July 24, 1809: The Morning after

The last few minutes of conversation had passed unheeded above Vickery's head; he was too busy nursing his headache and stupidly watching the chick (not such a small ball of fluff now!) pecking at the biscuit so kindly provided by the Engineer. He did eventually look up.

"Ah... Torrington? Don't tell me you mistook your inkwell for your shaving water?" he said, the black streaks on his friend's face suddenly resolving into something understandable to his poor aching head.

The chick chirped at Vickery and nudged her biscuit a bit further away from him, not sure whether he intended to take it or not but making sure he knew that it was indeed hers! She stepped on it, pecked it then stepped on it again just to lay claim to it once more then peered at Vickery to see if he had learned from this lecture at all.

++

Willoughby straightened up slowly. ".......Three.....days?...Please tell me that there is a shorter time in which this can be removed!" Three days was a life time! Neither he nor Torrington nor possibly Vickery - he has not seen his face yet to see whether he had any black streaks there as well - could suffer three days of it!

"There must be a way...what about water??"

Torrington passed a hand over his cheek and began to shake his head, but stopped the movement immediately with a groan.

"If I did, I made a mess out of the shaving ... and I certainly did not draw what Willough ... Gwydyr has on his face. Even drunk, I hope I would refrain from curling cat whiskers!"

He sighed.

"The best ink money can buy, especially created so that it neither bleeds nor smudges or fades ... not with water, not with alcohol, and, while it disolves the ink admirably, I would strongly recommend not to try ascorbic ... oxalic - oh, curse my head - acid on your skin. If we had fresh lemons, they might help, though."

"Wasn' me," Vickery said automatically - he hadn't engaged in such pranks in a long time - and looked around. Had he escaped the same fate or had someone decorated his face in a similar vein? "Anyone got a mirror?" he asked, not immediately seeing one.

"Here." Willoughby held the mirror towards Vickery, and only then realised that first, he had to get up to deliver the mirror, and second, he actually could see the captain's face and could not, from that distance, see a smudge on his face, so he could really just tell him.

He decided to bring him the item anyway and very slowly got up, shuffled his feet over to the desk and blinked at the chick. He arched a brow, then decided that that morning probably nothing should surprise him any more, so just handed the miror to Vickery. "Don't think the ink monster got you."

He glanced at Torrington then, made a very slow turn and looked rather hopeful at the suggestion. "So.......all we need to find is those and we will be saved from the stains?"

Nodding turned out as bad as shaking his head, but Torrington managed to signal his agreement.

"Should cut the time in ... shorter. Vikery, why are you not painted?"

"Rifleman. Can't be seen so easily," Vickery replied uncaring that the answer probably made very little sense. He kept his sentences short because it hurt to talk - hurt to think. He could not have drunk so much, could he?

"How much did we drink?" he wondered aloud, before draining the cup of coffee. It was nothing like big enough, or enough coffee.

"..Shorter is good." Willoughby looked a little relieved. "I cant appear...on duty for my very first day as a cornet wearing CAT whiskers!" Of course, if they were the other sort of whiskers, which could be trimmed and combed and he would have followed an example of a Hussar, all would be fine.

He could not accuse Vickery of being the culprit of this however, though it was remarkably suspicious that he had nothing on his face! He sighed. It could be, as he said. Pure luck that he had become one with his surroundings while he and Torrington stood out like sore thumbs.

"We drank.... didn't we just drink a bottle?" He inquired. "It was strong wine....but, a bottle."

"A large bottle."

Torrington eyed it measuringly.

"I believe we should have eaten something."

And, at least in his case, probably slept more.

"Must've been a very large bottle - I feel I have drank my father's cellars dry," Vickery managed, scrubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands in a way he had not done since he was eight years old. "Is there, perchance, any more coffee to be had?"

"..I think we would do...to have a dip in something cold. A river perhaps. It will awaken our senses and.. perhaps ....I don't quite know but what would be best remedy against this infernal headache?" Willoughby turned to the two officers hoping that they did have more experience in drinking heavily and the aftermath of such an endevour.

"My brother-in-law swears by pickled herrings, followed by a wee dram But then he is a Scot, and everything is followed by that. I don't think they have herrings here, though."

Torrington shuddered at the thought of cold water, river or otherwise.

"More coffee should arrive presently - I think we gave Rottlaender a rather nasty shock, which seems to make his miracles a bit slower than usual."

Freddie nodded eagerly.

"Yes, I have fire! And coffee! And shaving water! And things for Mylord's breakfast!"

Freddie danced eagerly around Cotton, holding his arms out to carry whatever the older man thought necessary. Since Torrington usually got a rather generous breakfast - he was a lord, after all, and had never complained about the expenses sofar - but tended to merely pick on it, Freddie supposed that if Willoughby had similar eating habits, the food would stretch enough for two. It would mean that he and Pye would not get a nice breakfast, of course, but he thought that he deserved that for shaking an officer, and he would do something nice for Pye ... give him all of his own breakfast tomorrow, maybe?

