About Time We Heard From Luce... an interview with young Pettitt

"How are you feeling now?" I say, and Luce looks up from under his hair and makes a noise which is, I think, intended to express malaise.

"Horrible," he says, with heartfelt sincerity, and to prove a point, honks into an extremely sodden handkerchief, and subsides back into the warm corner of the settle by the fire with a groan. "I hate having a code."

"Mustard plaster," Hollie says from the shadows. "That'll settle what ails you, brat."

I suggest a hot toddy, and have to explain what one is, but upon explaining the combination of whisky, lemon juice and sugar, am met with a series of further groans from which I infer that both Hollie and Luce may have already entertained this suggestion on an earlier occasion. It apparently ended, on that occasion, with Luce's disclosing that his Auntie Het had something of a soft spot for one large, scruffy, russet-haired captain of horse - and the rest, of course, is history. "As well you should know, you baggage, for you set every bloody word of it down in that damned book," Hollie mutters darkly. "Every bloody word."
(I think he means "Command the Raven". And he's right, he does get sweary when he's drunk. Swearier.)

So. Yes. I'm expecting Luce to still be full of zeal and ardour for the Parliamentarian cause?
"Ye-es," he says, "well, sort of, but - perhaps not as hot as I was."
It seems Witless - Witcombe, they've got me at it, the fat lad who serves as troop surgeon, having been apprenticed to one before the war - has taken Luce on as his apprentice. Nothing too responsible, but -"I should rather mend men than hurt them," Luce says, and for the first time, he sounds grim. "It should not come to this. It should never have come to this."

"Well, we know whose door to lay that blame at," Hollie says, and Luce looks at him thoughtfully. As if he can't quite decide, two years into this most uncivil of wars.

On the other hand, Luce has seen the world. (He says ardently, and who am I to dissuade him that getting as far as Yorkshire does not constitute seeing the world? In 1644, it pretty much does, bless him.) He's seen the Humber and the Ouse, and the ships that go down to do their business in great waters - Hollie, that most notoriously appalling sailor, makes a horrible gurgling noise - eaten toasted cheese in Cheshire, ridden across Yorkshire in the dark, listened to seditious sermons in Bolton. Eaten strawberries in the Vale of Evesham and had his heart broken at Edgehill. 
- it's not cured him of a degree of cork-brained romanticism, Hollie mutters. 

So, you know, is there anybody special at the moment? I say. (I do get asked that quite a lot, regarding our dashing young cornet.) 
Hollie makes another horrible noise. "Aye. Several somebodys."
"Shut up," he says, quite amicably, and it's rather nice to see how far they've come, in two years. That Hollie, who is neither so grizzled nor so cantankerous as he pretends to be, at thirty-six, has acquired a habit of heavy-handed playfulness, and that Luce, who was so very proper and conscientious two years ago, can now call his commanding officer an arsehole without turning a hair. 

There's a smart tap at the door. "Colonel Babbitt. Sir. Company coming up the York road."

"Reckon you'd best get on, then, mistress," Hollie says, with a sigh. "Duty calls. You remember Russell?"

Of course, I say, and the scarred lieutenant gives me one quick starry-eyed glance of purest joy from under his eyelashes. He says nothing, of course. Hapless Russell has been in the throes of a crush of epic teenage proportions on one author of his acquaintance ever since she rescued him from a future of monumental boredom as the Earl of Essex's secretary. Luce looks at his friend, who is now blushing like a rose and trying to look cool and unruffled, and then at me. 

"Not going to happen, Hapless," he says, with a degree of sympathy that makes me think that Luce has, somewhere, grown up. Somewhere in three books, that daft principled romantic boy has become a young man. "Come on." 

Rosie and Tyburn. Luce and Rosa. Meet Russell's Doubting Thomas....

