Honour and the Sword (11 page)

Word got round fast. Thibault farm were butchering too, so they took warning and did it that very night, all very secret and quiet, sent it out in little parcels; we had some of the guts salted away ourselves for making andouillettes. So when the soldiers come swaggering in to take the meat there’s nothing but an empty table and the testicles arranged tasteful on a plate. Soldiers went mad. Robert’s dad taken out and beaten, then the cabo says ‘Well if we can’t have the pig we’ll take the sow instead,’ and they took Robert’s sister into the barracks and had her all night. Poor little Agnès, not much above thirteen, we could hear her screaming through the walls. Wouldn’t have happened if d’Estrada’d been there, but he was in Verdâme that night, that de Castilla in charge, for all I knew he took part in it himself.

D’Estrada wasn’t happy when he got back, had his men flogged and de Castilla reprimanded, but he couldn’t do more. Old Père Gérard pleaded for order, but d’Estrada said he couldn’t blame his men for being rough, said it came of people taking pot-shots at them, said it made them touchy. He said ‘You keep your own folk in order,
mon père
, then I’ll be able to do more with mine.’

Not a bad type, d’Estrada, but he didn’t know Picards. We’re not like those madmen in Gascony, we’ll bend a while if we have to, but we won’t take bullying and we won’t be made quiet. There was no more talk of lying down and taking it after that, no talk of anything but fighting.

There was only one answer for it, same as there’s always been, and my dad told me straight. ‘Up to you, Col,’ he said. ‘You’re the man for this, seeing as you know them. You cut on up to Ancre and see the Seigneur.’

Jacques Gilbert

As soon as I saw him I knew this was it. We were fencing in the back meadow with the swords that afternoon, and the moment I saw Colin toiling purposefully up the bridle path I knew what he’d come to say.

I couldn’t really blame him, because it was a dreadful story. I knew Robert Thibault, him and me and Colin went round a lot together in the old days. I didn’t really know Agnès, but I’d dreamed about her sometimes, and now I couldn’t even do that, it felt sort of indecent. But the boy seemed even more upset than I was, which was odd, I mean they weren’t people he knew. He stood with his face turned away all the time Colin was talking, prodding his sword savagely into the grass. When it was over he just stared at the ground and said ‘Right then. That’s it, isn’t it? It’s time to fight back.’

I felt a kind of dull ache of acceptance. ‘How?’

Colin started talking enthusiastically about all those who’d be willing to fight, and of course it was all people our own age or not much older.

‘Haven’t we any veterans at all?’ asked the boy. ‘No one who knows how to go about something like this?’

We hadn’t. There was M. Gauthier, of course, and Jacob Pasle the woodcutter, who was even older and had shaky hands with all brown spots, but that was about it. I said bitterly ‘It won’t be much of an army.’

André looked at me. ‘We’ll manage somehow, we’ll learn. But we’ve got to fight them, Jacques, we’ve got to show the bastards, that’s what really matters.’

I thought our surviving mattered a bit too, but he wasn’t in the mood to hear it so I kept my mouth shut. We just packed up our swords into the bundle of firewood we carried them about in, then set off back to the cottage with Colin.

We were just approaching the top of the bridle path when we heard crashing and banging from down by the Manor, and looked at each other in alarm. The soldiers had finished looting Ancre months ago, and we liked it that way, it meant we could ride the horses and fence in the meadow, we didn’t want them coming back now. We crept carefully to the edge of the bank and peered down.

There was a cart on the back apron, and it looked like the same we’d stuck the wheel on. The two soldiers dumping a slab of marble inside looked like ones we’d seen before too, though there was no sign of that fat cabo, I was glad to see, he wasn’t someone I wanted to run into again. Then I looked at the horse harnessed to the cart and forgot all about the cabo and anything else, because it was the old Général.

I loved that horse. He was a huge German-bred beast, the Seigneur used to say he was the best warhorse he’d ever had, but he got a bit of shrapnel in his eye at Casale and had to be retired afterwards. He didn’t understand, the poor old Général, I remember the look on his face when the Seigneur went riding off on Tonnerre instead, and the desolate little whinny when he saw them disappear out of sight. He was old now and confused in the head, but he was still a warhorse inside, he didn’t know how to be anything else. And there he was, harnessed to a cart by Spanish soldiers like he was just some scrubby workhorse from the Auvergne, it made my heart sort of burn.

