‘I was half tempted to demand to talk to Fouquert.’
‘He’s not here.’
‘A lie,’ thought Markham savagely. The wounded Corsican had confirmed the Frenchman to Paoli. But he smiled nevertheless.
‘Good.’
‘Besides, he wouldn’t have come if you’d asked him. I think you scare him almost as much as he scares me. There’s no way he’d come out from under cover with you around.’
‘How very wise.’
‘It was damned cheek you sending that nigger to demand I come out, Markham. It nearly caused me to refuse.’
‘Lie two,’ he thought, the word improvisation recurring in his brain.
The face was red, fat and, despite the circumstances, still jolly. Indeed, as he’d approached Markham, he had his arms held out as though he was welcoming a prodigal son. There was no evidence of a wound on the man who’d been lying at death’s door a few days before. Pavin, looking even more gaunt and wrinkled in the dying light, stood near the first house that marked the boundary of the town of Aleria. The events of the last weeks flashed through his mind: what had happened outside the officer’s mess tent at Fornali; the inconsistency of behaviour; and the fact that he’d never actually seen the wound.
‘Made up,’ he said to himself, ‘the whole damn thing made up.’
‘What d’you say, Markham?’
‘That night at Fornali, Major,’ Markham said. ‘I should have spotted that wet sand on your boots.’
Lanester smiled, though from the look in his eyes it was clear that he’d no more realised the significance of that clue to his involvement than Markham. ‘Daresay you would have done if you’d seen them after.’
‘It doesn’t bother you that those men died?’
‘They were soldiers, Lieutenant.’
‘Who, I think, have a right to expect their officers to be on their side.’
‘You have a streak of sentimentality, Markham, that is about to get you killed. I had it once, pledging loyalty to a cause, until I found that commodity only goes one way.’
‘It won’t get me killed today though, Major. You don’t have enough men to mount an attack.’
Lanester sneered at him, telling him not so much a third lie, as a very necessary piece of exaggeration. ‘Oh! we do. It’s never a good idea to underestimate your enemy.’
‘What changed your mind, Lanester, about having me killed?’
‘Who said I changed my mind?’
‘I’ve just been talking to a very wise man,’ Markham replied, changing the subject, eyeing the fading twilight, determined to keep him talking. ‘And he and I think you might have managed to underestimate your friends.’
‘That I don’t follow.’
‘The horse soldiers. Our shepherds got too hungry.’
‘Cavalry, Markham. Had they just done their job we would have had you cold. You can never rely on them. Christ, they’re worse than tarpaulins.’
‘What price renegades?’ The major behaved as if Markham hadn’t said that, or at the very least, as if such a description didn’t apply to him. ‘It’s not the first time they’ve let you down. We were never supposed to meet Duchesne, were we?’
‘With your friend being such an unforgiving bastard, it cost him his life.’
‘Not before he’d played out that farrago at the monastery. I should have known that with Fouquert around, gentle interrogation was out of the question.’
‘He was acting to save his neck. What was that thing Sam Johnson said about hanging concentrating the mind?’
‘The price of some sense of decency.’
‘There you go being sentimental again. Who do you think garrotted those monks you buried if it wasn’t Duchesne?’
‘It would be nice to see you hang for the men at Fornali, hopefully within sight of the place they died.’
‘You’re planning to go back there, are you?’
It was such a stupid question that Markham had answered, ‘Of course,’ long before he realised that it shouldn’t have been asked.
Lanester threw his head back and laughed. ‘You should worry about your own skin, Markham, not mine. If you thought you were up to your chin in ordure when we left San Fiorenzo, wait till you get back. Not that you will, of course.’
He couldn’t ask, but then he couldn’t avoid looking curious either, and the major was too keen to tell him to hold it back for later advantage.
‘Your orders,’ Lanester hooted.
‘What about them?’
