‘Body in front,’ he said trying to sound unaffected. ‘Don’t trip on it.’
They got far enough away, onto a clear track, so that they could stand up and move normally. Markham’s mind was racing, and Rannoch had the good sense to keep his own counsel until his superior was ready to speak.
‘There were guards, or at least one.’
‘Dead?’
‘Throat slit. Someone went to a great deal of trouble to ensure we saw that.’
‘Those men led us to it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
‘Nebbio,’ said Markham, as a sentry challenged them. ‘Think where we are going, Sergeant, and why. To tell General Paoli that one or more of his generals have betrayed the Corsican cause. Up till now we had no idea who, but that has changed.’
‘A written note would have been easier.’
‘From whom? And would we have believed it, signed or unsigned? The man who arranged this is not going to reveal his identity.’
‘Because it would put him at risk.’
‘We have to believe so. Instead, he has allowed us to see for ourselves. To watch Buttafuco actually conversing with the enemy.’
‘Including that bastard from Toulon.’
‘Why not challenge him openly, and just arrest him?’
‘Could it be,’ Markham asked, ‘that Buttafuco is not alone?’
They made their way back up the lines as the first hint of grey tinged the sky behind Bastia. The whole party, with the exception of Major Lanester, was up and dressed, arms at the ready. Pavin was working on his fire close to the front flap of his master’s tent, his copper pots and pans arranged around him; a box was open to reveal beefsteak, trussed game birds, and fresh eggs ready to be cooked. Ordered to desist he glared at Markham, his gravelly voice a soft but rude litany, aimed at the flames, regarding the pleasures of serving decent folk, instead of bog-trotters.
‘Please be so good as to wake the major, Pavin, and saddle up his horse. We shall be on the road before the half-hour is gone.’
Pavin poked hard at his fire. ‘That’ll never be time enough to get him fed and watered.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Markham snapped, ‘it’s all the time you have.’
‘We’ll be seeing about that,’ Pavin growled, tugging at the tie on the Major’s tent flap. ‘Seems to me some folks has got above their place, an’ forgot the rank of the officer in charge of this here venture.’
Bleary-eyed and puffy faced, Lanester looked like a man who’d had a restless night. He looked at a sky just turning blue, and being no more convinced of the need for haste than his servant, he ordered Pavin to get on with his cooking. Looking at him, Markham felt a sense of utter frustration. He knew that dead guard would be missed. Even now the other sentinels on that meeting would be searching for him. What would happen when they found the body, as they were bound to now it was light, he didn’t know. All he was sure of was that he had no desire to still be in the Corsican lines when it happened. The other thing he didn’t want to do was to explain his nocturnal wanderings to Lanester.
‘I cannot see that our purpose can be served by delay, sir,’ Markham insisted. ‘We lost enough time last night.’
‘A good breakfast will put a better tinge on the day,’ said Lanester with relish.
‘I will, if you don’t mind, forgo the pleasure, sir.’
‘Gawd, boy, if it’s that vital to you, let’s get on the road with no more than a cup of warm coffee.’
‘Your honour,’ protested Pavin, pointing to a partridge already roasting on a spit.
‘Warm coffee,’ Lanester answered, softly but firmly, without taking his eyes off Markham. ‘And get my kit packed.’
‘Not till I’ve checked that cart,’ Pavin snarled. ‘Seems to me there might be a reason for all this hellfire haste.’
‘I doubt that’s the reason,’ Lanester said, his voice still soft, and aimed at Pavin’s retreating back. The Major didn’t elaborate further, but the look in his eyes was plain enough. That might not be the cause, but he had little doubt that there was one.
‘With your permission, sir?’
‘Carry on, Lieutenant.’
Markham left Rannoch to organise everyone, and went for a last, quick look at the redoubts. He ranged his glass along the embrasures, pinging to himself as he shot each presented target, like a child pretending to fire a gun. The one outline he sought wasn’t there, despite his careful examination. There was no bottle-green coat, no black eyes, and no sneer.
