Authors: David Donachie
‘Garry Owen,’ he said, before the youth challenged him.
‘Back to the stables, Yelland.’
‘Sir.’
‘We will be pulling out shortly, though say nothing till I inform everyone. Just wake Sergeant Rannoch and tell him to get ready. He will know what to do.’
Markham moved onto Dornan, who was still getting to his feet when his officer arrived. The man was incorrigible. But this was no time to chastise him and he sent him after Yelland.
‘Bellamy.’ There was no reply, so he moved the cloth that covered his lantern just enough to show the stretch of parapet the Negro was supposed to be guarding. His voice was much louder, as seeing nothing, he called out again. ‘Bellamy, damn you.’
Still no reply! ‘If this is some kind of joke to show the nocturnal superiority of the black man, you sod, I’ll have you flogged till your hide is bright red.’
Markham pulled the cloth off completely and, lantern raised, traversed the whole area that Bellamy had been detailed to cover. He examined the wood of the flooring to see if there was any trace of a struggle, or, God forbid a spot of blood. There was no trace of anything. The man had gone to sleep somewhere, like the useless
article he was, neglecting his duty in such a blatant manner that Markham would have to severely punish him.
No considerations of like and dislike could be allowed to interfere with that. It was the worst offence in the book, if you took out rogering the Regimental goat. To fall asleep on duty was bad enough; to desert your post was tantamount to going absent permanently. The curses flowed as he made his way back to the stable, in his mind’s eye a vision of a bloody-backed Bellamy hanging from the wheel of a gun.
Markham stopped suddenly, realising that if Bellamy had gone to all the trouble of finding somewhere out of sight, he had no way of looking for him. To send out his men to search would only wake up the people they intended to leave behind. He knew he would go regardless, but it would be so much easier to depart without a scene. The last thing he wanted as he crossed that field was Aramon’s curses ringing in his ears. Worse than that, knowing it to be the best means of escape, the cleric would probably follow him.
‘Bellamy has disappeared,’ he told Rannoch quietly. ‘Snoring somewhere, I’ll wager.’
The Highlander replied in that slow careful way that drove Markham to distraction sometimes. It seemed the more agitated he was the more deliberate became the Scotsman’s tardy mode of speech.
‘He might be with that Negro girl, Renate, seeing as how they were so very friendly.’
Markham was about to state what an offence that was when he recalled his own adventures. ‘I will go and look.’
‘Do not go getting caught in her chamber,’ said Rannoch, grinning. ‘I doubt you would be believed if you tried to explain it away.’
‘Just get the men to lighten their packs.’
He spoke loudly, to make Rannoch’s job easier, in case anyone was tempted to argue with him.
‘And that is an order I have cleared with Captain Germain, who will be staying behind. They may take all the food they have but they must not overload themselves with water. All their spare kit is to be abandoned, shirts, boots and greatcoats. The man who takes the flares and tubes is to spread his equipment out amongst the rest. We will be moving at the run, and anyone who falls behind will be left to die in the forest.’
He pushed out into the night again, stomping across the courtyard until he realised that his own footsteps risked causing the very noise he feared. Slowing down, he dropped his lantern on the ground as he approached the cell into which Dymock had shown Renate. It was dark inside, nothing showing through the same kind of sheet that had covered the well house. He quietened his own breathing, so that he could listen out for others. There was no trace of anyone, so edging the lantern closer, so that it spilled a little light, he fingered the sheet back a fraction and peered inside.
He was loath to go without Bellamy, though if he’d been asked to explain why he would have been at a loss. It was certainly nothing to do with his soldierly qualities, nor indeed his too often displayed erudition. But Markham hated to lose a man, even a useless article. He would have acted the same if it were Dornan.
He could see the makeshift cot the marines had rigged for her, but it appeared to be empty. Cursing Bellamy with real venom he lifted the lantern, pulled the sheet right back and edged in. The place was empty. Not only of Renate, but of Bellamy too. There was no trace of the Negro girl’s bundle, which she carried so elegantly on her head. That, he concluded was none of his affair. She could be anywhere. Perhaps she and Bellamy had found another less exposed spot to conjugate.
‘Nothing,’ he said as he re-entered the stable. His Lobsters were lined up, ready to go, though it was clear they were deeply unhappy about the pile of spare kit that had been piled up in the corner. Rannoch had even untied Fouquert, who, with a white bandage round his cut head looked like a Barbary Pirate.
‘No noise as we leave. Stay well clear of anything you might strike your musket against. We will make for the woods and get out of sight before daylight, that way the people we leave here will not know how far we have gone and make no attempt to pursue us. Captain Germain has undertaken to explain to them what I am now about to tell you.’
