The Iron Stallions
The Iron Stallions
First published in 1982
© Juliet Harris; House of Stratus 1982-2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of Max Hennessy (John Harris) to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2011 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 0755128052 EAN: 9780755128051
This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.
Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.
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John Harris, wrote under his own name and also the pen names of Mark Hebden and Max Hennessy.
He was born in 1916 and educated at Rotherham Grammar School before becoming a journalist on the staff of the local paper. A short period freelancing preceded World War II, during which he served as a corporal attached to the South African Air Force. Moving to the Sheffield Telegraph after the war, he also became known as an accomplished writer and cartoonist. Other 'part time' careers followed.
He started writing novels in 1951 and in 1953 had considerable success when his best-selling
The Sea Shall Not Have Them
was filmed. He went on to write many more war and modern adventure novels under his own name, and also some authoritative non-fiction, such as Dunkirk. Using the name Max Hennessy, he wrote some very accomplished historical fiction and as Mark Hebden, the 'Chief Inspector' Pel novels which feature a quirky Burgundian policeman.
Harris was a sailor, an airman, a journalist, a travel courier, a cartoonist and a history teacher, who also managed to squeeze in over eighty books. A master of war and crime fiction, his enduring novels are versatile and entertaining.
Field Marshal Sir Colby Goff, Bt
XIX LANCERS
1836–1918
Joshua Loftus Colby Goff stared at the flat oblong of stone and the sharply-cut roman lettering of the short inscription.
His grandfather had been a simple man, brave as a lion without being foolhardy, a man always conscious of fear but able to conquer it; a spare little figure who looked like a jockey but had been one of the last century’s finest soldiers. It was completely in character that none of his decorations – and there were plenty of them – were on the stone that marked his resting place. And that even now, whenever Josh visited Braxby Manor, the old man’s home, he still half expected to see his small erect shape appear round the corner from the stables, as likely as not followed by one of the Ackroyds.
But that was all over now. The old man was gone and, with times difficult, it was no longer possible to support the number of Ackroyds they had previously supported, especially since one of them had become part of the family by marrying Josh’s cousin.
An Ackroyd had ridden as orderly and servant with Josh’s great-great-grandfather in India, another with Josh’s great- grandfather at Waterloo, and a third, old Tyas, whom Josh could still remember, with his grandfather, the field marshal, at Balaclava. Yet another, Ellis, had ridden alongside Josh’s father in the Sudan, South Africa and France. At that moment, Josh couldn’t think of any Ackroyd who was likely to ride with
him
.
He shivered in the wind coming off the hills. The clouds lay dark and forbidding against an ice-white sky and the river was as metallic as cooled lava. The church, like everything else in that part of Yorkshire, huddled against the side of the slopes, low-roofed against the winds, its windows small to keep out the draughts. In that building after his grandfather’s funeral, knowing the old man’s feelings about fuss and dissatisfied with the
Dead March in Saul
, which the authorities – bent on sending a British field marshal to his long rest with the proper dignities – had insisted on having played, Josh had quietly obliged him with his favourite,
The Cavalryman’s Lament
.
‘Wrap me up in my old stable jacket
And say a poor devil lies low,
And six of the Lancers shall carry me
To the place where the best soldiers go.’
He stared down at the stone. It seemed hard to believe that so much vitality, so much courage, so much sense, had vanished for ever, and that all that remained of it lay beneath that heavy slab of granite. His father didn’t even have a grave in England – just a plaque inside the church:
Major-General Dabney Goff, XIX Lancers, Died of Wounds 12th November, 1918
. It had been his mother’s wish that the exact date of his death should be set down, in bitter reflection that his wounds had been received in the very last action of Allenby’s cavalry advance from Palestine to the Turkish border and only two days before the war had ended.
Josh frowned, wondering what the future held. At seventeen, the world sometimes seemed too large, and the future too uncertain. He was due back at school soon but he had no wish to go. Since it was a school which contributed a lot of officers to the army, having distinguished forebears placed a heavy burden on him because he was expected to be better than anyone else, to know instinctively how to do things.
