Honour and the Sword (32 page)

Jacques Gilbert

We weren’t in any danger really, the explosion was never going to reach that far, but we didn’t wait to see. We were back at the horses in less than a minute.

There were distant shouts and the crashing of booted feet pounding up the alley, but no one was coming near the mill, the soldiers were pouring into the barracks to help their comrades trapped inside. I was suddenly aware of another sound in the background, the distant barking of small-arms fire which seemed to be coming from the direction of the Gate.

‘The gibbet,’ said Marcel. ‘D’Estrada.’

We should have known. He’d guessed we’d try for the gibbet, it’s what any man of honour would have done, he’d gone and set an ambush. Col was at the gibbet, Jean-Marie was at the Gate, so was Robert, our friends were out there, all of them.

‘Come on,’ said André. He didn’t wait for an order, he just turned Tempête and galloped straight round the mill, right past the soldiers and heading for the alley.

Stefan swore and wheeled after him. So did I, so did the others, we were all coming. It was mad, it was stupid, but there was so much chaos no one was noticing a bunch of their own horsemen, it’s like we were invisible. Tonnerre was pounding under me, galloping towards the guns, the Seigneur’s own warhorse, and me riding him into battle, and there was the boy ahead of us, his hand coming up with the sword in it, and he was crying out something, I don’t know what, but the madness was catching, I found I was shouting myself.

Jean-Marie Mercier

I was trying to crouch behind Robert’s dead horse to use it as a stand for the gun, but a man came round it with drawn sword so I pushed the barrel up high and fired. I think it must have been nearly touching him, because his whole stomach seemed to explode in front of me, and hot wet blood and flesh spattered over my face. I wanted to scream with the horror of it, but there was stuff over my mouth and I couldn’t bear to open it, it was on my lips. The gun was useless now, I tried to turn it towards me to use the stock as a club, but there was blood in my eyes and my hair was sticking to it. I squinted up hopelessly towards the distant Square, and saw the crowd who’d acted as a screen starting to break up and disperse. There were riders coming through them, and they were Spanish cavalry, screaming as they came.

I groped over Robert’s dead animal and found a pistol still in the holster, but it was only one shot. Dom was still up, but he was trying to pull Georges on to the horse with him, only Georges was wounded and Dom nearly out of the saddle trying to help him. A soldier was coming at them and I remember getting up on one knee and levelling the pistol on my arm, but then something slammed into my shoulder and the pistol went off in my hand. I could see hooves pounding towards us, and knew the cavalry was here and we were finished.

They wheeled off to the gibbet, but two came on towards me. I dropped the empty pistol and tried to swing the musket, but my shoulder wouldn’t work properly and I was groping blind on hands and knees. The horsemen thudded past, then one slashed down at the soldier trying to pull Dom off his horse, and the sleeve reaching out from under the cloak was white.

Then a strong arm was reaching down to me, and a voice was saying ‘Up you come,’ and it was Stefan. He lifted me as if I were a child, and swung me safely up behind him, where I clung on desperately, hardly able to believe what was happening.

‘Can you shoot?’ he asked, passing me one of the saddle pistols.

My shoulder felt numb, but now I was seated safe I was sure I could. He turned the horse back to the gibbet, where several of the ambushers were fighting with our men. At least two of our team were already wounded or killed, because Marcel was lifting one on to his horse, and there was another beast galloping to safety with two men on its back, but Giles was firing a pistol coolly into the mêlée, Jacques was riding down two pikemen, cutting at them as they ran, and in the middle of it all Bettremieu was still hanging off the cross-bar and working with the ropes as if nothing was happening around him at all. And André was there, his cloak fallen back and his tattered white shirt shining in the dark like a star, he was leaning halfway out of his saddle as he slashed fiercely around him, and the Spaniards were falling away from him as if he were making hay.

Père Gérard Benoît

The sound of gunfire intensified from below, while the press of people which had parted for the passage of our horsemen now moved swiftly to close the gap, almost as if to a prearranged plan. My heart leapt with hope as I guessed what this might be.

More soldiers proceeded from the barracks to force their way towards the Gate and we followed in their wake, but such battle as had been fought there appeared to be over, for I saw only a small group of horsemen retreating in the direction of the Dax-Verdâme Road. There were bodies left lying on the ground, particularly about the gibbet, and I confess to a sensation of disappointment when I saw that two figures still hung from it exactly as before.

