‘How true.’ Girdwood had sat in his office, turning over in his head the options of punishment.
‘The Navy?’ Captain Smith had asked. Often the camp had rid itself of hardened troublemakers by sending them under escort to the North Sea fleet that was ever grateful for men. Girdwood gave a brief smile.
‘I doubt our sea-going brethren would be grateful for this one. He’s scum, Hamish, scum. I know them, you forget that!’
Captain Hamish Smith, who, like all Girdwood’s officers, had been growing old, seeing himself passed over for promotion and getting ever deeper into debt until the Colonel offered him this chance of redemption and wealth, said nothing. He guessed what the outcome would be, for he had seen before, and with some shame, how the boredom and brutality of Foulness increasingly encouraged its officers and sergeants to the foulest licence that even encompassed murder. This camp was secret, protected by the powerful, and looked only to Girdwood for its laws and justice.
Sergeant Major Brightwell, a great bull of a man with small, hard eyes and a face like pounded steak, grunted his opinion. ‘We could exercise ourselves, sir? Hunt the bastard.’
‘A hunt.’ Girdwood said it slowly, as though he had not been thinking of just that idea. ‘A hunt!’
It was not the first time that, on a moonlit night, the officers and sergeants had hunted a man through the waste that was the northern half of Foulness. The marsh offered little cover, except the ditches, and it was easily surrounded so that the victim could not escape. Girdwood had drunkenly claimed one night that such an exercise sharpened their military skills as if that excuse, in some obscure way, justified the enjoyment. Now, in the pale moonlight, the hunt was about to begin. Girdwood’s voice was crisp and sure, as though this night’s excitement was a normal military exercise.
‘Prepare him, Sergeant Major!’
Brightwell swung himself from his borrowed horse. The prisoner did not need much preparation, for he wore nothing but shoes, trousers and shirt, and the purpose of Brightwell’s attentions was only to ensure that the victim carried nothing that could be used as a weapon. The Sergeant Major saw the glint of metal at Harper’s neck and tore the shirt aside.
‘Sir?’ Brightwell had seized the chain, pulled so that it broke, and now handed the crucifix to Girdwood.
Harper wore the crucifix because, like many another married man, his wife was eager that he should show more devotion to his faith. A better reason, in Harper’s eyes, was that the symbol convinced Spanish villagers that its wearer was a true Catholic, not a heathen protestant, thus persuading them to more generosity with food, tobacco or wine.
To Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood, an officer of a country that still denied public office to Catholics, the crucifix added a patriotic spice to the night’s events. He looked at the symbol, sneered, and tossed it into the ditch beside the road. He urged his horse forward and Harper, in the brilliant moonlight that was silvering the marsh, could see every detail of the Colonel’s uniform and weapons. Girdwood looked down on the Irishman.
‘I’m giving you a sporting chance. More than you deserve. You see that post?’ He pointed to a stake that was thrust into the far side of the marsh. ‘You have twenty minutes to reach its safety. If you do it successfully I shall overlook your mutiny of today. If not? I shall punish you. You have two minutes lead over us and I wish you good luck.’ The mounted men smiled at the lie. Girdwood snapped the watch-lid open. ‘Go!’
For a second Harper did not move, so astonished was he by the turn the night had taken. He had expected a formal charge, a military court, and then, almost certainly, a beating. Instead he was to be hunted in the wetland. Then, knowing that every second counted, he ran northwards.
Girdwood watched him. ‘Going straight for the mark. They always do.’ He spoke to Captain Finch, the second Captain at Foulness, who was Girdwood’s partner for the hunt. Captain Smith, as officer of the day, was not with the hunters. This was not a sport Smith relished, though to protest was to open himself to Girdwood’s scorn or worse.