What Shall We Do With a Drunken Soldier?
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sharpiepenTitle: What Shall we Do With A Drunken Soldier?
Fandom/Canon: Show the Colours
Author:sharpiefan
Word count: 3089
Rating: PG
Spoilers: None
Pairing/Characters: Cotton, Vickery,
Disclaimer:
Author's Note: This isn't quite what I had planned to do with this piece, but it's a complete episode in itself, so I think I can post it. It's a bit rough round the edges. And yeah, I'm useless at titles. One day, some time in the winter of 1808-09. Comments are as gold. This was originally posted on LJ in 2007.
Summary: There's a time and a place to get drunk... Picking the right time and place is generally a good idea...
Cotton entered Vickery’s room with the officer’s jacket over his arm. He hung it up and moved to get a brush out of his pack. Although it was only a few days since entering Captain Vickery’s service, he had begun to get used to the freedom his position offered. He crossed to the window and leaned on the sill, looking out into the street below. The sky was grey and threatening, but it wasn’t raining yet. Cotton opened the window. It was stuck, betraying the fact that the Portuguese inhabitants of the house very rarely allowed fresh air in. Cotton had been brought up by a farm labourer’s wife who believed in the healthiness of fresh air, no matter what the time of year. He thumped the wooden frame until it moved. He paused, his hands on the sill, breathing in air that wasn’t what he would call particularly fresh, used as he was to the country.
He was just about to turn back to what he was supposed to be doing when movement in the street below caught his eye. Thorne and Jacklin came around the corner, merrily drunk and followed by Roper. All three Riflemen were carrying wine bottles. Cotton knew enough about his mates to know that those bottles were quite possibly illegitimate gains from their exploration of the city.
Roper looked up and saw Cotton watching them. He saluted with the bottle. “Hey, lads. Look who it ain’t!” he said, tripping up and bumping Jacklin from behind. He grabbed the wall to steady himself. “Wanna drink, Gabriel?” His words were slurred, betraying the fact that he had drunk more than merely the contents of the bottle in his hand.
Cotton shook his head. “If the Captain catches you in that state, he’ll have the stripe off your arm and the skin off your back before you know what’s hit you,” he said.
“No, he won’t,” Jacklin said, shaking his head to emphasise his words. He clutched at Thorne as he felt his equilibrium threatened by the movement.
Cotton heard hooves coming along the road. He turned his head to see who the rider was and was horrified to see three provosts. He realised that his mates couldn’t see them because the corner of the building opposite blocked their view. “Tom! Hsst! Tom!” Roper was inspecting the brickwork of the wall he was leaning against. Cotton risked a further quick glance up the road, and then whistled briefly the notes for “I have discovered the enemy” and “the enemy is cavalry.”
Roper turned at the whistled warning, the warm haze of drunkenness dropping away from him. "What is it?”
“Provosts!” Cotton said shortly, indicating the direction they were approaching from. “You’d better get those two in here before they come round the corner!”
Roper nodded shortly before turning his attention to Thorne and Jacklin. “Come on. Let’s go and visit Gabriel.”
“Where is he?” demanded Jacklin, turning in a drunken circle as though he expected Cotton to be standing behind him.
“In here,” Roper said, pushing open the door of the house where Vickery was billeted.
Jacklin hefted his bottle and marched in, followed by Thorne and Roper, who pushed the door shut behind them.
Cotton came running down the stairs. “Bloody hellfire, Tom. You cut that close!” He heard the hooves go past at a trot on the other side of the door.
Thorne smiled at him happily and offered him a bottle. “Ver’ nice place tha's got here, Gabriel,” he slurred.
Cotton took the bottle and sketched an ironic bow. “Welcome to officer country, lads,” he said. “Let’s go upstairs where we can keep out of the way.”
It took Cotton and Roper five minutes to get Thorne and Jacklin up the stairs and into Vickery’s room and a further five minutes for Cotton to persuade them to sit quietly without touching – and quite possibly breaking – anything.
“It’d be more than my job’s worth if you wrecked somethin’,” Cotton said, guiding Jacklin’s questing hands away from the officer’s writing desk. “Come on, sit down an’ stay still.”
