As Meat Loves Salt (15 page)

Had someone at home - Zeb, or Peter - said such things, he would have smarted for it. I glared at Ferris.

He looked steadily back. 'Ah, yes. You are full as big as he. Able to put me in the ground without a weapon, eh?' He began untying the cloth. ‘Are you still hungry? Are you, Nat?'

A flush spread over my cheeks.

'Here.' Ferris opened up the last folds and pushed the bundle of meat towards me. 'No bread this time.'

Nathan was full of admiration. 'Brave Ferris! Where did you get it?'

'From them, of course. I begged another share as reward for bringing it back.'

'Many thanks,' I muttered.

Humbled, I finished the meat in silence and endured Nathan's prattle with as much patience as I could muster. After a while the boy said,'Ferris, we are to see Russ before turning in for the night.'

'I forgot. Where is he?'

'Methinks on the far side of the camp.' The boy stood up. 'We should go now'

'Agreed.' Ferris rose. 'You will be snug enough here,' he said to me. 'Warm, and plenty of comrades round you. Sleep well.'

They picked their way across the grass. The boy was indeed the taller of the two, and I observed with a pang that he put his arm across Ferris's shoulders as I used to lay mine over Izzy's. Where, I wondered, was my own dear brother? Was he suffering for my crimes? To walk with my arm round him, to seek his advice, these were things which most likely I should never do more. I looked around me. The men were sprinkled about in groups and I could see none so utterly alone as myself.
I have been loved,
I wanted to call out to them, for it felt like leprosy.

I slept that night with the others, as near the fire as I could get, and tried to ease my aching hips. The entertainment money was laid next my breast, where a thief could not lift it without waking me. Yet it was impossible to rest easy, and after a while I gave up trying. As the fire sank low, and more men drifted into sleep, I heard mutterings, sobs and rustlings all around me. Many unknowingly gave tongue to their pain: 'Mary, Mary, no such thing,' mumbled one nearby, and another screamed out in the night, 'Save him, it falls.' Later, from some distance off, I heard shrieks as if a man were having a fit. It seemed that all suffered, the good along with the bad. But then, lying dismal and quiet, I felt the surge in my head which announced the Voice, and straightway there came unlooked-for comfort:

Our affairs are all of them ordered, and shall we, with our puny efforts, direct them ourselves? You are sheltered within the Lord's own army. Rest you there.

Daybreak was deathly cold. Swathed and huddled bodies flinched as the drum beat out
reveille;
I watched the man nearest me open his eyes on God's sky and fall to silent cursing. He lay awhile propped on one arm, coughing up phlegm, before crawling off to the fire and laying the wood together. He then moved away, came back with a water

bottle and seemed to pour it into the flames, for steam rose. After a time I understood that he was boiling a pannikin of water, something I had done countless times. The strangeness of the place had made me stupid.

A cry of 'Rise, rise' was heard nearer to us and the men commenced groaning. When we were all upright I thought I had never seen such wild-looking folks as some of the young ones. They were purple-grey with cold and their cropped hair stuck up at all angles. I passed my hand over my own head: tufts and angles too.

'Where's your lovely locks, Rupert?' one called to me.

'Sent them to his honey,' said another.

I turned away.

'Eh Rupert, want some bread?'

I limped on stiff legs to the fire. The one who had first called pointed to something like boiling slops on it. 'Bread's so old you can't eat it without.'

'Maybe
he
can,' another replied. To me he said, 'Big lad, aren't you? Are they all big in your family?'

'I'm the biggest.'

'Do they all
talk
like you?' Much laughter. Their voices came hard and unfamiliar to me but not unfriendly. They sounded something like Ferris, and something like Daskin; I could not always catch their meaning when they spoke fast together.

'We're from London,' said the last one to speak, seeing my difficulty. 'My name is Hugh, this's Philip and that's Bart.'

Bart took out a little pot and spooned some of the mess into it. I watched him blow on the brownish curds. It was the coarse bread called cheat; at home we had eaten the good white manchet, like the gentry. 'You can have this after me,' he said. 'There should be beans, but we ate them all last night.'

And cheese?'

'Cheese, lads! No, there's been no cheese of late.'

A man gave me some yesterday.'

'He's a friend worth having,' said Bart. He handed me the pot of boiled bread. 'Must have picked it up somewhere. Is he here?'

I looked about and saw Ferris seated some yards off, examining

the inside of a shoe. Turning to the rest I was about to point him out when I noticed their intense stare, like the eyes of dogs on a rabbit. 'I don't see him,' I said.

That day I entered upon my training. First we learnt how to position ourselves by rank and by file, and the distances to be observed, such as touching with outstretched hands, with elbows and so on; then the
various
motions: facings, doublings, countermarches and wheelings.

The business started well enough.
To The Right Hand
was simple, for we all swung to face the right and were brought back again, or
reduced,
by the command
As You Were.
This the veriest fool could have performed without difficulty, and I began to feel hopeful; but when we passed through
To The Right Hand About
(which was still sweet and easy) into
Ranks To The Right Double,
there was some stumbling, as when young children learn a dance, and when we came to
Middle-Men, To The Right Hand Double The Front,
a sigh passed through the lines of men. The corporal was obliged to take us through this last five times at least before the move could be seen for what it was, and even then the soldiers were by no means sure of it, as was plain from their glancing about to see what their fellows did. One near to me, a thin man with yellow skin tight and shiny over his face, had been lost since we abandoned
To The Right Hand,
and could never make it up after. I saw him, baffled, whirling and stamping about. There were others equally out of tune with the rest, too slow or turning the wrong way entirely. Many seemed as raw as myself, and some few were evidently so stupid as to be hopeless of instruction.

