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The Frenchman swore softly underneath his breath. “Are we to go home as if we were defeated then?” he demanded. “Without firing a shot? That will please the king, that will silence Parliament! They will say that we were suborned, that we are the queen’s men, papist men! They will say that this mission was a masque, a piece of theater. They will say we were players, not soldiers.”

Buckingham rose from his seat and stretched, his dark curls brushing the gilded roof of his cabin. “Not them,” he said softly. John watched warily. He knew the signs.

“They will mock us in the streets,” Soubise lamented.

“Not them,” Buckingham repeated.

“They will say it was a gesture to seduce the Queen of France,” Soubise said, going as far as he dared. “That you were throwing down a glove to her husband and that you did not fulfil your challenge.”

For a moment John thought that the man had gone too far. Buckingham stiffened at the mention of the queen’s name. But then his smile returned. “Not them,” he said. “And I will tell you why they will not mock. Because we
will
lay siege to the island, we
will
take the island, then we
will
take La Rochelle, and we will go home as conquering heroes.”

The Frenchman gasped and then beamed as the cabin of men burst into applause. Buckingham gleamed at the praise. “Set to!” he shouted above the laughter and applause. “We will land tomorrow!”

It was a shambles but it did the job. Inexperienced sailors, press-ganged from ale houses up and down the south coast of England, fought to keep the landing boats steady in the currents that swirled around the boggy and uninviting beaches. Inexperienced soldiers press-ganged from the poorhouses and ale houses of England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland cringed from the waves and from the French soldiers, forewarned and splendidly armed, drawn up to greet them. All would have been lost but for the duke, conspicuous beneath his standard, dressed in glorious gold and crimson, who rowed up and down between the boats and urged the men on shore. Reckless of danger, laughing when the cannon from his ships roared over his head, he was a leader from a fable. He was indeed a champion fit to bed the most beautiful queen in Europe. When they saw him, still sporting his diamonds, with his golden sword on his hip, their spirits lifted. It was impossible that such a man, such a glamorous golden laughing man, could ever be defeated.

His clear voice could be heard above the noise of the waves, the thunderous bellow of the cannon and the yells of ill-trained officers. “Come on!” he shouted. “Come on! For God and the king! For the king! For me! And let’s bugger the Catholics!”

They landed in a roar at his bawdiness, and the French, faced by an enemy suddenly renewed, powerful and even laughing, turned and fled. By the afternoon Buckingham stood on the beach of Rhé, his sword wet only with seawater, and knew himself to be triumphant.

John went inland with the scouts and saw the French cavalry driven back and back over brackish fields of rough grass where a hundred, a thousand, red poppies blew. “Like soldiers in red coats,” John said. He shivered as if it were an omen and bent to pluck a couple of the drying seed heads.

“Still gardening, Mr. Tradescant?” one of the scouts asked.

“They are a fine color,” he said. “A plentiful show.”

“Red as blood,” the scout said.

“Yes.”

The English luck held. Within days Buckingham held the whole of the little island of Rhé and the French army was holed up in one tiny half-finished castle on the landward side: St. Martin. John was sent to spy out the lie of the land.

“Tell me what their fort is like, John. Give me an idea of the size and how strong it is,” Buckingham commanded, as he strolled down the lines and came across Tradescant, digging a little nursery bed for any rare plants he might find during his stay. “Leave gardening, man, and tell me how their fort is placed.”

John put his trowel to one side at once, and slipped his satchel on his back, ready to set out.

“I’m no engineer,” he warned Buckingham.

“I know that,” his lord replied. “But you’re careful and you have a good eye, and you have been in a siege and under fire, which is more than can be said for any one of us. Go and have a look and when you come back, come to me privately and tell me what you think. I can’t trust a word these Frenchmen speak. All they want is victory at whatever price, and that price would include me and they would still pay it gladly.”

John nodded. He did not ask what, in that case, they were doing there, camped on a French beach on a small island off France. It was not his nature to complain of the obvious. He took up his blackthorn stick and set off, along the beach toward the other side of the island. Buckingham watched him go and noted the limp which favored John’s aching arthritic knee.