‘Look what’s in the cart,’ whispered the boy. ‘Look.’

I couldn’t tell at first, they were just big square slabs of marble, some black and some white, then a picture swam into shape in my mind and I recognized the hall floor at the Manor.

‘They’ll be for their barracks,’ said Colin knowledgeably. ‘They’re extending it at the back.’

‘And what about the dairy?’ said the boy. ‘Suppose they take the flags there too?’

I’d forgotten the weapons, but the boy hadn’t, he looked half frantic.

‘We’ve got to get them out,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to do it now.’

I explained we couldn’t stroll in and start digging up the dairy floor while the Spaniards were sitting practically on top of it, but he only said all right, we’d come back and do it at night.

‘Ah, but where will you keep them?’ said Colin. ‘We’re talking about iron and steel here, Sieur, needs looking after, needs to be inside and dry.’

That was typical Colin, he went droning on about rust and stuff, but the boy just flapped at him to shut up and said ‘The barn, we’ll put them there.’

I only just didn’t shudder. I asked what he thought the soldiers were going to do if they found us sitting on a whole armoury of guns, they’d kill the lot of us and burn the house down.

‘Risk you might have to take, Sieur,’ said bloody Colin. ‘Don’t know what else you’re going to do, and that’s a fact.’

I could have brained him. I think the boy felt the same, he just said coldly ‘You find the volunteers, Lefebvre, I’ll provide them with weapons when the time comes.’

‘Right you are, Sieur,’ said Colin, all huffy. ‘I’ll do my bit, you can count on me.’ He picked himself up off the grass and went on down the path, oozing outraged dignity through the stiffness of his back.

I started to get up myself, but the boy pulled me back down. ‘Wait a bit,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if they’re going to just take the hall and leave it at that.’

I didn’t see how they could possibly take more than the hall floor in one go, I mean this was stone, it was going to take them days to shift. Even as we watched, the soldiers dropped in a last slab then hopped on the cart themselves, and I knew they were finished.

‘Maybe when they’ve gone,’ said the boy. ‘Maybe we can …’

I stopped listening. The lead soldier flicked his whip and I saw the Général heave, but it was too much for him, poor beast, it was too much for any horse. The soldier flicked the whip again, and I heard him shout, the voice drifted right up to us and it sounded full of swearing.

I said ‘They can’t, they can’t expect …’

The soldier jumped off the cart in a temper, went up to the Général and brought his whip down
crack
across his flank. The Général shied away, and the whip lashed down again, the Général neighed shrilly, the soldier’s arm was coming up, and somehow so was I, I was on my feet and running down the bank, I’d got to stop him, I couldn’t bear it. I slithered and fell down the last bit, but I didn’t care, I was up and on the apron and running towards the cart.

The soldier on top lifted out a musket, and I guessed they’d got jumpy about their fellows being killed in Verdâme, but when he saw it was just a stupid unarmed peasant, he said something to his colleague, laughed and put the gun back down.

The one on the ground ignored him, he was raising his whip again, the Général snorting and trying to back away. I panted up and tugged the man’s sleeve, I said ‘Please, Señor, don’t hit him, he can’t do it,’ but he wasn’t listening, he just swung round violently, then there was this tearing pain shrieking through my belly, I was folding myself in two, sucking in air in great whoops. He’d punched me in the guts.

He didn’t even look, he turned and whipped the Général again, and there was nothing I could do, I might have been in fucking Germany. Somewhere in my head I heard running feet, but they didn’t seem to matter, there was a kind of fierceness screaming inside that forced me upright, I was reaching out and grabbing the bastard’s hand, wrenching the whip right out of it, I was saying ‘You leave him alone, you hear me, you leave him
alone.
’

He shoved me back, he was tugging the sword out of his belt, then behind us came the explosion of a musket. The Général screamed and reared, I turned and saw André pelting up with a sword in his hand, he’d got his bloody sword, no wonder the man fired. But he’d dodged the ball, he was charging straight on, and for the first time since I’d known him I thought he looked frightening. The man on the cart did too, he was trying to reverse the musket and use it like a club, but André was up to him, reaching up and grasping the barrel, and I remembered how strong his grip was, he just twisted it out of his way, his other hand coming round, and in it the sword.

