Ram; being the tale of one Ramillies Anstruther, 1704-55 .. (6 page)

Dizzy with chagrin, he glared at Will who, shrugging, muttered: "Eigh, she's champion!" and walked out.

Feet dragging as if he were a schoolboy bound for a whipping, Dick entered his mother's small office across the passageway. She sat at her escritoire, candlelight playing upon her white hair.

"I've heard the army's no place to learn manners, and last night proves it," she attacked. "Turning tha own home into a tavern, wi' tha brawling and boasting!"

"I was sick, ma'am and the liquor set my head awry," he protested. "No harm's done, surely?"

"No harm? For years I've fought to uphold tha father's name and borne bitter insults for it. And now, when time comes to show the gentry you're quality too, you prove nowt but a drunken Lob-sterback!"

"They'll soon learn different. The Queen needs regiments and gives high reward to those who raise 'em." He plunged on recklessly, until lack of breath alone halted him and left them staring at each other in silence.

"When tha father died, ye'd scarce done sucking my breast," she said at last. "Who then farmed the land, bred the horses, sold

the crops? Nay, not even when ye was grown did ye do else but drink and wench wi' that redcoat crew at Richmond and swear ye'd never rest till you wore the red too. Aye, ye prated enough how ye'd win fame against the rebel Irish and make dead Anstruther proud! How the Dutch lass married ye, I don't know. Maybe she's better dead, since you'd ruin an estate that's been eighty years in the making. Eigh, that hole in tha head must ha' made thee daft!"

" 'Fore God, I'll not be treated so!" he flared. "Dalesview's mine by law. I ask but to use it for promotion and fame—Anstruther fame! I could be a lieutenant colonel but for your niggardliness. Think I love having snotty-nosed boys set above me because they purchased their rank? I, who've fought and bled twenty years?"

"Aye, you own Dalesview." She rose slowly. "Send for Lawyer Railstone and have me driven off. In no other way will I let you ruin us all. So send, and let's have done."

Staring down at this small, indomitable woman, he knew he was beaten, yet he must retrieve something. "There's time later for a regiment. Give me two hundred and I'll purchase a company. Let me recruit a dozen lads and maybe I'll get a majority free. Remember, I leave tomorrow, taking my son with me."

"No!" she panted. "Such money'11 buy owd George's acres up by the fells. In two years it'll be worth thrice that. And ye'll take no more lads to get their heads knocked off. As for my grandson, ye'll not take him off again, sick as he is, to feed on God knows what. Good Yorkshire fare is what he needs." Her tone softened. "When the war's over, ye'll bless me for this. Dalesview'll be all yours then, to do wi' as ye will."

Lost—horse, foot and guns! He managed a bow. "God be wi' ye," he muttered and turned doorward.

"Dick!" She was beside him, pulling his head down, her fingers, soft as thistledown, caressing his pulsing scar. "My gert brave fool!"

Back in his room he slumped on a chair, proud, paradoxically, of her for having beaten him. What a woman; won't budge an inch. But I'm her flesh too, and Yorkshire tykes never let go. I'll bring her around, stab me if I don't!

Ely entered. "Thought your honor might like this. Tis rare Nantes." When Dick asked where he'd got it, he grinned slyly.

"Wenches know military men like their drop, your honor. There's more for our ride tomorrow."

"Get you a good sleep." Dick was grateful. "And pad your sore hams well, for I want no cripples on the march."

"Yes, sir." Ely moved around the room, hanging up Dick's coat and placing his peruke on the wig block. He opened the window, letting in the crisp air. Then he left.

Dick started on the brandy, which probably had been smuggled from France. Oh, for a racking tale to reach Mother's heart and her purse! Plans jumbled in his brain as the bottle emptied and the candles burned low. Bah, better sleep—inspiration would come tomorrow. He slept.

This time he awakened with a fairly clear head and for a little while he lay sorting out the debris of the night's thoughts. Well, even if she kept Ram, she couldn't stop him taking Ben and Abel, since he'd enlisted them legally.

He shouted for Ely to bring shaving water and looked for his watch. Not finding it, he searched his pockets. He swore. Not only was it gone, but so was his purse and pistols. He bellowed again for Ely. Getting no reply, he stormed into the kitchen. Poll and the wenches were there, but not Ely. No, they'd not seen him today anywhere.

