Honour and the Sword

by A L Berridge

  Started off right and tight in the morning, hid the horses by the main foresters’ road, then went on foot to the site itself. Got there good and early, plenty of time to sort our positions and load the guns.

  I was on the fringes of the Dumont farm, holding the ropes on the east side of the road with Margot. Didn’t seem right putting a woman on a job like that, only there on account of being a marksman, no call to go asking her to take the weight of carriage horses as well, but I told her not to worry, if the strain was too much I’d help her. Funny woman. Said to me straight-faced ‘And if you’re in trouble I’ll help you.’

  Jacques was with us as swordsman, along with Dubois himself. No one else on our side, cover being rather thin, they were all tucked away across the road in the Forest of Verdâme. Luckily we’d a runner to nip between us, Pepin or some such name, only about twelve, but Leroux said he was the best little poacher in Picardie, said if he was half as good with a musket as he was with a sling he’d soon be rivalling Mercier. Wasn’t sure I liked the idea of giving him a musket, truth be told. Dark skin, dark eyes, shifty look, I’d have said he was more than half gypsy. Still, I sent him for more powder from the other team, and off he went, happy as a little dog.

  So there I was, right, waiting for him to come back, when there’s movement over the other side, flash of something tan-coloured dropping through the leaves. Leroux coming down off the tree, and I realize something’s up. Take a step towards the road, but there’s Dubois beside me, pushing me back against the wall of the barn.

  ‘Soldiers,’ he said. ‘Coming out the Château gates.’

  So they were, maybe two dozen of them. Lined up across the road in three whole ranks, muskets on the stands like they meant business. Looked to me for all the world like a firing squad, only with no one to shoot at.

  ‘Georges is signalling,’ said Margot, and we all looked down the Kingsway to see this white handkerchief waving from a tree in the distance. Soldiers coming from that way too.

  Jean-Marie Mercier

  Giles said there were men in the woods behind us.

  ‘How far?’ said Stefan.

  ‘Six, seven hundred yards. Going slowly, keeping hidden, checking no one’s getting past them.’

  ‘Do they know we’re here?’

  Giles shrugged.

  A muscle twitched high up on Stefan’s cheek, but that was the only sign he made. He turned to us, said ‘Abort,’ and began to jog towards the road to warn the others, but Marcel was already signalling frantically to urge him back, and pointing towards the Château. Stefan halted on the edge of the woods, and they stood whispering and miming to each other across the road.

  Philippe adjusted the quiver on his back and reached for his bow. Bernard settled his crossbow under his arm, and pulled down his woollen hat with trembling fingers. Young Pepin started dumbly gathering up the bandoliers. I had my first musket already slung round my shoulders, but when I reached for the second Giles stopped me.

  ‘You can’t run like that, soldier,’ he said. ‘Leave it. Leave them all.’

  It went against everything we’d ever been taught to leave the guns, and I think it was that more than anything that made me realize how serious the situation was. It was so quiet, you see. I couldn’t hear anything wrong, I couldn’t see anything that looked different from a moment before, but suddenly there was danger screaming all round. I watched in a kind of trance as Giles calmly shouldered his own musket and stood tapping his fingers on the butt as we waited for Stefan to get back. Bettremieu was reeling in the ropes under the dead leaves like a fisherman with a line, while André lingered by the road, with Jacques staring desperately at him from the other side.

  ‘Musketeers,’ said Stefan, picking up his own gun. ‘Both directions. The road’s blocked. Can we get through them in the woods, Leroux?’

  Giles bared his teeth in a fox-like smile. ‘Can try,’ he said, and turned to lead the way.

  Jacques Gilbert

  I couldn’t get to him. The musketeers outside the Château weren’t moving, there were more setting up position down the Kingsway, one step on that road would get us blown to pieces in a second. The boy was only yards away, but I couldn’t get to him, and he couldn’t get to me.

  Colin said ‘They’ll be all right, they’ve got Leroux. Verdâme verderer, isn’t he? He’ll get them through.’

