A Shred of Honour (31 page)

‘Did this warehouse provide the flares when we attacked Bonaparte’s guns as well?’

‘I have never known a man on the edge of perdition who asked so many questions.’

‘It’s a bad habit. I’m so fond of it, I’d like to keep it.’

‘The Irish have a reputation for being amusing.’

‘There are a dozen men downstairs. They won’t let you pass.’

Serota waved the open lantern at the truncated trail of fuse which hung from the edge of the rocket, cut so that it would go off in seconds. ‘Then you must order them to do so.’

‘I’m sorry, Colonel, I can’t do that. You are a man who has betrayed more than your allies. You even butchered your own men in that useless attack on the Batterie de Bregaillon. I don’t know Spain, which you claim to represent. But there’s hardly a doubt in my mind that most of the people who live there would be deeply ashamed of what you’ve done. I think they’d like to see a garotte round your scrawny yellow neck as much as I would.’

Serota moved to the side of the rocket tube, and shifted the lantern till the candle touched the fuse. He was on his heels, anticipating the moment when Markham would try to rush him. Instead the cold indifferent stare from that quarter induced confusion, forcing him to look at the weapon he’d chosen to assure himself it had no faults. If he saw Markham’s hand behind his back it didn’t register. He was looking down at the short spluttering fuse, giving it more attention than his intended victim.

There is a point, when setting off a rocket, as the fuse enters the body of the piece, a moment when it seems to go silent. That is the very second at which it fires. It did so now, throwing Serota backwards as the flames shot out of
the rear. He lifted his head to look at his victim, and the bang as the rocket smashed into the double doors threw him momentarily. They were blown open, crashing against the outer walls. Within the blink of an eye the flare exploded, lighting up the whole of the quay and the harbour. But then the doors swung back, to reveal his intended victim, whole and unscathed, stretched out on the floor.

Serota didn’t know his uniform was alight, smouldering where the flames had scorched it, didn’t know as he rushed at Markham that he trailed smoke behind him. His sword was out, intent on impaling the Irishman. He cut hard enough to throw Serota back. The yellow teeth were bared, the eyes maddened and the breath rasping. Serota was beyond any sense, and seemed to run himself on to Markham’s sword rather than take avoiding action.

Rannoch’s head came level with the top of the stairs as the Spaniard crumpled in a heap at Markham’s feet. ‘There was a moment there, sir, when I have to admit you had me worried. But you Irishmen, when it comes to danger, have a luck we Scotsmen lack.’

Markham, panting more from relief than effort, pulled his sword from Serota’s hollow chest.

‘Then why is it, Rannoch, that when the Scots are conquered in battle, they end up, within a decade, running the whole bloody British government?’

‘Might it be brains, do you think?’ the Scotsman replied, as he began to remove Serota’s boots.

They’d carried Rossignol into the study and laid him on a chaise. He was breathing heavily, with Pascalle kneeling, weeping, at his feet. Eveline stood by one wall clutching and unclutching her hands, her eyes unfocussed, like someone whose world had fallen apart. Celeste held Jean-Baptiste’s hand, he alone unaware of what was happening. Markham had Rannoch lead Pascalle
away, then knelt to examine the wound. Then he took the hand that the old man waveringly extended.

‘There was no malice, Lieutenant,’ Rossignol whispered. ‘I hope you know that.’

‘Yes. I do.’

‘But I did lie to you many times.’ His eyes shut suddenly, his chest swelled, and a rasping noise came from this throat. But it didn’t stop him talking. ‘You thought you’d found me out, but I merely had to use one lie to disguise another.’

‘Sure, if I had a coin for every lie I’ve told, I’d own half of County Wexford.’

Rossignol didn’t understand, and the confusion showed on his face. ‘Serota never believed in the boy. But neither did you.’

‘Hanger?’

His voice gurgled as he replied, almost as if he were trying to laugh. ‘Him, yes. I count your Colonel as a success. His vanity was the greatest. That is my supreme asset, the vanity of others. No one flatters a man more than he will flatter himself. Once I have found the key to that, people make themselves my hostage. And they are so happy. The Picards were even delighted that you were not part of our shared secret. It is like conjuring, letting each person know only that which they need.’

