Battlesaurus (22 page)

“Yet you know that we, the village, had expressly voted against this,” Monsieur Claude says.

“I know that you were against it, and you made the rest of the villagers afraid to go against you,” Fran
ç
ois says.

“If Napol
é
on hears of this treachery, he will demand blood,” Monsieur Claude roars. “And it will be your blood we will give him. Yours and that of your cousin.”

From the look on Monsieur Lejeune's face, Monsieur Claude will not find that as easy to do as it is to say.

“I did something that I truly believe in,” Fran
ç
ois says. “Regardless of the consequences.”

“Where is Jean?” Monsieur Lejeune asks. He sounds concerned. It is the third time this question has been asked.

Fran
ç
ois begins to weep.

“Where is your cousin?” This time it is Father Ambroise who asks.

Willem now has a growing dread of what the answer will be.

“We were spotted by a French patrol,” Fran
ç
ois chokes out between sobs. “I got away, but…”

“They captured Jean?” Monsieur Lejeune asks. “Did they capture my son?”

“Jean is dead,” Fran
ç
ois says.

There is a sudden and shocked silence.

“What happened?” Monsieur Lejeune asks finally.

“The French soldiers fired at us,” Fran
ç
ois says.

“He is shot. That does not mean he is dead. Perhaps he lies wounded somewhere,” Monsieur Lejeune says.

“He is dead,” Fran
ç
ois says. “I saw the breath leave his body and the light leave his eyes.”

There is a scream from somewhere in the crowd and Jean's mother drops to her knees, wailing and keening. Several people move to help and comfort her. Monsieur Lejeune glances at his wife, but does not move toward her.

“Untie his hands,” he says.

“He is still under arrest,” Monsieur Claude says.

“Untie his hands,” Monsieur Lejeune says again in a voice that is calm but so cold that the air freezes around the words.

Monsieur Claude nods and one of the guards moves to do so.

“Go home, Fran
ç
ois,” Monsieur Lejeune says.

Fran
ç
ois looks at him for a few moments, his eyes full of unbearable pain. But he does not move.

“All of you, go home,” Monsieur Lejeune says.

Madame Lejeune is now screaming hysterically. A group of ladies lead her away toward the church, arms around her shoulders, supporting her.

“I am sorry for your loss,” Monsieur Claude says.

“My son made his own decision, and has suffered the consequence,” Monsieur Lejeune says. “As must we all.”

Willem becomes conscious that Fran
ç
ois is still standing there. He has not moved from the spot where he was taken. He now holds the ropes that had bound his wrists, and his hands are moving, twisting and pulling the cords like rosary beads.

He looks small, isolated by his grief.

Willem stares at him, lost in his own world of disbelief and utter desolation.

A shape moves in front of him, and Cosette walks to Fran
ç
ois. She seems a small and fragile bird standing in front of the hulking shape of the woodchopper, yet it is he who is the fragile one.

She puts her arms around him and pulls his head down onto her shoulder as he begins again to weep. Awkward, embarrassed, themselves suffering from the shock of the loss, the crowd starts to disperse. Father Ambroise stays. He walks to his brother and touches him gently on the arm, but says nothing.

Monsieur Lejeune looks at him. “Brother, I am not a religious man,” he says. “I wish this were not so. But I have seen too many things and done too many things to believe that there is a great Father who watches over us. Even now, as my son lies alone in the great forest, food for the wild things that roam there, I cannot find faith.”

Father Ambroise listens quietly and nods.

“I have asked for little from you these last years, brother,” Monsieur Lejeune says. “I did not want to take from you because I had nothing to give you in return. But I must ask something now. I am not a believer. I cannot pave the way for my son into the afterlife.”

There are tears in his eyes and he does not try to blink them away.

“I beg you to do that for me, Ambroise, despite our differences. Ask the Lord to accept him. To allow him to join his ancestors in paradise.”

“Marcel.” Father Ambroise reaches out and lays his hand on his brother's shoulder. “I cannot administer the last rites to someone who is already dead. How can I ask for penance if they cannot reply?”