"Find him!" He counted the wenches, wondering if one might be off somewhere yielding to the rogue's wiles. But, no. His urgency sent them scouring the outbuildings, while he himself went up to the attic where Ely had slept. The pallet was rumpled, but the man's equipment and flintlock were gone. The mealy-mouthed whore's bully had run . . . and stolen his watch, money and pistols! Dick was too furious even to swear as he dashed down and over to the stables. But no horses were unaccounted for and, recalling Ely's sore backsides, he was sure he'd gone afoot.

Hannah appeared and at once took charge: Will and the men were brought in from the fields and formed into small armed parties, mounted or afoot. While they went north, east and south, Dick took Abel and Ben and rode west toward the high fells, aware that a determined man could work across them into Westmorland and thence south to lose himself in more populous Lancashire.

Abel carried an ancient horse pistol and Ben a blunderbuss charged with old nails. But Dick had only Hannah's pocket pistol, having let one of Will's party take his sword; small enough armament against a desperate veteran having pistols and a musket. Ranging along torrent beds and across outcroppings of rock, the trio spread out and rode upward into the broken, wooded foothills.

Soon Abel waved the others to him. Upon crossing a shallow stream, he'd come upon still wet footprints on a limestone patch and leading into some thick bracken.

"He's in yonder woods," Dick decided. "Leave the nags and spread wide again." Barely had they started afoot through the waist-high ferns when a shot cracked. His teeth bared. The whorseson will swing for that! he promised. He glimpsed a figure dodging among the trees ahead and fired, cursing the little pistol's hollow pop. In return, a ball tore through the skirt of his coat and grazed his left thigh.

"After him!" Reaching the wood's fringe, he again caught sight of the moving figure. "View hal-loo!" he bawled, pointing, for the quarry now crouched behind a fir. He worked closer, reloading as he went. Yells telling that Ben was closing in from the right, he charged forward. "Got ye!"

But he hadn't. Instead, here was a ragged, bearded wretch, whose ratlike eyes glittered at him from under long, matted hair.

"Where's Ely?"

"I know no Ely." Already the creature squirmed in Ben's grip.

"A deserter. Ye sod, have ye seen him?"

"If you mean the redcoat, I shot at him—and missed, thank God. I thought he was one of you."

"Which way did he go?" Dick grabbed his throat. "Speak!"

"Toward . . . the fell!" the man choked. Dick let him go. Damnation, 'twas not Ely but this punk who's been shooting at me with my own pistols, he realized. The captive, he saw, wore manacles, though their chain had been snapped and its ends wrapped with rags. Another runaway!

"Hold him here," he ordered Ben and, with Abel, went on through the up-sloping wood until they emerged onto the rocky hillside. Not two furlongs ahead was a climbing red figure. "Take the left," Dick told Abel. "I'll follow over the crags."

A deadly hide-and-seek ensued. Twice Ely shot at him; but, gripped by the manhunt lust, he cut the pursued's lead until he was almost within the toy pistol's range, though Ely had vanished among the tiers of rotted limestone. Dick edged forward warily, ears cocked for sounds of movement.

So suddenly that surprise made him fire futilely, he saw his man spring up not ten feet away, firelock raised.

"I've got ye!" Ely panted. "I've waited long for this—to treat ye as I did young Drew. Aye, and as I'd ha' treated that little bastard brat! Use my woman, would ye? I'll send—"

"Order—ARMS!" Dick's tone had the blare of the parade ground.

Old-soldier Ely reacted involuntarily: the gun was halfway down to the order before he realized the trick. Yelling, he brought it up again, but Dick flung the empty pistol at his face and leaped after it. The firelock went off as his greater bulk hit the lighter man and both crashed upon the rocks. Once Ely's fingers ripped across his face, seeking his eyes; once his knee caught him dangerously near the groin. But then Dick straddled the ex-corporal's writhing body, kneeling on his outstretched arms.

Briefly they glared at each other in hatred. Then Dick's hand closed upon the scrawny throat. Terrible, inhuman gasps came from Ely's frothing mouth as his face turned purple. A moment more and he went limp.

But in his fury Dick held his grip. Drew; so that's how the ensign had died at Menin, And Ram; this scum had meant to drop him overside from the ship! "You skimmings of turd!" he raged.

"Does your honor want ti break his 'ead off entire?" came boring through his madness. "He's reet dead by the look of it." Abel stood beside him, the horse pistol held awkwardly.

