The Scarlet Thief (4 page)

The street was dark. A few gaslights lit the main streets in town but in the long rows of terraced housing behind the new train station the darkness was left to smother the backstreets in an impenetrable gloom. The days had finally started to draw out but the evenings still pressed in quickly. In the poorer areas of town, little spare money could be wasted even on the cheapest tallow candles, so the darkness was left to rule unchallenged.

Jack dawdled his way closer to the house where Molly lived with her mother. He was smartly dressed in his best uniform, as was required to pass the guard and be allowed into town. He did his best to avoid stepping in any of the unsavoury mess that littered the ground. He wished he had had the foresight to bring a lantern and he prayed he would arrive at Molly’s house without his well-polished boots smeared with some noxious substance.

There were few people around now darkness had set in, the people crammed into these small terraced houses seeking whatever rest they could get before returning to their work in the morning. Occasional raised voices echoed down the street as people vented their anger and frustration on one another, and in the house next door to Molly’s a baby wailed, its plaintive cry reverberating through the gloomy street.

With a determination he did not feel, Jack rapped on the scarred front door of number twenty-seven. The house behind its sturdy door was silent.

The sound of bolts scraping gave Jack just enough time to pull one last time at his uniform before the door was cautiously opened and an anxious eye peered round its edge.

‘Jack!’ The relief in the familiar voice was clear. Few respectable people welcomed visitors once night had fallen and Jack had expected to waste half the night on the doorstep persuading those inside to lower their guard and unbar the door. ‘What are you doing here at this time of night?’

Molly opened the door wide, quickly ushering Jack into the narrow hallway while nervously looking down the quiet street to see how many of the neighbours’ curtains were twitching.

The house stank of boiled cabbage and the harsh carbolic soap the family borrowed from the laundry for use at home. Molly held a single candle in a holder and in its flickering flame Jack thought she had never looked so lovely. She had discarded the linen cap that contained her unruly locks during the day and she wore her hair down. In the dim light she looked almost angelic, her face now devoid of the constant red flush he was so used to seeing in the heat of the laundry.

‘You shouldn’t really be here this late. It isn’t proper.’

Jack removed his shako and held it awkwardly in front of him. ‘It’s a bit late to worry about that now.’ He smiled as he saw a flush of crimson on Molly’s cheeks.

She turned to call up the stairs. ‘It’s alright, Mam. It’s just Jack. He won’t be staying long.’ She fixed Jack with a challenging glare, daring him to try any more of his ribald humour.

But Jack was there on a more serious errand. He looked at Molly as earnestly as he could. ‘I haven’t come for anything untoward, Molly. I just want to talk.’

‘Then you’d better come through to the kitchen. We can’t use the parlour, not just the two of us.’

Molly edged carefully round Jack and led him through the door at the end of the hall into the kitchen at the back of the house. The room was warm to the point of being stuffy, with a small fire in the grate adding its heat to that emanating from the cast-iron range that dominated the room. Two mismatched wooden chairs sat in front of the fireplace, one for each of the women in the household and Molly pointed to the largest one for Jack to sit on.

‘You’ll be wanting tea, I expect.’

‘About time you offered. I’ve been here ages.’ He thought he caught a flash of anger in her eyes so he resolved to be more serious. ‘Thank you.’

Molly used a cloth to pull the large iron kettle on to the range and busied herself wiping clean two tin mugs she pulled from the narrow dresser in the corner. Jack watched her move around the kitchen, enjoying seeing her in such a domestic setting. It led his thoughts to what it would be like if they were to become man and wife, what it would be like to have Molly in his own kitchen, looking after him as only his wife would. He was surprised to find the notion did not sit badly in his mind.

‘You’ll go blind if you keep staring.’ Molly delivered the warning with a smile.

‘At least you know your place, woman. Now, where’s my tea?’

Molly stuck out her tongue. ‘I’ll throw it over you if you don’t take care, fancy fig of a uniform or not.’

‘I’m glad you noticed my fine turnout.’

‘I couldn’t miss it. I’ve never seen you looking so smart. Are you out to impress the ladies?’

‘There’s only one lady I’m trying to impress but she’s a bit daft. She can’t see what’s right in front of her face.’

Molly laughed and handed him his tea. ‘So what brings you to my door. Did you get lost?’

Jack stared at the dark liquid in his mug as if he could read his future in it. Molly saw his serious expression and had the sense to remain quiet as she took the seat next to him, reaching her hand out so that it rested lightly on his arm.

‘It’s Sloames.’ Jack spoke at last, his voice quiet.

‘Sloames?’

