by Iain Gale
He smelt Slaughter’s breath close behind him. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but I don’t suppose you’re lost, are you?’ Steel turned and stared at him, unamused and said nothing. ‘Only, sir, I was wondering as to why you hadn’t taken us down to that hole over there.’
He stretched out his arm and pointed to the left, to where, in a section of the wall more mottled and moss-covered than the rest, Steel was now able to make out the merest hint of an indentation.
‘Jacob. You’re a bloody marvel.’
Slaughter shrugged: ‘Dunno why I did actually show you where it was, sir. Last thing I want to do now is get back into that filthy hole. Worse than any bloody battlefield it was. All that blackness.’
‘Don’t worry Jacob. Safety in numbers, eh?’
The sergeant shook his head and, turning away from his officer, cursed softly. Turning left, Steel indicated with his hand for the leading men to follow him and the company fell in. Sixty men in single file now, with Hansam bringing up the rear. After fifty yards he stopped. Slaughter was right. Barely noticeable from the side, the wall dipped inwards and there in the centre lay a black hole, barely wide enough for a single man to pass through it at a time.
He turned to Williams: ‘In here.’
Pushing into the blackness, Steel was surprised to find this time, coming from the beach, how quickly his eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light. Still, as they pushed on, the darkness grew more intense. After perhaps three hundred yards in the pitch-black and stifling, airless heat, the Grenadiers began to see chinks of light up ahead. No one spoke. What air there was tasted rank, tainted by the stench from the leaking sewer and men and officers alike had tied their cotton stocks around their faces. In the thin glimmer before them, Steel saw a door. It appeared to be shut, although there was light clear to see around its edges. He prayed that it would be open. And then he was against it. The column came to a clanking, shuddering halt. Men swore and sweated and prayed.
Steel leant against the wooden frame and pushed. Nothing happened. He pushed again. It was solid. Christ, he thought, the French had found it and blocked it up and he and his men were trapped. A terrible possibility occurred to him. It must now be close on three o’clock in the afternoon – there would be no time to get out of the tunnel before the tide began to come in. He wondered how high it rose in the tunnel. Certainly the ground had seemed dry enough. But how long would they be baulked like this? And if the French decided to open the door of their stinking prison, they would be shot like rats in a barrel. There was always the probability too that if they stayed where they were they would gradually die of asphyxiation or, when the allied cannon on the shore above the trenches began the bombardment which would precede the main attack they would be trapped by explosions within the town, or blown to pieces as their own guns raked the walls with fire. He wondered how long they had until any or all of that happened. He pushed and pushed again at the door. They had lost valuable time already; he tried to imagine how much. Ten minutes? The sweat was pouring off him now. He turned back into the darkness.
‘Two men. Help me here.’
Squeezing themselves into a space that had only ever been designed to take one small man, Steel and the two Grenadiers put all their weight against the wood and shoved. Slowly, to Steel’s intense relief, the door at last began to move. Within seconds it was fully open. Light poured into the entrance. They were standing in the outer tunnel now and the light cascaded down upon them from the slits in the rock. Steel saw the reason for their difficulties. Someone, presumably Fabritius and his friends, had placed three stout wooden barrels filled to capacity against the door to disguise it from anyone who happened to poke their nose down the main tunnel. The deception had worked, but Steel wondered whether the Belgian would have realized how heavy the weight of those barrels would have seemed to those opening the door and what terror his ruse had caused in their ranks. No matter, they were in.
Steel waved Slaughter on ahead and turned to Williams: ‘Tom, follow me.’
His plan when they emerged into the town was to leave Hansam in command of the leading platoon and take Williams, Slaughter and a handful of men in search of Trouin and Lieutenant Lejeune. Two by two now, the Grenadiers filed through the narrow doorway and into the wider passageway, which led directly into the base of the citadel. Now, thought Steel, the fun will begin. They might be inside, but how did you hide a company of redcoats in a fortified town teeming with the enemy? As if in answer from twenty yards ahead of him, on top of the inner rampart, there came a terrific explosion and he watched as the packed earth erupted and bricks, shards of stone and clods of clay were flung ten, twenty feet into the air.