‘They don’t exist. Gawd, I’ve had to be subtle with people in my time, but you were easy. You’re so goddamn vain you actually believed what I said about Hanger. And such a dupe that you marched out of San Fiorenzo without asking for confirmation from your own superiors.’
‘I was supposed to go,’ Markham responded, trying not to sound too doubtful.
‘Oh yes. I borrowed you to escort me to the Cardo outposts. But de Lisle was expecting you back within the next day.’
‘De Lisle!’
‘He’ll want to court martial you even more now. You’re absent from Hebe in a battle zone. I shouldn’t even think about going back, because he would have the right to request that you hang from his own yardarm, with his good friend Hanger holding the rope.’
Lanester was about to go on, to drive home the message to a clearly depressed Markham, who was struggling to convince himself that this was just another improvised tactic. Instead, the major looked over the marine’s shoulder, his eyes opening just a fraction.
‘I don’t know that the truce will hold for him.’
Paoli was coming as arranged, though given how loquacious Lanester was being it hardly seemed necessary.
‘Make it!’
‘Why should I?’ demanded the Major with a shrug.
‘Because,’ Markham lied, enjoying the sensation of improvising himself, ‘Sergeant Rannoch has a musket aimed at the very centre of your forehead. And it’s not dark yet. If he is even threatened by a mis-aimed ball, you die.’
Markham could see Lanester working himself up to a complaint, and cut him off. ‘And I don’t think, Major, you are in a position to question my notions of gentlemanly behaviour during a truce.’
It was the threat of Rannoch that shut off the protest, a man he suspected might take pleasure in shooting him even if he hadn’t betrayed anyone. He span round and made a sharp, insistent gesture, that there should be no shooting.
‘Just before he arrives, who is the traitor?’
‘For me to know, Markham. Neither you nor Paoli will ever find out.’
‘Major Lanester,’ said Paoli.
His voice was strong, and Markham knew without looking that whatever his inner turmoil, the old man was presenting to this friend who’d betrayed him his habitual strong personality. The conversation they’d had in the farmhouse could not help but be depressing. The question Paoli feared to ask was how long Lanester had been in the pay of his enemies. Had he harboured, as a close friend, a man who had betrayed him for nearly the entire length of his exile?
‘General Paoli,’ intoned Lanester, adding a small bow.
‘I said to Lieutenant Markham, not ten minutes ago, that if he’d called you a Virginian at any time in my hearing, I would have been able to sow a seed of doubt in his mind.’
‘Quebec, Markham.’
‘So I gather.’
‘French father, English mother. Not really a secret, just a slight change of emphasis to avoid certain discomforts.’
Paoli interrupted, his tone bitter. ‘Like huge debts?’
‘Odd how the English can forgive even American rebels, but still harbour a loathing for any soul who carries in his blood a trace of Quebec.’
‘Come, Lanester. You betrayed them too.’
‘I did not!’
Markham was only half listening to what was a meaningless debate. Lanester was a traitor claiming to be a patriot, though he couldn’t quite nail the cause to which he adhered. Paoli, so upright, was rele
ntless in his strictures, but clever enough to make the major defensive, so that information came out as hearty justification, not feeble excuses. The Virginian label, he’d adopted in the American war, to ease his activities as an English spy, and hung onto it when forced to flee to England.
‘It was I who brought that slug Benedict Arnold to General Clinton’s notice, me who set up the meeting with André.’
‘Perhaps it was you who betrayed them too.’
‘Damnit, I wish I had! That pack of gabbling lawyers might have paid me a decent stipend, instead of leaving me, like King George did, on the streets of London to starve. Six thousand pounds and a pension was what Arnold got. He lived like a lord while I was made a pauper.’
Markham had come out here to trap Lanester, to lull the man into a false sense of security. But right now, having heard what the major had said, he was trying to assess the damage it had done him. The despatch, supposedly from Hood, was a forgery. What had he put in the one he’d sent back after Cardo? Not that it mattered. There were enough people around prepared to think badly of him. A hint that he’d gone absent would be only too readily believed.
