Ram; being the tale of one Ramillies Anstruther, 1704-55 .. (9 page)

"They'll come," Frank Edwardes promised him. "Old Dick won't miss this, if there's a sound pair of legs left to his men. Ha!" He pointed to an approaching column, from which segments were breaking off to their respective regiments. "I hope the old fool's feet are as sore as mine. We've marched fifty miles—"

But already Ram was away to meet the latecomers.

"Odd's life," Dick greeted, "so you've caught up at last, hey?"

"Your honor!" Oh, it was good to see Father!

"Take post in rear, sir." Dick was a disciplinarian. Not even Ram could march beside him while he led Howe's elite toward battle. That there was anything amiss in allowing the child to be this close to danger didn't occur to him. Wasn't Ram his son?

Bowing happily. Ram dropped back to the company's tail, where Dick's batman was leading Son. Just ahead marched Sergeant Hodges and Jotham Dace, and soon the latter called: "Your pony's foundered, boy. Off and lead him or he's ruined." Obeying, Ram handed the reins over to the batman, but Hodges, sure the trotting boy could never keep up with the long-striding men, hoisted him onto his shoulders. " 'Steeth, I'll be glad to fight for a change," he grunted to the lad. "Two hundred mile we've marched since Tournai, and me with me toes out of me boots." He carried Ram until the company had rejoined the regiment.

Dick went to report and learned that the fight was hard. The French had built earthworks in the woods so that the attacking

Allies were suffering enormously. He received his orders and came back. "Grenadiers—forward!" He led toward the woods.

Ram would have followed, but Edwardes grabbed him. "That's no work for babes. Stay you here."

"I'm going to Father," Ram said, near tears, but was told to stay or be ordered to the rear. Miserably he watched the grenadiers disappear into the spouting forest fringe,

Frank eyed him speculatively. Should Dick be killed, what could be made from this brat? Those mock letters . . . there was a brother who might pay well to learn that the child was actually an unknown stray. Yes, there could be juicy pickings.

Captain Gaston Villebonne joined him. "We're almost the last of the reserve. This will be a costly fight." He noticed Ram. "Le pauvre, he's too young to be here."

"Dick doesn't think so. But for me the child would be up there with the old fool and likely trying to throw a live grenade."

"That Dick!" the Huguenot shrugged. He watched a grenadier returning on the double. "Here's a messenger from that same Dick." He and Frank went to meet the runner.

Their backs turned, Ram raced for the forest. Once within it, he entered an inferno of noise, flame and horror. Trees were crashing down, others were being hit deafeningly by bullets; the undergrowth was afire, sending up blinding, choking smoke. It was a scene to shake a veteran, yet he went on, though more hesitantly and with chattering teeth. For a while he was lost, until he heard Dick bawl: "Light your grenades!" There came explosions, screams, oaths and cheers. Then: "Charge!"

Through the thinning trees Ram could see it all: Father was already on a parapet, struggling with a French officer who was clutching a flag. Jotham was close behind Father. Then a big Frenchman was helping his officer to fight Father! But Jotham's clubbed musket came down on the big man's head while Father's sword went clean into the officer! As Ram crept forward, he saw many men fall, but what froze his gaze was a nearby redcoat who was propping himself against a tree. He was far too short to be wearing a grenadier's cap, barely taller than Ram himself, though his body was big and wide.

Sergeant Hodges! And trying to hold himself erect on the stumps of what had been his legs! He was moaning, but he recognized the

boy. "Can't carry ye no more, lad . . ." He fell forward, twitched and lay still in great pools of his own blood.

Ram screamed then and ran, ran blindly—anywhere to escape. In blind terror he crashed into a tree and stunned himself. At last, blubbering and shaking, he turned and went back toward the earthwork. "Don't let Father be hurt!" he kept muttering.

But by now the surviving French were streaming rearward into the plain to find refuge behind their massed cavalry, against which the Allied horse were charging. Dick, on the earthwork's parados, watched the combat before turning away. "Corporal Dace!" he bellowed, and at last Jotham came to him.

"I'm no corporal." Jotham protested, studiously insolent.

"Hodges is dead so Roat's now sergeant," Dick said patiently. Then: "Damn your eyes, put knots on your shoulder. Corporal Dace!"

"Ye Camp Cateau Cambresis ye June 28 1712 Most Hon'd Gran

I tak quill to write I am wel. His Honor is too. Ye English don't ffight but we are in ye camp. I swim in ye riwer with Carla but shee is sily to mislike getting her hair wett. Sjt Dace says my spelling" ....

