Honour and the Sword (64 page)

He was a very fine officer, my Capitán. A fine man.

I said ‘No, Señor.’

He said ‘No.’ He straightened his ruff, pulled down his sleeves, and patted down his hair, carefully arranging it to hide that hateful little scar.

The village clock struck half after three. My gentleman took one step to the door, and then the whole floor seemed to shake, Señor, it juddered and went still. The little vase of lilies went down bang on his desk, spilling water all over his papers. In the distance we heard something like a great boom.

Jacques Gilbert

We were waiting in the little back yard when it came. There was this distant rumbling, the ground trembled, and the sky lit up in a purple flash from the direction of Verdâme. It must have been a belter of an explosion for us to feel it this far away, but then I suppose it would be. We’d blown up the Verdâme barracks.

M. Lefebvre hoisted me so I could scramble on to the roof, then the boy after me. We crept to the barracks wall, keeping low so as not to make an obvious lump against the sky. The knotted rope was there, hanging down just as it ought to be, practically invisible next to the decorative stone piping. It smelt of rotten cabbage too, which wasn’t surprising since we’d smuggled it in to Arnould by tying it round a cartload of vegetables. We crouched beside it, waiting.

A crash below told us the courtyard gates were opening, and a minute later the first horsemen came galloping out. There were more even than we’d hoped, maybe even a hundred, all heading for Verdâme and safely out of our way. Better still, there was an imposing figure in bright blue at the head of them, so Don Francisco was leading them himself. It would have been nice if d’Estrada had gone too, but I suppose you can’t have everything.

We waited till the first of them made a screen between us and the Gate Guards, then the boy was up and climbing, with me hard behind. It was only a short haul to the third storey from the Forge roof, and in ten seconds the boy’s legs were vanishing through the window. Two more knots up, and I was at the sill myself and wriggling through to join him in the store-room. We hauled the rope inside, then paused a second to catch our breath and straighten our clothes.

We’d known about the storeroom, of course, but it still felt unfamiliar and frightening, especially in the dark. I remember getting a sudden panic this mightn’t be the right room at all, we could be standing here brushing ourselves down in somebody’s bedroom and they were watching us thinking we were mad. Then as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw drums piled on the floor, a rack of pipes and flutes, and a load of tall thin things wrapped in canvas I guessed were flags. Arnould had got it right this time, and we were safe.

We could hear noises on the floor below us, footsteps and doors opening and voices, and guessed a lot of people must have been woken by the explosion. There were company officers living all over that floor, clerks, barbers, surgeons, musicians, and it sounded like every one of them was up and about. At least it seemed quiet outside our own door, so after pressing our ears against it for a moment we pushed it open and stepped out.

The third floor was a barren sort of place, mainly stores and servants and defaulters’ cells, and there was nothing to see but a landing of rough bare boards and a load of doors like the one we’d just come out of. There were a few windows on the courtyard side, all of that thick glass with swirly round bumps that make you think of women’s breasts, but nothing else, just dirty walls. There wasn’t much light either, just two sconces for the whole landing, but it was bright enough to see the boy’s face. He was astonishingly calm, and I felt sort of shut out and on my own.

We started walking towards the tower room, our boots seeming to crash on the boards at every step. I was counting the doors we passed, waiting for the sixth, the one with the little grille. Third door, fourth, and a girl started up laughing in a room behind us and my heart jumped halfway into my throat, fifth door, but then the boy stopped in front of me and we were there. I suddenly didn’t feel ready, I wanted more time, I needed to remember what we’d got to do, but the boy’s hand was raised, he was knocking on the door and it was too late.

A gruff voice from the other side demanded ‘
Contraseña?
’

The boy’s mouth opened, then I saw a curious desperation come over his face and realized he’d forgotten the password. It’s funny, but that made me feel better, it’s like he was human after all.

I said ‘San Isidoro de Sevilla.’ He grinned at me in relief, and I tried to grin back. My cheekbones felt stiff, like I hadn’t used them in ages.

