Honour and the Sword (2 page)

PART I

The Boy

One

Jacques Gilbert

From his interviews with the Abbé Fleuriot, 1669

You can trust me.

No one knew him like I did. Not that bastard Stefan for a start, you don’t want to believe a word he says. You don’t need him, you don’t need any of them, except maybe Anne later on. I’m the only one who really knows.

I knew him from when he was tiny. My Mother was his nurse up at the Manor, and sometimes she’d take me with her so I saw a lot of him even then. They had all kinds of interesting stuff there, like a real clock in the hall and a tapestry with all pictures of stags on it, and a great big gong on the landing. Sometimes we’d see the Seigneur himself, and he was always kind, he used to give me sugared nuts which he carried round in a little silver box, and sometimes he’d ruffle my hair and call me a fine boy. More often it was just me and Mother in the boy’s room, and sometimes she’d sing to us, which was nice, and sometimes she’d make me play with him, which wasn’t. He wasn’t really André back then, he was just a baby that cried a lot, because I was jealous of him for taking my mother away and sometimes used to pinch him when she wasn’t looking.

I saw more of him when he was older, because he was the Seigneur’s son and I had to be nice to him and trot him around the paddock and answer all his stupid questions beginning ‘Jacques, why …?’ It was always ‘why’ in those days. It was only much later he started asking the really hard questions, the ones that begin with ‘if’.

But it wasn’t a proper kind of knowing in those days, just sort of knowing the shape of him and the things he did and said. I was only the stable-master’s son and he was André de Roland, he’d be Comte de Vallon when his uncle finally got on and died. But I did use to watch him, because if your own life’s a bit crap you can get a lot of entertainment out of watching people with better ones, and anyway I thought he was funny. He had this awful temper back then, he’d shout and wave his arms about, and sometimes even stamp. He never did it with me, of course, he was always polite with servants, it was only being ordered about he couldn’t stand, or people telling him things he couldn’t do.

What I liked best was watching him fence. I know peasants don’t have anything to do with swords, but there was no harm in looking, it’s like there was a bit of glass between him and me like a window and I was always safely on the other side. I think he knew I watched him, but I don’t believe he minded. He hadn’t anyone of his own kind to play with, his mother just used to drift round looking beautiful and never having any more children, and Colin’s dad said it was a black disgrace, they ought to have a spare in case anything happened. He didn’t say what ‘anything’ meant, but I knew, my own little sister Clare had died that year.

It was a pity for the boy, though, and I think it made him lonely. That makes me feel bad now, him being lonely and me just watching him being it, but that’s as much as I wanted in those days. I remember one time when he sort of reached out and smashed the window between us, and it got me one of the worst beatings I ever had.

It was one afternoon when they were looking for him all over the estate. That happened a lot actually, most days you’d hear someone yelling ‘André!’ round the place, he was never where he was meant to be, that boy, just never. But this time it was important because the new Baron de Verdâme had brought his children to meet the Rolands, and there wasn’t a sign of André anywhere. I just went on mucking out the stables, then I dug the fork back in the straw and there he was, curled up at the bottom trying to hide. I gaped at him, but he got his finger up to his lips, and I heard César, the Second Coachman, go by calling him, and I didn’t say a word.

It’s natural, isn’t it, it’s instinct. You stick together against the adults, though I’d have been fourteen then and him only eleven. So I never said a thing, I just went on working round him, but he wouldn’t keep quiet, he started up gabbing, then someone was coming and he was trying to burrow back under the straw, but it was the Seigneur himself at the door and we were caught.

It was terrible. The Seigneur kind of lifted him up, got him out of the stables and standing on the cobbles in front of him, all with just a look. It was a belting look, that one, very powerful. The boy inherited it, so I should know.

Then he really laid into him. Not the way my Father would have done, it was all just what he was saying, how the boy had let him down, let his whole family down, embarrassed his mother, failed as a gentleman, and shamed them all in front of their new neighbours. I could see the boy getting white in the face and his lip starting to tremble, then his father got even angrier and said in this terrible voice ‘You will not cry, André,’ and the boy swallowed it back and stuck his chin out and said ‘Yes, Sieur.’ There were times I wondered if my own Father really loved me because he beat me so much, but I remember thinking in a way what the Seigneur was doing was worse.

