The Maclarens (The Regiment Family Saga Book 1) by CL Skelton

Author:CL Skelton [Skelton, CL]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: family secrets, Indian Mutiny, family saga, pageturner, 1857, Scottish historical romance, must read, twists and turns, enjoyable romantic read
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Family Saga)
Published: 2017-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

During their absence, great things had been happening back home in Scotland. The most important of these was that new barracks had been constructed. After the railway line had reached Inverness, many of the labourers who had hacked and hewn the track through the Grampian Mountains had been engaged for the task of building the new headquarters for the 148th. They built it only three miles south of Beauly with huge blocks of pink Moray sandstone piled and mortared and trimmed. This was their basic building material.

There had been some argument as to whether the barracks should not have been built to cover the approaches to the Beauly Firth, but with the knowledge that Fort George did this quite adequately, and that the railway would soon wind its way north from Inverness, on through Beauly up to the very tip of Scotland, expediency had prevailed. The buildings were constructed close to the proposed tracks.

This then would be the permanent home of the 148th. A great wall surrounded it, cocooning the rest of the buildings and cutting them off from the outside world. The arched entrance was commanded by the guardroom with two sentry boxes standing outside, where, hail, rain, sunshine, or snow, two men would stand and suffer for four hours at a stretch. Inside the wall, the barrack blocks had been built as barrack blocks always were, squat and rectangular, around the parade ground. They were four-storey buildings, each destined to house a full company with little rooms at the end of each barrack room for the N.C.O.s. The sergeants’ mess and H.Q. block covered the far side of the square, differing only from the barrack blocks by the fact that they each possessed a porticoed entrance. Behind these, and set apart by a pleasant green lawn, stood the most ornate building of them all, gable roofed, white pillared, with large sash windows. This was the officers’ mess. Next to it in a corner of the area surrounded by the outside wall, there was the garrison church; the only place in the entire complex where all men were, theoretically at least, equal.

In the town of Beauly, there had been considerable discussion and argument, and many passionate outbursts among the town dignitaries. These had occurred in two stages; first the building of the barracks themselves, about which the town could do nothing, and secondly, about the return of the 148th, about which the town could do a great deal. The town had been split into two factions, those who considered the invasion of the ‘licentious soldiery’ an affront to the ordered tenor of their lives, and those who waited with joy and pride for the return of their ‘brave lads’! After all, these men were their men, men from the glens and villages which spread out beyond the town itself, and there were great advantages in having the regiment here within its own catchment area instead of a hundred and forty miles south.

Men would be available for special leaves and working parties.

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