LITMIR.BIZ

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for the wars in the Low Countries.

      And he sang as he marched

      Through the crowded streets of Rochester,

      “Who’ll be a soldier for Marlborough and me?”’

      As one the company joined in, with the familiar chorus:

      ‘Who’ll be a soldier, who’ll be a soldier,

      Who’ll be a soldier for Marlborough and me?’

      Steel smiled to see how, as ever, the magic worked so quickly on the terrified men. That was the answer, for now at least: the way to kill a few more idle moments. Set them thinking about their beloved ‘Corporal John’ – John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, ennobled by the Queen after Blenheim – about how he had won so many great victories for them and how today was sure to be another. Blenheim, Ramillies and … What, he wondered was the name of that little hamlet to their front?

      ‘Tom. What’s the name of that village?’

      ‘Place called Eename, sir.’

      No, thought Steel, that would not do. It hardly had a martial ring to it. Better of course the larger place to their left. Oudenarde. That would look better in the history books and on the broadsheets in the London coffee houses. Blenheim, Ramillies and Oudenarde. Not forgetting Ostend, the lines of Brabant …

      From behind him, above the singing and the noise from the valley, Steel caught the sound of a loud sneeze, and he had no need to guess from whom it emanated. Henry Hansam, his second-in-command, had found his own cure for the battlefield terrors yet again and was indulging in it as ever before an engagement. Hansam took snuff, and at such times as these in such quantities that his consumption increased tenfold. While in other companies and battalions the men might have advanced to the ring of huzzahs and the beating of drums, in Steel’s, for the past six years, the accompaniment to any attack had been embellished with a succession of Hansam’s explosive sneezes.

      Steel turned towards him. The lieutenant saw him and spoke over the resounding noise of the men’s singing.

      ‘Care for a pinch, Jack? Newly arrived consignment from England, via Ostend. Finest Spanish, and I’m reliably informed that it originates from that very shipment taken by Admiral Hobson off Vigo in 1702. Superb stuff. You’re quite sure that you won’t …?’

      ‘No, thank you, Henry. And no matter how you may press me, and whatever its divine provenance, you know quite well that the day will never dawn when I descend to pushing that filthy stuff up my nose. Drink is my vice. And perhaps a round of piquet or whist.’

      ‘And you only have eyes for one lady now, Jack. The lovely Mrs Steel has all your attention. Gone are the days –’

      Steel, laughing, interrupted him. ‘Quite so, Henry. All my roving done. A simple life is what I crave. Glory, promotion, riches. The love of a good woman and the company of such men as I am proud to serve with. I ask for nothing more.’

      Hansam laughed. ‘Well, please yourself. But you don’t know what you’re missing. Rare stuff this. Very sweet. Fragrant as lavender. Calms the nerves.’

      ‘Sweet, Henry? That muck’s as rank as a Holborn sewer. And from the amount of it you shove into your nostrils, I’m surprised you have any nerves left that need to be calmed.’

      Hansam smiled and his face contorted as he was consumed by another sneeze, even more violent than the last. Steel laughed again and was pleased to see Slaughter and his men, for all their singing, grinning as they picked up on catches of the officers’ conversation. It always made them feel relaxed to see their superiors appear so phlegmatic in the face of the enemy. To keep one’s head in battle, as now in the moments before it began, was one of the prime requisites for any officer. An officer, they knew, was bred to such a role. Bred to be a gentleman by birth and by inclination. And with that went a natural confidence. An officer, a real officer, was unassailable, indestructible. And while he might not have been born into any great wealth, Jack Steel, the hard-pressed gentleman-farmer’s son from Lowland Scotland, was surely a natural officer in their eyes. Purchased into the army by his former lover, a court lady at St James’s and wife of an elderly nobleman, Steel had established a reputation for his sang-froid. Yet behind the façade, if truth be told, there still lurked as unwelcome a heart-freezing terror as afflicted the greenest recruit. Who could not be afraid at such a moment?

      Steel cast an eye over the company and beyond his men to the others of the regiment and took in their parade of well-known, unshaven faces beneath their tall mitre hats, the symbol of their elite status, blue and red embroidery emblazoned with gold wire and white lace. The hats, worn only by grenadiers, were designed to facilitate the throwing of the bombs from which they took their name, and they carried those weapons still, even though those unpredictable weapons were used increasingly less often in battle. Each man carried in a black leather case three of the small black metal orbs, named after the Spanish word for pomegranate, which when lit by a fuse and hurled like a cricket ball were still capable of doing damage to an entrenched position and wreaking havoc within a tightly packed body of troops.

      Steel knew all these men and their individual characteristics, from Mackay’s thick-set farmer’s frame and Taylor’s scrawny, guttersnipe physique, to Yorkshireman Dan Cussiter’s high-boned bird-like features and Thorogood’s over-long arms, so effective with a grenade. He felt deep affection for most. He had fought alongside many before and was prepared to do everything he could to make sure they got through this war intact of mind and body and emerge with booty and honour. It was no less and no more than he hoped for himself.

      Beyond the grenadiers, high above the Battalion Major’s company, waved the silken squares of the regimental colours. One of them was tattered now, looking no more than a rag, after so long in the field. It was the Colonel’s colour, red and gold above the cipher of their commander, Sir James Farquharson. The other, only recently presented, bore the new Union flag of the united kingdom of England, Scotland and Ireland, in its centre a crown. Lest anyone should be in doubt, the colour made the matter plain. Farquharson might have raised a regiment of Scottish foot who at Blenheim and Ramillies had fought beneath the blue and white of his native country’s saltire, but since last year these were Britain’s infantry. British grenadiers. Proud to serve not only their Queen but their newly united nation. Steel watched the colours catch the sunlight as they rippled in the breeze.

      Behind them, curving back through the marshland and up the hill towards the village of Eename, he saw the mass of the column – a polyglot force, waiting here behind Farquharson’s, to step off in turn from the flimsy wooden bridges resting on tin boats. Among them, he knew, stood some of the finest infantry in the world: Lord Herbert’s Foot, and with them Gibson’s, Farrington’s, Meredith’s and Holland’s. Behind them came Princess Anne’s, Granville’s, Clifton’s and Douglas’s, and those other regiments which like his own had lately made up the Scots army: the Royals, the newly christened North British Fusiliers and the Earl of Angus’s Foot. All of them names that would surely be writ forever in the history of this army.

      To the right of the British brigades were the Allies: the Prussians and Hessians in their distinctive blue, Hanoverians and Swiss in red, and the grey-coated Danes. Singing and swearing in a half-dozen languages, they had all come to this place on the orders of their great general. This was an encyclopedia of Europe’s tribes and races: English, Irish, Scots and Welsh, pale-skinned Scandinavians, men from the Italian and German states and exiled French Huguenots.

      For some time now, too many of the men had been silent. They were watching as their comrades who had arrived earlier that morning met the enemy down in the valley and gave fire and stood to take it and charged and fought and died. They were all powerless, of course. They had been ordered to wait, and increasingly there was no alternative but to watch. Steel realized with a start, however, that his own men were still far from silent and Taylor had not yet finished his song. Or perhaps he has started afresh, thought Steel, and I have not noticed, being so lost in my own daydreams. He listened now as they sang out, mid-verse:

      ‘To be paid in the powder and rattle of the cannonballs Wages for soldiers like Marlborough

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