The Queen's Captain Read online

  About The Queen’s Captain

  The thrilling third and final instalment in the Colonial series.

  In October 1863, Ian Steele, having taken on the identity of Captain Samuel Forbes, is fighting the Pashtun on the north-west frontier in India. Half a world away, the real Samuel Forbes is a lieutenant in the 3rd New York Volunteers and is facing the Confederates at the Battle of Mission Ridge in Tennessee. Neither is aware their lives will change beyond recognition in the year to come.

  In London, Ella, the love of Ian’s life, is unhappily married to Count Nikolai Kasatkin. As their relationship sours further, she tries to reclaim the son she and Ian share, but Nikolai makes a move that sees the boy sent far from Ella’s reach.

  As 1864 dawns, Ian is posted to the battlefields of the Waikato in New Zealand, where he comes face to face with an old nemesis. As the ten-year agreement between Steele and Forbes nears its end, their foe is desperate to catch them out and cruel all their hopes for the future …

  For my beloved wife, Naomi.

  Contents

  About The Queen’s Captain

  Title page

  Dedication

  Map of country between Auckland and the River Waikato, New Zealand

  Prologue

  Part One: The North West Frontier, India and The Battle of Missionary Ridge, Tennessee, 1863

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Part Two: Waikato and The Wilderness, 1864

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Epilogue

  Author notes

  Acknowledgements

  About Peter Watt

  Also by Peter Watt

  Excerpts from emails sent to Peter Watt

  Copyright page

  Prologue

  Umbeyla Pass

  North West Indian Frontier

  October, 1863

  The wounded boy would not stop screaming for his mother.

  Captain Ian Steele had so often heard that primeval cry. From the battlefields of the Crimean Peninsula almost a decade earlier, through the campaigns of Persia and India, young men desperate for unobtainable salvation all sounded the same.

  He lay on his stomach in the dirt of a flat space little bigger than a tennis court with other red-coated soldiers, all gripping their Enfield rifled muskets as they awaited the next wave of rebellious Pashtun warriors to scramble up the slope, shouting Allah Akbar! in their Jihad against the force of six thousand British troops on their tribal lands.

  These sounds and smells were so familiar in Ian’s life. The sickly sweet stench of decomposing human flesh, the constant itch caused by microscopic lice and the stink of human waste were ever-present. Thirst and hunger were constant for the men isolated high amongst the rocks of the slope.

  The plan had been simple. Following the quelling of the Indian mutiny, many soldiers had fled and joined the rebel tribesmen of the mountains to the north. The British administration in India chose to destroy the rebellious tribesmen, who they referred to as Hindustani fanatics, and a force of six thousand battle-hardened troops, consisting of Gurkhas and red-coated English soldiers, made up a column that was to quickly enter two mountain passes, the Umbeyla and Chamla, and then push the rebel tribesmen onto a British force waiting at the Indus.

  But things had gone wrong from the start. The logistics train had not kept up with the advancing troops, and the rocky ground had taken its toll on the men and animals moving into the high passes. They were not aware that a well-armed force of fifteen thousand Pashtun tribesmen was waiting for them and instead of withdrawing, the commanding general decided to set up a defensive position either side of the Umbeyla Pass.

  Ian Steele was known to his companions as Samuel Forbes – the identity of the British aristocrat he had swapped roles with so long ago. Ian was now in his late thirties and had not lost the hardness of his body forged by his early years as a blacksmith. He was not classically handsome but did have the face of a man women could trust, with its combination of gentleness and strength. A pact between the young colonial blacksmith and English aristocrat had realised Ian’s dreams of serving the Queen as a commissioned officer, leading a company of infantry. But now – as he had often thought – his youthful dreams had been long shattered by the realities of war. His only consolation was that he was very good at leading men in combat, and his luck had held, despite the scars he bore of wounds from battles fought over the years in Queen Victoria’s army.

  ‘Three dead in the last attack. Five wounded,’ Sergeant Major Conan Curry said wearily, settling beside his commanding officer in the dust of the defended area now known as the Crag Picquet on the eastern side of the Umbeyla Pass. The company sergeant major was the same age as Ian and sported a thick, black bushy beard streaked with grey. A recipient of the Victoria Cross, he too wore the physical scars of past battles.

  On the opposite side of the valley below in the hilly terrain covered in thick scrub was the defensive position known as the Eagle’s Nest, also manned by a brigade of British troops. But it had been the position that Ian and his company held that had taken the brunt of the fifteen thousand Pashtun tribesmen.

  The expedition, commanded by Brigadier General Sir Neville Chamberlain, had gone badly from the first day they had reached the pass in pursuit of the Hindustani bandits. The terrain had been so rugged that only the elephants of the baggage train had been able to cope with it, and the two brigades had been forced to halt for forty-eight hours in an attempt to bring up mountain artillery guns and other supplies. The delay had been enough time for the British to lose the element of surprise, essential in this section of the Indian frontier with its long tradition of resisting all invaders. The delay in penetrating the pass had allowed a one-time bandit to declare a Jihad and assemble a formidable force, armed in many cases with locally manufactured rifled muskets equal to those of the British army.