‘Yet it all ends in tragedy, as it has here. And something tells me, Rossignol, that this isn’t the first time.’

‘It is the nature of my life. And time is an enemy. Perhaps I spent too long in Toulon. One small untruth must be used to support another. Too many, or one unguarded moment, and the edifice begins to unravel.’

Markham was tempted to ask about lies that could be classed as great whoppers, the category most of the things Rossignol had told him fell into. But to chide a dying man would be heartless.

‘Pascalle and Eveline?’ Rossignol croaked.

‘Celeste and Jean-Baptiste,’ Markham replied.

That brought a ghost of a smile to the now bloodless lips. ‘You catch me on the thorn once more, monsieur.’

‘Where are the Picards and their servants?’

‘Gone,’ he growled. ‘Took ship as soon as they knew that the town would fall.’

‘Without telling you?’

‘Their money and their lives meant more to them than their loyalty to their King.’

‘But he wasn’t their King.’

Rossignol tried to raise himself, his voice rasping and angry. ‘They thought he was. And these are the kind of people who look down on such as me.’

Markham changed the subject to calm him down, his voice dropping even more so that only Rossignol coud hear him. ‘You told me about Pascalle, but who exactly is Eveline? Not your daughter, I’m sure.’

‘No. A collaborator, a good one, who enjoys subterfuge as much as I do. Shall I call her an actress, and a consummate one, who has been unlucky in her chosen profession. With me, she had a chance to exercise a wasted talent.’ That, no doubt evasive, still imparted a great deal, and had him lifting his head to look at Eveline. The appellation actress covered a great variety of vocations, which, in an overcrowded milieu, ranged from leading lady to common whore. Just where she stood on the rungs of this ladder was something he really didn’t want to know. ‘But she was fond of you, Lieutenant, truly so. I didn’t deceive you about that. It would grieve me if anything happened to either of them.’

‘I cannot guarantee anything for my men, let alone the rest of the people in this house. Right now we are all safer here. Perhaps, when the streets have cleared, we will be able to get out of Toulon.’

‘But you will try.’

‘Yes.’

Rossignol’s body was racked by deep pain as Markham
nodded, but the words he managed to gasp made him considerably tighten his grip on the old man’s hand. ‘Fouquert will come here, looking for me.’

‘Why?’

‘I was his liaison with Serota. They communicated through Guillaume Rossignol. That is why we didn’t flee when we saw your troops withdraw. We knew we were safe.’

‘How did this come about?’

The head turned away. ‘Circumstances.’

‘You released him from the coach while I was asleep.’

Rossignol’s eyes, when he turned to face Markham again, held not a trace of guilt. ‘You left the wounded soldier’s bayonet beside me. It was an opportunity. It is unhealthy, in today’s troubled world, to make enemies in any quarter. And it was you who told me that the British would not send troops. A man like me must prepare for everything.’

‘Did you offer to sell him Jean-Baptiste?’

That produced a fit of coughing, and the first hint of frothy blood around Rossignol’s lips. But he didn’t answer the question. ‘Use the old smuggling tunnels. They lead from an entrance in Picard’s study. Eveline and Pascalle will show you.’ The pain he was suffering made him screw up his face. ‘Are you a Catholic, Lieutenant?’

‘If you want a priest,’ Markham whispered, ‘I don’t think I can get you one.’

‘No priests!’ He clutched Markham’s hand a bit tighter. ‘If I must confess, let it be to a man who feels he has as many faults as me.’

‘And what, pray, are my faults?’

‘Vanity, monsieur, like all men. But not so much that you do not know your own weaknesses. Your past troubles you, and sometimes blinds you.’

The light was beginning to go from the eyes. Markham had seen it before, that moment of approaching death,
when pain ceases and only the surprise shows in the pupils.

‘I can’t confess you, Rossignol, since any faith I had died long ago. But there is an English writer called Shakespeare, who said something about every exit being an entrance somewhere else. If there is a supreme being, I’m sure he’ll open the door for a scoundrel like you.’

‘Sure,’ he sighed.

‘Even Almighty God needs a laugh.’

Guillaume Rossignol died as the first sounds of the Rape of Toulon penetrated the thick walls of the Picard house.

