The King's Bounty Read online

  THE KING’S BOUNTY

  Sara Fraser

  © Sara Fraser 1976

  Sara Fraser has asserted their rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1976 by William Heinemann Ltd.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter One

  Shropshire, November 1812

  The early morning sky was patterned only with wisps of grey cloud and the pale sun had not yet tempered the cold winds that blew across the wild bleak countryside. High above the moorland, a solitary kestrel hovered, its wings beating rapidly as its keen tawny eyes searched the thick carpet of dark mauve-green heather below. Then, using the wind’s power, it soared to find fresh ground, hoping to sight quarry beneath the clumps of bright green gorse, whose yellow petals glowed like honey in the sombre landscape.

  A brown ribbon of earth wound over the low hills and across the moorland. Its surface of hard-packed soil and rock was deeply rutted and strewn with potholes, but for travellers across this desolate waste, it served as a roadway. Even now, with the dawn barely broken, there was movement of man and beast upon it.

  A small trap drawn by a plump well-groomed pony came lurching from the south. The pony’s reins were handled by an elderly man clad richly and warmly in a high fur-collared greatcoat and stout topboots and breeches with a low-crowned hat on his grey head. On the seat beside him the sole passenger, a small tassel-capped boy clung tightly to the brightly burnished brass guardrail and peered eagerly about him.

  He sighted the hovering kestrel and shouted aloud in his excitement.

  ‘See, Grandpapa! See above us! There’s an eagle!’

  The elderly man chuckled fondly. ‘Bless you, boy! That isn’t an eagle, it’s a hawk.’ Then, seeing the shadow of disappointment darken the young face, added quickly . . . ‘But dammee for an old fool with weak eyes! You’re quite right. I see it clearly now . . . It is most certainly an eagle.’

  The boy beamed in happiness and, as the trap passed beneath and away from the flurrying wings of the bird, he twisted his head, reluctant to lose sight of the beautiful creature.

  Abruptly, from a hidden dip in the road, a horseman appeared cantering towards them.

  ‘Look boy, there’s a fine soldier for you to see,’ the old man said.

  The solitary horseman was muffled in a long black riding cloak which streamed out along the glossy black flanks of his mount, imparting to him an aura of dark menace which not even the gaiety of the long red and white plume waving above his shako could dispel.

  The elderly gentleman brought the pony to a halt and the small boy asked anxiously, ‘Why do we stop, Grandpapa? Is that man going to hurt us?’

  His grandfather smiled reassuringly. ‘Of course not, boy.’

  His grandson became silent. The soldier reined in beside them and the elderly gentleman raised his hat.

  ‘Good morning to you, sir,’ he greeted politely. ‘Can I be of assistance?’

  The tall soldier’s pale grey eyes set in a lean cruel face were cold, and his voice was clipped and arrogant.

  ‘Captain William Seymour, Ninth Light Dragoons . . . Your servant, sir.’ He nodded curtly in salute, then went on. ‘Have you by any chance passed a convict convoy on the road?’

  ‘A what, sir?’ the old man questioned.

  The dragoon’s thin lips tightened. ‘A convict convoy, sir.’ Each word was enunciated so slowly and carefully as to be insulting.

  The old man flushed in offence. He shook his head. ‘No, I’ve not,’ he snapped.

  ‘Goddam the scum! They should have been on the march long since, the pox-ridden bastards!’ the soldier cursed viciously.

  The elderly gentleman flicked his reins. ‘Giddup, old lazy-bones! I bid you good day, sir.’

  The trap lurched forward, and the small boy, who had been still and apprehensive during the brief exchange, turned round in his seat to gaze at the tall dark figure, who sat on the motionless black horse, ignoring the farewell.

  The kestrel was still hovering above the track, but low now, as if it had sighted prey. Even as the small boy gazed, the soldier’s hand went to the saddle holster on the horse’s neck, and then swung aloft grasping the butt of a long-barrelled pistol.

