A Good Man (48 page)

After that, Booker squanders an hour inspecting the troops on his prancing horse and subjecting them to a patriotic address. He emphasizes repeatedly that haste is imperative if they are to reach Stevensville by ten o’clock and keep their appointment with Colonel Peacocke. No time must be lost; the pace of march must never slacken.

They set off in column. The morning sunshine bakes their shoulders; their boots raise a chalky dust from the roadway that turns into paste on their sweaty skin; they itch in their wool winter-issue uniforms. The fields are greening, showing the first shoots of wheat, oats, and corn. The branches of the maples and oaks hold an emerald fog of new leaves. It all shimmers vibrantly, eerie as a mirage.

Within a mile, the first men begin to flag. He turns back from the head of the company to encourage stragglers not to lose contact with the rest of the troops. Some are squatting, drinking water from ditches. When he orders them to leave that muck alone, it will make them sick, someone impertinently replies they must fill their bellies since they have no canteens to fill. Several pay him absolutely no mind, keep lapping up water like dogs. Not quite open mutiny, but on the brink of it. At last, with curses and threats, he gets them on their feet and moving again.

eight="0em" width="1em" align="justify">Then he spots Pudge, sitting on an oak stump at the side of the road.

“Lieutenant Wilson,” he says, “why have you halted?”

Pudge croons, “The grand old Captain Case, he had ten thousand men, he marched them up to the top of the hill –”

“Damn you!” he says. “Get to your feet!”

Pudge doesn’t move. “You know, Wesley, at this moment you put me in mind of my father. It was Pater’s idea I join the militia. Threatened to cut off my allowance if I didn’t. He believed a dose of discipline would do me a world of good. But I do not care to be done a world of good. And if you persist in trying to order me about, you will find you have bitten off more than you can chew. I won’t be corrected. Not by the likes of you.”

Just then the advance shivers to a halt. At the top of a ridge, two hundred yards ahead, shakos are bobbing up and down on the ends of musket muzzles, the agreed-upon signal to indicate the enemy is in view. The dancing shakos do what he can’t – they bring his recalcitrant lieutenant to his feet. “It must be a mistake,” Pudge says. “Booker said the Irish were at Stevensville.”

With the halt, the green dream they have been tramping through vanishes like the dust they have been raising. Everything falls into hard, sharp focus. He leaves Pudge contemplating the jigging shakos and runs to the head of the column to receive the company’s battle orders. Colonel Booker dispatches scouts to estimate the enemy’s strength, then gives company commanders their assignments. Armed with the best weapons, Spencer carbines, 5th Company will take the centre and lead the advance, while 1st Company is deployed to the left and 2nd to the right, to form skirmish lines. The rest of the Queen’s Own are placed in supporting, flanking, and reserve roles. The advance is sounded.

He moves the 2nd off the road, takes out his telescope and searches for the enemy. In the far distance, at the top of Lime Ridge, he can just make out the banners of the Irish Republican Army, gold harps, gold sunbursts on an emerald field, a swarm of green-uniformed men throwing up defensive earthworks. He fans the 2nd out in skirmishing order across a pasture dotted with thickets, Pudge anchoring one end of the line, young Ensign Hardisty the other, he the middle. Grazing sheep are scattered everywhere in front of them, white as remnants of snow in spring. But this is no spring sun the 2nd is advancing under. Its white blaze crimps his eyes into a defensive squint as he leads his men forward, doing his best to feign confidence and authority as his heart thuds dully and the blood roars in his ears like a windstorm.

It’s open meadow for five or six hundred yards ahead of him – but Pudge’s wing of the line has a clump of maples on its right and is wandering off course, nearer and nearer to it. Pudge is doing nothing to keep his men in formation; he simply toddles along behind them, looking aggrieved and put upon as he decapitates thistles with his sword. He shouts a warning to him. “Lieutenant Wilson, take care! Keep an eye on the wood! Look sharp!”

Pudge gives a cavalier wave of his sabre, and as he does the thicket of maples sparks as if it were a flint struck with sl. Pudge’s shako flutters off his head. His hand touches his hair in disbelief. The next instant, he dives down behind a tussock of grass. His troops drop to one knee and fire at will, Enfields booming, stringing blue ribbons of smoke.