There was no time for sobbing, and little time for sleep. Markham had his men carry Rossignol’s body up to the first floor of the warehouse, there to join that of Serota. His boots had been removed too, and now graced the feet of Quinlan. The two Spanish soldiers felled by Rannoch, one dead and the other unconscious, had been stripped, though looking at Dymock and Leech, both with Spanish muskets in their hands, he could see that their footwear was of poor quality. All the while, loud enough to penetrate the thick stone walls, the sounds of death increased outside on the quay.

‘They’re bayonetting them, sir,’ sobbed Yelland, who’d been put to watch, his fair hair flopping over his eyes. ‘Men, women and bairns. If they run, they drown.’

He couldn’t bring himself to admit that they needed that quay cleared to have any chance of escape. It was just too cruel a thought to contemplate. ‘I’d like to stop it, Yelland. But if we show our noses outside that door it will be bayonets for us, if not something much worse. Now get some sleep, and put wadding in your ears if you can’t shut out the noise.’

Eveline and Pascalle had gone to their room. He thought about knocking, to say that they should, for safety’s sake, be ready to leave, but decided against it, unwilling to undergo another dose of Pascalle’s grief, and even less inclined to exchange so much as a look with Eveline, in case, in her eyes, he would see that he’d been the final victim of Rossignol’s deceit.

He found Celeste and Jean-Baptiste in the kitchens,
sitting at the table, the young girl wearing an expression that exactly matched that of the boy, as she contemplated a repetition of her previous experiences.

‘Do you feel up to preparing some food?’

‘Why?’ she asked softly.

‘My men will need it, and so will you if we are to escape.’

‘Escape! To where?’

Markham, weary himself, couldn’t quite yet answer that. The French army was still camped all around the city, blocking off the land routes. Only the sea offered safety, and that was precarious to a man who had no idea how to navigate. But they couldn’t stay here. Almost any other building would do, as long as it allowed them to hide. But where that might be, he could not bring himself to guess. He needed to shut his eyes, if only for half an hour. Then perhaps he might be able to think straight.

‘Food, if you please.’ Before turning to leave, he laid his watch on the table. ‘I’m going to have a sleep on that chaise in the main hall. Please wake me in half an hour.’

The doors to the Rossignol rooms were shut. He passed by quietly, entering his own. Opening Frobisher’s sea-chest, he took out his best shoes and put them on, followed by a fresh shirt and the uniform coat, the pair of pistols and the cartouche containing powder and balls. He laughed inwardly, recalling how he had said that he’d return the valuable items. That was going to be a very difficult promise to keep. Returning to the hall, he lay back and closed his eyes.

Celeste woke him, as requested, laying his watch on his chest without saying a word. Markham pulled himself to his feet, his first conscious thought being that, if he’d dreamed at all, it hadn’t provided him with a way out of his predicament. Gathering Frobisher’s things, he crossed the courtyard. He’d barely entered the warehouse when the banging started on the heavily studded door that led to the quay.

‘Everybody up,’ he yelled as he ran for the first floor. He threw Frobisher’s possessions into the first available pair of hands, ordered the pistols to be loaded, and struggled out of his coat. Stepping over the bodies of Rossignol and Serota, he inched open one of the loading bay doors. Through the slight crack he saw a multitude of torches, and by their light that the harbour was full of floating corpses. He imagined the quayside being dark brown from their blood, interspersed with deep red pools where the cobbles sagged to form a puddle. The crowd, waving makeshift tricolours, clothing stained to match the red caps of liberty, had turned from their killing and was now milling outside the main entrance. Someone saw the door to the loading bay move, shouted and raised a hand to point, every eye then following the gesture. Markham slammed it shut as the crowd roared. The overall effect was indistinct, but the words ‘traitor’ and ‘guillotine’ were clear enough.

‘Halsey, get the Rossignol girls out of their room. Dymock, Hollick, I want the means to make a tricolour flag. Tear down the drapes if you have to. Those of you who’ve not got anything on your feet, search the house for footwear. And take anything you can find to use as a weapon.’

‘Which way will we get out?’ Rannoch asked softly. Markham, with no conviction at all, nodded towards the rear of the building, a notion which made little impression on the Scotsman. ‘If those intent on looting the place are out the front, sir, they will be at the back also.’