Then a great shout went up from the first soldier to near the gibbet, echoed in a very different tone from those of our people closest to the front. As I was impelled forward by the motion of the crowd I realized the two hanging figures were not after all those of Pierre Laroque and Martin Gauthier, who had disappeared without trace. They were instead the bodies of two Spanish soldiers. They were the murderers from Verdâme.

The shout became a cheer. I looked up towards the Dax-Verdâme Road in time to see the last of the horsemen safely reaching the bend. Then I saw him. I saw André, Chevalier de Roland. He was last of all, and as he took the bend I saw him cast his sword high in the air, and reach up to catch it neatly by the hilt as it fell.

Fourteen

Jacques Gilbert

We caught up with the others in the trees behind St Sebastian’s. Marcel was grabbing people to take the wounded back to the Hermitage, while Jacob shoved Dax men through the graveyard to get home under cover of the crowd. Stefan was smacking the rumps of the stragglers’ horses, saying ‘Go, go, quick as you can, they’ll be searching the woods any second.’ He turned as André reined up beside him and said savagely ‘Bloody little show-off, what the hell did you think you were doing?’

The boy stared defiantly. ‘I was out of range.’

Stefan said quietly ‘I taught you better than that, André. I taught you for a soldier.’ He turned back to Giles and said ‘For Christ’s sake, lead them, Leroux, they’re drifting about like whores at a banquet. If they’re not in the forest in ten minutes the dons will be on the Back Road to cut us off.’

Giles touched his hat and started urging the others onwards, back north towards the forest and safety. I looked at the boy, but his head was lowered away from me, a crimson flush down the side of his cheek.

‘Move it!’ snapped Stefan.

The boy hesitated, then dug in his heels and urged Tempête after Giles. I followed, confused and angry, the exhilaration beginning to ooze out of me like the sweat cooling on my face.

There was a kind of excited buzzing going on at the Hermitage when we got there, but I didn’t feel in the mood any more, it was lots of people standing in groups saying ‘Did you see?’ and of course we saw, we were there. There was an undercurrent of something else too, like pockets of quietness in all the noise. As we walked towards the stables there were men carrying a body the other way, and the voices round us sort of hushed as they passed, then grew loud when they’d gone by. I caught a glimpse of red hair and a pale face hanging upside down, and recognized Vincent Poulain. Edouard would still be in Dax, keeping the civilian screen busy so our men could sneak home under its cover. I pictured him working till the very end, looking out for his brother, then realizing no one else was coming and he was alone in the empty Square.

They laid Vincent down by the side of the weapons outhouse, and I saw others lying there already, covered in blankets like they could feel the cold. There was a pair of smart bucket-topped boots sticking out from one of them, and I guessed it was Cristoval.

The crowd murmured. Giles was coming towards us, supporting a stumbling figure so saturated in blood it took me a minute to recognize Jean-Marie. André exclaimed in distress, but Giles shook his head.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s not his own.’ He gave Jean-Marie’s shoulders a little squeeze. ‘Wearing someone else’s guts tonight, aren’t you, soldier?’

Jean-Marie looked at us with dazed eyes. He said ‘They got Robert, did you know?’

Robert. Little pictures flashed up between me and the bloodied mess of Jean-Marie’s face. Yesterday by the stream, and Robert trimming those weedy little bristles that would never get the chance to grow into a proper beard. The Lefebvre kitchen, and Robert saying ‘I’m going to marry Suzanne Pagnié one day,’ while Colin’s dad hammered
bang-bang-bang
in the Forge next door.

‘He was dead when we got here,’ said Giles. ‘Shame.’

We walked slower after that till André finally stopped altogether, like his legs had just forgotten how to move.

I said ‘Look, I’ll do the horses, you’d better get to bed. You’re all in.’

‘No,’ he said, then jerked his head back towards the weapons outhouse. ‘No, I need to see who else …’ He gave an embarrassed shrug, hunched his shoulders and set off towards the row of bodies laid out on the grass.