But for all the trouble that would cause him, his mind was operating, simultaneously, on the required level. The consequences would never interfere with his will to survive. From this closer distance, he was trying to fix in his mind the layout of the enemy positions. They were outnumbered by the force that had them trapped, but not by many, especially if they could, by moving fast, negate the cavalry, who were on the far side of the farmhouse.
Speed was the key, though he knew taking them wouldn’t be easy. But once they were through, the French and their Corsican allies would be surrounded by a hostile, instead of a passive, population. Every village they’d been forced to go through had gone wild at the sight of Pasquale Paoli. The wounded Corsican had refused to answer Markham, but faced with the towering presence of the Liberator, he’d been more forthcoming. The population of Aleria would surely react the same way.
What happened after that was incalculable. His mind was full of possibilities – ships, escape routes and killing – until the name Fouquert concentrated his attention.
‘I said he was a Jesuit, didn’t I, Markham? Can’t seem to accept that half a cake is better than none.’
‘What’s the whole cake?’ asked Markham.
‘Don’t go flattering yourself, son. It ain’t you, though it’s odd to think you’d be dead now without he saved you. No, it’s the general here, the Hero of Corsica, taken in a tumbril to meet Citizen Robespierre, before a final soirée with Madame Guillotine. Fouquert won’t give up on that. Not being a soldier, he can only see so far. Hardly surprising. He really doesn’t give a damn about Corsica.’
‘And you do?’ asked Paoli.
‘My mission was simple till that Jesuit came along. Now it’s got more complex. But it don’t matter none, it will end the same way.’ Lanester turned to Markham and fixed him with a hard look. ‘If it wasn’t for your feud with our friend Fouquert, I’d tell you to dump the Liberator and save your skin.’
‘And I tell you to go jump in the harbour.’
‘God,’ Lanester replied, with deep irony, ‘I can’t abide honest men.’
‘Half a cake?’ asked Paoli. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Guess, Pasquale, you were always good at that,’ Lanester said.
Paoli opened his mouth to continue, but Markham cut across him. The light was fading fast, the sky taking on that brittle blue quality that precedes full night.
‘We must discuss terms.’
‘There won’t be any,’ Lanester snapped.
‘I suggest that you let us retire to Corte, without further fighting. I suggest we meet tomorrow at the same time, to discuss our proposal.’
‘A waste of breath.’
‘So much better, Major,’ Paoli sighed, ‘than a waste of life.’
The walk back was no more than fifty paces, made in silence, Bellamy standing by the edge of the farmhouse holding the flagstaff. Haste had to be avoided, especially now, since Markham suspected he had a double reason for getting Paoli to Cardo. Only the old man beside him could convince those who bore him ill that he had been as much a victim as they had of Lanester’s machinations.
The major had let things slip, but they were conundrums not clues. Cakes; half cakes. Plans laid, made more complex, and spoiled. The outrageous fact that Fouquert, in pursuit of a higher prize, had spared Markham’s life, taking Duchesne’s instead, for what was no more than an error made out of ignorance. But he knew, or at least suspected, that Fouquert and Lanester must have different agendas. The major had almost said that.
It made no difference now. As he approached the farmhouse door, he slowed to let Paoli through. As soon as the old man disappeared, he held out his hand, and was obliged by the feel of his pistol. Turning, as if to take a last look, he could just see faintly that the enemy was still disorganised, still behaving as if the truce was in place. Strictly speaking they were right, but with men like those he faced, breaking his word as an officer was a duty, not a crime.
‘Bellamy, the flag.’
As it unfurled, in the last of the light, cracking open on the evening breeze, the white silk seemed luminous. From behind the straw bales and the upturned cart, Calheri’s troopers and his marines emerged. There was no yelling, no great shout to signal the charge. A party left behind went to work with their flints, rasping at oil-soaked straw which only caught light slowly. They’d gained ground by the time the first enemy musket fired, and were halfway to Lanester’s line before anything like an organised defence was mustered, close enough to get in amongst them before the fires they’d set rose enough to silhouette them.
