Casca 18: The Cursed Page 3

  Six fifteen. Thank the lord. Plenty of time. But, where the hell was everybody?

  He stomped through the building without encountering anybody until he came to the passage to the kitchens, where he was greeted by a grease bespattered cook's helper.

  "Oh, ullo Sarmajor, wot brings you 'ere at this hour?"

  Foster jerked to an infuriated halt. "Attenshun?" he bellowed.

  "Wot? Oh, blimey." Reluctantly Private Brian Warren came to attention.

  "Why aren't you on parade?" Forster bellowed in an irrational outrage at the slovenly soldier.

  "Wot sir? Cooks on parade?"

  "Don't call me sir. I'm not a hoffiser."

  A spark of rationality lit somewhere in what had once been the RSM's mind. Cooks on parade? Of course cooks didn't go on parade. Thank God. They would make a decent parade impossible. The British army used for its ordinary cooks only those men who proved totally useless at everything else. Of course, they were useless as cooks, too, but somebody had to do it.

  Forster turned away from the dirty cockney and marched into the stinking steam of the mess kitchen. He ignored the grimy morons sweating over their open caldrons and snatched a large butcher knife from a bench. He marched back toward the foyer and, at the doorway, almost ran into and very nearly disemboweled Private Warren, who was slouching his way through it.

  The clock now said six twenty, and Forster stepped out smartly, cursing himself that he had not had the sense to go to the kitchen door of the officers' mess for the knife, and to hell with the time and his dignity.

  By the flagpole the officers were no happier than the RSM.

  Parades were the very stuff of army life to sergeants major, but for officers they were nothing but a pain in the arse. All this time could have been much better spent at the billiard table, or reading the Times, or checking on the condition of the polo ponies.

  The gruesomely rigid corpse of their brother officer was not smelling any better as the sun's heat increased, and the buzzing flies were paying almost as much attention to the live officers as to the dead one. The cigarettes helped a little, but not enough.

  Colonel Braithwaite glowered as he looked over his officers for a victim. No help for it, they were more or less on parade, so any humiliation would have to be heaped upon the most junior officer. A pity, because Second Lieutenant Marksby was fast becoming something of a favorite with the colonel. But to choose anybody else would smack of favoritism. He could get away with that in the mess, but not on parade. "Dammit Marksby," he snapped, "surely you have a knife, don't you?"

  The faintly effeminate Marksby smiled in embarrassment. "I, er, I do have a small pair of scissors, sir."

  "Scissors?"

  Blushing, the young youth took from a pocket a small leather manicure pouch. He took from it a pair of nail scissors and tentatively proffered them.

  The colonel stepped back and waved a hand at the corpse. "Well, cut the damned thing down, won't you?"

  Marksby approached the grisly remains of his fellow subaltern and promptly threw up. The sky reeled, the ground came up to meet him, and Second Lieutenant Marksby lost his interest in First Lieutenant Marshman, the British army, and all else as he pitched unconscious to the ground.

  "Barrett," the colonel barked at another subaltern. "Get that scissors and get this thing down off that rope."

  "Yes sir." The young man moved quickly to snatch up the scissors and went to work with it on the rope.

  The soldiers returning for parade arrived to see Second Lieutenant Boy Barrett, one of the few officers they respected, scraping the nail scissors through the flag halyard one thread at a time.

  From the far end of the parade ground Regimental Sergeant Major Forster approached in his high stepping formal gait, stick under one arm, the huge butcher knife in the other swinging fist. He ignored the shorter diagonal and marched carefully the full length of the parade ground before stamping his way through a ceremonial left turn to march toward the flagpole.

  As the corpse crashed to the ground beside the fainted lieutenant, he stirred and got to his feet.

  This appalling display of shoddy parade ground behavior almost brought the RSM to a halt halfway to the flagpole. Well, he thought, it can't get any worse.

  From somewhere in the assorted uniformed ranks there came a giggle. Then, from another quarter a chuckle, then several, and then great guffaws of laughter came from all over the parade ground.

