All in Scarlet Uniform (Napoleonic War 4) (2 page)

Truscott was nervous, although only a close friend like Pringle would have spotted the signs. His fellow captain was a precise man, as punctilious in his duties as in his private affairs. His left sleeve, empty since he had lost an arm at Vimeiro, offered the readiest of reminders that this was no act. Every few minutes Truscott unconsciously reached up and rubbed the buttons on its cuff. The rest of the time his right hand kept clenching and uncurling. Captain Truscott did not care for this business, but was determined to perform his role as second properly. Thinfaced and always inclined to frown, the injury had left him drawn. Yet now Billy recognised a deeper concern in his friend’s features.

‘Tell him …’ Pringle’s voice cracked so he paused for a moment, took a long breath, coughed, and then continued steadily. ‘That is to say, thank him for his concern, but please assure him that there is no inconvenience. I can see well enough without my spectacles, should the rain become worse.’ Pringle was tempted to add that he had marched and fought through rain, sleet and snow last winter, while Tilney and his fellow light dragoon were snug in England, before deciding that there had been enough insults. More importantly, Truscott would not approve of such levity, and so once again Pringle acted a part and made himself speak with appropriate gravity.

‘You are sure?’ Again the simple fact that the question was asked betrayed Truscott’s doubts about the whole business.

‘Certain,’ said Pringle, his voice steady.

Truscott looked at him for a moment and then gave the slightest of nods. Without any more words, he turned and marched over to speak to Major Tilney.

‘You’re a bloody fool, Billy,’ said Hanley, who remained beside him.

‘Thank you, I am obliged for such a kind sentiment.’

This time Pringle could not help grinning, in spite of the solemnity of the occasion. Truscott would not approve, but Hanley cared little for convention. A man who had seen his dreams of becoming a great artist shattered, Lieutenant Hanley was forced to join the army because he had had no other choice. He cared little for convention and seemed baffled by most ideas of honour, but he had fought beside Pringle and gradually adapted to life in the regiment. More recently he had shown a talent for intrigue and gathering information about the enemy, and Billy suspected that his friend was more naturally spy than soldier.

‘Delay matters,’ urged Lieutenant Hanley, tugging his heavy boat-cloak more tightly around his neck. ‘That way Williams can sort out this mess himself.’ Like all the others in the little field the lieutenant was dressed in civilian clothes, but he was the only one who nevertheless did not obviously look like a soldier. Hanley was a handsome man, his skin tanned by the years spent in Spain before the war. He was a shade taller than Pringle, and more than a year of campaigning left him looking fit and strong, but he was still generally dishevelled and inclined to slouch.

Pringle shook his head. ‘Too late for that. A blow was struck.’

‘Yes, by you, in fact!’ Hanley’s smile faded when he saw his friend’s hard look.

The last days were a confused blur of searching for an errant girl and then a light dragoon officer. It was little more than a month since his detachment had returned to England from Portugal, and Pringle’s initial euphoria at coming home had rapidly faded. He was alive, but found peaceful England duller than his dreams. Billy Pringle began drinking once again, as heavily as ever he had done before the regiment went off to war. The responsibilities and shortages of campaigning had made it easier to be sober. Pringle chafed at idleness, far more than the others, and so the sudden flight of their friend Williams’ sister gave him a purpose and he had embraced it like a lover. Williams, Truscott, Hanley and Pringle had all gone hunting for the girl.

The trail proved easy to follow, and led them separately towards Cheltenham, but it was Pringle who arrived first, spoke to her, and decided to act. He should probably have waited, and might have done so if he had not felt so alive for the first time in weeks. Billy took Miss Williams with him and realised that he was drinking far less, although with hindsight it was probably still more than was wise in the circumstances. Lieutenant Garland of the 14th Light Dragoons was hardly in a better state when Pringle confronted him. Billy thought that he spoke calmly and with courtesy, but suddenly Garland was yelling and then damned Pringle as a liar. The light dragoon was flailing his arms in agitation, and when Billy thought that the man was aiming a blow his instincts took over, only the blocked swing turned into a punch which rocked the smaller dragoon back on his heels. Major Tilney and several other cavalrymen were all there to witness it. A gentleman could not simply strike another without consequences, but nor could he call another man a liar, and so it was Pringle who challenged in defence of his honour. Truscott arrived later that evening, and he had negotiated the business by meeting Tilney several times during the next day. No apology was forthcoming and the whole thing rapidly assumed an inevitability.

