by Angus Donald
Now, half drunk, half hungover, and feeling mightily ill-used by the Gods of Fate, he lolled outside his tent on a thick, musty-smelling horse blanket and watched Colonel MacCarthy’s cheerful Irishmen, their unloaded muskets reversed on their shoulders, as they marched across his view along the old road that led from the flung-wide town gates, along the coast south-west to Belfast.
They were heading, ultimately, for the Jacobite garrison at Newry – one of the last outposts loyal to King James in the north of Ireland. It was a jolly, almost festive column of men, some of the redcoats singing, others calling out old jokes to their mates, others with jaunty wildflowers or sprigs of green leaves tucked into their hatbands, and doing little dance steps of joy. It is a victory for them. The realisation came slowly to Holcroft. Does that mean we lost this battle?
The column was escorted only by one troop of sullen English cavalry commanded by Sir William Russell. The fifty or so troopers walked their horses in single file along the far side of the column of marching rebels, between the Irishmen and the walls of Carrickfergus. But beyond the horsemen, Holcroft could see that the civilians of Carrick and the surrounding areas, most of them staunch Protestants, were gathering in large numbers to watch their departure.
A hundred yards north of the road, on a patch of muddy turf a little higher up the hill and to Holcroft’s left, two regiments of English infantry were formed up in ten companies to witness the march-past. There were civilians gathering on this side of the road, too, knots of tough-looking folk in ones and twos. Some were shouting abuse at the Jacobites – calling them thieves and despoilers. And it was true: the Catholic rebels had burnt all the lands around Carrick before the English landed to deny them cover and forage, and a good deal of plundering had taken place. Somebody threw a clod of earth that smacked into the back of an Irish redcoat.
Holcroft knew he should stir himself and go and retrieve the eight-inch mortar from the ruined farmhouse beneath the town walls before some black thief carried it away and sold it. But he had been infected with a spirit of disobedience and told himself, once again, that he had been relieved of all his military duties by General Schomberg and that collecting the abandoned mortar and its ammunition was, without doubt, a military duty. He knew, of course, that he would have to go and get the piece in a while; a spirit of disobedience can only take a man so far. It could not change who he truly was. But in the meantime, for a few minutes on the blanket, he revelled in his private mutiny.
Slowly, Holcroft levered himself to his feet. He put on his beloved Ordnance coat and low-crowned black hat, slung his small-sword at his side and, tying his red sash around his waist, started to walk down the slope towards the road. He would seek out old Enoch Jackson, who was no doubt also watching the march-past and set him to gathering up a few idle men and finding a suitable wagon or two to collect the abandoned Humpty and its munitions.
As he got closer to the road, he saw that the crowds of civilians on both sides had grown more numerous. There were now hundreds of local men, women and children who had turned out to watch the rebels depart. The mood had grown uglier; the chants and taunts against the garrison were constant, people were now throwing rocks and stones. One woman was screaming that she and her daughter had been raped by the Irish soldiery. Holcroft began to feel uneasy. He disliked big crowds at the best of times, and this was beginning to look like an angry mob. He wondered if he ought to try to do something to calm the bellowing civilians lining both sides of the road. The garrison men were hurrying their steps, officers crying, ‘Make haste, lads, make more haste!’
Holcroft could see a group of men on horseback approaching from his right – gaudy plumes, bright scarlet coats bedecked with lace and gold. There was General Schomberg himself on his big black stallion. On the far side of the road, Sir William Russell was riding up and down the column with his sword drawn, warning the civilians to stay back from the marching Irishmen. His officers, too, were trying to keep the peace. One man in the crowd, a tenant farmer by his garb, stepped forward and tried to strike a passing Jacobite soldier with his gnarled shillelagh. Sir William slapped the man across the shoulder with the flat of his blade and bellowed at him to stay back or he’d be cut down.
Then Holcroft saw something that knocked all strength from his body.
