Under Enemy Colours

by Sean Thomas Russell

  “Where away?”

  Wickham rose to a crouch and crept through the sparse underwood, pressed aside a branch, and pointed silently. Two young ladies and a throng of children were in the throes of doing what could only be described as gambolling.

  “Damn …” Hayden whispered.

  “What are they about?” Wickham asked.

  “Out for a frolic, I would say.” He noticed the older girls carried baskets over their arms. “Collecting mushrooms, perhaps.”

  “I don’t suppose they’re cousins of yours?”

  “No. My uncle’s family removed to Arcachon some years ago.”

  “Bad luck.”

  Hayden gazed with a certain sadness at the scene; two pretty young women beneath ribboned straw bonnets, aglow with youth and high spirits. The children skipped and ran about them, like a little moving sea, overwhelmed now and then by gales of laughter. How far removed these innocents seemed from the sans-culottes of the Paris mob. It was a shock to think that he warred against these people, too.

  “If they come into the wood we shall have to slip out the other side, which I do not much favour, as there is a lane and a large farm house in that direction and we shall almost certainly be noticed.”

  “Do you think they’ll come into the wood?”

  “Very likely, yes. It is a warm day to sit in the sun, and if they’re seeking mushrooms, they will come looking in the shade.”

  “Then I suppose we can only wait,” Wickham said, letting the branch go slowly back into place.

  “Yes. Better wake Hawthorne. I can hear him snoring from here.”

  “Aye, sir.” Wickham slipped quietly away, leaving the lieutenant to listen to the children’s laughter.

  Wickham and the marine were back in a moment, Hawthorne looking decidedly out of sorts.

  “A drum, Mr Hayden, from the sou’west.”

  The lieutenant trotted as quickly as he could through the stand of trees, and, crouching behind a fallen log and some low bushes, saw a company of French Regulars heave into view. They marched in perfect columns, rows of blue coats, their officers seated on horseback.

  “The forces of the revolution,” Hayden whispered. “How they would like to seize some English spies.”

  “We’re not spies,” Wickham protested, sounding a little offended. “We’re officers of the British Navy.”

  “In uniform, that is true. Dressed as we are, they would declare us spies, and condemn us as such.”

  Wickham looked surprised. “What is the penalty for spying in France?”

  “The guillotine is the punishment currently favoured.” He saw the look on the boy’s face grow dark. “But you needn’t worry, Lord Arthur. Your father sits in the House of Lords. You they would exchange. Hawthorne and me …” He shrugged. “English spies are not their interest at the moment, I suspect. Many in Brittany do not support the convention, and as good papists, they have been hiding reactionary members of the clergy. A military presence here has very little to do with the English.”

  At that moment the lieutenant of marines blundered through the bush.

  “There you are,” he whispered, falling down beside them. “One of the children came into the wood, unbeknownst to me. I was observed.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Hayden crawled backwards from the log for two yards. “What did they do?”

  “I don’t know. The child sped off, screaming like an Irish banshee.”

  “Stay here—both of you.” Hayden crawled another few yards into the wood, then was on his feet, running as lightly as he could over the moss and roots. Sunlight from the meadow appeared through the branches, and then the anxious young faces of the ladies. Hayden retrieved his glass from his satchel, and the book as well, smiled broadly, and stepped out of the trees.

  “Bonjour, bonjour, mesdemoiselles.” He then switched to Breton. “What a perfect day God has granted us! Sunlit and warm, all His creatures abroad.” He held up his glass and book, smiling as though a bit embarrassed. “Excuse us for skulking, my friends and me; we were seeking the Sardinian warbler, Scorbutus cani, leagues beyond its natural range. You cannot hope to observe one by any strategy but unworldly stealth. He is wary, mesdemoiselles. That little bird is wary.”

  He could see the apprehension changing to amusement.

  “But I have not introduced myself.” He made an elaborate, even comic, bow. “Yves Saint Almond at your service.”

  The children tittered, and the young women smiled. His Breton accent and his clownish manner put them at ease.

