Chapter 8 #2
The day had been balmy, but the skies were grey and the air now held a nip. There was no reason other than rudeness to refuse.
“Of course, Major. Please join us.” Emily was more polite than Richard ever would have been, but he said nothing as the other man took his place.
He seemed to have no conversation to offer the group, but neither could Richard and Emily continue their own discussion, and with the ensuing silence, the trio soon broke up as the original two went their separate ways.
The morning dawned as bleak as November morns are wont to do, even in paradise, and Richard’s ablutions were accompanied by a knock at his door. His batman had news that Colonel Barrow wished to speak with him.
“Fitzwilliam, please sit.” The colonel gestured to the chair opposite him at the desk. “I have news for you that is both good and ill at once.”
Richard saluted and took the offered chair, but remained silent.
“Some coffee? I would offer brandy, but the sun and the yardarm, don’t you know…
Some coffee then.” He spoke a word, and a young enlisted man appeared with a tray and two cups, into which the colonel poured some of the hot bitter brew.
Richard took an appreciative sniff and began to sip from the delicate china cup.
“Well, to the point,” the colonel continued at last. “I just received this missive.” He waved at a letter lying open on his desk. “It was misplaced with the main stack of documents that came on yesterday’s ship. My secretary brought it in this morning.”
His secretary. Weekes. Of course it would have been ‘mislaid.’ Richard wondered how Weekes knew it concerned him… but of course, the secretary opened the colonel’s official mail, to send through only those pieces which required his specific attention.
Colonel Barrow pulled his chair forward and rested his forearms on the desk between them.
“I know your background, how your father has tried at every turn to hinder your career by preventing any posting to active areas of war. This is the tamest part of the theatre, and we have truly appreciated all your efforts here. However—”
“—I am being sent home.” Richard supplied the rest of the sentence. There could be no other continuation to it. The bottom seemed to fall out of the floor beneath him.
“Indeed.” Barrow let out a sigh and pinched his lips.
“It seems Lord Matlock’s desires out-shadow the needs of His Majesty, and you are summoned back to England.
‘Tis not all ill news, however. You will be required to train new raw regiments for our use, and in return will be promoted to my own rank, that of colonel. The posting and position will be effective on the first of February, but I have been ordered to relieve you of your duties here effective immediately. Until you ship out, you may continue in your quarters, and I will be proud to call you friend.”
Richard might as well have been slapped.
Of all the reasons he had imagined for this meeting, this news was none of them.
Anger, frustration, shock, and pride all warred within him, and he was unsure how long he sat there, unmoving under his commander’s gaze.
And Weekes had known about it, even last night when he inserted himself between Richard and Emily by the fire. The weasel.
But this… this slight, and at his father’s command!
To be summoned back to England to play nursemaid for green recruits was all but an insult to a man who dearly wished to fight for his country.
Nonetheless, one did not readily refuse a promotion, and certainly not one to the rank of colonel.
His confusion must have shown on his face, for Barrow passed the letter across to him and whispered, “Read it at your leisure. I shall be conferring with Oxley about this morning’s drills,” whereupon he took a final drink of his coffee and left the room.
Colonel. Richard would be a colonel, with the prestige and pay that such a rank commanded.
He reread the letter, in hopes of finding some means by which he might remain in Bermuda or be posted to some active theatre of war, but there was none.
The orders were simple: A training camp near enough to London to be able to return to his parents’ house there weekly, or nightly if he desired, with his promotion contingent upon accepting the position.
The strong implication was that there was little choice.
It was a command. He let out a long sigh.
How much had he wished to progress through the ranks in his chosen career, but how much more had he longed for duties other than these.
Still, unless he wished to give up the army, there was nothing to do but to accept, and with gratitude.
What was this? Another letter, this one still sealed, enfolded in the official missive from the War Office. He knew the writing on the sealed envelope well.
“Father.” He hissed the word. He had all due filial feelings for his parent, but at this moment, he would gladly have sent the earl to the underworld.
With another deep sigh, he broke the seal and began to read.
October 1, 1811
Son,
You will not be pleased with this letter, but I must act. Your aunt Catherine insists on your presence at Rosings at Easter to help Darcy with the accounts, and she will not be denied.
Richard let out a roar of anger. “The nerve! He disrupts the workings of His Majesty’s forces to accommodate my aunt’s desire for my accounting skills! Termagant! Harpy!”
To that end, I have used my influence to have you relocated to London, where you may exercise whatever spirit drives you in your career.