Cotton sighed, and began gathering up the ingredients that were going to be the Captain's breakfast. "How big's your kettle?" he asked, wondering if he was going to have to borrow his mess's tin kettle for the officers' use, or if they could leave it for the Riflemen and use another for the officers' teas. "Or - no. You said you had coffee, so that's all right, then. D'you have a skillet, though? Or what was you plannin' to cook for Captain Torrin'ton's brekuss?"

"Uhm ... like ... this and this. And the skillet is ... this."

Freddie indicated with his hands a smaller and a bigger kettle, and then for good measure the size of the skillet as well.

"I wanted to make eggs ... um, cooked in water? And some meat from yesterday with bread. And an apple. But I have three apples!"

"Boiled eggs? Or poached? Ah... in their shells, or not?"

Cotton was perfectly well aware of poached eggs, but hadn't developed the knack of doing them himself. If he had fresh eggs, he could do them fried, or scrambled. If they were going to be marching, though, he'd boil them to keep them from going off - eggs were not easy to get, out here, after all.

"Got any flour?" he asked. If so, they might be able to do apple fritters, too. Otherwise it'd be apples cored and sliced.

"In their shells. And cooked for two Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär."

Without a watch, Freddie had taken to measuring the time with songs.

"I have flour. And a bit of chestnut flour. And a bit sugar, but no butter. And the oil they have here is strange."

"For two..?" Cotton gave up at attempting to understand that particular piece of information and moved on. "Can cook 'em in oil - it works well enough. If I get butter, I'd rather save it for my bread." He grinned. "It comes from little round fruits - about the size of a rifle bullet, very soft, oily, sort of green - like sage. They'm called olives - grow on very old trees that are all twisted and bent - you've seen them. They'm the sort of trees we ain't allowed to cut for firewood."

"As long as coffee works.. i am quite willing to try anything. speaking of which.. where can we find the miracle salve to remove the marks on our skin?.. I'd quite hate to appear before my troop with the whiskers of a cat... .and I would probably not live it down.. should it so happen." He did not particularly want to end up being called Cornet Meow even if it would not have been done so in his face.

"Ah, olivas!", Freddie said sagely, then picked up everything he thought sensible and dashed off back towards Torrington's tent, spinning around his own axis halfway to call back:

"I will make shaving water! And hot clothes!"

------------------

"Probably not", Torrington agreed seriously. "Although ... aren't you supposed to have some kind of facial hair? Perhaps sombody wanted to help you along a little bit."

He tilted his head.

"I think breakfast will arrive shortly. And since Cotton seems to have appeared, Rottlaender might even be calm enough to serve it."

"Yes.....Hussars are known for the whiskers on their faces.. though, I particularly remember them appearing more under the nose, less like a cat, and certainly not painted." He studied Torington.. "Something like..... I would think, somebody attempted to do to you." He glanced at Torrington's clothes. "And perhaps did not fail because they were incompetent, but because it seems.. you smeared it yourself." He got closer to Torrington, more interested in what his smears and paint might mean and paused. "........and a treasure map? .. I just found a cross..." Everything else was too smeared to be easily readable.

"Good God! I rather hope not!"

Torrington looked at his cuffs, then winced when he saw the damage he had done to them. He hoped that Rottlaender knew some wonder cure so that his coat might be spared, but he was rather certain that not even a miracle would save his shirtcuffs.

"Well, if you are only opposed to where your new facial decoration begins, that can be easily rectified, although perhaps a removal might still be preferable. I, however, are completely opposed to carrying my work on my cheeks! My mother already complains I'm far too immersed in it."

"I would rather attempt to grow my own, then to paint them. I quite doubt that it would not be taken as a joke and cause for a nickname of sorts and I am not keen on being called anything that they might come up with that I could have prevented." He shook his head then laughed softly.

He regretted it moments later, as his head felt as if bursting with needles, pins and shards of glass and also that dull painful sensation that thought to pulsate unpleasantly.

"...I wonder what your mother would make of this. Perhaps, that you've taken her complaint a little too literally?" He grinned. "Though....a map on a face would save us all the need to carry it anywhere else, and you can hardly misplace your head!"

Glancing at Vickery he watched as the chick, quite happy at having finished the biscuit now hopped over to the man, pecked at his sleeve and then opened her mouth. Food was what she wanted, and she was not even half full - or at least she claimed not to be!

"I've been told off for having my nose in a book too much," Vickery said, glancing up. "Never met anyone who had their nose in a map - and certainly not so far as to get the map on their face. Most ingenious - looks like some of the Indians of my father's stories."

"Yes, but I would have to go everywhere you wanted to go!"

Torrington tried to get a better look at the painting on his face to decide between treasure map and Indian war paint, but with only one mirror, it let to some remarkable grimaces and eye-rolling, but to little success.

"This is unfair!", he complained. "I am the one most interested in maps, and I can't properly see it. This is like dangling the carrot between the ears of the donkey. Whoever did this was remarkably impolite!"

"I could attempt to draw it out for you on a piece of paper, if I do not first keel over or have the undesirable contents of my insides spill where they are least wanted." He smiled miserably at both men.

"..Would it not be fine though to have our dear captain come with us everywhere as a map. Much harder to misplace. and harder than that to steal and he would most certainly not be able to wrinkle up as a map might or tear!"