This attack failed like the others. Bob and his men had learned from the mistakes of the fellows they had been watching, and so they took fewer casualties. But it failed nonetheless, partly because of the ditches, and partly because of the plunging musket-fire that came down from the parapets of the ruined castle when they advanced within range. It was demoralizing to see a large building such as Aughrim Castle vanish behind a cloud of gray smoke as hundreds of muskets were discharged at once.
But they all suspected that they might have succeeded with more men. Bob mentioned to Captain Barnes, who reported to de Zwolle, who told General MacKay, that before the battle he'd spied a pair of regimental standards in the bog just by the causeway, where it entered Aughrim village. During one of the earlier attacks he had watched those colors move far south to the center of the line, where the fighting had been fiercest. They had not returned since. So the village's defenses were not what they had once been.
MacKay rode the line, having a look at the Black Torrent Guards, and pronounced them not half so wet, muddy, and exhausted as the men who'd attacked in the center; which he looked on as proving that this was not such a very boggy part of the bog, and that cavalry might get across it. He was being trailed by a motley string of European and English cavaliers who, because they had not done any fighting yet, were spotless and jittery. At one point MacKay got into a dispute with them, which he ended by wheeling his horse and charging directly toward Aughrim Castle just to show that it could be done. His horse took a header over a wall and stopped hard in muck on the other side, and MacKay flew off and ended up wetter, dirtier, and angrier than he had been before. Most of the cavaliers were convinced it could be done, and the others were now too ashamed to speak their minds.
The Black Torrent Guards were ordered to advance as far and as fast toward the castle as they could, and then throw themselves down in the bog and shoot at any Irish heads that showed above the parapet. It was hoped that this would lessen the damage inflicted on Ruvigny's skeletal division of cavalry as they galloped across and alongside the causeway. For every other route along which Ginkel's army might advance had been blocked; Ruvigny's squadrons were the only fresh troops he had; and the only way to avoid total defeat was to mount a charge along that causeway.
The Black Torrent Guards were sent across the bog first, in full view of the castle, to draw off some fire, but the Irish seemed to recognize that tactic for what it was and saved their loads for the cavalry, which came thundering down the road a few moments later.
Only ragged firing sounded from Aughrim Castle as the first squadrons rode directly past it. They galloped into the village with almost no casualties and found that it had been left nearly undefended, as Bob had predicted.
Bob got up on one knee to fire his musket at a head silhouetted against the evening sky, and was hit in the chest by something that made a strange zooming noise. He dropped his weapon and fell flat on his back.
When he woke up a couple of his men had ripped his coat open to examine the wound, which was in a bad spot, near where his left collarbone joined his breastbone. And yet Bob was still alive, and not coughing up blood. Not feeling bad at all, really.
He was being looked after by one Hamilton, a big bloke, infamous for uncouth qualities. Hamilton had planted a knee on Bob's shoulder to pin him in a more convenient attitude, and was picking curiously at a hard object embedded in Bob's flesh. Bob found this extremely annoying and said so more than once. "Oh, fuck it!" Hamilton decreed, and dived into Bob's chest, planting his lips over the wound. After a quick suck and a bite he popped up again with something yellow in his teeth, and spat it out for examination.
"'Tis a pretty brass button," he announced, "a bit dented by the ram-rod, but 'twill suffice to replace the ones we tore off your coat just now."
"Or we may fire it back to its owner," said one Roberts, who always did what Hamilton did, but not as well. He had a knee on Bob's other shoulder. "If we should run out of ammunition, I mean."
Not more than ten minutes had passed while Bob lay on his back on the ground, but when he got up again it was a new battle. All of Ruvigny's horse had now crossed over, and more was on the way, galloping up from the opposite wing where they'd been balked all afternoon. The gates of Aughrim Castle were open, and a lot of screaming and hasty praying could be heard within its walls as the unlucky garrison was put to the sword (vide Rules of Continental Siege Warfare). The squadrons not participating in this massacre had positioned themselves around the edge of the village and made ready to be attacked by the Irish and French battalions not far away, but such an attack never came; something had gone wrong in St. Ruth's chain of command, orders to counter-attack had not been issued or else were not getting through, and his generals were unwilling to do it on their own initiative.
