The Soldier's Curse (13 page)

Monsarrat wondered what Dory was experiencing, wherever his mind had taken him. Was he still dimly aware he was being flogged, or was he lost in a dark wasteland, the sky illuminated by red flashes of pain?

Monsarrat had been counting every stroke, partly because of his natural clerk's thoroughness, and partly as a distraction. On the hundredth, he exhaled. Whatever was to come, Dory's suffering was at an end for now.

And then Diamond coiled, released and struck again. And again, hard enough to make the frame scrape backwards, taking Dory with it. Diamond did not seem to notice. There was a vacancy to him, and the lashes seemed to be powered more by momentum than by any will of the captain's.

Dr Gonville stepped forward. ‘Captain,' he said, ‘the sentence has been carried out. You are exceeding the maximum allowable number of lashes, and I am officially informing you that further punishment may jeopardise the prisoner's life. Please, stand down.'

Diamond stopped, looked at him, smiled as if in a daze, and then struck again, and again.

‘Stand down, captain!' Gonville shouted again. ‘By God I will report you!'

He started towards Diamond. The captain gave no sign he noticed Gonville's approach, but as the distance closed, he suddenly shoved out a hand and sent the doctor staggering backwards.

Monsarrat had by now counted one hundred and twenty lashes. Gonville was gathering himself for another approach, but Slattery, who had been watching in shock, suddenly darted forward and grabbed Diamond's wrist as he drew back to strike.

‘Let him alone, you mad bastard!' he yelled. ‘You've punished him enough.'

Diamond did stop, then, looking at Slattery's hand on his wrist, and then into the young man's face. ‘Those additional lashes were not to punish the felon, private,' he said. ‘They were to punish you.'

He dropped the lash at Slattery's feet, and ordered Dory taken down from the frame. Then he gave orders for Private Slattery to
be taken to the guardhouse, there to spend the night as punishment for insubordination.

Dory was being handled by another private, who had hold of him under each arm, dragging him facedown towards the gate. Major Shelborne always had convicts taken to the hospital after a flogging. He claimed it was to ensure the convict returned to a productive state as soon as possible, but Monsarrat suspected him of more humane motives. He fervently hoped Diamond would leave this practice in place.

He did. But as the prisoner was being dragged past him, he held up a hand to stop the private. He bent over, examining Dory's back. Then, with the deliberateness he might have applied to loading a musket, he spat into the wound.

Slattery did not come by the kitchen the next morning, being possibly still incarcerated, and nor did his diminished crew. Monsarrat himself had only intended to make a brief appearance, perhaps even denying himself a cup of tea. But when he arrived, he found Mrs Mulrooney standing at the stove, quietly weeping. Her tears were not interfering with her work. Some of them splashed, fizzled and died in the skillet in which she was frying the breakfast eggs she knew would not be eaten.

In two years, these were the first tears which had been allowed to escape Mrs Mulrooney in Monsarrat's presence, and they alarmed him. Without words, he took her by the shoulders and guided her to a kitchen chair. He took the skillet off the stove and tried to ignore the small splash of grease which hopped from it onto his pearl waistcoat. He poured her a cup of tea – the first in their acquaintance, balanced against the hundreds she had poured for him – and sat down opposite her, waiting in silence.

Mrs Mulrooney was breathing deeply now, regaining her composure and dabbing at her eyes with the edge of her pinafore. ‘I'm a foolish old woman,' she said.

‘That is the most extreme falsehood I've heard since leaving England, and I've heard hundreds, some quite imaginative.'

One side of Mrs Mulrooney's mouth quirked up in a distracted half-smile, before her despondency quashed it. ‘I don't think it's long, Mr Monsarrat. I held her hand all night. Her fingers are so thin, her wedding ring slipped off her hand into mine – I've put it in the drawer of her dresser, by the way, should the major be looking for it. No point putting it back on her finger, not until … well, the major might wish it to make the last journey with her.'

‘Is there no hope? I thought the bleeding and cupping had curtailed some of the worst of her symptoms.'

Mrs Mulrooney looked at Monsarrat strangely. ‘Had I told you about the bleeding and cupping, then? I can't recall it.'

Monsarrat was tempted, sorely tempted, to confide in her regarding Diamond's interest in Mrs Shelborne's condition, and the task he had been set. But her distress worried him, manifesting as it was in someone not prone to histrionics. ‘You must have mentioned it, I suppose.'

‘Hm. Well, the wedding ring, those fingers made of sticks, they're not the worst of it. If she's sleeping fitfully, I give her hand a squeeze. It calms her. She knows someone's there, then, watching over her, I know she does because she squeezes back. So last night, she began moaning. She does that a lot now, and I gave her hand a little squeeze. Her finger twitched. That was all. There was no squeeze. If she's too weak to squeeze my hand, Mr Monsarrat, she might be too weak to keep breathing.'

