Billy Bacon and the Soldier Slaves (Colonial Warrior Series, Book 1) Read online

  He spent a day walking the docks, and realised that the man had been right – there was not the slightest chance of getting to sea. He put up in a small beerhouse which had a common lodging room, eighteen snoring men, a pallet each, tuppence and get out by seven o’clock and pay for a breakfast of bread and tea if you had another penny. It was not a good night’s sleep.

  Food for the day cost him another eight pence, and wasn’t very good – dubious pies from street vendors and yesterday’s bread. There was no place to shelter from the rain, either. Two weeks at most and he would be penniless, and probably ill as well. There was no work away from the docks, not a sign anywhere of hands required. He saw more than a hundred of men in like condition to him, mooching along from street to street, to the warehouses and builder’s yards and carriers and every other trade, and turned away from each.

  Next morning he saw a Fugitive Murderer poster on a noticeboard outside the Town Hall; the reward had been doubled and he was now worth twenty pounds. He was also, he discovered, wanted for several other crimes in his home area, all pinned to him since he had been found to be a Murderous Monster. He walked up the hill to the barracks.

  There was a gate in front of the new buildings; a large barracks in red brick and ugly, and of a size to accommodate many hundreds, he suspected. There was a red-coated sentry at the gate who ordered him to stop, not to come inside.

  “Beg pardon, mister, but a bloke in town said as ‘ow there was a battalion going far foreign what wanted men. I wants to join.”

  The sentry called his sergeant.

  “Volunteer, sergeant! Wants to go foreign.”

  “Is the Sheriff’s officer in sight behind ‘im?”

  “No, sergeant.”

  “Send ‘im inside.”

  Billy followed the pointing hand, entered the guard room.

  The sergeant was a short man, little taller than Billy himself, but imposing in his smart turnout, scarlet with buff facings and all shiny.

  “Name?”

  “Billy Bacon, if you please, sir.”

  “Sergeant, not ‘sir’.”

  “Beg pardon, Sergeant.”

  “Age?”

  “Fifteen years, Sergeant.”

  “Make that eighteen, if you wants to join. Age?”

  Billy was surprised, stumbled over his words, realised what he must say after a few seconds of hesitation.

  “Eighteen years, Sergeant.”

  “Very good! Place of birth unknown. Been travelling, parents are gypsies.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “Good. The 70th are off to India for seven years, Billy Bacon. They can’t get all the men they want. If I takes you across to their Adjutant and says as ‘ow you wants to join, you’ll be in, and won’t get out again. It’ll take five minutes to get into the Adjutant’s office, and then you’ll be Private Bacon, and it’ll be five ‘undred lashes if you tries to run. Make your mind up good and careful now, Billy Bacon! Last chance!”

  Billy shook his head.

  “I got money to live another week, Sergeant. There’s no work in town. There’s no place on a ship. Can’t say I ever wanted to go for a soldier, but I don’t fancy starving to death either. No choice, Sergeant. I got to take what’s to hand, like, so I’d better learn to be a good soldier.”

  “I said the same thing fifteen years ago, Billy Bacon. There’s worse lives. There’s better, as well. I done my time in India, and so long as the fever don’t get you, it’s as good as a man can get, just there. You’re sure?”

  “Dead sure, Sergeant.”

  “Then so be it. Come with me.”

  Conveniently, and probably to an extent unlawfully, the Colonel of the Second Battalion of the Herefords, also permanently posted to the barracks, was a magistrate. Billy signed his papers in front of the Adjutant, and was noted to be literate, and was then walked through the barracks to the Colonel’s office where he was quickly sworn in. He was marched back.

  “Private Bacon!”

  “Sir.”

  “You can sign your name. Can you read and write more than that?”

  “Yes, sir. I can read a list sent in by the missus of a house what wants her meat for the week, sir, and write it up in the books, and make out a bill, sir.”

  “Very good! I shall make a note that you are literate, which means that you can be made into a sergeant, one day, if so be you become a good soldier. Learn your drill and the musket and obey orders, Private Bacon, and you will get on in the battalion. You will be placed in the training platoon, Private Bacon, and will be put into a company as quickly as possible. The battalion sails to India soon, and you must learn fast and well.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No. Wrong answer, Private Bacon. Just say ‘sir’. If you say ‘yes’, then you might think you could say ‘no’, one day.”

