Honour and the Sword (30 page)

The Hermitage itself was packed with men. I could hear them from outside, great loud voices and bursts of raucous laughter. There was something oddly intimidating about it, but this was my home now, so I climbed the steps and pushed open the door.

The place stank of sweat. There seemed to be naked torsos everywhere, as a whole bunch of men changed their clothes for Spanish dress. The first I saw was Bruno Baudet from the mill, and that was revolting, because he was the hairiest man in Dax, he didn’t even look human. I walked past quickly, but now Giles was in my way, stripped to the waist, and swinging a Dax Company coat over his shoulder so violently it slapped me in the face. He turned and said ‘Sorry, soldier,’ and grinned at me with the kind of wildness you get on your second bottle of wine. The others seemed in the same kind of mood. Even Marcel wasn’t his usual calm self. He was already dressed in his Spanish gear, and the black looked wonderful against his fair hair, it made him seem taller, stronger, more like a leader. He was giving instructions to Clement Ansel, who was in charge of the assault on the Gate Guards, he was speaking fast and decisively, his hand jerking his sword in and out his scabbard,
swish-click
, in and out, all the time he talked. Clement was a bit full of himself usually, but today he was listening attentively, he even started nodding. Behind them old Jacob started to slather black grease on Marcel’s back hair, so the blond wouldn’t show under the helmet.

Stefan was there too, but he didn’t seem bothered with his own Spanish dress, he hadn’t even buttoned the coat, it was just draped round his hairy chest like he was showing himself off. He was briefing the gibbet team, you’d have guessed that from the size of them, there was Colin and Bettremieu and Philippe and Vincent Poulain, there was Roger from the Pagnié farm, Jehan from the Thibault, and that git Pinhead from Verdâme. They were all big men, but somehow Stefan dominated the lot of them, he was the only man I ever knew who could swagger while standing still.

Watching them, listening to them, I suddenly understood what made it all intimidating. The building wasn’t just full of men, it was full of soldiers. These weren’t the farmhands and craftsmen I knew any more, they were soldiers and this was a bloody army. This was what we’d always wanted when we first started the whole thing, only somehow it never had been, it had always in the end been just us. Something had changed, something I didn’t understand.

Then I stepped on to the platform, and saw André. He was sat by himself in the far corner, studying Arnould Rousseau’s plan of the barracks. He didn’t seem troubled by anything, and when there was an especially loud burst of laughter he only glanced up and smiled gently, like this was normal, this was what he’d wanted. When he lifted his head to reach for his pencil, I saw how calm his face was, and how it had a distant kind of glow. He was humming under his breath, and the tune was ‘
En passant par la Lorraine
’.

Thirteen

Jacques Gilbert

We gathered behind the mill shortly before nine. André brushed down my coat, straightened my helmet, then held out his hands. I tied them together in front of him, then suddenly he was a prisoner again, standing in the rags of his torn shirt and surrounded by a crowd of enemy soldiers.

The two half-Spaniards stood apart from the rest of us because of not really knowing anyone. Giulio wasn’t actually in the army at all, he just translated dispatches from time to time. He was nearly fifty and rather timid with a club foot, but we’d dressed him up in a cabo’s gear, and he looked really imposing, with a red sash and little rosettes at the top of his stockings. The younger one I didn’t know at all, he was a friend of Giulio’s from Verdâme and I think his name was Cristoval. He had a pointed black beard, and looked so Spanish I could hardly believe he was really on our side.

The Dax clock struck nine. Marcel nodded, and Giulio began to lead us round the mill and on to the Backs. That’s that big cobbled area that runs behind the west side of the Square all the way to the Thibault farm, and it was a space I’d known all my life. It was the back way to Colin’s, and we used to play here, him and me and Robert, we played boules and
saute-mouton
, we played soldiers. Now it was a stretch of grey stone to be crossed, with the rear entrance to the barracks right in front of us. They’d extended the back and stuck up a big iron gate, and there were four guards outside it who brought up their muskets as soon as they saw us.

Giulio was brilliant. His head went up, his shoulders straightened, and he walked towards the guards like they were the ones ought to be scared. The rest of us followed in a huddle.

