Chapter 26: Captain Parslow's Confession

A few days after challenging Braxton-Clark to a duel I was in my quarters, writing the letters which would be sent should I not survive the meeting, and I assessed my chances of doing so as slim to negligible. There was a knock on my door, and Surgeon Major Armityge entered at my invitation.

"You know that each week I visit the hospice where Captain Parslow is being nursed?" He asked.

I nodded; it was due to the generosity of Lord Brownlow that Parslow had been removed from the charnel house, which was the military hospital in Aldershot, to a clean, peaceful hospice, run by a nursing order of nuns.

"He is near to death. I estimate he has only a fortnight at the most. When I saw him last week he asked that you should visit him, he was quite agitated, and I think it would ease his mind if you accompany me tomorrow."

I thought it more probable that Parslow would outlast me, as my meeting with Braxton-Clark was in four days' time, but I agreed to accompany Krish.

The next day we rode over to Windsor. It was a dank, damp and dull November day, and the prospect of seeing a dying man did not enhance my gloomy mood.

As we rode, both of us quiet with our own thoughts, I recalled to mind the last time I had seen Drayton Parslow, which had been on the morning of the eighteenth of June, just before the first cannon balls started to fall amongst our battalion on that bloody ridge of Mont St Jean. He had shaken my hand before leaving to join his company, which was acting as skirmishers to the front of our line. I heard later that day that he had been badly wounded, but no more details than that.

We had little to do with each other prior to Quatre Bras, where together we had brought off our companies and the regimental colour from that stricken field. I knew only that he was a competent officer, who was unmarried, but sent money home to his mother in Bedford.

Krish broke the silence of our ride, and told me more of Parslow's medical condition. At Waterloo Parslow had been struck by a cannon ball that had removed both his legs from beneath the knee. Krish could do little for him, other than staunch the flow of blood, and clean up the bloody stumps.

"He must have the constitution of an ox, to survive the shock of having both legs taken off." Krish said, "not that you would know it to look at him."

Parslow had survived the journey, from Waterloo to the coast, in a jolting farm cart, and then the voyage across the Channel in the stinking hold of a ship. He also survived the fraught journey from Dover to Aldershot in another cart, but it was the hospital in Aldershot that was his undoing.

The dressings of his wounds were not changed for a considerable time, allowing the filth, disease, and pestilences that prowled the long corridors of the hospital to take hold. An infection entered his wounds, and soon fermented into gangrene.

Over time the gangrene had spread slowly through his body, and it was amazing that he had survived for so long. Parslow's removal to the hospice, where he received much greater care, had slowed the rate of decay, but even his iron constitution could not last for ever.

The hospice was just across the road from the boundary of Windsor Great Park, and from the second story windows of the building the massive bulk of Windsor Castle could be seen. I wondered if Mad King George was in a ranting or semi-comatose mood. It was said that he was kept in a locked and bolted room, so that he could not go raving around the castle.

The miasma of death and decay hung heavily in Parslow's room, but there was a pot of sweet smelling herbs on the window sill, and the room was clean, light and airy. It was as good a place as any to die, and far better than in that abattoir of a military hospital at Aldershot. Captain Parslow was in bed, propped up on pillows, a poor shadow of the man I remembered.

He smiled at me as I entered the room, but it was more like the grimace on a skull than a smile.

"Thank you for coming Greenaway. You are a good man, and someone whom I've always held in high regard."

This was the first time I knew of that, but he was on his death bed and naturally wanted me to have a good opinion of him.

Krish interrupted us. "By your leave, Parslow; I have other patients to see, but I shall return in an hour when I've finished my examinations. That will leave the two of you to discuss things in peace."

I thought, 'I have nothing to discuss', and I certainly was not looking forward to being in the company of a dying man for an hour, but I smiled and nodded.

As soon as the door closed behind Armityge, Parslow started talking, and he told me a tale that was shocking, disturbing, and, I must also say, quite distasteful.

"I've always blamed myself for the death of poor Charles St John."

That came as a surprise to me as I knew he had only been the referee at the duel, but when he started to give his reasons for his words my blood ran cold.

"Charles St John, Silas Maddox, Jarvis Braxton-Clark and I were all sodomites!" He said this so matter of fact that at first I thought I had misheard.

"Oh, Charles and I were not lovers, although Maddox and Braxton-Clark were, and probably still are. No, both Charles and I tried, with all the moral force that we possessed, not to give into our base desires. Fighting our way through Spain was one way of sublimating the craving, but when we reached Bordeaux, and Braxton-Clark joined the battalion, desire and temptation led us astray. I suppose Braxton-Clark was the tempter, for he soon recognised those who had similar tastes to his own, and quickly ensnared Maddox. Charles and I spurned his advances, but then he discovered there was a house in Bordeaux that specialised in gratifying the predilections of men such as us. He led us into what soon became a drug, which we found powerless to resist."

Parslow started coughing, and I held a glass of water to his lips. He drank feverishly.

"Charles was terrified that you would discover he spent his time consorting with young men; he so admired you. No-- more than that-- in fact he loved you, but your approval was all that he wanted from you. He knew you would be disgusted if you learned of his weakness."

My mind was in a whirl. I had never imagined that Charles St John was a pederast, although I teased him about his blonde curls and big blue eyes. I knew him to be a lion of a fighter, who seemed to have no fear when facing the enemy, and I could not believe that any man who had the appetite of a sodomite would be so courageous.

Parslow continued with his terrible revelations.

"Not only was Braxton-Clark a pederast but he was also a sadist, and one of the specialities that the house provided was for sadists to vent their lust on young boys, sometimes young girls. One dreadful afternoon, when all four of us were indulging in our particular pleasure, Braxton-Clark choked a young boy to death. Maddox was with him, although I gather his pleasure was to watch, rather than take part in sadistic pursuits. According to him Braxton-Clark got even more pleasure when, during sodomising a young boy or girl, he part choked them with a scarf wrapped around their throats, and as they choked he received more pleasure. This time the boy died before Braxton-Clark had finished his -- had reached his zenith. It was a terrible accident."

Parslow started coughing again, and once more I poured him a glass of water, and held it to his lips while he gulped it down.

"Braxton-Clark decided to remove the body of the boy from the house, and dispose of it in the River Garonne. Maddox came to where I was resting after my session with a young man, and then he roused Charles from where he had been indulging himself. We were then persuaded, or rather blackmailed, into helping Braxton-Clark. I know we should have refused and handed him over to the authorities, but he told us that if we didn't assist him then our reputations would be ruined. I could not bear that my mother should learn of my vice, and Charles was equally ashamed that you should learn of his. Maddox was the creature of Braxton-Clark, and would do anything he asked. We smuggled the body out of the house, and just as we were about to throw it into the river Braxton-Clark said it should be made to look as if the child had been murdered by some crazed maniac. He pulled a butcher's knife from under his jacket and proceeded to carve the body up in the most gruesome way. The mutilated remains were then tipped into the river."