“Have a drink,” Thorne said insistently, waving his canteen at Cotton.
“Anythin’ for a quiet life,” Cotton said, taking the canteen.
So it was that half an hour later, Vickery came back to his billet to discover that three drunk soldiers and one not very sober one had taken up lodgings in his room. Cotton smiled intoxicatedly up at the bewildered officer. “They was goin’ to get arrested by the Provosts ’less I helped ’em,” he said.
The bottles that Roper, Thorne and Jacklin had brought with them were now empty, but they had had the foresight to fill their canteens with brandy. As each canteen held three pints, there was enough for all four Riflemen to get riotously drunk.
“I see.” Vickery regarded the four with interest. “So you decided to continue getting drunk in my room?”
“Not exactly, sir.” Cotton, never the drunkest of the four, was now more or less sober. “They wouldn’t leave your things alone unless I distracted 'em, sir.”
“Your getting drunk would be enough to distract anyone,” Vickery said.
Cotton fidgeted uncomfortably.
“How do you plan on getting them back to their billets?”
Cotton blinked. “I don’t know, sir.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, sir. I hadn’t thought about it.”
“No, I don’t suppose you had.”
Vickery turned back to the others, who were looking apprehensively up at him. “Well, I’m not having you lot go back out there, so get your heads down in here. I don’t want you arrested after Cotton saved your skins.”
Roper looked as though he was going to protest through his drunken haze, having recollected where they were.
“That’s an order, not a request. Just keep the noise down!” He swung round. “Cotton, I’ll deal with you in the morning.”
“Yes, sir.” Cotton sounded subdued, and well he might. This could well mean his return to the ranks. All very well, but he rather liked the status he had as Vickery’s batman.
***
It was a subdued trio of Riflemen who slipped quietly out of the house early the following morning, before any of the officers who occupied the other rooms woke up and learned of their presence. Cotton was not with them; his position as Vickery’s batman meant that he shared a corner of the officer’s room, in case he was needed in the night.
Cotton himself was downcast as he prepared Vickery’s breakfast, served it and cleared away afterward. He was contrite as he came to stand before Vickery’s desk, dreading the expected tongue-lashing, yet wanting it over as soon as possible. He prepared himself for the worst.
Vickery sat behind his desk, watching Cotton and saying nothing. Cotton tried not to fidget under the officer’s scrutiny, but he was growing increasingly nervous. The storm was going to be most unpleasant when it finally did break.
Vickery eventually broke the taut silence. “So what happened, Rifleman Cotton?” There was the merest hint of steel in his voice, a hint Cotton would have missed if he hadn’t been listening out for it.
“I came up to brush your jacket, sir,” he began. His throat was dry, as if he’d been fighting a furious skirmish. “I went to open the window, and saw Chosen Man Roper and Riflemen Thorne and Jacklin. They’d been drinkin’ a bit, sir. There was a group of provosts comin’ up the road an’ I thought it’d be best to get them out of the way, sir. The Riflemen, not the provosts, I mean, sir.” He stumbled to a halting stop.
“And you continued carousing in my room after the provosts had gone?” There was a definite note of danger in Vickery’s voice. The temperature dropped by a couple of degrees. The captain’s eyes were frosty. Not that Cotton dared look anywhere other than the cracked wall directly above Vickery’s head.
“Yes…No…They wouldn’t sit quiet and leave your things alone unless I had a drink with them, sir.” The morning sun struggled out from behind the wintry clouds, making the wet roofs and walls sparkle cheerfully. Cotton flinched from the unexpected brightness. Mercifully, the sun went in again, but not before Vickery had noticed the involuntary movement.
“Count yourself lucky nobody else was in at the time, Cotton. Or we would be having a different conversation.” The officer’s voice was steely, leaving no doubt in Cotton’s mind that the conversation referred to was a disciplinary one, followed by a punishment that would be noted down in the black Company Punishment Book in Vickery’s neat copperplate script. The officer stopped, leaving the most important question unanswered. He seemed content to let Cotton writhe. The silence stretched, and Cotton took all his courage in his hands.