‘He’s managed to exchange his commission. He’ll be leaving the regiment.’

‘And you?’

‘I can go with him.’

‘Oh.’ Molly’s hand withdrew.

‘That’s what I’m here to tell you.’

Molly studied her hands for a long while before she spoke again. ‘What are you going to do?’ Her voice was small now, the question asked hesitantly as if she did not really want to know the answer.

Jack looked deep into Molly’s eyes. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You could stay with the regiment.’

‘And go to the Indies? No thanks.’

‘So you’ll go with Captain Sloames.’

‘I don’t know, Molly. Sloames wants me with him. He wants us to go on campaign.’

‘Of course he does. He wants you there to clean his boots and wipe his backside.’

‘He’s not so bad. He took time to tell me about the news. I’ve got to go with him to London for a few days so he can finish all the paperwork. It’ll give me a chance to think.’

‘Bully for you.’ Some of Molly’s normal sharpness was returning.

‘I could always volunteer for another regiment.’

‘What good would that do? You’d still be leaving and you could end up going to war all the same. Besides, you like being an orderly. You’re always telling me that it’s the first step to getting somewhere.’

‘Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever amount to anything.’

‘You won’t if you go around with that kind of attitude. You were born poor and you’ll die poor same as me if you don’t get a grip and shift yourself somewhere. You make your own future. It doesn’t get neatly delivered on a silver platter. You have to go and find it.’

They were both silent for a moment.

‘So what happens to me when you swan off with Sloames and go and fight your war?’

‘You could wait for me. I’ll come back for you.’

‘And when would that be? A year? Two years? And all the while I sit here like a nun and work in the bloody laundry waiting for my hero to return.’

It was the first time Jack had heard Molly swear. ‘What would you have me do, Molly?’

‘What is it to me what you do?’ Molly crossed her arms. ‘You’ll make your mind up with or without my two pennyworth.’

‘So be it.’ Jack stood up quickly. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

His heavy boots were loud on the wooden floor as he made to leave. But Molly would not let him go without having the final word.

‘That’s it. You bugger off as soon as the going gets hard. Well, you listen to me, Jack Lark. I’m not some little milksop who’ll sit on her backside waiting for some cove who may or may not come back some day. So you think hard on what you are going to do. Because I won’t wait forever, you hear me? I won’t damn well wait forever.’

Jack closed the door, shutting off the angry tirade.

He had to decide what he was going to do. He did not want to lose Molly, but nor did he want to pass up the chance to prove himself as a soldier. Somehow he had to square the circle.

Jack had just begun unpacking Sloames’s travelling trunk when Major Hume’s orderly barged into the room. As he served one of the senior officers, Cox felt obliged to look down on the orderlies of the lower ranking officers, passing critical judgements on their lack of diligence and on what he judged to be their less than satisfactory ability to care for their officers.

Cox looked over Jack’s shoulder at his attempts to lay out Sloames’s clothes. ‘You’re a clumsy bugger, Lark. You should’ve got the hang of this by now.’

Cox shook out each item of clothing from the pile Jack had already started. He smoothed his palms over the fabric in an attempt to tease away the worst of the creases and then refolded the garments neatly.

Jack smiled. ‘You can always do it for me, Coxy.’

‘You lazy sod. I’ll help you but I’ll not do your work for you.’ Cox pulled a soiled shirt from the trunk, his face showing his distaste at the muck streaked down its front. ‘So, how was London? Did Sloames let you off the leash?’

‘We were only there for two days. There wasn’t time.’ Jack tried to copy the movements of Cox’s deft hands which made the art of folding clothes look effortless. Cox had a sharp tongue and was never shy of criticising his fellow orderlies but he had gone out of his way to help Jack on too many occasions to count, teaching him the skills he had needed in order to adapt from soldier to orderly.

‘That’s what they all say. Martyrs, we are, Jack. Martyrs.’ Cox tutted in rebuke as Jack twisted another of Sloames’s shirts into a rumpled mess. ‘Take your time, those shirts are expensive. Have you heard the news?’

Jack scowled in frustration at his own clumsiness. ‘No. What news?’

‘Well.’ Cox obviously relished revealing a juicy bit of gossip. ‘You know young Tom Black? He’s in your company.’

‘Of course I know him. He’s full of himself. A real barrack-room lawyer.’

‘He has got himself into trouble. Nothing good ever comes from being a gobshite.’

Jack stopped folding the clothes and looked at his fellow orderly with interest. ‘What the hell happened?’

Cox grinned. ‘Listen to you. You should learn to speak like an officer. A foul mouth will do you no good.’

