Honour and the Sword (21 page)

‘The soldiers were hurling themselves against the door, thudding hard against it, they daren’t let me escape now. My father forced himself to sit up, the blood was pouring out, he shouldn’t have been moving. But the top bolt fell off, the door was bursting open, the soldiers piling up behind it.

‘And my father stood and threw himself into the gap. He didn’t even have a sword any more, he only had his body, but he threw it at them anyway and cried at me to run, and then he was stumbling, they were pushing him back, and I did run, Jacques, I ran down to the drawing room and climbed out of the window, and they didn’t catch me because my father held them up long enough, he saved me, and he died all alone in that room because his son left him and ran.’

He stopped abruptly, and his hands crept slowly back around his knees. He was still staring at the wall and it was safe for me to look at his face. I think I expected him to have changed somehow, to look like someone this awful thing had happened to, but it was already done by the time he first came to me, and the only person changed was me, because now I knew.

I’d got to say something, I’d got to at least try. I told him it was stupid for him to go blaming himself, he’d done more than anyone else would, and it wasn’t his fault it hadn’t been more, because he was only twelve years old.

He said ‘What matters is they both died in agony and all I did was watch.’

I said ‘It was their choice, wasn’t it? Your mother wanted to die, and your father gave his life to save you.’

He nodded. ‘They died honourably, didn’t they, both of them? And I’m left alive to carry the shame of it.’

‘There’s no shame in surviving, it’s what they wanted, isn’t it? I bet your father was really happy he didn’t die just lying on his back but standing up and fighting to save his son.’

Tears trickled slowly out from under the boy’s eyelids. He didn’t even wipe them away. ‘And that’s what I want too. I don’t want to be this, I don’t want to be me. I can’t go on watching other people suffer when I ought to be helping them, that’s where the shame is, that’s what I can’t bear. I wanted to be like my father.’

I said ‘But you are. I was in the Corbeaux last night, and everyone was saying so.’

‘Killing soldiers, that’s all. It’s not enough, Jacques, it doesn’t undo any of it.’

I said ‘It could do. Those soldiers, the ones who did it, they’ll still be here, won’t they? We could find them and kill them.’

‘I wouldn’t know them if I saw them. It was dark, they wore helmets, the only one I saw properly was the officer. It could be any of the soldiers who’ve come to use our well, that could have been them with the cart that day, it could be bloody any of them, any soldier I ever see.’

The horror of that hit me like a hammer. I remembered the hate in his face when he’d stared at that cabo, and how I’d made him let the bastard pat him while he stood and lowered his eyes.

I said ‘It doesn’t matter, you’re still fighting them, aren’t you? You did everything you could, and you’re still bloody doing it, you ought to be proud.’

He gave a hard little laugh. ‘I tell myself that every day. I tell myself I tried.’

I felt a complete shit. ‘I didn’t mean that. It’s not the same.’

‘No, it’s not. You saved your mother, I didn’t save mine.’

I shook my head and wished I hadn’t, it sent a sort of stab through my ribs. I said ‘I was scared to even fight my own Father. But you, you went in to fight all those soldiers on your own. You’re a hero, you must see that.’

He jerked forward so hard he knocked the basin right over, I watched the pink water soaking away into the straw. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right then, what does that make you? I couldn’t have done what you did. Not without a sword in my hand. Never.’

‘André …’ I said, and stopped. No one had ever looked at me the way he was looking now. I’d dreamed of my Father looking at me like this one day, I’d dreamed of it even when I was awake, but he hadn’t, he’d never, no one, ever. ‘André …’

He nodded gently and sat back. ‘Trying’s got to be good enough, it’s all there is. How would you feel if you hadn’t?’

I remembered how awful I’d felt while I was sitting letting it all happen, and how much better when I was up on my feet. I tried to recapture that aching feeling I’d had, but found to my surprise I couldn’t, it had sort of broken up and gone, there was a kind of warmth growing there instead.

I looked at him again and he actually smiled. The tears weren’t dry on his face, but he smiled.

He said ‘So stop calling me bloody stupid.’

