They soon found, however, that the training was not easy. Assembling the slaves and servants in sufficient numbers to make an exercise worthwhile was the first problem. The cane would not wait for a convenient moment to be ready for cutting and once cut, it had to be milled, boiled and cured without delay, or it would rot. Even with the cooperation of Adam and Mary, Charles had a frustrating time of it. Watching from a discreet distance, Thomas saw that endlessly repeating himself to groups of two or three had become thoroughly irksome.
Charles had divided the troop into three platoons. The first two, each consisting of eight indentured men, he named red platoon and green platoon. The third, the slaves’ platoon, with twelve men, he had rather unimaginatively named black platoon. Mary and Adam’s slaves, who had all been born in Barbados, were likely to be loyal, especially when they realized that they would be just as vulnerable in the event of an attack as anyone else. They would simply be treated as the enemy, and marauding parties of militiamen, Irishmen or Africans would take no prisoners. Discipline came easily to black platoon, less so to red and green.
‘If your commander orders you to run to those trees over there,’ Charles tried endlessly to drum into them, ‘he means you to run NOW. Not after you’ve scratched your backside or had a piss. By then you might find yourself pissing out of a new hole. If he says run, RUN.’
It was the other way round with flintlock training. Poachers and countrymen were used to muskets and pistols and some were deadly with them. Bringing down a rabbit or a pheasant called for speed and skill. And as he was told more than once, ‘Once you’ve got it, Mr Carrington, you isn’t going to lose it.’
He had tried teaching black platoon how to prime and load a musket but it was no use. The main problem was that with no experience of muskets at all, in the excitement of battle or even imaginary battle they lost track of the amount of powder they had tipped in. Sometimes they forgot to tip any in at all and had to start again, by which time they might have been skewered; sometimes two or even three times the required charge disappeared down the barrel. There had been the inevitable accidents – so far, two badly burned hands and a blinded eye – and the platoon strength was already down to nine.
Unwilling to risk more casualties, Charles had converted black platoon into swordsmen and chosen to command them himself. At this, they quickly proved themselves more adept. Wielding a heavy sword was not so different from wielding a machete in the cane fields, although the cane was unlikely to fight back, and these were strong men, accustomed to hard work and slow to tire.
Under Charles’s expert eye, they had learned the rudiments of thrust and parry, how to strike at an enemy’s weak spot and how to slash at his ankles and hands. They would never be accomplished with the rapier but, on balance, Charles thought he’d rather be with them than against them. He would hold them back while the musketeers were in action and only throw them at the enemy if needed.
Charles himself was seen practising with a sword in either hand. When Thomas asked him about this, Charles told him proudly that from the age of twelve he had been schooled in the art of swordsmanship by one of the finest fencing masters in England and his daily regime of practice and training would have put any of the king’s lifeguards to shame. The skipping rope had encouraged nimbleness of foot, lifting clay bricks and holding them for long periods in outstretched hands had strengthened the wrists and forearms and thrusting the rapier repeatedly at targets no larger than a man’s fingernail had sharpened the eye.
‘Above all,’ said Charles proudly, ‘I practised and practised with rapier and sword against older and stronger opponents until, by the age of eighteen, I could best my tutor.’ And, he said, he could do so with either hand. His father had insisted that his son be equally adept with left hand or right, to the point at which he could easily interchange and his opponent would not know from which direction the next attack was coming.
‘What’s more, my boy,’ the old man had told him encouragingly, ‘should you be unfortunate enough to lose one arm in battle, you will still have the other to fall back on.’ Charles chortled at the memory and returned to his practice.
Adam and Thomas, meanwhile, were busy building their defences. They set up lookout posts from which an advancing enemy would be seen well before he was within musket range, for which red and green platoons would provide a rota of sentries. At the first sign of trouble, the lookouts would fall back to the redoubts and take their places among the defenders. The redoubts were constructed of heaped brushwood, logs, rocks and a pair of beds chopped up for the purpose. Mary’s objections to this had been ignored.
Mary and Patrick had sewn pieces of material of the appropriate colour on to the right sleeve of each man’s shirt, so there was no excuse for any man to forget which platoon he was in. They also made sure the pork and flour were kept dry, the eggs were stored safely and the chickens and turkeys fed daily. And Mary had cut up her petticoats and dresses to be used as bandages. When they simply could not think of anything else to do, Mary had offered their services to her brother.
‘The food and water are stored and ready. We have rags for bandages, needles and threads and sharp knives for surgery, although heaven forfend that we shall have to cut off anything or extract any musket balls, and strong rum for the patients. We’re as ready as we shall ever be. Is there anything else we can do?’
‘Well now, sister,’ replied Adam, ‘I’m reluctant to put you in danger, but it would greatly assist our gallant musketeers if they had a continual supply of primed and loaded muskets. Thanks to Charles, we have plenty of flintlocks so if you’re willing, you could take up a position inside one of the redoubts and replace each fired piece with a loaded one. That would quicken the speed of fire. But you must keep well down – lie on the ground if necessary – and on no account offer your head as a target.’
‘We shall need instruction, Adam, but of course I’ll be a loader. And so will Thomas. It’ll be more exciting than handing out rations. Charles will teach us, won’t he?’
‘I expect he’ll be delighted. Let’s go and ask him.’
Charles was indeed delighted. ‘It will be an honour, my dear,’ he said, smiling hugely, ‘and I’ll wager you’re better pupils than the maggoty lot Adam’s sent us so far. Shall we begin at once?’
At a safe distance from everyone, they had their first lesson in the art of preparing a flintlock. Charles was an assiduous teacher, taking care to explain in detail the way to measure powder into the powder horn and how to load the shot. They both picked it up easily and by the end of the lesson could prime and load a flintlock in under a minute. Their teacher was impressed but still insisted on a second lesson the next day.
‘You must be entirely confident,’ he advised. ‘Practice, practice and more practice, that’s what Cromwell preaches to his Model Army, and we’ll do well to take heed. Parade tomorrow at nine, if you please.’
‘Very well, Charles, if you insist, but we do seem to have got the essence of it, don’t you agree, Thomas?’
‘I do. But perhaps Charles expects us to load two muskets in a minute.’
‘That would be excellent.’ He sounded as if he meant it.
The next morning, however, when they presented themselves for further instruction Charles had other ideas.
‘Priming and loading is all very well but if you can aim and shoot you’ll be even more help. Here are the flintlocks, here is a bag of powder with a horn each, here is a rod and here is the shot,’ he said. ‘And over there,’ pointing to a tree about twenty yards away, ‘is your target.’