Gradually Dick's head ceased throbbing. Rising, he stared down at Ely, whose Jealousy over a strumpet had brought him to this. He searched the body and found his purse, but not his watch. "Strip him. His clothes and equipment belong to the regiment," he ordered. Abel grimaced, but did as he was bid.

"We'll 'ave ti lug him down for burying," he pointed out. "Theer's no way in these rocks ti make a grave."

"Grave? Let him lie for the crows, as thousands of his betters lie after every battle." Using the flintlock for support, Dick limped

down the fell, leaving Abel to follow. He felt spent and his grazed thigh burned. But he had no regrets, save that he'd lost a veteran and gained only two clod recruits.

Back in the wood, Ben had tied their captive to a tree and was covering him with the blunderbuss. "Won't talk, Maister Dick. Tried ti run, but Ah fetched him a clout that nigh knocked his brains out of his arse." He handed Dick the watch and pistols. "Had these on him too."

Dick glared at the filthy wretch. "I've just settled with one runagate and I'd as lief rid the world of another too. So, best tell me your name and why ye filched from me."

"Keep your threats to frighten children, Captain. I assure you I've no fear of death—I've looked on it in too many forms already." The man's voice was curiously soft and cultured.

Dick kicked him near the groin. "Think death's easy, hey?" He bade the two recruits untie and spread-eagle the fellow. "I've no time to show you all the tricks, but when I'm done you'll think the hangman's your dearest friend. Now, talk!"

The prisoner blinked. "Were our positions reversed, I'd have a few tricks myself, learned from the Indians in Virginia. But since I've no liking for pain, I'm Jotham Dace, one-time student at Merton College, Oxford. A poor devil of a tutor to various lordly houses— and a most humble supplicant at the feet of Beauty."

"And the manacles? Did the ladies chain ye to them?"

Dace laughed wryly. "No, but one of 'em had a brother, whose son I was tutoring. He felt I was no longer welcome to his home or his sister's charms, so he 'found' some missing articles of value in my room. I was being taken to York Gaol when I got away, broke my chain and reached these fells. Last night hunger drove me to theft in yonder house."

"Ecod, England's no place for a poor soldier, when he's robbed by his own man and an unshorn scholar all on the same night," Dick mourned. "The squire's charges will surely set you dancing on air, so hark ye. I leave for the wars again today with these two recruits, but I've lost Ely. So take the Queen's shilling and this red coat or . . ." He raised Hannah's pistol.

"Most persuasive," Dace admitted. "Aye, sir, I'll 'list. I've heard

Duke John's men eat regularly, which is more than I have these past weeks."

Back at Dalesview, Jonathan Dace looked ludicrous in Ely's regimentals, which were far too small. But a basin, shears, a razor and a good scrubbing revealed a man of about forty with a predatory nose, shifty eyes and a cynical mouth. Ely had, at least, known his trade, but this ex-Oxonian promised to become one of the Queen's Bad Bargains.

But already the day had half gone and by tomorrow's noon Dick must be back aboard the transport. He found Hannah awaiting him in her office. "I trust Ram's ready, ma'am," he ventured.

Her small eyes hardened. "We settled that before. He's my blood too, and I'll not have him raised by a pack of trulls."

"Let's make agreement, ma'am. Keep the little tyke, but give me Fred and two hundred guineas."

"Fifty and no Fred," she countered. "There's none like him with a sick horse. You've stole two of my best hands as it is, wi' your glory tales." Taking a moneybag from her escritoire, she counted coins reluctantly, then gave them to him.

He scooped them up, lest she change her mind. "Send Fred with me to bring back the mounts," he begged. "I must go fast."

She nodded. "Why must ye ever be away at the wars? Will's wi' me always, and a hard-working lad he is. But thou wert first from my belly, and a mother's love's strongest for the first." She rose. "Coom back safe, lad," she whispered, eyes brimming.

They went up to Ram. "I'm marching now and leaving you under your new captain," Dick told him blufHy. "Grow ye strong and it's a great ox of a lad I'll find when I come back."

"No!" Ram clung to him, sobbing hysterically. "No! No!" But at last they calmed him and went below.

Outside, there was much emotion, what with the wenches crying for loss of Ben and Abel, and Fred looking glum because he must return with the horses. Dace, hands bound lest he try to escape, contrived to look cynically disinterested.

Hannah clung to Dick briefly. "No tricks, mind, like selling the horses," she warned and turned away.

He grinned guiltily, having considered doing just that. "Good luck, farmer," he bade Will. "And now the Pretender's chased