“Sir, I…Are you…Am I…” He stopped, uncertainly before blurting out the question that was troubling him. “Are you going to dismiss me back to the ranks, sir?”
The question hung in the air between them. Cotton did not dare to move his gaze from the cracked and stained wall behind the officer. He was standing to attention with a rigidity that would have made a Guardsman proud.
Vickery did not choose to answer the question when he next spoke. “I am disappointed in you, Cotton,” he said instead. Cotton felt the weight of failure threaten to overwhelm him. That was it, then. He felt crushed. And Vickery hadn’t even said that much to him. Again the silence stretched unbearably.
“I’ll go then, sir,” Cotton managed eventually. He didn’t move, however. Army discipline wouldn’t allow him to move without the officer’s permission, and the officer didn’t seem in a hurry to give it.
Vickery pulled the Punishment Book towards him and opened it. The sheer weight of uncertainty threatened to overwhelm Cotton. Vickery’s quill scratched for a few minutes, before the captain reached for the sand shaker to dry the ink.
Still Cotton waited. He couldn’t ask again without really raising the Captain’s temper, and he was wary of running that risk. It was bad enough as it was, without making it worse. And Vickery could very easily make it worse.
“Do you know where Chosen Man Roper and Riflemen Thorne and Jacklin are billeted?” Vickery asked, putting down the sand shaker.
“Yes, sir.” Cotton swallowed dryly.
“Fetch them here, please.” Despite the last word, it was not a request but an order. Cotton looked stricken, but turned away and bent for his knapsack. Vickery looked up and saw what he was doing. “Leave that here for now.” The words gave Cotton no hint of whether he was dismissed to the ranks or not and he dare not ask again.
He dropped the heavy pack and turned to the door. Vickery was writing again, so Cotton slipped out quietly to fetch the others.
He found them sitting in a subdued group in the corner of their billet. The look on Cotton’s face was enough to stop any questions, but he told them what little he knew.
“Captain’s pissed off, really pissed off. He’s been writing in the Punishment Book already.”
“What about your job, Gabriel? Has he said anything about that?” It was Roper who asked the question, Roper who knew how much it meant to Cotton, and who was in a similar position himself. The position of Chosen Man was not a rank, per se, although he did get paid slightly more than private soldiers. It was more a position of trust and authority. A Chosen Man was meant to deputise for a corporal, and was nominally in charge of eight men. Roper was in charge of his own small squad of English soldiers and nobody pressed him to accept responsibility of any more. He stood to lose as much as Cotton did, although his punishment would probably be harsher as he was supposed to give an example to the soldiers around him.
“No,” Cotton said, shaking his head. “He hasn’t said a word.”
Cotton led the way up the stairs and knocked on Vickery’s door before gingerly pushing it open. The Captain looked up. “Send them in, would you. And wait outside, please.” Again, it was not a request but an order. Cotton held the door open and the three Riflemen trooped in looking, to Vickery’s mind, like a group of naughty schoolboys sent to see the headmaster for a caning. The door shut behind them.
Cotton leant on the wall before sliding down it and putting his face in his hands. That was it, then. He’d be back in the ranks before lunchtime. At least he had a good bunch of mates. He’d be back to his usual self in short order with them around. He scrambled to his feet as he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Captain de Salaberry looked surprised to see him. “Not in trouble, are you, Rifleman Cotton?”
Cotton nodded ruefully. “Yes, sir. Got a bit drunk last night, sir.”
The rifle officer looked surprised. “Drunk? You? Oh, dear. What is this battalion coming to when one of its best soldiers ends up drunk?”
“It wasn’t exactly on purpose, sir.”
de Salaberry nodded thoughtfully. “Not exactly on purpose. I wouldn’t expect that kind of evasion from you.” He went into his room, leaving Cotton alone again.
Vickery’s door opened and Roper came out.
“What’s he said?” Cotton asked, keeping his voice low.
“Nothing much. Just said he’s disappointed in us all.”
“Has he said anythin’ about that?” Cotton asked, nodding towards Roper’s red armband, denoting his status as Chosen Man.