He turned to Slaughter: ‘Bugger me, Jacob. Those are our guns firing. They’ve begun the bombardment early. Now we’re for it.’
The sergeant, relieved to be free of the tunnel and keen to be at the French, grinned at him. ‘Well at least we don’t need to hide any more, sir.’
Up above they could hear the sound of men scurrying to man the embrasures, officers shouting shrill commands in French. Steel snapped back to his senses and turned to Slaughter.
‘Sarn’t, I think that we might dispense with any pretence of secrecy now, don’t you? Have the men make ready their grenades. And have them replace their headgear. If we’re going to die, we’re damn well going to do so with dignity.’
Slaughter smiled again and barked the order: ‘Replace caps.’
Above their heads a French captain heard the words and instantly grasped the situation – redcoats in mitre caps – the English were within the walls. Steel heard the order.
‘Tirez!’
No sooner had he heard it than a half-dozen musketballs were whistling past his face. A man went down, hit in the arm and groaning.
Steel moved fast: ‘Take cover. Tom, Sarn’t Slaughter, with me. You men there, to me, now!’
There was a flight of stone steps a short distance away and Steel knew that if they were not to be pinned down here by French musketry, they had to get up on to the counterscarp, and those steps. They were their only hope. Without waiting for support he sprinted across the ditch towards the steps and realized to his relief that the others were right behind him. Another French shot struck home, puncturing the throat of one of the Grenadiers. He could not tell who. But Steel had made it to the steps and began to climb.
He called back to Hansam: ‘Henry. You have the company.’
Hansam nodded in acknowledgement and began to give commands. Steel glanced back down to the wider tunnel up which they had come. He had accomplished the first part of his task. The gate lay open now and he knew that soon the men of the Dutch battalion in support would be pouring up the tunnel in their wake. Now, he thought, to find Trouin. And his mission was no longer for Marlborough and Hawkins alone. For only in taking revenge, Steel realized, would he ease his conscience and assuage the growing guilt at Brouwer’s death.
A noise made him look up as he climbed and he saw before him an officer of French infantry with his sword outstretched. Behind him, rattling down the steps, came four of his men. Steel knew the only way to meet him was to attempt the unexpected. Rather than stand and wait for the officer’s attack, he lunged forward himself so that the Frenchman’s own impetus carried his body hard on to the point of Steel’s blade. The officer’s eyes spread wide with terror as he felt the weapon penetrate his torso. He looked down, tried to clutch at it and then Steel withdrew the weapon and still advancing, pushed the dying man off the steps. The men behind were thrown into confusion. Steel could see that these were not the French infantry he was accustomed to meeting on the battlefield, but Walloon troops, French-speaking Belgians. For an instant they stood and faced him. Then one of the Grenadiers, Cussiter, he thought, discharged his fusil at one of the Frenchmen and the ball caught him on the cheek, spinning him round. That was enough. The other three, one of them dragging their wounded comrade, turned and fled back up the steps.
Steel raised his sword in t
he air: ‘Grenadiers, with me!’
With a great shout the redcoats came rushing up the steps behind him and as he reached the top of the flight he saw that the remainder of the section of Walloons had taken flight along the ramparts. He caught his breath and, standing on the parapet for a moment, glanced towards the allied lines and saw laid out before him the bulk of the force that had been selected to consolidate the attack. And seeing it he knew that, whatever might befall him now, surely the French must surrender the town. There were ten battalions in all, advancing steadily along the dunes towards the western gate. He knew that the balance of his own regiment, twelve companies of musketeers, were among them, with Colonel Farquharson at their head. And with them came their old friends from Ramillies: Meredith’s, Temple’s, Macartney’s, Farington’s and the Guards. He knew too that Argyll’s men were down there and wondered what sport the duke would enjoy today, how many Papists he might butcher in the name of humanity.