At first he could not believe his own senses. There, walking nonchalantly in the centre of a group of red- and green-coated Jacobite officers, was the French spy Narrey. Without his customary black cloak and with his left arm bandaged and hidden inside in a grubby white sling, and with his black hat pulled low over his face – nevertheless, it was definitely Henri, Comte d’Erloncourt, alive, if not quite well. And beside him the hulking form of Major du Clos, shepherding his master as the shower of Protestant brickbats rained down upon them.
Holcroft stared at his enemy. He could not quite believe the Frenchman had managed to survive the inferno on the roof of Joymount House. But here he was. Then Narrey caught his eye, stopped and stared for a moment. His gaze locked with Holcroft’s. They were separated by a dozen yards and a dozen folk in that mass of soldiery and lines of furious, shouting civilians. Yet for Holcroft – for only a fraction of an instant – it was as if they were the only men on that muddy road.
Narrey smiled coldly. He turned away and continued to walk with the rest of them, allowing himself to be swept past Holcroft on a tide of hurrying redcoats. Du Clos gave Holcroft one brief mad-bull stare and then followed his master, casting the occasional malevolent glance over his shoulder.
Afterwards, Holcroft could never fully explain what happened next. He was still a little drunk, and hungover; he had been ignominiously suspended from Ordnance duty by Schomberg, he’d been coldly rebuffed by Caroline, despite his kindness to her, and he had just received a very unpleasant shock. He was, in that moment, he told himself later, perhaps just a little bit insane.
He whipped his sword from its scabbard and, holding it aloft, he shouted, ‘Murdering bastard!’ and plunged forward into the stream of marching rebels, blade high, forcing his way through the press, using his considerable bulk, shouting, shoving and shouldering lesser men out of his path.
The crowd of civilians from Carrickfergus and the surrounding lands were an angry, vocal, jostling assemblage, who had so far restricted themselves to shouting insults and hurling the odd stone and stick at the red-coated men who had burnt their farms, stolen their corn, seized their sheep and cattle and raped their daughters. But the big English officer, now charging forward madly yelling with a naked blade in his right hand – it was the glowing slow-match that sparked the touch-hole and ignited the main charge of gunpowder.
The crowd erupted with an animal-like roar, hundreds of folk surging forwards at the same time, each grasping at the nearest rebel, tearing at his clothes, wrenching out his hair in handfuls and raining kicks and punches upon him. The column broke under the onslaught, the garrison men scrambling to get away from the howling civilian mob crying for their blood. Many succumbed and were pummelled and punched, torn and trampled. Some ran to Sir William’s cavalry escort on the south side, trying to find cover under the necks of the trooper’s horses; others broke away from the scrimmage and pelted north towards the hillside, seeking refuge in the neat companies of disciplined English infantry formed up to witness the capitulation of Carrickfergus.
Holcroft shoved a small running Irishman out of his path; another rose up before him, face to face, bawling at him, musket held across his chest, and Holcroft smashed him down with one savage blow from his forehead. He could see Narrey and du Clos a few yards away – and they could see him coming. Holcroft realised that he was screaming incoherently, he was two long paces from his enemies now, almost within range of his small-sword, and he was already preparing in his mind the thrust that would spit Narrey through and through like a roasted hog, and the slashing withdrawal of the blade that would spill his guts in a steaming heap in the road. He saw Guillaume du Clos turn to face him, square-shouldered, and seiz
e the butt of a pistol that was tucked into his wide leather belt – but Holcroft knew that before the Frenchman could draw the weapon, cock the piece, aim properly and fire, he would be on him.
‘Die, die, you bastard!’ he was shouting. He pulled back the sword . . .
A huge black horse was suddenly blocking his path. He cursed and slapped at its rump with his free left hand. The horse skittered but stayed in position, the rider controlling it superbly. Holcroft lifted his eyes to the man in the saddle and found himself looking into the pouchy, ageing and extremely angry face of Master-General Fredrich-Hermann von Schönberg, His Grace the Duke of Schomberg. The old man was holding, in a rock-steady liver-spotted hand, a large cocked horse pistol, which was aimed between Holcroft’s eyes.
‘Control yourself, Captain Blood, or I will shoot you down in a heartbeat. What the Devil, sir – what the Devil do you think you are playing at here?’
