Honour and the Sword (63 page)

I backed off and half lowered my sword. ‘Slow it down a little, will you?’

He was as into the fight as I was, his head jerked back in frustration, but he got a grip on himself, took a deep breath and slowed down.

I shot back up to combat speed and really let him have it. He stumbled in shock, his blade wavering on my outside line. I belted it right out and back, I opened him like a bloody butterfly and slammed him against the wall, forcing my guard up under his jaw, my left hand clamping on his wrist, twisting it hard until the sword fell out of his hand.

I held him there a moment, looking right into those disbelieving, furious eyes, but there was no satisfaction in it, Abbé, only a kind of sour disappointment. He was so easy to cheat, poor bugger, honour made him helpless as a child.

I said sadly ‘You’re no different, André. You’re a gentleman all through.’

I sensed the movement just a second before the pain hit me, and next moment I was bent double on the ground, eyes screwed shut in the effort not to scream. It took me a moment to become aware of anything else, then I saw his feet step past my face and his hand reach down into the grass to retrieve his sword. I peered up and there he was above me, sword steady in his hand.

The little bastard had kneed me in the balls.

He looked down at me dispassionately. ‘What was that about me being a gentleman?’

For a moment I’ll admit to a twinge of alarm, then a little smile twitched the corners of his mouth, and I’m afraid I had to laugh. It was excruciating, but I couldn’t help it. I coughed, retched, and said ‘All right, so you’re evil as well.’

He laughed too, the kid, he knelt down beside me and waited for my contortions to subside. ‘I’m sorry. But you’re wrong about me, Stefan, you really are.’

‘Evidently.’ I’d done the sensible thing and judged him by my experience, but the problem with André de Roland was he wasn’t like anyone else I’ve ever known.

He said gently ‘I’m sorry about your brother.’

I sat up rather gingerly and looked at him. There was a graze on his jaw where my guard had struck, but nothing in his eyes but concern.

I said ‘I know,’ and was surprised to find it was true.

We sat in silence a while. The singing from the Hermitage seemed to grow louder, accompanied by a rhythmic stamping of feet. I might have known it, they were at that stage of drunkenness, they’d started on that sodding ‘
Petit Oiseau
’.

I said ‘They’ll come looking for you in a minute.’

He nodded reluctantly and stood up. He sheathed his sword, turned half back towards me and said ‘It’s all right, I do understand.’

‘What?’

He gave a tiny shrug. ‘I can see why you won’t want to know me in the army. I wouldn’t either.’

I stood to brush myself down. ‘Oh, I don’t know, it might be entertaining.’

He was very still. ‘You mean that?’

I said ‘Yes, little general. I think I do.’

Twenty-Six

Père Gérard Benoît

The Second Battle of Dax took place on the morning of 8 June in the year of our Lord 1640.

There is little about the prosperity of our village to suggest the tragic conflict that once raged within its enclosing Wall, yet the signs are there if the patient visitor will look for them. The crosses either side of the Dax-Verdâme Road mark the place where the barricade once stood, and are a permanent memorial to the villagers who lost their lives there. Les Étoiles still stands, and its pockmarked walls bear witness to the savagery of the battle which raged in its environs, while two crossed pike take pride of place about the fireplace inside the Quatre Corbeaux. The stables where so many of our brave young men met their end have long since been pulled down, and a new alehouse to welcome travellers erected in their place, yet the sign above its door gives it the name Le Tireur d’Élite, and the painting is clearly recognizable as that of a marksman in the act of firing a musket.

Our village inn, Le Soleil Splendide, has been restored to its former condition, save only for the fine back gates, which are of decorated wrought iron, and represent the work of our own village smith, Colin Lefebvre. Of the infamous watchtower there is now no trace, and with it has gone the only tangible memorial to the achievements of our Seigneur on that most desperate morning. Neither is there anything to mark the scene of the last stand at our Gate. Nothing is there now but our own Wall, seemingly unmarked and unchanged by time. The embrasures which once housed mighty cannon now enclose only baskets of flowers, while the great Gate of Dax stands forever open, revealing the green plains of Picardie stretching away to the beech forest on the horizon. These things are all that remain to show how André de Roland, Sieur of Dax, fought alone against his enemies to win our freedom, and perhaps, in the end, they are the memorial that would have pleased him most.