Bob wrapped his coat around himself to cover the wound, which was bleeding, but not hissing or spurting. He strolled uphill a short distance and climbed up onto one of the earthen ramparts that the Irish had thrown up to defend Aughrim village.
He could see some Irish dragoons retreating off to his right. In the overall scheme this was amazingly stupid, and probably fatal, but they had no way of knowing.
"Sergeant!"
Bob looked down into the face of Captain Barnes, which was in the middle of a transition from intense anxiety to giddy relief; for the nonce it looked more quizzical than anything. "I was given to understand you had suffered a dire injury!"
"I was shot in the chest," Bob said guardedly. "One of those musketeers drilled me about here, from perhaps fifty yards." Bob glanced towards the corner of the castle from which the button had been fired. A French standard was being cut down by trophy-hunting cavaliers.
"Then you should be taking your rest! We have been ordered to garrison the castle," said Barnes.
"Has my bedchamber been made ready?"
"Alas, there are no chambers of any kind, only roofless cells," Barnes answered deadpan. "We could make you a bed from ammunition cases."
"I thought they had none."
"They have thousands of musket-balls in there," Barnes said.
"Then why did they not use them?"
"Because they are made for English muskets—ever so slightly larger than the barrels of their French muskets."
Hamilton had ambled to within earshot of this conversation, and responded, "Haw! I always knew we Englishmen had bigger balls than the French!" Indeed, all of the private soldiers found it hilarious. But sergeants and captains—who were actually responsible for getting musket-balls to the troops—could only wince at such a story, even when it had befallen the enemy.
Bob looked off to the south and saw a series of English and Huguenot cavalry squadrons slipping like a knife-blade into a gap between the Irish infantry, and the stunned cavalry to its rear. They were swinging round behind the Irish foot, getting into position to charge them, panic them, and mow them down like hay.
"Captain Barnes," Bob said, "you have said it yourself. I have been shot in the chest and am plainly a casualty of war, hors de combat, and for now my duties must be assumed by another sergeant…. Fortunately your company's assignment is trivial. There will be no counter-attack made against yonder castle this afternoon." Bob turned his back on Barnes and strode down the slope of the rampart, muttering, "Or this month, this year, this century."
ONCE THE DANES and the Huguenots over-ran the field like flocks of starlings scouring the earth for worms, Bob's red Guards uniform would not help him; this side of the bog, any man on foot was under a death sentence. Because the French/Irish phant'sied themselves the army of the true King (James II), many of their regiments wore the same red uniforms, and the only way to tell them apart was by looking for small badges or devices thrust into their hats: sprigs of green for King William's forces, scraps of white paper for James Stuart's. These were difficult to see even in good light. Bob's hat had been lost in the bog anyway.
Fortunately the battle had long ago got to that stage where riderless hors
es were wandering about, instinctively forming up into little herds, looking for quiet places to graze. They were being pursued by men under orders to round them up. Bob ventured into a sort of no-man's-land that had opened up between the village and some Irish battalions retreating from it, and pretended that he had been given such orders. For the available horses, he was striving against two men who were younger and quicker than he was; but being older and wiser and (today) luckier, he had the satisfaction of being able to rest, crouching alongside a fragment of stone wall, while they chased a saddled horse directly towards him. He vaulted up onto the wall, grabbed the mount's dragging reins, and swung a leg over its saddle before it even knew he was about. He inferred that it had been ridden by a member of Ruvigny's cavalry who'd fallen or been shot out of the saddle, but that it had followed its squadron across the causeway just to be sociable. At any case it was a good horse and fresh. Bob pulled its nose round southward and whacked it lightly with the flat of his spadroon.
