The Haunting Page 11

  None of the adults could sleep listening to the wails of distress from the poor woman but as time passed her cries became fainter and in the end stopped altogether.

  It was another hour before she returned to the stockade. The gate was opened, and once again the soldiers raised their muskets to the Gypsies. The woman was pushed roughly inside and the gate secured as she fell to the ground in the mixture of mud and cow droppings. Luke rushed to her side and lifted her head out of the mire supporting her with one arm while cleaning the mess from her face. She had no tears left to cry and looked up imploringly to Luke for help, but it was all too late for her. The dress she wore had been ripped to shreds in the soldier's eagerness to get at her and the other women collected amongst themselves for a replacement. They gently eased the remnants of her dress from her and clothed her in an assortment of odd pieces of clothing.

  Luke left the other women to attend to her and walked to the front of the stockade, glaring through the bars at the two troopers who had been left to guard them. Neither of them looked to be very alert, and Luke thought it a miracle they could stand at all. The one who had previously been left on guard was miserable, he had missed out on all the fun with the woman and expressed himself loudly to the other.

  ‘It’s not fair!’ He exclaimed to his companion, ‘You lot had the woman and I had nothing! What about me then?’

  The other soldier laughed crudely,

  ‘That’s your hard luck and no mistake, she was lovely and very accommodating, we took turns and I was lucky second, she weren’t so good further on down the line!’

  The disgruntled soldier put a jug of ale to his mouth and swallowed until it was drained. He threw it down on the floor in disgust and kicked it away.

  ‘No more ale and no women, ‘taint fair!’

  His companion approached the stockade gate, peering through the crudely built wooden slats.

  ‘Why there’s another young one in there, why not have her then?’

  The first man joined him at the gate and followed his pointing finger until his eyes rested on the other young mother who was still feeding the youngest children. He sneered vulgarly and grabbed his crotch in a lewd gesture,

  ‘She’ll do just fine, open the gate; I want her now.’

  The second soldier was so drunk, he threw all caution to the wind and opened the gate, bending it back on itself.

  The Gypsies drew back at the sight of the raised muskets as both the troopers entered the stockade. They made straight for the woman who pushed the young child from her and covered her mouth with the back of her hand to stifle a cry of despair, she had witnessed the fate of the other woman and feared for her own safety but could do nothing to prevent the impending assault.

  The troopers were so engaged in the prospect of more sport with the young woman they failed to notice they had passed Luke and two other men in their eagerness. At a signal from Luke, all three charged the soldiers from behind and silently brought them to the ground. The soldiers had no chance to fire their muskets, and with the firing powder pans now covered in mud, they were useless. More men rushed forward and held them face down in the mire. Their struggles soon finished as they asphyxiated in the mixture of mud and cow dung.

  Luke stood up addressing the group; he had assumed command and knew his authority would be accepted after dealing with the soldiers.

  Quietly he issued orders,

  ‘Strip these men of weapons, quickly now; we need to leave this place before the others are aware.’

  One of the other Gypsies stated the obvious,

  ‘We can’t run with all the women and kids, they will never keep up, and we’ll all be caught.’

  Luke acknowledged the problem,

  ‘But any that are left here with the dead soldiers will be surely be hanged, the children as well, there will be no leniency. We must get them somewhere safe, to a place where they will merge into the background. The men will have to fend for themselves or band together as a group, in that way we all might have a chance of survival, at least for a time.’

  An older woman spoke up saying she knew of a Gypsy encampment not too far away which was as yet safe from the government and Luke fastened on to the idea at once. They would head for the place and leave all the woman and children in their care.

  It was a sorry looking bunch of people who quietly left the stockade, but at least they were free once again. Luke had commandeered one of the muskets and had cleaned, dried and reloaded it. He appointed another young man, Daniel as his second in command and showed him how to care for the other rifle.

  They set off but soon turned off the road, making their way over fields and through small woods choosing a circuitous route to the Gypsy camp.

  The morning light revealed the empty stockade. The soldiers stood around in small groups talking and pointing at the two bodies half submerged in mud. Their officer approached and surveyed the scene.

  ‘Sergeant, what happened? And it had better be good!’

  The Sergeant stood before his commanding officer knowing his career and possibly his life was over. He had no excuses, having led the others in taking the woman out of the stockade and into the shed to use her in the basest manner. In fact, he had been the first to ravish the poor woman, and it was he who had torn her clothes, egged on by the cheering troopers. The officer knew full well that sort of thing went on and usually turned a blind eye, but not now, two of his soldiers lay dead in the mud and furthermore their muskets were missing, an offence in itself.

  The officer looked down his nose at the man in front of him,

  ‘Well, Sergeant, I’m waiting.’

  The Sergeant had to confess and explained what had taken place the previous night.

  The officer listened with the scowl on his face deepening into one of anger. He would also have to account for the situation to his senior officer and so on and so on until the whole sorry mess ended on the commander in chief’s desk. He doubted whether he would be able to hold onto his own position.

  The immediate problem was the escaped Gypsies, and he contemplated launching a quick search. As he was about to issue the orders, a thought crossed his mind. The problem was not about to go away because even if he managed to recapture the Gypsies and hang a few of them his command would still be in jeopardy. No, there had to be a better solution.