‘No entry this way,’ said the senior guard. My Spanish wasn’t good back then, but it helps a lot when you’ve already got an idea what people are going to say.

Giulio managed a laugh. ‘I’m not risking this one in the Square.’ He gestured behind him, and that was us, that was me jerking the rope to show the boy on the end like a horse on a halter.

The soldiers gaped, then burst out laughing as they recognized the boy. They all started jabbering, probably congratulating Giulio on his catch, I didn’t really know, what mattered was their muskets were down, they were standing back for us, they weren’t even asking for the password, because André was the only password we were going to need.

Bruno’s men went forward first, they were right next to the soldiers, close enough to touch, then I glimpsed one flash of a knifeblade as Bruno’s fist thrust forward, old Jacob slapped his hand round another’s mouth as he stabbed hard into his neck, and the other two I didn’t see at all, there were too many men between them and us. I heard it though, that hard squelch of a knife going in, like a punch into a damp mattress.

The bodies were dragged into cover behind the mill, and Bruno’s team took their place. They looked all right if a soldier wanted to go in that way, and Bruno spoke enough Spanish to get by. It was hard to believe looking at him, all you’d expect to come out of that hairy mouth was a grunt, but he was actually the best in the army.

Marcel got us in order. He was leading with Giulio, then it was Stefan and me with the boy on the rope, then Giles with the sack of explosives, and Cristoval at the back. Marcel adjusted his helmet, tucked in a stray bit of fair hair, then turned and walked through the gate, with the rest of us following like a line of ducklings.

We were in.

Colin Lefebvre

Clock struck nine. Minute or two later there’s the curé walking towards the barracks, leading the biggest congregation I’ve ever seen at a Compline. All carrying lighted candles, and the curé singing in Latin, all very innocent, but there was our own Edouard Poulain busy shepherding people down the south side of the Square, and Margot lining them up into a good thick screen. Curé looked a touch puzzled at that, wondering why they’re not all in a lump behind him, but there, wasn’t ever safe to tell him anything of that kind, he wasn’t someone you ever told a secret. Crowd finished forming, screen complete, and we couldn’t see the barracks any more. More to the point, they couldn’t see us.

We were the gibbet team, all of us big chaps, lying in the woods behind Les Étoiles waiting for the bang. Oaf Pinhead said the barracks team ought to have gone in sooner, he said ‘Dons won’t let that crowd stay there for ever. What if they’re gone by the time the bang comes?’

Durand the butcher, he said ‘Don’t be daft, Joe,’ he said. All right sort of chap, Durand, for all he was a Verdâmer. ‘Don’t want them hanging about those barracks longer than they need, do you?’

Pinhead said ‘More than their skins to think about here, Durand, but maybe your precious Sieur doesn’t care about that.’

Then wallop, out came Bettremieu Libert’s great boot and there was Pinhead yelping and saying ‘You’re crushing my hand, you Flemish bastard.’

Libert looked tranquil as a nun at Mass. He said ‘Pardon, Monsieur, my French is not so good. What was that you said about the Sieur of Dax?’

Jean-Marie Mercier

Our party were in the woods at the corner of the Dax-Verdâme Road, and our job was to dispose of the Gate Guards.

I think people were rather excited, because we’d never fought a cavalry action before. Robert was saying ‘This is more like it, Jean-Marie, now we’ll show the dons what we’re made of.’ Georges was actually bouncing in his saddle with eagerness.

I was less comfortable myself, because I’m not a very good rider and wasn’t quite sure about the enormous horse they’d given me. It was one of the newly captured Spanish ones, and I had the feeling it didn’t like me very much. Of course my job wasn’t as important as the others’. They were proper light cavalry, but Simon Moreau, Luc Pagnié and I were what Marcel called ‘carabins’, because we carried muskets instead of swords, and could actually dismount to fight. Hopefully we wouldn’t even have to do that, because there wasn’t to be any shooting except in emergencies. Bernard and Marin were in the woods with crossbows to deal with the long-range work instead.

The Dax clock struck the quarter. Clement Ansel said ‘Stand by, everybody. Any moment now.’

The leather of Georges’ saddle gave one excited squeak and was silent.

I’d never been on an action without André and Jacques before. Never.

