Brothers in Arms. Iain Gale
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noticed that he was sweating heavily now. The day had crept up on them, and the noise from the valley seemed to amplify the heat. How much longer would they stand here? he thought. Taylor and his men had long since finished their song and silence again descended upon the ranks, letting the fears back in.
Steel drew himself up and spoke in a clear voice, intending the men to hear him: ‘That was a fine piece of singing back there, Corporal Taylor. Would you mind very much if we should call upon your talents again ere long?’
Taylor grinned. ‘At your disposal as always, Captain Steel, sir. Lifts the spirits, does a song. That’s what I always say, sir.’ And by way of an afterthought he added: ‘Can’t abide this waiting though, sir.’
Slaughter glared at him. But Steel was not one, as were some officers, to chide petty impertinence, particularly at such a time as this and from one of his veterans such as Taylor. He nodded. ‘Nor I, Taylor. And you’re right about singing. We’ll hear from you again. But I dare say we’ll be at them soon. Don’t you worry.’
The man next to Taylor in the company’s front rank, a normally dour Lowland Scot, like Steel himself, named John Mackay, spoke up: ‘And we’ll see ’em off today, sir, won’t we? Just like we did at Ramillies, eh boys?’
‘When you were still at your mother’s teat,’ muttered Slaughter.
There was a short hurrah from the ranks which betrayed more about their boredom and fear than it said about their confidence. Like Ramillies, thought Steel. Perhaps it would be like Ramillies. Like Bleneim too, maybe. But Marlborough’s past triumphs seemed an age away now, as he stood on the bridge – almost another country after all that had happened to him since.
Before then he had not known his wife, Henrietta. Lady Henrietta Vaughan, to give her her full title. And this was the name by which she would forever be known, it seemed. He himself found it hard to imagine her as ‘Lady Henrietta Steel’. Would he ever become used to it? For she was his wife of little less than a year, now safely billeted in Brussels. He had not wanted her to come out with him from England, but she had prevailed, saying that other wives did as much so why should she not follow her beloved captain?
Captain Steel. Now that was a style he had no difficulty in adopting. His part in the taking of Ostend had been rewarded at Court with the confirmation of his brevet rank as a full captaincy, by no less a person than the Queen herself. He had been paraded through the streets of London as a hero of the campaign. His praises had been sung by balladeers from Covent Garden to Holborn and talked of by old campaigners in White’s, at Old Man’s coffee house and the late king’s new military hospital at Chelsea.
He had wondered at the time what his brother’s reaction might have been had he but seen him in such pomp. His elder brother Charles, that was, who had always called him ‘Jack the good for nothing’, who had introduced him as ‘Jack my hapless brother who will come to naught’. To him Steel would forever be the failed lawyer’s clerk, a penniless soldier who had accepted the commission purchased by his mistress. What would he say now to Captain Steel, the hero of Ostend?
For a moment too he thought of his younger brother, Alexander, a professed Jacobite whose ideals had split the family – what was left of it. Alexander, the baby of the three brothers, two years his junior, who had left home to join the exiled King James at his court outside Paris. Steel had not had news of him now for five years and wondered what might have become of him. Was he still alive? Had he fought for his king? In truth Steel half expected to encounter him on a battlefield in the uniform of the ‘Wild Geese’, those Irish regiments in French service who fought so well for a vanquished dynasty and a conquered land. Perhaps he was wounded or maimed. Steel was overcome by melancholy and a sense of emptiness and the understanding that now, more than ever before, he had left his childhood, youth and roots far behind in Scotland when he had taken the old king’s shilling and joined the Guards as a young lieutenant at his lover’s behest. Now he knew that his real family were those men who stood behind him on this field – them and the pretty, headstrong girl who waited for him in their small and unaffordably expensive apartment in Brussels.
Although rank and fortune were central to the plan that he had long nurtured for his career, Steel could not help but think that his real prize in the bloody affair at Ostend had been Henrietta. He had rescued her from the hands of a French privateer – no more than a pirate – in the service of the Sun King. That man had held both of them captive as together they had stared death in the face and watched a good man die horribly in an underground torture chamber. Steel had taken her out of that place, and she loved him for that. That was beyond doubt. And now, as the years went by, it would be his task to persuade her to love him for whatever else he was as a man – those virtues she had not yet seen, whatever she and her constant love had the power to make him. It was all very well to fight for yourself, to fight just to stay alive and to make a life as a soldier. But it was quite another thing to fight when you knew that back beyond the baggage lines someone was waiting. He was happy and proud that she had chosen to follow him to Flanders, though in truth he would have expected no less from her stubborn, feisty character. Marlborough’s army always brought in its wake the gaggle of camp followers that came with any army – women, children, wives and lovers. But not many of those who came were attached to officers. It was one of the things he admired about Henrietta, her independent spirit that was intertwined with an unmissable sexuality. He hoped he had made the right choice for the wife of an officer of the Grenadiers. It was clear that his men had taken to her. They saw her as a natural part of the regimental family. They were aware too of what she had gone through, and respected her for it. Besides, she was Captain Steel’s wife.
A captain he might be, and on the not ungenerous sum of £170 a year, but Steel was again hungry for promotion. For, as lovely as she was, Henrietta had already begun to make something more than an emotional impact on his life. Steel had not previously been aware just how expensive a woman could be. True, she had brought with her a small dowry, but it was hardly in line with her status as the eldest daughter of the Duke of Rumney, and Steel wondered whether her father, knowing his modest station and uncertain prospects, might not have deliberately held back a portion in case of some … unseen eventuality. In addition, a great deal more money had now been necessitated by Henrietta having insisted on bringing a maid from England and her declaration that they must live in an entire suite of rooms. Where, previously, a town billet for Steel as a bachelor officer had meant a simple bed in a tavern room, it now seemed that they must live in some style and be able to entertain. Two bedchambers, a salon, an office and a dining room were the bare minimum, according to his wife. Not to mention the maid and a share in the cook and the kitchens. Not to mention her other requirements. Steel had not known that women could accumulate such … stuff. His life had been transformed, and as much as he adored Henrietta, Steel found it an added burden and began to understand what Slaughter had meant when he had advised him long ago that soldiering and matrimony did not make happy bedfellows.
Nevertheless, when he lay down in their marriage bed and held her small, softly naked form, all such thoughts left Steel’s mind and he was lost in such delights as he had never dreamed of. He had thought he might have grown soft during those months away from the war, nestling in the luxury of a feather bed and the arms of his wife. But in the past few weeks he had learnt that the regiment had seen little action, and he had passed up no chance of glory.
The shrill whine of a cannonball passing overhead snapped him back to the present. But even as he looked absently at the continuing battle his mind still pondered the prospect that before the year was out he would have to find some means of improving his situation. Promotion to major would help, bringing in another hundred a year. However, it would, he realized, as likely as not take him from his beloved Grenadiers. Unless, of course, the regimental adjutant should come to grief in the present campaign. Steel had never liked Charles Frampton, and after that episode following Ramillies with the major’s now hushed-up part in the distribution of scurrilous pamphlets against Marlborough the man was still less appealing. Naturally the business had been all but forgotten. Frampton was too good a soldier in the field to be lost. His accomplice, in truth the instigator of the scheme, had been punished and Frampton given a severe reprimand and encouraged to donate several hundred guineas to the regimental funds. Steel