Case orders a volley from the centre. Down the skirmishing line, Ensign Hardisty’s men raise their muskets and open fire. Muskets emptied, the 2nd freezes as clipped leaves lazily spin down from their target. A ewe is bucking and bleating on the grass, a bright spreading stain of red on its wool, the rest of the flock bounding away in a terror that could be mistaken for high spirits. In that instant, he imagines his own death in a sun-soaked meadow, his blood soaking the sweet grass, the wild ox-eye daisies.

The 2nd provides a stunned audience for three Fenian snipers who burst from the maple bush and hotfoot it back for their own lines. Nobody touches a ramrod. Nobody fumbles for powder or ball. Then somebody begins a hip, hip, hooray. All the company joins in, brandishing their muskets, tossing their shakos in the air. The cheering lifts Pudge up from his patch of grass.

Faces shine with relief and pride. His untried, exhausted boys have stood their ground, held their own. “Well done!” he shouts. “Reload! Stand to while I confer with Lieutenant Wilson!” Passing down the skirmishing line, he hands a word of encouragement here and there to the grinning militiamen. When he reaches Pudge, he takes him by the elbow and draws him out of earshot of the ranks.

“Granted the skirmish line is a loose order of advance,” he says. “But not so loose that an officer skulks along behind the formation. You
lead
the line, Lieutenant Wilson. That is your place. And you keep a watchful eye on the terrain.”

Pudge’s forefinger is worrying away at the hole in his shako; his eyes are turned to the centre where the battle is heating up. The snapping reports of the Spencers are like bursts from a string of firecrackers. A drum throbs insistently.

His second-in-command does not seem to have heard a word he has addressed to him. “I would advise you to tuck us in behind the 5th,” Pudge says quietly. “Well behind them.”

“Tuck us in behind the 5th? Are you mad? We are to guard their flank, see to it that the enemy doesn’t turn them, roll them up.”

“The 5th have the repeaters,” Pudge says, as if that is reason enough to ignore the order.

“And you are suggesting we hide behind them? Keep well clear of the action?”

“In the confusion of battle – how should I put it – orders are often misunderstood, often difficult to execute.” Pudge gives him a knowing look. “Consider this my personal appeal to you to take advantage of this well-known military phenomenon.”

“You and your personal appeal can go to hell,” he says, voice shaking with anger.

He knows Pudge is furious as well, recognizes it from the calculated fashion with which he draws a brandy flask from his pocket and sips it, from the evenhanded coolness with which he speaks. “You know, lst year when you fell enamoured with the lady from New Orleans and decided to no longer keep company with your old friends, they used to lament your disloyalty. I consoled them as best I could by pointing out the impossibility of turning a pig’s ear into a silk purse.” He caps his flask. “I take it that this display of high ideals, of high purpose, is an attempt to forget who you are. But Wesley, the son of a vulgar woodcutter, of a man whose trouser cuffs leak sawdust on the floor of every drawing room he enters, remains what he is despite all attempts to mimic his betters. Lord knows, I made a valiant try to make a gentleman of you, but it was like trying to clean the Augean stables.”

Despite the calmness with which Pudge speaks, he can feel a sour, violent hatred emanating from him. It is a struggle for Case to collect himself, keep his voice level. “So I am a poser? And what of you? The
beau sabreur
with the Code Duello in his pocket.” He taps Pudge’s sword scabbard with his finger. “Lieutenant Wilson, I know how you have longed to test your steel. The moment has arrived.”

He strides away from Pudge to where his men wait, raises a telescope to study the progress of the 5th. There are tremors in his hands; he has trouble bringing the glass to bear. But at last he steadies it. The 5th are stalled for the moment behind a rail fence, facing a pocket of stubborn Irish resistance. He sweeps the telescope over what lies before the 2nd, a stretch of low ground covered in marsh grass, backed by a fieldstone wall. Beyond the wall is a copse. From that copse a puff of smoke emerges, briefly hangs in the air. It cannot be a single sniper. A sniper would not make that mistake. There must be a body of Irish in that wood, and one of them, unable to restrain himself, has fired too early. When the 5th dislodge the Irish before them and resume their advance, they will pass very near that wood where an ambuscade has apparently been laid.

He feels a moment of panic, indecision, then orders his men to go into a crouch, advance as swiftly as possible under cover of the tall marsh grass, and rendezvous behind the fieldstone wall. And they do, without being detected by the Irish, whose attention seems to be focused on the 5th. Panting, trying to catch his breath with his back propped to the wall, he realizes he has committed the gravest of errors. In his rush to protect the flank of the 5th, he neglected to send a messenger to warn them of a possible ambush. And at this very moment, he can see the Queen’s Own spilling over the rail fence, beginning to move forward. Even if he dispatched a runner now, how would a messenger locate the commanding officer in that ragged wave of men?

