Chapter 6
Six
Laurence Bennet arrived in Dover upon the last day of August, the sun already low and casting long shadows across the white cliffs that rose sheer against the sky.
The sea air struck him sharp with salt and the faint, acrid smoke of the town’s chimneys, carrying with it the ceaseless cry of gulls wheeling over the harbour.
He had ridden hard from Hertfordshire, changing horses at Rochester and again at Canterbury, his portmanteau strapped behind the saddle and his new lieutenant’s coat folded with care inside to spare the scarlet from the dust of the road.
The journey had been long, the ways dry and rutted, and his temper—never of the mildest—had shortened with every mile that bore him farther from Longbourn.
He had left home under a shadow that still clung to him: his father confined to his chamber, Miles grave and watchful in the parlour, Kit silent but steady in his quiet way, and his mother’s handkerchief never far from her eyes.
James had been there as well, standing near the window with the quiet composure of the eldest son who must appear stronger than he felt, while their mother moved restlessly between chair and hearth, unwilling to sit yet unable to do anything that might truly ease her anxiety.
Their father, pale but determined, had insisted upon rising long enough to see him depart, leaning heavily upon the arm of his chair while speaking only a few measured words that Laurence could scarcely remember now.
Elias alone had been absent, still in London, and the knowledge of that absence had lent the moment a curious incompleteness, as though the family circle had been broken at the very hour it most needed to be whole.
Now that the commission had been purchased at last, with what remained of the sum once set aside for that purpose, Laurence had taken it as a victory of sorts—proof that his follies had not entirely closed every door.
Dover unfolded before him first as those towering cliffs, pale and immense, then as a confusion of narrow streets alive with soldiers in red coats moving purposefully in every direction.
The harbour bustled below, ships riding at anchor, boats plying between them, and the air thick with the shouts of stevedores and the clang of iron.
He found the headquarters of the 43rd Regiment of Foot in a large inn near the quayside, its signboard freshly painted, its yard crowded with officers’ horses stamping restlessly and orderlies hurrying about their duties.
Laurence dismounted, handed his reins to a boy with a curt nod, and entered with the bearing of a man who expected his arrival to matter.
The adjutant, Captain Henry Ellis, sat behind a table strewn with muster rolls and pay lists.
A man of middle height, perhaps five-and-thirty, he bore a scar that ran from temple to jaw, lending his face a perpetual expression of wry severity.
He looked up as Laurence presented his commission, read it without visible haste, and returned it with the slightest inclination of his head.
“Mr. Bennet,” he said, voice even and uninflected.
“You are expected, though not so punctually as one might wish. The regiment assembles here for reorganisation; we have lately returned from France and are not yet fully settled. Report without delay to Colour-Sergeant Thomas Harris on the parade ground. He will see to your kit and your place in No. 4 Company.”
Laurence opened his mouth to offer some explanation—fatigue from the road, perhaps, or the press of family affairs—but Captain Ellis had already bent once more to his papers.
The dismissal was absolute, courteous in form yet complete in effect.
Laurence felt the colour rise in his cheeks, but he turned on his heel and went out.
As he crossed the inn’s crowded hall, a steward carrying a tray of glasses paused to let him pass, his glance lingering for a moment upon the dust-streaked riding boots and the carefully folded scarlet coat beneath Laurence’s arm.
The man’s expression held no insolence—only the faintest, knowing patience of one who had watched many such arrivals before.
“New lieutenant, sir?” he asked with quiet civility.
Laurence inclined his head stiffly.
“Then you will soon discover,” the steward said, setting the tray down with deliberate care, “that a gentleman’s birth is of little consequence here until he learns to drill like the men who have already survived the war.”
The words were offered without emphasis, almost kindly, yet they struck Laurence with a precision more cutting than open mockery.
Before he could frame a reply, the man had lifted the tray again and gone on his way, leaving behind the uncomfortable certainty that the observation had not been meant as an insult, but as fact.
***
The parade ground lay behind the inn, a wide expanse of chalk-white earth sloping gently toward the sea.
