown somewhat hazy in his recollection. The young private, if he had been in the Battalion then, could easily have put on two or three inches in height and the same across his shoulders since those days, so he might well be unrecognisable to him now. Most probably that stripling in the trench was in any case not the same young Redcoat, the one in the church in that town in Lower Saxony – after Donoghue and Bakewell had thumped William in the head and knocked him down and scrambled – whose solicitous touch William had so haughtily and irritably twitched away. But that swarthy soldier was - Christ, it was so bloody unfair! He had never asked for this thorn in his flesh! Once again William made an effort of will and, in his mind, turned his back upon the path upon which his nature still seemed perversely bent upon leading him.
Just then the ‘Gypsy’ said something further to another of his mates, who actually dared to throw back his head and laugh aloud. A ripple of sympathetic merriment flowed through the men in the trench. William saw the ‘Gypsy’ grinning in response to the smiles upon the appreciative faces of his companions, which were turned upon him in gratitude for his sallies of good humour, with which it seemed plain that he was in the habit of making less unpleasant and more bearable what it then occurred to William must be their generally rather grim lot. Even on days when they were not being made to carry out tasks such as this, he thought, it could not have been all that of a rewarding experience to be a private soldier in His Majesty’s 33rd Regiment of Foot; but before he could think further upon those lines Hakeswill shouted an angry reprimand. William glanced at the ‘Gypsy’ to see what he would do. The dark young man did not disappoint. There was a flash of his white teeth and his bright dark eyes (could one admit of such an oxymoron?) which seemed to William to be full of mischief and cunning and wicked fun, his long black flour-clogged hair flicking to and fro as he tossed his head to show that he did not care at all for the Sergeant’s censure. William thought of a spirited half-broken horse defying a tedious bullying groom.
“Stop that laughing! Shut your fucking pie-holes!” the Sergeant was shouting meanwhile, his face, the skin of which possessed the colour and texture of a withered lemon, twitching weirdly.
William wondered then if Hakeswill had been in the West Indies. Oh, of course he had! The 33rd had been stationed there twenty years earlier. The Sergeant looked to be in his mid-thirties, possibly a little older; he could well have been in the ranks then. That made sense. That jaundiced look - William had read about it. Yes; it was often a sign that a man had served in Barbados or Antigua or any of those notorious fever-islands and had, against all odds, survived a visitation of the Yellow Jack. Then, inevitably, William thought briefly of Mark, surely by now in Jamaica – O God! Mark! was he even still alive? He upbraided himself that it had taken him so long to think of Mark when he had thought upon the Yellow Fever. How could he have ceased to think of Mark, even for five minutes! But the sustained assault upon his senses which he had endured that day, leaving him confused and reeling, almost overwhelmed, had indeed driven Mark out of his mind, for a little space – not for long, or far, but far enough to permit the temporary admission into his thoughts, in Mark’s stead, of the black-haired dark-eyed youth.
The ‘Gypsy’’s jesting had caused the men to forget that they had been meant to be standing straight and in respectful silence before their Captain. At that moment the yellow-faced Sergeant shouted,
“Stand to attention, you bastard rabble!”
William turned away his eyes, thinking it likely that the ‘Gypsy’, with his proud attitude, who evidently did not care for Sergeants – even (allegedly) the best recruiting Sergeant the Havercakes had ever had - probably did not care for officers, either – especially not for pipsqueak junior subalterns such as he - and suddenly he felt that he was very keen never to see those dark eyes turned upon him in contemptuous insolcence. Silence fell as the detail stamped once again to attention. William noted again, now that he and Morris and Bickerstaff stood almost upon the brink of the foul-smelling trench, how the twitching Sergeant, in striking contrast to the men, was not merely smart, but faultlessly immaculate in his full uniform. He might have been on the parade-ground at the depot in Halifax. It was very hot, hotter than an exceptional day of July in England, notwithstanding that it was December (2); and yet, as Morris had said, the men had been set to a task involving hard manual labour, in the full heat of the day, with the sun, rendered a glowering dull red by the optical effect produced by the dust in the air so that it appeared to hang menacingly in the sky above them like a heated round-shot which had somehow been arrested in its trajectory, a fiercely-burning ball of fire. It did not seem reasonable to William that they should be punished so, even if they had deserved to be chastised for what had taken place upon the previous evening.
Just then the breeze from the sea began to get up and William was suddenly aware of a terrible, truly hellish stench wafting towards them now from the depths of the disinterred latrine, for they were standing upon its landward side. His stomach was still delicate after the adventure in the surf that morning, and he suppressed a sudden urge to retch. Meanwhile, his hand, as if of its own will, had begun to reach for his pocket, for he had wanted very much to cover his nose with his fine lawn handkerchief, which in the past he had always taken the prior precaution, in the course of his morning toilet, of scenting with oil of bergamot in case of situations just such as this. But - No! he thought. This sort of missish delicacy would no longer do! William stifled the urge and forced his hand back to his side.
“Sergeant Hakeswill!” said Morris meanwhile, peering gingerly into the trench as he spoke. It was about four and a half feet deep after a morning’s digging: its steep-sided walls were smooth, yet it seemed somehow, and rather disconcertingly, uneven at the bottom, as if cobbled. Those ‘cobbles’ had an unattractive aspect, was William’s first thought. Like – oh, of course that was what they were. Just then, somewhere at the back of his brain he heard Bach’s Goldberg Variations strike up of its own volition. This kind of thing had often happened to him throughout his life when he had found himself in situations which his conscious mind had been beginning to find hard to bear. The music in his head, almost as if it were an entity which had its own being separate from himself, had wanted to come to his succour. But now was not the time. The clavichord had arrived safely in his tent, thanks be to God, and he had a fairly good idea of the whereabouts of the tuning wrench amongst his gear, so later, later, all being well, there would be the consolation of counterpoint and harmony. In the meantime he must be patient and offer up his nausea and his olfactory discomfort as a penance for the unspeakable and wayward thoughts which contemplation of the ’Gypsy’ had earlier provoked in him.
“Sah!” Hakeswill barked. “I thought I told you not to dig this up, Sergeant! You were meant to have them dig a fresh one! Don’t dig there!” (3)
“Too late, sah! As you see, sah!”
“But can’t you have ‘em fill it in and dig another elsewhere? Apart from anything else, it’s in the way of the waggons in that position.”
“Ain’t got nowhere else to put one, Captain Morris, sah! Waggons’ll just have to go round it, that’s all, like they was doing before. Anyways, Major Shee agreed it would be best to clear this one out and re-use it.”
“Who asked Major Shee, Sergeant?”
“I did, sir!”
“But why trouble Major Shee with a matter such as this!”
“Major Shee shits like the rest of us, sir – I thought he might have some valuable suggestions.”
“But – but - Sergeant - ! Oh, for God’s sake! And in this weather!” Morris said, petulantly, feeling vaguely that his authority had been usurped. And was the bloody man mocking him? After all he had done for him?
“We could’ve waited for the monsoon, Captain Morris, sah! That would have cleared it out all right - and sent the contents swilling through the fort, too, no doubt.”
“So, tell me, Sergeant Hakeswill,” said Morris, after a pause during which he had attempted to regain control of his feelings, “how do you propose to dispose of – of – “
“Bullock-cart, sir. Take it into the countryside, let the locals spread it on the fields. Bumper crop next year. Good for them, good for us.”
Hakeswill of course had had no intention of doing any such thing. His plan was to tip the lot into the Cooum River at the spot where the local women habitually came to do their laundry. For no particular reason, except that they were what Hakeswill habitually called a certain word descriptive of their complexions, and that they, in his opinion, therefore deserved it.
“Well done, Sergeant. Commendable thinking.”
“Thank you, sah!”
“Never let it be said that the British only ever take from the natives,” said Morris, under his breath, before deciding to leave the subject. “Lieutenant Lawford,” he said, again in a tone which suggested that he found that particular combination of rank and name inherently ridiculous.
“Sir?”
“Forgive the tardiness of the introduction. This is Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill.” William looked at Hakeswill and suppressed a sudden powerful urge to shrink away from him now that he saw him close-to. The man’s jaundiced-looking face, he had already noticed, was constantly twitching as if he were possessed by some terrible chthonic demon which threatened at any moment to burst out of Hakeswill’s body, bringing with it all the host of Hell to terrorize the unfortunate inhabitants of the miserable Earth. The savagely insolent appraising look Hakeswill gave the young officer just then filled him with – what – horror? (Obadiah? thought William then. Who for the love of God would call an innocent newborn baby boy Obadiah? - a minor prophet responsible for the shortest book in the Old Testament, if memory served? He would have to look it up, later on, in the Bible which Mama had asked be given him. Perhaps he would find there in the sacred text some key as to the horrifying enigma which was Sergeant Hakeswill.) But he smiled at him, anyway, in a worried and obviously forced manner.
“He is sterling, as I have already intimated,” Morris went on, in a loud aside intended to be overheard by Hakeswill. “He will be a staunch help to you as you find your feet in the Company. Or re-discover them, rather.” Morris laughed briefly as though he imagined that he had just made an amusing remark. “Sergeant Hakeswill – “ he went on, “ - this is Lieutenant the Honourable William Lawford – “ (William winced at the faux-pas – most definitely Morris was no gentleman! one never made an introduction in those terms – the honorific was really only for making entries in records and addressing envelopes and the like) “ - lately come from England to rejoin our select fraternity. His grandfather is an Earl. You will not have met him before as you were neither in Ireland nor Flanders, being stationed at the Halifax depot, but he is known to others in the Battalion – and he knows of you. Lieutenant Lawford has been recovering at home following a long illness.”
“Sir!” said Hakeswill, with peculiar savagery, swivelling his eyes now in William’s direction.
