Honour Be Damned

by Donachie, David

  He was puzzled when the group emerged, with Aramon waving his arms, clearly in dispute with de Puy. Something was wrong. Perhaps he hadn’t been so clever after all. But Markham had no time to wait around and speculate. It was full daylight now, and time to go.

  ‘Move out,’ he called softy, beginning to jog, ‘and take your pace from me. Choose your own path, but do not get out of sight of the men to the right and left of you.’

  Chapter seventeen

  Progress was good, with his Lobsters moving quickly, unencumbered by the normal heavy packs. The sky had cleared above the top canopy and the light was perfect, dappled shafts of gold streaming through the leaves and branches. Given two dry days the ground underfoot was hard again, the water from the thunderstorms either run off, evaporated, or drained into the soil.

  Going downhill was so much easier than climbing up, and not constrained by the need for silence, one or two of his men occasionally laughed as one of their number tripped or slipped. The mule tracks that had been obscured in the ascent seemed strangely obvious now, an avenue they could easily follow, brushing aside the encroaching vegetation.

  The manic tinkling of the cowbell was taken as no more than a distraction, with Markham wondering why the animal had come into the woods, away from its natural pasture. But he knew that cows were stupid creatures, the word bovine applied to anyone slow and dense, and their only wish it seemed to be somewhere else, wherever they were at any given moment. Obviously they had scared it into panic flight, so it was no bar to their progress.

  It was the single musket shot that made him haul up and slither to a stop, the sound reverberating around the hills, crack after crack as though it was a timed volley. His men halted too, some quicker than others, with only Fouquert jogging on, until a muffled shout stopped him. Markham had an ear cocked, and began to retrace his own steps. He found the cord fifty feet to his rear, stretched between two bushes, no more than six inches off the ground, one end now loose where it had been kicked clear.

  A trap laid by a clever man who had worked out that marines must head for the water, to get back to the ship that had brought them here in the first place. Instead of filling the woods with infantry, he’d realised that coverage of all the available avenues was impossible. So he’d marked the obvious trails, assuming that his enemies would use them, and set his troops wide apart, to cover a vast area, the single musket shot a signal to indicate the point at which they should concentrate.

  To proceed or fall back? And if the latter, to what? Markham told everyone to rest, and called for Rannoch. He had no time for private thoughts; whatever he extrapolated from the situation needed another mind to sound off against. The Highlander proved his worth before Markham even opened his mouth.

  ‘Quinlan, Ettrick, go straight left. Use your bayonets to mark a route on the trees. There will be another avenue down, another gully where the water has worn the soil away. One go up and the other down. Look for cord or twine or even thread. If you find it don’t touch it, but come straight back and let us know. Tully and Yelland do the same to the right.’

  ‘A trap?’ said Markham.

  ‘I do not doubt it. And it is clever.’

  ‘They must guess that we have Fouquert.’

  ‘Leaving that coat has backfired. They would not have gone to all this trouble for us.’

  ‘What is going on?’ demanded Fouquert.

  ‘Your enemies have laid a snare to catch us,’ said Markham, with an almost humorous tone, because he couldn’t admit his own chagrin to this man. ‘And damn me if they haven’t succeeded. They are so keen to get your putrescent head on the block of the guillotine that they are gathering from east and west at this very minute to bring about that happy event.’

  ‘We must run.’

  ‘We must wait,’ said Rannoch, without looking at Fouquert. ‘And it would do us all good to remain silent.’

  That’s what they did, kneeling, listening, waiting for the return of the four men Rannoch had sent out, half afraid that they would not do so. The rustling undergrowth had every musket raised, aimed at the source of the sound, until the sight of a red coat took the fingers off the heavy Brown Bess triggers. Tully and Yelland returned first, the youngster carrying a slim piece of twine.

  ‘I cut this right next to the bell, without making a sound. It was an old shell casing for grape, with a stone suspended inside.’