He was back late in the evening, with a brace of cuttings and a rough sketch.

“Good God, what have you in your hat?” Buckingham demanded. He was seated before his tent, at a table of exquisite marquetry, looking young and careless with his white linen shirt undone at the throat and his hair tumbling in black curls about his shoulders.

John carefully took one of the plants by the leaf and held it up. “It’s a new sort of gillyflower,” he said. “I’ve never seen such leaves before.” He held out the plant. “Do the leaves have a scent?”

Buckingham sniffed. “Nothing I can smell, John. And — forgive me — but you were sent out as a scout to bring us news of the French fortification, not to go plant-gathering.”

“I sat among the plants while I drew a sketch of the fort,” John said, with simple dignity. “A man can do two things at once.”

Buckingham grinned at him. “A man such as you can do a dozen,” he said sweetly. “Show me your plan, John.”

John unfolded the paper and spread it on the little table before his master. “The fort is built like a star,” he said. “And only half-finished on one side. Our trouble will be that the north side, on the strand, is facing La Rochelle over the sea and can be easily relieved by the French troops who are camped around the besieged city on the mainland. We hold the island, right enough; they will get no help from here. And the town of La Rochelle is holding out against the papist French army. But there are sally ports all along the base of the St. Martin’s fort wall and they have boats moored ready. We will have to cut them off from the mainland before they can be reduced.”

Buckingham looked at John’s sketch. “What about a direct attack? Never mind starving them. An attack against the walls?”

John’s mouth turned down. “I don’t advise it,” he said briefly. “The walls are new-built and high. The windows look very deep. You can’t hammer your way in, and you will lose half your men trying to scale it.”

“They have to be starved out?”

John nodded.

“So if we put our army all around them on the landward side, can you build me a barrier to span the seaward side to prevent them getting ships in and out?”

John thought for a moment. “I can try, my lord,” he said. “But these are high seas. It’s not like building a raft across the Isis, it’s like building a raft across Portsmouth harbor. The waves come very high, and if there is a storm, anything we built would be smashed.”

“Surely if we have enough wood, and chains…”

“If the summer weather remains calm it might hold,” John said doubtfully. “But one night of high winds would smash it.”

Buckingham got up swiftly and strode forward, looking down on the fort. “I tell you, John, I cannot stay here seated before a little fort, looking at it forever,” he said, his voice so low that no one but Tradescant could hear him. “I am laying siege to them, and they are trapped inside the fort, right enough; but all I have to feed my men is what I brought in my ships. I need support as much as the fort. Their army and their suppliers are over a small channel of water, while my army and suppliers are many miles away. And their king is commanded by Richelieu, while my king…” He broke off, and then saw John’s uneasy face.

“He will not forget me,” he said firmly. “Even now he will be preparing a fleet to come after us and revictual and supply us. But you see that I am in a hurry. I cannot wait. The French in the citadel of St. Martin must starve and surrender at once. Otherwise we will beat them to it. We will starve and surrender even though we are supposed to be laying siege to them.”

“I’ll plan something,” John promised.

There were no tents for the men nor for the poorer officers; no one in England had thought that the expedition would need tents. John laid his soldier’s pack on the ground beside the other men, heeled in his new gillyflower in his little nursery bed, and then set about planning his blockade of St. Martin.

Within an hour or two he had his drawing of ships’ timbers and a couple of spare masts chained together. The senior shipwright and John supervised the throwing of the wood in the water and watched the sailors leaning out from little boats and struggling to chain them together.

“Those were our spare masts and timbers to repair the ships,” the shipwright observed dourly. “Better pray we don’t lose a mast on the way home.”

“We can’t go home until the citadel falls,” John reasoned. “First things first.”

“And have you heard when they will come to relieve us?” the shipwright asked. “The lads were saying that a great fleet is coming behind us, now that the king knows that the duke has been successful, now they know that we are at war.”

“It will come soon,” John said, with more confidence than he felt. “My lord told me that the king had promised it.”