“Sergeant Hakeswill,” William said. Nonetheless, he acknowledged Hakeswill in as polite and as neutral a tone as he could contrive, smiling nervously again. Meanwhile Hakeswill glared back at him with glaucous eyes, watery and filmy as two badly-poached eggs, down a bent nose which looked like it had been broken more than once - a look which quite chilled William’s soul. William knew that if he had been one of those half-naked, sweating, dehydrated and exhausted-looking men in the trench, covered in dust and – and – atomised – nameless – detritus - he would himself have been afraid of Sergeant Hakeswill. No, he thought then, even Lieutenant Lawford, in his elegant finely-tailored officer’s coat (4), his status further emphasised by the dashing sash of crimson silk loosely knotted about his waist and the costly finely-crafted slightly curved sword, or sabre, which hung at his side - which he had almost forgotten how to use (notwithstanding all those hours which he had spent in a Hall of Arms in St James’s in the Christmas holidays five years since), beyond a hazy notion that he was supposed to cut at the enemy with it, if he were either on horse-back or afoot - assuming that the enemy came close enough - and William earnestly hoped that he would not, at least not until he had had time to re-adjust to what, he had suddenly and sickeningly realised, had become this no-longer-familiar life (notwithstanding his daily parading and drilling with Néreide’s Marines for the last five months) for he did not want to be mocked for brandishing it to no purpose, like the second King George at Dettingen in ’43 - yes, even Lieutenant Lawford was afraid of Sergeant Hakeswill.
The idea grew upon William, then, that perhaps after all he had a dim recollection of Hakeswill from those unhappy weeks of worsening illness which he had spent on the Princess Charlotte from April to June of ‘96, most of the time lying uselessly in a sick-berth taking up space needed, he had been sure, by worthier invalids, and doing no good to man or any of the many beasts on board, prior to his eventual ignominious departure at the Cape. He suddenly remembered, then, quite clearly: there came into his mind an image of a yellow-faced Sergeant with a facial tic and a foul mouth, laughing coarsely at the sight of William, strapped to a litter, being bumped carelessly down the side of the Princess Charlotte. That must have been Hakeswill! So he had encountered him, then! And Charles Morris, who had doubtless spent his days en route then marinaded in rum, had forgotten! These unfortunate men in the trench had enjoyed Hakeswill’s enforced company since embarkation more than two years ago – and they knew him well enough, it came to William then, from the looks on their faces, to be more than afraid of him. The Sergeant exuded an air of latent feral violence which was now very nearly causing the hairs to rise on the back of his neck.
“Mister Lawford, sah!” said Hakeswill, obviously very well aware of the effect that he was having on the nervous young Lieutenant.
“Stand the men at ease, Sergeant,” said Morris. “I think they deserve it, in this heat, what?”
“At ease!” snarled Hakeswill, as if to say, ‘You’ll all pay for this later.’
William stiffened his resolve and again looked at the men. In the main, they were not, as already noted, a pretty sight, but he made himself do it anyway, out of a sense of duty towards them. It occurred to him that there was something amiss, wrong, out of kilter about the scene before him (apart from the existence of Hakeswill) and he realised that it had been nagging at him since he and Morris and Bickerstaff had arrived at this unedifying presentation. His recent experience with the Marines of Nériede was causing something to whisper in his mind’s ear, for there was that about them which struck him as odd and wrong. The men were missing something, perhaps, some vital piece of their kit? Not their weapons, for of course they did not need their muskets for this task. Their once-scarlet coats and their grubby shirts, neck-cloths, stocks and waistcoats were piled in a heap some distance off. He could not think what it was, and then told himself that perhaps it was not a lack of something after all - that it was simply the contrast, so extreme that it was almost obscene, between the mahogany darkness of their faces and their hands where they had been exposed to the fierce tropical sun for the better part of two years, and their mushroom-pale torsos, which he was finding so disturbing; but then at last it occurred to William what it was. It was a day of broiling heat; the men had clearly been labouring for hours - and yet not one of them had his canteen with him. The round wooden flasks bearing the Regimental number, which they should have had with them to quench their thirst and to stave off heat-exhaustion, were nowhere in sight.
“Sergeant Hakeswill,” William said then, impulsively, his voice quavering a little, as he had not thought this through – he had seldom used his voice in any public capacity in almost three years now (although he had of course had to squeak somewhat before the Marines and his designated gun-crew on board Néreide occasionally) and now, attempting to speak as an officer before the men, he was aware that he must sound ridiculous, piping - boyish, almost. He was certainly no Henry Bellingham, who, even with his as-yet unbroken tones had possessed the innate authority to make seasoned sailors three times his age jump to it when he ordered them. Hakeswill appeared not to have heard him. “Sergeant Hakeswill!” William said again, raising his voice. He saw Morris turn to glare at him. Too bad! He had committed himself now.
“Sah!”
“Why have not these men their canteens?” He knew, of course, that he had spoken out of turn. You idiot! It had been for Morris to ask that question! But Morris had not asked it, and it was done now. William saw Hakeswill and Morris exchange outraged glances (so did a nervous Bickerstaff). He saw that there was a perceptible stirring amongst the men. However, surprising, even alarming himself now with his own boldness, although blushing, of course, William nonetheless persisted. “Sergeant Hakeswill. I asked you why the men have not their canteens. They have been hard at work for several hours, and it is a hot day, after all. Indeed, shocking hot, I find it.”
“Do you, sah?”
“I do, as a matter of fact, Sergeant.”
“On account of how you has only just arrived in India, most likely, sah! Gets a lot hotter than this, so it does, sah! You’ll get used to it, I don’t doubt.”
“Sergeant,” said William, surprised and taken aback at Hakeswill’s tone, but determined not to be fobbed off by his nonsense, “please answer my question: where are the men’s canteens? Why do not they have them?”
Sergeant Bickerstaff, standing close behind him, and from long experience reading Hakeswill’s mood more accurately than William ever could at this early stage of his Indian career, said, in a nervous whisper,
“Steady on, sir!” In a low voice William said, “It is all right, Sergeant Bickerstaff. Sergeant Hakeswill is in the wrong.”
“I know he is, sir, but – “
Raising his voice once again, William said, “Why are not their canteens here, Sergeant? They should at least be piled in the shade somewhere nearby. Their clothes are over there, after all.”
“Teach ‘em a lesson, Lieutenant Lawford, sah!” Hakeswill said, looking daggers at him. He was clearly incandescently angry. Spasms of rage were undulating across his face like ripples in a pond, causing his jowls to wobble. His swede-like head, round, yellowish, with its purple scar beneath the chin (William had not yet known what that represented), twitched upon his long skinny neck; twitched again.
“That lesson being, Sergeant?”
“Labouring in the hot sun makes them build up a thirst like the Thirst after Righteousness, sir, so it’s good for their filthy souls, like it says in the Scriptures!”
William was not impressed by Hakeswill’s bizarre attempted excursion into the realm of theological exegesis.
“I can see there is a cask there, Sergeant,” he said, to his own further great amazement at his temerity, nodding towards a barrel where it stood in plain sight, not three yards from the trench in which the men had been labouring. It had a hook driven into its rim, from which was suspended a ladle. Then, astonishing himself to an even greater degree, William now said, “Sergeant Hakeswill, please be so good as to have the men given water.”
There was a pause. Hakeswill appeared shocked and Morris was quite obviously speechless with fury at having been, in his view, entirely supplanted by this upstart of a Lieutenant - one who had only arrived at the garrison fort that very day, at that. Hakeswill then glanced at Morris for confirmation of the order.
“Water for the men, Sergeant,” snarled Morris; he had confirmed William’s order because he knew that he had to, or be in breach of regulations, but he was nonetheless clearly in a silent rage every bit the equal of Hakeswill’s.
“Yes, sah!” said Hakeswill at once. “Garrard!”
“Sergeant?” answered one of the men in the trench, a stocky brown-haired young fellow of middling height who was standing close to the ‘Gypsy’ – the companion who had laughed aloud at the ‘Gypsy’s’ witticism earlier witticism.
“Water for the men, Garrard, like the Captain said!”
Garrard! Tom Garrard! With a start, William remembered! The first of the group of three Redcoats, young private soldiers, Havercakes who had come to his aid in the church that time at the tail-end of the Flanders campaign when he had been attacked by the two deserters! And that other man, the one who had smiled and chuckled – he must be Harry Drewett, the one who had been second in through the door! Those three boys, as they all four of them, including himself, had been then! But who was the ‘Gypsy’? He had been there in the church too, but William could not remember his name. (Donoghue and Bakewell, whichever one it had been, they had seriously rattled his wits with the blow to the back of his head with the stock of that musket – it had taken him the better part of a week to recover.) That trio of likely lads! And himself. They had not been with the Light-Bobs then. But then had come the disaster in the West Indies, where the Lights and the Grenadiers had been brigaded with the flanking companies of several other Regiments to prosecute the cause of British interests against the French there, just at the same time as the battalion companies of the other Regiments, denuded of their élite companies, had been confronting the French in the Low Countries. The three friends had evidently been transferred together when the then Arthur Wesley had begun the work of rebuilding the almost annihilated flanking companies of the 33rd, once the Regiment had been back in England.
Private Garrard, one of the few men of the detail (other than the one whom William thought of as the ‘Gypsy’) who could be described as in any degree well-made and personable, with a serviceable amount of muscle on him, so that William surmised that he was most probably a former farm-boy, climbed out of the trench – not an easy thing; it was after all fairly deep (some of the men, especially the younger ones, barely over-topped it by a foot, as William had already noted) and the sides offered no convenient hand-holds, so the ‘Gypsy’ laid his hands palm uppermost one upon the other to make a stirrup for his friend, who climbed up and out and went to fetch the cask.