  Markham looked at Rannoch. ‘How far apart would the sentinels have to be?’

  ‘Not too close with the racket we made.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘They will not rush into the woods.’

  ‘But they will concentrate on the lower slopes.’

  ‘I would!’ said Rannoch with a rare display of passion. ‘There will be more bells below, and they will funnel us into a dead end well before we reach the flatlands near to the shore.’

  ‘We must go on,’ said Fouquert.

  ‘If you want to die keep talking,’ snapped Markham. Then he turned back to Rannoch. ‘This has told them all they want to know. Even if we could evade them, they will set a watch up to look out for a ship, and with men lining the shore they are bound to observe our signal to Syilphide’s cutter.’

  Rannoch was silent for a moment, and when he responded his voice was grave. ‘There is little point then, in continuing to rush downhill.’

  ‘Our only other route is through two armies.’

  Rannoch smiled, a rare thing, the whole of his square face changing shape. ‘At the very least, one of them will be friendly.’

  Fouquert had moved closer, to listen to them conversing. ‘This is madness.’

  ‘Born of necessity,’ Markham replied.

  ‘It is not your neck on the block.’

  Markham gave him a wolfish grin and pointed a languid arm south. ‘Feel free, if you wish, to continue on your own.’

  ‘They will be moving across the hill, those men with muskets,’ said Rannoch.

  ‘So if we move up the hill?’

  ‘On the same line we took down, that will open the gap.’

  Markham was sick of alternatives, craving for once the simple notion of an enemy he could see, and a position he could advance on, with troops to his right and left committed to mutual support. Flags waving, bugles blowing and massed volleys full of flying death suddenly seemed preferable. This situation was too full of imponderables. To split his force, drawing off the French while a small party went east with Fouquert. To stay still, and hide out for a whole day in the woods hoping they would pass by; to try and fight his way through to a beach on which the cutter couldn’t land?

  ‘We go back,’ he said suddenly.

  There was no way of knowing what was the right decision. The only thing available was the lesser of several evils. The old adage about living to fight another day was paramount in his thinking, the notion that, having had a trap set for him, he must somehow contrive to turn the tables on his enemy and set a snare for them.

  ‘At the double?’ asked Rannoch.

  ‘Light infantry pace if we are going to get out of this.’

  There was no shouting, just a wave of the arm. Markham led the way, trying to spot the route by which they’d come, a task made more difficult by the compound factors of the opposite view of every hedge and bush, allied to the fact of moving uphill instead of down. Behind them, for a long time, there was no sound. Then a bugle blew. Markham suspected that the men who had been waiting to trap him had realised he wasn’t coming and had set off in pursuit.

  They burst out of the woods right in front of the church building. Aramon, de Puy, Ghislane Moulins and the trio of servants were heading away on a diagonal line that would take them due east to Piedmont. The sight of a dozen Lobsters and Fouquert bursting out of the forest, at first had them spurring the two horses into a gallop. But the red coats soon registered, and they came to a halt.

  Markham was met by a string of curses the like of which would keep Aramon in the confessional for a week. De Puy merely gree
ted him with a look of utter disdain. Not even Ghislane had anything approaching a welcome on her face. Perhaps she felt doubly abandoned.

  ‘You deserted us, you low-life putrescence,’ Aramon barked. ‘Sneaking out like a thief in the night.’

  ‘Captain Germain surely explained.’

  ‘How could he, in a fever?’

  ‘He was fine last night. In pain certainly. But I spent a lucid hour in his company.’

  ‘Well he is far from it now,’ snapped Aramon. ‘One must suppose an hour of your company is enough to cause a relapse in a saint. And how can I believe you when you say you spoke with him last night? The poor man is incoherent and near to dying.’