I stabled the horses and went straight to the Hermitage, feeling if I could just unpack our stuff and make it like home then somehow things would be all right. I’d forgotten we were using it as a dressing station. Dom was coming out to empty a bucket of water as I arrived, and I saw it was bright red. I hurried past him up the steps, suddenly terrified of what I might find inside. It was cowardly, but if Georges was dead I didn’t think I could bear to see Dom’s face.

It was warm in the building, and all the candles lit, making little pools of magic pictures all over. To my relief the first person I saw was Georges, propped up in a corner with a bandage round his middle, but still grinning at the sight of me and saying proudly ‘Look, I’ve been wounded.’ There was Marcel, wrapping what looked like a whole sheet’s worth of dressings round Bettremieu, who was bleeding from a score of gashes down his legs and arms but didn’t seem bothered by any of them. There was Colin, thank God, alive and grumbling, hauling his breeches on over a huge bandage on his leg and looking critically at the lump it made. There was Stefan kneeling by Jean-Marie, with blood on his hands and speckling up his arms, caught in the hairs like tiny red dots. He glanced up when I came in, and said ‘That shoulder of yours want seeing to?’

André had already dressed it on the way back. I said ‘No, I’m fine, can I help?’

He grunted. ‘You can get us a bloody drink.’ He wiped his face with the back of his arm, leaving a bloody smear across his cheek, then turned back down to Jean-Marie.

Jean-Marie Mercier

I’m not sure I’m terribly reliable about this part. Jacques gave us all wine, then Dom made me drink some medicine made from poppies, which made me very dreamy. It came from Mme Hébert, who Stefan said was a kind of witch, but Dom was convinced it would do me good.

I do think it helped. Stefan had to dig the ball out of my shoulder, and while I felt every single thing he was doing, it was like the pain was happening to someone else. I did worry at first because Colin said we ought to be cauterizing the wound with hot iron, but Stefan said that was balls. He said he’d learned a lot from an army surgeon when he was wounded himself, and the man had been a very advanced type, a follower of someone called Paré. He told me I was getting the best possible treatment and if I died under it I’d have no one to blame but myself.

So I lay on my stomach while he operated, and drifted in and out of sleep. Stefan told me to look at Jacques, and I did find that soothing. Everything about us was so chaotic, but there was Jacques carefully unpacking his and André’s things at the platform end, as if this were their home now and he wanted to make it nice.

I remember the door opening, then footsteps approaching, and Stefan’s voice saying gruffly ‘You’re in my light.’ The newcomer knelt beside me, and when I opened one eye I saw it was André.

He said quietly ‘Can I help?’

‘No,’ said Stefan. ‘It’s nearly done.’

I felt the bullet come out and heard a tiny
clink
as he laid it on the floor. A dressing was clamped down hard over the hole in my back and I saw Stefan’s other hand reaching out for the needle.

André’s voice whispered ‘I was a fool. I’m sorry.’

Stefan’s hand paused, and I felt him turning round. Then he picked up the needle and began to stitch.

‘It’s natural,’ he said. ‘You had more cause than most.’

‘I hadn’t,’ said André. ‘It was my plan, and all these men died for it.’

Stefan didn’t answer for a moment, and I felt him mopping away blood around the wound. Then he said ‘Don’t take it to heart, little general. War costs lives, everyone knew that, and they chose to do it all the same.’

‘But so many,’ said André. ‘Robert, Jehan, Cristoval, Clement, Vincent.’

Stefan worked in silence for a moment, then said ‘If you were a real general, André, you wouldn’t even know their names.’

‘But I do know them,’ said André. ‘I can’t just not care, can I?’

‘You can’t do anything else.’ He finished the last stitch, and I felt his breath warm on my shoulder as he bent to bite off the thread. He said ‘Every single person you care about is just another hostage slung round your neck, another way to get hurt.’

There were footsteps near us, and a pair of black Spanish breeches came into view. Jacques’ voice said ‘Come on, André, I’ve unpacked our stuff.’

André’s voice always sounded warmer when he spoke to Jacques. ‘That’s brilliant. You’ve made it look just like it did in the barn.’

‘You ought to be in bed,’ said Jacques.

Stefan made an odd little grunt as he reached for a bandage. ‘I need your hands here, André. Hold this end firm.’