It was plain to William that Hakeswill had had it placed where the men could see it as they laboured, in order to torment them the more as the thirst had taken hold, and had never intended to let them drink of it. He observed the scene, feeling very uncomfortable now. This Hakeswill, with his viciousness and twitching and bizarrely mendacious citing of the Scriptures to justify his cruelty, was already giving him the impression of being a man not in full possession of his sanity. Edging away from him William chanced to catch the eye of Sergeant Bickerstaff; so he turned the look into a query. In reply Bickerstaff shrugged a little and made a discreet moue expressive of helplessness.
Private Garrard meanwhile commenced his round with the water-barrel and the ladle. After a little, Garrard came to the tall dark long-haired ‘Gypsy’ - Dick! as William had suddenly and simultaneously remembered - he had no idea what his surname might be, although he was sure he had told him at the time. Images had come to him – angular, barbed, piercing things – things that stabbed and cut and transfixed – bayonets, swords, halberds - had filled his mind - but he could not remember the name. Then - Tom, Dick, and Harry! Oh, yes! He remembered now. He could not help but glance at him again, and immediately started in alarm, for the ‘Gypsy’ was leaning insouciantly upon his shovel, looking obliquely back at him! William, suddenly feeling a shock at his heart comparable to the static electrical report, almost like the blow of a cane upon his fingers, which he had sometimes experienced when touching the steel, iron, brass or copper components of Audax’s gear on a frosty morning, looked away at once, of course, but nonetheless something seemed all at once to grip him deep within; not in his guts, exactly, something less tangible than that; but it felt like whatever was the emotional equivalent of his guts; and his gaze was dragged back, compelled back; and the dark eyes of the black-haired Private were still looking straight into his own, and now there was also a faint but knowing smile upon the lips of the ‘Gypsy’, the sight of which caused William’s heart to kick and struggle in his breast, so that he feared that he was discovered. Yet at the same time, his thought was all – Oh, Mark! Mark, forgive me!
“Begging your pardon, Mister Morris, Mister Lawford,” said Hakeswill just then, as Garrard completed his round, “but time is getting on and the men must finish the work.”
“Of course, Sergeant,” said William, in his panic speaking again out of turn, and trying so hard to fight the sudden dizziness and light-headedness which had come upon him then.
The world was spinning far too quickly. It was too hot, there was too much sun, too much stink, too much which was new – too much of this tall, strong-looking dark-haired young man, who had, he was certain, effortlessly seen into his secret heart and found him out in his sin - and certainly, absolutely certainly, there was too much Hakeswill.
“We’ll be on our way, then,” said Morris. “Carry on, Sergeant.”
Morris spent another hour or so showing William around the camp and introducing him to the other officers who still remained at Madras, perhaps half of whom he remembered. He supposed that several of them, apart from Hughes, must have died since he had left the 33rd at the Cape two and a half years before – fever, dysentery, duels (forbidden under the King’s Regulations on pain of being cashiered and losing one’s investment, but which had happened anyway, and hushed-up after the event, especially if one of the participants had died) – drink, even self-murder. The usual fate of Englishmen who by war and by mercantile and imperial ambitions these days found themselves in hostile climates and inimical circumstances to which they had not been bred (concerning which the rules had barely been established at this date) and which had exercised a baleful influence upon their states of mind. Few of them remembered William, although they greeted him politely enough. On the whole they did not strike him as a particularly bad set, apart from Major John Shee, who, despite the early hour at which William had been admitted into his tent, already had clearly been under the influence of alcohol. This struck William as a poor state of affairs. Shee had made no reference to their (for William) distressing parting on the deck of the Princess Charlotte in ’96. Indeed, William wondered if he remembered him at all.
Morris had not dismissed him, so William had at first made to continue to pace deferentially behind him; but then he was detained by Sergeant Bickerstaff.
“Sir, might I have a word?” he had said.
“Of course, Sergeant. What is it?”
Once Morris had walked out of range of hearing, as quietly as he could, Bickerstaff said,
“I regret that late sorry scene you’ve just been made to witness, sir. No doubt that it would never have happened had Colonel Wellesley not had to go off to Wallajabad with the rest of the Battalion. He’d never have countenanced it! He’d have dealt properly with the matter, by the book, as he always does. It was Captain Morris’s doing – him and Hakeswill, of course. Begging your pardon, sir, but I ought to tell you, because it’s an important thing for you to bear in mind, now we don’t have Colonel Wellesley and Major Shee is – sorry, sir – but as useless a piece of donkey-shite as was ever allowed to walk out of Horse Guards with a commission in his pocket - Obadiah Hakeswill’s mad.“
William looked at him, wondering at first if he had mis-heard, then, having decided that he had not, and not knowing which to find the more alarming – that extraordinary first name (it was hardly a Christian one, he reflected, again), or the imputed mental infirmity - thought that he would address the matter of the name first. As to the rest of it, Major Shee and his implied incompetence, he would think about all that later.
“Come, Sergeant,” he said. “We had better follow the Captain. We may speak discreetly.” He stepped off after Morris. Bickerstaff paced beside him. “It is such a singular name,” said William, taking care to keep his voice low. “I have never before met anyone called Obadiah. But then, I have never ventured into the circles where Enthusiasts gather.”
“You’re right about Enthusiasts, sir. You’ll recollect, sir, Obadiah is one of the Minor Prophets, and indeed the Enthusiasts, the Chapel mob, the God-Botherers, they dote on the Minor Prophets. The shortest book in the Old Testament. One chapter. Really had it in for the people who dwelt in the rock, from what I can remember, did Obadiah. Perhaps they had cast aspersions upon his mother.”
“Sergeant?”
“Apologies, sir. I was waxing flippant. Anyway, he’s a member of some Connexion, sir. In the North, I do believe. Somewhere with dale in the name, I think I did hear Sergeant Hakeswill say, once.”
“Ah. That certainly narrows it down! Oh - sorry, Sergeant. That was, to use your term, flippant - of me! and you are in earnest, I perceive.”
“I do not know what the sect is called, or anything about it, except that it is one in which every man is his own interpreter of Scripture. They have turned every one to his own way. Isaiah, chapter fifty-three, verse six. A receipt for chaos and heresy, if you were to ask me, but then, I am only a plain man who can just about fudge my way through St Mark’s Gospel (6), if my good Mary is on hand to get me through some of the harder words.”
“I am pleased to hear about your Mary. Is she an Englishwoman?”
“Her father was English. Her mother was a native, light-skinned. Mary can pass for English, in the right sort of light. Well, British, anyway. Welsh, perhaps, or Scottish, or even Irish. She’s dark otherwise, you see, sir – hair, eyes. Anyway, as I said, Hakeswill comes from one of these lately-sprung fraternities where they set great store by the Minor Prophets. The ones the parsons of the King’s Church don’t go on about so much. It shows they’ve read the Bible, you see, sir, these zealots – or at least, they like to pretend they have. It’s a sort of boasting, showing us regular Church people how holy and special they are when they calls their kids after the Obadiahs and the Hezekiahs and the Zephaniahs, the Habbakuks, the Miriams and the Hannahs, like they was false Israelites. Not after Matthew and Mark, Luke and John, James and Andrew and Peter and Paul, Mary and Martha and Tabitha, and Lois and Eunice, like Christians. Methodies of some sort, anyway, I think, is what Hakeswill belongs to. The John Calvin sort rather than the John Wesley variety, I fear. I have a lot of time for the Wesleys, as long as they keep their heads down and don’t go around the camp preaching or shouting about how they’ve been saved; they are good folks on the whole, kind and decent and only wanting the best for their fellow-man; but those Calvins – they would send us all to Hell, if they could. I believe they like to think upon the rest of mankind outside their narrow sect being punished in the everlasting fire. They are the bad sort what give all the Methodies an evil name.”
William knew that a good many of the servants at Durford, including Jeremy Collins, belonged to a Wesleyan Connexion which met half-secretly on Saturday evenings in an old barn in a tenantless farm in the neighbouring village of Rogate, notwithstanding they attended the parish church on Sunday mornings, which they were required to do as a condition of their employment, or risk the loss of their places. Collins, a happy devotee who had been ‘saved’, having felt the invading glow about his heart (William had not been sceptical; he had been genuinely glad for him, and frankly envious) had told him about it, which William, touched, had taken as a sign of trust. (He had often wondered thereafter why God could not have sent him Grace rather than unholy longings, and he had never come to an understanding of why that should have been.) But as it had happened, he had felt a good deal of sympathy for those who had been attracted to the sensible, reasonable, egalitarian propositions of moderate Nonconformism, with its typical manifestations: good works – food-parcels, new-born care, nurture of small children and promotion of literacy amongst the poor (it was that in particular, he knew, which had led many conservative-minded persons of all classes to distrust it), and its reliance upon the comfortable words of Jesus himself rather than all that Old Testament blood and thunder and harshness towards even penitent sinners which the adherents of the more extreme sects went in for, although he had never said so to the Viscount, much less to the Rector.
“You say Hakeswill is mad, Sergeant,” he said then. “Is that really so? That is a heavy thing to say of a man.”
“As a hatter,” said Bickerstaff, without hesitation. “True as I’m walking here beside you. And probably for the same reason that hatters are said to be mad.”
“That being?”
“Mercury, sir. And the thing they physics with mercury. The sickness and the cure, they both make a man mad.”
“Oh…”
“He sees Mr Micklewhite regular for his pills, I know that for a fact. Oh, and he’s evil, with it,” said Bickerstaff.