  “Y… Sir!”

  “You learn quickly. Well done. Dismiss!”

  The sergeant took over, ordering him out, giving his first lesson in standing to attention and then making an ‘about turn’.

  Billy was led across to the corporal in charge of the new recruits, the sergeant returning to his gate and being intercepted by the Adjutant.

  “Good recruit, Sergeant Hales?”

  “Might be, sir. Bright, strong and might be biddable, sir. Not yet in the habit of taking orders, maybe, sir; might be perhaps he’ll need be shaken up a bit. He’s running, out of course, sir. That’s Hampshire on his tongue, not Somerset. As soon as we’re aboard ship, sir, and can’t come back to England to surrender him to the Sheriff, I’ll have his company sergeant find out what he did and why. He don’t sound like he’s a bad one, sir, and he ain’t that old, as well, but you never know, some of they are steeped in sin from their very childhood, sir!”

  Sergeant Hales was known to be in the habit of attending Divine Worship on a Sunday, one of very few in the battalion of that habit. The officers did not approve of his activities, smacking too greatly of one of the nonconformist sects, but accepted that he was one of the better sergeants for being invariably sober. His views on ‘sin’, and the remarkably broad definition he gave to it, were a source of amusement.

  “Ah, well, Sergeant Hales, we are all sinners to some extent, you know. I doubt that many in the battalion will be accompanying you to Heaven!”

  “The Gates are open wide to all who will enter, sir!”

  Neither felt it wise to continue the discussion; it was not appropriate, bearing in mind their ranks.

  Billy was led to the Quartermaster and was, grudgingly, issued the whole of his equipment. The battalion was to sail within days, the QM thought, and that meant that Billy would have no more than six months of use of his English issue, which was wasteful, but he must not wear his Indian cottons and looser trousers in England or aboard ship.

  There followed five busy days in which he learned the basic drill and discovered how to polish and pipeclay and brush his uniform, and how to keep up a musket, and even how to load and fire as well, though that was less important at this stage. On the sixth day of his service he was assigned to A Company, the Grenadiers; he was not especially big, but he was strong, young and healthy and would grow. He marched with them down to the docks.

  They reached the quayside and stood in their companies, Billy towards the middle of the second rank, being shorter than most and newer than any. Then they waited, at ease, but silent. After an hour they were permitted to fall out and sit down wherever they could find a dry patch.

  Billy asked what was happening.

  “Nothing, Billy! You gets used to it. First you runs like buggery. Then you stops. That’s the Army.”

  Smudger Smith was old in the service, had seen the war in America and ten years of garrison in England and Ireland before that. He had avoided promotion, had never even made corporal, because he wanted a quiet life and could see no gain in earning a penny or two more a day in exchange for working hard and shouting. He had been casually kind to Billy, showing him the ropes, teach
ing him how to keep up his uniform and stay out of trouble, for no particular reason other than idle good nature. Life was easier for the platoon if all of its men fitted in; if one stood out as awkward or scruffy, then the whole platoon could find itself on fatigues. It made for a simpler life if they looked after the new men.

  “You just wait, Billy. We got here ten minutes early. Now we’ll hang about till we’re an hour late. Then they’ll start shouting and blame us and make us get aboard ship at the double. It’s always our fault, never theirs, Billy. You just stand to attention and salute when you got to and always – every bloody time – keep your mouth shut! Men with big mouths gets their backs scratched, and they gets watched for next time they even look like they might be thinking about gobbing off. Keep your trap shut, nipper! And don’t laugh, neither, no matter what the daft buggers gets up to, that’s even worser nor answering back. Officers ain’t to be laughed at, not even ensigns like that tit over there! Don’t point! Don’t turn your head, just look sideways a bit, crafty like.”

  Shiningly bright and smart in new uniform put on within the past week, the latest addition to the Officers Mess was trying to look like an old hand, swaggering bold and confident, and not knowing what to do or when. The other officers were staring disapprovingly, knowing it was too late to do anything about the boy; they had him on their hands until they came back from India, which would likely be in seven years, but could be in ten, or twenty even.