  ‘Look Grandpapa, what’s that man going to do?’ the child demanded anxiously.

  The old man glanced back and the aimed pistol jerked, the sharp crack of its report echoing across the moor. The hovering bird was flung savagely upwards then, wings fluttering weakly, it plummeted to the ground and sprawled dying across the heather.

  ‘He’s killed my eagle!’ the child’s voice shrilled in horror. ‘That man has killed my eagle!’

  He flung himself against his grandfather, tugging at the man’s lapels with frantic fingers. ‘Why, Grandpapa? Why did he do that? Why did he kill it?’ he demanded, the sobs already choking in his throat.

  The old man held the boy, stroking his cheeks and throat, to comfort him, and his face was grim as he watched the dark figure canter away. He shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know why, boy . . . Some men seem born only to destroy life . . .’ he said sadly.

  *

  Many miles to the south, a long column of men and animals was moving slowly across the moors. A hundred ragged, barefoot men were chained together in five separate files, each numbering a score. The files were distanced from each other by gaps of up to forty yards and in each gap rode two or three blue-tunicked dragoons, their shakoed heads bent against the biting edge of the wind, the harnesses jingling on their glossy-coated horses. Other men in civilian dress walked on foot at the side of the files. They carried long thick canes in their hands and their voices were hoarse from constant bawling of threats and curses.

  In addition to the chain threaded through the iron bands clamped to their right ankles, the shaven-headed convicts also wore long-fettered wrist manacles. When the men moved, the rust-streaked metal rubbed pitilessly against their skin until it broke through to the raw flesh, causing it to tear and bleed. The fetter sores of the men who had travelled the most miles had ulcerated until they were pus-filled, poisonous yellow-green craters, and those afflicted bit their lips and moaned many times during the purgatory of the long marches.

  The heavy iron ankle chains dragged over the surface of the rough track, snagging sometimes upon a jutting point of rock, causing the files of shuffling men to stumble as their leg-irons were abruptly halted by the trapped links. In the last file, a convict trod with his bare foot on a jagged stone. He cried out in shock and pain and knelt to examine his injury, forcing his companions to stop in confusion.

  ‘Move along! . . . Gerron you barstards! Move! Mov
e!’ The turnkey, Abe Dalton, ran to the kneeling man and, lifting his bamboo pole, brought it slashing down across the man’s shaven head. The stubbled pallid skin burst and a thin line of blood welled across the scabbed scalp.

  ‘I’ll swing for yer! Yer pox-rotten pig!’ the convict screamed, and hurled himself at his tormentor.

  The long chain threaded through his ankle-iron tightened and the band of metal jerked to a halt, bringing the leaping body thumping to the ground. Dalton’s thick lips, which had slackened in fright at the man’s assault, firmed up, then curled back in a grin compounded equally of shock and relief.

  ‘Master Dalton? Goddam you, Master Dalton! What’s the delay?’

  Josiah Lees, officer of the Government Transport Board, and civilian head of the convoy, reined in his horse by the fallen man.

  ‘A prisoner tried to attack me, your honour.’ Dalton tugged at his lank forelock.

  ‘Blast your soul, Dalton! Cannot you deal wi’ that sort of nonsense yet? Are you bloody gormless still?’ Lee’s well-fleshed jaw quivered in his rage. ‘The whole bloody convoy’s being held up by your section . . . Take that soddin’ animal’s name. When we halt tonight, you shall have the privilege of flogging the bugger. Now get that sod up and moving!’ he roared. ‘D’ye hear me man, move!’

  Terrified at his superior’s anger, Abe Dalton kicked with his iron-shod boots at the man sprawled helplessly before him.

  ‘Gerrup, you scum! Gerrup!’

  The men on each side of the fallen convict hauled him to his feet and, supporting him as best as they were able, shuffled on. Satisfied, Lees spurred his mount to gallop back to the head of the column. A tall convict was leading the last file and, using the thud of the officer’s hooves as a cover, he whispered to the man behind him.

