28 May; Outside the Tent

From here.

It did not seem to take very long before Cotton was outside again, his coarse language indicating his feeling at that instant. Newbury tossed a clump of dirt at his shako and smiled humourlessly. "Went well, did it?

"Could've gone better. They had me when I had to say them provosts who chucked the Captain's stuff around weren't the same ones who was layin' into you." He threw himself flat on the ground and stared up at the darkening sky. "Let's hope Pye does a better job than you an' me, mate."

Another clump of dirt splattered against his shako where the cap lay on the ground some yards distant. It did not hurt so badly to move now, since the surgeon had given him a few drops of laudanum.

"Bugger got me 'bout that one fella gettin' stuck with my sword." Newbury prised a pebble from the ground and aimed it in the general direction of his shako. "Maybe he will."

"Think he might be gettin' the surgeon in as well. He's tryin' 'em for what they done to you, not for wreckin' his baggage, ain't he? Hope he does it, too." He sighed. "Still. I'll tell you what, Joe. It's much better bein' a witness like that than bein' the one on trial. That was damn nasty, that was."

"I'll bet." Newbury aimed another bit of dirt toward the dark lump of his shako, then sighed and flicked the dirt aside. "S'pose it's really just a waste of time now. Surgeon's word or not."

"I'll thump you meself if you'm jus' goin' to roll over an' give in like that," Cotton said. "It ain't done, till it's done. They didn't have no right to do that, an' you didn't do nothin' to rile them or anythin'. So they had no excuse to lay into you." He shrugged. "An' if you forget summat or whatever, well, you was on the ground after bein' kicked half to hell an' back. You can't be 'spected to 'member everythin' right. Not like me. It's my word that got totally screwed up when I had to say it was two diff'rent groups."

He twisted his head to look at Newbury. "What've you done with your shako now?" he asked, noticing that his mate's head was bare.

Newbury snorted. "Go on, then." At that moment, he didn't much care. Maybe it was the laudanum. "Shako's over there some'res."

"Idiot." Cotton rolled over. "Over where?" Oh. There. He grabbed at it. "I never knew such a one as you, you great lump, Joe Newbury." He sat up and dropped the hat on Newbury.

Idiot. Newbury shrugged and flopped down onto his back. That one word pretty effectively summed everything up, didn't it?

"You'll be back on your feet afore you know it - if you don't go gettin' into any more trouble with anyone." Though this laest fiasco was hardly Newbury's fault, was it. It'd been Captain Vickery who'd told him to stay behind, after all. "Though, the Captain was an idiot hisself, tellin' you to stay put like that." And didn't Cotton wish he could tell him so, straight.

"Officers don't get to be idiots," Newbury replied. He was not pessimistic about the trial's outcome for his own sake, either, but he knew enough not to speak of that. "Soon's this circus is over, I'm goin' back to the surgeon's wagon an' I ain't plannin' to leave it again 'til the war's over."

Cotton snorted. "He ain't perfick, Joe. An' I'm his batman, so I oughta know, don't I?" He grinned up at the sky, where the stars were starting to appear. "You'll get bored stiff o' bein' in there before you's half fit again. I know you, Joe. Don't go gettin' all down in the mouth, now, will you?"

Bored? Probably. It was no more than he deserved though, wasn't it? He'd made a mess of most everything these past couple days after all.

"Only a little hard not to," he admitted reluctantly. "Can't do right by nobody, can I?"

"Now you are bein' stupid." He sat up again. "I never tole you thanks for stickin' with Maggie in Coimbra that time, did I? Not prop'ly, anyhow."

"That was Jenny first," Newbury pointed out blandly. "But it weren't like I coulda just gone prancin' off outta there anyway." He shrugged. It had obviously been unwise to be that boldly honest. Surprise, surprise.

"We'll know how it all's gone soon 'nuff, anyway."

"Stop puttin' yourself down all the time, mate, do. You'm a good mate, Joe. You jus' got to stop reactin' an' start thinkin' a bit more. An' I got to start stickin' with you a bit better - if I'd bin with you 'stead of gettin' side-tracked, you'd never've done your knee in in the first place. An' I'm real sorry for that, Joe."

Newbury simply shrugged. It didn't bother him so much that he'd gotten a beating, as it did that he hadn't been much use as a deterrent. He figured that was part of why Jenny had legged it. Smart lass, really.

"Ain't so bad." Except for his knee, maybe.

"Y'know he wanted to charge 'em for doin' for Jenny as well?" Cotton pulled a leg up and clasped his hands round his knee. "Only, well, with her not bein' 'ficially attached to us, she didn't want to. Can't blame her, really. Reckon she've got a proper sweet spot for you."

This was news to him, really. Newbury closed his eyes. Maybe she did, maybe she didn't.

"Aye, well..." his voice trailed off and he made a noise of embarrassment. In truth, he hoped that to be the case even as he doubted the probability of it, Jenny being who she was. "Maybe."

"You'm all right, Joe. Jus'... you go runnin' off without thinkin' things through prop'ly." Captain Vickery had a word for it, imp- something. Captain Vickery had a lot of words for things, words Cotton didn't always understand, and didn't necessarily remember even when they'd been explained.

He hoped it would be over soon and that they would find the provosts guilty. Newbury deserved to have a bit of luck after everything that had happened recently.

It was surprisingly uncomfortable to eavesdrop on a conversation touching on herself and speculating on her emotions. Jenny kept her back to the riflemen who were a few yards away. There were other people milling about outside the tent, even a few obvious listeners like herself. She really ought to move around to the opposite side of the tent, away from the riflemen, but it was dark and she was anonymous. And she could not quite pull herself away.

She had heard Cotton testify that there was an "understanding" between herself and Newbury. That would do no one any favors. Damn. Vickery had been under the same impression when he had spoken to her in the surgeon's wagon. Why? "Not being officially attached." That had not been the reason at all. Men.

"Ha," Newbury said. "It was just that what got me into the army, like. But I s'pose it ain't helpin' nothin'." About anything. His knee, the provosts, Jenny, life in general. He sighed.

"Hey, c'mon, stop doin' yourself down all the time, will you? Soon's they'm done, we can go an' get some tea, an' you can go for a lie down. It'll all look diff'rent in the mornin'." And only the night before, he'd said the same to Pye. He felt old, suddenly, like a man with a couple of rowdy kids to look after.

"I ain't, neither," he remarked, thinking sourly of Old Bill Fuller. "Weren't so bad, 'listing. It was that or hang. Fair obvious choice ain't it?"

The morning. Heh. "Everythin' looks diff'rent in the mornin', since it's light out an' all."

"I only 'listed 'cause I couldn't get me a place on another farm, not after Squire's son took ag'in me. Well, he was the Squire by then, but he weren't a patch on his father." He chuckled. "'Course it is. 'S why things look better in the mornin', usu'lly." He wondered if he could go and scrounge a cup of tea from somewhere, but knowing his luck, no sooner would he have left than they'd both be wanted back inside the tent.