The voice said ‘Fucking idiot, that was yesterday.’

The shock was awful, and I found myself thinking stupidly we ought to have thought of that, they probably changed it at midnight. The next second the door was being unlocked anyway, and a laughing soldier opened it to let us in.

I suppose it’s just human nature. Officers forget about that when they come up with these rules for security, they forget it’s ordinary people who’ve got to carry them out, and no one takes them seriously when it’s stupid things like having a password inside your own barracks. So the man just said ‘Idiots!’ in a friendly kind of way, and that was it, we stepped inside and André closed the door with his left hand. His knife was in his right.

As he thrust up from under his cloak, I moved clear into the room, which is when I got my next shock, because there was a second guard sitting on the table, his grin fading as he took in what was happening. Arnould had guessed only one, because the soldiers used to moan what a lonely job it was, but there was this other man with his mouth opening to yell and I hadn’t even got my knife ready. I punched him hard as I could on the jaw, and he crashed back against the wall. André jumped round in alarm, and a second later a voice called down from beyond the wooden steps. The guard in the watchtower was asking what was up.

I had a hand over my man’s mouth now, and finished the job with my knife, while André called up in his gruffest voice ‘Fucking idiot!’ then laughed. The guard above us laughed in return and went quiet.

So did we. There wasn’t even a door between him and us.

We bundled the bodies quickly under the table and stood staring at the door in silence, wondering how long before four o’clock when the relief came. My breathing seemed to take ages to slow down, I felt like the guard in the tower would hear it. I was hot too, we’d got those thick black Spanish coats on over our shirts, and I felt a line of sweat trickling down the side of my face. I glanced at André and saw he was the same, his chest was heaving and his upper lip damp. He saw me looking, wiped it with the back of his hand and gave me a rueful little smile.

I smiled back, and suddenly it was just him and me again, waiting for an ambush like we’d done scores of times over the years. I got control of my breathing, wiped my palm down my breeches, adjusted my grip on the knife and stared firmly at the door. The wood was grey and scratchy and the knots black with age. One looked like the face of a man with a beard.

There were footsteps coming up the corridor, then a sharp knock on the door. André cleared his throat and asked for the password, and they actually said the same as we did, they said ‘San Isidoro’, so we laughed and called them idiots, then let them through the door and killed them. I don’t want to say any more about that, because actually it was horrid. They were just ordinary people like us, they made mistakes and joked about it, they were men I’d have got on with. But we’d got no choice. There wasn’t time to go tying them up and gagging them, we’d got no choice.

There was only the guard in the tower left. We went up the rickety steps that led to the roof and along the wooden tunnel, then there in front of us was the tower ladder, disappearing up into a round hole in the platform where the guard stood. On the other side of the ladder was the door on to the roof that had scared us so much when that man came out to piss.

I didn’t use the password, it felt silly, I just called up ‘
¡Hola!
’ and the guard called it back, and next minute his shoes and stockings appeared in the opening as he started to climb down. He was expecting it, of course, he knew it had gone four, he’d heard voices in the anteroom and thought it was his relief arriving, he wasn’t thinking about anything except getting back to his mess, and maybe having a drink before grabbing a bit of sleep. He climbed down like you’d expect, facing the ladder and with his back to us, it was the easiest kill we’d ever made. Then the boy was swinging himself up like a monkey up a tree, and I unbolted the door on the other side and stepped out on to the roof.

The wind hit me at once. I sheltered behind one of those little mock towers to fumble the cords out of my pockets, then put my head down and walked quickly towards the rear, the bit looking down on the south end of the Backs. The stone lions were where we’d remembered, so I lowered the weighted cord into the dark. A minute later there was a tug on the end, I hauled it back up and there was the first rope ladder. There was something else attached to the top rung and that was a small flask, tied on by the neck. It was a lovely touch, that flask. It was Giles giving me a drink, like having him next to me saying ‘Well done.’ I had a quick slug and the spirit shot into my head, giving me a great rush of something as I realized what we’d achieved.