Ram scowled. "How'd ye spell improves?"

"La, d'ye ask me, Sir Scholar?" Carla tossed her dark curls. "You, with a head full o' book-larnin' asking a lass what's got none."

He leaned over to give her a shove, but instead spilled ink on his red breeches. "Damme, ye jade, Jotham says you learn right well— for a girl. How d'ye spell 'improves'?"

"I-m-p-r-u-v-e-s," she stated primly. "All know that, stupid."

"Stupid yourself!" He pulled her hair and they wrestled until, flushed with exertion, by common accord they leaned back against the earthen bank and rocked with laughter.

They made a pretty pair: Carla, now past nine, was developing curves that drew many a man's gaze, as did her large dark eyes and rich curved lips. And Ram, in the three years since the Malplaquet battle, had shot up like a stalk. Freckle-faced and with his auburn

hair shoulder-long, his expression in repose was oddly stern for one so young; but when he smiled it was with a flashing gayness that promised soon to stir many a woman's heart. He could jabber in Hol-landish, German and French and knew choice obscenities in all. He was perfect in foot drill and tactics and he was a born rider.

It had never occurred to Dick to teach him more. But the tutor in Jotham— Sergeant Dace now—had at last rebelled against the boy's running wild among letterless men and whores. So he'd taught him some Greek and more Latin, how to write a fair hand and to have some slight knowledge of mathematics.

"Here's Jotham," Carla said, waving. Of all Meg's "protectors," he alone had been kind to her, so she loved him—next to Ram.

Thanks to Meg's cooking, Jotham had grown almost sleek and, though he still cursed Dick for forcing him into the army, he was not ill content. And if he never discussed his past with adults, he'd often tell the children of his undergraduate days at Oxford, or his years in Virginia, though never admitting he'd reached the colony as a transported felon, having stolen from a noble lord to pay a gambling debt.

Such was the hard-bitten soldier who now tied his borrowed mount beside Battle. "All off-duty English are confined to camp, so the major wants ye back," he announced, gnawing on a hunk of ration bread. He spat some out. "Bah, this stuff grows more foul each day!"

"Why aren't we sieging Quesnoy with the prince?" Ram puzzled.

"Because our betters plan a separate peace with France. That's why the cursed politicians dragged down Marlborough and put Duke Ormonde in his place. Were old John still commanding, we'd be in Paris now and the war ended. Come, let's get back."

"Mother says the beef's never been so bad," Carla contributed as Ram swung her up behind him on Battle. "Why do they starve us on such rotten fare?"

"To break our spirit, damn 'em!" Jotham remounted. "I can't speak for officers, but the private men won't stand it. We have our honor too, and we don't dare look our allies in the face, lest tomorrow we're ordered to fight 'em as French alliesl"

They had reached high ground overlooking the camp of the British and British-paid mercenaries. Southward rolled French Picardy, rich and untouched by war. A swift Allied stroke could pierce its thin defenses and gain the enemy heartland. But Eugene was away at Quesnoy and the British contingent lay inert.

"Christ's Mother, look!" Jotham pointed to a long wagon train winding south from the camp. "Ormonde's sold us out already! There go our foragers into Picardy itself. And, begod, they're escorted by French horse!"

"Oh, Jotham!" Ram was old enough to realize what this meant.

White-lipped, Dace took a dog-eared volume from his pocket and handed it to him. "Here, 'tis yours."

The boy stared at it, wide-eyed. It was Codrington's translation of Quintus Curtius' Life and Death of Alexander the Great. Jotham had rarely even let him touch it, though he had often read chapters of it aloud to him. On the flyleaf was written: "To Room-mate Jotham. From his ever admiring Richard Steele. Merton College, 1692." Mr. Steele, it seemed, was now ver)- famous.

"For me, truly?" Through Ram's pleasure ran a thread of bewilderment. "Jotham, why d'ye give it me?"

"Mayhap I'll not read it much longer. Come, gallop, lest we meet any of our allies and they slit our treacherous throats!"

So on a July dawn Lord Hertford, new colonel of former Howe's, sat his horse at the regiment's head, with Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong and Dick beside him. Germans, Huguenots and Danes gathered to watch, bitter-eyed. Here a man spat and turned away, there a guttural taunt was thrown. In turn, the ranked English muttered aloud in their bewilderment and shame.