“Oh,” William said, again. He thought of the business with the canteens. Cruelty and unreason combined in one outrageous gesture of contempt towards the men, who were already being punished more than enough, in his opinion – insult added to injury. Though this be madness yet there’s Methodism in’t, so to speak?”
“Could be, sir,” said Bickerstaff uncertainly, not being a great Shakespearian. “And you never know when he’ll strike. Any time day or night, he could come at you, round a corner or out of the darkness. I’ve seen him do it - scares the living daylights out of people, it does, when he jumps out of the shadows with that ruddy great pole-axe of his, like a bleeding executioner!”
William’s ears pricked up at that, metaphorically at least. He had of course been wondering about that weapon himself.
“And here’s a tip, sir: Sergeant Hakeswill likes everyone to know that he keeps that halberd very sharp. Or rather, he makes his servant Raziv keep it very sharp.”
“Hakeswill has a servant? Are Sergeants permitted to keep servants?”
“No, sir. Nevertheless, Hakeswill has one. He has other things he’s not entitled to as well, but nobody dares take issue, because Captain Morris allows all. Forgive me if I speak out of turn, sir, regarding your brother-officer, but Captain Morris will do anything for a quiet life because he’s – much given to his leisure - and also he prefers to avoid what you could call ‘situations’.” “Yes – I remember he had a reputation for that when he was a Lieutenant. I heard that he would leave everything up to the NCO’s – he gave them a lot of licence and privilege, whilst at the same time he treated the Ensigns in his company as if they were his fags.”
“Sir?”
“When I was at school, Sergeant, the senior boys were allowed to order the juniors around as if they were their servants, making them perform menial chores, without payment. That’s how Lieutenant Morris behaved towards those junior to himself. I was glad not to be in his company when I was with the Havercakes in Flanders.”
“Well, sir, he ain’t changed. He can’t bother himself to supervise the men properly, or discipline them. He leaves all that up to Hakeswill, and in return for being left alone, he lets Hakeswill do pretty much as he pleases. Hakeswill has a tent! Snaffled it from Captain Hughes’s gear, he did, when the poor Captain died. It should have been auctioned with his other stuff, the proceeds to be put into his estate, for his relatives, but Hakeswill just somehow acquired it. And that blessed halberd of his – !“
William had noted already how Bickerstaff seemed to be particularly exercised by the subject of Sergeant Hakeswill’s halberd.
“What of it?”
“ - it’s a relic, left over from when he was with the recruiting parties back at Halifax - he shouldn’t have it - yet he has it! And he makes his poor halfwit servant keep it sharp for him, as I said. He’s always mentioning it, too. You could ask yourself why he’d do that.”
“But keeping one’s weapon in prime order is an admirable thing, I should have thought, Sergeant?” William said, uncertainly.
“Yes, sir; but why is he so keen to advertise it, always making it sound like a threat? Halberds are out of date these days. They belong back in the time of Oliver Cromwell, if you ask me, him that cut off good King Charles’s head, God rot him. That one of his, I think Hakeswill must have helped himself to it out of the armoury at the depot on a time because he wanted something he could use to impress the crowds when he was doing his recruiting-patter – well, it is a sight more impressive than a bayonet for impressing crowds, you have to admit, even a bayonet with a Havercake stuck on the end of it, you can’t deny it. It’s a hundred, hundred and fifty years old, if it’s a day! Belongs in a museum. Older than the blessed Thirty-Third, anyway, what only goes back to the Year Two. If Hakeswill was in one of the Battalion companies he’d have a spontoon, fair enough, but he ain’t. He’s in the Light-Bobs and he should have a fusil!”
Bickerstaff indicated his own. “So why has Hakeswill still got that ruddy great thing? Captain Morris lets him keep it, that’s why. And you know what else, sir – “
“Enlighten me,” said William, warily, nervously wondering what the next revelation would be.
“He talks to it.”
“What?” William looked at Bickerstaff in sudden confusion, unsure whether he had heard him correctly.
“When he thinks no-one is listening, sir. He calls it Mother.”
“Good Lord!”
“And that’s the kind of man what has Captain Morris under his thumb. Avoid those two as much as you can, sir – perhaps try to get a transfer into another Company as soon as may be, is my advice.”
“But this is the Light Company, Sergeant! I was pleased to be granted a place in the Light Company. It’s an honour to be on the flank. I should feel it extremely should I have to go back to a Battalion company - unless as - “ William fell abruptly silent, blushing.
“Unless as Captain, which seems likely, considering what is coming soon. I know sir; but you always was a decent young officer, and you deserves better than to be with men like Hakeswill and – and Morris, especially now you’re a Lieutenant.” Bickerstaff looked right and left with an expression of exaggerated circumspection worthy of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane before continuing. “You might want to think about a different Regiment, even.”
“That’s a little impractical, at the moment, even should I ‘want to think about’ it, Sergeant. Besides, I should feel as though I were being ungrateful to my uncle, were I to do that, for he paid for my commission – he chose the Thirty-Third for me. I am honoured beyond anything I deserve to be now a Lieutenant in The Pattern.”
“I shouldn’t feel too guilty if I was you, sir,” Bickerstaff said to that, in his honest and pragmatic way. ”The Thirty-Third ain’t the same now Colonel Wellesley has been put on higher duties, I can tell you, not by a long shot. There’s mischief afoot now.”
“Colonel Wellesley no longer commands the Thirty-Third?” Here was more unwelcome news!
“Well, sir, he does, and he don’t. He’s still our commanding officer, but he’s been spending most of his time heads-together with General Harris, along of General Baird, these days, planning how they’re going to deal with the Tippoo Sultan. They’ve been huddled away together looking most intent and secret, so it’s been said.”
“You are an unwitting comedian, I perceive, Sergeant.”
“Sir?”
“In tent – oh, it does not matter. So who is now responsible for the day-to-day running of the Battalion?”
“That would be Colonel Sherbrooke, sir,” said Bickerstaff. “At least, that’s my understanding. He’s currently in charge of the rest of the Battalion at Wallajabad, so I’ve heard.”
“Well, that’s one good thing. I remember what he achieved at Schyndel.”
“That is, so long as he don’t get shunted upstairs too, in which case I expect it will be Major Shee. It’s Major Shee who is in charge of us here as remains in Madras.”
William’s heart sank still further, although he had so far barely even exchanged nods with Major Shee since his return and had as yet no idea as to his competence or otherwise as an officer had improved since he had been away - whether he was generally considered agreeable, or a tartar, or just an ordinary middling sort, neither a hard taskmaster who drove his officers to meet his own exacting standards, nor yet a slacker who shirked his own duties and cared not whether others did the same. It would be bad luck if he turned out to be like Captain Morris in that regard. William had noticed that Shee appeared to have been drinking when Morris had briefly introduced him in passing a short while since. He had distinctly caught the whiff of rum on the Major’s breath. But perhaps that had been a lapse, out of character? William hoped that it was. He wondered again how Shee behaved now towards his officers; whether time might have mellowed him. He recalled the blunt and dismissive way in which Shee had told him that he was to be put off the ship two years before. It had been (more or less) Goodbye and don’t bother to write – no thanking him for his efforts, no it is with great regret that I must inform you. Even a transparently insincere expression of hope that William might soon return to the Battalion would have been at least of some small comfort to the devastated nineteen-year-old who had feared that his career had now been over before it had even properly begun; but it had just been a summons to Shee’s quarters, and ‘Lawford, you’re to leave the ship at Cape Town: Micklewhite says you’re unfit for duty, and that you likely won’t recover within a six-month at least, so you’re to receive a medical discharge - dismissed’ – just like that, out of the blue, utterly shocking, leaving him distraught! Small wonder that his health had then entirely collapsed. He did not now relish the thought of having to regard such an unfeeling man, someone so entirely lacking in emotional intelligence, as his de facto Colonel, should Sherbrooke indeed, like Wellesley, at some point be required to command elsewhere. One should not think of one’s commanding officer as one’s nurse, of course, William told himself, or expect to be mollycoddled, but surely the better sort of officer tried to put himself in the place of his subordinates, imagine how they were feeling, carefully weigh his words to try to discern how they might sound in their ears. William had tried to approach the business of being an officer in that way, well, at least after he had begun to learn to do so from Wilfred Halston, and he intended to go on in that manner. “But as I was saying, sir,” Bickerstaff was continuing, meanwhile, “you always did seem to mean well, having the interests of the men at heart, decent young officer, as I said, even if you wasn’t always very – “
“Very what, Sergeant?”
Bickerstaff, a guilty expression upon his face, thought fast.
“Very - martial. Not in an obvious way, that is. You was quite martial, I daresay, but in a less – manifest - way than you normally see in young sparks like yourself. Martial, but in a thoughtful way. Yes, that was it, sir.“
Mindful bloodthirstiness? When you find that you are in a hole, stop digging, was William’s thought; and that of course made him think of the ‘Gypsy’. A grimace as if he had experienced a spasm of physical pain passed swiftly across his face, and Bickerstaff began to panic, thinking that his uncalled-for words had been the cause of Lieutenant Lawford’s sudden frown of discomfort.
“ - Put it like this,” Bickerstaff went on, now speaking a little too rapidly, “In those days, I couldn’t see you ever having a big painting made, you sitting up on great rearing horse with mad rolling eyes – the horse’s mad rolling eyes, I mean, sir, not yours - with boiling black clouds behind you, and smoke all around, like you see in the big exhibitions in London, waving a big sword like you was Alexander reborn, or Marlborough, or even this here General Boney-Part we’ve been hearing so much about lately, for that matter - for he does think such a powerful lot of himself, that one, from what I’ve heard; a right piece of work. We need to watch out for him, I think. The Frogs cut off King Louis’ head six years ago and it’s my belief this General thinks he’s spotted a vacancy and is playing a bit of a long game, although I could be wrong.”