Then he turned to me and said ‘As for you, young Jacques …’ and my heart jumped I was so frightened, but the boy leapt in at once and said it wasn’t my fault because he’d ordered me. The Seigneur looked at him then, and I saw he really did love him after all, but that didn’t stop him giving him another bollocking for putting me in an impossible situation, which was apparently even worse than being rude to the Baron. Then he packed the boy off to apologize, but I saw Father watching on the other side of the track, then I knew I was really in trouble and felt sick.

But the Seigneur was nearer. I was standing in the doorway clutching my hat and rubbing and pulling at it, and my hands were all sweaty and I wished I was dead, but he just leant forward and said ‘You did quite right, Jacques. A gentleman never tells.’ That was an odd thing to say, but I knew he meant it kindly, so I tried to smile and say ‘Yes, Sieur,’ like the boy did, and he reached out and tousled my hair. Then Father was suddenly there next to me, apologizing for what I’d done and saying he’d deal with it now, and the way he was saying it was like telling the Seigneur to piss off.

The Seigneur said not to worry, it was his own boy caused the trouble and he hoped my Father wouldn’t be hard on me for it, but Father just bowed and looked him right in the eye, which you’re not supposed to do with nobility, you’re meant to look at the ground or your boots or something, then he stuck his hand on my shoulder and said ‘He’s my lad, Sieur.’

I could never understand how Father didn’t get sacked or flogged, because quite apart from the drinking he could be really rude sometimes, but instead of ordering him hauled off to have something horrible done to him, the Seigneur just looked at him a minute then turned away. I watched his boots walking out of sight, then Father took me into the stable and beat the shit out of me.

Nobody beat André, of course, that window was round him all the time like a bubble nothing could get through. I remember crawling home that afternoon, bruised and aching all over, and seeing him sitting by the sunken garden with a girl, deep in conversation like there was no such thing as a stable boy trudging past with a black eye and ribs that were purple for a month. That would have been Anne, I suppose, it was the first time they met, but I wasn’t thinking about that at the time, I just wanted to get home to Mother and tell her it wasn’t my fault.

I avoided him after that. He caught me at the stables next day to say sorry, and I just mumbled it didn’t matter and wouldn’t look at him, and after a while he went away. He still came hanging round asking questions sometimes, but now I just said ‘yes’ and ‘no’ till he left me alone. It was better that way.

Until the night the Spaniards came, and everything changed.

This is when it really began, the summer of 1636. This is when it gets really hard, what you’re asking me to do. I can remember all right, I remember all of it, but I understand what was going on in a way I never did at the time, so I’m sort of seeing things wrong and not what they were really like at all.

If you want the truth as it really was, then don’t ask me to remember. What I’ve got to do is forget. I’ve got to forget everything I know now and feel now, and everything about what happened later. I’ve got to go back to being what I was then, that hot night in July when the Spaniards came.

Père Gérard Benoît

From his
André de Roland, A Personal Memoir,
privately printed in 1662

It was yet within the octave of Peter and Paul in the year of Our Lord 1636 that the Spaniards came to our village.

The seigneuries of Dax and Verdâme, or the ‘Dax-Verdâme Saillie’, as they are collectively known, lie to the north of Lucheux, and thrust as a finger into the territory of Artois, at that time in the hands of the Spanish Netherlands. The villages had long been part of Artois themselves, and indeed are still bulwarked on three sides by the now famous Dax-Verdâme Wall, constructed at the time of the uprising in Flanders against Philippe le Bel. This hastily assembled fortification is unusual in its extent, encompassing even a portion of the major farms within its perimeter, but boasts neither flanks nor bastions, nor is even of considerable height, standing in places no more than six or seven foot above the moat. Yet frail a defence as it seems, this Wall had still a significant part to play in our history, as my readers shall learn.