  There were drums beating he forest in now, played by men set apart to act as monitors for the line sweeping the woods. Very soon that line of troops would emerge into the open, and when they did, the only hope he would have was to drag Aramon off his horse, mount Fouquert, and send him off at gallop. The less pleasant prospect was that he should go with him, and Ghislane Moulins was astride the other mount. The only other alternative was to stop the French advance.

  ‘You have deserted the people who were entrusted to you, quit your own superior officer, and it seems the very cause you are commissioned to serve.’

  Rannoch poked his musket into Aramon’s stomach. His three servants moved immediately to aid him, but the determined look in the Highlander’s eye soon stopped them.

  ‘Do be a good gentleman and cap a stopper on your mouth.’

  The cleric was shocked, but Rannoch was not fazed by his outrage. He continued as slowly and deliberately as he always did. ‘If you have in your head a way twelve men short on powder can confound a regiment of French infantry, the notion would be most welcome. But I suspect you have not, so silence on your part will serve us all.’

  ‘This man has the French army plans for the invasion of Italy.’

  He was pointing at Fouquert, who for some reason seemed to shrink from the attention. It was the act of a man who knew everyone present wanted him dead, and who had no idea where the next threat to his life was coming from.

  But de Puy had responded to that, his head jerking round, which was the first outward sign of life that Markham had noticed. But he looked away again as their eyes met, a seeming oasis of indifference. Maybe they’d found the treasure after all, and he was now feeling detached, looking forward to the delights that a night with Ghislane Moulins would produce.

  ‘You have proof,’ demanded Aramon, brushing the point of Rannoch’s musket away.

  ‘I have neither that nor a choice. I must either take your horses and race for the border, or find some method of stopping that infantry.’

  ‘Garda,’ appealed Aramon, a cry that immediately had his servants drawing their pistols and crowding round their master. If they’d never quite looked like servants before they looked even less the part now.

  ‘Monsieur le Comte,’ barked Markham, ignoring them, which was easy since his men had their muskets aimed right at their chests. The sad eyes turned slowly on to him, but de Puy didn’t speak. ‘You told Captain Germain of the danger hereabouts of a forest fire.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Do the conditions still prevail?’

  ‘They are more delicate now than they were immediately after the rains.’

  Markham wet a finger and held it up to catch the wind. It was still southerly, still hot, strong enough to rustle the very top branches of the trees, not perfect but then it would just have to do. As he did so his eye caught that of Ghislane Moulins, and he was somewhat thrown by the way she immediately pulled a face and looked elsewhere. What was the matter with the girl? He hadn’t promised her anything, had he?

  ‘Flares,’ he snapped, in a voice rendered even angrier by her behaviour.

  Dornan had them of course, and no one had bothered to relieve him of his own kit. If there was duty going that required no thought and extra effort, then he always got it. The equipment for the blue lights wasn’t heavy, but it was awkward, not the sort of thing any trooper with brains would want to transport. Yet for all the ribbing he endured, and all the pranks that were played on him, his good humour rarely slipped, and he never lost the affection of his comrades. That made him think of Eboluh Bellamy.

  ‘Set them up,’ he shouted, before posing a question, which had suddenly come to mind, aimed at Ghislane. ‘Where is your maid, Mademoiselle?’

  ‘Run off,’ answered Aramon, the only one of the trio to show any outrage. ‘It seems to be a disease you have introduced, which has contaminated even the most faithful.’

  Aramon must have caught the drift of Markham’s reasoning. The cleric scanned the faces of his men, and when he didn’t spy the very obvious countenance of the Negro, his lips became compressed, and he emitted a loud sniff of conclusion.

  Dornan and Gibbons were spreading the tripod and attaching the twin tubes, while Corporal Halsey and Leech were fusing the rockets. If they were curious as to what their officer was up to, it had no effect on their work. And the drums beating in the background, growing louder by the minute seemed to be something they could safely ignore. Halsey, satisfied, nodded to his officer, then slipped the first of the rockets into the tubes.

