Kitabı oku: «To Do and Die», sayfa 2

‘He'll cook you with his next round, sir.’ Sergeant Ormond – one of those steady, likeable men, the backbone of the company – had appeared beside him, giving words to his own thoughts as the ramrod flew down the barrel of the distant rifle.

‘Thank you Ormond – you're a great comfort, you are. Luff, pass me your rifle … is it made ready?’

‘Sir, an' it's dry an' all. Sure you know how it works?’ It wasn't much of a joke, but Luff's words made them all smile amongst the danger and noise. Morgan, like most officers, had been brought up with gun, hounds and rod and took a pride in being more skilful with the new Minié rifle than the soldiers. Despite this, officers didn't carry such weapons in action; gentlemen were expected to arm themselves only with a chivalrous sword and pistol.

Now Morgan glanced at the sights and drew the chunky rifle into the shoulder. The Russian was just starting to kneel – he aimed at his belly and as the pale disc of his face swam above the foresight, he squeezed the trigger. He was always surprised at the kick of the new weapon; a few rounds would leave your shoulder black and blue.

Even above the din, Morgan recognized the sound. He'd first heard it as a boy when shooting seals off Bantry with his father's heavy rifle – the solid, meaty thump of a soft lead ball tearing flesh. The Russian jerked forward onto his face, invisible now amongst the low scrub and the young officer marked the spot as he would for his dog and a downed pheasant.

Had Morgan been able to hear above the pounding of his heart, he would have sensed that the din was less. As they'd raced up the lethal slope splinters and balls had sliced the men around them and Morgan had been conscious of holes and rents suddenly appearing in his Colour as the artillery banged and roared its hatred at them. But at the crucial point, when cool, disciplined gunnery would have won the day, panic seemed to have struck the Russians and now the brass-barrelled howitzers were being manhandled and tugged away by teams of horses to save them from being over-run.

‘Right, come on you lot, they're all in a pother, get amongst 'em,’ Hume recognized the moment. The Russians were confused by the whining shells and bullets and the screaming British: dash and boldness now would carry the position.

Gasping, Morgan crouched with Sergeant Ormond below the bank of gabions, Colours across their laps, gathering themselves for the final rush into the heart of the enemy, whilst the troops around them scrabbled through the unaccountably empty embrasures, boots rasping on the basketwork as, rifles at the ready, they leapt into the gun positions beyond. Catching Morgan by the arm, Ormond led the way up and over the breastwork, brandishing his Colour as soon as he was steady and helping the officer over the obstacle.

Inside the Redoubt everything was in uproar. Four horses plunged and shivered, anchored at one end of their harness by a heavy howitzer and at the other by a subaltern of the 23rd who, clinging to the tack with one hand, had a pistol firmly in the ear of the Russian driver. The man was clearly terrified by the demented youngster and his revolver and he was leaning so far out of his saddle that he was in danger of falling and losing control of his horses, yet still the boy yelled and threatened.

Another gun remained. Morgan saw how Alfred Heyland, commander of Number Six Company, and a handful of his soldiers went surging towards it. There was blood all over Heyland – it dripped from his nose and whiskers and one arm hung uselessly by his side. Later, Morgan was told that Heyland had been blown over bodily by a discharge of grape just yards from the centre of the gun-line in the Great Redoubt – everyone thinking that he was dead, yet he'd risen up like a torn and bleeding Lazarus, determined to lead his men on. Now all that Morgan saw was a crazed thing, chopping at one of the gunners with his sword whilst the men dealt with the others in a mad lust for blood.

Three Russians had been surrounded beside the gun's trail. They all had short swords, but none had drawn them before their attackers pounced. None of the British had reloaded their rifles, nor were their bayonets fixed, so the Russians met death in the most brutal way as butts rose and fell whilst boots kicked and stamped, despite the cries for mercy. Eventually their victims were silent: chests heaving, the executioners looked down at the red splashes on their feet.

But the trophy was theirs. Some men cut away the hastily placed tow-ropes whilst Heyland clutched his sword by the end of its blade and scratched a crude “95” into the green paint of the carriage to confirm its capture. Faint with lack of blood, Heyland was swabbed with bandages and then led away by two of his men. Morgan remembered how well Heyland had danced at Dublin Castle last year – and how jealous they had all been of the flock of women around his elegant form. Now, how could any girl find this broken, bruised creature attractive again?