There is no choice; the 2nd must immediately attack the wood, root out any Fenians hiding here. He issues his orders. His most junior officer, boyish Ensign Hardisty, is to remain behind the wall, the position of greatest security and safety. Pudge will lead his platoon to the right and take cover behind a cord of wood curing on a small rise. As company commander, he will take the left, place himself directly between the Irish in the thicket and the 5th.

His plan is simple and desperate. On a signal from him, Hardisty will loose a volley on the copse, poke a stick in the Irish nest of hornets, prompting them to return fire. When they do, he and Pudge will attack from the left and right with bayonets fixed, catch the Irish with their muskets emptied.

Turning to Hardisty, he inquires urgently, “Do you understand, Ensign? You are not to fire until you receive my signal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you, Lieutenant Wilson, do you have your orders clear? Go quickly to the rise, wait until you see the Irish return Ensign Hardisty’s fire, and then fall on them.”

Pudge’s crisp, firm response surprises him. “By God, I shall. With a will.”

“If you wish, I can lend you Sergeant Jimson for the attack. The man is solid as oak.”

“Sergeant Jimson is not required. I would prefer not to have him.”

“Five minutes to reach the hillock, and not a second more.”

“Good as done.”

While he and his men crawl through the marsh grass, the stalks rustling and brushing their faces, they disturb a crowd of butterflies, small scraps of brightness that flutter above their heads; one lights on his sleeve, rests there, opening and closing its frail orangey-copper wings. He looks down at it, hears the angry gavel of gunfire from the 5th slamming repeatedly, over and over, trying to calm his fear by drawing air into his lungs in time to the serene movements of those wings. His breathing needs steadying. He feels an urgent need to urinate. Then, suddenly, the butterfly takes flight from his forearm, flutters, soars like a kite that has jerked free from his fingers.

They reach their objective, a trench dug to drain the field of spring runoff, slide down into it, squat in stagnant water spotted with little islets of green scum. This time when the men drink, he does nothing to stop them. Instead, he too gulps handfuls of warm, fetid water, splashes it on his burning face and neck. Fear has sucked every drop of moisture from his mouth. It is all he can do to restrain himself until the men are finished drinking. Hidden to the waist by the water, he pisses in his trousers.

Bobbing his head above the lip of the ditch, he looks towards the stack of wood on the hillock. No sign of Pudge yet. The crackle of the Spencers is skulking closer and closer. There is not much time left to act. He counts to a hundred and raises his head above the embankment again. Still no Pudge. Ensign Hardisty is waiting expectantly for the order to loose a volley on the Fenians.

Striking his thigh with his fist, Case swears under his breath.

“Sir?” says phlegmatic Sergeant Jimson, a man perplexed by any sign of emotion in a superior.

“Fix bayonets,” he says. There is a click of steel as the men lock sword bayonets to the barrels of their Enfields. “Boys,” he says, “when I go, follow hard. Do not hesitate.” He flags an arm at Hardisty, whose troops rise up behind the wall, level their muskets, and discharge them with a heavy thump. Smoke billows, writhes, twists down the wall in tendrils of black ivy.

The Irish return the favour; muzzle flame spatters the shadowy thicket.

Pistol in right hand, he paws at the greasy side of the trench with his left, struggling to pull his boots clear of the grip of themud. He hears himself screaming, “Charge! Charge!” All around him bayonets spring from the earth, a wicked bristle and glitter of light. Up over the embankment they scramble. He is running hard, the dark wood heaving before him, jouncing in a crazed dance, the burning sky listing and yawing, raining glassy shards of light into his eyes. He feels his knee twist, stumbles. Private Jones tears by him, shrieking as if his bayonet was dragging him towards the Irish against his will.

The wood barks gunfire. A body strikes the ground beside him, rolls and skids. He storms into the trees, branches slapping his face, twigs jabbing at his eyes. Dim shapes whirl and stagger, the green of the Irish uniforms blending with the green of the foliage. Shrill shouts, the din of muskets, some Irishman shouting “Mary, Mother of God! Mary, Mother of God!” He shoots at any figure that doesn’t wear a shako, swinging his revolver from right to left.