Their eyes widened when he told them what Fouquert had. Men who had taken wagers on how long it would be before he dangled were now faced with the primary task of keeping him alive.
‘It doesn’t matter who gets through, one of us or all of us. This man must be taken to where the information he has will be of use.’
‘Will they hang him then, your honour?’ asked Dornan.
‘I doubt it,’ Markham replied grimly. ‘They will probably make him a Duke, and gift him a huge pension.’
Fouquert, who had very good English, was smiling. But that was wiped off his face by Tully. He had been one of the first men Fouquert had met, outside Toulon, and he no doubt remembered that the then soldier had a penchant for misuse of the bayonet.
‘Then why don’t we beat everything he knows out of him, sir, and impale the bastard on a stake.’
‘He would lie to us, Tully, even in death. He’s the type. But I want him roped, so that he is attached to both the man in front and the man behind.’
‘That is not necessary. We are on the same side now.’
‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Markham, ‘that will be the day. Tully, search him in case he’s acquired something sharp.’
‘Pleasure.’
It was a rough handling, with Fouquert seething, as every part of his anatomy was checked for a concealed weapon. Markham meanwhile checked his own kit, throwing out all that was superfluous. The last thing he did was feel inside his shirt, to ensure that the package Fouquert had given him, and Germain’s despatch were safe.
‘It would be an idea to check the courtyard before we move,’ said Rannoch.
Markham nodded and the sergeant went out the doorway, moving with a silence born of long experience. The rest of the men waited, their breathing the only sound to fill the stable, until he returned and pronounced the way out to be clear.
‘Single file, lads, and slow on my command. Stay close enough to see the belt on the back of the man in front. If you get lost, you are on your own.’
Rannoch killed the light and they stood for several seconds, adjusting their eyes to the dark. Markham went first, calling softly for them to follow. To him, the noise sounded horrendous, heavy boots scraping on the hard, packed earth. But he reasoned that he was listening for it, and that to anyone asleep, it might register enough to disturb their slumbers, but would be gone by the time they were fully awake.
The compass was, in this light, useless, but the sky to the east had the very faintest tinge of grey at the base, just enough to show Markham his direction. As long as he had that on his left he was heading due south. The ground was still in darkness though, and that caused men to stumble, their muffled curses evidence of their high level of discipline.
He tried to calculate, by his memory of the rise and fall of the ground, how close he was to the woods. He knew that they were at the crest of a hill, and that he would be close to them when that became a steep incline. Yet there was a sense of disorientation in the dark, with no fixed object to give him a point of reference. Even that grey line was deceptive, and he knew that if they were going to get to their target, it would not be in a straight line.
Then the ground became really steep and he knew he was close. He called back to warn Halsey, right behind him, bidding him to pass it on, just as he scrambled up the last of the embankment and felt the first twig of the bushes brush his face.
‘Halt ten paces inside, and wait,’ he ordered. ‘You men on Fouquert, keep a tight hold. Stay still until it is light. If you can see the church buildings retreat further back until you are out of view.’
It seemed to take forever for the light to increase, and much as he was tempted to move, Markham stayed still. To try and negotiate the forest in anything but full daylight would be madness. It wouldn’t be easy then, especially moving at the pace he intended to set.
It was an hour before they could see each other clearly, and make out the details of their surroundings. Markham had them eat as soon as they could, insisting that they split their rations with the Frenchman.
‘He’s no good to us dying of hunger and thirst, lads.’
‘Nor am I tied like a hog.’
That was true. They couldn’t move fast with Fouquert roped. He would snag on every branch that he passed, also holding up the men detailed to run with him. Markham was going to be forced to trust him, and that was an uncomfortable notion. Yet it had to be acknowledged that much as he hated him, Fouquert’s only hope of survival was to stay with them. Last night he’d been tied in the stable to avoid him coming into contact with the others. Now the question had to be asked; was he just roped because of habit?
‘Cut him free.’
Markham moved forward slightly, to look back at the
buildings
. In the grey dawn he could see Aramon standing in the open gateway, his eyes ranging over the shallow hills and towards the forest. A group appeared behind him, de Puy and the Monsignor’s three servants. They turned right and the cleric joined them, seemingly heading to an empty part of the hillside with a spare set
of trees too far apart even to merit the appellation copse. Yet there was something visible in the midst of the trees, a black dot, not a bush or a tree, that looked out of place.