“No.”
They waited in silence until the door opened again and Thorne and Jacklin came out. Thorne looked at the other two. “Extra guard and a week’s loss of spirits,” he said, before either had a chance to ask. “And you’re to go in now, Tom.”
Roper steeled himself and entered the room, closing the door behind him. Cotton resigned himself to another long wait. And he still didn’t know about the certainty of his own position. The door eventually reopened and Roper’s anxious head peered round it. “You’re to come in, Gabriel.”
Cotton could see his own uncertainty mirrored in his friend’s eyes as he went into the room. Roper shut the door again and then both of them went to stand in front of Vickery’s table.
“You both have positions of trust in my company,” he began. The words were quiet. God, they were in trouble.
“Both of you have broken that trust,” Vickery continued. “The Rifles are not like any other regiment in this army. This is not a flogging regiment. It never has been and it never will be. And I am not a flogging officer. In any other regiment, both of you would return to the ranks after receiving a flogging. And you know it. This regiment, this battalion, does not work like that. Both of you will have to earn my trust again. I am not going to dismiss either of you back to the ranks, but if anything like this happens again, I will. You will both have two weeks’ extra duties and three weeks’ loss of your spirit ration. I am not punishing you for being in my room without permission, as there were extenuating circumstances. I am punishing the drunkenness, as you should know better. What if somebody else had caught you? Major Davy, for example. Or somebody outside the battalion?” He glanced at what he had written in the Punishment Book and then closed it. “Dismissed.”
Both Riflemen turned to their right, paused, saluted and made to leave. “Wait behind, Cotton.”
“Sir?”
Vickery waited until Roper had closed the door behind him. “You will mount guard with me next week. The week after that, I will release you from my service to complete your second week of guard. After that, if you have performed your duties to the satisfaction of the duty officer, you may return to my service, should you so wish.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you. An’, I’m sorry, sir.”
***
Cotton stood shivering on the walls of the fort, looking toward where the French prowled, out of sight to the north.
He didn’t think he’d known a night so dark or so cold. There was the threat of snow in the air. He risked slinging his rifle so he could blow on his frozen fingers. His breath misted the night air.
“Cold?” The voice of Captain Vickery behind him startled him and he swung round, realising that the rifle on his shoulder left him open to a serious charge. He let it slide down into his hand, hoping Vickery wouldn’t notice – or say anything if he had noticed already.
“Yes, sir. It is a bit chilly, sir,” he said, trying to cover his confusion.
“The worst winter for thirty years or so, I’ve heard,” Vickery said, coming past to lean on the cold stone wall.
“Oh?” There was not much else Cotton could say to that. He also looked outwards. “Sir,” he began hesitantly. Natural deference and his social upbringing had taught him that you did not speak to a superior officer – a gentleman – unless he spoke to you first, but there was something he desperately had to know. Vickery did not appear to have heard. Cotton tried again. “Sir?”
Vickery turned his head. “Yes, Cotton?”
Cotton kept his eyes averted, staring northwards. Only his voice betrayed the misery he felt. “Do you want me back as your servant, sir?”
“I gave you the choice, didn’t I?”
Cotton finally turned to look at the officer. “You can say that if you like, sir, but I don’t have a choice. If you want me back, I’ll come, an’ gladly. If you don’t, I can’t, whether I want to or not, sir.” He knew he had overstepped the mark and was within a hairsbreadth of being punished for insubordination and impertinence.
“Do you want to return to my service?” Vickery asked gently.
Cotton nodded. “Yes, please, sir.”
“When does the guard get replaced?”
“Sunday, sir.” There was a bare hint of hope in Cotton’s words.
“Then present yourself at my billet on Monday morning, ready for work.”
The gratitude on Cotton’s face was almost heartbreaking. “Thank you, sir.”
Vickery pushed himself away from the wall and moved to descend the steps from the rampart. If the truth were known, although Cotton had been in his employ for less than a month, he had enjoyed the man’s cheerfulness around his billet. He found himself looking forward to Monday morning with indecent delight.
© Sharpie, January 2007
If you have a story you want me to write with these characters, give me a prompt and I'll try to come up with something!