  Sergeant Cass Longman was laughing as lustily as any of his soldiers at the comic entertainment being provided by the officers of the regiment. He felt much closer to his men than he did to the officer caste, or to the strutting absurdity of an RSM. The other sergeants felt the same way. The officers were making fools of themselves; so what? It was always open season on officers if you didn't happen to be one.

  Barrett stooped to lift the corpse by the shoulders. Marksby, slightly recovered, stooped to help. Their heads crashed and they fell apart to either side of the corpse.

  The ranks whooped delightedly. Gales of laughter rocked back and forth across the parade ground as the two dazed subalterns staggered back to their feet to stoop again, managing this time to avoid each other, but between them only succeeding in jerking the corpse to a sitting position.

  Two more second lieutenants sprang forward and took the heels.

  "What a fuck up," Colonel Braithwaite fumed. "Well, at least we're out of it now."

  He was about to snap the order to take the corpse away when the panting RSM arrived and came noisily to attention before him.

  The laughter stopped. Forster forced his aching lungs to bellow at their best parade ground blast. "Wish to report sir, I've brought the knife."

  "An' just in time, too, mate," a wag hollered from the ranks, and the parade ground exploded in a new burst of hilarity. Cheers, jeers, hoots, catcalls, and whistles came from everywhere.

  The troops had now reached a situation they relished. Strictly speaking, it was difficult to make laughing an offense. Like sneezing or farting, it often had to be tolerated. Besides, the soldiers had not yet been called on parade. Best of all, any disciplinary action would have to be applied to the entire regiment. And any such punishment would have to be reported in dispatches, and the soldiers knew that this was a situation that the colonel would not want to report.

  The troopers in the ranks had learned what they knew of their duties and privileges and how the army worked through the toughest possible school, and the little they did know they knew very damned well.

  Similar thoughts were running through the colonel's mind. Damn this fool RSM. He should have scrubbed the parade altogether. What the devil to do now?

  Well, the main thing was to ensure that the ranks knew as little as possible of this officer's demise. He opened his mouth again to order the removal of the body, when RSM Forster's routine steeped, discipline dominated mentality snatched the moment from him.

  "On the order, parade will come to attention," Forster bellowed. "Pa-rade, at-ten-shun."

  But there came no answering stomp of heels on the ground. Instead the volume of mirth increased as if his command had been intended as an addition to the entertainment.

  The colonel found his voice at last. "Get this sack of lard out of here," he snapped to the officers holding Marshman's body. "Take it to sick bay and not a word to anybody."

  Boy Barrett turned disgustedly to carry the corpse away. "Past every bloody private soldier in the regiment, like the trash detail," he cursed under his breath at the absurdity of trying to keep the matter quiet. But he squared his shoulders and stepped out as if honored to be carrying a fellow officer who had died in the line of duty.

  The other three junior officers followed his lead, and it was almost enough.

  But the colonel was now determined to revenge himself upon the RSM for pre-empting his authority. "RSM," he barked, "get this parade to order."

  Forster stamped his way through the ridiculous routine it took to bring a regimental sergeant
major to attention. Then he saluted, stamped his way through an about turn, and faced the troops.

  Coming right after his hilariously mistimed arrival with the knife, this performance had the effect of continuing the comedy act, the huge butcher knife alongside the swagger stick under his left arm.

  The troops applauded lustily, some of them wondering how they had so long watched this ritual of one man ceremonially parading himself without laughing before.

  All the officers withdrew while Forster repeatedly made a fool of himself, shouting at the now quite uncontrollable troops.

  Sergeant Longman grew bored with the entertainment and decided to take a hand. He had better things to do than watch a fool on ceremonial display. He spoke quietly to his own corporals. "Murphy, O'Hara, Smith, quiet down, will you? Get ready to go off parade."

  The three corporals stopped chuckling and turned to their men with serious faces. Taking their cue from Casca, they spoke quietly but forcefully. "Orright then you lot. Orright then. Enuff's enuff. It ain't May Day you know. Quiet down will youse."