The telescope brought it into sharp focus, a studded set of double doors, quite wide, set into the steepest part of the hill, and partially screened by trees. That made him smile. He’d anticipated that whatever it was they sought had been buried, and would take a lot of work to recover. One sight of the burned buildings, added to the Frenchman’s sanguine response, was enough to tell anyone with half a brain that it was not in any of them. And de Puy had used this very instrument to sweep the valley floor.
But de Puy had been clever. What was it Aramon had said? It had been brought here on the backs of men and could be taken out that way. A burial place would have required men to dig, witnesses to the fact that something valuable was being interred. Even the men who brought the treasure here would not have known its final destination. De Puy could have placed the goods himself, leaving his own men to suspect they were still in the church. And they were as safe as they could be while still above ground, even from the people Fouquert had incited to burn this place down. Who would go into an ice house, even to loot?
The Frenchman had no idea, when Markham turned round, why he was laughing at him. But the idea that this man, who so prided himself on his brainpower, had missed such a prize was amusing. He knew they should leave, there was ample light now, but he swung the glass back in his desire to see the Bourbon officer’s triumph. Perhaps Ghislane Moulins would not have such a dull existence after all. A man who could bait Aramon like that, had to have something in his favour apart from innate courtesy.
He was puzzled when the group emerged, with Aramon waving his arms, clearly in dispute with de Puy. Something was wrong. Perhaps he hadn’t been so clever after all. But Markham had no time to wait around and speculate. It was full daylight now, and time to go.
‘Move out,’ he called softy, beginning to jog, ‘and take your pace from me. Choose your own path, but do not get out of sight of the men to the right and left of you.’
P
rogress was good, with his Lobsters moving quickly, unencumbered by the normal heavy packs. The sky had cleared above the top canopy and the light was perfect, dappled shafts of gold streaming through the leaves and branches. Given two dry days the ground underfoot was hard again, the water from the thunderstorms either run off, evaporated, or drained into the soil.
Going downhill was so much easier than climbing up, and not constrained by the need for silence, one or two of his men occasionally laughed as one of their number tripped or slipped. The mule tracks that had been obscured in the ascent seemed strangely obvious now, an avenue they could easily follow, brushing aside the encroaching vegetation.
The manic tinkling of the cowbell was taken as no more than a distraction, with Markham wondering why the animal had come into the woods, away from its natural pasture. But he knew that cows were stupid creatures, the word bovine applied to anyone slow and dense, and their only wish it seemed to be somewhere else, wherever they were at any given moment. Obviously they had scared it into panic flight, so it was no bar to their progress.
It was the single musket shot that made him haul up and slither to a stop, the sound reverberating around the hills, crack after crack as though it was a timed volley. His men halted too, some quicker than others, with only Fouquert jogging on, until a muffled shout stopped him. Markham had an ear cocked, and began to retrace his own steps. He found the cord fifty feet to his rear, stretched between two bushes, no more than six inches off the ground, one end now loose where it had been kicked clear.
A trap laid by a clever man who had worked out that marines must head for the water, to get back to the ship that had brought them here in the first place. Instead of filling the woods with infantry, he’d realised that coverage of all the available avenues was impossible. So he’d marked the obvious trails, assuming that
his enemies would use them, and set his troops wide apart, to cover a vast area, the single musket shot a signal to indicate the point at which they should concentrate.
To proceed or fall back? And if the latter, to what? Markham told everyone to rest, and called for Rannoch. He had no time for private thoughts; whatever he extrapolated from the situation needed another mind to sound off against. The Highlander proved his worth before Markham even opened his mouth.
‘Quinlan, Ettrick, go straight left. Use your bayonets to mark a route on the trees. There will be another avenue down, another gully where the water has worn the soil away. One go up and the other down. Look for cord or twine or even thread. If you find it don’t touch it, but come straight back and let us know. Tully and Yelland do the same to the right.’
‘A trap?’ said Markham.
‘I do not doubt it. And it is clever.’
‘They must guess that we have Fouquert.’
‘Leaving that coat has backfired. They would not have gone to all this trouble for us.’
‘What is going on?’ demanded Fouquert.
‘Your enemies have laid a snare to catch us,’ said Markham, with an almost humorous tone, because he couldn’t admit his own chagrin to this man. ‘And damn me if
they haven’t succeeded. They are so keen to get your putrescent head on the block of the guillotine that they are gathering from east and west at this very minute to bring about that happy event.’
‘We must run.’
‘We must wait,’ said Rannoch, without looking at Fouquert. ‘And it would do us all good to remain silent.’