Carlos Corvacho

Funny kind of mood there was those days, almost expectant, if you know what I mean, and people going quiet when they saw us coming. My Capitán took to nosing round the woods again, said he was hunting, but I guessed he thought the rebels might be back, and was keeping his eyes open for signs of activity.

That’s what he was doing that last day too. The Thursday, this would have been, Señor, 7 June. I was with him that afternoon, and it happened we picked up the trace of a wild boar. We followed it all the way into the north-eastern corner of the Forest of Verdâme, then the beast broke cover right in front of us and went belting off towards this great rocky mound on our right.

‘Now we have him, Carlos,’ says my Capitán. ‘He can’t climb that.’ So we go plunging after it, but when we get to the knoll it’s completely disappeared. ‘That’s interesting,’ says my Capitán, then suddenly he exclaims, and when I join him I see why. There were these two great rocks like cliffs, Señor, only overlapping very slightly, like the two halves of a kissing gate, so there was actually a little path between them. A well-worn path, by the look of it, and wide enough to take a full-grown boar. There were hoof prints as well as boot tracks. Horses.

‘Very interesting indeed,’ says my Capitán, and guides his horse carefully through. And there it is, this distinct track, leading away bold as anything off towards the east Wall. So we follow it quite a way until we see the gorge coming up and think we’re going to have to turn back, but that’s when we get the really big surprise. Once we get to the brink, there’s suddenly no gorge at all. There’s been some kind of landslide at one time, Señor, and there’s this one part of the ravine where it’s almost filled in, you could ride a horse right across it. It was steep down and up again, and very narrow, a little like a single-track bridge if you take my meaning, but we rode over it with no trouble at all.

We knew what we’d found then. Once the gorge was crossed, there was nothing to stop a man riding on through the forest and out into France where the Wall stopped. The Capitán reckoned the rebels hadn’t got a new base at all, they were simply living in France and nipping in and out when they felt like it.

‘Not much we can do about that then, is there, Señor?’ says I.

‘Is there not?’ says my gentleman, with a little smile. ‘If we picket this road secretly, who knows what we might catch?’

And at that moment, Señor, at that very moment, we hear the sound of a horse approaching from the east, and faint in the air we hear a man singing.

Jacques Gilbert

The light died very slowly that day.

It was still warm in the early evening, and the sun was giving that sort of gentle, mellow light that colours everything like a stained-glass window. Stefan was wearing a deep-red shirt, and it blazed up and made him look like one of the rougher apostles. The grass was that kind of rich, golden green that almost hurts your eyes, and the trees glowed like dark fire.

Everything was quiet. There wasn’t any more training going on, there wasn’t any point, we were ready, and it was now. We were waiting in a half-hearted kind of way to see if Crespin was going to bring any last-minute instructions, but we didn’t really expect him, it felt like that was over and done. People were spending last time with their families, or just sitting chatting with their friends, but all speaking in low voices, like we were in church.

A blackbird started up singing when the light began to fade. It stuck itself high in a beech tree where everyone could see it, and sang and trilled away for ages like it was giving us a concert. The boy was sitting hunched over a last letter to Anne, and I remember him lifting his head to listen, the glow of the sun warm on his face. A bit of me wondered if I oughtn’t to be telling him the truth, and how I’d feel if he died without ever knowing I was his brother, then I told myself if he died I was bloody well going to die too, and not worry about any of that old stuff, the things that happened before we were either of us born. What mattered was what was happening now, these summer evening moments that felt like the last there’d ever be.

Some of the men were strolling into the woods with women, and Stefan actually took two. I remember Marcel looking after them, something sad in his eyes. Giles was away longer than anyone, and when he emerged again he hadn’t got his usual smug expression, he was looking sort of dazed, and holding Margot’s hand. I could have done the same thing myself, I suppose, but I somehow didn’t fancy it. I’d got this strange kind of peaceful feeling coming over me, like when you’ve just come out of Confession, feeling you never want to do anything bad ever again. Normally that only lasts about two minutes, but this evening I felt like it might last for ever, however long for ever was going to be.