‘You should mention it to Dr Gonville – he surely should be told of such a change in her condition.'

‘I can't leave here though, Mr Monsarrat. I don't know what time that awful man is going to let Fergal free. He's friendly with some of the other young soldiers, told one of them he would return the stake the man had lost at the last card game if he would come to me with the news of Fergal's whereabouts. He brought the news of the flogging for free. I want to be here when Fergal comes by, if he does. After a night in the guardhouse he'll need tea. May I ask you as a favour to me, would you go and see the doctor?'

‘Of course,' said Monsarrat, ‘though I'll need to wait for Diamond. Nevertheless, I'm sure his interest will prompt him to allow me to make the errand.'

Mrs Mulrooney looked up sharply. ‘His interest, you say. And you have sparked mine, for I must confess, I have long suspected Diamond's chief interest is taking everything that belongs to the major.'

‘You mean his job,' said Monsarrat, in a futile attempt to dodge the question.

‘His job, yes, that's part of it,' said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘You know what they're all like, Monsarrat; they're interested in advancement, in glory. And there's precious little of either out here. They could commit the most outrageous act of valour here, but without anyone to record it, without a general there to witness it, what's the point? That's what they think, anyway. Some of their eyes are as dead as those of the felons. I suppose it's a kind of sentence for them as well. That's why young Slattery is such a tonic. That boy could find fun in hell.'

‘Well, if our captain wants advancement to the lofty rank of major, he's going the wrong way about it,' said Monsarrat. ‘I would not be at all surprised if the doctor reported his conduct yesterday.'

‘Oh, advancement's only part of it for Diamond. If you were to ask me, I would say that there's something else of the major's he wants. Do you remember when Mrs Shelborne let me come with her in that sea box?'

‘Let you? To hear you talk at the time, she nearly had to compel you at the point of a musket.'

From the look Mrs Mulrooney gave him, Monsarrat considered himself fortunate he was not in swatting range.

‘A most delightful afternoon it was, and I won't hear you talking ill of it, Mr Monsarrat. But while we were there, we heard someone passing. Just as well, thought I, for the canvas sheet protecting the young woman's modesty. It was a bright day, and whoever it was passing by outside cast their shadow on the canvas. It was no woman.'

‘You know who it was?'

‘Indeed I do, for he spoke. I recognised the voice as Diamond's, right enough, but I'd only ever heard it barking orders before. It sounded different that day, though. Oily, like someone trying to convince you they'd found a way to weave gold out of straw. He must've thought that that was what Mrs Shelborne was used to hearing, or that it would please her. But his presence didn't please her, anything but. I saw her draw her shift more tightly about herself, even though he wouldn't have seen more than her outline through the canvas.'

‘And what did he say, in this oily voice?' asked Monsarrat.

‘That he hoped she was well and enjoying her time in the ocean. That one of the great benefits of this place was that imaginative individuals such as herself could start undertakings which would have been impossible in the old world. Then he just stood there for a while. Well, Mr Monsarrat, she is the soul of courtesy, that girl; she thanked him, and wished him a good day. It's a funny thing with those who are born to it – they can let you know you're dismissed without actually dismissing you. But he didn't seem to realise he was being sent on his way. He stayed there for what must've been a full five minutes. I think he was facing us, because I couldn't see the outline of his nose. She glanced towards him every now and then, and kept giving me little smiles, as though she was concerned I might be discomfited by his presence. She was right about that, I can tell you. After a while, he moved off. Without another word. She turned to me, all smiles, and said how wonderful it was that even here, one could still find a familiar face from home. Then she asked me how I was finding the water, whether I was becoming chilled or would like to stay in the box for longer. Well, I didn't want to get out right then, didn't know whether Diamond would be lurking nearby. Although to be honest I was becoming a bit cold. We stayed in for another little while after that, and she didn't mention the captain again.'

‘I must admit,' said Monsarrat, ‘that I did get the impression when we were presented to her that she and Diamond already knew each other.'

‘I'm certain of it,' said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘But how or when, and what the nature of their acquaintance was, is not something I can shed any light on. And judging by his performance yesterday, the captain seems to be a bit deranged. It frightens me.'

‘Yesterday was certainly amongst the more disturbing things I have witnessed,' said Monsarrat. ‘He was always a martinet, but he seems to be straying into a level of brutality I haven't seen since my time on the road gang.'

‘Then you should be on your guard, Mr Monsarrat, for he is the authority here now. And he seems to believe you have too lofty an idea of yourself. It's to be hoped he doesn't decide to teach you your place.'

‘That very eventuality is one of my chief concerns at the moment,' said Monsarrat.

Mrs Mulrooney got up then, and traced with her feet the well-trodden but invisible lines that marked her daily path around the kitchen. The eggs had congealed in the skillet, earning it a glare from her, and a few muttered words of Irish which may or may not have been entirely appropriate from the mouth of a woman her age.