ETA: Previous fic can be found here
Fandom/Canon: Show the Colours
Author:
sharpiefanWord count: 3089
Rating: PG
Spoilers: None
Pairing/Characters: Cotton, Vickery,
Disclaimer:
Author's Note: This isn't quite what I had planned to do with this piece, but it's a complete episode in itself, so I think I can post it. It's a bit rough round the edges. And yeah, I'm useless at titles. One day, some time in the winter of 1808-09. Comments are as gold. This was originally posted on LJ in 2007.
Summary: There's a time and a place to get drunk... Picking the right time and place is generally a good idea...
Cotton entered Vickery’s room with the officer’s jacket over his arm. He hung it up and moved to get a brush out of his pack. Although it was only a few days since entering Captain Vickery’s service, he had begun to get used to the freedom his position offered. He crossed to the window and leaned on the sill, looking out into the street below. The sky was grey and threatening, but it wasn’t raining yet. Cotton opened the window. It was stuck, betraying the fact that the Portuguese inhabitants of the house very rarely allowed fresh air in. Cotton had been brought up by a farm labourer’s wife who believed in the healthiness of fresh air, no matter what the time of year. He thumped the wooden frame until it moved. He paused, his hands on the sill, breathing in air that wasn’t what he would call particularly fresh, used as he was to the country.
He was just about to turn back to what he was supposed to be doing when movement in the street below caught his eye. Thorne and Jacklin came around the corner, merrily drunk and followed by Roper. All three Riflemen were carrying wine bottles. Cotton knew enough about his mates to know that those bottles were quite possibly illegitimate gains from their exploration of the city.
Roper looked up and saw Cotton watching them. He saluted with the bottle. “Hey, lads. Look who it ain’t!” he said, tripping up and bumping Jacklin from behind. He grabbed the wall to steady himself. “Wanna drink, Gabriel?” His words were slurred, betraying the fact that he had drunk more than merely the contents of the bottle in his hand.
Cotton shook his head. “If the Captain catches you in that state, he’ll have the stripe off your arm and the skin off your back before you know what’s hit you,” he said.
“No, he won’t,” Jacklin said, shaking his head to emphasise his words. He clutched at Thorne as he felt his equilibrium threatened by the movement.
Cotton heard hooves coming along the road. He turned his head to see who the rider was and was horrified to see three provosts. He realised that his mates couldn’t see them because the corner of the building opposite blocked their view. “Tom! Hsst! Tom!” Roper was inspecting the brickwork of the wall he was leaning against. Cotton risked a further quick glance up the road, and then whistled briefly the notes for “I have discovered the enemy” and “the enemy is cavalry.”
Roper turned at the whistled warning, the warm haze of drunkenness dropping away from him. "What is it?”
“Provosts!” Cotton said shortly, indicating the direction they were approaching from. “You’d better get those two in here before they come round the corner!”
Roper nodded shortly before turning his attention to Thorne and Jacklin. “Come on. Let’s go and visit Gabriel.”
“Where is he?” demanded Jacklin, turning in a drunken circle as though he expected Cotton to be standing behind him.
“In here,” Roper said, pushing open the door of the house where Vickery was billeted.
Jacklin hefted his bottle and marched in, followed by Thorne and Roper, who pushed the door shut behind them.
Cotton came running down the stairs. “Bloody hellfire, Tom. You cut that close!” He heard the hooves go past at a trot on the other side of the door.
Thorne smiled at him happily and offered him a bottle. “Ver’ nice place tha's got here, Gabriel,” he slurred.
Cotton took the bottle and sketched an ironic bow. “Welcome to officer country, lads,” he said. “Let’s go upstairs where we can keep out of the way.”
It took Cotton and Roper five minutes to get Thorne and Jacklin up the stairs and into Vickery’s room and a further five minutes for Cotton to persuade them to sit quietly without touching – and quite possibly breaking – anything.
“It’d be more than my job’s worth if you wrecked somethin’,” Cotton said, guiding Jacklin’s questing hands away from the officer’s writing desk. “Come on, sit down an’ stay still.”
