Land of Hope and Glory by Geoffrey Wilson

Author:Geoffrey Wilson [Wilson, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton
Published: 2011-09-15T06:00:00+00:00

Charles let Jack drive the cart the next day, while he lay in the back, hand on his forehead, groaning each time they went over a bump. Jack admonished himself for letting Charles drink so much. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. They had to get to London before the army and he couldn’t let anything slow them down.

At around ten o’clock in the morning, hills appeared in the distance.

Charles sat up. ‘Hampshire Downs. We’re near the border of the Earl’s lands.’

‘You’d better get out of that tunic,’ Jack said.

Charles frowned and looked at his dark-blue uniform. ‘You think so?’

‘If we come across Rajthanans you’ll attract attention.’

Charles nodded, took off the tunic and replaced it with an old jerkin. He slid the tunic underneath the canvas, with the firearms.

‘No,’ Jack said. ‘Better get rid of it. They could search the cart.’

Reluctantly, Charles held up the tunic, looked at it for a moment, as if inspecting it before going on parade, then rolled it into a tube and threw it out into a field.

A cloud of dust appeared across the road ahead. At first it was a tiny smear, but then it grew into a huge globe that obscured the hills. Jack held the reins tightly.

‘What is it?’ Charles asked.

‘Don’t know.’ Jack stopped the cart and climbed down. He knelt on the pitted road, put his ear to the ground and listened intently to the vibrations in the earth. The immediate surroundings were deserted, but far off he could detect the tread of thousands of feet.

‘The army?’ Charles asked as Jack climbed back into the cart.

Jack shook his head. ‘A lot of people, but they’re not marching in time. Just ordinary walking.’

‘Who are they, then?’

‘Can’t be sure. Give me that pistol.’

Charles took the pistol out from under the canvas. Jack examined the weapon. It was an ancient flintlock single-shooter, with a prowling lion etched along the side. Similar weapons were being phased out of the army when he’d first joined twenty-three years ago. He wondered whether it would even work. He checked the pan and the barrel – they were both clean. He then measured and poured powder into the muzzle, and rammed in a ball along with a greased patch of cloth. After priming the pan, he balanced the weapon carefully on the seat beside him, under a blanket.

‘You’d better load that musket too,’ he said.

Charles bit open a cartridge. He stood in the cart as they bounced along, jabbing with the ramrod and watching as the dust cloud spread before them.

The countryside changed. The farms thinned out, then vanished, leaving open, uncultivated grassland. No one worked the fields, no other travellers moved along the road.

Figures formed in the dust: peasants, thousands of them, trudging along the road in a vast, broken column that snaked away into the distance. As they came closer Jack could see their ragged clothes and gaunt features. They dragged their feet as if carrying heavy weights. There were men and women, children, babies clinging to their mothers, all staring straight ahead.

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