All that Hansam had to do now was hold the breach for the Dutch and then together the combined force would open the West Gate. If the resistance they met was as slight as that which Steel had just sent into a rout then the assault would be swift.
For his own part however, Steel knew that the day’s events had only just begun. Now, as he heard the firefight intensify at the mouth of the tunnel, he led his party away from Hansam and the core of the company and along the course of the wall, trying to remember the route Fabritius had taken and transpose it into reverse order. At length, to the left he saw an opening and motioning to the others to follow him, ducked into it. To his intense relief there was not a single Frenchman in sight. The end of the short tunnel through the second wall gave out on to a familiar street. Above his head the sound of running feet told him that, as planned, Hansam was drawing the garrison towards the gate.
He looked round to check his men. There were ten of them all told, including Williams. He had a feeling that Trouin would not be in his headquarters. That was too obvious and also too vulnerable a place. No, Steel knew that a man like Trouin needed to be at the hub of things. To exercise control he must be seen to be in the cockpit of command. His men might be fighting in the streets, but Trouin would be in the governor’s office. That was where they would take him.
Operating on instinct, Steel headed southeast and soon found the straight thoroughfare of St Sebastian Straat. He turned to Williams: ‘Tom, this street leads directly to the town hall. That’s where we’ll find Trouin. It’s too dangerous to march straight down it, we’d better use the sidestreets. But if we get separated try to keep on this course. Understood?’
‘Sir.’
Still in single file, Steel led the party right and left down a series of narrow streets. They saw no one and even amid the intermittent cannon fire as Marlborough’s shore batteries sent the cannonballs against the ramparts, their steps rang out on the cobbles with alarming clarity. There was noise, certainly, but it was the familiar clamour of men going into battle, commands being given to lay cannon and for companies to stand-to. Of the townspeople though, there was no sign, not just in the backstreets but along the wider avenues. The inhabitants, Steel guessed, must have gathered in the shelters, desperate to avoid the bloody fray that they knew must soon envelop their homes. They turned to the right and the area seemed strangely familiar. Steel realized that he had been here before. Although part of Christian Straat had been disfigured by the allied bombardment and several houses lay in ruins, this was clearly the street to which poor Marius Brouwer had brought them on his first visit. In fact his house was only a few doors away from where they now stood.
Suddenly, Slaughter caught Steel’s arm and whispered softly, ‘D’you see, sir? By the door over there.’
Steel had seen it. There, in the doorway of Marius Brouwer’s little house, was a shadowy form. It stood, motionless and barely visible in the deserted town under the dim light from the horned moon. From its stature and the silhouette though Steel could tell that it was a man, and that he was armed with a sword. He was about to approach when there was a sudden commotion ahead of them. Steel pressed himself flat against the wall and the others followed. Looking down the street they saw a party of men, perhaps twenty or thirty of them, fully armed with muskets and an assortment of blades. They were running fast and the two in the lead and another pair to the rear each carried a flaming pitch-covered wooden torch. While several wore the white coats of regular French infantry, others were in civilian dress or the faded coats of other armies. And in the torchlight, even at a distance, Steel recognized several of them as Trouin’s men. They were coming hard down the street now, straight towards the Grenadiers it seemed. Surely now, he thought, they must be seen. He prepared to fight, looked at Slaughter and nodded. And then, without letting up in their pace, the men turned sharply to the right down a smaller alleyway, in what Steel reckoned to be the direction of the West Gate. And as they did so the orange light from the torches carried by the last two in the group momentarily illuminated the figure in Brouwer’s doorway. Then the street was returned to shadow and silence. But it had been enough and Steel was in no doubt. He would have known that profile anywhere.
FIFTEEN
As Steel tightened the grip on his sword, he heard Slaughter ease back the hammer on his gun. Steel spoke: ‘Not a word.’
The figure moved into the light. ‘Captain Steel? Is that you? Oh, thank God, sir. Thank God I’ve found you.’