“I know that, brother. But do whatever you can,” Monsieur Lejeune says. “He was my son.”

 

LIGNY

The church is burning. So are the houses around it. From every window and every doorway the long, sharp needles of muskets project, fire, then withdraw to be reloaded. The stone of the church appears diseased, so badly is it pockmarked from ball and shot.

In gardens, men kneel among the bushes, behind walls and fences. They crawl through hedges and ditches and clamber across rooftops.

The French cannon unlimber within sight of the walls and unleash a hell of ball and grape against the Prussian defenders. Twelve-pound iron balls make gaping jagged holes in the stone walls, and in the sides of houses.

Through the gaps pour French infantry. This is not the neat lines and precision marching of battle in the open field. This is dirty, ragged, urban warfare.

Before dawn on the previous day, Napol
é
on and his army crossed the border near Charleroi, aiming to drive a wedge between the English and the Prussian armies. Ligny is the key to that strategy. A win here and the Prussians, under Blücher, will be prevented from linking up with the English, under Wellington. It is a vital and brutal engagement.

Into this fiery netherworld trots Thibault on a thoroughbred charger he took from a dead colonel after his own horse was shot from under him.

In a courtyard he finds a platoon of grenadiers preparing to spike a row of Prussian six-pounders.

The clash and crash of battle is everywhere, on every street. Smoke swirls around the houses, and the three houses on the far side of the courtyard are burning fiercely, flames gushing from the windows, although the stone walls remain impervious.

The Prussian artillerymen are lined in a row on the ground near the wall of the courtyard. At first Thibault thinks they are all dead, but then he sees the two guards, muskets presented, who stand above them.

Many other Prussians lie where they fell, at their cannon.

There are numerous French dead also in this courtyard, and Thibault can picture the battle in his mind's eye. The grenadiers entering the courtyard to be met by a hail of grapeshot from the row of Prussian artillery. Rushing forward before the cannon are reloaded, and capturing them.

The leader of the grenadiers is a young captain. His uniform is black with smoke and red with blood. Not his own, judging by the efficient way he salutes as Thibault approaches.

“Hold,” Thibault shouts, seeing one of the soldiers remove a fuse from one of the cannon, preparatory to spiking it. The soldier stops, holding the fuse, while another stands behind him, an iron spike and hammer ready in his hands.

“Why do you spike the cannon? Can you not commandeer them, and turn them against the Prussians?” Thibault asks.

“Sir, we have more cannon than we have cannoneers,” the captain says. “The Prussians have been targeting our artillerymen. I would see that these are not used again against us.”

“Well, think twice before spiking that one,” Thibault says. “Especially when I am in front of it.”

“Sir?”

“This cannon is loaded, Captain,” Thibault says. “One spark as you hammered that spike into the touch hole might have set off the charge. As I was in its path, that would have caused me great displeasure.”

The captain turns red, and bows his head in an apology. “How did you know it was loaded, sir?” he asks.

“The fuse was already inserted,” Thibault says. “Did you not notice, or did they not teach you that at Saint-Cyr?”

“In the confusion, I confess I did not see it, sir,” the captain says. “What mission brings you here?”

“I seek the headquarters,” Thibault says.

The roof on one of the houses collapses, sending up a shower of flames and sparks. Smoke drifts through the courtyard.

“But that is to the west, at Fleurus,” the captain says.

“I was told we had captured this town!” Thibault says.

“We did, sir. Three times so far,” the captain says.

The sound of a musket, close by, removes the last word of his sentence, and the young soldier with the fuse still in his hand collapses back against the cannon behind him, a shocked look on his face.

“To arms! To arms!” the French captain shouts.

There are more shots before the soldiers can react and another of the soldiers flies backward, arms flailing.

Now the gates on the eastern side of the courtyard are filled with Prussian uniforms. A sea of dark blue speckled with smoke from the muskets. The first rank kneels as a second rank fires over their heads. Two more of the French soldiers drop.