That’s what they did, kneeling, listening, waiting for the return of the four men Rannoch had sent out, half afraid that they would not do so. The rustling undergrowth had every musket raised, aimed at the source of the sound, until the sight of a red coat took the fingers off the heavy Brown Bess triggers. Tully and Yelland returned first, the youngster carrying a slim piece of twine.
‘I cut this right next to the bell, without making a sound. It was an old shell casing for grape, with a stone suspended inside.’
Markham looked at Rannoch. ‘How far apart would the sentinels have to be?’
‘Not too close with the racket we made.’
‘So?’
‘They will not rush into the woods.’
‘But they will concentrate on the lower slopes.’
‘I would!’ said Rannoch with a rare display of passion. ‘There will be more bells below, and they will funnel us into a dead end well before we reach the flatlands near to the shore.’
‘We must go on,’ said Fouquert.
‘If you want to die keep talking,’ snapped Markham. Then he turned back to Rannoch. ‘This has told them all they want to know. Even if we could evade them, they will set a watch up to look out for a ship, and with men lining the shore they are bound to observe our signal to
Syilphide’s
cutter.’
Rannoch was silent for a moment, and when he responded his voice was grave. ‘There is little point then, in continuing to rush downhill.’
‘Our only other route is through two armies.’
Rannoch smiled, a rare thing, the whole of his square face changing shape. ‘At the very least, one of them will be friendly.’
Fouquert had moved closer, to listen to them conversing. ‘This is madness.’
‘Born of necessity,’ Markham replied.
‘It is not your neck on the block.’
Markham gave him a wolfish grin and pointed a languid arm south. ‘Feel free, if you wish, to continue on your own.’
‘They will be moving across the hill, those men with muskets,’ said Rannoch.
‘So if we move up the hill?’
‘On the same line we took down, that will open the gap.’
Markham was sick of alternatives, craving for once the simple notion of an enemy he could see, and a position he could advance on, with troops to his right and left committed to mutual support. Flags waving, bugles blowing and massed volleys full of flying death suddenly seemed preferable. This situation was too full of imponderables. To split his force, drawing off the French while a small party went east with Fouquert. To stay still, and hide out for a whole day in the woods hoping they would pass by; to try and fight his way through to a beach on which the cutter couldn’t land?
‘We go back,’ he said suddenly.
There was no way of knowing what was the right decision. The only thing available was the lesser of several evils. The old adage about living to fight another day was paramount in his thinking,
the notion that, having had a trap set for him, he must somehow contrive to turn the tables on his enemy and set a snare for them.
‘At the double?’ asked Rannoch.
‘Light infantry pace if we are going to get out of this.’
There was no shouting, just a wave of the arm. Markham led the way, trying to spot the route by which they’d come, a task made more difficult by the compound factors of the opposite view of every hedge and bush, allied to the fact of moving uphill instead of down. Behind them, for a long time, there was no sound. Then a bugle blew. Markham suspected that the men who had been waiting to trap him had realised he wasn’t coming and had set off in pursuit.
They burst out of the woods right in front of the church building. Aramon, de Puy, Ghislane Moulins and the trio of servants were heading away on a diagonal line that would take them due east to Piedmont. The sight of a dozen Lobsters and Fouquert bursting out of the forest, at first had them spurring the two horses into a gallop. But the red coats soon registered, and they came to a halt.
Markham was met by a string of curses the like of which would keep Aramon in the confessional for a week. De Puy merely greeted him with a look of utter disdain. Not even Ghislane had anything approaching a welcome on her face. Perhaps she felt doubly abandoned.
‘You deserted us, you low-life putrescence,’ Aramon barked. ‘Sneaking out like a thief in the night.’
‘Captain Germain surely explained.’
‘How could he, in a fever?’
‘He was fine last night. In pain certainly. But I spent a lucid hour in his company.’
‘Well he is far from it now,’ snapped Aramon. ‘One must suppose an hour of your company is enough to cause a relapse in a saint. And how can I believe you when you say you spoke with him last night? The poor man is incoherent and near to dying.’
There were drums beating he forest in now, played by men set apart to act as monitors for the line sweeping the woods. Very soon that line of troops would emerge into the open, and when they did, the only hope he would have was to drag Aramon off his horse, mount Fouquert, and send him off at gallop. The less pleasant prospect was that he should go with him, and Ghislane
Moulins was astride the other mount. The only other alternative was to stop the French advance.
‘You have deserted the people who were entrusted to you, quit your own superior officer, and it seems the very cause you are commissioned to serve.’
Rannoch poked his musket into Aramon’s stomach. His three servants moved immediately to aid him, but the determined look in the Highlander’s eye soon stopped them.
‘Do be a good gentleman and cap a stopper on your mouth.’
