The Last Horseman (34 page)

‘He’s alive?’ Edward whispered.

Radcliffe nodded. The boy sighed. ‘Good. I tried to save his brother. I couldn’t. It was Belmont’s men...’ His voice trailed away at the memory.

‘Don’t think about it now,’ Radcliffe said, not wishing the wounded boy to become more distressed.

Edward’s voice was husky with emotion. ‘It was terrible, Father...’

‘I know, son, I know. You will heal, you’re young; it’s something you will deal with. I promise you.’

Edward squeezed his father’s hand. ‘No. No... I don’t mean my arm, I meant... I killed... two men. Shot them... It was the foulest thing. I feel... so ashamed.’

Radcliffe held back the tears that stung his eyes. The boy seemed settled for a moment. And then he began to whisper. Radcliffe lowered his head so he could hear.

‘With sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines by their thighs – ah, my brave horsemen!

My handsome, tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride...’

Radcliffe looked uncertainly at his son.

‘It’s a poem,’ said Edward.

Radcliffe’s voice was tinged with regret. ‘I don’t know any poetry.’

Edward looked at his father for a moment. ‘I know.’

The boy’s eyes closed as he drifted into sleep and, as his breathing settled, Radcliffe could no longer hold back his silent tears.

*

Ghostly outlines of bell tents squatted in their orderly rows as here and there a dull glow from an oil lamp softened the darkness. One of the braziers still offered warmth from its embers, its light half-obscured from Radcliffe’s sight by Evelyn Charteris who stood beside it, arms folded, a shawl around her shoulders. She glanced in Radcliffe’s direction as he left the field hospital, his escort behind him. The soldier kept a discreet distance between him and his charge: there was nowhere for his prisoner to run.

Radcliffe stepped closer to her. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘A man forgets a woman’s tenderness.’

They walked side by side towards Radcliffe’s quarters. ‘You’re tender with your son.’

‘It’s not the same as coming from a woman.’

She gave an almost imperceptible sigh. ‘I’ve seen women without it. Usually because of what men do.’ She caught her breath, aware of the condemnation; and then smiled regretfully in the hope of softening her words. ‘This war punishes so many.’

Radcliffe glanced back at his escort. The man was far enough away to be out of earshot. ‘It occurs to me we could have met under different circumstances. One day I might have looked at your letters and seen the woman behind the words. I’d have been drawn to finding out more about you.’

She shook her head gently. ‘What I do makes me self-centred. Which is not a particularly good thing.’

‘Probably not when it comes to relationships. But it’s a duty one has to others. Is that so self-centred?’

The uneven boardwalk made him take her arm to steady her, but he did not remove his hand when they passed the bumpy planking. She felt a slight pressure as he almost whispered to her: ‘I have... responsibilities that I cannot neglect. There are parts of my life that cannot be brushed away.’

‘I understand,’ she said carefully, letting him know with her eyes what both of them sensed. Whatever this moment between them meant, despite its innocence, something more was trying to be expressed.

‘All I’m saying is... if things were different...’ Radcliffe said awkwardly.

How sad, she thought, that behind their words these unfledged feelings would never take flight.

‘Things are what they are,’ she said quietly.

They were getting closer to Radcliffe’s hut. The urge to say more was undeniable, and who knew when they might have this time again. She let her hand rest on his. With no regard to the soldier a dozen paces behind them, she raised her face to his and kissed his cheek. They embraced gently, holding the moment for a few shuddering heartbeats.

‘Sometimes I wonder which is the cruellest – what others do or what we do to ourselves,’ she said.

He was glad of her tenderness and wished he could ease her into the dull glow of his room and his bed. Instead, he nodded in understanding.

She stepped back from him. ‘It’s cold. I think I’ll go back. Your son is strong. Don’t worry about him.’

‘I’ve seen men maimed before. Some can’t live with it.’

‘He will. Don’t doubt him. He’s got courage – the wounded men told me what he did. If you have that inside of you, I believe you can face anything. He’ll come through it. I know he will.’