  “You are not from around here,” one of the boys said, eyeing him suspiciously.

  “How perceptive you are,” Hayden congratulated the child. “But when I was your age I visited this place often. My uncle lived only a short walk away.”

  “Who might that have been, monsieur?” one of the girls asked. They were much alike, the two of them: willow leaf– shaped eyes, with a little archipelago of faint freckles scattered across their cheeks. They looked as though they had been well fed on farm victuals all their short lives, and were all milky skin and corn-silk hair, supple and tall.

  “Gabriel Saint Almond.”

  “Ah!” the taller said. “The Saint Almonds moved away.”

  “To Arcachon,” Hayden said, and saw all doubt disappear from their faces.

  “Marie was heartbroken,” the other girl said, and laughed, receiving a cuff on the arm from her friend.

  “You knew Guillaume?” Hayden said innocently.

  The girls both giggled. “I am Anne Petit,” the tall girl offered, “and this is my cousin, Marie. These little brats are a pack of wild wolves, seeking innocent lambs to devour.”

  “I thought they looked very fierce,” Hayden declared gravely. “My friend, he said to me, ‘Yves! I was set upon by a pack of wild wolves!’ He was almost mad with terror.”

  The children giggled.

  “Guillaume had an English cousin, too, did you know?” Anne asked; she regarded him oddly. “He, too, had differently coloured eyes, monsieur.”

  “My cousin Charles!” He waved a hand at his face. “It is a family trait, the eyes. But he is in America now, where his mother married a wealthy merchant, and they all live in a big house where they have grown fat and contented.”

  Anne nodded as though this were what she expected. “We met him, when he was young and we were just children.”

  “He was not so handsome as Guillaume,” Marie said wistfully.

  “But wittier,” Hayden pronounced. He suddenly pricked up his ears, turning his head from side to side. “Did you hear that? My Sardinian warbler! It calls. If I may beg your leave … ?”

  The young women smiled and waved for him to go. Hayden slunk back into the trees, pausing just before he disappeared, to raise his glass and examine the high branches of an oak. He waved once and entered the shady hallways of the wood. A few moments later, he found his companions still watching the French soldiers march by.

  “You should come away from there, before someone remarks your pale, English faces,” Hayden whispered.

  “What about the children?” Hawthorne asked.

  “I think I have convinced them we are innocent, if somewhat ridiculous, natural philosophers, seeking the rare Sardinian warbler.”

  “What in God’s name is a Sardinian warbler?” Hawthorne demanded.

  “A bird that eats sardines, for all I know. There, the tail of the French serpent, at last.”

  The final soldiers passed, the blue-backed company snaking down the road. Hayden took a long breath and felt his knotted shoulder-muscles relax. And then a French officer on horseback, a young boy up before him, came trotting back and left the road to pass east of them.

  “Apparently we are not out of the wood yet,” Hawthorne said unhappily. “That is the boy who discovered me.”

  “They did not tell me he had run off after the soldiers.” Hayden stood. “Bloody hell.”

  Wickham leapt to his feet. “Shall we make a run for it?
”

  “With two hundred French soldiers around the bend? I don’t think it would answer.” Hayden wiped away the sweat on his brow with a rough sleeve. “I will have to speak with the officer, though I doubt he’ll be as credulous as the young ladies. Damn; I wish I had not named my uncle now.”

  Hayden ran quickly back across the small wood, emerging on the other side to find the officer, head bent, listening to the ladies. The English lieutenant erupted from the wood, waved his telescoping glass, and cheerfully greeted the officer in Breton.

  The Frenchman fixed him with a serious, measuring gaze, and answered in French. Hayden repeated his greeting in that language.

  “Oh, here he is,” announced Anne. “But we know him, it turns out. He came here often as a boy, to visit his uncle, Gabriel Saint Almond, who was our neighbour.”

  “And what is your business here, monsieur, if you will permit me to ask?” The officer did not seem overly suspicious, but rather a man performing his duty with admirable thoroughness.