After a while, people started to drift off to their homes, or where they needed to be for the start of the action, until in the end there was nobody left but us, and the light was gone at last. It’s funny, I kept feeling the others were somehow still there with us. I could almost hear the ghost of that blackbird singing in the dark.

Carlos Corvacho

It’s the letter gets my Capitán most excited, Señor, but it’s all in code, and the courier in no state to tell us anything, being deep unconscious from being knocked off his horse by my boar-spear. It’s coming on dark too, and no time to hang around, so we bundle him up on my horse and ride back fast as we can to the barracks.

My gentleman locks himself away with the Colonel, and they spend hours poring over that cipher with no result at all. Then the courier starts stirring at last, so we douse him with cold water till he starts to mumble, then our officers take turns at him, demanding to know who the letter was for and what was in it. We were sure he knew something, Señor, the use of the code told us that. A code’s no good unless you’ve got people writing to each other regular; it had to be one of a series. The courier had to be regular too, he knew exactly where he was going, he should be able to tell us all we wanted to know.

Well, able he may have been, but willing he was not. A very young man he was, very frightened, but very brave. He claimed he was only a courier, he knew nothing of what was in the letter or how to find the recipient, he said they always came to meet him on the road, which we didn’t believe for a moment, Señor, the timing would have been impossible. So the Capitán keeps on asking, until at last the man says ‘I tell you, I don’t know, I’m not important enough, the Maréchal would never confide in someone like me.’

‘The Maréchal?’ says the Colonel.

The man shuts his mouth fast, but now we know it’s serious. There’s an army out there somewhere in communication with our rebels, and that can only be bad for us.

‘Put him to the question,’ says the Colonel. ‘Now.’

Jacques Gilbert

We were in the Forge by midnight. The wagons were already in place, one laden with barrels outside Les Étoiles, and two filled with pitch and straw standing innocently by the bakery. Everything looked ready.

We were just sitting down to eat when Arnould Rousseau came shambling in. He scrabbled on his wig at sight of Mme Lefebvre, refused an offer of lentil soup with a sort of shudder, and said ‘Rope’s in place, and the password’s San Isidoro of Sevilla. Bloody silly, but there it is. I picked it up twice, I’m quite sure.’

He was a miracle, Arnould, he really was. He’d spent the last months wandering all over the south wing of the barracks to get the information we needed, he’d gone everywhere bringing food to people who’d never asked for it, but the Spaniards just thought he was mad and left him alone. I could understand that actually, I mean when someone cooks as well as Arnould you don’t bother about little things like him being insane.

There was nothing to do after he’d gone, so we changed into our Spanish dress and sat in the Forge to wait. It was warm in there, and I was feeling almost drowsy as I watched Colin hammering. The Spaniards might not buy the spit he was making for them but someone would, people will always want iron.

The boy was staring into the fire without blinking; it made my eyeballs feel dry just to watch him. The light was flickering over his face, and I found myself remembering a night four years ago, and a twelve-year-old boy watching the burning of his home. I realized he’d made a promise all the way back then, and tonight was the night we were going to make it good.

Carlos Corvacho

My gentleman never could bear torture, especially the rack, he’d a real horror of it. He came striding into his office, and I only just got a basin to him in time.

He wiped his face, clenched the sides of the basin, and said ‘He is crying for his mother.’

I said ‘Why don’t you go to bed now, Señor? The Colonel’s in charge, isn’t he?’

The Colonel never missed an interrogation, Señor, he’d quite a fascination with them. He wrote a poem once called ‘The Mastery of the Body’, all about the dialogue during torture between the soul and body. I’m told it’s very moving.

My gentleman went to the mirror to adjust himself and smooth his moustache.

‘There are nearly four hundred men in this garrison, Carlos, two at the Château, and two more at Verdâme, to say nothing of those billeted around the villages, and the wives and followers. Would you have them all die because I had not the stomach to hurt an enemy soldier?’