Rapscallion (58 page)

"Can't
leave you alone for a bloody minute, can I?" had been Jago's response.

The
route had continued south through Barham Downs. Ii had been too dark and too
late to send a signal by shutter, but Hawkwood had seen the station outlined
against the night sky at the top of the hill as they rode past.

They
had been making good time until Wooten, but then the journey had taken a turn
for the worse. The roads had become little more than narrow winding tracks,
barely wide enough for a wagon, forcing them to ride in single file. Some
stretches had taken them across moonlit fields. Hawkwood suspected it might
have been quicker riding all the way to Dover and then taking the main road
north, but Jago had argued that their chosen path was five miles shorter.

They
entered Deal through the toll gate on the western end of the town. They could
tell by the lights and the frantic activity that they were too late. In truth,
Hawkwood had suspected that would be the case from the moment they had left the
ashes of the farmhouse.

True
to his promise, Morgan had taken his revenge. In doing so, he had left a trail
of death and destruction behind him.

The
attack had not been subtle. If Morgan's only intention had been to instil fear
and confusion, then he had succeeded admirably. Six wagons and more than two
dozen men had taken part in the assault on the Admiral's residency. The handsome
two-storeyed building with its large windows either side of a pillared and
porticoed entrance didn't look like the sort of place where bullion was stored.
To the right of the pillars stood a manned sentry box.
A pair of heavy doors formed an effective barrier to the street. Or at least
they had done. Morgan's attack had left them hanging from their hinges, blown
apart by twelve-pound shot fired from a 6-cwt carronade that had been mounted
on the heavy horse-drawn, flat-bedded wagon that was now parked at an oblique
angle across the road.

The
carronade was an effective weapon, short-barrelled, utilizing a variety of
calibres - of which the twelve-pounders were the smallest - but it had its
flaws. One being that it was prone to violent recoil. The stubby, nozzled tube
of metal resting on its side next to the wagon told its own tale.

A
four-man military guard stood watch over the gun and the two horses, now
waiting placidly in their harnesses.

"Nathaniel,
you and Micah have a word with the guards," Hawkwood said. "See what
you can find out. Captain Lasseur and I will pay our compliments to the
Admiral."

Jago
looked Hawkwood and Lasseur up and down. "That's if he doesn't have you
both arrested for vagrancy first."

After
running a gauntlet of curious stares, Hawkwood's warrant got them through the
door and into a cold marble- floored room with an impressive domed ceiling,
where a harassed army lieutenant called Burden identified himself as the
officer in charge of the bullion escort. He and his troops had been in their
quarters in the castle when Morgan launched his assault.

Rear
Admiral Foley had not been in residence at the time, Burden explained. A galloper
had been sent to Dover, where he was attending a meeting with his fellow Port
Admirals, to inform him of the night's events.

"Who
was in the residency?" Hawkwood asked.

Hawkwood
could tell that Burden was still wondering who he was, but the warrant gave him
the authority to ask questions, and Burden knew it, irrespective of the fact
that Hawkwood looked like the bastard son of a low-class bordello keeper and
the town drunkard.

There
had been six people in the house: the admiral's secretary, the cook, the
housekeeper and three armed guards, who rotated shifts in the sentry box under
the portico. The unfortunate sentry
manning
the box
when the carronade round demolished the entrance doors had been Private Hobley.
His body had been found, face down and badly mutilated, twenty feet from the
entrance. It was still lying there
now,
awaiting
removal to the dead room next to the castle's infirmary, where it would join
the night's other casualties.

Throughout
his report, Burden kept casting surreptitious looks in Lasseur's direction. The
Frenchman had remained silent thus far, but Burden's interest had been piqued;
no doubt because Lasseur, with his goatee beard, didn't have the look of an
Englishman. And, like Hawkwood, he was bloodied and bruised and
reeked
of smoke.

To
satisfy Burden's curiosity, Hawkwood introduced Lasseur by name but described
him as a Bourbon loyalist officer on special detachment to the Home Office. He
could see that Burden wasn't entirely satisfied with the explanation, but that
was something the lieutenant would just have to live with.

Then
Burden said to Lasseur, "You'll have to forgive me, Captain, but after
what we've seen tonight, my men and I ain't feeling too well disposed to your
countrymen."

"What
are you talking about?" Hawkwood asked.

Burden
gazed at him in puzzlement. "You mean, you don't know?"

"Know
what?"

"It
was a French raiding party that did this."

Hawkwood
felt cold fingers caress the back of his neck.

Burden
explained, with another sideways glance at Lasseur, that the men who'd invaded
the residency had been wearing French infantry uniforms.

"They
killed two of my men, the murdering bastards," Burden said, unable to keep
the anguish from his voice.

In
addition to the sentry, Corporal Jefford, one of the guards stationed in the
inner lobby, had been killed. His body was lying next to Hobley's, under the
same blanket.

The
lieutenant in charge had spoken in English, summoning all the building's
occupants to assemble before him. Then he had demanded the key to the strong room.
The admiral's secretary, the individual entrusted with the safety of the key in
his master's absence, had, in a laudable but ultimately futile display of
defiance, refused to comply. At which point, one of the lieutenant's men, a
short, broad-shouldered sergeant somewhat older than his comrades, had shot
Corporal Jefford stone dead.

