Infernal Revolutions by Stephen Woodville Page B

breaking sweat.’
    â€˜Killed a poet, I have,’ growled Ned Lester.
    â€˜They’re floppier these days,’ said Dick Lickley, eyeing me with amusement. ‘More doomed.’
    â€˜â€™Ee’s doomed, all right, ‘ee be,’ said Claude Jepson, ‘garspin’ n wroithin’ loik a landed troit.’
    Unable to respond at first, I eventually recovered enough to take the offered breakfast of dry bread and diluted rum. I was just about to join in a conversation on the demise of bearbaiting when the dreaded cry of
Turn Out! Turn Out!
came blasting once more through the door.
    â€˜For God’s sake,’ I cried. ‘Is there no rest?’
    No
, was the unspoken answer, and ‘twas off again for the main working session of the morning, which in my case turned out to be musket drill.
    In my former life I would have welcomed a session with the Brown Bess – what poet currently writing could claim firsthand knowledge of the foremost military icon of the age? – but now I was so tired I doubted my ability even to pick one up. However, in the fields where we practised there was no room for doubt, acquaintance with the beast was forced, and soon I was staggering around beneath the weight of it like the rest of the rogues. We were not trusted with trying to fire it yet, but perhaps there was no need to learn, for in a morale-boosting speech Corporal Tibbs explained to us with great asperity that the musket was absolutely useless in the wet, and not much better in the dry, being badly engineered and appallingly crafted. Chances of hitting a barn door fifty yards away were minimal. Nevertheless, according to Corporal Tibbs, it did have one saving grace: ‘twas an admirable pole on which to stick a bayonet. To prove this, he ran screaming at a bluecoated scarecrow and plunged the blade in up to the hilt. Almost drooling with pleasure as the scarecrow shuddered and popped its turnip eyes out, my fellow recruits could not wait to get started on their own specially-prepared scarecrows, which were waiting anxiously in line not ten yards away. I, however, was not so keen, having neither the passion nor the abandon required for such primitive work. Energy being missing too, I spent the morning miserably tickling my appointed scarecrow until it seemed almost to smile. Indeed, my response was so feeble that I would have been in trouble with Corporal Tibbs had he not been kept busy trying to prise the others off their bewildered victims. By the end of the session, mine was the only scarecrow not shredded, dismembered and scattered to the four winds, and I trudged back to the
Martyr
feeling even more ineffectual than usual.
    â€˜Never mind,’ said Dick Lickley, as he ladled me some of Anne’s scrag-end and vegetables, ‘this afternoon won’t be as bad.’
    He was right there – it was worse, for we were returned once more to the noisome monstrosity in the barn, there to finish off the job before the next pile built up. Even the confirmation that Ann had sent my letters could not cheer me, and by the time I was back in quarters for the night I was again at the end of my tether. At this rate I would be dead before anyone came to rescue me.
    â€˜Remind me again, Dick,’ I groaned from my bed, as I examined blisters the size of eggs on my hands and feet, ‘What date do we sail for America?’
    â€˜16th of July. Why, thinking of deserting?’
    â€˜No,’ I lied. ‘Just that I can’t see myself being a soldier by then.’
    â€˜Because if you are,’ went on Dick, ‘you’re right to think about it now. Nowhere to desert to on a troop ship, is there? Remember though, you’ll upset Little Bob if you’re caught.’
    â€˜Dick, I told ye, I am not going to desert. Help will come before I am reduced to that course of action.’
    â€˜Nothing wrong with that course of action,’ said Dick, to my surprise.