  Casca's men suddenly found themselves outside the comfortable anonymity they had been enjoying. One by one each soldier mastered his merriment as he faced his own corporal and, beyond him, Sergeant Longman, who stood as if waiting expectantly and a little impatiently. In a few moments Casca's men were all silent.

  "On the order dismiss, move to the right and dismiss to await further orders," Casca rushed out in one breath, then. “Dismiss.”

  His troops made the required turn, then walked from the parade ground.

  The surprised sergeant of the next platoon looked at Casca, who shrugged as if to say: "It's easy enough when you know how." The sergeant promptly started to bring his own men under control.

  The roars of laughter died down to a hubbub of chuckles and then to silence as one company after another was brought under control.

  Forster was the last to realize that the circus was over and was still bellowing uselessly for the parade to come to order as the last few squads were leaving the field.

  Colonel Braithwaite decided to be magnanimous and came to his rescue. He moved a little closer. "Very good, sarmajor. New parade in five minutes, thank you."

  "New parade five minutes sir." Forster went through his lonely routine stamping through his turn as he dismissed himself to march in solitary absurdity to the edge of the parade ground, where he could wait out the five minutes.

  The troops were well content to have gotten away with so much, and they settled down to wait, which was, after all, their main day to day activity.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Casca had not given much thought to the consequences when he had carried about the execution, and had certainly not expected to be apprehended.

  But he had reckoned without the inexplicable workings of a Chinese mind.

  The dead whore's younger brother had spent the previous night seeking out Lieutenant Marshman in his next debauch, and in the early hours of the morning, had followed the lieutenant to the army camp, intent upon himself taking revenge for his sister's murder. But he had been unable to sneak past the guard at the barracks gate for some little time, and when he again caught up with the staggering lieutenant, it was just in time to see Casca seize him and drag him to the flagpole.

  He had been afraid to go any closer, but he witnessed the hanging, and knew that the hangman had been a sergeant.

  When the news swept the marketplace the next morning, Fei Qili had gone to the barracks, and had reported what he knew, confident that the result would be the death of yet another of the hated white devils.

  To the little Chinese boy, all foreign devils looked much alike; they were all enormous, with strangely colored eyes and hair. His description would have been too vague to be of any use, but Colonel Braithwaite had called Sergeant Cass Longman to assist the Chinese interpreter.

  As Casca stepped into the colonel's office the startled Fei Qili recognized him as the hangman, and blurted out: "This is the man."

  The Chinese interpreter immediately translated, and the colonel exploded: "So you're the mystery sergeant. What the fuck do you think you're doing, hanging my lieutenants?"

  Fei Qili had now also recognized this big sergeant as a friend of his sister who had been kind to the family. He stared at Casca in consternation as he realized that he was betraying his sister's avenger. Well, so the fates had decided.

  Casca saw that there was no way out for him. There were not that many sergeants on the base, and few who could have singlehandedly dealt with the large officer. And no others with a motive. Indeed, there was not another man in the barracks who could be moved to give a damn about the murder of a Chinese harlot.

  "Dammit," the colonel snapped, "there's no bloody shortage of whores, and we're damned short of officers even if he was a no good, drunken, murderous slob. And now I suppose I'll have to hang you as well, and we're damned short of sergeants, too."

  He had Casca thrown into a cell to await trial, and had gone to the Army and Navy Club to drink away the nuisance of it all.

  The colonel was pleased to see that the club was already quite busy as colonial service army, and China Company officers took their first gin and quinine for the day, the essential preventive medicine in the pestilential tropics.

  He took a leather chair at the British consul's table and motioned to the Chinese servant standing by the oak paneled wall. He brought to the table a tray carrying a carafe, linen napkins, a gasogene, an ice bucket, and quinine.

  "Another Taiping Rebellion is what we're facing," the pink faced consul mumbled into his pink gin. "Fanatical bloody heathens shouting mixed up garbage compounded out of the bloody Bible and that fool Marx's socialist crap."