The afternoon sun beat down fiercely, shimmering the air with heat and dust. Companies moved in orderly lines: the sharp stamp of boots in unison, the metallic flash of steel ramrods, the low, measured murmur of sergeants’ voices correcting timing and carriage.
Laurence paused a moment at the edge, coat draped over his arm, observing with what he imagined to be a soldier’s practised eye—though in truth he had never before stood upon such ground.
As he walked toward the forming ranks, he noticed small, incongruous tokens carried by the veterans who passed him—objects worn smooth by travel and habit.
One corporal turned a dull silver coin between his fingers as he spoke with a companion, the emperor’s profile faintly visible upon its surface; another man had fixed a battered brass eagle to the strap of his haversack, its wings bent where some blow had struck it; and near the well a group of soldiers bent over a torn French gazette, puzzling through its print with slow amusement.
They handled these relics with the casual familiarity of men who had crossed a continent and returned again. Meanwhile, Laurence, standing newly arrived in spotless linen and untested boots, felt suddenly and uncomfortably aware that he had come not from war but from a quiet Hertfordshire parlour.
For the first time, the scarlet coat folded over his arm seemed less like a badge of glory than a garment borrowed too soon.
Colour-Sergeant Thomas Harris was not hard to find.
He stood apart from the nearest platoon, arms folded across his chest, watching the men with the fixed, unblinking attention of one who had witnessed far worse faults than any they might commit today.
Tall and spare, his face burned dark by years beneath hotter suns than England’s knew, the tip of his left ear missing—a souvenir, Laurence would later learn, of a French sabre at Talavera.
When his gaze turned upon the newcomer, it held neither welcome nor overt surprise, only calm assessment.
“You are Lieutenant Bennet, sir?”
“I am, sir.”
“Late, sir. We began at noon. Strip off that coat and fall in with No. 4 Platoon. We shall see whether those boots of yours can keep time with men who have marched farther than you have yet dreamed.”
The words struck like a lash, though delivered without heat.
Laurence felt the flush deepen, a surge of indignation rising in his throat, but he swallowed it down and obeyed.
He removed his coat, rolled his shirtsleeves above the elbows, and accepted the Brown Bess musket thrust into his hands by a corporal.
The weapon was heavier than he had expected, its stock worn smooth by countless hands not his own, and already his palms grew damp against the wood.
Ensign William Taylor, a thin youth of nineteen with a nervous manner and a faint stammer when addressed by superiors, edged closer as they formed line.
“First day?” Taylor whispered, glancing sidelong.
Laurence gave a short nod, jaw tight.
“Colour-Sergeant Harris is strict but just,” Taylor continued in the same low tone. “Do as he bids, and you’ll come to no harm. Defy him, and you’ll spend your evenings on extra drill till the new year.”
Lieutenant James Carter, who commanded the company in the captain’s absence, regarded Laurence with cool appraisal.
A man of thirty or thereabouts, steady of eye and quiet of speech, he had risen from the ranks after Corunna and wore the look of one who had earned every thread of his epaulette through hard service.
“We’ve no leisure here for gentlemen who mistake the army for a drawing-room,” Carter said, not unkindly but with plain meaning. “The war is over. What remains is discipline. Mind it.”
The drill commenced without further preamble. Colour-Sergeant Harris’s voice rang out across the ground: “Shoulder—arms!”
Laurence brought the musket to his shoulder with what he believed to be precision. The movement proved awkward; the barrel swung wide, and the butt grazed the man beside him—a wiry Londoner named John Smith—who muttered something indistinct under his breath.
“Elbows in, sir!” Harris called sharply. “You are not waving a fan at Almack’s. Again!”
The platoon repeated the motion. Laurence’s arms began to burn almost at once.
The sun pressed upon his back like a heavy hand; sweat ran into his eyes, stinging.
The commands continued without mercy: “Present—arms! Recover—arms! Order—arms! Support—arms!” Each shift of the heavy musket demanded exactness of timing and carriage, and Laurence, though quick to grasp theory in the abstract, found his body slower, clumsier, betraying him at every turn.
Harris halted the platoon twice to correct him alone.
“Step out, Mr. Bennet. Show the men how a gentleman performs the manual exercise.”