  “I am here for reasons of sentiment, monsieur, to see once again the place where I spent many childhood summers. Today I am taking note of the birds.” He held up his glass and removed the book from his satchel.

  “He is looking for the Sardinian warbler,” Anne offered.

  The officer’s face did not change, but his tone did. “The Sardinian warbler makes its home upon the shores of the Mediterranean, if I am not mistaken, and flies south for the winter.”

  Hayden cursed his foolishness—mentioning a bird of which he knew nothing. “That is true, monsieur, so you can imagine my surprise to hear one singing in this wood so late in the year. But of course they have been known to wander even further north. A pair was collected in the Low Countries not two years past.”

  “You sound like a man of education, monsieur …”

  “He speaks Latin,” Marie said, as if this had made a particular impression on her.

  “Do you indeed?” the officer asked, his interest piqued.

  “Not with the fluency I would like,” Hayden said modestly, realizing how imprudent it had been to have uttered a word in the tongue of the clerics.

  “And what other languages might so learned a man speak?” the officer asked.

  “A bit of High German; Italian, to a degree; Spanish, but only a little better than my Latin.”

  “Do you speak English, as well?”

  “I can ask my way and order a meal.”

  “We are looking for English spies. Three men came ashore last night near Crozon, we believe, and are now at large in the countryside.”

  “And what did they look like?” Hayden asked, narrowing his eyes.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I saw three men upon the road to Folgoit, early this morning. They hurried along unnaturally, as though pursued.”

  “I shall have enquiries made in Folgoit. Where are your friends, monsieur?”

  “In the wood, seeking our warbler.”

  “I would be remiss in my duties if I did not speak with them, as well. I hope you will forgive my intrusion.”

  “Duty is a cruel mistress, monsieur,” Hayden answered brightly, “but you may rely on us to offer every assistance.” He favoured the officer with a smile, though he felt his heart sink. He had failed to divert the man’s curiosity, and one word from Hawthorne would give them away. Hayden was not sure he could bring himself to shoot the officer, here, before two young ladies and a mob of children. Hawthorne, however, might not share his misgivings.

  Hayden turned toward the wood, but, before he had taken a step, the officer said, “Let one of these children bring your friends, monsieur.”

  “If you wish.” Hayden stopped and tried his best to look both unconcerned and of mild disposition. He hoped he would not have to open his satchel, because his pistol, he now realized, was of English manufacture.

  Two boys were detached and sent running into the wood, fearless now with the French officer nearby. In a moment they returned with Wickham in tow.

  “May I introduce my nephew, Pierre le Pennec,” Hayden said, resting a hand on Wickham’s shoulder.

  “Monsieur,” Wickham said, making an appropriate bow.

  “And where is it you hail from?” the officer asked, his face a carefully composed mask of neutrality.

  “Arcachon, monsieur.”

  “I see. And what is it your father does in Arcachon?”

  “My father is dead, monsieur, but he was a barrister.”

  “My condolences, but I must ask—how did he die?”

  “The doctors called it consumption, but I think they did not really know, monsieur. He took very ill and hovered at death’s door for several weeks.” Wickham cast down his gaze, as though the memory were painful to him.

  The officer regarded the boy a moment, still showing no sign of emotion.

  “Is there not another?” He searched among the children until he spotted the boy who had brought him there. “Is this the large man who frightened you?”

  The boy shook his head, still too fearful to speak.

  “My uncle’s servant crossed over the road, chasing a bird he hoped to collect.”

  “Then let us go find him,” the officer said. He doffed his hat to the young ladies. “Mesdemoiselles.”

  With two English spies beside him, the Frenchman rode slowly around the wood. Although he showed no outward signs of fear, when he thought no one looked he loosened one of the pistols holstered on his saddle.

  Hayden wondered if he thought him a cleric in hiding, or a nobleman sent to raise the population of Brittany in rebellion. Perhaps he even believed them to be English spies. Each of these prospects was as dangerous as the other.