‘It is my affair now.’ Pringle managed a thin smile. ‘Or would you have me meekly submit to a caning at the hands of that schoolboy?’

Garland was not yet nineteen, his cheeks shaded with wispy hair as he desperately sought to emulate the luxuriant side-whiskers of older light dragoons like the major. The lad clearly idolised Tilney, and Pringle suspected the latter had played a prominent role both in insisting on the duel and in the original affair. The two cavalrymen had met Kitty Williams and her older sister Anne at Bath, where the girls were acting as companions to the elderly Mrs Waters. Pringle only knew a little of what had followed from Anne’s modest account. Flirtation led to an understanding, and repeated excuses for clandestine meetings where Kitty was unaccompanied, and after the sisters’ departure there was secret correspondence, aided by Mrs Waters – that ‘silly, wicked woman’, the girls’ mother had said sharply. Then just a week ago Kitty Williams had sneaked away from her home and vanished, leaving a note to say that she was going to seek true happiness and would soon have splendid news. By the time Pringle found her that dream had died, for she was red-eyed from long weeping and almost at the end of her meagre funds. As he coaxed the story from the girl, Billy guessed that Anne’s suspicion was right, and that there was a deeper reason why Kitty Williams feared to remain a spinster.

‘It would not do,’ said Pringle after a long pause. ‘Besides which, Bills would kill the little cuss.’

Hanley frowned. ‘No great loss to anyone, I suspect. And yet do you not plan to do just that in a moment?’

‘I might.’ Pringle spoke slowly as if mulling the matter over, but in his heart he was sure. ‘But I will more likely merely nick him or miss altogether. With Williams it would be a certainty. Bills is a bad man when it comes to fighting.’

Hamish Williams was taller than both Hanley and Pringle, who were themselves big men. His mother was a widow, the family lacking funds and influence, and so, when her son determined to be a soldier, he had joined the 106th as a volunteer, carrying a musket in the ranks. A gentleman volunteer lived with the officers and served with the soldiers, waiting to perform some act of valour sufficient to win him a commission. Williams managed this feat in Portugal in ’08, survived unscathed and then later won promotion to lieutenant.

Pringle had seen Williams fight, and heard tell of other deeds he had not witnessed. Shy, awkward in society and pious, Hamish Williams was an unlikely friend, but had become a very close one to the other three. Billy had two older brothers, and was fond of them both, but since they had followed their father and grandfather and gone to sea at a young age he could not claim to know them as well as he knew his friends in the 106th. His own poor eyesight had kept him out of the Navy, and after Oxford even his already disappointed father had to admit that Billy was unsuited to the Church. Pringle decided to become a soldier, and now he found it hard to imagine another life.

He felt that he was a more than decent officer, and after four battles and twice as many skirmishes he was experienced and considered himself to be capable. Even so, he had to admit that Williams had taken to battle more naturally than any of them, and indeed seemed almost at home in the chaos. Williams was a very good officer, but he also killed readily and with considerable fluency, and Pringle was beginning to understand how rare a thing this was. Billy doubted that he had ever taken any man’s life, although it was hard to be sure. More than a few times he had fired his pistol into the chaos and smoke and perhaps one of the balls had struck a mortal blow, but more probably it had not and he preferred to believe this. Williams fought with a skilful savagery that was almost chilling.

‘Then let him slaughter Garland,’ suggested Hanley.

‘And how would that help Miss Williams?’

‘Avenge the slur on her good name by righteous punishment.’ Hanley’s disdain for honour was obvious. ‘I can remember you helping me to lie like an Irish horse-trader when we needed to stop Bills from meeting Redman.’

Pringle chuckled at the memory. ‘Dear God, that seems like an age ago.’

‘It would not offend me to be called a liar.’

‘Well, my dear friend, with all due respect, you are a liar,’ said Pringle.

‘Yes, and a damned good one. So what has prompted such a change on your part?’ asked Hanley, who expected the world to be open to reason.