  Stefan was moving the team after Giles. The boy trotted after them, then gave me a grin and a wave before he turned and the forest swallowed him.

  ‘Come on,’ said Marcel urgently. ‘They’ll be after us too, if they’re not already. Back to the horses, then we’ll try and support the others.’

  Our own escape was easy, we’d only got to make our way down the farm till we were behind the musketeers on the Kingsway, then nip over into the Dax-Verdâme woods and run like hell up to the Back Road. We never saw any soldiers after us, I suppose the farm was too open to look a good site for an ambush.

  The horses were just where we’d left them, grazing contentedly near the Flanders Road with Pinhead keeping guard. We’d expected to be coming back here with a carriage and Don Francisco, I’d seen us in my head all whooping and laughing with excitement, and here we were running in grim silence with a million questions in our heads and a sick sense of fear in our stomachs.

  Marcel seemed as desperate as I was. He shoved us towards the horses and said ‘We’ll go north of the site and work back down towards it. Lead as many horses as you can. If they break through, there may be pursuit close behind and we’ll need to get them out fast. If they don’t, maybe we can at least give them cover to help them disperse.’

  It sounded good, it sounded like something. But Tonnerre was snorting uneasily as I mounted him, and as I grabbed his reins Tempête was doing the same.

  Beside me Colin stiffened and said ‘Smoke.’

  There was something tingling at my own nose too. I turned east to stare into the forest back towards the ambush site. It seemed quiet and peaceful in there, we still hadn’t heard so much as a gunshot, but away in the distance something was obscuring my view of the trees, blurring them over with the faintest bluish haze.

  Colin was right. Smoke.

  Jean-Marie Mercier

  ‘Smoke,’ said Philippe. ‘From the west.’

  I don’t think I’d ever seen Philippe when he wasn’t smiling. He was always jolly, you see, always flashing that great gap-toothed grin, but now there was just the face of a man I didn’t know and his lips forming the word ‘Smoke.’

  Stefan swore. ‘Trying to drive us to the gorge and trap us there.’

  There was a sudden rustle of leaves, then a weasel broke cover right in front of us. We watched uneasily as it darted away noisily through the bracken.

  Giles’ voice seemed quite without expression. ‘I’ll have to turn us north-east, no choice about it. Maybe we can break through their line before we reach the gorge.’

  I heard a tiny rasping sound behind me and saw André drawing his sword. He caught my eye and smiled. ‘There’s eight of us, Jean-Marie. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble breaking through.’ He started slithering his way past me through the undergrowth. ‘Can I come to the front, Giles?’

  Giles turned to face ahead, but not before I saw a tiny smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. I heard Stefan muttering ‘Bloody little hero,’ as he came worming after André, and saw to my surprise he was grinning too. For a second I caught sight of Philippe’s old smile as he bent to start crawling again, while Bettremieu was actually rumbling an odd little tune under his breath as he followed. I looked round at the new volunteer, who was crawling at the back with Bernard, and said ‘It’s all right, Pepin, we’ll get through.’ He beamed at me and continued wriggling along, happy as an eel in sand.

  The smoke seemed to have grown thicker as we talked. I felt it tickling my throat, and was afraid I might cough. I tried to suck in a breath, but my lungs constricted and panic tightened my throat. ‘Heads down, lads,’ Stefan was int
oning ahead of us. ‘Faces down, it’ll clear in a minute.’ Behind me Bettremieu was making a noise like ‘Pom, pom, ti-pom-pom,’ and Stefan’s voice drifted back ‘Stop that Flemish grunting, Libert, or I’ll kill you.’

  As Giles led us slowly eastwards, the smoke gradually thinned again and my hopes began to rise. The maquis grew more sparsely now so I knew we must be getting nearer the gorge, but we were progressing northwards too and I began to wonder if we mightn’t have passed the Spanish line after all.

  Giles looked back and put his finger to his lips, and after a moment he held up his hand to stop us altogether.

  ‘Can’t get past that,’ he whispered. ‘Let them come to us, then we’ll break through.’