William laughed aloud at that.
“Bonaparte thinks he might be King of France? Do you really believe that, Sergeant?”
“If that Irish mercenary George Thomas can become a Rajah in India, I don’t see why a French General should not become a King in Europe, sir,” said Bickerstaff, very serious now. “We live in very strange times.”
“Strange times indeed, should what you fear ever come to pass!” said William, laughing again. When he laughed, others had often noted that the sound was very far-carrying, although not unpleasant – indeed, like a peal of silver bells, perceptive people had often said. Captain Morris, several yards ahead of them, stopped dead and span around on his heel, evidently very much irritated - at Lawford’s merriment, at the fact that the officer and the NCO had clearly been deep in inappropriate familiar conversation, and at the additional fact that they had fallen so far behind him as they had been gossipping together like, as he thought, a pair of old women.
“Lawford! Recollect yourself!” he called out angrily. “Bickerstaff! Keep up, the two of you!”
“Sorry, sir! Coming, sir!”
William jogged forward now, Bickerstaff at his side.
“Do you think I could enhance my martial credentials, be more convincing as an officer, if I did take to rolling my eyes madly?” William said, humorously, in a conspiratorial tone.
Bickerstaff thought that one swivel-eyed loon in the Light Company, in the shape of Sergeant Hakeswill, was quite enough for them to have to cope with, so he merely said,
“It’s just that I should be sorry if I thought I’d made you think just now that perhaps you shouldn’t be a military gentleman after all, sir, and you’d come all this long weary way to India just to be unhappy.” Bickerstaff was worried now that he had overstepped himself again, but William only said,
“I do not think that I shall be unhappy, Sergeant. My uncle Colonel McCandless is here. I have not seen him for almost ten years. I should be pleased to see him again, if that should prove possible. I shall write to him at Calcutta and then I shall hope at least to have news of him very soon. I confess that I remember very little about my time as Ensign. Was I really any good at that, do you think?”
There was a brief silence whilst Bickerstaff first tried not to panic - again.
“You want my opinion, sir?” he said, carefully, playing for time.
“Yes, I should, truly.”
Bickerstaff considered how to respond. Eventually he said, “I used to see you, sir, being kind to the horses.” Bickerstaff the diplomat!
Everyone knew that all Ensigns really had to be any good at was standing steadfast under assault whilst enjoying the honour (were they sufficiently senior – although most of them did become so in fairly short order, given the high mortality rate amongst Ensigns) of clinging to the Colours whilst being shot at by the enemy. Bickerstaff vaguely remembered that in Flanders young Ensign Lawford had been shot in the thigh doing that very thing, and that everyone who heard that this had happened had just assumed at once that he was dead. When he had turned out to be still living, and recovering moreover, there had been some very disgruntled rankers, and NCOs as well, who had had to hand back their winnings, as they had placed good money on Lawford’s being the next snotty-nosed boy-officer to cop it. How had he dared not to be dead! What Bickerstaff chiefly remembered about Ensign Lawford, however, was that on the occasions when he had been rough-spoken by his superiors, or mocked or belittled by his peers, he would invariably go to seek consolation, not amongst the less unfriendly of his fellow-subs, but amongst the horses. Bickerstaff recalled that he had often seen William go to them in their lines, as probably, once, he would have gone to the stables at his family’s home in Hampshire, and the good beasts would suffer him to put his arms about their necks, and they would whicker at him gently as he wept (sometimes: a very little) into their manes; and then he would return to his duties comforted and cheered and newly resigned to his fate. “You’d take them apples and carrots and such, and talk to them, even though you wouldn’t speak to us men – not like Mr Fitz-Gerald, always ready with a laugh and a joke and the old back-chat, he is; he’s a fiery one all right, a right cacafuego! – even Hakeswill can’t keep him down, not now he’s been breveted Lieutenant on account of poor Lieutenant Raymond dying of the flux not long before you arrived! - but us men could see you was a decent sort – not proud or high and mighty, just shy, I used to tell ‘em. And once, back at Warley, sir, I saw you saving a kitten from a water-butt where some bastard had dumped it in – you’d heard it mewing. I remember, you pulled it out and put it under your coat, because the poor scrap of fur was almost at its last gasp, three-quarters-dead from cold, and when at last it began to perk up and show signs of life you put it in your hat and took it to the kitchen.”
“Oh, I remember!” William said, with a small laugh. “My hat probably smelled of wet cat for at least a week. I called her Malkin. I hope Cook let her be, let her stay in the warm, gave her something to eat. She would have repaid the favour once she was old enough to catch mice, I am certain.”
“Indeed, she did, sir. But we are a hapless lot here. If only the Colonel had not been seconded to broader duties. I am sorry you have returned to find us in this uncertain wise.”
“I am sorry to have inconvenienced you,” said Morris sarcastically, as they finally came up to him. “I had not meant to interrupt your no doubt scintillating conversation.”
“My apologies, sir. Sergeant Bickerstaff has been kindly apprising me of all the many changes which have occurred in the Battalion since I was last with it.”
“Has he indeed. You are dismissed, Sergeant. Go about your duties.”
“Sir,” said Bickerstaff. He saluted, faced about and marched off.
“Come with me, Lawford,” Morris said then. “Following this morning’s display, I have certain things to say to you which you evidently need to hear as a matter of some exigency.”
“Yes, sir,” said William, his heart sinking further. He had no desire to be alone with Morris, but of course he had no choice in the matter. Morris’s soldier-servant, busying himself with the preparation of Morris’s mid-day meal in a small tent pitched to the side of the larger one which evidently belonged to Morris, both situated comfortably within the shade of a large and leafy tree of a kind unknown to William, stared at him in curiosity as William followed the Captain into his private quarters, bracing himself for what he knew would inevitably be an unpleasant dressing-down. It would turn out to be only the first of several, over the weeks to come.
That evening William had not lingered in the Mess. Morris had regarded him throughout dinner with an hostile expression whenever he had chanced to meet his eye, and William had more than once seen him turn from him in order to pass a sneering remark to the officer seated upon his left. In addition, he had quickly become aware of the phenomenon to which Mark had once referred as an atmosphere, which he had found very unsettling. Clearly something had occurred in recent days to cause tension and disagreement amongst the few officers of the 33rd who still remained at Fort St George. Then some bloody Captain, Cavill or something, of one of the inner companies of the Battalion’s left wing, who had been drunk, had insulted him in a most humiliating way, which had been the last straw, so he had made his excuses and left.
After William had washed himself thoroughly all over – a third time - hair and all - with the bergamot-scented soap he so favoured (nonetheless, he fancied that he could still smell the horrible stink which had almost had him on his knees and vomiting into that trench a few hours earlier) he did something which he had not done in many weeks: he searched in his sea-chest and found, in addition to the tuning wrench belonging to the clavichord, a leather satchel, from which he drew a rectangular package wrapped in tarpaulin. This was his sketching portfolio. William found a pencil and a fresh sheet of paper, then sat with his eyes closed for a few minutes, thinking, concentrating, summoning, almost conjuring the memory. Finally he set to work. After a time he found that he had produced a strikingly accurate half-length portrait of the swarthy lean black-haired private – the ‘Gypsy’ - an enigmatic half-smile upon his lips and whose knowing dark eyes gazed directly into those of the beholder, as if issuing a challenge. It was in fact a fine likeness and character-study of the Private whose surname he still could not remember, although he had heard the ghastly Hakeswill shouting it several times that afternoon; the one whose seemingly over-familiar embrace had kept him from falling once again to the floor in the church in Lower Saxony that time: Garrard’s pal. Perhaps it had been Shaftoe. Or Sharwood? Shawe? Shawe seemed to ring a bell of familiarity. It did not matter. Nevertheless, William was more than well-aware that in making this record he had produced not so much a creditable drawing of a striking young soldier, as a telling representation of his own response to the encounter. He was, he feared, already failing in his resolve to put aside once and for all that particular morbid and unhealthy sensibility which had led to disaster at Durford.
“O God! Mark!” William said then, again: the phrase he had been murmuring almost like a prayer many times a day for months past. He slipped the drawing into the folder, wrapped it up and thrust it once more to the bottom of the chest, beneath several layers of clean linen, and then sat for some time with his face buried in his hands, until an unpleasant trickling sensation upon the back of his neck and upon his breast compelled him to notice that it was stifling hot in the tent and that he was sweating horribly. He thought of taking a turn around the encampment, for reason said that it ought to be cooler outside now that the sun had gone. That was how the weather worked in England, after all. But he was not in England. And then he recalled that his still sea-accustomed legs felt absolutely leaden from the effort of all that walking about in the noontide heat earlier that day. After five and more months at sea, walking on the unyielding land again, which stayed right where it was and did not fall away a little from under one, or else rise to meet one, like the deck of a ship did for much of the time, had been proving exhausting, and very trying on his calf- and thigh-muscles. William suddenly remembered also Bickerstaff and his warning about Hakeswill and his alarming nocturnal habits. Instinct told him that it might be wise to avoid any potential encounter with Hakeswill alone in the dark of an Indian night, especially after their uncomfortable encounter earlier that day; so he remained in the sweltering heat of his tent. Then, once he had stripped and sponged himself down and retired to his cot, all night long (when he could sleep at all in the suffocating heat) he suffered from bad dreams.
The Past: Durford, June 1798.