Along with this, I have instructed the War Office to grant you a promotion.
Darcy will surely appreciate your company when he next visits my sister.
I trust you will obey your new orders with no display of bad manners or poor grace, as befits a Fitzwilliam.
Yours,
Matlock
Once again Richard bellowed an epithet that no man should apply to a parent.
His father did not even have the heart to sign his letter with some personal endearment or name, but simply by his title.
This was insupportable, to be summoned home for so paltry a reason, and yet there was nothing to be done about it.
Good grace and good manners it must be, then.
He would miss this place. For over a year it had been his home, and he had come to love every rock and leaf and reef in the glistening waters. There were some good men here, despite the generally unfriendly atmosphere, and he had made friends.
Friends… Emily! That thought stabbed him in the gut. By leaving Bermuda, he would of necessity leave Emily.
That was the cruellest cut of all.
He moped about for a moment before sulking back to his rooms. To take up his new command in February, he would have to leave soon, perhaps on the very next ship back to England.
He recalled how much he had, at first, resented being posted here, but now, he was devastated to leave.
There was more to the Bermudas than sitting idly on a patch of paradise.
Still, such was the life of a soldier; there was nothing for it.
He must summon his batman and start packing up his belongings.
He did not have a great many personal effects here on this isle, but he had travelled with some and had accumulated some others during his stay, and all must be stowed into trunks and be made ready for the long journey home.
His shoulders sagged from an invisible weight.
He passed by his office to inform his batman of the new orders before completing the walk to his own chambers. There, he stopped short, unable for a moment to take in what he saw.
What the hell—?
He blinked in an attempt to clear the image, but the chaos remained. Rage flooded his veins as he took in the disaster that had been his private quarters.
The door had been flung wide, despite having been locked before, and the room was torn apart.
Every drawer in his small chest had been pulled out, every trunk and storage bin opened, and the contents strewn wildly about the room.
His linens had been ripped from his narrow bed and the blanket lay in shreds upon the thin mattress.
There was clothing everywhere, papers scattered about, wet and crumpled, and the pottery vase that he had purchased from a local craftsman lay shattered on the floor.
What else had been destroyed? And moreover, what was missing?
He stifled a roar and set off immediately to find Colonel Barrow to inform him of this latest, and most serious, incident.
Barrow followed him down to his rooms, there to survey the damage. “Who has done this, Fitzwilliam?” He did not yell, but the deadly quiet of his voice was more terrifying still.
“I cannot say for certain. I have my suspicions, but as with all these happenings, no true evidence with which to lay blame.”
“He was at his desk all morning.” There was no need to give a name.
Richard growled. “He might well have been, sir, but he knew I would be in your office. That letter was not misplaced yesterday. He brought it late deliberately and sent his… his henchmen to do his dirty work while he sat, so innocently, only a few yards away. It can only have been like that.”
Barrow hissed an oath. “Would that I had proof. I do not doubt you for a moment. But without anything more than supposition and guesswork, there is nothing I can do. He remains a good secretary, is efficient and has excellent handwriting, and he has done nothing to arouse my ire, other than display his character too often for my liking. Perhaps I can have him reassigned to Fort St Catherine, but other than that, my hands are tied. I am sorry.”
The two men set about sorting through the chaos, accumulating piles of clothing and books and other effects. “What is that smell?” Now that they had been in the room for a while, a nasty odour had begun to permeate the air.
Richard threw open the last of his trunks, the only one that the miscreants had left closed. He staggered backwards with a violent oath.
“What is it?” Barrow asked. “Oh God, that stench!”
The trunk no longer held the item it originally contained, but was now filled with dead and rotting fish.
“Bloody bastards!” There was no holding back this curse.
Now that the trunk was open, the air reeked of fish. The smell, Richard knew, would infect all his surviving clothing and papers. He bellowed for his batman, who came running, and between the three of them they set about removing as much as possible from the chamber.
“Take the room three doors down,” Barrow suggested. “It has remained empty since Barnes was sent back to England.”
It was a great length of time before Richard’s belongings had been moved and the vile trunk wrestled out of the wing to the fort’s great gates, where it would be disposed of in the morning.
There would be no salvaging the trunk itself.
Everything placed inside it would surely stink of rotten fish for months, if not years.
That night, at long last, Richard retired to his new rooms, cursing Weekes’ very existence and dreaming of ways to wreak justice upon this incomprehensible foe.