Chapter 8: The Kennet & Avon canal

The days rolled by, and the Tuesday ‘nature walk’ with Susannah became the highlight of my week. After that first assignation, I soon introduced her to soixante neuf, and we spent many happy hours entwined, with heads to groins, licking and sucking at the sweet flesh presented to our questing mouths.

Summer strayed into October, with unexpected but welcome warmth, and Susannah and I would cavort naked in ‘our’ dell, where I would coat her nude body with my seed. I can vouch for the effectiveness of the liquid which emanates from a man’s nugs as beneficial to a lady’s complexion, for Susannah bore the smoothest, silkiest, and most unblemished skin that I had ever seen on a female. Unblemished that is except for the marks of passion left all over her delectable body, as consumed with lust, I sucked, licked, kissed and bit her succulent flesh.

At the beginning of November Susannah began planning a special birthday treat for me, which was to be the two of us spending the entire evening, and night, in her bed. She was going to lace the Rector’s evening bottle of port with a soporific, obtained from the local wise woman, which would leave him sleeping like the dead until well into the next morning.

Tabitha, the cross-eyed maid, would be sent on an errand that would keep her away from the house for the night. As for Mrs Lawson; she always slept the sleep of the pure and innocent, and the drunk, aided by a bottle of rum. Susannah and I would then indulge ourselves in a frenzy of uninterrupted fornication, locked together in a lusty love knot until the bright dawn of day, free from any prying eyes or ears.

Unfortunately, capricious fate dealt me a cruel blow, and just weeks before my birthday my company and I were recalled to Devizes, to take post along that part of the Kennet and Avon canal which ran to the east of Devizes, through the Vale of Pewsey.

This sudden change of location for the battalion was due to an attack made on a lock of a Gloucestershire canal. Damage to the lock gates had resulted in traffic along the canal being at a standstill for three days. The authorities feared similar attacks could be made on any of the many canals that criss-cross England. This network of canals was a modern wonder of the world, where materials and manufactured goods flowed to and fro between factories and sea ports. The canals were the arteries of commerce and trade, and any attack upon them was seen as an attack upon the Kingdom itself.

The authorities moved swiftly to counter this assault on the fabric of the realm, and military governors were appointed to those areas where canals were determined to be at greatest risk.

The general appointed for the Wiltshire/Gloucester region was General Picton, a veteran of the Peninsula campaign; he was a Welshman, and as devious and eccentric as any of that race can be.

As the name suggests the Kennet and Avon canal, or Navigation, to give it technical name, linked two rivers: The River Avon flows westward, through the great seaport of Bristol before meeting the Bristol Channel, which then led into the Atlantic Ocean.

The River Kennet flows eastward through Hungerford, then joined with the River Thames at Reading. Barges from Bristol could continue down the Thames right into the heart of London.

The 69th were given charge of the canal from just to the west of Devizes, where three flights of locks, the largest comprising of sixteen locks at Caen Hill, lifted the canal over two hundred feet, truly an engineering feat worthy of the Romans or the ancient Egyptians. East of Devizes there was a stretch of the canal where no locks were required, as the route lay at a constant level for nigh on sixteen miles, until a smaller flight of four locks took the canal up to its highest point at Bruce Tunnel. This tunnel cut through five hundred yards of chalk hill, before the canal gradually dropped down to Hungerford and the River Kennet.

Individual companies of the 69th were assigned areas along the canal, and my stretch was near the village of Burbage, with several bridges over the canal to patrol, and three locks, and the entrance to Bruce Tunnel, to guard. As misfortune would have it, the company posted directly to the west of me was commanded by Braxton-Clark. I could foresee the risk of a confrontation, concerning the responsibilities for locks and bridges, between the two of us, and asked if the boundary between our two areas could be set so that no mistakes would be made as to which company had the charge of which locks and which bridges.

“Come now Jack,” said Sir Edmund, “I expect my officers to be able to come to an amicable working arrangement between themselves, without my authority being invoked.”

I would have no difficulty making arrangements with any officer in the battalion, other than Braxton-Clark, who would go out of his way to discomfort me. I sighed, and decided to beard the lion in his den and ride over to Braxton Hall, where Braxton-Clark was still living.

The Braxton-Clarks had brought the run down estate from an impoverished family who had lost most of their money in the South Sea Bubble, and the rest at the gaming tables. Braxton-Clark senior, Cornelius, had driven a hard bargain and got the estate cheaply, although much work was needed to bring the mansion, which had been formerly known as Sudbury House, up to the high standard that the Braxton-Clarks demanded. That in itself would have taken a considerable amount of money as the house was at least 100 years old. However, Jarvis Braxton-Clark had been bitten by the fox hunting bug, and a stable block had been built rivalling that at Badminton, the home of the Duke of Beaufort, to house the four hunters Jarvis deemed necessary for him to attend the Pewsey Vale Hunt twice weekly. There was also a string of six racehorses, as the Braxton-Clarks thought their entry into the ‘Sport of Kings’ would enhance their reputation amongst the gentry. Add to these the number of working horses required, for waggons, ploughs and carriages and the amount of money spent on building, and on horseflesh, would have made a sizeable dent in any fortune, however large.

Jarvis Braxton-Clark was out riding to hounds when I arrived at Braxton Hall, so I accepted a glass of rather good claret from a very pretty house maid and awaited his imminent return.

An hour, and a bottle, later he appeared, striding through the hall dressed in hunting pink, and it was plain he had not a thought for his men, nor his duty.