"Stop that man!" Dick spurred back along the column, sword drawn, for a private had sprung from the ranks and caught a sneering Dane by the throat. A low growl came. Would the major cut down the Dane? No! He was beating the Englishman with the flat of his blade. "Back, or I'll run ye through!" As the man obeyed, a collective sigh arose from the regiment and the hostile onlookers.

The colonel gave the order, the drums rolled. Hertford's moved off to take its place in the miles-long British column that was turning away from its allies and marching out of the war.

Searing taunts hedged its way and Ram, riding Battle in the rear, felt the humiliation as hard as any. Soon he cantered forward and checked beside Dace.

"Jotham, what does Terfidious Albion' mean?"

"That English traitors have sold England's honor! Damn you, leave me alone!"

The march ended; the regiments broke off to their hnes, tents went up, cooking fires blazed. Hertford's officers ate silently in their mess marquee, all with faces averted. Soon from outside came angry mutterings that swelled swiftly into a roar. Dick slid a finger between cravat and throat. His head ached.

Individual voices pierced the tumult. "Down with the fat old bitch! ... To hell with Queen Anne! . . . Damn all politicians! . . . Curse Ormonde! . . . God save the Old Corporal!"

Lord Hertford picked up his sword and moved to the entrance, Armstrong and Dick joining him, the rest grouping behind them. Before them surged wild-faced men, many coatless, more with weapons and equipment. One grenadier raised his flintlock by the muzzle and smashed its stock off on the ground. "Carried it five year 'gainst the French. Now I break it. God damn the Queen!"

"Let's root out the buggerly officers!" someone yelled. "They're all tools of the traitors!"

Hertford moved forward. "Major, order the men fallen in."

"Sergeants, fall in the companies!" Dick bellowed. His eyes fell on Dace and briefly they exchanged glares of sheer hatred, then the noncom turned, barking: "Grenadiers—fall in!" Other sergeants followed suit and the mob congealed once more into a disciplined unit.

Hertford indicated the man who had broken his musket. "Fifty strokes at the halberds. And fifty for one man per company. Ecod, I'll have no mutiny in my regiment!"

But floggings couldn't halt the resentment, and when Ormonde proclaimed on massed parade that war between Britain and France had ended, there were catcalls and yells. Because the commissariat broke down, the army was half starving before it was broken into garrison groups on the coast. Hertford's went to Ghent.

Many officers hurried to England, hoping to sell their commissions before a glut ruined prices. Others, like Dick, offered their services to Prince Eugene, to the Dutch, to the Elector of Hanover and other Allied leaders.

As for the men, not only did their rations continue bad, but they were not even paid. Dick, temporarily in command while Hertford and Armstrong were in England, was at his wits' end to maintain discipline, for theft, violence and drunkenness were rife.

"Who can blame the poor brutes?" he half defended. "Why should they starve in a town full of rich, overfed Flemings?"

There came a morning when not 200 of Hertford's were present on parade. The rest, he learned, were absent from quarters.

A staff aide galloped up. "Sir, the Duke of Ormonde's compliments, and please to march your regiment at once to the town square, fully armed. Half the garrison's broke out in mutiny!"

At that same moment, Jotham was haranguing some 3,000 mutineers. ". . . If we fail, they'll hang us. But we've three just demands: To be treated as Britons, to get our regular rations and pay, and to serve again under Old John, in peace or war!" Amid thunderous agreement, he jumped down. "We have 'em, they can't turn back now!" he exulted to his co-ringleaders. "We close the barricades the instant the convoy's safe in."

To bring the mass to action had meant endless goading by these few embittered noncoms and privates who were men of fire and enterprise. The "convoy" they awaited were food wagons, army and civilian, they had detailed parties to seize. Though ammunition was short and they had no cannon, they didn't expect a real fight. Their demands were so just, they counted upon concessions by Authority and a return to obedience by themselves.

But, lest the new ministry which had ruined Marlborough be ruined in turn, and he with it, Ormonde knew he must crush the outbreak. So every regiment and gun in Flanders was ordered to converge on Ghent and cordon off the mutineers' camp.

Dick, as acting colonel of Hertford's, attended the council of war. At once Ormonde proposed to bombard the camp into submission. But many senior officers were not only of a different political stripe from him, they bluntly refused to support such action against men they'd led in fifty fights. At last Ormonde conceded that grievances about pay and rations would be rectified. As to Marlborough's reinstatement, all knew that only the Queen could do that.