Radcliffe glanced back to the soldier and felt gratitude well up inside of him. The older man was a non-combatant and had kept a discreet distance, even half turning away, plunging his face into cupped hands to light a cigarette. He had given them as much privacy as his duties allowed. Radcliffe knew he had to take advantage and betray the man’s trust. He held Evelyn close to him and whispered, ‘The Boers are riding into a trap. I feel I owe them. Do you know anyone who can warn them?’

He felt her body stiffen. She was suddenly more nervous, and glanced back at the guard.

‘I can’t help the enemy. That’s not why I’m here,’ she answered quietly.

It was a gentle rebuke, and he knew the risk of asking her had failed. He nodded, knowing he had clumsily tested her loyalty to her own countrymen. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’

Yet in that moment she seemed to be his only chance to pass a warning to the commandos. How many times in a courtroom had he manipulated the emotions of a witness? To do so could risk resentment and hostility, but there were times when it touched the conscience of those being questioned.

‘Why was Sheenagh O’Connor shot dead by a British Army officer? Because she smuggled medicines? You don’t kill a woman for that. You arrest her. What was it she knew that threatened others and caused her to be shot in cold blood? Whatever the answer is, the simple fact is that she tried to save women and children under your care. She didn’t have to do that. She risked everything. Get a warning out and stop the slaughter.’

She hesitated, conflicted. ‘I can’t.’

Radcliffe knew he had lost his appeal, but then the gods of war gave him an unexpected opportunity to secure her support. Two stretcher-bearers carried out the young wounded Boer and took him towards the guardroom and the cells.

‘What are they doing with that boy?’ she asked.

‘The guards tell me they’re going to shoot him as a spy tomorrow morning, because he was wearing a British tunic.’

She held back the outrage that rose from her despair. ‘If you need to go... to warn the commandos... I’ll stay with Edward. I’ll care for him. But I cannot do so myself.’

He had lost the gamble. There was no questioning her compassion, but, despite her own fight against the authorities, her loyalty to her own people could not be challenged.

He barely kept the fear from his voice. ‘I understand. But there’s something else. I think they’re going to execute Edward for treason.’

Dawn.

Brevet Major Lawrence Baxter squinted across the purple mountains which had not yet felt the warmth of the sun. It was a cold morning and he shivered, reaching his fingers beneath his buttoned tunic to tug at his shirt and pull it closer to his throat. He had been ordered to hold his company to the rear and then go up the line to rejoin his regiment. He knew that Captain Belmont had led a successful operation against a Boer commando and the prisoners were being taken to prisoner-of-war camps, and that the troops in this camp, several thousand strong, would soon be taking part in the next, decisive assault against the enemy. However, he had no idea that Joseph Radcliffe and Benjamin Pierce were here. Nor did he know that his boyhood friend, Edward Radcliffe, lay wounded in the field hospital. Baxter had led the detail to arrest Major Taylor, and neither Sergeant McCory nor Private Mulraney had seen Radcliffe under escort in the general’s office. The vagaries of war sometimes allowed men to find lost friends on a vast battlefield but could also keep apart men who were billeted within a few hundred yards of each other.

And now his duty demanded an act of random killing that neither he nor his Irish soldiers had any taste for.

He watched as Sergeant McCory marched out a dozen men. Mulraney and Flynn, now recovered from his wound, were among those chosen from a short-straw lottery. The open veld reached towards the mountains that now began to change colour. Golden light speared through the ragged-toothed peaks and Baxter closed his eyes for a moment and let the sun warm him. The slow, subdued
lef’, right, lef’, right
chant from Sergeant McCory as he brought the firing squad into position crept up behind Baxter. What soldier could want this duty? he thought. In the guardroom each man had been relieved of his personal weapon and issued with another. A round was already loaded in the chamber. One of the dozen rifles held a blank cartridge. This ‘bullet of conscience’ allowed each of the men chosen for the firing squad to believe that they had not fired a fatal shot.

McCory brought the men to a halt, and then spaced them by arm’s distance, as if preparing for a parade-ground inspection. He stood them at ease and waited stoically. Thirty paces in front of their extended line was a chair. Carpenters had hammered in two stakes in front of each of the chair legs, and then bound chair leg and stake together, to stop the executed man from flying backwards from the impact of the firing squad’s bullets.