  Fouquert could not wait. The tension and that drumming sound was too much for him. Typical of the bully that he was, he rushed for Ghislane’s horse. He moved too quickly for those close to him to interfere, and he was on her, grabbing the folds of her dress in an attempt to haul her from her saddle before they moved. Rannoch switched his musket in his hands, so that the stock was swinging. It caught Fouquert behind one knee, which was enough to dent his balance. Ghislane kicked at the same time, and he was sent flying back to land in a sobbing huddle.

  Markham was by the flare tubes, bending down to align them. Designed to fire straight up into the night sky, and to illuminate a target, they were a chancy instrument for what he had in mind. He lowered the elevation as much as he could, so that the assembly was lying at an angle of forty-five degrees, with the waxed paper fuses hanging from the rear.

  ‘Sergeant,’ he said.

  The Highlander was well ahead of him. He already had out his flints and match. He struck until there was a flame, which was then applied to the fuses. They spluttered into life, burning slowly down until they connected with the main charge of powder. At the critical point they exploded, sending the rockets straight to a point just above the line of trees. Both missiles sped over the top branches, fizzing and spluttering, erratic in their course, the trail they left a crazy whirl of spreading smoke. But Markham knew they would land in the woods, still alight, the phosphorous powder they contained designed to burn bright for several minutes. If that didn’t set the forest alight nothing would.

  He didn’t hang around to find out, instead ordering his men to move out. Aramon immediately began to move off in front of them, and nearly earned himself a sharp rebuke to get out of the Lobster’s way. Oddly, de Puy and Ghislane had not stirred, and he saw them exchange a glance that hinted at some form of communication. Then the Frenchman gave the most imperceptible of nods, and Ghislane hauled on her reins. There was a temptation to leave them all behind. But then Markham reckoned that the case for taking the horse had not altered, and if his ploy with the rockets did not produce the desired result, then that would be his final act. That would especially be the case if they faced more cavalry. Abandoning his men would be hard, but he had no choice.

  Looking back, he saw the first trace of smoke rising through the treetops. Where had those rockets landed, in front of the French or behind? His aim was the former, so that the spreading flames would set up a wall of fire that they dare not try to cross. The wind would fan the flames until the conflagration reached the edge of the fields. What happened then, he could not tell, but it might be that the entire forest would have to burn before the end. If he was in command of those French troops he would get out of the woods pretty damn quick!

  The first sign that they might have don
e their work was the silencing of the drums. There was a long silence before the trumpet blew again, and Markham was sure that what he was hearing was the sound of the French army being recalled. Now they were all jogging along, Aramon’s servants included, two of them hanging on to the straps of the horse, the other its tail. Ahead of them, in the clear morning light, they could see the outline of the hills that rose towards the distant Alps, still capped, no doubt, with snow. That was all they had to get across to be safe.

  Markham was working on the theory that whoever was in command of those troops had taken up his position on the southern slopes to catch him. He’d had the impression from the previous day of units which, while much more numerous than his own, had finite resources. Several factors pointed to this; the lack of more cavalry, the way that Lieutenant Andoche Junot had halted his men rather than take heavy casualties, and finally the method used by whoever was in command. He had spread his men thin, using bells rather than sheer manpower to trap them.

  If that put them on the other side of that blaze and they like him were on foot, they could not move at a much faster pace than he. And as long as whatever gap he had was maintained, he’d have time to asses the situation when he came up, as he inevitably must, against the fighting troops on the border.

  ‘Fouquert,’ he said, his breathing heavy, the map he was trying to read while still moving bouncing before his eyes. ‘You know the dispositions of the French forces, which route will take us out with the least risk.’

  The Jacobin renegade was reluctant to answer, that was obvious by the guarded expression on his face. And he tried to take immediate advantage of the request by demanding that he be allowed to ride.

  ‘What? Let you on a horse. You’d be off and running before you got a second foot in the stirrups. So stop bleating and answer my question, or we’ll never get out of here.’