By the time of which I write, however, the Saillie had long been absorbed by conquest into Picardie, and although the Wall remained, its Gates were ever open and its people enjoyed the freedom of the realm of France. So the villages prospered, especially that of Dax-en-roi, where I have the honour to serve as parish priest. It may seem a false modesty to ascribe the name of ‘villages’ to so large an area, but the northern part is entirely given over to a thick forest which extends well over the border with Artois, its steeply rising slopes and great east gorge rendering the land impractical for building.

The Dax of 1636 was a contented community. The Chevalier de Roland kept his own Household Guard, so we had only a small militia to feed and billet, and while the
gabelle
or salt tax imposed a grievous burden, our crops made us largely self-sufficient, and the visitor could find here no trace of the poverty to be seen in so many villages of our kind. Verdâme was in other case, its Seigneur having died without issue and its new Baron being unacquainted with the needs of a rural population, but its little businesses still thrived, and starvation had yet to come there.

Yet there are dangers other than these, and so we were about to find. The previous year our King Louis had declared against Spain, so that our northern marches now lay directly on the borders of a hostile country. Since by reason of our history Artois was the one side our Wall did not reach, we had already been exposed to raids and skirmishes from this direction, fortunately repelled by the valour of our Seigneur, but the events of 1636 proved of far greater significance than these.

The Spaniards came in the early hours of the morning, and this time they came in force. Mindful of their previous reception, their first target was Ancre, the Roland estate, surmising that by cutting off the head of such resistance as they were likely to meet, they would incapacitate the entire body. Otherwise they would surely have opened their attack on the village itself, which they could not have known to be so empty of soldiery because of the
gabelle
riots at the Market in Lucheux the day before.

It was Gabriel Lange, sexton of this church, who roused me about two of the clock to warn that the Night Watch reported a large body of cavalry approaching us from the Flanders Road, which bisects the forest. There were, it seems, too many to challenge, but the Watch reported the first part of the force had already turned west towards the gates of Ancre. I immediately sent Gabriel to the taverns to alert the militia, and myself began the tocsin, as Jehan Bruyant, our bellringer, was unfortunately indisposed after a late night at the market.

Jacques Gilbert

I remember the heat. I had a headache, and the flies were bothering me, the horses were all sweaty and snorting, and the straw was dry and prickly against my skin. My back was hurting because Father had beaten me about something, so I had to sleep on my stomach, and it was pissing me off because I wanted to think about Colin’s sister Simone who I’d kissed a few days ago in the lumber room of Le Soleil Splendide, but I needed to be on my back for that, if you know what I mean.

I was fifteen.

I was sleeping in the stables because Father had taken Mother and the children to the Market at Lucheux, and we’d had problems lately with horse thieves. I’d got an arquebus just in case, but it was a rusty old thing, and they’re stupid guns anyway, because most people aim with their eyes not their groin. At least it was a firelock, which was something. I wouldn’t have fancied pissing about with a slow match in all that dry straw.

I was woken by gunfire. It was raining hard and I thought maybe I’d been hearing thunder, but the Général was going bonkers in his stall, and he was an old warhorse who always went crazy at the sound of guns. Then high and clear above it all I heard the distant bell of the tocsin and knew it was a raid.

I don’t know how long it had been going on, but I’d only got one leg in my breeches when the door banged open and César came crashing in. He must have been working late in the coach-house, and was already fully dressed and clutching a nasty-looking scythe.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’s the Manor.’

He was stamping about impatiently while I hurled my boots on, he just couldn’t wait to get out and start killing people.

‘Spanish, from the look of them,’ he said. ‘Whole troop. Have you got …?’

He stopped when he saw I’d already hauled out the arquebus and was groping for the powder flask.

‘That’s good, that’s something, but we’ll need my pike against the cavalry.’

Cavalry. My fingers were fumbling, I was spilling the powder, the ball slipped out of my hand, I lost it in the straw and reached for another. His hand came clamping down on my wrist and held it still for a second.