  Smudger leant back, hands behind his head, enjoying a few minutes of rest.

  “Glad that little feller ain’t ours, Billy. He’s going to be sent into all sorts of dangerous corners in the hope that he’ll get his head blown off. Trouble is, there’s likely to be a couple of platoons with him and going the same way.”

  “Whass ‘is name, Smudger?”

  “Ensign Woodforde, with an ‘e’ on the end to make it properly nobbish. Good regiment, this one, and dear little Mr Woodforde ain’t going to fit in. The Excellers – that’s us – ain’t going to put up with ‘im, that’s for sure. Time we gets out to India, nipper, either ‘e’s going to be turned round so that ‘e does fit in, or they’ll push ‘im to transfer to the Company Army; that’s if we strikes lucky. If we don’t get a bit of luck, then, like I said, they’ll stick his nose in to places where it’s like to get cut off. Of course, a lot depends on what ship ‘e gets put on.”

  Billy could not understand that last comment, was going to ask for an explanation when they were called to order, stood back to their ranks.

  As Smudger had forecast, there was a great roar of orders and objurgation and the companies were set to jog down the quayside to a pair of ships some three hundred yards distant. The Grenadiers turned up a gangway and onto the deck of the smaller of the pair, an old two-decker, once of the Navy, now converted into a trooper. They doubled to the nearest companionway and down into the gloom of what had been the main deck, where the biggest guns had been located. The gun ports had been closed, nailed down in fact, and there was hardly light to see by.

  “Fifty-six gun ship of the line, Billy. Too small, these days. They build sixty-fours and mostly seventy-fours now. Take about two hundred and fifty of us – three companies, I reckons. Likely to ‘ave the QM and ‘is stores as well, which ain’t bad as far as we’re concerned. The rest will be on the big old Indiaman, officers as well, most like, which is a real sod for six months at a time, all cooped up together. We ain’t going to see an officer for more nor one inspection a week, and ‘aving to be rowed across for that and avoiding it when they can; the others is going to ‘ave the buggers on their backs all day, every day.”

  Sergeant Parton called A Company together, informally rather than in parade.

  “We got this end of the deck. From the front to where we is ‘ere. Hammocks, what is better than pallets. Four rows of twenty. Hooks up in the deck’ead – the bloody roof, that is! Put ‘em up before lights out, roll ‘em up in the morning and stow ‘em against the bulk’ead at the front. Thing is, there’s eighty-one of you, together with four corporals and me. Eighty-six and eighty bloody ‘ooks. So we got pallets laid out for the extras, in them little spaces down the back there.”

  Sergeant Parton pointed to the six little cubby-holes, perhaps five feet long, two deep and thirty inches high.

  “We ain’t that tall, so we five fits in. Last man in gets the last one – only fair way of doing it. Tough bloody luck, Private Bacon!”

  They laughed, more or less sympathetically. The brighter ones started to wonder why, if pallets were less comfortable, the NCOs were getting them – it was not the way things normally worked. Most of them did not think at all – they were in the Army and thinking was not part of the job for private soldiers.

  “Muskets is kept in their racks, and will be worked on, every day. Sea air rusts the old Brown Bess. Your pieces will not get rusty! If they do, so will your backs!”

  Billy looked puzzled. Smudger grinned, whispered that dried blood was the same colour as rust.

  “You as each got a ‘ook and a locker, against the other bulk’ead. Grab a bit of chalk and stick your number on the door. Keep your packs there, and your coats and shoes; full uniform only for parades, what will be once a week, in the deckspace ‘ere, where no bugger can’t see nothing! But keep the leather polished – the sea air will turn it bloody green if you leave it.”

  Most of the company had sailed to America and back, and to the Sugar Islands from America, spending six months there in between campaigns. They knew that salt air was the enemy of their uniforms and must be fought every day.