‘Just tell me what happened, will you?’ Jack replied before correcting himself. ‘If you would be so kind.’

‘That’s better.’ Cox perched his skinny shanks on the edge of Sloames’s bed. ‘Manners cost nothing, young Jack. If you want to get on in this world of ours you are going to have to face facts and learn to speak with some decorum and not like you just barged in straight from the gutter.’

Jack grinned at the lecture, enjoying Cox’s company despite his prissiness.

‘Now, then,’ said Cox. ‘Sunday night, Colour Sergeant Slater was assaulted. He was on his way back to the sergeants’ mess when some cowardly cove set about him.’

‘That could be anyone in the damn company! Why do they reckon it was Tom?’

‘Patience, Jack. I’m coming to that. So this rascal comes at Slater out of the dark, trying to take him unawares.’

‘Sounds like a good idea to me.’

‘Hush! But of course our valiant hero is not one to be beaten so easily. Not only does he fearlessly beat off the dastardly ambush but he also manages to capture his assailant. And who does that turn out to be?’

‘Tom.’ Even as Jack spoke the name, he knew what had happened. Slater had not been assaulted. The mouthy young soldier must have fallen foul of Slater and this was simply the sergeant’s way of exerting his authority.

‘So you do have some brains after all, Jack. Yes, it was Tom and he’s been in the clink ever since.’

‘And I suppose no one else saw what happened.’

‘I told you. It was dark. Anyway, Slater caught him so he’s bang to rights.’

‘We both know that is not necessarily so. Just because Slater says something doesn’t mean it’s true.’

‘What are you saying, Jack? That Slater would stoop to blagging? Anyway, Tom Black is going to be flogged in the morning. He’s been sentenced to fifty lashes.’

‘Bloody hell! Fifty! He must really have upset Slater to get a flogging like that.’

‘Listen to you. Tom has only himself to blame, the fool. Fifty lashes should learn him right. If it doesn’t kill him.’

Jack closed his eyes as he absorbed the horrid tale. Tom had had no chance. No one, especially not an officer, would take the word of a young private over that of an experienced non-commissioned officer.

It was a vivid example of the power a colour sergeant wielded and the price that had to be paid for daring to flout Slater’s will.

In the quiet stillness of dawn, the ten companies of the battalion marched on to the parade ground. The only sound that marked their entrance was the slow, mesmeric beat from the battalion drummers. Like a heartbeat, the sound never faltered, each ponderous strike of the drummers’ sticks sending another beat to echo around the barrack blocks.

The redcoats marched to their allotted place and then stood in grim silence.

The whole battalion was on parade, the ten companies arranged to form three sides of a square, with the side closest to the gatehouse left open. The men faced the open space in the centre where the punishment triangle stood. Fashioned from the fearsome half-pikes that the battalion’s colour guard wielded in battle, it waited impassively for its victim, the apex of the triangle thrusting up towards the dull, lifeless sky, the base resting on the ground, the whole held up by a pair of supports pushed hard into the clay soil. Thick ropes had been tied to the uppermost pikes, their ends left dangling, ready to tie Tom Black’s wrists to the thick staffs of ash. Two more sets of rope lay coiled on the ground, ready to lash his ankles to the sides. Held fast by the ropes, Tom would be unable to move, his back presented to the whip, open and exposed.

The soldiers stood in their ranks, eyes fixed facing forwards, waiting for the arrival of their officers and for the signal that the punishment parade was to begin. A punishment they knew to be unjust.

The redcoats bore a strict sense of fairness. They did not shirk from punishment. Indeed, a flogging broke the monotony of garrison duty. They understood the rules, they knew that to break the army’s regulations was to risk dire punishment and if anyone was foolish or slow-witted enough to do so and, worse, be caught, then they had to damn well live with the consequences.

Yet the redcoats knew there was no justice on parade this day.

The battalion knew Colour Sergeant Slater just as they knew Private Tom Black. The knew the mouthy soldier had fallen foul of Slater but that alone should not merit the infliction of fifty lashes, the heaviest sentence the colonel could order on his own authority.

The officers’ arrival was announced by the jangle of horse tackle, the damp soil deadening the sound of the horses’ hooves. To the solemn beat of the drum, the officers rode to their allotted places. If they sensed the men’s tension, there was no sign of it in their languid pace and in the easy way they sat their chargers. Barely a glance was given to the stationary ranks of redcoats.

‘Carry on, Sergeant Major.’ Colonel Stimpson gave the order to the regimental sergeant major in a low tone. Still, the words sent a ripple of tension through the battalion, as if the hundreds of men had drawn breath as one. Stimpson looked around him warily, suddenly becoming aware of the strange mood gripping his battalion.