‘Good men, get those Colours up on the parapet.’ Major Hume was now commanding the Regiment. Just as collected – though even more tattered than when the pair had seen him last – he was bareheaded, quite unarmed and utterly in control. The same self-confidence that Morgan had noticed when they were in the river was asserting itself over every man to whom he spoke, regardless of regiment or company, calming, reassuring and helping frightened boys to become men.

‘We've done it, sir, we've taken the Redoubt.’ Morgan had thrust the butt of the Colour pike hard into the parapet; now he looked round up at the bushy slopes to the horizon no more than three hundred paces above him.

‘Aye, Morgan we have, but there's plenty more Muscovites: look there.’ Hume pointed up the hill.

Although a few hundred British had bloodily taken the centre of the position, they were now pinioned between the unprotected rear of the Great Redoubt and a mass of fresh, Russian infantry who lay on the smoke-laden slope above them. Meanwhile, the British commander, Lord Raglan, had moved forward with a tiny group of his Staff until he was well to the fore, almost in advance of his leading troops with the foresight to order-up a battery of British guns that could fire right into his enemy's flank.

‘Now we'll need some help to hold it.’ Major Hume was so hoarse he could barely make himself heard, despite the fact that the guns and rifles had fallen quiet for an instant right across the battlefield.

‘Yes, sir, Cambridge's Guards are in reserve right behind us, aren't they?’ Morgan knew what was supposed to be the plan, but Hume looked anxiously back towards the river.

‘Well, if they are in reserve, they're a bloody long way away; we need them up here now before the Russians counterattack,’ Hume replied.

The Duke of Cambridge's division had, indeed, been held in reserve, untouched by the fire that had so damaged the Light and Second Divisions during the advance to the river and now he was determined not to let his command fall into the same ruptured state as they crossed the Alma. But Cambridge's caution meant that his Division lay too far to the rear of the troops that were now so horribly exposed in the Great Redoubt. They should have been closely supporting the first wave of attackers, on hand to deal with whatever the Russians planned to do next.

The unnatural quiet ended as suddenly as it began. As the last few men seeped into the Redoubt and caught their breath, the danger of the position became more and more obvious. The sergeants busied themselves redistributing ammunition and clearing fouled breeches with their combination tools whilst trying to calm and steady the men. Despite their every effort, though, the troops started endless, ragged cheering that Morgan was raw enough to mistake for a sign of confidence rather than one of near panic. He and Sergeant Ormond had been relieved of the responsibility of the Colours by two uninjured sergeants, so they bawled with the best of them until a spatter of bullets sent them to ground.

‘Where's that fire coming from, Sar'nt Ormond?’ Morgan felt useless as he crouched on the ground with no Colour, no troops to command and only a sword and pistol.

‘Must be them lot, sir, there.’ Ormond paused for a moment whilst reloading his rifle and pointed through the smoke to a slab of Russian infantry about three hundred yards up the hillside beyond them. One half were firing whilst the other half plodded obliquely across the rear of the Great Redoubt, bayonets twinkling, the sun flashing off the brass spikes of their leather helmets.

That morning, Morgan had taken the Tranter revolver from its case and carefully loaded the six chambers before clipping it to his narrow sash – he thought he could remember holding it above the current but, as he drew it, he had no confidence that the thing would work.

‘You'd be better off with one of the casualties' rifles, sir, wouldn't you?’ Ormond asked.

Morgan looked around him – none of the other officers had picked-up rifles, they were sticking to the unwritten rule that gentlemen left the sordid business of killing to the rank and file – a rule that he'd already broken. So now he contented himself with his pistol, balancing it carefully on his forearm as he aimed at the coatskirts of a crossing Russian and pulled the trigger. He was rewarded with a bang, a jolt and a face full of smoke followed, much to his surprise, by five more faultless detonations, yet the Muscovites tramped on untouched, apparently oblivious to his fire. How his father would have scoffed.

Heads and hearts more hardened to war may have been able to resist the spark of panic that now fanned through the mass. Two Staff officers scrambled through the position, waving their arms, yelling, ‘Don't fire, they're the French’ then ‘Fusiliers retire’ in chaotic succession.

‘Retire be damned, stand fast and fire low.’ Hume had almost lost his voice, but other officers echoed him. ‘Morgan, put that wretched thing down; get amongst the boys, won't you?’ Stung by the words, Morgan thrust his half-reloaded pistol away.

