Honour and the Sword (61 page)

I said cautiously that there was no betrothal.

‘That is unimportant,’ she said. ‘That is a matter of business, this is an affair of the heart. But people will talk of you, Mademoiselle, and if nothing should happen when André returns then I am afraid you may look foolish. Indeed, it may harm your chances of making another match elsewhere. What do you say to that?’

I knew what Papa would say. Then I thought instead of André, and the way he had fought all those men just to save me. I remembered his voice when he said ‘Anne,’ and how it felt when he kissed me.

I said ‘Do you really think this will help him?’

She shrugged. ‘It will certainly reach the King. The pretty Monsieur le Grand will see to that, if I can manage to have speech with him. Yes, I think it will help.’

I took a deep breath. ‘In that case, Madame, I will play your game.’

She was silent a moment, her fingers tapping on the back of my hand. ‘You are a good child,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I should ask your father what he thinks.’

I knew what his answer would be. I said ‘There is no need for that, Madame. I know the risk, and am quite content to proceed.’

She gave another peal of that delightful laughter. ‘Bravo, Mademoiselle!’ she said. ‘You are quite right. We have left this war for too long in the hands of men, and it is time to see what the women can do.’

Stefan Ravel

Oh yes, Abbé, that’s how it’s done. There’s nothing like a little popular appeal to reconcile people to a war and keep their minds off the price of bread. God knows how the old woman managed it, but there were tasteful little poems circulating in no time, along with a few
canards
that weren’t, and an acrostic that was frankly obscene. The couriers used to bring them with our letters, and poor André didn’t know where to look. Some grovelling scribbler even wrote a play about him, I believe, though I can’t say I ever saw it. I doubt I was in it myself, Abbé, from all accounts it was young André de Roland fighting the whole war single-handed, and all for the love of a ‘Mlle Celeste’ who apparently looked strikingly like Mlle Anne.

I didn’t grudge it him. He was still André back then, he never came the big hero with me. Marcel insisted on him taking over the leadership, saying he’d only done it himself till the kid had enough experience, but even that didn’t go to his head. He wanted my advice more than ever, he’d sit and listen to me for hours, his eyes on my mouth as if he didn’t want to miss a single word.

No, I saw the purpose of it all well enough, and a couple of days before Christmas it finally looked like paying off. I was sitting by the stream with Marcel that afternoon, skinning a brace of rabbits for the pot. He was much more relaxed these days, Marcel, though I can’t say I felt the same about him after what he’d done. Oh yes, I knew what he was, Abbé, I’d suspected it for some time, but I’d never pretended to return his strange little passion, and I’d certainly never asked him to start driving away my friends. Still, it’s hard to hate someone for giving you affection, and the man was a soldier and a comrade. Something else you might remember, Abbé, while you’re sitting there with a face like a dead fish, is that the lad had no one else at all.

So there we were stripping away with frozen fingers when we suddenly heard the most extraordinary sounds. There were hooves, which meant nothing, we were expecting a courier back from Lucheux, but there was a delicate jingling mixed in with it, and above it all a light tenor voice singing ‘
Enfin la Beauté
’ as if we were in a concert in the Louvre. We looked at each other, and stood to face the apparition that burst into the clearing in front of us.

The courier was Baudet, which was enough of an apparition in itself in my opinion, if the man got any hairier someone was going to use him to stuff a mattress. But beside him came a young man in scarlet and mauve astride a dazzlingly white horse, his sword clinking merrily against his spurs. His fair hair bounced under his plumed hat, and about his face was a dirty white bandage to cover his eyes. He was the one singing, carolling away as carelessly as a blind bird.

We blinked.

Baudet reined to a stop and jerked the bridle of his companion, who obediently halted beside him. ‘Oh,’ he said, peering from side to side as if hoping to see through the blindfold. ‘Are we there?’

Baudet untied the bandage, explaining gruffly the man had been waiting at the Poulet Noir with a letter for André but would only deliver it into his own hands. The youth gazed at us with eyes of astonishing innocence, dismounted elegantly and bowed to us both, announcing himself as Crespin de Chouy, aide-de-camp to M. le Maréchal de la Meilleraye.