  The officer returned to his temporary quarters with the downcast Sergeant walking behind him.

  ‘Now, Sergeant, how do you think we might handle this, shall we say, rather delicate situation?’

  The Sergeant had no idea, his thoughts lay in the direction of his own punishment, probably a severe flogging and reduction in rank. It was not his first visit to that situation, and he still remembered the pain of being tied spreadeagled to a cartwheel and receiving one hundred lashes. He still bore the scars on his back as testimony to the severity of that particular form of punishment and knew he could expect double that amount now.

  He stood with a blank look on his face as the officer steepled his hands on the desk and looked up at him.

  ‘Well now, Sergeant, what are we to do? It will be a flogging for you and permanent reduction to the lowest of the low for the rest of your service, I very much doubt if you will survive for more than a couple of years, even if you live through the flogging, it’s the second one isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The Sergeant replied, his pallor fading to a deathly white.

  ‘Well, now, perhaps this mess can be sorted out between us. How reliable are the men?’

  The Sergeant could see a faint chance of survival and grabbed it with both hands,

  ‘Very reliable sir, very reliable.’

  ‘Would you say that it might be possible that the two dead men could have been crushed by stampeding cattle?’

  The Sergeant allowed himself the glimmer of a smile as the reality of what the officer was suggesting became apparent.

  ‘Oh, yes sir, dangerous buggers those cattle, begging your pardon, sir.’


  The officer hadn’t finished, though,

  ‘The men will have to be sworn to secrecy but that may not hold them, hardly gentlemen are they? They will have to be put in fear, Sergeant, put in a position where they will never dare utter a word about last night. Do I make myself perfectly clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Replied the Sergeant, although he was by no means clear at all.

  ‘I’ll leave it to you then, nothing more will be said but make no mistake, if anything goes wrong it will be your head that rolls, not mine.’

  The Sergeant brought himself to attention.

  ‘Dismissed.’ The officer said with a wave of his hand.

  Outside the Sergeant approached his men and they, in turn, looked at him for direction.

  ‘Right you lot, the officer has kindly allowed us to deal with this problem ourselves. Now, those two stupid sods, indicating the bodies of the two dead soldiers, went and got themselves killed, didn’t they? Well, didn’t they!’

  The men nodded and murmured in agreement.

  ‘Now, the situation is as follows, if it ever gets out, the officer has guaranteed that we will all swing for it. He has no option but to find us all as guilty as each other. However, in his generosity, he is allowing us to solve our own dilemma.’

  He waited for the gravity of the situation to sink in. He knew he was talking nonsense but was also aware that his men wouldn’t know that. They were all too conscious of the punishment meted out in the army, which was never reluctant to string up anyone for the merest hint of an offence.

  The sergeant had thought up a solution and now put it into action. He ordered his troops to round up a few cattle from the surrounding area and to be quick about it.

  Within the hour a dozen bewildered cows were stamping their feet outside the stockade. The gate was drawn open, and the cattle driven inside. The troops then made such a noise and hullabaloo that the beasts panicked and charged around the stockade, trampling the dead soldiers even further into the mud.

  The Sergeant smiled,

  ‘There now, problem solved. There never was no Gypsies, and these poor sods got themselves drunk and wandered into the cattle pen. Everyone understand? Because you are all involved now whether you like it or not, we all stand together, or we all hang together, right?’

  The once again formed up troops replied as one.

  ‘Yes, sergeant.’

  Luke and the others reached the Gypsy camp and explained their predicament to the leader. He had known Jeb and cursed the soldiers roundly. The men in the camp had heard how, at Cromwell’s insistence, all Gypsies were to be rounded up wherever possible and shipped to foreign parts. Theirs was an unenviable situation, and nobody had any solution other than to keep on the move.

  The women and children were distributed amongst the other families but the men would have to fend for themselves they were told. Luke, now firmly established as the leader of his small band of men made ready to move off at first light.

  They enjoyed their first night of relative comfort, and all slept soundly. Merely being able to lie on the ground was a treat in itself.

  As dawn broke, the men took their leave. There were tears aplenty as the men left their families, not knowing if they would ever see them again. They made their way North, as far away from London as possible. That area had already been cleared of Gypsies, but the movement was slowly moving in their direction. If they could keep ahead, they might be safe for a while or until the crazy ideas of Cromwell subsided. They travelled on foot well away from the road, choosing instead to walk at the side of fields where they would be sheltered by hedges. Breaks were taken in any wooded area, where they could light a small fire without too much risk of detection. It wasn’t only patrolling soldiers that represented danger; the ordinary peasantry was only too willing to give them up. Gypsies had no friends or allies, they were quite alone and an easy target, just as the Jews had been several centuries earlier. That entire race had been eliminated from England for some four hundred years by King John. Some had been lucky to make it all the way to Europe; most had been killed.

  However, the band of men now on the march had no idea of this piece of history; they were unaware of just how bad their situation might become. Luke, although not a Gypsy himself, had joined their ranks, having married one of their kind, and now had the blood of two troopers on his hands. He had assumed command easily, and the others accepted his leadership without question. The events at the stockade had cemented his worth in their eyes.