  ‘Tell Johnno not to fret, he’ll not be flogged this night. Wait for my signal then do what we planned.’

  A tap on his lean rump showed him that his message was understood.

  Hour after hour, the convict convoy struggled across the moor. The sun grew stronger and the men began to sweat from the effort of dragging their heavy chains. The heat and moistness of their unwashed bodies released in turn a thick stench from the caked filth on their skins and the escorts moved farther away to escape the vile odours of the convicts. Josiah Lees rode at the head of the line, silently cursing the absent military commander of the convoy, Captain William Seymour.

  ‘It ain’t fair, God rot me! Why should I have to take sole charge o’ the bloody convoy. That poxy whoreson! Spending his time swillin’ drink and rogerin’ the wenches in Shrewsbury instead of bein wheer he’s supposed to be . . . ’ere wi’ me! It’s his place to command the bloody convoy, not me . . . ’E’s the army orficer.’

  His bitter musings were interrupted by one of the civilian guards touching his thigh.

  ‘Well? What ails you, man?’ Lees snarled.

  The guard knuckled his forehead. ‘The cap’ns up ahead, Marster Lees.’ He pointed to a horse and rider topping a distant rise of the track.

  Lees squinted, straining his eyes but could only discern a shapeless moving blob.

  ‘Damn your eyes iffen you’m mistaken, Turner. I’ll cut your bollocks off,’ he threatened.

  The man scowled up at his superior’s lowering face. ‘It’s that mad bugger all right, Marster Lees.’ His voice was surly and aggrieved. ‘I’se got the sharpest sight in all Wiltshire, I ’as.’

  ‘We’ll see, Turner . . . We’ll see,’ Lees growled, and touching spurs to his horse, he went forward to meet the oncoming rider.

  They met a good mile ahead of the convoy. Lees forced himself to smile.

  ‘Good morning, Captin. I hope you had a pleasant night of it in Shrewsbury.’ His voice strained to sound jocular as he pointed back at the dust-kicking files. ‘My bloody oath, Captin! You did yourself a good turn all right. Makin’ sure you warn’t riding all morn in the middle o’ that bunch o’ gallows’ meat. They stinks worse than a bloody midden.’

  William Seymour’s expression was contemptuous, and his nostrils widened visibly as he caught a whiff of his companion’s own stale body. He nodded curtly, causing the plume of his shako to sway to and fro.

  ‘As military commander of this convoy, neither my actions nor my motives are answerable to you, Lees,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll thank you to tend to your own affairs in future . . . And try to remember that you are my inferior, both in rank of government and in your station in life.’

  Lees’ face hardened. ‘Be damned to you for a stuck up barstard, William Seymour,’ he thought, and turned away.

  The road ahead snaked through a series of sharp bends, and on each side thickets of brush and woodland pressed upon its verges. The column shuffled on, and each section in turn disappeared from the other’s view as it entered the bends. In the rear section, the tall convict leading the file watched narrowly until the blue backs of the dragoons directly in front of him went from his sight round a curve in the road. He turned his head and glanced first to his right rear, then to his left. The turnkey, Abe Dalton, was eight paces distant at his left and behind the section two dragoons slouched in their saddles, lost in their own thoughts. The tall convict slapped his right thigh sharply, then halted, clasped his throat with both hands and, giving vent to a strangled cry, dropped heavily to the ground. The section came to a stumbling halt and the second and third convicts on the chain started to yell out.

  ‘Hey turnkey, this bleeder’s gawn down wiv the fever!’

  ‘Turnkey, come quick. This cove’s dropped dead ’ere.’

  Dalton swore loudly. ‘God blast his bloody eyes! He’s got no right . . .’ and ran to the twitching body.

  The convict lay curled on his side. The turnkey grasped the wiry shoulder and tugged to turn the man over on to his back. The man’s bright blue eyes opened and his lips twisted in a savage grin. His hands shot upwards, one to grasp Dalton’s shaggy hair, the other to hold a wicked-bladed knife to the exposed jugular vein.