To the words of command, the prisoner detail left the guardroom and made their way on to the parade ground. Tom Black marched between the men charged with bringing him to his place of punishment, his head low, his eyes fixed on the ground, unable to look at the formed ranks of the battalion assembled to witness his shame.

Tom marched without his musket, his scarlet coat bereft of the cross-belts, his head bare. His body shivered in the morning air, the cold and fear setting his muscles trembling, the shaking obvious to the hundreds of eyes that watched his progress. Had Tom lifted his gaze he would have seen little sympathy in the impassive faces of his fellow redcoats, their expressions betraying none of their emotions. Yet more than one soldier wondered what thoughts were going through Tom’s mind, what fear he felt, what they would feel if they ever found themselves in his place.

Tom looked small, puny, his escort in their tall shakos seeming to tower over his slight frame. The young soldier’s face was puffy, his skin blotchy. The tracks of tears smudged his face and a thin smear of snot crusted around the meagre moustache on his upper lip. When he reached the waiting triangle, he lifted his head, a look of pleading on his face as he searched the watching ranks for some final assistance.

With deft hands the corporal in charge of the escort stripped the young soldier to the waist, his scarlet coat and thin shirt quickly removed. Tom looked around piteously, his beseeching look ignored by the two sergeants who tied him fast to the triangle.

Jack was transfixed. He could see every shaking rib in Tom’s thin frame. He could see the tears coursing down the young soldier’s cheeks.

The adjutant spurred his horse forward. In a loud, braying voice, he read the charge that had been brought against the redcoat. The words passed Jack by, the adjutant’s voice droning on, the convoluted passages he read out barely making sense.

His role completed, the adjutant pulled hard on his reins, moving away from centre stage with indecent haste. The sergeants cleared the area, leaving just the drum major and his two young drummer boys, who shuffled forward, reluctantly taking their places like actors pushed from the wings to face a difficult audience.

‘One.’

The whip landed on the young soldier’s back with a wet slap. Thin trails of blood traced across Tom’s back, the first blow starting the sordid process of turning the boy’s back into minced meat.

Jack closed his eyes.

‘Two. Three.’

Jack kept his eyes closed. Like a drowning man reaching for the rope that would pull him to safety, Jack’s mind grasped for memories of better times, searching for an escape.

‘Come on now, boys. Lay it on properly. Four. Five.’

The redcoats stood in silence and endured the grim spectacle. Forced to watch as a fellow soldier was scarred for life. Flogged bloody for nothing more than falling foul of his sergeant.

‘Fifty.’

Jack opened his eyes. The long, slow count of the drum major had seemed to last for hours. Finally, it was over.

The corporal of the guard moved forward, cutting down the unconscious soldier from where he hung on the triangle like a carcass of meat. His back had been reduced to a nightmare of flesh and blood, the bones of his spine gleaming as the sun finally dragged itself out from behind the thick, grey clouds to make a tardy appearance on the parade ground.

The punishment was complete.

The example had been set.

Jack crept back from his dreams. Back to the horror of an unjust punishment robustly delivered. His back ached from standing stationary for so long, the dull pain in the pit of his spine throbbing and sending spasms down his legs. The misery of the moment was complete.

Jack turned his head and looked at Slater.

Slater was staring straight at him.

Jack flinched as he met Slater’s stare. He would have turned away, his fear instinctive. Yet, instead, he felt his hatred come alive, coursing through his veins.

Slater’s mouth twisted into a grin, the smug look of a job well done on his face. He lifted one hand and pointed his thick forefinger directly at Jack. There was no misunderstanding the words Slater mouthed at him.

‘You’re next.’

Jack walked out of the barracks. It was a relief to leave the cloying atmosphere of the battalion behind and not for the first time he was grateful his officer had taken a suite of rooms in town rather than staying in the rooms allocated to the officers in the barracks. The liberty to leave the barracks was something to be savoured and Jack felt the freedom act as a balm to his raging emotions.

The punishment had cleared his mind, the display scouring away the doubts that had dogged him since Sloames had announced his departure.

He would not stay with the battalion, not with Slater looming over his future and with a posting to the Indies in the offing. It was time to leave the life of a garrison soldier behind and become the fighting redcoat he had always dreamed of being. He would go with Captain Sloames and face the challenge of a campaign.

But he would not forsake Molly. He would ask Captain Sloames for permission to marry her. They would be apart but it would not be forever. The war would be short, perhaps even over before Christmas. Then they would be together.