The
key had been produced within minutes.

And
then the raiding party had commenced emptying the strong room.

It
had taken some time to remove the bullion boxes, but the Frenchmen had worked
with quiet, speedy efficiency. According to the surviving guard, Private
Butcher, it looked as if it was something they did every day.

When
the last box had been taken, the lieutenant had locked the staff in the strong
room. He and his men had then departed with the bullion.

"Where
was the army?" Hawkwood demanded. "What the devil were you doing
while all this was going on?"

The
army, Burden told him miserably, had been outmanoeuvred.

Following
a tip-off that
two major contraband
runs involving
hundreds of men and ponies were planned for that evening - one to the north at
Sandwich Flats, the other to the south at Margaret's Bay - the Revenue had
turned to the town's regular contingent of troops, modest at the best of times,
for assistance. Only a handful of soldiers had been left in Deal.

Hawkwood
realized then how well Morgan had played his cards. He had obviously started
the rumours himself, instructing his agents to spread the word the runs were
taking place. With the troops out of the way, his men had soon sealed off the
town's three major access roads: the Dover Road to the south, Five Bell Lane in
the west and the turnpike road to the north.

Burden
coloured. "And we were stuck in the bloody castle. We were able to return
fire, but I'm still not sure if we hit any of them."

Deal
Castle lay at the southern edge of the town, close to the Dover Road toll gate.
It had been besieged once before, during the Civil War. Since then it had
remained inviolate, its massive circular bastions standing guard over the town
and the coast, a monument to Tudor engineering.

Like
the carronade, however, the fortress had its flaws. Its primary use was as a
defence against attack from the water, not from the land. Its guns faced the
sea. The second major flaw was that, like all castles, it had only one main
entrance: the gatehouse.

Access
to the gatehouse was by a narrow stone causeway. Morgan's men had turned the
causeway into a killing ground, blockading it with another of their heavy
wagons and a pair of mounted swivel guns opposite the entrance.

When
the carronade opened fire on the Admiral's residency, a patrol had immediately
set out from the castle to investigate. The soldiers made it only as far as the
causeway before Morgan's men, dressed in their French infantry uniforms, opened
fire to lethal effect. Four men dead, six injured, out of a force that hadn't
been large to begin with.

"We
couldn't get at the bastards," Burden said. "And all they had to do
was keep us confined. We couldn't get out by the moat either. They had the
postern gate under their guns, too."

"What
about the Naval Yard; aren't there any troops there?"

Burden
shook his head. The Yard lay next to the castle. It was small by Admiralty
standards and its main role was to victual ships with bread and beer and
ballast from the local beach. Enclosed by high walls and with only three
entrances, it had been easy to seal off. In any case there were no troops
stationed there beyond a couple of sentries
manning
the gates.

With
his wagon crews effectively in control of the town, Morgan and his raiders had
driven the gold straight down to the beach where his ship had been waiting.
They had used a fleet of small boats to ferry the bullion boxes from the
shingle beach out to the ship.

"She
was flying the ensign," Burden said heavily. "In the dark, we thought
she was one of ours."

With
the gold on board, the ship had weighed anchor and Morgan's wagon crews had
melted away in the night, leaving the strong room bare and the town in a state
of shock.

That
had been nearly two hours ago, Burden told them.

Morgan
had put the army to shame. And he had done it with a precision the army would
have been proud of. Even down to executing the robbery at night so that the
Deal telegraph station would not be able to send a shutter message alerting the
next station down the line that the residency was under attack.

The
time had come for Hawkwood to add to the lieutenant's suffering.

It
wasn't the French, he told Burden, at which the man seemed to age a thousand
years in front of their eyes.

Leaving
the shattered lieutenant in the empty strong room to contemplate what remained
of his career, Hawkwood and Lasseur made their way to rejoin Jago and Micah.

"Perhaps
he'll shoot himself," Lasseur said. "It would be the honourable
thing."

"I
think someone will probably do it for him," Hawkwood said.

Outside,
the bodies of the dead were being lifted on to a cart.

Jago
nodded towards the soldiers guarding the overturned carronade. "There are
some bodies on the beach and the corporal told us there are more up by the
castle," he said, then paused and looked at Lasseur. "They're
French." Jago turned back to Hawkwood: "I thought you said Morgan and
his men were behind this?"

"It's
only the uniforms that are French," Hawkwood said. "It was Morgan's
crew."

Jago
shook his head. "The ones I saw were definitely French. They had tattoos.
I'd know that eagle anywhere."

"You've
seen them?"

"Beach
is that way -" Jago pointed. "And you won't even get your feet
wet."

"Show
me," Hawkwood said.

The
bodies had been laid side by side, face up, on the shingle, ready for disposal.
In the moonlight, in their dark tunics, shakos and dirty breeches, and with
their faces already grey and misshapen by death, they looked like bloodstained
ragdolls left by the tide.

Le
Jeune looked about a hundred years old. The tattoo was visible just below the
crook of his arm. The tunic was too short for him and the sleeve had ridden up.
Next to him, in complete contrast, Louis Beaudouin looked about twelve.
Souville resembled a skeleton already; Rousseau wasn't much better.

Jago
had referred to another lot of bodies found by the castle. Hawkwood was willing
to wager he knew the identities.