The cleric was shocked, but Rannoch was not fazed by his outrage. He continued as slowly and deliberately as he always did. ‘If you have in your head a way twelve men short on powder can confound a regiment of French infantry, the notion would be most welcome. But I suspect you have not, so silence on your part will serve us all.’
‘This man has the French army plans for the invasion of Italy.’
He was pointing at Fouquert, who for some reason seemed to shrink from the attention. It was the act of a man who knew everyone present wanted him dead, and who had no idea where the next threat to his life was coming from.
But de Puy had responded to that, his head jerking round, which was the first outward sign of life that Markham had noticed. But he looked away again as their eyes met, a seeming oasis of indifference. Maybe they’d found the treasure after all, and he was now feeling detached, looking forward to the delights that a night with Ghislane Moulins would produce.
‘You have proof,’ demanded Aramon, brushing the point of Rannoch’s musket away.
‘I have neither that nor a choice. I must either take your horses and race for the border, or find some method of stopping that infantry.’
‘
Garda
,’
appealed Aramon, a cry that immediately had his servants drawing their pistols and crowding round their master. If they’d never quite looked like servants before they looked even less the part now.
‘Monsieur le Comte,’ barked Markham, ignoring them, which was easy since his men had their muskets aimed right at their chests. The sad eyes turned slowly on to him, but de Puy didn’t speak. ‘You told Captain Germain of the danger hereabouts of a forest fire.’
‘I did.’
‘Do the conditions still prevail?’
‘They are more delicate now than they were immediately after the rains.’
Markham wet a finger and held it up to catch the wind. It was still southerly, still hot, strong enough to rustle the very top branches of the trees, not perfect but then it would just have to do. As he did so his eye caught that of Ghislane Moulins, and he was somewhat thrown by the way she immediately pulled a face and looked elsewhere. What was the matter with the girl? He hadn’t promised her anything, had he?
‘Flares,’ he snapped, in a voice rendered even angrier by her behaviour.
Dornan had them of course, and no one had bothered to relieve him of his own kit. If there was duty going that required no thought and extra effort, then he always got it. The equipment for the blue lights wasn’t heavy, but it was awkward, not the sort of thing any trooper with brains would want to transport. Yet for all the ribbing he endured, and all the pranks that were played on him, his good humour rarely slipped, and he never lost the affection of his comrades. That made him think of Eboluh Bellamy.
‘Set them up,’ he shouted, before posing a question, which had suddenly come to mind, aimed at Ghislane. ‘Where is your maid, Mademoiselle?’
‘Run off,’ answered Aramon, the only one of the trio to show any outrage. ‘It seems to be a disease you have introduced, which has contaminated even the most faithful.’
Aramon must have caught the drift of Markham’s reasoning. The cleric scanned the faces of
his men, and when he didn’t spy the very obvious countenance of the Negro, his lips became compressed, and he emitted a loud sniff of conclusion.
Dornan and Gibbons were spreading the tripod and attaching the twin tubes, while Corporal Halsey and Leech were fusing the rockets. If they were curious as to what their officer was up to, it had no effect on their work. And the drums beating in the background, growing louder by the minute seemed to be something they could safely ignore. Halsey, satisfied, nodded to his officer, then slipped the first of the rockets into the tubes.
Fouquert could not wait. The tension and that drumming sound was too much for him. Typical of the bully that he was, he rushed for Ghislane’s horse. He moved too quickly for those close to him
to interfere, and he was on her, grabbing the folds of her dress in an attempt to haul her from her saddle before they moved. Rannoch switched his musket in his hands, so that the stock was swinging. It caught Fouquert behind one knee, which was enough to dent his balance. Ghislane kicked at the same time, and he was sent flying back to land in a sobbing huddle.
Markham was by the flare tubes, bending down to align them. Designed to fire straight up into the night sky, and to illuminate a target, they were a chancy instrument for what he had in mind. He lowered the elevation as much as he could, so that the assembly was lying at an angle of forty-five degrees, with the waxed paper fuses hanging from the rear.
‘Sergeant,’ he said.
The Highlander was well ahead of him. He already had out his flints and match. He struck until there was a flame, which was then applied to the fuses. They spluttered into life, burning slowly down until they connected with the main charge of powder. At the critical point they exploded, sending the rockets straight to a point just above the line of trees. Both missiles sped over the top branches, fizzing and spluttering, erratic in their course, the trail they left a crazy whirl of spreading smoke. But Markham knew they would land in the woods, still alight, the phosphorous powder they contained designed to burn bright for several minutes. If that didn’t set the forest alight nothing would.