Jennings pondered: ‘No, Steel. I think it better to make camp here for the night. Best to put ourselves in order before we enter the town, eh?’
He paused beside one of the enemy corpses and turned over its white face with the tip of his boot. The man was no more than a youth. Barely eighteen.
‘These men may have been peasants right enough, but we beat them in the fight and we should show the rest of them why. Discipline, Steel. The iron discipline of regular, steadfast infantry. You can’t beat it. We can’t have the populace as a whole thinking the British army a bunch of ragamuffins. Wouldn’t do at all.’
Steel frowned. ‘But, Major, I must protest. You know of the urgency of this mission.’
Jennings looked hard at Steel. Could he know the true reason for his coming here?
‘I am well aware, Mister Steel, of the urgency of your quest. That we must return as soon as we can to the army, with the flour. Nevertheless I am your superior officer and I elect to pitch our camp here for the night. Herr Kretzmer I am sure will wait for us until morning.’
Steel glared and turned to Slaughter, who was busy binding the wound of a young Grenadier.
‘Sarn’t. Have the men fall out and make camp. We’re resting here tonight. Major Jennings’ orders.’
‘Here, Sir?’
‘Here, Sarn’t. Get to it.’
Jennings walked slowly over to the body of another dead peasant. The neat, black-scorched entry wound left by the musket ball in the man’s chest belied the bloody mess where it had exited his back. Jennings kicked at the corpse and stroked thoughtfully at his own chin. He needed this delay to decide on his next course of action. Obviously the original plan to pay Kretzmer before Steel’s arrival was as dead as the man at his feet. He would have to act on his initiative alone.
He was still hatching a plan a half-hour later, when Stringer approached him.
‘Beggin’ your pardon, Sir. But me and some of the men was wondering if you’d like to share in a piece of chicken, Sir. Found all legal and proper, Sir. Property of … no one in particular.’
Jennings smiled. ‘How very kind, Sarn’t. That would be most agreeable. And as it belonged to no one in particular then no word of it any further than our own little circle, eh? Now tell me, how do you intend to cook your chicken? Will you fricassee it or do the men prefer a ragout, d’you think?’
Steel watched the Major and his fawning Sergeant walk across to where a platoon of his musketeers were gathered about a fire over which they had suspended a stout straight branch between two cleft sticks. This was surely Stringer’s doing, he thought. He would have coerced the men into parting with some of their hard-won plunder, legal or not. As for the rest of them, he and Williams would make do with the bread and cheese he had carried in his pack for the past two days. Slaughter, he knew, had a bottle of rum.
There had not been time to bury the dead before nightfall. They had moved them though, covered them with what leaves and branches they could find in the half-light and laid them out under the cover of the trees that grew along the riverbank; the stench would blow with the wind away from the camp. It was not ideal, but that was ever the case with war. You simply had to make the best of your lot. He reached into his pocket for a wad of tobacco and placing it in his mouth began to chew. He had sent Slaughter back for the wagons, with a full platoon. The light was fading and empty as they were, there was nothing to be gained by chancing their loss. Walking across the camp, he found Tom Williams by the bridge, staring up at the sky.
‘I think that’s the Plough, Sir. Am I right?’
‘I think you are, Tom. Well done. We’ll make a woodsman of you yet.’
‘Good to have Major Jennings and his men, Sir, don’t you think?’
Steel spat a mouthful of the acrid tobacco juice on to the ground.
‘Yes, very good. Very good of Colonel Hawkins to keep me in his thoughts. Judging by today’s experience we will soon be glad of the extra men. But time is of the essence, Tom. We should not delay.’
Even as he spoke, and tried to tell himself to think nothing of it, Steel could not comprehend what had possessed Hawkins to send Jennings to his aid. Nor why the Major should have elected to spend the night here, among the corpses, when the town was so close at hand. And later, as he drew his blanket tightly around his still-clothed form and lay trying to chase sleep, while the gentle sound of the running water rippled through his consciousness, he found the thought still nagging at his mind. It was insistent as the intermittent hoot of an old barn owl that had come to sit in one of the high trees by the riverbank, gazing down greedily at the wide-eyed bodies of the dead.
The two men gazed at the tall column of smoke that climbed up lazily into the sky. Steel spoke:
‘Well, at least we know we’re not alone, Jacob. Three thousand horse dispatched as far as Munich with orders to burn and destroy all the country about it.’
The Sergeant grimaced and muttered under his breath.
‘Still. Best not tell the men, Sir. They don’t like it. Goes against the grain. Doing that to civilians. And it can’t help us neither. If you ask me, Mister Steel, we’re walking into trouble.’
‘Better to be here, Jacob, than kicking our heels with the rest of the army in the trenches besieging Rain. Or worse still out with the damned dragoons burning innocent civilians out of their homes.’
‘I’m blessed if I can fathom it out, Sir. I mean what are we doing here? Why send us, Grenadiers for God’s sake, the best of all the army, to find provisions?’
Steel shook his head and said nothing. I wish I could tell you, Jacob, he thought. But there are some things which even you cannot know. He looked ahead.
At least this village, whose white-painted houses now began to rise up ahead of him as they crested the slope, appeared as yet to have escaped utterly the ravages of Marlborough’s dragoons. Sattelberg. The rendezvous with Kretzmer.
‘Look, Sarn’t. No sign of burning here, at least. Perhaps they’ve stopped. We shouldn’t find any trouble.’
Slaughter nodded and smiled. But in his heart, Steel knew that it would not be in Marlborough’s way to finish this thing so soon. A few burnt townships would not be sufficient to make the point. If he really believed that these tactics would coerce the Elector, Steel knew that his commander would conduct a sustained campaign of terror. This was only the beginning. He grasped the pommel of his saddle and with a swift motion hoisted his leg up on to Molly’s back. Whatever his personal feelings, he also knew that to lead a column into a village required any officer to look the part.
Steel goaded the horse into a trot and rode along to the where Williams led the column. ‘Looks a pretty little place, Tom, don’t it?’
They had started from their bivouac an hour ago, travelling more slowly now, on account of the wagon train. Not that they had woken late. It had taken a good two hours to bury all the dead, from both sides. It was around nine in the morning now and, as they grew closer to the village Steel noticed in the neighbouring fields the cattle grazing happily and carts standing half-filled with harvested produce.
‘Villagers seem to be at their breakfast, Sir.’
‘Perhaps they’ll save some for us, Tom, eh?’
As the redcoats entered what appeared to be the place’s major street a single sheepdog, who had been standing in the middle of the highway, barked a greeting and ran off to the left.
Steel looked up to the windows, waiting for the usual inquisitive faces to appear. For the children to run to greet them with taunting rhymes and begging gestures. Waiting for the doors of the houses to open. For