  We crawled into a dense area of tall bracken and waited. Now we’d stopped moving, I found I could hear the enemy for myself. I heard swords jingling, the rustle of leather against steel, the faint clinking of the little flasks on the bandoliers, all the usual noises of an army on the move, but almost eerie because of the total absence of voices. There was a swishing sound as well, and I guessed they were beating the bushes. Stefan drew his knife. André coiled himself into position, knees bent, sword poised, his other hand resting lightly on the ground to give purchase to the spring, long fingers spread in an arc in the dirt.

  Giles was whispering again. ‘When it goes off, we all run like bloody hell, right? Follow Ravel and head for the gorge.’

  He’d hardly finished when the bracken parted ahead of us and a pair of dark breeches suddenly appeared. André thrust forward at once and the breeches went down, but another man behind let out a yell, and I knew we were finished.

  ‘That’s it, boys,’ said Giles, not even whispering any more, and crashed forward through the bracken. Stefan overtook him, and we all followed, running as fast as we could, not looking at anything or anyone but Stefan running ahead of us.

  There were shouts all around, and the crack of a musket as someone recovered enough to take a shot at us, but it came from behind, and I realized we were through the line and past them, we had only to keep running to reach safety. But Stefan was still going east, he was heading for the gorge, and after a moment I realized why. There was movement far ahead of us in the trees, someone was shouting, and I knew there were more soldiers coming down at us from the north. It felt as if the whole Verdâme garrison must be loose in that forest, they were hunting us like animals, and nowhere to run but the gorge.

  Stefan Ravel

  No choice, Abbé, we’d got to cross the bloody thing or die. There were a couple of hundred dons out there, and even with the fearsome André de Roland on our side those were odds I didn’t fancy at all.

  I got them to the edge of the gorge and started leading them north along its bank. The dons had lost sight of us for a while, but I guessed we wouldn’t get far before hitting the next cordon. At last I saw what I wanted, a good sturdy tree with high branches sited near the edge on the far side. I halted them and asked Libert for the ropes. It took him long enough unwinding them, he was carrying so many muskets he looked like a giant hedgehog, but he got them in the end, Leroux knotted them together, and I ripped off a branch to make an anchor. I looked round for a volunteer as I worked, and saw the perfect one right away.

  ‘Now then, young Pepin,’ I said in my most fatherly tone. ‘How’d you like to be a hero?’

  Jean-Marie Mercier

  Stefan and Bettremieu swung Pepin between them and simply threw him over the gap. He landed quite easily on a large patch of heather and seemed almost to bounce to his feet as if this were all a great game. Then he took his end of the rope, scrambled up a big tree and secured it above a high branch, while Stefan reeled in the other end, and we had a crossing.

  Unfortunately only one man could cross at a time, and the Spaniards were bound to search this section of the gorge any minute. Stefan was clearly aware of it too. While Pepin was still tying the rope he glared at the rest of us and said ‘No argument about this, you’ll go when I say. André first, then Mercier –’

  ‘No,’ said André. ‘I can’t give cover, you know I can’t. Marksmen first.’

  Stefan’s head jerked towards him, then he hesitated and dropped his eyes. ‘All right. Mercier, you first, then Rouet, then Durand, then Leroux. Don’t hang about when you get there, we’ll need all the covering fire we can get if we’re all to cross. If we’re in trouble, Libert, throw André over before crossing yourself.’

  ‘If we’re in trouble,’ said André, ‘you’ll need a swordsman to cover your back.’

  Stefan said calmly ‘I’ll need soldiers who’ll do what they’re fucking told. Now keep your voices down or we’ll draw the dons.’

  The rope was ready and people were pushing me towards it, then Bettremieu was slinging two more guns round me, and there wasn’t time to think about anything else. I clutched the rope tight and closed my eyes as I stepped off the edge.