Meilleraye. I didn’t know they’d given him a baton, but it made sense. A year ago he was just a mediocre soldier and famous only for being related to the Cardinal, but things were very different now. Charles de la Porte, Duc de la Meilleraye, Duc de Rethel and all the bloody rest of it, was the man who’d just taken Hesdin, and put France back on the map of Artois.

I wondered if he might be thinking of doing the same with Dax-Verdâme.

Jacques Gilbert

He was thinking about it all right, the letter told us that straight off, but it was only a vague idea, and de Chouy was meant to report back on the easiest way to do it.

Only there weren’t any easy ways, which is why we were so valuable to the Spaniards in the first place. A siege was out of the question because we backed on to Artois, which meant the Spaniards could get supplies and reinforcements while our own troops sat outside and starved. Sneaking them in by the
gabelle
road wasn’t going to work either, I mean no invading army wants to come in single file, not to mention having to leave their artillery and baggage behind. The only possible way was a straight frontal assault, but when de Chouy saw the cannon at the Gates he didn’t seem to think they’d like that idea either.

‘What if we hold one of the Gates?’ said André in desperation. ‘If we take the Dax Gate and spike the cannon, surely your troops could charge it then?’

De Chouy seemed to think that was a wonderful idea, but then he thought everything about André was wonderful, I think he’d been reading some of that awful guff the Comtesse had been circulating. He was taken aback by the hair at first, but obviously assumed it must be all right because this was the famous André de Roland. I even saw him looking doubtfully at his own long curls, like he was worrying he might be behind some new fashion. He was very young, of course, and probably on his first campaign. He found everything very exciting, even the Hermitage, he thought it must be wonderful fun to live like that. I didn’t think he’d like it so much after two years.

But he was wonderful to us too, because he was something from the outside world. We hadn’t seen anybody like him in years, he was something we’d forgotten even existed. He stayed for supper, talked mysterious rumours about a lady called Ninon and asked us our opinions on
La Belle Alphrède
, and even André looked blank. We got him drunk as quickly as we could, but he only sang ‘
Chanson d’Amour
’ with lots of dramatic gestures, and Stefan stared like he was an exotic animal in a show.

The most incredible thing was just him being here at all. It made us feel people outside were thinking and talking about us, and something might really be going to happen at last. I remember him leaving that night, just casually riding out of the Saillie and back to Paris like it was nothing. I remember the brave little tinkling of the bells on his harness that sounded in an odd kind of way like hope.

Stefan Ravel

Me, I was a little sceptical. A battle’s something you plan when you know who’s in charge for the season, how many men they’ve given you, and what the enemy are up to on their own account. You don’t sit down and plan it six months in advance unless you’ve got a much deeper scheme going on somewhere, of which this is only a part. And with apologies for being tedious, I’m afraid I was right again.

We made a plan anyway, just to make sure it was possible. Taking the Gate wasn’t difficult, the problem was holding the fucking thing against a thousand angry dons while our troops strolled up to join us. But once we’d got our heads round the fact this was actually a defensive action to hold that small strip of land by the Gate, then it became a whole lot simpler. We’d have a distraction at Verdâme to draw a load of the bastards off, then a barricade on the Dax-Verdâme Road and archers and musketeers in the woods to stop them coming back. We’d have a screen of pike and shot across the bottom of the Square to deter any stray dons around Dax, which left only the little matter of the three hundred in the barracks itself. And after a little thought we came up with a way to deal with that too.

It wasn’t going to be easy. It was certainly going to take more men than our humble army could boast of, but we’d used civilians the night the Spaniards came and were quite ready to do it again. This time we’d have months to prepare and train them. This time we were going to do it right.

Or so we thought. At the end of January young de Chouy came trotting back, with a hook-nosed companion he introduced as de Saussay, a senior official on Châtillon’s staff. Well, la Meilleraye was one thing, Châtillon quite another, and I started to get an uneasy feeling right then. De Chouy didn’t seem so happy this time either, he had a rather subdued air about him and wouldn’t stay for supper.

We soon found out why. When the visitors had bowed themselves off, André called the four of us together and broke the news with a face as white as his shirt. Châtillon loved the idea of us taking the Gate, unsurprisingly enough, but wanted us to hold it for an hour.