“Retreat!” the captain shouts.

“Damn that!” Thibault shouts. “I will shoot the first man who retreats. Present arms.”

The remaining grenadiers aim their muskets from where they stand, or from the cover of the cannon.

“Fire!” Thibault shouts.

Holes are cut in the Prussian ranks, but already the first row is rising again, reloaded.

“Help me,” Thibault shouts to the nearest French soldier, running to the trail of the loaded cannon. Musketballs zing past his ears and his sleeve explodes in a puff of fabric.

The soldier runs with him but drops almost immediately, coughing blood.

The grenadier captain takes the soldier's place, grasping one of the handles. Together they lift and spin the cannon around.

Thibault snatches the fuse from the dead private and rams it into the touch hole. There is no portfire, so he holds his pistol to the fuse and pulls the trigger.

The pistol fires, and a second later, ignited by the sparks from the flintlock, so does the cannon.

There is a roar and the courtyard fills with smoke.

The effect is more than Thibault could have hoped for.

The cannon is loaded with grape—iron balls tightly packed into a metal canister—and at such short range the effect is devastating.

When the smoke clears, those Prussians who are not dead are dying, lying wounded, or running for their lives.

The captain orders his men to gather up the wounded and force them to lie down in the row with the other prisoners.

“Why do you keep these Prussians?” Thibault asks. “You have more prisoners than you have soldiers.”

“I cannot spare the men to escort them to the rear,” the captain says. “And many of them are too wounded to move.”

“Then I think you have a problem, sir,” Thibault says.

“Indeed so, sir,” the captain says.

“Do they have information that you need?” Thibault asks.

“No, sir,” the captain says.

“Then they are of no use to you,” Thibault says.

He rests the tip of his saber on the back of the nearest Prussian. The man is bleeding heavily from a wound to his shoulder. The sharp blade cuts the cloth of the Prussian's uniform and pricks the man's skin.

“No! In the name of God, sir,” the Prussian pleads in heavily accented French.

“Sir, these are not the actions of a gentleman,” the captain says.

“This is not a gentle war,” Thibault says.

“If we kill their prisoners then they will kill ours,” the captain protests.

“Only if there are witnesses,” Thibault says, and presses the saber home. Blood spurts. The Prussian shudders once, then is still.

“Sir, I cannot condone…”

“Now, Captain, there are witnesses,” Thibault says, gesturing at the other captives.

“Sir, they are my prisoners!”

Thibault moves to the next man in the row and again the saber does its work.

“Do you want them to spread word of this?” he asks. “Will you be responsible for retaliation against French prisoners?”

“But, sir!”

“See to them directly, Captain, or would you have me do it all for you?” Thibault moves to the third prisoner in the row.

The captain shakes his head and signals to his men.

The screams are still sounding as Thibault gallops out of the courtyard heading west. He rides through the rubble of the town wall, past cannon that lie in shambles, their carriages and limbers burning fiercely.

Behind a stand of trees he can see the windmill. A wooden observation platform has been erected around the outside and as he draws closer he can see Napol
é
on standing on the platform, studying Ligny through a spyglass.

Count Cambronne is at a table at the base of the windmill poring over a map when Thibault arrives. He only looks up when Thibault salutes. He scowls.

“You came through Ligny! Are you a fool?”

“I was informed that it had been captured,” Thibault says.

“The report was wrong,” Cambronne says.

“So it seems,” Thibault says.

“What if we had lost you, Thibault?” Cambronne says. “So close to our first battle. Who would have commanded the emperor's new army then?”

“Sir, I came to get news of the progress of the campaign. There is no sign of Wellington in the fields around Waterloo. I must know when to move up my unit.”

“Wellington is not retreating toward Waterloo, because that damned fool Ney has not managed to dislodge a few stubborn Dutchmen from the crossroads at Quatre Bras.”

“Perhaps it is more difficult than we think, to bend the Iron Duke to our will,” Thibault says.