  ‘Now, cully!’ the convict hissed. ‘Shout and tell them bleedin’ sodgers to stay wheer they be . . . Tell um everything’s all right.’

  Dalton gulped hard, his protuberant Adam’s apple jumping beneath the stubbled skin of his dirty throat. The knife blade pricked sharply and drew a tiny spout of blood. He shouted, ‘Stop theer you two. Everythin’s all right.’

  The dragoons at the rear of the section were supremely uninterested in the delay. They reined in their horses and grumbled to each other. The tall convict, shielded from the soldiers by his fellows crowding forward, jerked with his head at the great rusty padlock which clamped the end of the long chain to his ankle iron.

  ‘Get that unlocked, cully! Quick! Or you’m dead meat,’ he hissed.

  Dalton’s hands trembled violently as he snatched the ring of keys from his belt and inserted one into the lock. Stealthily yet rapidly, the convicts began in turn to thread the chain through the holding rings on their irons. Nine were free before the dragoons became suspicious. The youngest one kneed his mount towards the knot of men.

  ‘What’s holding us up so long?’ he queried, then noticed the end of long-chain lying free on the ground.

  ‘You bastards!’ he shouted, and turned to snatch his carbine from its holster at the rear of his saddle. Even as his hands felt the smoothness of the polished wooden butt, the tall convict’s knife ripped into his stomach. The soldier screamed and fell forward off his horse. A flung rock caught the remaining dragoon on his temple, knocking him stunned from the saddle. The rest of the convicts slipped free from the chain and then, at a wave of the hand from the tall man, scattered in all directions.

  For some seconds, the turnkey lay shivering in terror, his hands scrabbling at the dirt of the track. Then, realizing that he was unscathed and no convicts were near, he clambered to his feet and ran shrieking fearfully to alert the rest of the column.

  *

  It was late afternoon and Captain William Seymour’s hard thin lips were tight as he s
canned the hillsides that stretched above him. From its round case hanging upon the saddlehorn, he took a small telescope and wrenched it to its fullest extent. His horse blew noisily through mucoused nostrils and moved restlessly beneath him, pawing at the soft marshy ground with its polished hooves.

  ‘Be still, blast you!’ Seymour hissed and, putting the glass to his eye, he studied the thick windswept vegetation. He was alone, his squad of troopers had one by one been sent back to the regiment’s camp at Ludlow with the convicts that they had recaptured. Now, of the twenty men who had escaped earlier that day, only two or three remained at liberty, and Seymour was certain that at least one of them was hiding on the hillside before him.

  He replaced the glass and urged his mount forward, intending to circle the face of the hill and thus force his quarry to alter position. As he circled, Seymour checked the long-barrelled horse pistols, taking them from the holsters at each side of the horse’s shoulders and seeing that the flints were well fixed and the pans contained powder. Next he loosened his curved sabre in its scabbard.

  Seymour was in his late twenties and had been a soldier from his fifteenth birthday, except for one period when he had been forced to leave the army for what his superiors considered to be excessive brutality to soldiers under his command. He himself had seen it only as the maintenance of good discipline. The long-drawn-out wars with the French had been a blessing to Seymour. The British army had become desperately short of officers, so many of them being killed, mutilated, or dying of disease all over the world. The officials at the Horse Guards had been reduced to giving commissions to totally unsuitable applicants to fill the gaping ranks. His sadistic tendencies apart, Seymour was a magnificent combat officer, without fear, and already a veteran of four campaigns. When he re-applied to purchase a captaincy in the cavalry, the overwhelming need for soldiers of his calibre ensured that his previous misconduct was overlooked. It was not of his choosing that he was now acting as an escort to convict convoys, but his regiment had been decimated in Spain and had been brought back to England to recruit and gather strength afresh. Seymour had been forced to return with it, and lived only for the day when he could once more go to war.