‘Here, sir, help me with these.’ Colour-Sergeant McGucken thrust a clutch of paper cartridges into the young man's hand, gesturing him to calm the troops from the hotch-potch of regiments around him. Within the Great Redoubt were men of the 7th and 23rd Fusiliers, both as keen as anyone else to hear and obey an order that would get them out of the horror with their honour intact and once a bugler took up the “Retire” all was lost. Some men paused, firing sullenly into their enemies, but most bundled back through the embrasures that they had seized just a short time before with barely a backward glance. The troops streamed down the hill, trying hard to avoid their dead and wounded comrades who studded the slopes.

Morgan never really knew whether the Scots Fusilier Guards had broken or not. He could certainly remember their Colours standing fast amongst the smoke and shot and, later, the body of a young Guards officer in the hospital riven with bayonet wounds. He could recall Russians too close for comfort, his imperfectly loaded pistol and then the whole Guards Brigade in close and perfect order as the survivors of the first attack on the Redoubt eddied around them, but none of this left the same impression as Hume did. Somehow he'd retrieved the 95th's Colour party and reformed it; somehow he'd clubbed a score or so of his own men around him; and somehow he found the sheer gall to persuade them to face the Russian fire once again.

Morgan wondered if Hume's exaggerated courtesy was natural or whether he was simply trying to master the surrounding bedlam. It hardly mattered, for there wasn't a man in sight who could have failed to notice a senior, shot-holed and tousled major approach an ensign of the 3rd Grenadiers, brace to attention and ask the youngster's permission to fall Her Majesty's 95th Regiment in on their flank. Mere theatre, perhaps – but it worked. The boy in the bearskin stuttered his approval and now no one in the 95th could fail to get into step behind Hume and beside the sweeping line of Guardsmen.

Without the heavy guns in the Redoubt, the fire was certainly lighter this time, but the fear was worse. Just a few minutes before, Morgan had found himself all but oblivious to the hum and crack of shot knowing that all eyes were upon him and the Colour that he carried. Now, though, he was amongst the bloodied, those who chose to face the horrors of those slopes again and who no longer needed a mere subaltern's bravado. Regimental pride was a powerful thing. With the Guards file-firing as they advanced, the knot of 95th steadied and began to ply their weapons with the precision that they'd been taught.

‘Come on show-soldiers, it's this way to Mr Russ.’ The boy, Pegg, seemed to have recovered sufficiently from his earlier fright not only to be beating a creditable tattoo on his dented drum, but also to be taunting the line of bearskins to his left.

‘So when we take the position for you will you be able to hold it this time, short-arse?’ One of the Guardsmen snarled back at Pegg.

The rifles sickled the Russians. The enemy musket-fire was feeble in return and as each volley smashed home so low mounds of moaning or motionless bodies began to pile up. Morgan saw a Russian officer come running to the front of his troops, sword point down, waving his men on. A line of bayonets were lowered and a brown-grey wall of men began to trot down the hill towards them.

‘You five, kneel,’ croaked McGucken. ‘Three hundred – but aim at their knees, it's not that far. Get that bastard officer.’ One fouled rifle failed to fire, but four rounds and a pointless one from Morgan's pistol flew straight and true and when the smoke from the muzzles had cleared, the officer had disappeared and the bank of Russians had stalled, their muskets touching the ground as they goggled at the approaching British.

Some unheard message pulled the 95th to a halt. The Guards to their left had stopped, all looking expectantly to the centre of their line, whilst the other two battalions continued on their steady tramp. Then flashing metal, a sibilant rasp and six hundred long, needle-like bayonets were fixed over the muzzles of the men's rifles. Another pause, and then with a mute command, the Guards stepped out.

The Russians stood in the same dense columns that had served them well at Borodino, little expecting that at such close ranges a Minié bullet would pierce not just the front rank but find the second and sometimes the third. As the lead squashed and distorted on the first impact, so it became all the more damaging on subsequent strikes – no troops could stand against this.

As the Guards' pace increased, so the Russian columns dissolved. Harried now by French and British horse artillery, the great, grey masses started to peel away, leaving just their dead and wounded to face the bayonets.

‘Here you are, Mr Morgan, sir, I'm sending one to Mam.’