Steel was relieved to see Fabritius, but noticed that his face wore the same mask of terror that he had seen on it as they had fled the town.
‘Mister Fabritius. Are you quite all right? This is no place for you. You should take cover. Where is your family?’
‘That’s just it, Captain. I need to talk to you. I need your help. You must come with me.’
‘Calm down, man. What the devil’s the matter?’
‘We need your help, Captain. My family. The French know who we are, what I have done. They know that I helped you. Please, you must save us.’
Steel weighed up the situation. If he were to help Fabritius then he might lose the chance of taking Trouin by surprise. Yet to abandon the Belgian would merely add to the weight on his own conscience over Brouwer’s death. There was no contest.
‘Of course we’ll come. Where are your family now? Shall I fetch more men?’
Fabritius looked at the handful of redcoats and seemed troubled. ‘No, no, Captain. I am sure you will be enough. Come with me, please.’
It took them perhaps twenty minutes to cross the town. Despite Marlborough’s assurance that he would not bombard the defences, the night still crackled with the sound of gunfire, musketry mostly. Parties of French infantry could be seen running through neighbouring streets, yet still Fabritius managed to keep clear of them. He had taken Steel and his men directly across the town to the southeast, as far as they could go. At length they crossed the road which led to the monastery of the Capucins and passed a windmill which had taken several hits during the bombardment and now stood looking like some grotesque giant skeleton, its remaining two sails sticking out like paralysed, crucified arms, its windows and warehouse door acting as the empty sockets of the eyes and mouth.
At length Fabritius stopped, found Steel and spoke in a whisper: ‘Over there, Captain, sir. We are here.’
Steel looked ahead and instead of Fabritius’ house as he had expected, saw the vast bulk of one of Vauban’s casemates, set beneath the furthermost bastion of the fort, the Lanthorn Bastion, the last before the port and strongest of them all. They advanced towards the stout oak doors of the casemate which were firmly shut and, he presumed, locked. To his surprise, Fabritius pushed them and they swung wide. At Slaughter’s command the handful of Grenadiers poured through the opening – into emptiness. The inner yard of the casemate was deserted, save for four horses tethered in the far corner. Steel froze. Something was not right.
He turned to Fabritius: ‘Where are they? Your wife and children?’ Fabritius stared back at him. Ste
el tried again: ‘Well, man. Where are they?’
Fabritius said nothing but pointed towards the large wooden door at the rear of the yard.
With their guns held at the ready, loaded and cocked, the redcoats, led by Steel, his sword drawn, moved gingerly across the yard towards the inner door. Steel pushed and like the outer doors it too swung open.
The interior stank of human ordure and stale wine. Broken wine bottles and opened packing cases lay strewn across the floor and in a far corner two dogs were chewing on something which might have been a rat. The room was lit by candles and in the half-light Steel saw in the centre of the room a woman and two small children huddled together. Beside them, tied to a chair, sat Lieutenant Lejeune, who was stripped to the waist. Yet it was not on Fabritius’ family nor the lieutenant that Steel’s gaze now fell, but on the man at the end of the room.
Duglay-Trouin was seated close to the rear wall, behind a heavy oak garrison table. Beside him sat Stringer. For a moment Steel thought that he might be too late, but then Lejeune turned his head and Steel could see that he had not yet been mutilated, but merely badly beaten. The French subaltern managed a feeble smile. Steel saw that the far end of the room was filled with Trouin’s men. There were more than a score of them, heavily armed and aiming their muskets directly towards the Grenadiers. Trouin spoke, his voice echoing against the walls.
‘Captain Steel.’ The privateer smiled with satisfaction, then looked down at his hands and picked at his fingernails with a pocket knife. ‘As you can see, we had not yet begun to enjoy ourselves with the lieutenant or Madame Fabritius. You have quite spoilt Ajax’s fun.’
Steel looked him in the eye. ‘You’re finished, Trouin. In minutes this place will be full of redcoats. We’re in the walls. The town is ours, or soon enough will be.’