  “The ship is sailing in convoy with six East Indiamen and one other trooper. The Navy will be ‘ere as well – a couple of them frigates, by the looks of it. So, nothing to worry about for six months. You can go up on deck in the daytimes – the sailors will show you where you can sit. Don’t take to fighting each other, or it’s the lash, no second chances. Don’t gamble too much. Don’t play cards or dice with the sailors – not ever!”

  That was it, as far as Sergeant Parton was concerned. There was no work for them – six months of idleness in which they must occupy themselves quietly and not become a nuisance.

  They played cards and rolled dice for a large part of every day, gambling, mostly for imaginary stakes, for they none of them had money and knew that debts, even if they counted them, could never be paid.

  Billy still had more than twenty shillings in his pockets and made no mention of the fact – he probably held more than half of the cash in the whole company. He learned a dozen different games of dice and cards and found that none of them held his interest for very long – he just was not a gambler. He listened to the older men talk, telling the tales of the American War and of what they had done in England and of the women they had known. He did not speak of his own history, except to Sergeant Parton who took him aside early in the voyage and demanded to know what he had done and why he had joined up.

  “Don’t reckon you got a lass in the family way, so you must ‘ave been caught out some other way. Come on, Billy! There ain’t no way we can do anything about it, and time you’re ever back in England, it will all be forgotten about.”

  Reluctantly, Billy told the whole story.

  “Tried to put it to you and you knifed ‘im, you say?”

  “Butcher’s boning knife, Sergeant. In the front and out the back of ‘im. Proper sharp, like I learned in the trade.”

  “No half-measures, eh? Well done, too, Billy! Quite right! Man’s got the right to look after ‘imself, so say I! And so will the captain say, if ever he asks me and I tell ‘im that you run for very good reason. Nothing for you to worry about there, boy! You says you know how to put a sharp on a blade, Billy? Take a look at them bloody knives the cooks ‘ave got, will you?”

  Their daily issue of salt beef or pork, or peas on no-meat days, was boiled up by a pair of volunteers who had taken over cooking as their permanent duty, mostly for wish to keep busy at something rather than sit idle all day. The me
at was salted on the bone and had to be hacked off, almost wooden in texture and consistency, before boiling.

  It took four days of work with file and coarse stone and oilstone, but at the end of them each cook had a pair of razor-sharp cleavers and one large and one small carving knife that they could shave with. Billy showed them as well how to recognise the grain of the meat and cut it into slices rather than hack it into lumps.

  “It’s bloody awful meat, but you can do a bit with it.”

  The quality of their food improved a little – which was recognised and approved of by the company. Billy turned from being ‘green’ into a useful and valued mate, one who pulled his weight to the advantage of all. Sergeant Parton volunteered Billy’s services to the other two companies aboard ship, making him known to them as one of the good soldiers.

  “Always worth getting a name, Billy. The regiment looks after its own, and we all works together. Might be one day they’ll be looking for a sergeant and some bugger will say ‘Corporal Bacon in the Grenadiers is a good bloke’. That’s how it works, sometimes. Their captain will get to know, and ‘e’ll speak to our bloke. That’s how good regiments do things, Billy.”

  Six months at sea turned Billy into a soldier – he learned the history of the Regiment, memorised its battle honours, discovered that ‘Bulldogs’ or the ‘Excellers’, they had earned the two names in different wars, were always first in and last out and were never defeated. The Army might lose a battle or campaign, but the Regiment won its own fights, retreated only when let down by other, lesser battalions. The Regiment was his sole and whole loyalty, as must be the case for every soldier; any person who did not belong to the Regiment was a lesser being, not quite human. Officers, most of them, did not belong to the Regiment – they merely used it for a few years, apart from those who spent their whole career in the one Mess. Billy discovered, and came wholly to believe, that he was one of the privileged few, a soldier of the Saucy Seventieth, the finest Regiment in the Best Army in the world.

  They experienced one severe storm, spent four days battened down in the hold, rolling and pitching and expecting to sink at any moment. Billy watched and behaved the same as the others – stretching out silently in his cubby-hole, keeping his fears to himself, occasionally catching the eye of one of them and managing a grin. They could do nothing if they did go down, so there was no point to shouting and wailing in fear of the event. They were hungry, thirsty and seasick – but things would get better, or they would die – why worry?