  It was only when I was in the air that I thought with sudden panic I might simply crash straight into the opposite wall of the gorge, but of course Pepin had secured the rope very high, and my feet no more than skimmed the grass of the far bank. Stefan started reeling it back as soon as I let go, then I quickly found cover and positioned my first musket. I’d hardly laid out the others when Bernard was dropping beside me, and on the far bank Stefan was hauling the rope back for Philippe. We might do it yet. I pulled off my bandolier so I could reach the flasks quickly. There were twelve reloads, Stefan used to call them the ‘Twelve Apostles’. Twelve shots, but it could take twenty minutes to load them all.

  ‘I can load, M’sieur,’ said Pepin, sitting behind me with crossed legs. ‘Pass me your guns as you finish and I will load.’

  Beside me, Bernard finished ratcheting up his string, locked the bolt in place, sat back and cracked his knuckles.

  Jacques Gilbert

  We were belting through the forest as fast as the horses could go. The sight of Tempête galloping beside me gave me an odd kind of superstitious hope. He’d saved the boy’s life once, a bit of my brain thought he could do it again.

  We stopped on the gabelle road to take stock of our position. The smoke was well south of us, the Spaniards had only fired the bit between the last two foresters’ roads, but it was enough to drive anyone more than a mile south of us east and to the gorge. We were about to ride down and follow it, when there came muffled reports off to the east, gunfire reaching us through the smoke.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Margot. ‘It’s on the other side of the gorge.’

  That was impossible. The bit north of the Château between the gorge and the Wall was just called the ‘dead land’ because no one could get to it, except of course by crossing the gorge at the gabelle road and riding down, which it had never been worth our while to do.

  ‘It is now,’ said Marcel. ‘Come on.’

  Jean-Marie Mercier

  Two soldiers appeared further down the gorge, looking up and down the bank, trying to see where we’d got to. Our men were hidden by the trees that grew right up to the edge, but just then Philippe came sailing over on the rope, it was too late to signal him to wait, and they saw him at once.

  I fired immediately, and Bernard loosed his bolt, but we’d had no time to consult, and both fired at the same target. Philippe landed safely, but the second soldier was firing even as he touched down, and suddenly he was falling backwards and away from us, his mouth open in a kind of terrible surprise, his hands open and releasing the rope, his body dropping out of sight, thudding terribly against the side of the gorge as it fell.

  Pepin was pulling the musket out of my hands, I grabbed the next and shot the second man. There was still one loaded musket left, but no one yet to fire at. André, Stefan, Giles and Bettremieu were alone in the clearing, and Stefan was reeling back the rope. Unfortunately the sound of our shots was having its effect, and I could hear distant shouting as the pursuing Spaniards began to realize our direction. I said to Bernard ‘You take right, I’ll take left,’ and he nodded
dumbly even as he was screeching back the string for his next bolt. Another man appeared higher up the bank, I shot him quickly, then Giles was swinging over towards our side.

  Pepin was loading frantically, but there were soldiers nearly up to our men, I could see movement in the trees behind the clearing. Giles skidded to a halt on our bank, his heels scoring up two great furrows in the dirt, and I stood to snatch the musket out of his hands as two dark figures rushed into the clearing on the other side.

  I fired half-blind, but even as I jerked to the recoil I heard Bernard call out, and turned to see horses pounding towards us from the north. I jumped back into cover, but the rider in front was blond, he was blond, and I realized with shattering relief that it was Marcel.

  Stefan Ravel

  Someone shot straight, I’m glad to say, and André had the other, stabbing straight into his belly before he’d even taken in the sight of us.

  Me, I just kept hauling in the rope and said ‘André next.’ The kid went on facing the trees, sword in hand, but I’d known he’d be trouble, I was ready for it. I jerked my thumb at Libert and said ‘Get him.’

  The big Flamand moved fast enough when he needed to. He was scooping up his young Sieur under one arm and back to me before I’d finished reeling in the rope. I left them to it, drew my own sword, and turned to the trees where three of the buggers were bursting through at once. I slashed one, saw the furthest fall to a bolt, and punched the third hard in the jaw, but the bastard had a pistol which flamed out as he fell. Libert cried out and clutched his arm, then another shot cracked out, and he collapsed on his knees. Then for the first time there was something like a real volley of answering fire over the gorge, and we were covered.