‘Ask me after it is over.’

‘You may not be here to ask!’ Hanley was studying his friend closely and his face changed, suggesting sudden enlightenment. ‘Oh,’ he said after a moment, ‘there is something else. Do I take it that Miss Williams is in pressing need of a husband?’ Hanley’s natural cynicism matched Pringle’s view of human nature, but in this case he had a particular sympathy for he was the child of an illicit liaison. Neither of his parents had wanted anything to do with their bastard, although to be fair his late father had provided an allowance, and so he had been raised as best she could by his grandmother. For all his disdain for convention, Hanley felt the stigma deeply, and had no great wish to have it inflicted on another child. ‘In that case, try not to kill him too much!’

‘Gentlemen, you may take post!’ Truscott’s voice carried across the clearing.

‘Good luck, Billy,’ whispered Hanley as his friend strode towards the tent peg marking his position. Earlier on Truscott had paced out the distance and the elegant Tilney had driven the pegs into the damp earth, and then looked at the traces of mud on his gloves in evident distaste.

Two subalterns of the light dragoons stood at the edge of the field, chatting away in voices that were nervously loud, until the major glared at them. With them was a civilian doctor, a hunched, ill-favoured fellow with the red face and prominent veins of a hard drinker. Otherwise secrecy was preserved and no one else had come to watch the encounter.

Pringle stood behind the peg. The seconds had agreed on an exchange of at least two shots at a distance of twenty paces before apologies could be offered, since if the argument was easier to resolve then it should already have occurred. The range was at the upper end of convention, and suggested that neither Tilney nor Truscott wanted to make a fatal wound too likely. Principals were not allowed any say on such matters. Nor was Pringle permitted to reject the right to take the first shot. It had been agreed, and that was an end to it. Garland had given first offence and so should be the first to stand fire. Major Tilney was the first to insist on this point. Billy Pringle was not sure whether this marked him as a slight or extremely close friend to the young lieutenant.

Tilney was also willing to permit Truscott to seek assistance when unable to perform his duties. Hanley moved to his side as the captain selected a pistol from each of the two identical cases of matched pairs. Then the lieutenant took these and loaded them in turn, while Major Tilney charged the other pistols for his principal. Neither man did the other the gross discourtesy of watching him as he went about this task.

Pringle and Garland waited at their marks. The rain slackened, although both men were already thoroughly wet, their hair flattened on to their heads. Garland stared boldly at his opponent, and, not to be outdone, Billy met his gaze. Neither man showed any sign of animosity, and Pringle wondered whether the light dragoon was genuinely without malice or simply dull-witted. Billy envied the cavalryman his silk shirt, and wondered whether it was warmer than his. Fragments of silk were easier for a surgeon to pick out of a wound than the threads of cotton. He knew that his father and brothers, like a lot of RN officers, always tried to wear a silk shirt and stockings with their uniform on a day of battle. Soldiers less often had the time for such careful preparations, or the capacity to carry so full a wardrobe on campaign – excepting the Guards, of course, for the ‘Gentlemen’s sons’ always had plenty of servants and pack animals to shield them from the worst rigours of campaigning.

Pringle let his mind wander rather than think about the coming ordeal. Then he noticed Garland start slightly when Tilney brought him the loaded pistols, and it was pleasing to see a trace of anxiety in his opponent. For a moment Pringle almost felt sorry for the boy. He could not blame him too much for wanting to tumble Kitty Williams. The three Williams sisters were pretty, with fine golden hair just like their older brother, and Kitty was a bold flirt of seventeen summers with the shape of the very ripest young Venus. Pringle doubted the seduction had been entirely one-sided, and part of him thought that bedding the little minx would be a damned sight more pleasant a use of his own time than this challenge, but that would not stop him from putting a ball in the randy little dragoon. Williams was a friend, and on brief acquaintance he had developed a great esteem for Anne, a taller, somewhat serious girl closer to her brother in character, and more Juno than Venus in shape. It was not just a question of desire. Billy was inclined to desire any half-decent woman he saw. There were feelings for the eldest Miss Williams that he had not yet had proper chance to understand. That prompted the absurd thought that it would make it all the more unfortunate if he got himself killed this morning, but it was too late to change anything.