Baxter clicked open his father’s timepiece.
Sweet Jesus, let’s get this over and done with. This is no way to kill a man, let alone a youngster.

The guardroom door opened and an army padre led out the two stretcher-bearers who carried the wounded boy. He was moaning in between his tearful cries, in a language that none of the men who waited to kill him understood. He had been strapped on to the stretcher, but his head turned left and right, as if trying to see where he was being taken.

Out of the corner of his eye Mulraney saw that he was just a boy. ‘Mother of God, Flynn. It’s a lad we’re doing away with this morning,’ he whispered from the corner of his mouth.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Flynn.

‘Keep it down,’ McCory’s voice instructed under his breath. ‘Steady now. The lad’s fearful enough. No need for him to hear you cursing. See to it we do our job proper.’

Major Baxter waited as the solemn procession moved towards the execution chair. The priest and the stretcher-bearers were followed by the officer in charge of the detail, a fresh-faced new lieutenant, a recent replacement. Baxter watched him closely. The execution was not to be mishandled, which was why Baxter had been ordered to attend. The young officer stared intently at the chair, glancing nervously back and forth from it to the wounded boy. Most officers bore their family name like a medieval banner. Honour was all. How you behaved under duress was the mark of the man. Baxter glanced at the rank of men he had fought with these past months. Some were replacements; most were not. The rascal Flynn dared a glance in his direction.
Fecking hateful thing this is, major. The colonel, God rest his soul, would despise what it is we’re doing.
Baxter imagined the words, and had they been spoken Flynn would have been correct. But Colonel Alex Baxter would have taken the duty just as seriously and seen to it that it was carried out in good order. Had he lived. Lawrence glared back at Flynn, forcing him to avert his eyes. Baxter strode forward. The boy was struggling and the young lieutenant was dithering.

‘You,’ Baxter said to one of the soldiers from the stretcher-bearer detail. ‘Bind his ankles. You, hold him,’ he ordered the second man. It seemed the padre was about to protest at Baxter’s intrusion. His lips parted, but he held his peace now that they had control over the boy. Baxter wished to Christ they could gag him and stop him crying out. But they could not, of course, and thankfully when they got him into the chair he pressed his head into his chest and the fabric of his shirt muffled his sobs.

Baxter glanced at the lieutenant. Enough of a look to see that he could control the situation. The lieutenant nodded. The boy’s hands were strapped to the arms of the chair, his chest secured by a broad strap. The lieutenant pinned a square piece of linen over his heart and then quickly placed a blindfold over his eyes. The moment the boy was plunged into darkness. He cried out again. ‘
Nee, asseblief... Waar is my moeder... my moeder...
’

‘I’d be calling for my own mother an’ all, poor bastard,’ muttered Mulraney.

Before McCory could chastise him the lieutenant nodded his permission to proceed.

‘Ready!’ Sergeant McCory ordered.

The squad brought the rifles into their shoulders, butts pressed against cheeks.

‘Aim.’

Eyes gazed down barrels at the squirming boy.

The boy wailed, thrashing his head.

Jesus. The damned chair was too short to secure his head.

Rifles wavered as his body bucked.

‘Fire!’

The bullets tore through him.

The volley reverberated across the camp. Men faltered in whatever they were doing, and then carried on. The shots were a clarion call to them all. The Dutchy may have been an enemy but the same fate could await any man.

The firing squad began lowering their weapons, but their eyes were held by the boy who quivered and shook despite the bloodstains that blossomed on his shirtfront. His writhing had allowed the rounds to miss his heart. Blood coughed and spluttered from his shattered lungs.

The young lieutenant looked horror-struck.

Baxter barked a command. ‘Lieutenant!’

The replacement officer looked aghast. This was the first time he had seen death close up. A death that he was responsible for, supposedly seeing it was done in the most humane manner.

‘Finish it!’ Baxter commanded, his own hand involuntarily reaching for the flap of his holster and the revolver at the end of its lanyard.

For a moment the fresh-faced lieutenant hesitated but then military discipline cut through his daze of uncertainty. He strode forward, placed his revolver’s barrel close to the boy’s temple and shot him.