*
Henri found himself being swept into a circle of two score Irish infantry all now with loaded muskets and under good discipline. Guillaume shoved him into the centre of the mass then joined the outward-facing ranks, pistol cocked, ready.
‘Do not fire unless you have to, lads; do not shoot unless you’re forced to!’ Henri recognised Colonel MacCarthy’s ogre-bellow. ‘We’ve surrendered with all honour and must not break our parole, even if these God-damned Protestant bastards provoke us now beyond all sense and reason.’
There was no sign of the tall Ordnance officer with the sword – Holcroft Blood, it was definitely him, of all people to see here in this damp, godforsaken island. What a surprise! Holcroft Blood, a man who had served with him as a page in the Duke of Buckingham’s establishment, a former officer in Louis XIV’s elite Corps Royal d’Artillerie, who had turned spy and traitor to His Most Christian Majesty, who had fled to England before Henri could lay hands on him in Paris and bring him to his just and severe punishment; the man he had skirmished with in London the year before – that Englishman was now here in Carrickfergus and apparently intent on murdering him with his small-sword.
Well, perhaps it was not such a surprise. The English Ordnance was present in full force with the powerful Royal Train of Artillery, and Holcroft Blood, he recalled, was now a celebrated gunner. Yet, it was strange nonetheless. He had not thought of the man since he had heard that Blood had beaten a hireling of his, a crude London criminal, to death with his bare hands. Since then Henri had filed this erstwhile adversary away in a compartment of his brain marked ‘Unfinished Business’, and forgotten about him. Now, here he was, in Ireland, large as life and evidently bent on taking some sort of revenge.
Like a shaft of sunlight breaking through the clouds, Henri recognised that Blood must have been the artillery officer behind the surprise mortar attack on Joymount House. That made sense. It was typical of the Englishman to seek a petty revenge. So he had Blood to thank for his smashed left arm. And if Guillaume had not hustled him into the tunnel in the nick of time and carried him down the stairs and out of the burning building, he would be dead as a stone.
He moved forward, pressing closer to Major du Clos’ reassuringly broad back. ‘You recognised that English bastard Blood back there in the crush?’ he whispered in his bodyguard’s ear. ‘You saw him come roaring towards us?’
The major nodded. ‘I saw him, monsieur. He seems to have gone now.’
Henri stared over du Clos’ shoulder. A kind of order had been restored on the road – the angry civilians had been beaten back by the English cavalry using the flats of their blades and the moving bulk of their horses’ bodies. The companies of English infantry had fixed their plug-bayonets and been marched forward to make a sort of bladed human corridor on the road inside which the Irish garrison cowered, many of them bruised, muddied and with torn clothing. Scores now without their hats and muskets. Some even lacked their boots.
General Schomberg was prowling along the edge of the road on his big black horse like a highwayman, keeping the warring sides apart with his ferocious scowl and the threat of the pistol in his hand. Henri could see no sign of Blood.
‘The march will continue,’ Schomberg was shouting, ‘the garrison will be allowed to make their way to Belfast, and onwards to Newry, without interference of any kind!’ He wheeled his mount and glared at a bulldog-ugly Irish peasant woman with murderous dark eyes and a smooth, round river rock in her hand. ‘I have given my word of honour that our gallant enemies may depart in peace. And I will shoot dead any man’ – on his high black stallion he loomed massively over the old peasant – ‘or any woman, for that matter, who causes me to break my sacred vow to these valiant and courageous men.’
The woman dropped her stone, lowered her eyes. Schomberg moved on.
‘If you see Blood,’ whispered Henri, ‘and have a clean shot, put a bullet in his head immediately. Don’t hesitate. Shoot him. We’ll explain ourselves later.’
‘As you command, monsieur le comte. I shall not hesitate.’
‘The column will continue the march,’ Schomberg bellowed. ‘March!’
Henri felt himself and Major du Clos and the whole circle of Colonel MacCarthy’s personal guard being moved sideways in a great jostling mass. He lost his footing for a moment as a stone turned under his boot; he staggered and a careless musket butt knocked his wounded arm, sending a bolt of excruciating pain ripping though his body – but du Clos had him upright in an instant, and the two of them joined the flow of men trudging south-west along the road.