I looped the ladder round the first lion, tied the flask on to the cord and lowered it down again to Giles. I couldn’t see him in the dark, but it made all the difference knowing he was there. We got the other two ladders up, I secured them on the last two lions, and that was our escape route in place. It was also the way up for Giles’ men, and that was a good feeling too. They weren’t coming till just before five, they couldn’t do it till Bruno’s team had taken out the back gate guards, but it made me feel help was on the way.

I set off back to the tower, but the boy was already out, he was standing by the door with his hands in his pockets and an odd little smile on his face. I went to him quickly, but he didn’t say anything, he just took my arm and said ‘Come and look, Jacques. Just look.’

I followed him up to the platform. It was a really rubbish bit of work, that tower, with two of us on the ladder it felt like the whole thing was wobbling. I squeezed halfway through the hole at the top till I’d run out of ladder to stand on, then gripped the flagpole that went all the way up through the roof, and hauled myself on to the platform. The boy didn’t even look round as I came up, he was pressed against the wall, staring through one of those tiny little slits of windows. I stood next to him, found another slit and peered through.

I couldn’t see anything at first. It was still dark, of course, and it took me a minute to get my bearings and work out what I was seeing through a hole that small. Then I saw I’d got a view right over the plain and the beech forest on the horizon.

‘Look,’ said the boy. ‘Look at the forest.’

It was moving. It’s like the edges of it were spreading, the way a pool of ink does when you spill it on a table, it was sort of creeping out and towards us.

‘They’re coming,’ said the boy.

There was a great body of men advancing towards us. There was one pool putting more and more distance between itself and the others every minute, and I guessed they’d be the cavalry. Behind them came the infantry, and that really sluggish sort of mass crawling along behind would be the artillery and baggage wagons and all that stuff. It was an army, a real French army, and it was coming for us.

I reached out my hand blindly into the space on my right, and somehow the boy found it, he grabbed and squeezed it tightly. We hadn’t been forgotten. We hadn’t been abandoned after all. We stood side by side in the dark and watched as our own country came for us at last.

Jean-Marie Mercier

I went through the Forge into the Backs to give Giles the flag. It had taken Mother weeks to make, but it was a proper regimental one, plain white with the arms of our Colonel-in-chief in red, and we wanted it to be a surprise for André. We knew the battle would be credited to the real French army, you see, but it didn’t seem fair for some other regiment’s flag to fly over Dax when we had a proper army of our own.

We honestly did feel like one that morning. I crossed the Backs to the south alley, went through the back gate into the Thibault farm, and found Simon and Georges already waiting. We crossed the farm to the far wall, where the rest of the team were standing by the siege ladders. There was one for my marksmen, which would take us directly on to the roof of the stables, and two next to it for the ground troops, who’d be hiding in the barn behind. We’d considered the barn for our own position, because it was bigger and a few feet higher, but the sight-lines to the Gate were no good, you see, we’d tried it.

There was a little stir in the crowd, then Stefan strolled to the front, returned safely from his mission in Verdâme. I think we all felt a little better at the sight of him. He looked expressionlessly at me, and said ‘Fucking good bang, wasn’t it?’

I always found it difficult to think of things to say to Stefan, but I had my team behind me, and didn’t quite like to look feeble in front of them. I said ‘And we’re going to make some fucking good bangs of our own.’

He grinned and gave me a wink. I could see his face quite clearly. The sky was lightening, and dawn was on the way.

Carlos Corvacho

He broke just before dawn.

It often happens about then, Señor, it’s a popular time, but of course my Capitán was in charge now, and he knew how to handle these things. What it is, Señor, things like the rack do a man so much damage that in the end his body’s quite mashed up, and the pain doesn’t stop even when the rack does. Now that’s no good to us, there’s no incentive to talk when it’s like that, so as soon as the Colonel left we tried a little bout of
tortura del’agua
instead. Now, the water torture’s much more effective, because your man goes through all the terror of drowning, then you give him a little break to think about it before you lay him back down and start pouring it in again.