A short rest followed, and as soon as we broke rank there came a steady rain. The men wandered about, complaining, or squatted on their heels until it should be time to begin again. I thought I had not done too badly, and that once accustomed to it I should perform my part as well as any.

Next was weapons drill, and we were now given to understand that we were already divided into groups according to the arms we would carry. Ferris and Nathan had been right, for I was handed a pike. Weighed in my hand it seemed bigger than the one at Beaure-

pair, some six yards long and so heavy it was hard to carry except on the shoulder. We stood in the rain trying not to jab each other as the corporal took us through our postures.

Handle Your Pike
was no more than raising it from the ground, and as to
Recover
and
Order,
those were just as a man might say,
Plant It Thus By Your Side.
Yet all around me I saw confusion, and men in the wrong without knowing it.

The corporal shouted again, 'Order your pike!'

I stood still, my right arm extended, slightly bent, to hold the pike with its base just before my right foot.

A voice not the corporal's said, 'Bring the hand as high as your eyes.'

I turned. The man behind me was a greybeard, but hale and strong, with the look of a practised soldier. He indicated his weapon. 'Thumb cocked, and your pike against it.'

'Thanks, friend.' I copied him, finding that the correct position held the pike firmly, but also (since we were made to wait a long time in this posture) made my arm ache.

At last we got on to
Advance Your Pike,
which was done in three motions. I was cack-handed here, and the movement would not come smooth. The pike, which was to be locked between my right shoulder and arm, slipped away and I had to catch it in the left hand before it brained one of my fellow scholars. We then
Ordered
the pike again, very like the first time, and went on to the next part.

'Shoulder your pike!'

As I took the thing on my shoulder the top of my shoe came away from the sole. The pike dropped backwards and the others cried out to me to mind what I did. Our corporal came up to see what was the matter.

'I can't stand level on one shoe,'said I. He told me to take off both, so I stood watching the mud squeeze up between my toes while he walked again to the front of the file.

'Shoulder your pike!'

Had I known how many postures were to be gone through that day, I would have drilled with less enthusiasm. My feet cold unto numbness, I learnt how to
Port, Advance, Charge For Horse,
and other moves, with their endless
palming, griping, raising
and
forsaking.
Nothing could ever be done with a pike, it seemed, unless it were done in three motions, and there was already some considerable doubt in my mind as to whether men could do thus in the heat of the fight.

When the full drill had been gone through, by which time the new soldiers were
reduced
not to any former posture but to perplexed misery, those who could read were given a paper with the main points set down in the form of a doggerel rhyme. This I folded up and afterwards forgot.

The corporal told me to go again to the baggage train for shoes and wrote out the order. Taking it there, I was given a pair of boots, finer than anything I would have worn at home. They were even big enough, though I felt the last man's feet moulded within them.

'Why boots?' I asked.

'The latchets we have here are too small. Give me those, soldier,' for I was still carrying my own shoes.

'The sole is torn away from this one.'

'No matter, we can make up a pair from two odds if we have to.'

So my, shoes were put in the pile with the others and that was the last I saw of them. Once I was Jacob. I washed in sweet water for my bridegroom's bed. Now I was Rupert, and I took my boots for battle.

We broke camp in the afternoon, and I was glad of the even road for walking. While marching along I considered what I had learnt. At Beaurepair there had been an old drill manual in Sir John's study, designed to promote the use of Dutch tactics. All of us young men had studied it on the sly, sometimes snatching up a broom and posturing as musketeer or pikeman. We had pored over the engravings of classical battles wherein the troops advanced in orderly fashion, the files of pikes showing like square hedgehogs, and every kind of soldier keeping with his fellows. I had marvelled at this thing called an army. Yet our army marched in small knots and gaggles, the men seeking out their friends to pass the time. Sometimes these were comrades who carried the same arms, sometimes not, and I concluded that such

books were like books of manners, written for that things were not done as they ought to be.

As we trudged on some of the men, especially the London lads, began to tell me of the fighting they had seen and of their dear hopes. I said they were most admirable at their drill, as indeed I thought.

'You would be amazed to see how they drill in London,' said Bart. 'They're trained to defend the city against attack, for the liberty of the people.'

'From what you say, there are none so good in these parts,' I admitted.

'Another thing, most trained bands won't go from home,' Bart went on, warming to his subject. 'But the London ones, well! Fifteen thousand lads, prentices mainly, regularly exercised. And they do their stuff.'

'I wager they frighten the other side,' I offered.

'The Cavaliers — to speak truth, they've some good men but they run wild. No discipline, rag tag and bobtail.'

'What are their men?'

'Great lords, poor country fools ...'here he hesitated but I smiled, 'Papists, folks from up north where they think the King pisses perfume, Irish and Welsh rabble

And men from the rich cathedral towns. Where you find a cathedral and a pack of fat priests, you find Royalists,'put in Hugh.

'They bring their doxies with them,'Philip said.

Another man, walking behind us, here shouted, 'He's got doxies on the brain.'

Are there not women here also?' I asked, for I thought to have seen some near the baggage train. 'What are they?'

Hugh laughed. 'Many are wives to some man here. Others are wives to all.'

'There are women feign their sex,'put in Bart. 'To pass among the men without insult.'

Philip guffawed. 'Or to whore the more freely.'

I enquired of him what happened to these soldieresses if their men were defeated. None answered me, so I asked where we were headed.

'Now Devizes is fallen we're off to Winchester,'said Hugh.