Markham yelled then, and so did Magdalena. Behind him, in a phalanx of his marines, Pasquale Paoli, protected from harm, felt his Corsican blood race, and even he, as he raised his double-barrelled pistol, managed a war cry.
Chapter thirty-three
Deciding they had to break out was one thing, and achieving it quite another. However disorganised they had been, the forces opposing them rallied quickly. But one vital ingredient was missing, something the defenders had banked on. By acting as they had, they’d completely fooled the cavalry. If they’d stirred they hadn’t arrived on the scene. And the fire Markham had started was beginning to take hold, a blaze that would in time consume the barn, the farmhouse, and the oil-soaked lines in between. The horses would shy away from that, further slowing their riders. So Markham and Calheri could concentrate for quite some time on those in front of them, without having to worry about their rear.
Counting on that lost advantage, the Buonapartists hadn’t bothered to do anything other than man points in the buildings that gave them cover. Markham was surprised, though elated, by the fact that no real attempt had been made to block the streets leading into the town. They had left gaps, ones which with the advent of night became very obvious. Markham didn’t want to fight them, but bypass them, so had suggested that they head for the areas that lacked gun flashes. Rannoch and his Lobsters, with one exception, obeyed. But Magdalena Calheri and her troopers, with their flag and Eboluh Bellamy in the middle, had charged the guns, seemingly intent on taking the strongest point on the town perimeter, a low set of cattle stalls, which provided natural and linked cover for defence.
‘Rannoch,’ he yelled, as they made for an opening that was obviously some kind of street. ‘Once you’ve got the general safe, form up on the corners and see if you can suppress some of that fire.’
‘Those horse soldiers will not be long,’ the Highlande gasped, pointing at the flames beginning to roar, quickly consuming the dry straw. ‘They’ll come round if they can’t get through. And an open street is as bad as a field.’
‘Not if we can block it.’
The yell from his rear killed any idea of getting hold of Magdalena and dragging her away from her own private battle. The shape that loomed up at the head of a counter-attack was identifiable.
Fat, Lanester still ran at the head of the men he led, swinging his sword right and left, trying to get behind them and close off the route to the port. The whole area had taken on the glow from the flames, making Lanester’s coat radiant. Pavin was by his side, jabbing with a pike, trying to beat down the opposing bayonets.
The flaring of sparks, which silhouetted the positions they’d just left, increased the available light. But they also indicated the danger, showing as they did cavalrymen dragging the bales of straw aside, creating a gap they could ride through. It was stupid considering, as Rannoch had pointed out, the option existed to ride round the conflagration. It mattered little; they would be involved in the fighting within minutes, and if he and Calheri could not present a solid front by blocking one of the streets, they’d be in real trouble.
Markham fended off a stab with a sword, ducked under a wielded axe to skewer the bearer, then disengaged, falling back to where Bellamy stood rooted to the spot, the flames shining off his black skin, holding the black and white flag. How he’d survived was a mystery, pennant carriers being primary targets for the enemy in any battle. But he had, and his officer grabbed him and dragged him towards his own men, yelling to Calheri and her troops to follow him.
It was the flag they obeyed, not him. That square of silk seemed to exert a strange hold, inspiring them to crazy valour. Certainly they’d fought well, and if they hadn’t taken the cowsheds, they stopped any of the defenders from getting out. What he wanted now was for them to occupy Lanester and his foot soldiers, so that he could get his Lobsters some space. They needed to reload and take careful aim on the cavalry as they came through the gap between the blazing buildings.
They had to be stopped. If they couldn’t be, then the idea of making an escape into the town was doomed. Stepping over a dead Buonapartist, Markham picked up his weapon, a heavy cleaver, and pushed it into Bellamy’s hand.
Honour Redeemed Page 37
