“That might be debated. Three days ago, they claimed they had come upon the spoor and tracks of a feral pig, and requested leave to hunt it down. They vanished over the horizon, in the direction of Germany, not long after permission was granted.”
“Very good-an excellent training exercise.”
“When they did not return after one, then two days, yet their sergeant was disinclined to think the worst of them-”
“The expectation of bacon for breakfast had impaired his judgment. As my own mouth is almost too full of saliva for me to speak, I must say that I understand.”
“Now still Jimmy and Danny are not back. I must assume that they have deserted.”
“They trained only too well, and learned the lesson too soon,” Barnes reflected. “Now their lives shall be forfeit, if they are caught.”
“Oh, they shan’t be caught,” Bob assured him. “You forget that before I taught them to be English soldiers, Teague Partry taught them to be rapparees.”
“Do you want leave to hunt them down? It would be an excellent-”
“No, sir,” said Bob, “and would you please explain your incessant jesting about everything we do being a training exercise?”
“I have a soft spot in my heart for the men of my regiment-most of them, anyway,” said Barnes, “and would see as many of them as possible survive what is to come.”
“What, then, is to come?” Bob asked, “and how does brush-gathering and pig-chasing make us more fit for it?”
“This war is over, Bob. Ssh! Don’t tell the men. But you may be assured there’ll be no fighting in the year to come. We shall occupy this ground, as a bargaining-chit for diplomats to shove to and fro on a polished tabletop somewhere. But there’ll be no more fighting.”
“That is what is always claimed,” said Bob, “until a new front is opened, and a campaign launched.”
“True enough-in your boyhood,” said Barnes. “But you must adjust your thinking now, and take into account that the money is all gone. England has ninety thousand men under arms. She can afford perhaps nine thousand; and she is willing to pay for many fewer than that-especially if the Tories throw down the Juncto, as seems likely.”
“The Black Torrent Guards are an elite regiment-”
“You really must fucking listen to me, Shaftoe…”
Barnes’s voice was getting fainter and falling away aft.
“I am listening sir,” said Bob, “but mind you don’t stand still and declaim for too long in one place, lest mud swallow up your peg.”
“Shut up, Shaftoe!” said Barnes; but renewed sucking and squelching noises told that he had heard Bob’s counsel too late. There was a long grunt of effort terminated by a succulent pop as he drew his prosthesis out of the mire.
“Yes, sir.”
“It is all going away, man! Every bit of it. An elite regiment, you say? Then some draughty chamber in the Tower of London may be set aside, and a sign nailed to the door reading ‘King’s Own Black Torrent Guards,’ and if I am very fortunate, and if my lord Marlborough intercedes, and fights hard for us, I may be allowed to go behind that door from time to time and push a quill about. On frightfully important occasions of state, I may be prevailed upon to rake together a skeleton Company and dress them up in uniforms so that they may parade before a visiting Embassy, or some such. But I say to you, Bob, that a year from now everyone in this regiment, with a very few lucky exceptions, shall be a Vagabond. If Jimmy and Danny have deserted, and taken to the road, it is only because they have had the wit to anticipate this.”
“Mmph. I have oft wondered over the amount of time you spent in yonder house, over the winter, reading letters from London.”
“I know you have from the queer looks you sent my way.”
“Since the Year of Our Lord 1689,” said Bob, “I have spent all of about three weeks in England. As I cannot read, all that I know of the place now consists of rumors. Your predictions seem unlikely to me-if you are correct, it means England has gone mad. But I do not have knowledge of my own to set against yours, in a debate; and in any case I do not have the standing to over-rule you, sir, if you have made up your mind to turn your Regiment’s winter quarters into a training-ground for Vagabonds.”
“It is more than that, Shaftoe. For their own sakes, I would that these men would survive the coming lean years. And for England’s sake I would conserve this Regiment. Even if we be disbanded for some years, yet the day shall come when we are mustered again, and on that day I’d fain re-constitute the King’s Own Black Torrent Guards from this lot, and not, as is customary, from some random collection of criminals, shake-rags, and Irishmen.”
“You want them to stay alive-if possible honestly,” Bob translated, “and you want me to know where they are to be found, so that we can call them up again, if there is a need, and if there be money to pay them.”
“That is correct,” said Barnes. “Of course, we can’t tell them any of this!”
“Of course not, sir,” said Bob. “They’ll have to work it out for themselves.”
“As did Jimmy and Danny. Now! It is time to read your letter. Fetch me a burning bush and I shall play Jehovah to your Moses.”
Bizarre witticisms such as this were the price Bob Shaftoe had to pay for having a colonel who’d trained as a churchman. He trudged over to the feeble campfire that Captain Jenkins’s company had made in the midst of their encampment, requisitioned one uprooted shrub from their brush-pile, and shoved it into the coals until it began to burn. Then he hastened back to Barnes and held it up like a candelabra, from time to time waving it about to make it blaze up. Smoldering leaves snowed down upon the page and on the epaulets and the three-cornered hat of Barnes, and he shrugged or blew them off as he read.
“It is from your lovely Duchess,” said Barnes.
“I had guessed as much.”
Barnes read for a bit and blinked and sighed.
“Am I allowed to know that it says, sir?”
“It concerns your woman.”
“Abigail?”
“She is in a house not thirty miles from here…a house that is for the time being unguarded, as the proprietor has been locked up in the Tower of London. How fortuitous, Sergeant!”
“What is fortuitous, sir?”
“Don’t play the fool. Just at the moment when you must lay plans for a new life as an unemployed civilian, your two chief sources of distraction and gratuitous complications-Jimmy and Danny-have absented themselves, and you are presented with an opportunity to take a wife!”
“Take is an apt word in this case, sir, as she is the legal property of Count Sheerness.”
“Why should that trouble us? If Jimmy and Danny can run off in quest of a feral pig, cannot we steal you a wife?”
“What d’you mean we, sir?”
“I am altogether decided on it!” Barnes proclaimed, and thrust the corner of the page into the bush, setting it ablaze. “To establish you in a stable and happy domestic arrangement is to be a linch-pin of my strategy for keeping the Black Torrent Guards together! Besides which, it shall be an excellent training exercise.”
APRIL 1696
God has chosen the world that is the most perfect, that is to say, the one that is at the same time the simplest in hypotheses and the richest in phenomena.
–LEIBNIZ
“IT IS THE VERY LAST fate I should ever have imagined, that two unmarried and childless wretches should end up running a service to deliver children from city to city,” said Daniel.
As the carriage had thumped and veered out of Leipzig up the high road toward Wittenberg, and (later) the very, very low road to Pretzsch, he had settled like a great heap of sand, grabbing pillows and stuffing them under the boniest parts of his frame, and bracing his feet against the base of the bench that supported his companion, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.