Tom Griffiths’s very evident hostility towards William had begun to bother him greatly. At first he had thought he would say nothing of it to Mark, for at some level he had begun to have an inkling of what might have lain behind it, although he had not fully articulated it to himself, and he really had not wanted to know details, if any had existed; but one evening, Tuesday, in the first week of June of 1798, the 5th – two days following that blissful Sunday afternoon at the Lucas’s cottage and exactly three weeks before the disaster - he had chanced to encounter Griffiths as he had walked in the long midsummer twilight upon the lawn between the two deep herbaceous borders beyond the pergola which had formed a kind of portal leading from the rose-garden; he had already lingered for some time beneath the arch of this structure, enjoying the beguilingly heavy fragrance of the roses, mingled now with that of honeysuckle and mock-orange, waiting for the dusk to deepen before seeking out Mark in a pre-arranged assignation. The floral planting here, mainly of blue and white annuals, had glowed like the flowers of some mystical realm in the last of the light, and the fragrance of night-scented stock in addition to all the other sweets had been heavenly (7). Venus in its aspect of Evening Star had blazed like a diamond in the western sky, so bright at this time that William had half-persuaded himself that it cast the faint shadow of the pergola upon the grass. It had been a moment of peace and tranquillity, of the quiet happiness of anticipation, but just then it had been a little marred by the sound of raised voices in the distance. This had seemed to be coming from the direction of the greenhouses: too far away for William to be able to make out any words, or even to recognise the owners of the voices elevated in apparent contention. William had felt a degree of irritation that servants should be bickering in such a manner in public, particularly after the incident which he remembered had occurred a year since, but he had felt no real concern. It had been none of his business. Then the ill-tempered exchange had ceased abruptly, and he had at once forgotten about it, quickly lost again in his happy dream of Mark.
William had passed through the arch of the pergola. Two or three minutes had passed as he had strolled at leisure upon the well-tended sward between the fragrant flower-beds, which in that short interval had faded from green to grey as colour had fled the world in the face of the advancing night. Then, in the deepening twilight, someone had emerged suddenly from a gap between two laurel hedges close by. William had turned, smiling in eager anticipation, expecting Mark: but it had been Griffiths. Suppressing a start, William had nonetheless politely wished Tom a good evening.
“Been admiring the roses, sir?” Griffiths had remarked, unpleasantly.
“Yes, Tom. They are very fine this year – I congratulate you - “
“They’re none of my doing. Mr Potter won’t let me near ‘em now. They’re Mark Lucas’s roses. Congratulate him if you would congratulate anyone.”
The light had still been good enough for William to make out the sour, vindictive expression on Griffiths’s face. The young man had looked at him just as he had earlier that afternoon when, returning bare-headed from his visit to Liphook (8) to Jessica and her parents - his hat had flown off who knew where at a gust of wind and had vanished into the thick underbrush which had lined the wooded road, but no matter, he had owned several more - whom he had been to see in order to make his respectful and affectionate farewells in advance of his imminent departure for India. He had thought that he had better do so, well in advance of his actually leaving, to get the awkward business over with, mainly. There had been a ruddy healthful glow upon William’s face, flushed from his ride. A light there had been also in his blue eyes and upon his golden hair, so pleasingly tousled by the wind as if by art. He had been wearing a well-tied snowy neck-cloth, a ruffled shirt of fine linen, a buff waistcoat, a beautifully-tailored coat of good dark blue wool adorned with silver buttons; white kerseymere breeches; finely-made black half-boots. In other words, William had appeared to Tom that afternoon quite as dashing a young horseman as was to be encountered anywhere in England, quite fit to ravish anyone’s heart. He had encountered Griffiths in the company of half a dozen of the other gardeners, all engaged in scything the lawn which, together with the fine mature trees planted symmetrically to east and west of the house, had made such a pleasing proscenium for the handsome Palladian architecture of its southern elevation, which had set the scene for the encounter in the manner of a painted cloth in a theatre. Mark had not been amongst the workers, for Potter had considered him too skilled and valuable now to be put to such mundane labour: he had had grand plans for Mark, and had already written to the Royal Society on his account, seeking passage for him on future voyages of discovery, once the wars were over, which could not be long now – all people of good sense were saying so. Make peace with Bonaparte, let him have all Europe, Egypt, swathes of the Americas – Bengal? – perhaps no, not India – but apart from that, the lot, if he wanted! Even bloody Australia (for Bonaparte had, strangely, recently shown interest in the lands at the Antipodes) – only let normality return! That would be good for trade and travel, and it was the popular desire - and when all had gone awry for the demonic Wellesley trinity in India and they had been replaced by more pragmatic people, the Government would fall and Britain would have a new one, a Whig one which would treat with Boney and give the people their wish – a quiet and prosperous life, albeit in thrall to the newly-risen power in Paris. Potter had kept his Whiggish sympathies very close to his chest, yet somehow, still everyone on the outdoors staff had known about them.
Griffiths had swung his implement then vigorously and with vicious intent, and then with great insolence he had looked William squarely in the face, coldly studying the fine Classic features which others found so pleasing, and appraising the open benign expression of the handsome young aristocrat, up there upon his horse, who that morning had dressed himself with such a deceptive elegant simplicity belying the very great care he had in fact taken over his appearance. William had intended to leave his fiancée and her parents with the very best last impression of him before he went away for who knew how long, probably for years. He had been so very easy on the eye as he had greeted the gardeners, with a voice to charm the ear moreover, utterly unlike any of his brothers in looks or in manner or in speech: the boorish loud Charles, the instantly forgettable Henry (9), the quiet, self-effacing and otherworldly Francis, whose features had been, frankly, plain, but nonetheless mild and sweetly pleasing. Tom Griffiths had looked upon the countenance and figure of the Honourable William Lawford, an Earl’s grandson, fair of face and form, elegantly accoutred, moneyed and privileged, who had turned the head of the one he desired and had stolen his heart away - and hatred - a killing hatred - had kindled in his eyes. Now William had seen it flare there again, in the last of the twilight.
“Tom – “ he had begun, startled and alarmed at the intensity of the naked hostility and undisguised venom he had seen there; but Griffiths had simply walked away - or at least, so he had feinted.
He and Mark had arranged to meet briefly on this evening in the gloaming, as they had on a handful of occasions now, although too sporadically for it to have become a habit. Mark had already had occasion to warn him that discretion required that they should perhaps refrain from seeing each other too frequently, and so for two days now, and with great reluctance, William had held off, although he had of course seen the sense of it. He had been greatly longing for this meeting, but now he had been severely rattled by the disturbing and abrupt appearance of Griffiths – evidence, perhaps, that, as Mark had feared, they had not been nearly wary enough. That distant argument he had heard in progress earlier had now taken on greater significance, for since his encounter with Tom, he had formed a good idea as to the identities of the participants in the quarrel, and why they had been at odds. Then Mark had appeared at last from the narrow gap in the hedge in the near-darkness, and William had told him at once about his two encounters with Griffiths that day, and about his worries occasioned by the young man’s surly petulance.
“What is wrong with him?” he had asked Mark, exasperated. “He seems to dislike me so - and his manner towards me is always almost – well – insolent – rude, even! I try to be civil to him, and treat him with proper respect, but he doesn’t want to know! It’s as if I’ve offended him in some way. Do you know why this should be? Just now when I offered him good-night he gave me such a look as if to say that he wished me at the Devil!”
Mark had sighed. He had appeared not to want to pursue the subject, but William had persisted.
“Would you rather I asked him, seeing as you do not seem to wish to tell me?” he had said. “I need to know! It is becoming unsettling.”
Mark had considered for a little then, before speaking.
“Tom and his family, sir,” he had said, at last, “they aren’t from here. When I was young, about four years old, and I had just been put to work in the gardens, pulling weeds – I soon learned the difference between the weeds and the bona-fides, I can tell you! and scaring pigeons - Tom was often rough and rude in the way he spoke to me. I did not like it and I asked Mother why he was like that. Mother told me then that Tom’s family were strangers here, for they had come down from the estate at Cannock, in the days of the old Earl, the one before your grandfather, and had found it hard to settle. The people there at Cannock, she said they aren’t like the estate people here at Durford, sir. That they’re different somehow, with odd manners. They can be difficult – surly – as Tom is. It’s said that many of them were brought into Staffordshire from the north of Wales, when Anne was Queen, because of the mining. They have coal at Cannock, so I’ve heard (10). Tom’s father wasn’t a gardener. He was a foreman at the coal-mine. He was wanted here for overseeing the practicalities of the prospecting – the digging – the pit-props – that kind of thing. For there was talk once of iron ore, on the estate here at Durford - perhaps you’ve heard of it?”
“Yes; there was talk of it. It came to nothing. The iron is all down by Beaulieu and Lymington, Sowley - Fareham and Tichbourne. Durford is too far north.” (11). I remember Josiah Hayles telling me all about it.”
“As the Viscount soon found out. Then Tom’s father died, but he and his mother and sister, instead of going back north, they stayed at Durford. Tom was taken on in the gardens. My father spoke up for him when the Viscount had seemed inclined not to want to employ him, but he soon wished that he had not, or so it seemed to me, for Tom proved sullen and difficult and did not get on with the other young men on the estate.”
“I see. But come, Mark! I cannot believe that Griffiths is as he is with me just because he comes from some – some barbarous tribe of mountain Welshmen!”
Mark had sighed then, as if he had been thinking, well, it was a good try.
“Well, then, sir. It’s because of me,” he had said, hesitantly, eventually.
William’s heart had sunk. It was what he had been beginning to suspect, on the one hand, but the reality of which he had been denying to himself, on the other. Suddenly the likely significance of the argument he had heard going on in the distance perhaps half an hour earlier had loomed even larger.
“You?”