As he walked back along the lane towards his home, he reflected that it had been along here that his grandfather’s funeral procession had passed. There had been old men with clanking medals lining the route and hats had tumbled in a wave as the coffin had passed. He could still feel the enormous sense of loss that had been on him as he’d walked to the graveside.
When he reached home, his mother, Fleur, was in the kitchen, preparing the evening meal. She studied her son sadly. He looked exactly like his father, straight, slim but strong, dark-eyed and jetty-haired. She could see her husband in him, just as she remembered him before he’d left for the Middle East, never to return.
‘Chloe’s friends have arrived,’ she said. ‘I think you’d better go and say hello to them.’
Josh went unwillingly. His sister was only thirteen and most of the time he regarded her as beneath his notice. With her were two other thirteen-year-old girls who had arrived for the last two days of the holiday.
‘This is Jocelyn Reith,’ Chloe said importantly. ‘She comes from Scotland.’
‘Cumberland, actually. On the border.’ The small blonde girl had a pert nose and a short upper lip and, even at seventeen, Josh was aware she was going to be a beauty. ‘Mostly, people call me Joss.’
The other girl was a dark-haired child with plaits, a strangely grown-up look, a too-large mouth and enormous eyes. ‘I’m Louise Cobb Peabody,’ she said.
‘She’s American,’ Chloe explained.
‘My father’s at the Embassy,’ Louise said. ‘I come from Virginia.’
‘So does my grandmother,’ Josh pointed out. ‘My grandfather fought in Virginia in the Civil War with Jeb Stuart. We’ve got a revolver he gave him. It has under-and-over barrels and takes .52 bullets and a charge of shot. He killed a Federal sergeant with it at Parks Bridge.’
Louise pulled a face.
‘He also killed a Zulu who was trying to kill him with an assegai at Isandhlwana.’
‘What’s a Sandhlwana?’
‘It’s not a thing. It’s a place in Zululand. There was a massacre there and my grandfather arrived in the middle of it on a tired horse. He only just escaped. We’ve also got my father’s sword which he used in the charge of Omdurman. It got bent like a corkscrew when he killed a Fuzzy-wuzzy with it. Would you like to see it?’
Louise had been about to pull a face once more but Josh was good-looking and she changed her mind hurriedly.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I guess I would.’
That afternoon, with Chloe and Joss Reith trailing behind in a huff, Josh and Louise Peabody walked across the fields towards Braxby Manor.
‘When do you go back to school?’ Louise asked.
‘Week’s time.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Not much. Bit like boarding kennels. Reeves Major says it’s boring.’
‘Who’s Reeves Major?’
‘Toby Reeves. Friend of mine. He’s filthy rich. His sister’s got a bit of a crush on me.’
Josh spoke without pride, merely stating a fact, but Louise looked at him admiringly.
‘The headmaster’s a bit of a duffer,’ he went on. ‘He’s a new one. His name’s Lamps and he wears glasses, so we call him Headlamps. He’s after Reeves Major. He knows he sometimes slips out at night. Reeves Major’s mad about horses. Are you? The Braxby Hounds meet on Saturday and we could find you something to ride.’
‘Does Chloe ride?’
‘Yes. But she falls off a lot. I don’t. I was taught by my grandfather, who was one of the finest light cavalrymen in the army. Tyas Ackroyd also taught me.’
‘Who’s Tyas Ackroyd?’
‘The Ackroyds always went to war with the Goffs. Tyas was at Balaclava with my grandfather. He used the fire-irons to show me how to use a sabre. I’ve got strong wrists because of that. Feel.’
Louise felt Josh’s wrist and made appreciative noises.
‘You’ll have to excuse Grandmother’s house,’ Josh explained carefully. ‘It’s because she’s old. I’ve got cousins in Virginia, did you know?’ As they breasted the hill, he pointed. ‘That’s Braxby Manor. Chloe and I call it Headquarters and Granny the High Command.’
The old house looked grey in the indifferent daylight. It was beginning, Josh noticed, to look a little shabby, and he put it down to the fact that his Grandmother’s eyesight was no longer what it had been. He had practically grown up there, exploring its shrubberies and learning to ride in its paddocks, helping in the stables whichever Ackroyd happened to work there at the time, or sitting in the pantry listening to old Tyas describing Balaclava.