Ginkel’s army had marched out a day ago and left them behind to await a train of wagons from Dublin, and to make sure it got across the bridge safely. Today they would have to catch up with the army and, if that army was on the move, accomplish a second march as well.
When someone was trying to kill him and his men (which was not really all that often), Bob’s chief professional obligation was to think about that. At all other times he thought about food. Treading carefully among sleeping men, he came to a place where he could look out through a bomb-hole and see orange flames fondling the bum of Black Betty, the company’s prize kettle, out in the court. There would be a sort of gruel boiling in it, with shreds of mutton flashing to the top occasionally, and an inch of grease floating on it. In other weathers a cloud of steam would be roiling from Black Betty’s mouth, but today she was surrounded and hemmed in by ?ons of fog proceeding out of the west, seemingly drawn by the feeble promise of the pink gloaming over Leinster. If any steam was coming out of Black Betty, it was like a fart in a whirlwind.
By the time Bob had groped his way to the coffee-pot and burnt his hands and lips on a tin cup of Mocha’s finest, the pink light that had greeted him earlier had been snuffed out by the progress of this fog. When he went about nudging men awake, they were all certain it must be midnight, and not dawn as Bob earnestly claimed.
Connaught would not let go of her mysteries easily, then. By the time they fell in with the regiment, chasing the customary, hideous screams of sergeants through the gloom, a kind of profound blue-gray light had begun to emanate from the fog: light without warmth or even the colors that made men remember warmth. There was a lot of bumping into other companies in rubble-congested streets, and standing still for no discernible reason, and then at last a gate materialized around them and they understood that the regiment was forcing its way through a bottleneck. They marched out of Athlone and left its unburied dead to the flies—for only flies could reach the ones who lay in the cellars of the fallen-in buildings.
Immediately the road began to fork and fork again, offering passages to Roscommon, Tuam, Athleag, or Killimor. Bob gazed down every one of those tracks with frank longing. But young officers on horseback were posted at every turning to ensure that the regiment, and the wagon-train, did not stray in the fog.
They marched on the high road, the road west toward Galway. Everything about the conduct of the operation said to Bob that it would be a long trudge with no objective other than to put distance behind them, and no prospect of actual fighting. But late in the morning—or so he guessed from the color of the fog, which had taken on a brassy shimmer, like a counterfeit guinea—he heard musket-fire far off.
It could not be his regiment. It must be some other battalion of Ginkel’s main army. So Ginkel had not marched on ahead of them at all. He had done a day’s march and then stopped. And from the sound of those muskets it was clear why: St. Ruth had only retreated a few miles down the road from Athlone.
They joined in with another column, marched for a mile, and crossed a river at a place called Ballinasloe. Immediately the rope of men and beasts raveled and frayed into a wide mess, each strand pursuing a different course. This would only occur if they had butted up against the army of St. Ruth, and were spreading out to form a battle-front.
Lone cavaliers dashed from left to right and right to left, wearing the colors of Brandenburgish, Danish, Huguenot, or Dutch cavalry regiments; these were engaged in the supremely important tasks of finding the ends of the line. The great bodies of soldiers were still proceeding towards the front, occasionally crossing over each other’s paths, but more and more often moving along parallel courses. The fog shone more brightly to their left, which suggested that they were going generally westwards. Bob’s left knee was hurting rather more than his right one—not only were they moving down-slope, but the ground on the right, toward the Ballinasloe road, was higher.