As Mark had begun to unfold the tale, William had desperately wanted to believe his story in its entirety, that it was a full and true account of what had happened. To a large extent, he had believed it. But then he had recalled Mark’s confidence and competence on the bluebell hanger above the river, his easy familiarity with the business of managing someone else’s breeches-buttons as well as his own when lying in such intimate proximity, his knowing what to do in such a situation – and – of course –
“Just over a year ago – the rose – Tom saw, sir.”
What? Of course he had! Of course! Now it had been obvious!
“He saw what I did, that afternoon when you were asleep, sir, in the rosary. It made him wild with jealousy, because he – we - “ Mark had bitten his lip before continuing. When he spoke at last it had seemed to William that he had been choosing his words with especial care, framing them with the greatest circumspection. “A year ago – he had been pestering me for a long time, sir. I was tired of it. I wished he would stop. But he persisted, so I – I let him – just a little – I thought, if I let him - just one kiss – once - it would be curiosity satisfied and he’d leave me alone after that. But it wasn’t just once, of course. And then soon it was more than kissing – it was - touching – you know, sir – “
William had nodded sympathetically at that, even though he had not known, not really – he had never found himself in such a situation before that evening on the bluff above the river. What Mark had now been describing regarding himself and Tom had sounded a world away from that magical early May evening in the woods, or the hot June afternoon upon the snowy sheets in the rose-and-lavender-scented upper chamber of the neat clean cottage, and a good deal more reminiscent of unpleasant incidents he had been aware of in Flanders from time to time, when the men had got drunk and had insulted the women and girls of the civilian population, and the precursors of the Provosts had inevitably become involved. But he had wanted to encourage Mark to go on.
“ - And then he, he wanted to – to – go further - and I said no. That was last summer, around that time, the time of the rose. No, it was before. About a fortnight, three weeks, perhaps? Well, I told him no. He was angry, of course - but he left off bothering me - for a time. I thought it was finished. I had even begun to feel less uneasy in his presence, able to speak to him again, as a work-mate, if not as a friend. But then by ill chance, a couple of weeks later, he saw that – me giving you the rose – and he sought me out that evening, when I was working late in the smaller greenhouse, pricking out seedlings. I’d been taking advantage of the last of the daylight. He said he wanted a word with me, and I said, concerning what, Tom? to which he replied, concerning Mr William, and at once I knew it would be bad. He went on. He said … certain things. If him, then why not me? was one of them. Then, You think so highly of yourself, with your pretty eyes and your pretty face and your pretty hair and your book-learning and your music, and your refined and dainty ways – I’m not good enough for you, is that it? He was shouting by then. But you’re a fool if you really think you’re good enough for that young lordling! I said it was not like that; that I had cut the rose by accident when I was dead-heading and it had seemed a shame to cast it aside so I’d thought I would give it to you, I said, because you were in delicate health – you were, then, sir - and that sick people often found consolation and comfort in flowers. He said straight out that I was a liar – well, he was right there, I hadn’t cut it by accident. I’d chosen it for you, carefully, sir. It might have taken me a short step of the minute-hand of the clock on the roof of the stables to find the exact right one. He’d probably watched me do it. But then he went on saying other things of that sort, that I was wanton, and a hypocrite, to give you a love-token, as he called it, when I would have none of his - as if I was virtuous - his voice becoming louder the more angry he waxed. I was mortal afraid someone would hear – If I’d known his Lordship was anywhere near, and their Honours the Earl and Countess, I’d have promised whatever Tom wanted, on the spot, to make him be quiet! and followed through with it, too! I should never have wanted to cause trouble! But I didn’t know, so I raised my voice as well. I can’t recall entirely what I said. It might have been something unkind. I fear it was, for I was angry too. I think I might have said that his attentions were repulsive to me, when I should have framed my speech more gently. At any rate, by then he was in a rage. He laid his hands upon me. He said he would have me, whether I would or no. I struggled, of course. I almost got free but then at last he had me fast by my shirt. That was when it was torn. There was made a great rent in it. I thought he would have it off my back at once, he was in such a passion! I tried to calm him belatedly with conciliatory words, but he only grew more heated! I think he must have been drinking before he came hunting me out. I caught the scent of it on him. I had certainly never seen him so angry. He only left off when his Lordship, that is, your father, and the party of gentlefolk which included the Earl and Countess, suddenly appeared at the top of the walk, the one which leads to the working part of the garden, taking the air, as I supposed, as it was a fine evening, much like to this. He ran off then, and I did my best to make myself as decent as I could. I snatched up a sack to hide the tear in my shirt, but I think his Lordship saw it. Of course, it was beneath the Viscount’s dignity to question me there and then, but Mister Potter sent for us both, me and Tom, the next day. He insisted we explain our behaviour. He said his Lordship had described to him something that had sounded to him almost like a lovers’ quarrel - and he wanted an account which he could offer to his Lordship to correct any misapprehension on his part - as well as an apology. I managed to think of a story, which seemed to convince him, although I don’t know if he might not already have drawn his own conclusions after hearing what his Lordship had had to say. I couldn’t get it out of my head, that his Lordship might have misconstrued things – “
“Misconstrued?”
“That he might have thought that Tom and I were indeed lovers - when it wasn’t like that. I never wanted to be with Tom. I had let him do some things that lovers do when I should not have done so, certainly, but I had not wanted to. I had hoped that he would surmount his cross-grained passions, curiosity sated, as I said before; but letting him do those things had just provoked him to demand the right to take further liberties with me. I feared his lordship might have jumped to conclusions when he had overheard only part of what had passed between Tom and me that night. Anyway, Tom just stood there dumb as a doorknob and then agreed with the story I had come out with to explain the quarrel to Potter, of course. He had not the wits to have thought of a story himself. That’s another reason why I could never have preferred him to you, sir. Tom might as well have a pot for a pate. I think that he is just of sufficient intellect to know that, and to find it mortifying.”
“What did you tell Potter?”
Mark frowned, evidently puzzled as to how best he could explain the complexities of his craft to a layman.
“We use clay saucers for sorting seeds, sir ?”
“Clay saucers?”
“Aye. I said Tom had spent a lot of time that afternoon separating carrot seed, carrots of a special kind, purple, and yellow – originally given us by Mr Orwell, the head-gardener over at Uppark, at South Harting? as a special favour, after the Viscountess had praised them at a dinner she had attended. You have to wait two years for carrots to set seed, sir – so it was the end result of two years’ work, I said, to Mr Potter - I just said the first thing that came into my head – it was all nonsense - and that Tom had arranged the seed on saucers on a tray ready to be bagged and labelled, purple seed on one saucer and yellow seed on the other - and that I’d carelessly knocked the tray from the bench and scattered and confused the seed, and broke the saucers beside.”
“And did he believe you?”
“I don’t know, sir. It was the wrong time of year to be sorting carrot seed. Mr Potter is no fool, and he knows his business better than any of us, and so he should. I think he knew very well that I was lying in my teeth. He said he would let the matter rest - but I think he must have believed that the fault lay with Tom, sir, because he warned him then on account of his loud and furious words and the violent actions which his lordship had witnessed. Any more of that, he said, and he would see to it that Tom would lose his place. Mr Potter told me afterwards that I’d be working mainly in the hothouse and pinery, now, away from Tom. I think he thought I should be pleased, but in truth I was dismayed at that. When I work in the pinery, sir, it’s so hot that I often have to take off my shirt and breeches, so as not to faint. I thought Mr Potter had understood how things truly were regarding Tom and myself, when he accepted my cock-and-bull story without question – in his place I should have had a lot of things to say about it! - but when I asked if I might take the key and lock myself in when I was working there, for modesty, because of having to take off my clothes, he refused and told me not to be foolish, as everyone who works in the pinery has to strip, or they would faint, and it was missish to be shy about it. But my fears turned out to be well-founded.”
“Griffiths? You were still afraid of him?”
“Tom persisted after that night, hunting me out, pestering and threatening, and I became afraid to be left working alone anywhere, in case he found me; but I did not know how to tell Mr Potter without getting Tom into trouble or even dismissed. Lord, sir, I could not have done that to him, the times being what they are! He’d most likely have had to go for a soldier, and I would not wish that life on anyone, from what I’ve heard - saving your presence, sir. But there came a day when I was working in the pinery, clad only in my drawers, and Tom came in - he had begged the key from Mr Potter on some pretext, and he locked the door upon us.”
“Oh, Mark...”
It had come to him then how he had found it strange that he had never once seen Mark, when he had visited him at his work in the hothouse, take off his shirt, or so much as loosen his neck-cloth, even on the hottest days of this early summer, although the others who worked there with him had shown no hesitation in doing so. He now saw only too clearly why this was, and was aghast at himself that he had never thought to ask him about it. He ought, he had understood, to have realised that there had been some very good reason for Mark’s preferring to endure the heat.
“He’s strong and sturdy, sir. I know he’s been in fights, even here, in Durford. There was a time when he was sent to Portsmouth with a party in the course of his duties, and afterwards the talk was that he’d slunk off to a low drinking house, a – a boozing-ken, as I’ve heard they say in the London canting speech - one of those taverns where they hold bare-knuckle fights in back rooms. Tom boxes - he fancies himself the equal of Mendoza or Bartholomew! (12) Anyway, he involved himself in a brawl with some sailors from one of His Majesty’s ships, and he knifed one of them. He boasted about it, sir. So when I found myself near-naked and trapped in the pinery with him at last, and no-one near to call – I am sorry to confess that I let him have his way. I know it was cowardly, but I thought of Mother, and of losing my pay, and the cottage, if I complained to Mr Potter – and I also thought that otherwise, if I resisted – “
“You feared he might knife you?”