He wondered just how grateful Mrs Pegg would be for the brass eagle with its big ‘31’ from the front of a Russian helmet and whether she would approve as her boy lifted an icon from around the rapidly cooling neck of one of their foes.

The earth and sandbag walls of the Great Redoubt gave welcome protection as the British surged back into it for the second time. The Allies' guns had played on the Russians as they massed for the counter-attack there and now the red coats of the earlier casualties were all but submerged by their dead and dying enemies. There on his back, arms outstretched, head lolling back and mouth wide open was Private Peter Luff – he was as pale as milk, the river water still dripped gently from his clothes, mingling with the great brown stain that spread below his body whilst two flies crawled over his lips.

‘God help us, Pegg, it's Peter Luff, ain't it? Did you see him fall?’

‘No, sir, only just seen the poor bastard. Save him from a flogging though, won't it?’ Now, Private Luff would never receive the punishment that he'd been awarded a few days before. With scarcely a glance at his dead friend, Pegg ransacked another corpse.

Then, just feet from them a shot cracked out. Without a sound, a subaltern of the 95th toppled over, banging his face hard into the earth. His dead fingers still held the water-bottle with which he had been trying to slake the thirst of one wounded Russian, when another had shot him in the neck. Now both blood and water spilled into the ground, but before Morgan or Pegg could properly grasp what was going on, two of their soldiers were upon the Russian, thrusting at him with their bayonets. The Muscovite cried once, twice and then was silent as the men wiped his gore from their blades.

The Guards battalions were quickly brought in hand, stoically pushing past and beyond the earthwork in an attempt to turn their enemy's defeat into a rout, but Hume ordered his clutch of 95th to check and rally the rest of the troops.

The guns still thundered but at distant targets now. For the first time in what seemed weeks, Morgan was conscious that the air was not full of metal and that death, for him at least, was slightly more distant. The men sank all around him, deaf to the cries of the wounded, as they pulled out their stumpy clay pipes, some of the younger ones falling instantly asleep, lips still black with powder. Even the sergeants, moving amongst the survivors trying to find out who was and who was not answering the roll, staggered, exhausted.

Morgan sat down heavily. He rootled around his haversack until he found the silver-topped brandy flask that he had bought in Dublin on the way out and, hands shaking with the sheer relief of being alive, he unscrewed it and took a long pull at the raw spirit. Looking between his soaked and muddy legs and boots, he saw the grassy hillside below him covered with scarlet and grey cairns. It seemed like an eternity since that farewell dinner at home when he'd been asked if he could take another's life, if he could widow wives and orphan children. Well, now he had and it gave him no pleasure. The smiles of those at the table were still vivid, but now James Keenan was torn by shot, Mary was stained with her own husband's blood and had seen things that no teenage girl should have to see whilst his own courage had been tested to the full. As he sat and pondered, Colour-Sergeant McGucken lowered himself wearily to the ground beside him.

‘Well, Colour-Sar'nt, that will be the first battle-honour on our Colours.’ Morgan forced his gloom and tiredness away.

McGucken pulled out his pipe and poked and prodded at the bowl before answering, ‘Aye, sir, an' let's pray it's our last.’

TWO Glassdrumman

The young moon winked through the shutters. Glassdrumman, the warm, shabby, peeling Georgian hall that was the Morgan family's Cork home was deep in sleep. Mary Cade pulled her nightshift down to cover her bottom, wrapped an errant blanket about them both and moved herself a fraction on top of Tony Morgan, their passion spent. The chambermaid and the young officer had had their fill of one another and now was the time for talk.

‘Maude Hawtrey's lovely – she sits a horse so well, almost like a man. And it's obvious to anyone that you're getting on famously, so much in common, scriptures and the like.’ Mary held Morgan's face in both her hands, his dark-fair hair and whiskers tousled, her nose an inch from his, murmuring, smiling so that he'd have to search for the barbs.

‘Mary, please, why are you always like this afterwards?’

‘Mary, please.’ Even in a whisper she mimicked him well enough, catching the Englishness that he'd cultivated over the past couple of years. ‘And why are you always like this afterwards? You're all promises and passion with me here, but downstairs I'm nothing to you, am I – d'you think I'm some sort of eejit?’ In an instant the warmth and smile had disappeared. Her face was now serious, the honey had gone from her voice and she neglected that little gesture of sweeping a jet-black lock of hair from out of her eyes.