‘Impossible,’ he said to himself.
‘We are ready, sir,’ said Rannoch, from behind him.
‘I did see him last night, Rannoch, didn’t I?’
‘I recognised him too.’
‘What is a bloody butcher like Fouquert doing here in Corsica?’
Chapter fifteen
The image of that face stayed with Markham even when the camp at Cardo was out of sight. That and the memories it engendered, acting like a persistent itch to the back of his neck, which didn’t fade as they began to climb towards the central mountains, using a road built by the French to help them control the interior. To the Irishman, a creature like Fouquert represented the worst excesses of the Revolution. Initially welcomed by most liberally minded people, the fall of the Bourbon monarchy had turned into a social upheaval that had begun to eat its own, with many of the original opponents of royal tyranny, radicals to a man, suffering either exile or judicial execution at the hands of fanatics.
Such mayhem had allowed men of Fouquert’s stamp to rise to prominence. They used the guillotine as a child might use a toy, delighting in the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people, cloaking their activities in the name of revolutionary justice. Not that Fouquert needed such an instrument to kill and maim. Markham had seen his handiwork at close quarters, and knew he was just as willing to use rape, torture and mutilation as instruments of both personal gratification and oppression. Indeed Fouquert boasted that, given a sharp knife to play on an individual victim, he’d take great personal pleasure in the pain he inflicted. To appoint such a monster as the Citizen Commissioner-designate of Toulon, the man responsible for retribution when the allies were ejected from the port, was an invitation to genocide.
If the reports were to be believed, six thousand souls had died when the French retook the Mediterranean naval base, quite a number just driven to drown in the harbour as they fled the approaching nemesis; part soldiers, part the rabble from the slums of Marseille. How many had died formally, decapitated in the main square under Fouquert’s personal direction, Markham didn’t know. Probably a minority, since one of the ploys of the revolution was to release the worst elements in society onto the defenceless populace, the mere possession of property quite sufficient to warrant a bloody death. They’d done it in Lyon, Nantes, Marseille and every other city that resisted Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety.
They marched all day at a steady pace along the paved highway, with strictly regulation stops, crossing the flat and fertile coastal plain. After Casamozze that changed as the forests thickened. The incline also seemed to increase as they progressed, till the approach of night found them close to the hillside village of Barchetta. They took over a barn from a rapacious peasant farmer, who insisted on a usurious rent for its use, knowing that the alternative for these British soldiers was a night out in the open. Lanester, who had not bothered to pose a question to him all day, eyed him while Pavin cooked their meal, but held his peace until it was served, and his man had gone back to prepare the second course.
‘So. Now that we are well away from Cardo, and alone, was it fear of the knife that had us leave in such a hurry?’
Markham had had plenty of time to rehearse the tale, so that when he related the events of the previous night, it came out with few hesitations, to a superior who mixed scepticism with outrage and surprise.
‘You saw Buttafuco in person!’
‘I did. I can’t be sure that he was
negotiating personally with Lacombe, but there can’t be too many French generals languishing around Bastia.’
‘Good God in heaven!’ he exclaimed. Then his face clouded, and he invoked a different image. ‘Why the devil didn’t you tell me this before we left?’
Lanester didn’t actually say that the rest of their journey might not have been necessary, but it was there in his belligerent stare. Markham was suddenly presented with one of those revelations that come at the oddest moments; the recollection of the major’s insistence that they pass through Cardo instead of pressing on, cross country, to Corte. It had been unsettling at the time. Now the thought entered his head that Lanester had brought him along as bait, quite prepared to sacrifice him to expose whoever the traitor in the Corsican command was. If nothing else, that explained how he’d managed to persuade his superiors to allot the Hebes as an escort. He questioned the notion as soon as he had it, but it was still with some difficulty that he managed to keep his voice normal.
‘Because I feared that if we delayed, we might not get away at all.’
‘We could have confronted them,’ Lanester barked, inducing a queasy feeling in the junior officer’s stomach.
