A Regimental Affair

cut the scalp with two deft slices — one with and one against the sun — then loosened the skin with the point of the knife, and pulled with his feet against Atyeo’s shoulders until the scalp came away with a sucking sound.

Henrietta had already hidden her eyes, but her sobs came all the more.

It was the sight of Atyeo’s scalp that raised Armstrong’s blood to the boil as he bore down the slope screaming murder at them. ‘Fight me! Fight me! You bloody bastards, you bloody heathen, coward bastards! Fight me, any one of you!’

The Shawanese were stunned.

Armstrong leaped from his mare still at full tilt. The point of his sabre went clean through Atyeo’s defiler. He stood and roared his challenge the more. ‘Fight me — any of you!’

One brave launched at him with a tomahawk, but Armstrong merely sidestepped and took off the man’s hand with a neat stroke. ‘That’s it! That’s it! Come on you savages — one by one. There’s a different cut for every bastard of you!’

But he didn’t see the warrior crouching behind. The tomahawk struck at that defiant head and stopped the tirade abruptly. Henrietta’s frantic sobbing sounded ever louder in the sudden silence.

A brave who wore two eagle feathers at his throat, and carried a rifle, walked towards the sleigh and pulled Henrietta from under it. She had the carbine in her hand still, though he made no attempt to take it. She pulled her arm free — he did not grip it hard. He took several steps back, as if to admire his prize. She levelled the carbine and squeezed the trigger. The recoil snapped her wrist like a twig, and the rifle flew from her hands. She screamed in pain, turned and ran back towards the bridge, sobbing wildly. A warrior trotted his pony to bar her way. She scrambled down the bank to cross below, but the ice broke as she took the first step. She plunged up to her shoulders, the shock silencing her. Still she fought. She seized at the reeds on the bank, and somehow managed to drag herself out, watched silently the while by the Shawanese. Then the cold began to numb, where first it had bitten. What little strength was left was leaving her, and she knew it.

She began to sob uncontrollably. ‘Oh, my baby, my baby! Oh Matthew! Matthew! Please God! Please God!’

She was on her knees before the warriors. It was snowing again, and bitterly, bitterly cold.

‘Please, please!’ she cried. If only the Indian would spare her, she could drive the sleigh the last few miles to safety — for all the cold, and her dousing, and her broken wrist. She knew she could do it. She must do it — for her baby, for Matthew.

The warrior with two feathers cradled his rifle in the crook of his arm, and fired. The sleigh horse fell dead in the traces. He turned and motioned the braves to follow, and the Shawanese rode off taking the other horses with them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE. RECKONINGS

Fort Brownstown, next day

Seton Canning spoke very softly. ‘And that is as much as we could make out, Hervey. Those dragoons must have fought like lions for her.’

Hervey nodded slowly, using every ounce of his strength to keep his composure. He wanted to give way, but duty bound him tight even now. ‘What an end. What a terrible, terrible end.’ His voice cracked tellingly.

Seton Canning watched him anxiously, unable to find any word to help.

‘And Henrietta — she…?’

‘Hervey, I am sure she was not… touched by any of them. She lay under a buffalo hide, huddled up to the horse. There was no fear in her eyes. She even looked — I can hardly say this — peaceful, almost. But she’d been soaked from head to foot. That much was clear. Whether she had tried to hide by the river, I just don’t know. The snow had covered all the tracks.’

Hervey stayed silent for a full minute. ‘Thank you, Harry. Thank you for… I think I should like to be left to myself for now, if you please.’

Seton Canning rose, but Hervey had one more thought. ‘Corporal Collins is trying to track the war party, you say?’

The lieutenant shook his head. ‘It’s not a case of trying, Hervey. Collins won’t give up till he’s got every one of them with a noose round their neck.’

Hervey nodded again. ‘The rest of the Shawanese we backed away easily enough when you’d left. They were a sorry sight. The Indian Department men could scarcely believe it.’ It seemed to make it more incredible still that Henrietta should have died this way.

‘A few days’ cold and…’

‘Yes, Harry. Nature doesn’t seem to spare her own, even.’

‘Sir?’

‘No matter.’

In solitude, there was nothing to stand between Hervey and his darkest thoughts. Every instance that might have averted Henrietta’s death, every occasion that Lord Towcester’s conduct had given him just cause to protest to higher authority — and there had been many, if only he had possessed the resolve to use them — paraded before him like ranked troops at a review. Even the vision of Sir Abraham Cole and Manvers Priory, where yet they might have been enjoying their wedded bliss, loomed like some infernal spectre. He buried his head in his hands at the sudden vision of a crib on the fine lawn of that gentle mansion. How might their daughter ever forgive him when she learned the truth?

There was a knock, and the surgeon came in. ‘Good morning, Hervey. I’m so very, very sorry. I can give you something, later — if you want to sleep, that is.’

‘Thank you, Ritchie. Perhaps I’ll be glad of it then, but not at the moment.’

‘Ay… ay. Whenever you’re ready.’

‘Is there any more news?’

The surgeon sighed. ‘No. No sign of consciousness yet. But he’ll live, I’m pretty certain of it. Any man that can survive this long will live. That shako is a hell of a fine thing. It took the force from the blow, and it’s as well that it broke his skull, for that’s what put Armstrong out as if he were dead.’

‘But how did he survive the cold then, when…’

‘Henrietta was soaked to the skin, so Canning told me. She was only minutes from death as soon as that happened, unless someone could have helped her. Armstrong? Well…’

‘Enough said, Ritchie. Thank you. Let’s just pray that Armstrong recovers his faculties.’

‘Ay, let’s pray that. Well, I’d better get back to see that he’s still breathing properly. I’m so very sorry, Hervey.’ He put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You know… that is… the cold is not so fearsome a death as others. Henrietta would have slipped into a peaceful sleep. She…’

Hervey gave the surgeon what thankful smile he could manage, and sank back in his chair as the door closed. The clock struck the quarter and then the half-hour, and many were his visions of Henrietta in that time — happy visions of childhood, courtship and wedding day, shared perhaps by others; and there were more intimate ones, too, of which he alone could know.

At length he buttoned up his tunic, rose, and left the room.

‘His lordship will see you now, Hervey,’ said the adjutant, in a voice distinctly subdued.

The commanding officer’s temporary quarters were only a dozen yards from where Hervey had been alone with his thoughts, but they might have been a league away. He put on his shako and said he was ready. The adjutant opened the door, and both entered.

Lord Towcester nodded to acknowledge Hervey’s salute. ‘You’d better sit down, in the circumstances, Captain Hervey.’

‘I should rather stand, if you please, your lordship.’

The lieutenant colonel looked a little taken aback. ‘Very well. Then let me express my deepest regrets at