‘Impossible,’ said Marcel, his face even paler than André’s. ‘Civilians against trained troops, it would be murder.’

‘I know,’ said André wretchedly. ‘But they need to minimize their losses, because they’ve got an onward battle to fight. Apparently we’re just the start.’

‘Arras?’ I said. There’d been rumours about it for ages, it was the obvious target.

‘They wouldn’t bother with us for Arras,’ said Marcel. ‘They’d cross the border further east, we’re miles out of the way. It’ll be Béthune or Aire.’

‘Good luck to them,’ I said. ‘If our troops come through here first, the dons will see exactly where they’re headed, and it’ll be St Omer all over again. They’ll just send troops from Arras to reinforce Béthune.’

A flush of colour returned to André’s face. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what they’ll do – then we’ll march east and invest Arras instead. That’s it, Stefan, we’re a distraction.’

Well, it’s always nice to know where one stands in the scale of things. I said ‘If they’re worried about their losses taking this little patch they won’t have enough men to take Arras.’

‘Oh, they’ll have another army about somewhere,’ he said loftily, trying to look like Gustavus and Wallenstein rolled into one. ‘We’ll only be a tiny bit of it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We’ll be a small pile of corpses that need burying. An hour, little general. How can they possibly justify that?’

He grimaced. ‘They’re afraid the Spaniards will see them coming from that watchtower. There’ll be no glacis, no earthworks to hide behind, they’ll be riding in the open. The cannon could wipe them out before they get halfway across the fields.’

‘The dons could wipe us out even quicker than that.’

He was silent.

‘Lot of casualties, kid,’ I said. ‘We hold this for an hour you’ll win your battle, but it might be the end of the Saillie.’

He knew it, my little general, he knew exactly what choice he had to make. He looked at me in sudden anguish, but I only shook my head. He was in command now, and that meant making the hard decisions for himself. I’d trained him for it over the years, and I’ll admit I was interested to hear the result.

He screwed up his eyes, rubbed his hands over them, then slowly let them drop. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to order it, that’s my duty. But I’ve also got to do all I can to limit the casualties and keep the people safe. That’s my responsibility.’

Well, yes, I’m bound to say I agreed. Pity a few more officers haven’t worked that one out, but that’s not the kind of education a nobleman usually gets. This one I’d taught myself.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘But the only way to do that is to reduce the time we need to hold the Gate.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘And the only way to do that is to take the watchtower.’

Colin Lefebvre

Seigneur told us straight. We were going to be relieved in the summer, but we’d got to fight like we’d never fought before, he needed every volunteer he could get. Wasn’t a raid he was talking about, this was a battle, second Battle of Dax, and this time we’d got to win.

He got his volunteers all right, could have had everyone in the Saillie. We were up for it too, we Lefebvres, we were all in it. My dad was to lead the archers, there being no one to touch him now Durand was gone. Simone was on the barricade, my mum with the alley teams, and I was loading for the top marksmen. Not all we were doing neither, my dad and me had pike-heads to make for over a hundred, and that’s a tall order with your regular work on top. An art to it, you know, pike, getting the crescent perfect so it won’t impede the spear when it’s sliding in but give you a good barb for disembowelling when you’re coming out. I’m telling you, Forge was the busiest place in the Saillie that year, fire was working all night.

Jean-Marie Mercier

We were training all through the spring. André’s friends on the outside sent us arms and powder, and we used to go over the Wall and practise on the plains of France so the Spaniards wouldn’t be drawn by the sound of our fire. I had a whole marksmen’s team of my own now, and Giles, Jacob and I used to have contests against each other, which my team nearly always won. I don’t mean to boast about it, because Jacob was over seventy now and perhaps a little slower than he had been, while Giles had been very generous in giving me so many top men. I had Simon as my second, and I’d promoted Georges too, who was turning out a far better marksman than he’d ever been a loader. I’d have liked Margot as well, but André wanted her on the barricades with Roger. Roger was a little doubtful whether people like the senior famers would take orders from a woman, but André smiled and said ‘Oh, I think they’ll listen to Margot.’