As she restored the skillet to the stove, her eyes on it all the while, she said, ‘Mr Monsarrat, you're to tell me at once, what do you know of the captain's interest in Mrs Shelborne? And of the cupping and bleeding, for that matter?'

Monsarrat had known it was foolish to hope Mrs Mulrooney hadn't noticed his slips. Really, he was surprised at himself – he believed in using words with surgical precision, and took a great deal of care in how he employed them. Having one word out of place, he believed, could make an entire structure collapse, leaving him standing in a verbal rubble from which nothing useful could be constructed.

And that being the case, thought Monsarrat, was I really being careless when I mentioned the cupping and bleeding and Diamond? Or is my conscience still alive somewhere? Is it trying to position me so that confiding in Mrs Mulrooney is my only choice?

‘I will tell you, but I fear you'll despise me afterwards,' he said. He was surprised by how despondent the prospect of her disapproval made him.

‘I'll not despise you, Mr Monsarrat,' said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘Of course, I may be wrathful, and for some time, and I may not consider you worthy of tea, but I shall never hate you. You've shown yourself too decent a man for that, even though I suspect what I'm going to hear from you today won't be an act of decency.'

Monsarrat noticed that the speed of her movements had increased as she was talking, her hands carrying out their accustomed tasks without, it seemed, any conscious direction from their mistress. She dreads the moment, he thought, when there is no longer a need for a tray of eggs and tea to be brought to the house.

‘An act of desperation, perhaps,' he said, ‘but I don't offer that as an excuse.'

He told her about his conversation with Diamond on the beach, and all of their conversations since. ‘I must say, I am becoming increasingly unsettled by the change in the man. He has always been far from soft, but, as you say, his behaviour is beginning to verge on the unhinged. And there was a point, while he was flogging Dory, when I believed he had lost all sense of who or where he was. This is not a man I felt I could refuse. My brief period on the work gangs nearly killed me, Mrs Mulrooney, and as poor a motivation as it is, I did not want to go back there. Please forgive me.'

‘For a smart man,' she said, ‘you can be a bit of an eejit sometimes.'

Monsarrat felt, a little unjustifiably, annoyed. ‘What would you have me do?' he said. ‘Who would it serve if I was building a road, with a few years of miserable life left in me before my health failed? I know I have behaved in a way which is less than honourable – and believe me, I chastise myself for it daily – but if you could have thought of another way out of the situation, I would be very interested in hearing about it, for none presented itself to me.'

‘You really are making me doubt your intelligence, Mr Monsarrat,' Mrs Mulrooney said. ‘I wasn't talking about your agreement with Diamond. Of course you had to do as he said, we are all of us under his rule at the moment, and the only person who can
overrule him is several days' ride away. Don't get too hopeful – I am very angry at you, and will exact my revenge in due course. But for the moment, does this knowledge not make you want to ask any particular question?'

‘You mean, why would Diamond want such information? Of course. However, I had thought that I asked and answered that question in the same moment. He's clearly in love with Mrs Shelborne, or at the least has a kind of obsession with her. It wasn't just details of her medical condition he wanted, but of her spirits and so forth. Why would he want to know that unless he did have some tender feelings for her?'

‘But you're a student of human nature, Mr Monsarrat. You must realise that love, even the twisted kind that the captain seems to have for Mrs Shelborne, can provoke one of two responses. Tenderness, or something a bit darker.'

‘Yes, I suppose … But what are you suggesting?'

‘Only that Diamond, with his leanings towards brutality, might have decided his chances of ever getting either the major's job or his wife were slim. We know he's a violent man, and after yesterday we know his violence is out of its cage. So, what does a man with those inclinations do when he realises the object of his adoration will never be his?'

A sickly unease unfolded itself in Monsarrat's belly. ‘He might,' he said, ‘decide that destiny meant her to be his, or no one's. Therefore, he will make her no one's. But you're not suggesting that Diamond is responsible for Mrs Shelborne's condition? How on earth? It beggars belief.'

‘Her entire condition beggars belief, Mr Monsarrat. Dr Gonville confesses himself perplexed. And if the doctor hasn't seen anything like it in nature, perhaps there is nothing like it in nature.'

‘What, then? Are you suggesting some sort of poison? How would Diamond administer it? Especially as Mrs Shelborne has now been cloistered for nearly a fortnight. If poison were involved, wouldn't the poisoner need continuous access to the victim? Even now, with Diamond in a position of unalloyed power, that's a stretch, if I may say so.'

‘You may say so,' said Mrs Mulrooney. ‘But I tell you, Mr Monsarrat, I feel sure there is a human agency involved here – either that or the native curse is indeed at work. But I've never been a believer in fairies and curses, and nothing I've seen in this strange place has changed that.'