A Marriage of Convenience Read Free Page B

to take charge of the men in the yard, Clinton turned to his trumpeter.
    ‘Advance in line.’
    The man sounded the call; and as the front line moved forward, calls to trot and then to canter followed. With swords held at the carry, their sodden capes opening to reveal frogged braid and gleaming buttons, the line thundered down across the fields towards the rough ground between the farm and the river. Behind him, the even thudding of hoofs and the rapid but fresh breathing of the following horses exhilarated Clinton with a feeling not unlike leading the field in a hunt. Glancing over his shoulder briefly, he allowed himself the pleasure of admiring the line, his eye caught by the swaying plumes and red busby-bags. With none of the tension of a charge against a waiting enemy or moving cavalry, Clinton gave himself up to the beautifully smooth action of his stallion, feeling entirely at one with the animal, not holding him back as he quickened his pace before leaping a wall, nor urging him on over a wide ditch. The horse took these obstacles as if they did not exist and Clinton merely gave him the rein, anticipating his movements with instinctive ease.
    A hundred yards ahead, he saw the fleeing men stumbling through the tall bracken, throwing away their weapons, blundering into gorse bushes; tripping, falling. A small group led the rest and seemed likely to reach the thick sedge and reeds beyond a line of willows at the water’s edge.
    ‘Right shoulders,’ he shouted to the trumpeter, wheeling to cut them off. Checking his horse a little as the ground grew rougher, he came up with the stragglers and tightened his grip on the hilt of his sabre. One man stopped, another flung himself out of the way.
    ‘Stand where you are,’ roared Clinton, catching glimpses of terrified faces as he flashed by. Between him and the willows was a bank of blackberry bushes; with a slight touch of his heels, he urged his horse over them. The stallion landed badly on a steep little slope. Almost before Clinton had righted himself in the saddle, he saw the blurred shape of a man crouching low in his path, a black thing held up apparently to the shoulder. Clinton crouched in the saddle and cut cleanly with his sword, carrying the full weight of the horse into the blow. The man spun away, falling with outstretched arms. In the fleeting glimpse Clinton caught of him, he saw a young lifeless face and the blackthorn stick he had mistaken for a gun, lying harmless in the grass. With a nauseous sensation in his stomach, he rode on, all his earlier elation spent.
    He swore aloud as he saw that four Fenians had already reached the reeds well ahead of him and the dozen hussars close on his heels. His success had already gone sour; more deaths would ruin it completely. These men were not soldiers, and his pride, as well as his humanity, revolted against being obliged to treat them as if they were. Around him, troopers were dismounting and snatching theircarbines from the straps behind the saddle cantles. Clinton shouted to the Irish to stop and save their lives but now hussars were plunging into the reeds, forcing their quarry on. Two gave themselves up when they saw the speed of the current, two others, regardless of the repeated shouts to halt, launched themselves into the swirling tea-coloured water. A sergeant, acting on Clinton’s previous orders, told his men to fire, and one of the Fenians was hit in the first burst of shots. His companion by then had reached the far bank, and could have escaped into the thick overhanging undergrowth, but looking back, he hesitated and then dived in again, in a suicidal attempt to rescue his compatriot.
    ‘Get them out. Don’t shoot,’ bellowed Clinton, scrambling from his horse and running to the bank. By the time three hussars had waded into the water, the Irishmen had been swept down to a bend where the river was waist-deep. Seconds later a floundering struggle ended with the sharp crack of a carbine fired from