“Got a surprise for you, Hapless,” Hollie said smugly.
Percey had groomed the bay horse till its coat gleamed like a dark conker. He'd even acquired some chalk from God knows where and he'd whitened the gelding's stockings. There were times when you had to wonder about Mattie Percey's previous career in a stable-yard in Essex. Just how honestly he might have come by certain skills. That lad was a better painter than Lely.
What he hadn’t done was improved the big horse's temper, and it came out of the line rearing, ears pinned against its skull. Mattie had his hand gripping the bit-ring, trying to keep the horse's head down, and even so the bay nearly had him off his feet.
It was a bloody fine horse, though. Big-built, not one of your lightweight sprinters like Luce Pettitt's spindly witless Rosa: backside like a gable end and a proud arch to its thickly-muscled neck that hinted that someone might have been a little behindhand with the shears to its gelding. That was a beast that'd go all day chasing Malignants and come in at the end of it dancing. It was the sort of mount any junior cavalry officer with any dreams of a future career in the Army might covet, provided a man could train some sense into its thick head. Plenty of staying-power, plenty of fire and dash, though possibly a bit light on good humour. Hollie closed one eye and looked at the bay horse consideringly where it ramped and curvetted like some maniac heraldic emblem.
"What d'you reckon to him, then?" he said, and looked at the scarred lieutenant, expecting to see gratitude and pleasure on that cold, half-lovely face.
Instead the lad was white to the lips, the great scar on his cheek standing out a most unlovely purple, and his eyes were as mad as the bay horse's.
"Is - thish - intended to be meant in humour?" he said stiffly, and his voice had that funny slur it had when the ragged muscle in his cheek had gone stiff as wood, like it did when he was tired or ungovernable. Or drunk. That was still always a clear and present possibility.
Hollie shook his head, thinking he must have misheard, or Russell must have misheard, because –
"All right, ain't he?" Percey said happily, still being jerked around like a rag doll by the beast's flinging head, but as cheerfully good-humoured as ever he was even when his arm was being yanked from its socket by an unwanted cavalry remount. "Want to take him out, Hap- uh, Lieutenant Russell? Take a bit of the ginger out of his heels?"
"I. Should. Rather. Be. Dead," Russell said, through gritted teeth. Flung his own head up, looking not unlike the bay horse, and glared fiercely at Hollie, and Hollie would have sworn to it the lieutenant's dark eyes were brimming with wholly incomprehensible tears. "A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel."
"What?" Hollie said blankly, and Russell snarled at him, actually snarled, baring his teeth like a dog.
"The Book of Proverb. Ss." He bit off the last consonant with a hissing, furious sibilance, and then hit himself in the temple with the heel of his hand. "Shir."
And then wheeled about and was gone, shoving Luce rudely out of the way, storming back to the house. "What," Hollie said again, shook himself, "what the bloody hell was that all about?"
"What on earth did you say to him - oh, sir, that was not well done!"
There were times when Luce didn’t half remind Hollie of Het. Well, Hollie's wife was his cornet's father's little sister, it wasn't so much of a surprise, but even so. That hurt, shocked, disappointed look was pure Het, an expression she reserved for when he did something completely stupid. What, precisely, he'd done this time, he did not quite know, save that he was still trying to make things all right for a lad who was as tricksy to handle as a barrel of rotten gunpowder, and he didn’t know from day's end to day's end what mood he was going to be on the receiving end of. Like walking on eggshells, if eggshells were volatile, suspicious, and prone to soothing their tempers by getting fiercely rat-arsed.
"What wasn't?" he said warily. "What, seriously, sir? You did not mean to be - um - funny?"
"No, of course I bloody didn't!"
Luce gave a great sigh. "Ah, God. So you - you know - did you look at the beast? Other than, um, you know - professionally?"
"What -" With one final jerk of the bit, Mattie had the bay horse with all four feet on the ground. It was still a handsome beast. It was just - odd-looking. Three white feet, and a great lopsided white blaze to its face. One blue eye, and one, slightly manic, brown one.
A perfectly sound, sturdy, fine cavalry mount, who just happened to look both ugly and irregular. It was a bloody good horse, sound in wind and limb, beautifully put together, a mount a man could rely on - could be proud of. But now Luce came to mention it, the brute did look a bit like it had been sewn together from bits of at least two other horses. Good ones, but -.
And that had been a coincidence.
"Ah," said Hollie.


The Smoke of Her Burning. October 2015.