“Have a drink,” Thorne said insistently, waving his canteen at Cotton.
“Anythin’ for a quiet life,” Cotton said, taking the canteen.
So it was that half an hour later, Vickery came back to his billet to discover that three drunk soldiers and one not very sober one had taken up lodgings in his room. Cotton smiled intoxicatedly up at the bewildered officer. “They was goin’ to get arrested by the Provosts ’less I helped ’em,” he said.
The bottles that Roper, Thorne and Jacklin had brought with them were now empty, but they had had the foresight to fill their canteens with brandy. As each canteen held three pints, there was enough for all four Riflemen to get riotously drunk.
“I see.” Vickery regarded the four with interest. “So you decided to continue getting drunk in my room?”
“Not exactly, sir.” Cotton, never the drunkest of the four, was now more or less sober. “They wouldn’t leave your things alone unless I distracted 'em, sir.”
“Your getting drunk would be enough to distract anyone,” Vickery said.
Cotton fidgeted uncomfortably.
“How do you plan on getting them back to their billets?”
Cotton blinked. “I don’t know, sir.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, sir. I hadn’t thought about it.”
“No, I don’t suppose you had.”
Vickery turned back to the others, who were looking apprehensively up at him. “Well, I’m not having you lot go back out there, so get your heads down in here. I don’t want you arrested after Cotton saved your skins.”
Roper looked as though he was going to protest through his drunken haze, having recollected where they were.
“That’s an order, not a request. Just keep the noise down!” He swung round. “Cotton, I’ll deal with you in the morning.”
“Yes, sir.” Cotton sounded subdued, and well he might. This could well mean his return to the ranks. All very well, but he rather liked the status he had as Vickery’s batman.
It was a subdued trio of Riflemen who slipped quietly out of the house early the following morning, before any of the officers who occupied the other rooms woke up and learned of their presence. Cotton was not with them; his position as Vickery’s batman meant that he shared a corner of the officer’s room, in case he was needed in the night.
Cotton himself was downcast as he prepared Vickery’s breakfast, served it and cleared away afterward. He was contrite as he came to stand before Vickery’s desk, dreading the expected tongue-lashing, yet wanting it over as soon as possible. He prepared himself for the worst.
Vickery sat behind his desk, watching Cotton and saying nothing. Cotton tried not to fidget under the officer’s scrutiny, but he was growing increasingly nervous. The storm was going to be most unpleasant when it finally did break.
Vickery eventually broke the taut silence. “So what happened, Rifleman Cotton?” There was the merest hint of steel in his voice, a hint Cotton would have missed if he hadn’t been listening out for it.
“I came up to brush your jacket, sir,” he began. His throat was dry, as if he’d been fighting a furious skirmish. “I went to open the window, and saw Chosen Man Roper and Riflemen Thorne and Jacklin. They’d been drinkin’ a bit, sir. There was a group of provosts comin’ up the road an’ I thought it’d be best to get them out of the way, sir. The Riflemen, not the provosts, I mean, sir.” He stumbled to a halting stop.
“And you continued carousing in my room after the provosts had gone?” There was a definite note of danger in Vickery’s voice. The temperature dropped by a couple of degrees. The captain’s eyes were frosty. Not that Cotton dared look anywhere other than the cracked wall directly above Vickery’s head.
“Yes…No…They wouldn’t sit quiet and leave your things alone unless I had a drink with them, sir.” The morning sun struggled out from behind the wintry clouds, making the wet roofs and walls sparkle cheerfully. Cotton flinched from the unexpected brightness. Mercifully, the sun went in again, but not before Vickery had noticed the involuntary movement.
“Count yourself lucky nobody else was in at the time, Cotton. Or we would be having a different conversation.” The officer’s voice was steely, leaving no doubt in Cotton’s mind that the conversation referred to was a disciplinary one, followed by a punishment that would be noted down in the black Company Punishment Book in Vickery’s neat copperplate script. The officer stopped, leaving the most important question unanswered. He seemed content to let Cotton writhe. The silence stretched, and Cotton took all his courage in his hands.