Without warning her sticky weight was off him. She slid from under the blanket and onto the woollen rug beside the bed, hands on her hips, a curling mane of hair down her back, chin and breasts petulantly thrust forward. Morgan recognized the signs and unconsciously pulled the covers up against the storm.

‘What happiness d'you think you'll get there, Lieutenant Mister-bloody-Morgan? Your Da will end up with some Prod stronghold and you'll be at his and the Hawtreys' beck and call for the rest of your days, like a wee puppy.’ Mary hissed her venom. He lunged and tried to grab her wrists. Occasionally she could be tamed, won round by kisses and enveloping arms but this time she wouldn't be turned. She left the dawn-lit room as swiftly as her pleasure had cooled.

Morgan winced as the bedroom door banged – did she want everyone to know? And she was wrong of course. Maude would never glance at Tony Morgan whilst he was soldiering; besides, a war could change his world. But whatever lay ahead with stringy Maude, the smell, warmth and sheer sparkle of Mary would stay with him. He groped to find his watch.

‘So, the young lion's awake and prepared to grace us with his presence at last.’ Billy Morgan, a widower at fifty-nine, grey curls hanging too long about the collar of his badly-starched shirt, his waistcoat unbuttoned and loose, greeted his son as he came into breakfast.

The big dining room was barely warm from the peat fire that the servants had started before any of the family were awake, lighting up the walls and heavily decorated ceiling where the grey March morning light hardly penetrated. Silver entrée dishes jostled for space on the sideboard, little spirit lamps flickering below them to keep the porridge, eggs, bacon and kidneys warm for the Morgans and their guest.

‘I am, father: good morning, Colonel, I hope you slept well?’

Tony had learnt not to encourage his father's heavy jokes, particularly when others were there; to do anything else would only spur him on. Now Billy's oldest friend, Colonel Dick Kemp, grinned across the table at him.

‘I slept as well as your father's lumpy mattress would allow: I've had better nights in a snake-filled storm ditch with jackals licking my balls; I only stay at Glassdrumman out of pity for the old boy.’ When Tony had come back for home leave a week ago, he'd found Kemp deeply ensconced there, staying for a full three months of his furlough from India where he commanded a battalion of Bengal infantry. The two officers, despite the gap in age and rank, had soon formed an easy bond in the face of Billy Morgan's wit that sent the banter crackling between the three of them.

‘Less of the “old boy”, Kemp. Just because I was a-soldiering before you'd thrown a leg across a drab, don't come the “Victor of Aliwal” with me!’ As a very young man, Billy Morgan had seen some gentle service in the West Cork Militia, patrolling the Atlantic coastline against the last vestiges of Napoleon's hordes whilst Kemp had just been starting on his career as an ensign of the Honourable East India Company. And that career had been a placid one until Kemp, if his accounts were to be believed, had beaten the Sikhs almost single-handed, smashing them as effectively as they had snapped one of his legs at the Battle of Aliwal eight years before.

Tony knew the signs by now. Kemp's sharp, black eyes were shining, he was full of piss and vinegar, keen for fun at any price, but if the two, older men started one of their verbal skirmishes now, there would be no end to it: distraction was the answer.

‘What have the papers to say today, Father?’ Tony asked as he sprinkled cinnamon and sugar over his porridge.

‘Well, those fools in London and Paris have finally declared war.’ Billy shook the paper out, the headlines bellowing the formal recognition of a war that had been underway for several months already.

‘Tell me something that surprises me, Father. Here, Keenan, look at this: at last we're at war.’ Private James Keenan, Tony's batman in the 95th whom he'd selected for the post as much for the fact that he was a fellow Corkman as for his competence, had brought more coffee for his master. When the Regiment was sent on leave before embarking for foreign service, Keenan had chosen to spend the time comfortably fed and watered by his master in Glass-drumman rather than with his own family scraping an existence from the soil just a dozen miles away in Clonakilty. Now he narrowed his eyes and laboured over the letters of the headline.

‘So, we're to have a fight, then, your honour. But where will it be?’ Keenan asked the question to which none of them knew the answer.

Six months before, the Russian Admiral Nachimov had sunk an ageing Turkish fleet at Sinope in the Black Sea; since then war had been an inevitability. The Turks had already been hard at it with the Russians, each pounding the other inconclusively: now the formal entry of the Allies meant that war could start in earnest, plunging Europe into her first serious conflict since Waterloo.