John was right about the fragility of the timber barrier. The high wind blowing over their camp in the next week warned him of the storm that was coming. He crawled out of his makeshift shelter and looked out to sea. In the darkness he could see nothing. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Buckingham, sleepless too.

“Will your blockade hold?”

“Not if this wind keeps up,” Tradescant replied. “I am sorry, my lord.”

He could feel the warmth of Buckingham’s breath as he leaned forward to be heard above the storm.

“Don’t ask for pardon, John,” he said. “You warned me of the danger and I told you of the need. But at first light tomorrow get out there and build me another barrier. I must have St. Martin cut off.”

John’s next attempt was to use the landing-craft ships, lashed together prow to stern across the channel before the St. Martin citadel. Two small camps of soldiers were set up at either side, to guard the barrier and to take the occasional pot shot at those citizens of St. Martin who were bold enough to peep over the half-finished walls. The building work on the fort had almost ceased, although the need to finish the citadel had never been greater.

“They’re weary and hungry,” Buckingham said with satisfaction. “We will outlast them.”

Within a week of the new barrier being in place there were more high winds, and the stormy waters, pushing the landing craft in opposite directions, broke through. Some of the officers were openly contemptuous of Tradescant at the council of war.

“I am sorry,” John said dourly. “But you are asking me to build a barrier in what is almost open sea. I can rebuild it. I shall bring the ships closer in to shore and run hawsers one from another. The men on board ship can keep watch, and if a hawser breaks we can replace it. But the weather is getting worse; I can think of nothing which will withstand the autumn storms.”

Buckingham’s face was grave. “The king’s fleet will arrive this month,” he said. “It will come without fail. His Majesty loves me and I have his solemn promise of a fleet in September. I have asked him to send more hawsers and timber as well as munitions, money and food. And three thousand more fighting men. As soon as it arrives we will take the castle and move on to La Rochelle itself. Once we’re on the mainland all our troubles will be over.”

There was a brief dispirited silence. Only John dared voice what they were all thinking. “If he is delayed…,” he began cautiously. “If the king cannot raise the money for the fleet…”

Buckingham’s sharp gaze warned John to be silent; but he doggedly continued.

“I beg your pardon, my lord, but if His Majesty is delayed in sending succor then we will have to withdraw for this year,” he said stoutly.

“You are afraid,” one of the Frenchmen declared. He whispered something behind his hand about gardens and easy lives.

“I know that we are running short of food and munitions,” John said steadily. “And the men are on half-pay. If there was anywhere for them to go they would have deserted already. We cannot make them fight if they are hungry. They cannot shoot their muskets if they have no powder.” He looked at Buckingham, past the gentlemen who were openly laughing at him. “Forgive me, my lord. But I am much with the common soldiers and I know what they are thinking, and I know that they are going hungry.”

Buckingham glanced at his table where a flagon of red wine gleamed beside a plate of biscuits. “Are we short of food?” he asked, surprised.

“We’re not starving; but rations have been cut,” John replied. “The Protestants are sending us all they can from La Rochelle — but it is not justice for us to eat their supplies. We came here to relieve
them,
not to devour their stores. And they themselves are surrounded by the papist French troops; they cannot go on supplying us forever.”

“I will speak with the French commander,” Buckingham said thoughtfully. “He is a gentleman. Perhaps we can make some sort of terms.”

“We should starve them to death and drive them into the sea,” Soubise said hastily. “We have raised the siege; we should smash them into nothing!”

“Next year,” Tradescant said hastily. “When we come back with another fleet.”

A package of letters for the English troops had gotten safely through. The king had written, Buckingham’s wife Kate had written and his mother, the cunning old countess. None of them had sent money to buy food or pay the troops, and there was no news of the fleet being equipped and setting sail. The duke kept the bad news to himself but no one seeing the way he thrust the letter from the king inside his embroidered waistcoat could doubt that Charles had sent fond words but no news of an English fleet ploughing its way through stormy seas from Portsmouth to relieve his beloved friend.