TEARS OF THE FOOT GUARDS

ADAIGO - STAVE XXVI

S T A V E

XXVI

West Hyde, his hatt-cap jaunty, his wounded arm slung, walked with exuberance toward Smith's Tavern. Behind him, Geordie, with a Masonic robe in a painted canvass bag having just come from the lodge, rather, Hyde from the lodge; Geordie outside, waiting.

"Where are you going?" Obedience had asked after she had spent hours mending soldiers' shirts.

"He wants me to attend him out on the town."

"What's he need you for?"

"His wing, he says."

"Ridiculous," she huffed. "Five months ago he was sleeping out on some cornfield. He had no one then."

"His prerogative. Besides, I must protect our benefactor; what if he gets into another duel? Where would we be then?"

"Would he?"

"No. He'll get drunk and layup with one of these Philly girls and send me back."

"You come back."

Send me back, Geordie in his thoughts, but Hyde did not care to notice. Whatever the amusement, it must be had, and Hyde would have it whether crippled, drunk or broke. His Prerogative indeed, and so it should be – officers out front exposed to all danger – felled more than private men. That too, a Prerogative of Class.

Hyde bounded up the steps, scraped his shoes on the boot scrape, unfastened his cape and held it behind for Geordie to be there, as Geordie was, like so many of the objects in Hyde's privileged life. Then his hat atop the cape, and without a glance, up the stairs.

Geordie in the smoky taproom – long tables, tobacco and beer – the lower class in the lower level, subject to the main door draft. Little did it matter, the frolickers made their own heat with chorus after chorus of drinking songs. Overhead the ceiling creaked. Muffled voices just as rowdy, male and female. And so above them to the highest floor, in private rooms, until the whole proud strata seemed to groan and in a moment might collapse. Not a chance, all in order.

Geordie pushed to the bar and threw down fourpence. He looked at the ceiling with grim eyes. The night would be long.

"Catullus, Johnny!" shouted a young Guards ensign from a cluster of tables in the center of the upper room as the cadre laughed and hooted.

Captain Watson, thespian, stood one foot upon a chair like Zeus upon Olympus to hurl poetry like a thunderbolt.

"Catullus, Johnny! Give us Catullus!"

"No, no, no," Trelawny groaned next to him. "Eld, you puppy, Catullus is a bore – 'let us kiss with a thousand kisses and we shall kiss more' . . ."

Laughter.

"That's not how it goes," protested young Eld, glass in hand. "Let Johnny do it."

"God," Trelawny said, "must we go back to Eaton? Someone fetch a pig that Eld may run it down and beat it."

"Let Eld put a rebel on his head," Captain Archer cried from the corner, a girl upon his lap. "The boy can fight. Watson, give him Catullus if he wants it. You'll do the old Roman good."

Watson raised his hand in a grand gesture when West Hyde walked in, and with an affected inebriation, Watson flicked his wrist as with a sabre parry. "La!"

West Hyde, come not only from the lodge, but dining with friends in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers – Saint David's Day and drams of Wisgi Cymreig – was cheery 'til Watson spoke.