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sergeants’ mess when some cowardly cove set about him.’
    ‘That could be anyone in the damn company! Why do they reckon it was Tom?’
    ‘Patience, Jack. I’m coming to that. So this rascal comes at Slater out of the dark, trying to take him unawares.’
    ‘Sounds like a good idea to me.’
    ‘Hush! But of course our valiant hero is not one to be beaten so easily. Not only does he fearlessly beat off the dastardly ambush but he also manages to capture his assailant. And who does that turn out to be?’
    ‘Tom.’ Even as Jack spoke the name, he knew what had happened. Slater had not been assaulted. The mouthy young soldier must have fallen foul of Slater and this was simply the sergeant’s way of exerting his authority.
    ‘So you do have some brains after all, Jack. Yes, it was Tom and he’s been in the clink ever since.’
    ‘And I suppose no one else saw what happened.’
    ‘I told you. It was dark. Anyway, Slater caught him so he’s bang to rights.’
    ‘We both know that is not necessarily so. Just because Slater says something doesn’t mean it’s true.’
    ‘What are you saying, Jack? That Slater would stoop to blagging? Anyway, Tom Black is going to be flogged in the morning. He’s been sentenced to fifty lashes.’
    ‘Bloody hell! Fifty! He must really have upset Slater to get a flogging like that.’
    ‘Listen to you. Tom has only himself to blame, the fool. Fifty lashes should learn him right. If it doesn’t kill him.’
    Jack closed his eyes as he absorbed the horrid tale. Tom had had no chance. No one, especially not an officer, would take the word of a young private over that of an experienced non-commissioned officer.
    It was a vivid example of the power a colour sergeant wielded and the price that had to be paid for daring to flout Slater’s will.
    In the quiet stillness of dawn, the ten companies of the battalion marched on to the parade ground. The only sound that marked their entrance was the slow, mesmeric beat from the battalion drummers. Like a heartbeat, the sound never faltered, each ponderous strike of the drummers’ sticks sending another beat to echo around the barrack blocks.
    The redcoats marched to their allotted place and then stood in grim silence.
    The whole battalion was on parade, the ten companies arranged to form three sides of a square, with the side closest to the gatehouse left open. The men faced the open space in the centre where the punishment triangle stood. Fashioned from the fearsome half-pikes that the battalion’s colour guard wielded in battle, it waited impassively for its victim, the apex of the triangle thrusting up towards the dull, lifeless sky, the base resting on the ground, the whole held up by a pair of supports pushed hard into the clay soil. Thick ropes had been tied to the uppermost pikes, their ends left dangling, ready to tie Tom Black’s wrists to the thick staffs of ash. Two more sets of rope lay coiled on the ground, ready to lash his ankles to the sides. Held fast by the ropes, Tom would be unable to move, his back presented to the whip, open and exposed.
    The soldiers stood in their ranks, eyes fixed facing forwards, waiting for the arrival of their officers and for the signal that the punishment parade was to begin. A punishment they knew to be unjust.
    The redcoats bore a strict sense of fairness. They did not shirk from punishment. Indeed, a flogging broke the monotony of garrison duty. They understood the rules, they knew that to break the army’s regulations was to risk dire punishment and if anyone was foolish or slow-witted enough to do so and, worse, be caught, then they had to damn well live with the consequences.
    Yet the redcoats knew there was no justice on parade this day.
    The battalion knew Colour Sergeant Slater just as they knew Private Tom Black. The knew the mouthy soldier had fallen foul of Slater but that alone should not merit the infliction of fifty lashes, the heaviest sentence the colonel could order on his