  "Ridiculous nonsense, of course," the colonel replied, shaking out his month old copy of the London Daily Mail. "Never should have taught the blighters to read. Bad business all round. Bound to cause trouble."

  "Teach the Chinese to read?" The consul looked up from his drink. "They were reading and writing thousands of years ago."

  "There you are then," said the colonel. "We should have known better than to let them see books in English. These bloody missionaries are to blame."

  "Well, whoever's to blame, it looks like we're in for big trouble. And we can't even find out what's happening in the countryside until it blows up in our faces, like it did last time. And last time, you recall, they gave us no bloody end of strife. Took us fourteen bloody years to pacify the country, and–"

  "I say," the colonel interrupted him, "listen to the mail about the Chinese: `It is because there are people like this in the world that there is an Imperial Britain. This sort of creature had to be ruled, so we rule him, for his good and our own.' Damned right.

  "Send out a scout." The colonel dismissed the problem as he waved at the Chinese servant for another drink.

  "A scout?" The consul was incredulous. "How many men do you have who can speak Chinese?"

  "Only one I know of, and now I've got to hang him," the colonel replied unhappily.

  The consul's head snapped up from his drink. "You do have a man who speaks Chinese?"

  "Did have. Damn fool killed that new subaltern, the drunk oaf Marshman, I think his name was. Marshman choked his whore."

  "The flagpole executioner?" asked the consul.

  "That's him. He'll be at the end of a rope in a day or two himself."

  "You could pardon him if he volunteered for a suicide mission."

  "Sure I could. You got one?"

  "Yes, I think I may have. Look, I'm going to go and see the ambassador. Be a good chap and don't hang this blighter for a bit. Hanging our own always looks bad to the Chinks anyway."

  The colonel shrugged as the consul hurried away, and the next day Casca was again paraded before the colonel. Casca had quite resigned himself to hanging, although death now held more terror for him than it ever had. During his time in the cell, his sleep, and even his waking moments, had been disturbed by recollections of that d
ay on Golgotha when the Jew preacher had cursed him as he withdrew the spear from his side. "Soldier, you are content with what you are, So that you shall remain until we meet again."

  Then he relived the moment when he had brushed the sweat from his face with the back of his hand, and the blood that had run down the spear shaft touched his tongue, to send him crashing to the ground in a poisoned stupor.

  In the succeeding nineteen hundred years Casca had died countless deaths, and with each one his death agony, whatever it had been, had been resuffered as his body painfully put itself back together to fulfill the Nazarene's curse. Even more than the unbearable death agony, he dreaded the inevitable reawakening to the increasingly horrible realization that he was alive once again, to do nothing other than fight for pay, until he was killed once more, and the cycle began all over again.

  And this time, he was doing it because of a whore, just as he had so many times before although not all of the women he had died for had had the decency to admit their calling, even to themselves. "Well, all right then, nothing to do but face it."

  He smiled at the thought that once hanged he'd be out of the British army. What had pressed him to join in the first place?

  "Nothing to laugh about what?" the colonel's bark interrupted his reverie. "You're going to hang, you know."

  Casca looked calmly at this second rate colonial time server, a barely passable soldier by any standard. " 'Spose we all deserve hanging one way or the other sir."

  Colonel Braithwaite could scarcely believe his ears. Had this swine really said "we," meaning that there was some sort of commonality between a mere bloody sergeant and an officer and gentleman who carried Her Majesty's commission?

  "Jesus," he swore under his breath, "the consul can go to hell. I'm going to hang this blighter for his fucking impertinence."

  Casca caught a, glimpse of Braithwaite's mind and realized that he had not been brought into the colonel's exalted presence merely to be told his fate. Something else was afoot. And if there was an alternative to dancing at the end of a rope, Casca was all for it whatever it might be. "We of we in the ranks, that is, sir," he added in meek, lower caste submission, bobbing his head obsequiously, as British army sergeants were somehow trained to do, allowing the infuriated colonel room to reinflate himself above common soldier level.