  Chapter 18

  Sebastian sat at the kitchen table the morning after Caroline’s arrival contemplating his third cup of coffee when she arrived on the scene, noisily, as usual. He didn’t have to ask but instead made her a strong coffee, the first of many he decided, looking at her dark features.

  ‘So, what now?’ He said, dreading the answer.

  ‘Can I stay here, with you, just for a while?’ She replied in her best ‘little girl’ voice, the wheedling tone jarring Sebastian’s nerves. He had listened to her petulant ‘little girl’ act for too long, amazed at how she could still believe he would buy it every time.

  He nodded in defeat,

  ‘I suppose so but what will you do; have you left your job as well?’

  She sipped her coffee looking at him from under long eyelashes,

  ‘Had to darling, I was his secretary. How could I possibly stay when he dismissed our relationship with a mere text message. And of course, there is the wife, the bitch hates me. Can’t think why? According to Jules she never gave him any comfort, cold as ice he said.’

  Sebastian knew he shouldn’t say it, but it was too hard to resist,

  ‘Then why in heaven's name didn’t he leave her for you?’ He murmured.

  Caroline raised herself up in her chair,

  ‘Because all he ever thinks about is money and how much he would lose if he left her, that’s why.’

  Sebastian concentrated on his cup as he thought to himself that the same excuses were rolled out time and time again in these situations. It was always someone else’s fault, never the illicit lovers. His sister had been a bit of fun for the lawyer, but when push came to shove, and he stood to lose everything, love flew quickly out the window to be replaced by hard reality. There would be others Sebastian assumed. Men like that seldom mended their ways, they merely became more discreet and cunning.

  But that wouldn’t be any comfort to Caroline, the last thing she needed to hear was that by now her lover would have secured another interest and be enjoying the excitement of a new relationship. The wife would have assumed he would mend his ways after being caught out and dropped her guard.

  Sebastian knew he wouldn’t have the house to himself for some time and perhaps a little selfishly regretted his sister’s arrival; just as he was about to ask Briony over. He hadn’t seen her lately but had already made up his mind to invite her for dinner or at the very least, afternoon tea at the next opportunity.

  Caroline perked up a little after the third cup of strong coffee and asked what he was planning for the day. Sebastian told her he was looking to expand the small pantry because after taking measurements something didn’t quite add up. The wall between the cupboard and the next door room seemed to be a very thick wall, too thick in fact and he was determined to investigate. The old wooden shelving would have to be removed and replaced after finding out if there was anything behind the wall.

  Caroline said she would drive into Upper Marston and spy out the village. Sebastian assumed that would mean a surveillance of the men in the area for any likely prospects.

  He was hard at work inside the old pantry when she left by the kitchen door with a wave of her hand and a cheery ‘bye’. By the time he managed to disentangle himself from the ripped apart shelving and popped his head out she had disappeared. He heard the sound of her car leave the yard, turn into the road and accelerate towards the next village. He smiled to himself saying aloud,

  ‘Watch out Marston; you’re about to encounter a mini
hurricane.’

  The shelving was standing in a heap outside the kitchen door, and Sebastian kicked at it, sorry that he wouldn’t be able to put it back. The timber was past its best and needed to be replaced. He considered what to do with it, the nearest rubbish dump was miles away, and it would take considerable effort to load onto a trailer and unload it at the dump. He had an idea, and the thought excited him like it would a young boy. He would burn it in the old bakery oven. It was probably years since the oven had been used and he quickly gathered up the broken shelves, carrying them into the bakery. The door stood ajar as usual, and he grimaced at the thought that whatever he did the bloody thing was always open.

  When all the wood was stacked in front of the oven door, he opened it, squealing in protest on rusty hinges. He peered into the gloom of the interior seeing only the charred remains of the last fire and pushed in an old newspaper, crumpled into loose balls, followed by some of the shelving. The wood was dry with age and would soon catch alight. He struck a match and applied it to the paper, standing back to review the results. Disappointment etched his features as smoke poured out of the door into the room, the wrong direction he thought, beginning to cough. Looking up to the top of the oven he spied an old iron rod which had a bend at the end and then disappeared over the top. He thought it might be some form of damper and reaching up he pulled it hard, feeling a little movement. Then taking it in both hands and jerking it as hard as he could he was rewarded with a muffled clang as the rod reached the end of its travel. The smoke immediately reversed its course and was sucked back into the oven fire pit. The shelving caught and soon there was a blazing fire. Sebastian fed it with the remainder of the shelving and stood back to survey his handiwork, beaming like a naughty child. He heard the timber crackle as it bent and twisted in the fiery inferno, and something else. Sebastian cupped a hand to his ear when he thought he heard another far more frightening sound. The soft crying turned into screaming as the fire roared and soon he was deafened by a final shriek which appeared to come from the fire door, still wide open. He jumped back in fright and became rooted to the spot as a thin line of dark smoke came out of the oven door. It swirled in front of his eyes beginning to take on a shape, and he thought it resembled a human form, then it turned once more into a line of smoke and disappeared through the open door.