‘Who, sir?’ asked Markham quietly.
Lanester chewed on that, literally since he was consuming the partridge he’d missed that morning. Markham was chewing on his hidden thoughts, alternately accepting and denying the possibility as he recalled each conversation. One thing was certain: if it was the truth, he’d never get the man to admit it. Fetching his thinking back to the present was difficult, but it had to be done.
The major didn’t need explanations really, just time to draw the obvious conclusions. That apart from Buttafuco, there was no way of knowing who else was involved; that a traitor who’d killed already to facilitate his perfidy would have no choice but to do the same to anyone who threatened exposure.
‘There’s more betrayal to come,’ he said finally.
‘That’s my reading of it,’ Markham replied. ‘The French will have been told about Nelson’s intentions. If for just that one day, when they see his ships in the bay, the French can be sure they run no risk by denuding the Cardo redoubts, they’ll have all the men they need to throw Nelson’s attack back into the sea.’
‘Damnit, the whole island would be unsafe after that kind of treachery.’
‘So alerting Paoli is imperative.’
‘We leave before dawn tomorrow, Markham,’ Lanester snapped, stabbing at the last leg of his bird.
‘The cart, sir.’
Lanester glared at him. ‘Don’t start in on that again, Lieutenant.’
‘I’m just worried that we might be intercepted?’
Lanester’s round face took on a worried expression. ‘The way we left that encampment, without the ritual farewells, is going to stink in someone’s nostrils for sure. And it wouldn’t surprise me if we had acquired a tail. But to suddenly dump that, too early, and start double marching, would only add to their anxieties. We must appear to change nothing till we’re close enough to Corte that it makes no odds. One more thing, we must send a messenger back to San Fiorenzo to let them know what you saw.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘We’ll need to get them away while it’s still dark. Thanks to your delay in letting on about this, those men will have an extra day’s journey. They’ll have to retrace every step they took since this morning.’
Markham used his knife to trace a triangle on the dusty table, stabbing to indicate the three points, showing that the distance between Barcetta and San Fiorenzo was no greater than that between Hood’s base and Bastia.
‘They won’t have lost much, sir. It would be tempting providence to send a despatch containing this kind of information back along the same route we used.’
Lanester nodded, acknowledging that they’d moved on two sides of a triangle since leaving San Fiorenzo. Their messengers would have no more than ten miles to go to get back to base, and by the direct route, as Markham pointed out, they’d avoid any risk of being stopped at Corsican outposts.
‘I thought, sir,’ Markham added, ‘that since we don’t know who to trust, we’d best trust nobody.’
Lanester glared at him. ‘Not even me, it seems.’
Markham detailed a trio of the Seahorses for the duty, handing them the uncoded letters that Lanester had just written to Hood and d’Aubent, with strict instructions to deliver both, seals intact. They were allotted three days’ rations, accompanied by a rough-drawn map, plus an admonition to keep their eyes peeled for French cavalry patrols.
‘If you do think you face capture, get rid of these in any way you can. Do not let them fall into the hands of the enemy. The tracks you will be on should be pretty wide, and on the whole, if you do need to ask, I think you can trust the Corsican peasants.’
Markham handed them the paper he’d written, with various French phrases that they might find useful if they could find anyone who could read. But really, on what judging by the starry sky promised to be a clear day, it was just a case of keeping the sun at their backs, to know they were heading north.
The main party’s march was carried out at a brisk pace, on a road that grew steeper as the day wore on, cutting into the distance they could travel. The second night they spent in the bridge-keeper’s house on the far bank of the Canavafola river at Ponte Leccio. Now they were amongst high surrounding hills, the central mountains right ahead, white-capped and forbidding. The weather stayed dry, but cold, though the never-ending forest, and a sky that had become overcast, kept everything moist, especially where snow still lay in the folds of the hills.