‘Check that, they might not have thought of it yet.’

Markham heard Rannoch call to Gibbons as he inched the door open again. A group of citizens were pushing their way through the mass of bodies, carrying a heavy ship’s spar big enough to batter the door down. Several missiles, accompanied by curses, flew in his direction, bouncing off the thick wood of the door as he slammed it shut.

‘The Rossignol girls have gone!’ yelled Halsey, his head appearing at the same time. ‘Cleared out by the look of it, though they’ve left most of their clothes.’

‘Damn! They must have slipped past me while I was asleep.’

Rannoch pushed past the marine corporal. ‘The mob out the back is thicker than the one in front, and they are at the timbers with an axe. We pushed the coach right up to the door to slow them up, and Gibbons is keeping watch.’

Pascalle and Eveline must have used the tunnels. In a city being put to the sack, the girls had only one place they could go to feel safe. That was to Fouquert. And the only thing they could offer him as an excuse for keeping their heads attached to their necks would be information about him and his men. One by one they’d drifted back, armed with knives and cleavers from the kitchens, all with something on their feet. Tully and Yelland looked particularly incongruous in highly polished dancing pumps.

‘Ettrick, Quinlan, search Picard’s study. There’s an escape route somewhere, and I need you to find it. Dornan, my pistols, if you please.’ Dornan passed them to him, without any attempt at haste, which earned him a glare. ‘Stand here. When I say so, push the door open. As soon as I’ve fired my pistols shut it again.’

Raising one, he nodded, and Dornan obliged. The men with the spar, the only regular grouping in an otherwise heaving mass, were easy to spot. He’d be lucky to actually hit them, but that didn’t matter, since a ball into the surrounding mob would cause enough panic to slow them down. The crash of the pistols, in the low-ceilinged chamber, was deafening, slowing Dornan’s reactions just enough to allow those below to aim several pieces of the torn-up
pavé
in his direction. One came right through the gap, forcing Markham to throw himself backwards to avoid serious injury.

He glared into Dornan’s bovine face. ‘A little swifter next time, if you please. Leech, Dymock, there’s a party with a battering ram below. You’ll see them as Dornan opens the door. Don’t bother to aim, just get as close as you can.’

Ettrick came up behind him as he began to reload the pistols, and tugged at his shirt so that he could whisper in his ear. ‘The study door was locked, but Quinlan picked it. One of the bookshelves has a handle at the back, but we was afraid to tug at it without your say-so.’

‘Good. Sergeant Rannoch, everyone bar Dymock and Leech into the hallway outside the study. Halsey, get Celeste and the boy, as well as any food they can carry. Schutte, take Yelland and set up something at the bottom of the stairs to start a fire.’

Dornan swung the door too wide, giving Markham a fleeting glimpse of the Grosse Tour, as the two men fired off the unfamiliar Spanish weapons. Even as he was yelling at him to shut the damn thing, he had the ridiculous notion of taking Rossignol’s unfinished painting with him. What a pleasure it would be to present it, as a wedding present, to Hanger! But there was no time for such fantasies. He didn’t have much hope that they would survive. And if they were to have any chance, they had to leave now.

At the bottom of the stairs Schutte and Yelland had stacked everything loose they could find around a barrel of turpentine, then placed a lantern on top. That last, hastily-fired salvo had gained little in the way of time. The crash, as the battering ram hit the door, reverberated round the chamber. The temptation to light it now was strong. But logic dictated that he wait until he knew they had an escape route themselves.

‘Get something across that door to hold them up.’

Rannoch was in the hallway, loading a fowling piece that he’d found. Halsey was taking food from Celeste and Jean-Baptiste, passing it round, stuffing it into mouths
where the hands were too occupied to receive it. Hollick had draped himself in the strands of the makeshift tricolour he’d been asked to find. Markham pushed past and joined Quinlan in the booklined study. They hadn’t even tried to conceal the handle properly. The dull bronze shone in the candlelight, the ledgers that were normally used to hide it thrown carelessly on the floor.

‘Quinlan, take this pistol. Aim it at the door. If there’s anyone on the other side, shoot them in the face.’