“I’d been afraid he would do that on the night of the terrible quarrel, when he took hold of me and it seemed that he meant to strip the shirt off me – I had a hard time trying to explain that rent to Mother! – as if Tom had not vexed me enough, I had to endure her scolding me for my carelessness in spoiling a good shirt that had belonged to my father, and that she would now have to wear out her poor old eye-sight in the mending of it! I was afraid that he would again try to - to force me - and I should not be able to fight him off if he did, and that I might be killed! And then poor Mother being turned out, perhaps with nowhere to go if Uncle John could not be prevailed upon, and no-one to fend for her, for my sister Martha is certainly in no position to do so. I don’t know how to fight, sir - I’m a gardener, not a follower of the Fancy, not a pugilist. When Tom caught me in the pinery I was afraid that if I tried to fight him off again he might get so angry this time that he really would kill me! And that’s why I gave in to him at last. I didn’t want to die, because, now Father is gone, I have to look after Mother, and my sister, Martha.”
William had at first not known how to respond.
“And you didn’t tell anyone afterwards?” he had said, at length. “Mark, you should have told Potter!”
“I couldn’t, sir! I couldn’t tell anyone. It was too shameful! Think of it! What if it had been you in my place! What would you have done? Anyway, after that, that was when I … I am not proud of it. I began to pay attention to Tom’s sister. Keziah. I thought, if it seemed…”
“Oh, Mark… that was - ”
“Unworthy, yes! I’m more ashamed of that than of the other, sir, really, because it pertains to Keziah, who is an excellent sweet girl, much like my sister Martha, and not at all like Tom – it is disrespectful to a, a, female. I don’t care so much about what Tom did to me, but I feel ashamed at how I have used Keziah - and I know she has been expecting me to ask her to wed, for many weeks now, since New Year’s Day, in March, Our Lady’s Day, when we kissed under the old oak in front of everyone. Everyone has! And so I shall, sir, of course, once you are gone into the East Indies. That is the honourable thing to do.”
“I am glad of it,” William had said, because it had occurred to him that it had been the right thing to say, although his heart had shuddered and grown suddenly cold at the idea of it.
“Keziah is a good girl and I must not disappoint her,” Mark had gone on. “But I just wanted Tom to back off for good, and that was the only thing I could think of. But now, I fear he suspects once again that what I finally granted to him unwillingly a year ago, when he first grew suspicious on your account, I’ve now granted to you, willingly. Anyway, it seems to me that all of this is why he’s angry with you.”
So, Mark had been Griffiths’ lover, albeit a reluctant one (according to his account) and had broken from him, deeming the risks of a continued affair too great, most likely; but then, along had come William, a lover far more to Mark’s liking - one who, moreover, had been shortly bound for India, so there would have been no chance of a continuing dangerous liaison. But there had still been Griffiths: a violent man, not much blessed with sense, short-tempered, angry at rejection, jealous – vengeful?
“Mark… do you think he could be a threat to us?”
Mark had thought about it. There had been a long pause.
“Tom is a strange one, sir,” he had said at last, frowning in perplexity as he had continued to consider the matter. “He broods. He harbours grudges and ill-feelings. He might be no Joseph Banks, nor Charles Linnaeus neither, but he is good enough at his work – I should say, at least that part of it which involves little more than pulling a wheel-barrow of manure, perhaps - yet the world has not treated him kindly. He’s already six-and-twenty, yet he has not advanced in life. Mr Potter has tried to help him find a better position; he has introduced him to seedsmen and nurserymen, who are well-placed to know of any gentleman of consequence who might be in need of a gardener, both in this county and further afield; but all to no avail. People whisper about him that he should have risen to a position of greater responsibility and moreover that he should be married by now - although he is not one for marrying, I know that. Perhaps it would be better for him if he were to go away to London or one of those places where men of – that - kind can hide safely amongst a great mass of people – the great towns of commerce now arising in the North – or go to the Colours – to sea, even. The longer he stays here the more angry and despairing he becomes, and the more dangerous he is, sir, to himself - and to other folk.”
“I meant, dangerous to us. Now.”
“I think, sir, we need to be very careful from now on,” Mark had said, at last, quietly. “Even more careful than we have been up until now.”
“Careful! If we’re any more circumspect we shan’t be able to be together again at all!” William had said, unable at last to keep the tone of bitter and intense frustration from his voice.
“As you say, sir.”
“It’s less than six weeks now until I must sail for India! Then there will be all the time in the world for circumspection.”
The anticipated brief meeting in the June twilight had already lengthened to half an hour, and it was apparent that after what had passed they could not now simply part with nought but a brief embrace and a fleeting kiss only. Both Mark and William had realised, at the level of some buried stratum of understanding, that they had now needed to seek a more profound comfort in each other against a coming time when the only solace would be memory - inevitably fading memory. It was then that William had said – suddenly, impulsively, for the first time in his life, and the last - never would he say it to any other, not even to his wife – until she had lain dying in his one arm twenty years later, and completely meaning it, although not in any usual sense of the phrase - “I love you – “
There had been another lengthy pause, so lengthy indeed that he had begun to fear that he had offended Mark - but at last, and very quietly, Mark had said,
“Then come, sir; I know a place.”
“A place?”
“Where we can sit down together and hear the nightingale sing.” (13)
That had been the first time in the seed-store, couched upon that very convenient stack of clean sacks that had just happened to be there. They had kissed sweet and comforting as they clung to each other, and the nightingale’s song had that night been one of heartbreaking loveliness - but Tom Griffiths, who had noiselessly returned to spy upon their meeting, now, silent and cunning as a poacher, dogging their steps, had marked for destruction this humble sanctuary which they had made their last refuge.
The Nightingale
As I went a walking one morning in May, I met a young couple so far did we stray, And one was a young maid so sweet and so fair, And the other was a soldier and a brave Grenadier. And they kissed so sweet and comforting As they clung to each other; They went arm in arm along the road Like sister and brother. They went arm in arm along the road Til they came to a stream, And they both sat down together, love, To hear the nightingale sing.
Out of his knapsack he took a fine fiddle; He played her such merry tunes that you ever did hear! He played her such merry tunes that the valley did ring, And softly cried the fair maid as the nightingale sings. And they kissed so sweet and comforting As they clung to each other; They went arm in arm along the road Like sister and brother. They went arm in arm along the road Til they came to a stream, And they both sat down together, love, To hear the nightingale sing.
“Oh, I'm off to India for seven long years, Drinking wines and strong whiskies instead of strong beer, And if ever I return again 'twill be in the spring, And we'll both sit down together, love, to hear the nightingale sing.” And they kissed so sweet and comforting As they clung to each other, They went arm in arm along the road Like sister and brother; They went arm in arm along the road Til they came to a stream, And they both sat down together, love, To hear the nightingale sing.
"Well then", says the fair maid, "will you marry me?" "Oh no", says the soldier, "however can that be?" For I've my own wife at home in my own country, And she is the finest little maid that you ever did see.” And they kissed so sweet and comforting As they clung to each other; They went arm in arm along the road Like sister and brother. They went arm in arm along the road Til they came to a stream, And they both sat down together, love, To hear the nightingale sing.
End-Notes
1. There was a persistent rumour that on his final recruiting expedition Hakeswill had kicked a recruit to death on the march to the depot after the youth had fallen down in the road in what, according to the account of one witness, had sounded very much like an epileptic seizure; so, as the 33rd had been about to embark for India it had been deemed wise to transfer Hakeswill into one of the 33rd’s companies and so get him out of the country before the young man’s relatives could catch up with him. In recognition of his undeniable record as an effective recruiting sergeant he was placed with the prestigious Light Company.
2. It was probably about 86 F (30 C). The hot season was not due to begin until March.
3.Homage to a different Bernard C. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yShvgXZQBTs
4.William had had to don his new, best, uniform following his plunge into the surf, having sensibly worn his oldest gear before disembarking from Néreide.
5. Lord Edward Clive, son of Robert Clive. Governor of Madras, 1798-1803.
6.’Receipt’ in this sense is an archaic form of ‘recipe’. St Mark’s Gospel is the shortest and plainest account of the life and teachings of Jesus in the New Testament.
7.‘In no place have I ever seen such accurate attention to olfactory joy as at Uppark. Every room has its depot of odours for permanent use while every window has its Orange Trees and Tuberoses and admits perfume from the surrounding beds of Mignionette and Heliotrope till the whole is an atmosphere of sweets.’ Humphry Repton, 1815. Uppark is the model for Durford Park.
8.Liphook lies six and a half miles north of Durford, so it would have been a pleasant, easy journey for both horse and rider, perhaps less than an hour either way.
9.In later life it was often said of Henry that the Earl of Winchester’s coach had drawn up at Carlton House and nobody had got out.
10.They had. The seam which ran beneath Cannock Chase lay at a greater depth than elsewhere in south Staffordshire, which presumably is why the first Earl of the fourth creation had felt the need to bring in specialist miners from Wales, which was not far away.
11.This would have been when Lawford was perhaps six or seven years old. Viscount Petersfield had discovered the failings of his steward and had been seeking a way to repair the damage to his finances, which had already received a body-blow owing to the sudden collapse in value of East India Company stock in 1772 (a circumstance which had recently caused him to regret the arrival of another Spare arrow, Francis in his quiver, only a year since – ‘Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant: even so are the young children. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.’ Psalm 127:5-6). The iron-ore prospecting, Plan A, came to nothing, of course, as Josiah Hayles had advised him that it would; so Plan B was put into operation. The exchange of William’s future happiness for cash in any case, in the circumstances surrounding his birth, had seemed to the Viscount to be only fair recompense for the expenses he had already incurred in raising him.
12.Champion British bare-knuckle fighters of the later eighteenth century.
13.Mark is making reference to a folk-song, The Sweet Nightingale. William’s mention of going to India probably put it into his mind. The couple in the song assuredly do more than sit down together.
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