Page 9 of Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #20)
Lean, sun-darkened, and tough as shoe leather, the soldier said his name was Billy Callaghan and that he was twenty-eight years old, although he looked far, far older. He agreed to talk to Hero in exchange for ten shillings and a couple of hot sausages from a nearby street vendor.
Still dressed in his tattered uniform and broken-down boots, he leaned against the edge of a worn, flat-topped tomb in St. Andrew’s churchyard and talked to her while he ate. In between bites, he said he’d been looking for work ever since he’d been shipped back from France in June. But he hadn’t found anything yet beyond a few odd jobs every now and then.
“Faith, once I realized how bad things were, I tried to reenlist,” he said in a husky voice that still carried the soft lilt of County Clare. “But they wouldn’t take me. Got no use for men like me these days, ye see. And the sad truth is, the only thing I know how to do is fight.”
“You said you were in the Peninsula with Wellington?”
“That I was. Haven’t got a pension, though. I was a seven-year-man, ye see.” Most men who took the King’s shilling enlisted for twenty-one years, but some committed to only seven or fourteen.
“Were you at Waterloo?”
“I was not. If I had been, at least I’d have me a medal I could sell. The thing is, ye see, right after Boney abdicated the first time, they loaded our battalion on a transport. Thought we were going home, we did—fools that we were. I’d only a few weeks left of me enlistment and I remember thinking, ‘That’s it, Billy; ye survived yer seven years and now it’s good-bye to grapeshot and musket fire, bugles and night marches and all that rot.’ ’Cept then I started noticin’ we’d been at sea for days and days with a good wind behind us, and I knew we should’ve been seeing land when there weren’t nothin’ out there but endless blue waves. That’s when the officers finally told us the truth, that we was on our way to America.”
Hero looked up from scribbling her notes. “What a nasty trick to play on you.”
“Sure then, but I thought so, and that’s the truth. Sent us to some godforsaken place called Florida, they did, and then we was supposed to take New Orleans. Should’ve been able to do it, too, if it weren’t for General Pakenham. He was Wellington’s brother-in-law, ye know, and a right arrogant idiot he was, too. I know folks like to snicker at us, sayin’ all we was fightin’ was squirrel hunters, Indians, free Black men, and pirates. But it was their artillery that ripped us to pieces, not their muskets, and Pakenham was a bleedin’ fool to attack the way he did. If ever a man deserved to get hisself killed, it was that blotter. Just wish he hadn’t taken a couple thousand of our lads with him.”
Billy gave a ragged cough, turned his head, and spat up what looked to Hero like blood. “And then what do we hear but that the government had already signed a peace treaty with the Americans! Reckon it was all for naught, but me, I’m thinking, ‘Well, Billy, ye made it through another war and now yer gonna get t’ go home.’?”
He readjusted his battered shako hat and gave a harsh laugh. “We was maybe halfway back across the Atlantic when we run into this French naval ship—one of ole King Louis’s, it was, and fit to be tied they were on account of they’d just heard Boney was back in Paris. So instead of headin’ to Portsmouth like we was supposed to, what do we do but get sent to Belgium! And me, I’m thinkin’ I might’ve survived two wars, but I ain’t gonna survive a third.”
Hero said, “But you weren’t at Waterloo?”
He shook his head. “Got real sick on the ship, ye see, so that by the time we landed I was fit only for hospital.” He gave her a strange look. “Y’ever been on a ship, ma’am?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
He nodded. “A fine lady like yerself, I reckon it might be a different experience altogether for ye. But there’s few things worse’n a crowded troop transport. Don’t think I’ll ever get the smell of it outta me nose. Bilgewater, tar, hemp, and rum, all mixed up with the stink of men bein’ seasick. The sailors, ye know, they get to sleep in hammocks, but us soldiers, we had to bed down on deck—hundreds of us, squeezed together so tight we couldn’t hardly move. In some ways it’s better ’cause at least ye’ve got the fresh air. But when it’s cold, or it’s raining, or the sea’s runnin’ rough so everybody’s rollin’ all over the place…I don’t reckon I’ve ever been so miserable. I sorta been thinkin’ about maybe goin’ down to South America—know lots of lads who’ve gone there to fight in their revolutions, and officers, too. But whenever I think o’ crossin’ that ocean again…” His voice trailed away as he stared into the distance and swallowed hard. “I don’t think I could do it.”
It was the last thing she’d expected to hear him say. “Do you miss the Army so much?”
“I miss me messmates. But the Army?” He laughed. “No, ma’am.”
“And yet you’re thinking of going to fight in South America?”
“What else am I t’ do? Been a soldier most me life; like I said, it’s the only thing I know how t’ do. Seems like South America might be better’n staying here and starvin’…if only it weren’t so blasted far away.”
“Have you thought about going home to Ireland?”
A sad, faraway light crept into his eyes. “Think about Ireland all the time, I do. But I’m never going back there. From what I hear, they’re all starvin’ to death over there, too—or dead already. They don’t need me back there. Me girl got tired of waiting and married somebody else; m’ mother and da are both dead, and me sister’s got troubles enough of her own without me adding to ’em.”
He was still holding the last of his sausages, and he stuffed it in his mouth and swallowed before saying, “I’ve heard tell that one out of every three soldiers in King George’s Army is an Irishman. Did ye know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
He nodded. “Guess there ain’t much else for a likely lad from Tipperary or Kilkenny or Dublin Town to do, now, is there? He can go off t’ fight in France or America and get himself shot, or stay home and get shot by some bloody constable don’t like the look on his face. Sometimes I think, What would old King George and his bloody cousin Lord Jarvis do without us? Wouldn’t be winning so many wars, that’s fer sure. ’Course, maybe they wouldn’t be startin’ so many, neither.”
Hero smiled faintly and said, “If you don’t go to South America or back to Ireland, what will you do?”
He fell silent, his head tipping back as he watched the heavy white clouds shifting overhead. She was beginning to think he wasn’t going to answer when he said, “Ask meself that all the time, I do. But the truth is, I don’t know.”
He paused, then said more quietly, “I just don’t.”