  They slipped down a steep, grassy embankment to the road below—two greyish tracks separated by a swath of trampled green. A dry-stone wall topped the southern slope, and the little wood where they had hidden overshadowed the north. Birds called in the quiet afternoon and the low drone of insects all but drowned out the retreating beat of the drum.

  “Where is your servant, monsieur?” the officer asked, his voice perhaps betraying a bit of anxiety.

  “I don’t know,” Hayden answered truthfully. “If he is off after a warbler it might lead him some distance.”

  The officer twisted about to look north and something flew out of the southern forest and drove the man from his saddle. Hawthorne and the officer tumbled in a writhing heap, the Englishman on top for a moment, the French officer trying to call out.

  Hawthorne attempted to choke off the man’s windpipe, but a strangled cry did escape. The horse leapt clear of this, trotting a few yards. Hardly realizing what he did, Hayden leapt at the pile of thrashing limbs, grabbed an arm he hoped was French, and wrestled it to the ground. Another muffled cry escaped the man, and then something large and heavy was driven down from above. A horrible impact, and then a second, and the officer lay still, the arm Hayden pinned limp as a cable.

  Wickham stood over them, holding a stone the size of a twenty-four-pound ball, a look of keen distress on his young face. Hayden leapt to his feet, casting his gaze desperately down the road, left then right. He saw no one in either direction.

  Hawthorne, who was half under the dead Frenchman, disentangled himself and got to his knees, gasping for breath, his nose bleeding. He put a hand to his eye, blinking quickly.

  “Are you injured, Hawthorne?”

  “Struck me twice in the eye.” He shook his head as if to clear his vision. “Nothing to speak of.”

  Hayden looked again down the road in the direction the company had disappeared. Wickham still stood, staring at the body in horror, the bloody rock in his hands.

  “What shall we do, sir?” he almost whispered. “We’re spies and murderers now. I wouldn’t have killed him, but flailing around, he found your pistol.”

  For the first time Hayden noticed, almost beneath his feet, his own flintlock lying but a few inches from the officer’s limp hand.

  “Bloody hell!”
Hayden muttered, retrieving the gun. Doing so, he looked, accidentally, into the dead man’s blue eyes. The Frenchman lay, mouth agape, staring blindly up at the sky, his skull shattered and bloody, arms and legs thrown out unnaturally.

  Hayden rose and gazed at the little tableau.

  “They’re going to be after us now, Mr Hayden,” Hawthorne said. “As soon as they find this Frenchie.”

  “Not if we keep our wits about us.” He looked desperately about as though there might be something lying nearby that might be used to save them. Pointing down at the depression of damp earth from which Wickham had clearly pried his stone, he said, “Set your stone back down there, Mr Wickham, if you please. Have a care to place it just as it lay when you snatched it up—the dirt-coated side down. Just so, yes.”

  Wickham carefully replaced the stone and Hayden knelt and pressed the turf close around it. He was back on his feet in a moment, examining the ground. “We must all march here, in the dirt track, to cover our boot-prints. Do you see? It must look like a company of soldiers has passed. No marks of anyone standing or moving about the dead man. But don’t overstep any of the horse’s hoof-marks. He came after the soldiers.” Hayden pointed. “Something spooked the horse, here, and he threw his master. Do you see, where Hawthorne threw himself from the trees? The horse’s hoofs dug in as though he sprang forward, frightened. The Frenchman was thrown from his saddle and by the worst luck struck his head on this stone. It is all plain as morning.”

  He began marching over the dirt, and the others fell in behind. They covered their boot-prints with others heading in the same direction as the soldiers. Hayden quickly ran his eye over the ground in the area, walking up the lane to where they had joined the path, and marching over their prints so that it seemed only the French officer had passed this way. The horse had come trotting back and stood grazing a few yards from its master, who lay, a mass of blue and white, fallen like a bit of cloud and sky.

  “Let us hope the girls and their charges do not learn of this man’s fate before the day is out,” Hayden muttered. He waved down the road. “Come. This way.”