We sat in silence, but it was a nice silence and went on for a long time. An owl hooted somewhere, and the boy’s head slipped down off the wall. He was asleep. It didn’t hurt me, and I didn’t move him. His head was on my shoulder like it belonged there, like it always had.

I knew it was true what I’d said. I thought of the Seigneur dying on his feet, and there was a kind of fierce pride burning up in me because he was the Sieur, and it’s what I would have expected of him, he was everything I always thought he was, and I’d loved him. And André was the same. He’d fought six soldiers on his own, and he’d have gone back if his father hadn’t stopped him. He was the Seigneur’s son. I don’t just mean the title and all the other stuff, I mean he was the son of Antoine de Roland in every way there was. And here he was, sleeping beside me in the straw like I was part of it too.

As I was drifting off to sleep, I found myself remembering a day when I was very little, and Mother was bringing me back from the Manor. The Seigneur walked a little way with us, and I was tired, and Mother held my hand and the Seigneur took the other. They walked me between them, and I felt like the safest person in the world.

PART II

The Soldier

Nine

Père Gérard Benoît

As spring warmed into summer, the hopes of our people rose. A year had passed since our Occupation, a new campaign season was upon us, and there were once again French armies abroad in Picardie. The success at Landrecies stirred all hearts, and the investment of La Capelle rendered them almost feverish with excitement. Our conquerors clearly shared in the sense of anticipation, and began forthwith a great work of fortification, not only extending the height of our Wall, but also erecting a watchtower on the roof of their barracks, the better to spy the advance of the French troops we expected daily for our relief. Yet no one came. The siege of La Capelle proved prolonged, and autumn was well advanced before the fortress once more reverted into French hands. Armies withdrew into winter quarters, the campaign season was over, and another year of Occupation was begun.

Yet for all the heaviness of our hearts, the evils of Occupation proved less than fear had made them. Some indications of unrest had made the Saillie a less attractive prospect for colonization than perhaps the Spanish had hoped, and there was no further sign of either the importation of new citizens from Flanders, or the arrival of our long-threatened governor. Dax-Verdâme continued under the rule of Don Miguel d’Estrada, whose government was as fair and peaceable as circumstances could allow.

The André of this period was a charming gentleman of fourteen, but grown a little rustic in his manners and sorely in need of contact with his own kind. I saw him more regularly at this time, for he visited me weekly for the purpose of his neglected education, but he was not, alas, a scholar by nature, and while his progress in the Spanish tongue was rapid, his Latin did me little credit. Madame la Comtesse contrived to send books for his improvement, but while he displayed considerable acumen in his study of martial strategy I was less sanguine as to his progress in the arts. He was enchanted by the old-fashioned
Amadis de Gaul
, but his reaction to a translation of
Don Quixote
was to hurl the book against the wall of my cottage and say he wished he might throw the author after it.

These lessons were abruptly terminated by the events of the following spring. The little signs of unrest I had already remarked began to swell, and rumours now circulated freely among us of an Occupied Army formed in our very midst, which was not only in communication with French forces outside, but also assailing and frustrating the enemy within. It was whispered abroad that the Sieur of Dax had followed in the spirit of his family’s tradition and was leading a great body of men for the succour of his stricken people.

Stefan Ravel

Oh, for Christ’s sake.

Look, the kid was fourteen. He was in the army all right, but we didn’t let him lead anything back then, I wouldn’t have trusted him as far as I could spit. Yes, he was turning into a fine soldier, I’ll grant you that, he did what we told him and did it well, but he still had those ludicrously romantic ideals and he was a disaster with a musket. The nearest we let him get was loading for Jacques, but he was happy enough with that, he was happy with anything as long as we let them do it together. St Roch and his dog had nothing on those two.

