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.
A sudden crash at the sideboard made both father and son jump.
‘Mary, have a care, won't you? Those are the last few bits of Mrs Morgan's favourite china.’ Neither man had noticed the girl glide in from the scullery to start clearing the plates and dishes. She must have heard all of the last conversation and now she banged away with none of her normal care, her usually elegant lips pursed in a tight, cold line. She said not a thing, almost snatching the cups and saucers from their hands, her face set and expressionless until James Keenan held the door open for her. Then she smiled: she smiled a great, lovely beam straight into the young soldier's eyes before both servants left the room.
‘Don't know what's got into her this morning – though I've a fair idea what got into her last night…’ Billy looked hard at his son. ‘Any ideas, boy?’
‘No, father, but she can be awfully cussed sometimes, you know.’
‘Yes, I do, son … but please be careful.’
Tony paused at the back door of the house to buckle his spurs to his polished, brown, riding boots and take his crop from the mahogany stand. As he clicked over the setts towards the tack room, he could hear Colonel Kemp's excited voice.
‘They came on like bloody French did the Sikhs – mind you, half their officers was école trained – and it looked bad until the guns put some canister amongst them. I never expected natives to stand against our sepoys, but I was wrong. Sir Harry used the infantry well, but it took you and the Sixteenth Lancers, Finn, to really finish the day.’
Morgan entered the big, leather-smelling room just as Finn, at forty-two still as slender as the lance he'd once carried, took to the floor. Legs bowed, imaginary
