Will Starling by Ian Weir

The following morning he turned his back for a moment, and looked round again to see a scarecrow receding at speed: small, and growing smaller by the second.
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    I joined the Army some months later. I’d been making my way towards Kent, with notions of finding my old wet-nurse — I had it in mind that she might know something of my mother, who had never turned up at Lamb’s Conduit Fields to reclaim me, as mothers sometimes did. How exactly I thought I might find my old nurse remains a mystery to me, considering as I had nothing to offer up but a description of one epic breast. That plus the chicken, which was assuredly dead by now. In any event I got myself off course, and ended up in Southampton instead, where I smiled my way into employment as a pot-boy at the Spyglass Tavern.
    It was a boozing-ken near the docks, catering to sailors and sailors’ whores. One night a recruiting party from the Ninety-Fifth Rifles came in, and as I cleared tables the Sergeant took to me remarkable: a red-faced man with a roaring laugh and magnificent sidewhiskers. They were sailing to Spain with the morning tide, and he was damned if he could see why Your Wery Umble should not come with them. He stood me drinks, and clapped me on the back, and exclaimed what a dashing figure I should cut in a bright red coat. One of his fellows stripped his off and put it on me to prove the point. The sleeves were half again as long as my arms, and the hem trailed down below my knees, but Recruiting Sergeant Sidewhiskers swore that this was no obstacle; we’d find a tailor and have it taken in, and requisition a half-sized musket. Until it arrived I should serve as a drummer, leading Tom Lobster into battle. Men would cry huzzah, he predicted, and girls would fall right over backwards with their skirts up over their heads.
    In fact they were not a recruiting party at all. My new friend was mere Infantryman Sidewhiskers, who found the notion of Your Wery Umble in uniform wondrous comical — and I was such a flat that I did not see it. Still, how much could you expect from a boy who would set off from London to Kent in quest of a gigantic titty, and end up in Southampton instead? So I found myself lurching awake on a troop-ship in the middle of the Channel, with a pounding nob and last night’s libations on my shirt. I spent the rest of the journey spewing into a bucket, and I have never seen a gratefuller sight than the Spanish coast as it loomed through a bank of fog.
    The ship dropped anchor and they rowed us ashore, and I was staggering onto the sanctuary of solid ground when behind me I heard the sounds of consternation. A sodger had taken a fall while disembarking — so I discovered in the hubbub that grew as they ferried him ashore. His fellows clustered round and shouts went up for assistance. Finding a stretcher they carried him into a dockside tavern, sweeping pots from a long wooden table, after which the press parted and voices exclaimed that the surgeon had arrived.
    He came through them like a man striding into a howling wind. Bent forward, arms pistoning, head outthrust like a snapping turtle’s. Expression like a snapping turtle’s too, and a first glance told him that the leg was badly broken.
    â€œYou, there,” he barked. “Take your thumb from out your arse, and be useful.”
    I had wormed my way through for a closer look — a bad habit of mine. Cats, and curiosity. But surely he wasn’t barking at me?
    â€œYes, you! Run and fetch my tools. Tell them Mr Comrie commands it.”
    The instruments were still aboard ship, he said. That meant commandeering a boat — “Surgeon’s orders, from Mr Comrie!” — and being rowed back out, to be hoisted aboard like a rat that had unsuccessfully deserted. But I liked saying “Surgeon’s orders.” It’s a phrase, I discovered, as will puff a lad’s chest. So I did as I’d been bid, making my way