He galloped into the heart of the battle while it still deserved that name, before it turned into a rout and massacre. Ruvigny's cavalry had by now broken through the Irish flank altogether and were charging south, traversing the hill. To their left and downhill lay the entrenchments crowded with Irish foot-soldiers in their gray coats. To their right and uphill were the white tents of the Jacobite encampment. In front of them was nothing but a flimsy barrier of cavalry: not above three squadrons of what looked like an English Catholic regiment.
Bob had begun by galloping in the wake of this charge, but soon caught up and found himself in the middle of it—close enough that he could see the faces of those English Papists, Persons of Quality all, and watch them think as the attack bore down on them. Some seemed ready to die for their faith and rode forward with a certain look of calm ferocity that Bob admired very much. Some stood their ground—not, Bob thought, out of courage but out of terror, as rabbits freeze when the hawk flies overhead. Some wheeled and ran. But a contingent of three riders, who had been situated toward the rear, turned away and rode south in a way that looked purposeful to Bob.
Bob knew what they were doing: first, preserving their regimental standard (one of the three riders was the standard-bearer). This would enable them to erect the colors on a high place later, so that the scattered squadrons and stragglers could converge on it and reform into an effective battalion. Without that scrap of cloth they could never amount to anything but lost Vagabonds. Second, they were going to the other wing where Sarsfield was commanding the bulk of the Jacobite cavalry, and apparently doing a very good job of it; in a few minutes they would come back at the head of several regiments.
Bob out-stripped Ruvigny's cavalry in an instant when they galloped into the Catholic squadrons and stopped to duel it out with pistols and sabers. French Protestants fighting for the King of England crossed blades with English Catholics fighting for the King of France. Bob, having no personal interest in their quarrel, rode through them all like a cannonball through a bank of smoke and discovered himself in open country pursuing the three riders.
The standard-bearer was moving slowest, and gradually falling behind. Bob almost had him when the fellow chanced to look back; then he let out a yell and spurred his horse forward. The two officers in front, perhaps eight lengths ahead of him, looked back to see their standard-bearer in trouble; he could not defend himself without dropping the colors. As this happened Bob got a direct view of their faces and realized for the first time that one of the two was Upnor.
After a brief exchange of words, Upnor drew back hard on one rein to wheel his mount around, while the other officer shot ahead to get the message out to Sarsfield. Bob—who had a lot to keep track of—heard a loud crack and assumed a pistol had gone off. The standard-bearer, four lengths ahead of Bob, faltered. Bob looked again for Upnor, but he had vanished! Then in the corner of his eye he saw the standard-bearer coming up fast—having brought his mount nearly to a stand-still while Bob was still at a gallop. Bob had no time to do anything but stick his spadroon out. The blade struck something hard and the weapon was wrenched out of his grasp, and he was nearly thrown back onto the horse's croup. What saved him was that this had all occurred just short of a declivity in the hillside, a little water-course running straight down into the bog, therefore straight across their path. Both Bob's horse and that of the standard-bearer had seen it coming, and in the absence of orders to the contrary, slowed down.
Bob recovered his equilibrium just shy of this gulley and shook his hand frantically in the air a few times. It felt as if it had been stung by a bee. Lacking another blade, he drew out his pistol, which he had put out of his thoughts until this moment because it was useless while galloping. But now he was standing still, as was the standard-bearer, no more than four yards away from him.
The standard was hung from one end of a full-length pike so that it would rise to thrice the height of a man and be visible above a teeming battlefield. While galloping, the bearer had held it nearly horizontal, like a jousting-lance, in his left hand, while using his right to hold the reins. Bob had overtaken him on the left and he had reflexively raised up the pike-staff to parry Bob's blow; Bob's spadroon had cut into it at an angle about a third of the way from the top and come to a stop, wedged into the wood.
The standard-bearer now raised the pole to vertical and planted it, leaving Bob's spadroon high in the air and out of reach. Hugging the pike against himself and his horse's ribs to steady himself, he drew out a pistol of his own. He was a beautiful blond English boy of about eighteen and Bob shot him in the head. He was wearing a steel cuirass to protect his torso and so it was the head or nothing.