Jacques Gilbert

It was dark when we first went in. The new extension wasn’t finished yet, and they obviously didn’t bother lighting it after the masons went home. The floor sounded like stone under my boots, but I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t even see my own feet. I concentrated on the white of the boy’s shirt ahead of me and stepped forward cautiously.

The dark began to get less black and more grey as we got nearer the inhabited bits. Gradually I made out a pattern on the floor, and saw it was the marble slabs they’d stolen from the hall at Ancre, those beautiful black and white squares like a giant chessboard. There were noises ahead now too, a deep murmur of voices, and a sudden burst of crude laughter.

We just kept walking. Arnould had given us a couple of choices of quiet places to set the mine, but even the nearest was the old lumber room of Le Soleil Splendide, and that was still a way to go. There was another rumble of laughter, then we passed an open door with candlelight spilling out on to the corridor, giving us tall, thin shadows that wobbled and stretched as we passed. I glimpsed beds inside the room, but only a few soldiers, and guessed the rest were on duty somewhere. One near the door glanced up as we passed, and I got my eyes down fast, like if I couldn’t see him then he couldn’t see me. It seemed to work all right, we just walked past with the boy hidden between us and the wall, and nobody said a word.

It was lighter now, there were sconces every few feet, and I saw for the first time how scruffy we looked and how crumpled our clothes were, and couldn’t remember if real Spanish soldiers looked that way, I had this mad urge to go outside and check. Then we reached a plaster archway, the old boards of Le Soleil Splendide were creaking under my feet, and that was better, I knew this place. The lumber room was close, and I knew that even better, I’d had my first kiss in there.

We turned off the main corridor down a branch that led to the courtyard, and there was the lumber room on our left. Marcel stopped and whispered to Giles.

‘Is it deep enough in? Can we do enough damage?’

Giles shrugged. ‘Deeper’s better if we want to draw guards from the front.’

Marcel hesitated. I was screaming at him in my head ‘No, it’s fine, let’s just do it and get out,’ but he looked back towards the main corridor and I knew he was thinking of going on to the pantry. Then the sound of tramping feet down the corridor decided him. He pushed open the lumber-room door and we all crowded in, anxious to get out of sight.

The room was bigger than I remembered, but everything else was different too. It was all clean and furnished, there was a bed in one corner and a tapestry and mirror on the wall, there was a bloody great desk off to one side, I remember staring stupidly at a vase of bright-red poppies. And behind it was a man, a man at the desk getting up at the sight of us, and it was bloody Capitán d’Estrada.

Stefan Ravel

I’ve been happier to see someone. We outnumbered him seven to one, but we were in the middle of the fucking barracks, and all he’d got to do was shout. Still, there was no turning back now, so I jerked my head at Cristoval to join us inside, then closed the door.

He didn’t seem suspicious. He snapped at Giulio, probably complaining we hadn’t knocked, then spotted André and stopped dead in mid-sentence. He came slowly out from behind his desk as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and Giulio started talking fast. Don’t ask me what he said, my Don-speak isn’t what it might be, but I guessed it was the official story that we’d caught the kid climbing back in over the Wall. I wasn’t really listening, I was more concerned with the fact the bastard wasn’t coming any nearer. He was too far away to grab, and if we rushed him he’d still have time to shout.

André kept his head. D’Estrada motioned him to approach, but the kid stayed where he was, forcing d’Estrada to come a step closer. I edged nearer. Marcel did the same.

D’Estrada ignored us, and spoke quietly to André as if the two of them were quite alone.

He said ‘Why did you come back?’ He sounded rather sad about it.

‘You know why,’ said André.

‘Yes,’ said d’Estrada softly, ‘I do. But I’m afraid you may have no army to come back to. I have taken steps to ensure it.’

I didn’t like the sound of that, but I got another step closer while he was saying it. Unfortunately d’Estrada looked up, and made an irritated shooing gesture, so I had to stay where I was.

‘What steps?’ said André.

D’Estrada smiled. ‘Would you like to talk to me? We don’t need to see the Colonel yet, we can speak quietly, you and I.’

Smooth bastard. More to the point, he was costing us time. I looked urgently at André, and his eyes flickered.