  ‘We need a bloody relief force soon, or the butcher’s bill will be filled,’ Ian muttered through dry lips. His face was blackened from the gunpowder discharges of both his Enfield rifle and six-shot cap and ball Colt revolver, and only his grey eyes stood out on his face. So it was also for Conan, his best friend and subordinate and a colonial-born man of Irish blood. Ian was also a native of the British colony of New South Wales. Although his men did not know about his colonial birth, he had long earned the title of the Colonial Captain. It was said that Captain Samuel Forbes had commenced his career serving in the colony of New Zealand and New South Wales and had acquired some colonial notions of egalitarianism. The real Samuel Forbes had served in the British army in the colony of New Zealand as a young lieutenant and, at the skirmish against Maori warriors at Puketutu, decided he was not born to be a soldier.

  Conan nodded his agreement. The big sergeant major had followed Ian through all their military campaigns and was due to complete his term of enlistment. Conan had a loving Welsh lass to return to in London, Molly, who owned a successful confectionery business, catering to the toffs of the world’s greatest city. But under the current circumstances, Conan felt that he would not get off the hillside alive. It seemed his and Ian’s luck had finally run out, like that of so many past comrades in arms.

  ‘Wish there was something we could do about that lad,’ Conan said, staring down the slope at the masses of dead bodies, most already black and bloated and under clouds of flies. The stench of decomposition was overpowering from the two weeks of constant attacks with no time to bury the dead. The Crag had been overrun and counterattacks with fixed bayonets had been ordered to retake their strategically vital defensive position on the hillside. Neither Ian nor Conan could count the number of Pashtun warriors they had killed with bullet and bayonet in the last two weeks.

  ‘It is hard to even see where he is amongst the bodies,’ Ian said as he listened to the pitiful voice of the young man slowly tapering away until it mercifully ceased. Neither man made a comment on the young soldier’s probable death on the slope amongst so many others wearing the red coats of their friends and the flowing clothing of their enemy.

  ‘At least the weather is holding.’ Conan sighed. ‘Not as bad as the bloody snow and cold we suffered in the Crimea.’

  ‘It is known that the hills around here can get snowfalls,’ Ian said, now cleaning the chambers of his revolver and reloading each cylinder with g
unpowder and ball. ‘Do you realise that Christmas is only about ten weeks away?’

  Ian thought about the time of peace and goodwill to all men and smiled grimly. How ironic life was when, back in the vaults of London banks, he had accumulated a small fortune from treasures he and Conan had looted and been given during their fighting for the Queen in far-flung lands. He had no need to continue his dangerous life on the frontiers of the British Empire other than a promise to the real Samuel Forbes that he would satisfy the conditions of Samuel’s grandfather’s will, which specified that he serve at least ten years as an officer in his grandfather’s old regiment. A sworn oath was an oath and, if Ian survived, he would also benefit financially.

  ‘We should be back in London at the barracks,’ Conan said, gazing down the slope as the sun began to disappear behind the scrub-covered hills surrounding them and the chill of a winter’s night started to set in. Conan shivered, not so much from the approaching cold but the thought of what had occurred in the bloody afternoon’s assault on the hill. Not to mention what was probably to come when the sun rose once again in the rocky hills occupied by the vast numbers of tough Pashtun tribesmen.

  Ian laid his big Colt revolver by his hand and brought the Enfield forward, its bayonet stained dark with blood, ready for action. The rifled musket’s greater range would be of more use before he took up his close-range revolver. Ian thought again about Christmas and gathering with family and loved ones. Conan had Molly waiting for him, but Ian had no one to return to in England; the woman he loved was now married to another man.

  ‘Movement!’ Conan growled and Ian could also see the figures of the enemy darting between the outcrops of rocks. What scrub covering originally existed on the slope to their front was long burned away and provided a stark canvas for the rotting bodies of friend and foe.

  ‘Look to your front!’ Ian bawled to his weary men, and rifles clattered into place. ‘Do not waste powder and ball!’ His men looked down the iron sights at the approaching Pashtuns bearing ancient muskets, more modern rifled muskets and swords. As they watched through fear-clouded eyes, the small numbers of enemy suddenly swelled to a vast oncoming wave rolling towards them, and they brought their arms to bear.

  ‘Fire!’

  Ian’s order was instantly followed by a rolling volley of Enfields spitting out their lethal .577 calibre Minie rounds. Death was coming again as the sun set in the valley below.

  London, England

  Same Time

  Ella Kasatkin stepped from her elegant carriage onto the cobbled street in front of the tenement house she so often visited. It was bitterly cold and the gaslights that illuminated the deserted narrow street seemed to shiver. Ella tucked her hands into the fur muff and walked towards the narrow door of the two-storey house. She did not need to knock as the door opened and a burly man stood filling the frame.

