The Confusion

He was being looked after by one Hamilton, a big bloke, infamous for uncouth qualities. Hamilton had planted a knee on Bob’s shoulder to pin him in a more convenient attitude, and was picking curiously at a hard object embedded in Bob’s flesh. Bob found this extremely annoying and said so more than once. “Oh, fuck it!” Hamilton decreed, and dived into Bob’s chest, planting his lips over the wound. After a quick suck and a bite he popped up again with something yellow in his teeth, and spat it out for examination.

“’Tis a pretty brass button,” he announced, “a bit dented by the ram-rod, but ’twill suffice to replace the ones we tore off your coat just now.”

“Or we may fire it back to its owner,” said one Roberts, who always did what Hamilton did, but not as well. He had a knee on Bob’s other shoulder. “If we should run out of ammunition, I mean.”

Not more than ten minutes had passed while Bob lay on his back on the ground, but when he got up again it was a new battle. All of Ruvigny’s horse had now crossed over, and more was on the way, galloping up from the opposite wing where they’d been balked all afternoon. The gates of Aughrim Castle were open, and a lot of screaming and hasty praying could be heard within its walls as the unlucky garrison was put to the sword (vide Rules of Continental Siege Warfare). The squadrons not participating in this massacre had positioned themselves around the edge of the village and made ready to be attacked by the Irish and French battalions not far away, but such an attack never came; something had gone wrong in St. Ruth’s chain of command, orders to counter-attack had not been issued or else were not getting through, and his generals were unwilling to do it on their own initiative.

Bob wrapped his coat around himself to cover the wound, which was bleeding, but not hissing or spurting. He strolled uphill a short distance and climbed up onto one of the earthen ramparts that the Irish had thrown up to defend Aughrim village.

He could see some Irish dragoons retreating off to his right. In the overall scheme this was amazingly stupid, and probably fatal, but they had no way of knowing.

“Sergeant!”

Bob looked down into the face of Captain Barnes, which was in the middle of a transition from intense anxiety to giddy relief; for the nonce it looked more quizzical than anything. “I was given to understand you had suffered a dire injury!”

“I was shot in the chest,” Bob said guardedly. “One of those musketeers drilled me about here, from perhaps fifty yards.” Bob glanced towards the corner of the castle from which the button had been fired. A French standard was being cut down by trophy-hunting cavaliers.

“Then you should be taking your rest! We have been ordered to garrison the castle,” said Barnes.

“Has my bedchamber been made ready?”

“Alas, there are no chambers of any kind, only roofless cells,” Barnes answered deadpan. “We could make you a bed from ammunition cases.”

“I thought they had none.”

“They have thousands of musket-balls in there,” Barnes said.

“Then why did they not use them?”

“Because they are made for English muskets-ever so slightly larger than the barrels of their French muskets.”

Hamilton had ambled to within earshot of this conversation, and responded, “Haw! I always knew we Englishmen had bigger balls than the French!” Indeed, all of the private soldiers found it hilarious. But sergeants and captains-who were actually responsible for getting musket-balls to the troops-could only wince at such a story, even when it had befallen the enemy.

Bob looked off to the south and saw a series of English and Huguenot cavalry squadrons slipping like a knife-blade into a gap between the Irish infantry, and the stunned cavalry to its rear. They were swinging round behind the Irish foot, getting into position to charge them, panic them, and mow them down like hay.

“Captain Barnes,” Bob said, “you have said it yourself. I have been shot in the chest and am plainly a casualty of war, hors de combat, and for now my duties must be assumed by another sergeant… Fortunately your company’s assignment is trivial. There will be no counter-attack made against yonder castle this afternoon.” Bob turned his back on Barnes and strode down the slope of the rampart, muttering, “Or this month, this year, this century.”

ONCE THE DANES and the Huguenots over-ran the field like flocks of starlings scouring the earth for worms, Bob’s red Guards uniform would not help him; this side of the bog, any man on foot was under a death sentence. Because the French/Irish phant’sied themselves the army of the true King (James II), many of their regiments wore the same red uniforms, and the only way to tell them apart was by looking for small badges or devices thrust into their hats: sprigs of green for King William’s forces, scraps of white paper for James Stuart’s. These were difficult to see even in good light. Bob’s hat had been lost in the bog anyway.