‘Good question, Keenan.’ They all deferred to Kemp for he knew the Russians well – or so he claimed. ‘We saw more than enough of the Russians' tricks up on the Frontier after that nonsense at Kabul in forty-two. They're crafty buggers an' John Turk will need all the help he can get if he's to throw them out of Moldavia and Wallachia. You'll be scampering up and down the Danube, I'd guess.’

The mention of two such exotic names stalled the discussion for a moment, adding to Kemp's stature, before Tony cut in, ‘You're probably right, Colonel, but everybody seemed to have a different view back in Weedon.’

The 95th were stationed at the newly-built barracks in Weedon in Northamptonshire. Just six weeks before the commanding officer had ordered a general parade and told them all that they were to start, ‘warlike preparations’.

‘All we've been told is that we're to be ready to go to, “The East” and there's been some craic over that, I can tell you. Kingsley, the adjutant – you remember him, Father, he transferred in from the Cape Mounted Rifles – says we'll go wherever the Turks want us, but Hume, the senior major, reckons that the French will want us to have a go at the Muscovites' fleet in Sevastopol up to the north, in the Crimea.’

‘The French,’ Billy Morgan said it as if he were clearing phlegm, ‘how in the name of God have we got involved with those rogues?’

‘Father, before you start, those poor fellows have had their necks stretched enough: I'd say that Colonel Kemp and Keenan can probably name every last one.’ Tony was trying to stop his father from treating the whole room to another account of the highpoint of Billy's Militia service when, at seventeen, he'd arrested and strung-up a boatload of shipwrecked French sailors. Local society was still undecided whether they were spies or not, but Billy was convinced and still delighted in the story.

‘Aye, well it's all right for you an' your clever pals loafing around in barracks without a hand-span of proper soldiering to your name,’ Billy Morgan was warming to one of his favourite themes, ‘but if you'd seen what those damn Frogs and the Croppies did to this country when I was a boy, then that so-called revolution of theirs in forty-eight – and now they've got another of those Buonaparte fuckers back at the helm, you'd be getting ready to fight the Frenchies and not the Russians who helped us to thrash 'em last time.’ His voice fell before adding, ‘They're just a parcel of bloody Papists.’

There was a flicker of embarrassment as Kemp and Tony looked at Keenan – the only Catholic there – but the soldier-servant was too used to this sort of talk from his betters to take any notice or offence.

‘What d'you, think, James Keenan?’ Billy Morgan sensed the others' slight discomfort and tried to cover it by bringing the man back into the conversation, ‘Wouldn't you prefer to go at the French and leave the Russians to their own devices?’

‘I couldn't care less, your honour …’ Keenan poured more coffee for Kemp, ‘I'm just a soldier an' I'll go wherever I'm told an' put a lead bullet into any head that Mr Morgan asks me to, Catholic, Protestant, Musselman or Jew, they're all one to me. Besides, they say Turkish tail's worth a look.’

There was a shout of appreciative laughter at Keenan's simple philosophy and it brought an end to talk of war.

‘Now, I'm off to have a peep at this horse you've got for me, Billy,’ said Kemp, rising from the table, wiping heartily at his lips before letting his napkin fall to the ground. ‘I'll see you in the tack room in, what … five and twenty minutes, shall we say, Mr Morgan?’ Keenan pulled the Colonel's chair away for him and retrieved his discarded cloth.

‘That's fine, Colonel, I'll be with you as soon as I've finished my breakfast,’ Tony half rose from his chair respectfully as his senior left the room.

‘You'll be taking Kemp for a canter over Clow's Top, will you, son?’ Billy pushed more bacon home as a slight smile lit his face.

‘I will and don't fret, I know that Miss Hawtrey and her cousin are expecting to see us up there. I'll show them that fox's earth that Finn's been talking about all winter.’

‘Aye, well mind you do, you'll get bugger-all time between now and the end of your leave to speak to young Maude with anything like privacy, an' I've told Kemp to give you both a bit of breathing space, so make the most of it.’ With no mother to corral suitable young women for Morgan during his rare leaves, Billy had to do the job instead, the most promising target being the eldest daughter of Judge Hawtrey from Leap. He'd first introduced them last year; what Maude lacked in beauty and warmth was more than compensated for by her family's wealth and position.