Oh, it’s true people talked about him, but what do you expect? You want to lift the morale of a bunch of backward villagers, you’re not going to do it by talking about a brave caporal and a tanner from Verdâme. Word got round the Sieur of Dax was playing, and we had volunteers crawling out from every stone. We even had women. That appalling Simone Lefebvre was one of them, and there wasn’t much doubt what she was after. She’d heard Jacques was going to stay with André after the Occupation, and was all over the poor bugger like a blanket. Oh, some were maybe genuine, but you can’t make a soldier out of a woman, Abbé, they’re too unpredictable. There was only one I’d any time for and that was Margot from the Dax bakery, big tough lass who could heft a musket like a man and swear like one too. The others were only fit for loading, so we let Giles Leroux train them, which was as good as having a fox drilling a bunch of chickens. Christ knows how he did it, he was thirty if a day, but he was the biggest stoat this side of Abbeville, wiped the eyes of all our young glory boys where the women were concerned. He never showed so much as a blink of interest, but turn your back for five minutes and there’d be another bandy-legged bint staggering cross-eyed from the undergrowth and Leroux back teaching them like he’d never moved.

Still, we were doing all right. We’d a well-trained little army, and were picking off enough stray dons to keep the bastards from moving in themselves. We were also keeping communication open with France. Both Gates were shut now, but we got people in and out, Abbé, we managed all the same. We had siege ladders hidden in the forest and the back of some of the orchards where the Wall was lowest, but when we needed to take out horses as well as men we had one other little secret up our sleeves.

We called it ‘the
gabelle
road’. It wasn’t much, Abbé, just a single-track path deep in the Forest of Verdâme, but it was a way out of the Saillie without going through the Gate or climbing the Wall. On the east side the Wall stopped short in the woods because of the gorge, and there was this one place, only one, where there’d been another kind of landslip and the gorge was so shallow a horse could cross it and trot clean into France with the dons none the wiser. It was the perfect way for people to ride out of the
pays de grande gabelle
to buy salt at a twentieth the price, and bring it back in without bothering those inquisitive militia at the Gates.

The
gabelle
road really came into its own now. We used it for trade we didn’t want the dons near, such as André flogging off jewellery, or our trips to buy gunpowder from the garrison at Lucheux. But its real function was communication. The Poulet Noir at Lucheux acted as a staging post, and the owner took in letters for us and passed on our own by the next coach. Courier duty wasn’t the most exciting in the world, but it was worth it to keep in touch with the war outside.

That’s what we wanted most, Abbé, news of the war. We got it locally from a bald-headed lunatic called Arnould Rousseau who worked as chef in the Dax barracks, but he could only tell us what the regular soldiers knew, which was frequently bugger all. So we used to pounce on any Spanish couriers we spotted prancing down the Flanders Road, swipe their dispatches, then pass them on to d’Ambleville at Doullens, de Rambures having died the year before. I doubt anyone ever acted on them, least of all that prize goat Châtillon, who had the Picardie command that year, but at least it was a calling card, a way of saying ‘Don’t forget about Dax-Verdâme.’ We still didn’t have enough of an army to boot the dons out, and our only hope was help from outside.

André wanted more of course, and Marcel wasn’t much better, he was forever wanting to redeem his honour by rescuing the hostages from the Château Petit Arx. Oh yes, they were still there, the King being in no hurry to give away important prisoners for the children of a jumped-up banker. André would doubtless have been desperate to help fellow nobility, but a rescue was rather out of the question, since the Château housed officers from both garrisons, and was more heavily guarded than the Bastille. That still mightn’t have deterred the lad from trying, so I made good and sure to keep any news of the hostages’ plight well away from him. What our soft-hearted little gentleman didn’t know wasn’t going to hurt him, and it wasn’t going to get the rest of us killed either.

Jacques Gilbert

I was happy that spring, the spring of 1638.

Things weren’t the same at home, of course, but I’d sort of got used to it by then. My family never talked about what happened that night, it was just accepted that when the Occupation was over I’d go with the boy, and no one ever questioned it or asked why. But obviously it couldn’t happen yet, so it was a bit like saying goodbye to someone then finding they’re still there.

We didn’t actually see that much of them. The barn was our home now, and we only went in the cottage for meals or to see Mother when Father was out working at the barracks stables, which he did as a way of paying taxes. We could have gone at other times if we wanted, there’d never been any open breach, but it felt uncomfortable all the same.