He turned the handle and pulled, watching Quinlan’s screwed-up features and stiff shoulders for the first sign of trouble. As they relaxed, so did he. Stepping round the bookshelves, he looked into the void, his nose twitching at the musty smell that wafted out. There were stairs cut into the rock, and slipping down, lantern in hand, he saw that after a few yards the tunnel split in two.

‘They’re nearly through the doors at the back, sir,’ shouted Ettrick. ‘Sergeant sent me to tell you.’

Markham emerged from the tunnel as a shot rang out from behind the house. ‘Fetch the rest of the men from the warehouse. Tell Schutte to set light to that turpentine barrel. Get Rannoch and Gibbons in, then bar the back door. Everyone else in here.’

They crowded into the study, knocking over the round table as they filled the room. The heavy book with the embossed cover fell, sending Rossignol’s drawings flying. Jean-Baptiste let go of Celeste’s hands and scrabbled around picking them up. Halsey tried to stop the boy, since time was precious, but Celeste pushed him back, and got down on her knees to assist. Markham, watching, was vaguely aware that the drawings were numerous, and that some had been added to those he’d already looked at, these being coloured rather than just linear sketches.

By the time they were gathered Rannoch had shepherded the rest into the room to join them. ‘The door to the warehouse is bolted,’ he said, his speech controlled
even in this dire emergency. ‘But that will not stop the flames. And I do not think the rear door to the house, a flimsy thing, will stand for long against those axes.’

‘We have a way,’ Markham replied, addressing them all, as he grasped the handle. ‘This leads to an old smuggling tunnel. God knows where it comes out. We can’t get out the front or the back without passing through that mob. And we can’t stay and hold the place. Even if we succeeded, Fouquert is bound to come here. That’s the man we tied to the back of the coach at Ollioules. I’ll leave you to guess at the fate you’ll have in his hands.’

The question of where they were to go, even if they did get clear of the Picard house, hung in the air. But no-one asked it, since without an opinion such an enquiry was worthless.

‘We may come out into a public place. Front and back, the crowd outside are scum. There’s not one of them who hasn’t committed murder since last night. If they get in your way, kill them. Rannoch, behind me. Halsey, you bring up the rear. Celeste and the boy in the middle. Quinlan, re-lock that study door.’ The soldier knelt down and pulled out a set of picks as they filed down the stairs to crowd into a small chamber at the bottom. ‘There has to be a way to shut that entrance, Halsey. Wait till Quinlan’s through. If there’s a bolt of some kind, use it.’

Markham was thinking back to the day he’d gone after Fouquert, and the way he’d disappeared, which meant he knew about these tunnels too. That was worrying, but it was a case of the lesser of two evils. One of these exits must lead to the alley into which he’d been chased, or to a building that backed onto it. But which one? They had little time in which to make a mistake. Looking at the floor, covered in the accumulated dust of ages, he saw the faint traces where something heavy had recently been dragged across it. It could only be Eveline and Pascalle, inadvertently leaving a trail to be followed.

There was a dull thud, that seemed to come at them
through the very walls, which he hoped was the barrel of turpentine exploding. With luck the whole warehouse was now alight. In time, the fire would reach the top floor, and all those combustibles that had so worried Picard. Then, with luck, they would go up, taking the whole of the rampaging mob with them.

‘Wait here, while Rannoch and I go forward and look.’

They didn’t have to go far. The tunnel ended at a sort of spiral staircase, which rose to a wooden trapdoor. Rannoch, having first put his ear to the timber, and heard no sound, pushed gently. When it didn’t move, he tried more force, increasing that till the veins were standing out on his neck. He couldn’t even budge it a fraction, which indicated that it was either tightly bolted, or under something so heavy that it was impossible to lift.

‘We’ll have to try the other way,’ said Markham.

‘Well, let us hope that leads to somewhere,’ Rannoch replied. ‘It is for certain that we cannot go backwards.’

This proved a much longer tunnel, which twisted and turned so that they soon lost any sense of direction. If there were exits, they weren’t visible in the light from his lantern. Frustrated, Markham called a halt and stood still for a moment, feeling the temperature rise as the heat of. candle, added to human bodies, filled the confined space. He was trying to get his bearings, conjuring up a picture of the study, its position in the house, and the turns they’d taken.