‘Swear to me, Guillaume,’ said Henri, through agony-locked teeth. ‘Swear on your soul. When you next see that double-dyed traitor Blood, you will shoot him in the face. Immediately. Damn the consequences. Blow him to Hell.’
‘I swear it, monsieur.’
*
‘I like you, Captain Blood, I really do,’ said General Schomberg. ‘You are a gunner in a thousand, an artist when it comes to the pointing of a cannon, and I have it from all sides that you are normally diligent, obedient, hardworking . . .’
Schomberg had his feet in a basin of steaming hot water mixed with a pungent bouquet of herbs. The resinous, lemony smell was intense inside the newly erected and smaller command tent and it was making Holcroft’s eyes water. The general was wearing nothing below the waist but a pair of red silk drawers and seated on a canvas chair his thin, white, veiny legs were sunk deep in a porcelain washing bowl.
‘. . . But, quite apart from your disgraceful dereliction of duty at the No. 2 Battery and your blatant disobedience of my orders, I cannot have you attacking prisoners of war after I have given them my solemn word that they may march away with their arms and honour intact. I simply will not allow this sort of wild, unruly behaviour in one of my Ordnance officers.’
It was the evening of the day of the Irish garrison’s departure. The English camp was in turmoil with all units packing up and preparing to head south after the retreating Jacobite army. After being arrested in his attack on Narrey by Schomberg himself, Holcroft had been escorted to his tent by a pair of Sir William Russell’s troopers and detained there for the rest of the day while the artillery park behind him was turned into an anthill by the orders to march.
‘I sent a galloper with a message to First Engineer Richards in the hospital in Belfast, seeking his advice about what I am to do with you,’ said the general, frowning at Holcroft through the fragrant mist of his foot-bath, ‘and he sent back the most extraordinary message. He tells me that the two French intelligence agents inside the town, in Joymount House, to be precise, were responsible for the murder of a lady friend of yours. Is this true, sir? Major Richards says that you must have been driven temporarily mad by grief for this female person – one Mrs Behn, a notorious playwright and poet, if I have understood correctly – with whom you had an intimate friendship . . .’
Holcroft had been keeping the blade-sharp memory of Aphra’s death locked away in his heart for the longest time. But now, as this silly old goat with his lean shanks wreathed in ste
am, droned on about his misdeeds, he found that he was transported back four months in time to a warm day in London and a visit he had made to a squalid attic room in a house on Drury Lane . . .
*
He had gone to the decrepit house to visit his old friend Aphra Behn in mid-April. As he mounted the creaky wooden staircase – pausing only once to raise his hat to a half-dressed and very drunk young whore whom he met coming down – he was feeling irritated and out of sorts. Guilty, too. He had been neglecting Aphra, whose health had declined over the course of the winter and who was now complaining of constant pains in her arms and legs. She ascribed this to a condition called sciatica, which made walking and, far worse, writing extremely painful.
He had visited her the week before and brought her a camphor-wood box of crystallised ginger, a treat that he assumed his wife Elizabeth had bought from one of the Cheapside confectioners and forgotten about. He had found the wooden box of sweetmeats in a dining room cupboard and, lacking any other gift to hand for his sickly and impoverished friend, he had taken it and wrapped it in a pretty green silk ribbon. He had not mentioned this appropriation to his wife because Mrs Blood had a deep and frequently expressed dislike of his playwright friend. Elizabeth objected to Aphra on several grounds: she felt that writing witty, salacious plays was not a fit occupation for a lady; and that, as an attractive widow, she spent far too much time drinking wine with married gentlemen – including Elizabeth’s own husband. But most of all, she objected to the fact that Aphra lived above a notorious brothel. On such petty things, a human life does balance, thought Holcroft.
As it happened, Holcroft and Aphra had quarrelled on the day he had visited and brought her the gift of the crystallised ginger. She was in more pain than usual, and he was distracted with his preparations for the Train’s departure for Ireland. The news had recently broken in London that James had landed in Kinsale with his French troops and the mobilisation for war was in full swing.