  ‘Ella, my little dove. Come in before you catch your death,’ he said.

  ‘Good evening, Bert,’ Ella said, looking past him to a little boy standing at the end of the hallway. Her pretty face lit up and the boy walked towards her.

  ‘Aunt Ella,’ he said formally, extending his hand as he had been tutored.

  ‘Josiah,’ Ella said, kneeling and embracing him in a tight hug. ‘Have you been a good boy?’

  Josiah did not see the tears streaking Ella’s face as she continued to hold him to her. Josiah did not know that his aunt was in fact his mother. He had been put in the care of Egbert and his wife Meg just after he was born, to hide the shame of a child born out of wedlock. Ella had been informed by her father, Ikey Solomon, that the child had died, but she had not believed him. In a short time, Ella had traced the whereabouts of her infant son, and visited him under the nose of both her husband and father for years. Meg had died the year before from consumption, and Bert was now caring for the little boy on his own. The secret was kept between the employee of her father and herself, but only Ella knew who her son’s father really was.

  ‘Josiah, you have studies to complete,’ Bert said, but not sternly. There was love in his tone and the boy disengaged himself to return upstairs and complete the book he had been given to read.

  ‘I will make us some tea,’ Bert said and his scarred face, the legacy of his life as an enforcer for Ella’s father, was filled with pain. Ella removed her muff and followed the big man she had known since she was a mere child growing up in her father’s palatial home in one of London’s better suburbs.

  Bert poured rewarmed tea from a pot into two chipped cups and placed them on the wooden table at the centre of the cramped kitchen.

  ‘Are you in much pain?’ Ella asked gently, observing the furrows in his face.

  ‘It comes and goes.’ Bert shrugged. ‘The doctor says I might not be around much longer.’

  Ella reached out and placed her hand over his big hand. Although a tough and, to some, a dangerous man, he had always treated Ella as a father would a beloved daughter. Ella had ensured that money continued towards the welfare of her son while at the same time, ironically, her father was also paying for the boy’s care.

  ‘I fear for the future of the boy when I go,’ Bert said. Ella could see tears welling in his eyes. ‘Your father has told me that if I am asked, I am to say that Josiah is a waif Meg and I adopted.’

  Withdrawing her hand, Ella took a sip of the hot tea and was aware of the murmurs of laughter and cooking smells in the tenement. It was in one of the better working-class neighbourhoods, but she still wished Bert had allowed her to arrange for better accommodations for him and Josiah. Bert had insisted he wanted to be with his own class of people. Ella had to admit, both he and Josiah had always seemed happy here.

  ‘You know I will take care of my son when your time has come,’ Ella said.

  ‘He needs the love of a mother,’ Bert said. ‘I have heard the stories on the street about your husband, my little dove. How he beats you and spends all your money on prostitutes, gambling and drink. If he was not your husband, I would have long ago removed him from this world – even without Ikey’s permission.’

  Ella was startled by Bert’s declaration but could see the love for her in his tear-filled eyes. She looked away in her shame for the years of abuse she had suffered in her marriage to the handsome and dashing Russian émigré aristocrat. With the looming probability of the former tough man employed by her father dying, it would mean Josiah being sent to an orphanage. She knew her father was a hard man and would not interfere in case someone discovered the truth and halted his current rise in polite society, and she knew no one she could trust with her secrets. Ella faced a terrible decision. To declare Josiah her son would mean confronting both her father and her husband. But to not do so would mean seeing Josiah placed in one of the terrible orphanages reputed to be racked by cruelty and suffering for the children unfortunate to be locked behind those walls.

  Ella had once loved a man, but he was not of her Jewish faith. She still loved him and her secret of the existence of that man’s son was held from even Captain Ian Steele – Josiah’s father.

  Part One

  The North West Frontier, India and The Battle of Missionary Ridge, Tennessee

  1863

  ONE

  Lieutenant Samuel Forbes of the 3rd New York Volunteers stood on the bank of the Tennessee River, gazing at the high hills named on his map as Lookout Mountain and Cameron Hill. He had the niggling feeling that they would become significant in his life in the near future. Maybe it was because in his youth he had been a British officer on active service in the British colony of New Zealand and still had the suppressed instincts of military experience. It had been his youthful experience of combat that had originally forced him to face his opposition to violence and he had thereafter intrigued to avoid it as a soldier.

  Now here he was, wearing the blue uniform of the army of Abraham Lincoln, serving as a commissioned officer in a war that was not really his own. Samuel could have been a twin to Captain Ian Steele, but he was in fact slightly narrower in the shoulders as his aristocratic heritage had not required him to labour in his youth as Ian had. But both men had a passion for poetry and shared a love for reading. Samuel had always desired to be known as a great poet in his own right and detested all things military after his traumatic experiences in New Zealand.