Something was hacking down at me, I only half saw it, but I’d fenced long enough to know to spin on the back foot as the soldier’s sword slashed through the air where I’d been. I knew the next move, I was leaping forward on his inside line, I got both hands to his sword arm and tried to wrestle the blade away, but he was too strong, he clenched his arm to tighten his elbow round my neck. Behind us the Général was rearing and kicking, then one of his hooves came swiping through the air, my man ducked in panic, and I didn’t even think, I swivelled and punched him with everything I had, and the back of his head went down
crunch
against the hub of the wheel.

I’d killed him, I knew it, his eyes rolled up and he was making gurgling noises in his throat. Behind me came a cry and a thump, and I looked round to see the other man on his knees, André standing over him with a sword that was bloody halfway to the hilt. I looked back at mine, and he was sliding to the ground, still making choking noises, then stuff dribbled out of his mouth and at last he went still.

The cart lurched, and I saw the Général slumping down on his front knees. I was up to him in a second, I’d got my knife and was sawing at that bloody crappy degrading harness, but it didn’t help, he just slumped further, his nose was almost in the dust. I was on my knees and stroking him, and I think he knew me, he gave this last little whinny, then a white film went over his eyes and stayed there and I knew he’d gone. My tears were falling hot on my wrist, but I wasn’t sad, I was almost elated. He’d never wanted to die miserably in his stall, the Général, he’d wanted to die in battle, and he had, he really had.

There was a little tinkling sound behind me, and I turned and saw the boy looking down. He’d got two bandoliers slung over his shoulder, and I knew he’d been spoiling the dead. I didn’t care, I’d got this savage kind of gladness boiling up in me, I said ‘We beat them, didn’t we? We beat them.’

He reached out and touched my arm. ‘We outnumbered them,’ he said. ‘You, me, and the Général.’

He understood. He didn’t think I was stupid to fight over a horse, he bloody understood. I felt strong suddenly, I remember standing up and saying ‘You’re right, André, you were right all along. We’ve got to fight these bastards, it doesn’t matter if we lose, we’ve just got to fight.’

He bent to clean his sword on the coat of the nearest corpse, and my mind turned over and realized what he’d done. He was thirteen years old but he’d seen me in danger and come to save me, he’d just killed a man without my even looking. ‘Silly,’ he said. ‘We’ve already started.’

Five

Stefan Ravel

Oh yes, I’d been busy. It wasn’t only André de Roland who didn’t like being invaded, you know, there are other kinds of heroes in this world.

Marcel was one of them. I’d been nursing him at my tannery since the night at the barricades, and he turned out quite a little firebrand, desperate to continue his own private war. It was a matter of honour, of course, as you’d expect when it’s something unbelievably stupid. He’d failed in his duty to defend the Château, he’d allowed his patron’s family to be taken prisoner, and the shame of it needed to be wiped out. Honour, Abbé? It kills more people than plague.

Me? Oh, there’s nothing heroic about me. I rather doubted an army of two could achieve much against a thousand, and suggested we’d be better off nipping over the Wall to join our own troops. And who knows, Abbé, maybe we’d have done it if it hadn’t been for the accident.

It was a lone trooper, who came looking to steal leather to make himself a nice buff jacket. I told him there was bugger all left, his mates had nicked it, I said ‘
Nada
, you understand? Now fuck off.’ But well, he couldn’t take a hint, he went poking and prying about, and next thing he’d turned up Marcel’s uniform coat, which unfortunately he recognized. I’d have talked my way out of it, but there was Marcel in the breeches that went with it, and the trooper knew he’d caught himself a stray enemy soldier. I thought he’d be off for his sergeant at once, but no, he turned out to be an even worse bastard and said kindly he wouldn’t report us as long as Marcel agreed to ‘be nice’ to him.

No, I wasn’t shocked, Abbé, I’ve seen the Italian disease in our own army, and Marcel was an attractive lad, young and blond, just the type they like. But willing’s one thing, unwilling quite another, so when the filth dropped his breeches I gave him my graining knife in the guts. Messy, I grant you, but effective.

We still had a little problem in the form of a corpse on the premises, but Durand helped us with that one. That’s Philippe Durand, local butcher, a sweet-tempered man, but he didn’t like thieving and liked bullying even less. He came round, butchered the body fit for a banquet, then I carried it out in sections and dumped it in the lime pit. It took weeks to rot down, but at least the stink of decomposing don kept looters away from my tannery for quite a little while.