“Sir, I…Are you…Am I…” He stopped, uncertainly before blurting out the question that was troubling him. “Are you going to dismiss me back to the ranks, sir?”
The question hung in the air between them. Cotton did not dare to move his gaze from the cracked and stained wall behind the officer. He was standing to attention with a rigidity that would have made a Guardsman proud.
Vickery did not choose to answer the question when he next spoke. “I am disappointed in you, Cotton,” he said instead. Cotton felt the weight of failure threaten to overwhelm him. That was it, then. He felt crushed. And Vickery hadn’t even said that much to him. Again the silence stretched unbearably.
“I’ll go then, sir,” Cotton managed eventually. He didn’t move, however. Army discipline wouldn’t allow him to move without the officer’s permission, and the officer didn’t seem in a hurry to give it.
Vickery pulled the Punishment Book towards him and opened it. The sheer weight of uncertainty threatened to overwhelm Cotton. Vickery’s quill scratched for a few minutes, before the captain reached for the sand shaker to dry the ink.
Still Cotton waited. He couldn’t ask again without really raising the Captain’s temper, and he was wary of running that risk. It was bad enough as it was, without making it worse. And Vickery could very easily make it worse.
“Do you know where Chosen Man Roper and Riflemen Thorne and Jacklin are billeted?” Vickery asked, putting down the sand shaker.
“Yes, sir.” Cotton swallowed dryly.
“Fetch them here, please.” Despite the last word, it was not a request but an order. Cotton looked stricken, but turned away and bent for his knapsack. Vickery looked up and saw what he was doing. “Leave that here for now.” The words gave Cotton no hint of whether he was dismissed to the ranks or not and he dare not ask again.
He dropped the heavy pack and turned to the door. Vickery was writing again, so Cotton slipped out quietly to fetch the others.
He found them sitting in a subdued group in the corner of their billet. The look on Cotton’s face was enough to stop any questions, but he told them what little he knew.
“Captain’s pissed off, really pissed off. He’s been writing in the Punishment Book already.”
“What about your job, Gabriel? Has he said anything about that?” It was Roper who asked the question, Roper who knew how much it meant to Cotton, and who was in a similar position himself. The position of Chosen Man was not a rank, per se, although he did get paid slightly more than private soldiers. It was more a position of trust and authority. A Chosen Man was meant to deputise for a corporal, and was nominally in charge of eight men. Roper was in charge of his own small squad of English soldiers and nobody pressed him to accept responsibility of any more. He stood to lose as much as Cotton did, although his punishment would probably be harsher as he was supposed to give an example to the soldiers around him.
“No,” Cotton said, shaking his head. “He hasn’t said a word.”
Cotton led the way up the stairs and knocked on Vickery’s door before gingerly pushing it open. The Captain looked up. “Send them in, would you. And wait outside, please.” Again, it was not a request but an order. Cotton held the door open and the three Riflemen trooped in looking, to Vickery’s mind, like a group of naughty schoolboys sent to see the headmaster for a caning. The door shut behind them.
Cotton leant on the wall before sliding down it and putting his face in his hands. That was it, then. He’d be back in the ranks before lunchtime. At least he had a good bunch of mates. He’d be back to his usual self in short order with them around. He scrambled to his feet as he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Captain de Salaberry looked surprised to see him. “Not in trouble, are you, Rifleman Cotton?”
Cotton nodded ruefully. “Yes, sir. Got a bit drunk last night, sir.”
The rifle officer looked surprised. “Drunk? You? Oh, dear. What is this battalion coming to when one of its best soldiers ends up drunk?”
“It wasn’t exactly on purpose, sir.”
de Salaberry nodded thoughtfully. “Not exactly on purpose. I wouldn’t expect that kind of evasion from you.” He went into his room, leaving Cotton alone again.
Vickery’s door opened and Roper came out.
“What’s he said?” Cotton asked, keeping his voice low.
“Nothing much. Just said he’s disappointed in us all.”
“Has he said anythin’ about that?” Cotton asked, nodding towards Roper’s red armband, denoting his status as Chosen Man.
“No.”