A light misty rain had commenced and the late afternoon sun had gone out like a snuffed candle, leaving gray twilight. Bob looked down the gulley, drawn by an anguished noise, and saw Upnor's horse thrashing around with a broken leg. Then he saw Upnor clambering up out of the gulley intact. The crack he had heard before must have been Upnor's horse breaking its leg when it tried to stop and wheel around in the wrong place.
Bob had discharged his only pistol and there was no time to reload. The standard-bearer had squeezed his trigger involuntarily and fired his pistol into the air. Bob dismounted, staggered on cramped legs over to the standard, and threw it down. He glanced over at Upnor, who had got himself up above his horse on the brink of the watercourse and pulled out a pair of pistols, one in each hand. He aimed one at his horse and pulled the trigger; Bob saw the white sparks from the flint, but it did not fire—the pan had gotten wet.
Upnor now gave Bob a sort of appraising look. Bob planted his foot on the pike at the place where his spadroon was lodged in it, and pulled up on the end until it snapped; then he came up with the weapon in his hand. The Earl of Upnor took one look at it and then, with no hesitation, aimed his other pistol down into the ditch and put his charger out of its misery. He dropped both of his pistols, turned to face Bob, and drew out his rapier. For being something of a traditionalist in these matters, he had not yet adopted the more fashionable small-sword.
"Sergeant Shaftoe," he said, "since we last met, your brother has achieved even greater infamy than he had then. Now the Battle of Aughrim has been lost. I am not likely to see the sun rise again. But I can at least thank Providence that she has placed you in my power, that I may salvage something of the day by sending the brother of L'Emmerdeur to Hell."
"I phant'sied 'twas you who were in my power," Bob muttered.
Upnor cast off his cloak to reveal a shining steel cuirass underneath, with a vest of light mail under that.
"Not at all chivalrous," Bob observed.
"On the contrary, nothing is more characteristic of the chivalric classes than to put on armor and go round ridding the country of rebellious Vagabonds—as your own cavalry is demonstrating!"
With a wry tilt of the head, Upnor pointed toward the lower slopes of the hill where King William's cavalry was hunting Irishmen, frantic to kill as many as they could before they lost the dayli
ght altogether. The Earl was a sophisticated man who enjoyed this irony, and wanted Bob to share it with him.
"Enough talking," Bob said, raising his guard to his face. "I did not come here to make friends with you." And he snapped the blade down and away, completing the salute. Upnor took half a step forward, raising the rapier to a guard position, then made a little show of remembering his manners and acted out the faintest memory of a salute. He was so dexterous with a sword that he could convey certain qualities, such as sarcasm, simply through nuances in his movements. Bob now stepped towards Upnor, hoping to back him up against the brink of the gulley; this also situated Bob on slightly higher ground.
"It's about the girl, isn't it? Abigail, my pretty slave," Upnor exclaimed. "I had forgotten."
"No, you hadn't."
"Tell me, do you believe that killing me will help you repossess her?"
"Not really. She'll pass to your heirs and assigns, and I will kill them."
Upnor did not like this very well. "It is revenge, then," he concluded. He spun on the ball of one foot, ran down the bank for several yards to build up speed, then leapt across to the opposite brink. "In that case you are obligated to pursue me—so I am entitled to choose the ground. Come over here, Sergeant!"
Bob backed up for a few paces to get a running start, but by the time he was ready to make his leap, Upnor had moved back up to stand directly across from him, rapier aimed out into the space above the stream, positioned to impale Bob in mid-jump. "You hesitate a second time! You could have cut me down before I jumped across," Upnor said reproachfully.
Bob did not see fit to dignify this with a reply. He sidestepped up the bank; Upnor tracked him until he stopped. Then the Earl turned his head sideways and cupped his hand to his ear like a bad actor. "Hark! Patrick Sarsfield's cavalry is approaching, I do believe!"
The Confusion Page 35