Somehow the weather seemed to mirror the relations between the two officers. Things had changed since San Fiorenzo. Cardo hadn’t helped, but Lanester, probably brooding on the way he’d been kept in the dark, had seemed to become less content at the way the lieutenant had abused his trust. He’d reminded Markham more than once that the manner in which he’d acted was high-handed. That being nothing short of the truth made the marine a trifle stiff in response. Then there were his nagging suspicions regarding Lanester’s motives for travelling via Cardo, which rendered him uncommunicative, as each word spoken was examined against that disturbing thought. The Virginian noticed his reserve, which only made matters worse.
‘Horses, sir,’ said Yelland, kneeling to look at the clumps of mud scattered across the pavé, damp earth which, judging by its shape, had dropped from clattering ironshod hooves.
Markham had come forward and joined him when the youngster signalled, his eyes following the line where the mounts, several dozen in number, had crossed the road, east to west, to disappear into the gap in the thick encroaching woods. They’d passed many tracks traversing the road, but all gave the impression of having been used by mules. Unshod and smaller than a horse, they’d left a shapeless, muddy trail on the arched stone highway.
This was different. From his elevated position, the sea was visible in the distance, the grey, white-flecked waves matching the sky, which had remained overcast. He looked back down the route they’d travelled, a snake of a road forced by nature to bow to the features of the rough terrain. Up ahead it was worse, a twisting brown scar that zigzagged, hanging to the side of steep hills, showing occasionally through the deep green landscape, until finally both disappeared into the mountain mists.
Built as a military road, it had been, until very recently, well maintained. The blocks of pavé had a high camber to let the rain run off, while the undergrowth on the edges had been cut back to ward against surprise. Yet ten feet on either side the tangled woods enclosed them, which made Markham wonder why, with no habitation in sight, a unit of cavalry would choose to journey through that, rather than use this, a much easier route.
Suddenly he stood upright and retraced their hoof clods to the point at which they’d come onto the highway, the last traces of the winter snows that edged it turned into a dark and soggy mass by their passage. Moving further into the woods, he came upon
a small hollow where the wet ground had been churned up badly. Clumps of fresh droppings were just visible in the mud, broken up and mixed by stomping hooves. He searched in vain for the sign of a human boot, but could see none, even on the very edge of the clearing. The track they’d used was visible, a well-worn, churned-up mule path that dropped down the hillside. Whoever these horsemen were, they’d stopped here, but not dismounted, to wait before crossing, perhaps a halt while someone made sure the road was clear.
Markham, in his present mood would have shown caution if gifted with a tearful vision of the Virgin Mary. Now, every nerve in his body screamed danger. They were too numerous to be robbers. Besides, living as they did in the maccia, they could barely run to a horse, never mind a farrier. The crossing had been undertaken with care. There was only one explanation for that; they didn’t wish to be seen. It then followed that they felt the need to remain concealed in hostile country.
‘The only people who are hostiles here, sir, are the French.’
‘You may well be right, Markham,’ Lanester replied.
‘May, sir? I can’t think of another explanation.’
‘I can. In my conversations with Paoli I learned that the island is a bit more complicated than that.’ He had to haul on his reins to control a horse excited by the smell of other animals. ‘It’s not just footpads and robbers. The old man spent half his life trying to snuff out horrendous clan feuds. There are some on this rock that go back generations. Just crossing another’s territory can be taken as a provocation. They’re a touchy crew, as you have witnessed. Why, even the islanders travelling this route show caution when they sight us, though they must reckon when they spy our red coats that we’re friendly.’
That was true. The Corsicans were suspicious of everyone and everything. This was the only proper road from the mountain interior to the east coast, yet to call it quiet was an understatement. Few locals seemed to use it for short journeys, probably preferring their own ancient mule trails, which they knew intimately. People on longer errands, or transporting large quantities of produce, did take advantage of the highway, but each wagon stopped as soon as they spotted the redcoats. The owners then stood, clearly ready to flee, until they had convinced themselves of the soldiers’ bona fides. Yet those hoof-prints, given the nature of their mission, were certainly a cause for suspicion, one Lanester seemed inclined to play down.
Honour Redeemed Page 18