They waited in silence until the door opened again and Thorne and Jacklin came out. Thorne looked at the other two. “Extra guard and a week’s loss of spirits,” he said, before either had a chance to ask. “And you’re to go in now, Tom.”
Roper steeled himself and entered the room, closing the door behind him. Cotton resigned himself to another long wait. And he still didn’t know about the certainty of his own position. The door eventually reopened and Roper’s anxious head peered round it. “You’re to come in, Gabriel.”
Cotton could see his own uncertainty mirrored in his friend’s eyes as he went into the room. Roper shut the door again and then both of them went to stand in front of Vickery’s table.
“You both have positions of trust in my company,” he began. The words were quiet. God, they were in trouble.
“Both of you have broken that trust,” Vickery continued. “The Rifles are not like any other regiment in this army. This is not a flogging regiment. It never has been and it never will be. And I am not a flogging officer. In any other regiment, both of you would return to the ranks after receiving a flogging. And you know it. This regiment, this battalion, does not work like that. Both of you will have to earn my trust again. I am not going to dismiss either of you back to the ranks, but if anything like this happens again, I will. You will both have two weeks’ extra duties and three weeks’ loss of your spirit ration. I am not punishing you for being in my room without permission, as there were extenuating circumstances. I am punishing the drunkenness, as you should know better. What if somebody else had caught you? Major Davy, for example. Or somebody outside the battalion?” He glanced at what he had written in the Punishment Book and then closed it. “Dismissed.”
Both Riflemen turned to their right, paused, saluted and made to leave. “Wait behind, Cotton.”
“Sir?”
Vickery waited until Roper had closed the door behind him. “You will mount guard with me next week. The week after that, I will release you from my service to complete your second week of guard. After that, if you have performed your duties to the satisfaction of the duty officer, you may return to my service, should you so wish.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you. An’, I’m sorry, sir.”
Cotton stood shivering on the walls of the fort, looking toward where the French prowled, out of sight to the north.
He didn’t think he’d known a night so dark or so cold. There was the threat of snow in the air. He risked slinging his rifle so he could blow on his frozen fingers. His breath misted the night air.
“Cold?” The voice of Captain Vickery behind him startled him and he swung round, realising that the rifle on his shoulder left him open to a serious charge. He let it slide down into his hand, hoping Vickery wouldn’t notice – or say anything if he had noticed already.
“Yes, sir. It is a bit chilly, sir,” he said, trying to cover his confusion.
“The worst winter for thirty years or so, I’ve heard,” Vickery said, coming past to lean on the cold stone wall.
“Oh?” There was not much else Cotton could say to that. He also looked outwards. “Sir,” he began hesitantly. Natural deference and his social upbringing had taught him that you did not speak to a superior officer – a gentleman – unless he spoke to you first, but there was something he desperately had to know. Vickery did not appear to have heard. Cotton tried again. “Sir?”
Vickery turned his head. “Yes, Cotton?”
Cotton kept his eyes averted, staring northwards. Only his voice betrayed the misery he felt. “Do you want me back as your servant, sir?”
“I gave you the choice, didn’t I?”
Cotton finally turned to look at the officer. “You can say that if you like, sir, but I don’t have a choice. If you want me back, I’ll come, an’ gladly. If you don’t, I can’t, whether I want to or not, sir.” He knew he had overstepped the mark and was within a hairsbreadth of being punished for insubordination and impertinence.
“Do you want to return to my service?” Vickery asked gently.
Cotton nodded. “Yes, please, sir.”
“When does the guard get replaced?”
“Sunday, sir.” There was a bare hint of hope in Cotton’s words.
“Then present yourself at my billet on Monday morning, ready for work.”
The gratitude on Cotton’s face was almost heartbreaking. “Thank you, sir.”
Vickery pushed himself away from the wall and moved to descend the steps from the rampart. If the truth were known, although Cotton had been in his employ for less than a month, he had enjoyed the man’s cheerfulness around his billet. He found himself looking forward to Monday morning with indecent delight.
© Sharpie, January 2007
If you have a story you want me to write with these characters, give me a prompt and I'll try to come up with something!
ETA: Previous fic can be found here
