by Iain Gale
‘That’s it, sir. That’s all of them. We’ve looked below decks and there’s not a soul down there.’
A skeleton crew, thought Steel. Trouin had tricked his pursuers and taken the smaller ship.
‘All dead, Jacob?’
‘All save one, sir.’
Stringer, though unconscious, was still breathing. Holding his bleeding leg, Steel bent down towards him. Slaughter slapped his face to bring him round. Stringer groaned and opened his eyes. Steel spoke close to his face: ‘Where’s Trouin? Tell me and you’ll live. Don’t and I’ll kill you now.’
Stringer struggled to speak, finally he found words: ‘You’re too late, Steel. He’s not here. Just left me to guard ’is flagship. Trusts me, see. On the other ship. He’s going to take the bombships and blow up your fleet. Seen her flag, have you? Same as yours. Nothing you can do about it.’
He grinned at Steel who straightened and looked up at the main mast where a cross of St George fluttered in the evening breeze. Trouin was sailing under friendly colours. He found Cussiter and nodded across towards Stringer.
‘Dan, get that bastard down into the boat and try and keep him alive till we get back. I want to see him hang.’
Stringer was right. He was too late. Steel looked out from the quarter-deck and saw Trouin’s fast-rigged brigantine pulling hard away from them. She was two hundred yards distant now, and making speed through the calm waters, heading directly for the first of the bombketches. There was no light aboard the squat English vessels and Steel knew that the crew would be resting in the dinghy tied up to the rear. At most they would have only three men on each ship. Trouin’s plan was simple and perfect. His men would board each one silently and kill the crew and and perhaps even take on a man-o’-war. Maybe more. Then he would be at liberty to open up with their mortars and all the cannon he could find and destroy first what he could of the flotilla and then turn on the army. And there was nothing Steel or anyone could do to stop him. The flotilla was as good as lost, and with it, Ostend.
Malbec had not thought that it would end like this. But like many old soldiers he had always believed that there was an allotted time for him to die and he felt that this was not that moment.
He would not die here, but be taken prisoner. He could not help admiring the tall redcoat officer who had fought so hard and accounted for so many of his men. Now he knew that the hour had come. He presumed he would be taken to England and if he was lucky, within a few months exchanged for some unfortunate English officer. Then he would rejoin his regiment and the war. That was how things worked. It was not the same for the rank and file, of course. If they were taken prisoner rather than killed out of hand then their lot might be a great deal less certain. Perhaps they might rot for years in the prison hulks at Dartmouth or even be pressed into the service of the enemy. For the officers there were different rules. For the lucky ones, who lived to fight again. England, he thought, might not be so bad after all. He was inquisitive too to know the true character of a people for whom, for so long, he had nursed so intense a hatred. The people who had killed his wife and children, the people who had taken his life.
And so Malbec held out his sword to the redcoat officer: ‘Sir, I would be honoured if you would accept my surrender. I could continue the fight. But I regret that today, I do not have it in me to do any more killing.’
Argyll smiled at him. He had originally thought to kill this man, along with all his Frenchmen. ‘No quarter’ had been the orders he had given to his battalion before the assault. But there was something about this particular French officer that told the duke that to kill him in such a way would not be right. Perhaps it was the way he held himself. Or the look in his eyes and the scarred, care-worn face that told Argyll that in a curious way that he and this Frenchman had too much in common. A shared history of battle. A brotherhood. So he accepted Malbec’s sword, and watched as his men piled the enemy muskets and dragged away the dead, and then settled down to await the return of Sergeant McKellar.
There was one chance, thought Steel. One slim chance left for them to stop Trouin and he meant to take it. As they stood staring down at Lejeune’s body, he turned to Slaughter.
‘There must be a magazine on board. Trouin didn’t take the guns. He must have left powder. Jacob, have you got a tinderbox and a slow match?’
‘Sir. But what …’
‘Come with me.’ He called to Cussiter: ‘You too, Dan. Here, give me a hand.’
They found what he was searching for on the lower deck. Although most of the powder had gone with Trouin and of what was left much was damp, Steel reckoned there would still be enough for his purpose. They were well past the mouth of the harbour now, drifting under canvas and yet just barely visible to the flotilla, although still a good half-mile away. As they moved the barrels of powder close together, Steel explained.
‘We need to warn the fleet. This is the only way. We’ve got to blow up this ship.’ With a rope rubbed in more powder leading from the barrels up to the deck, Steel trimmed the length of slow match that Slaughter had produced and waited as it burned down.
Cussiter had climbed down into the dinghy. Watching Trouin’s brigantine as it grew closer in the twilight to the first of the ketches, Steel was increasingly conscious that there was not a moment to lose.
‘You’d better go, Jacob. I’ll jump after I’ve lit the fuse.’
The sergeant shook his head: ‘I’m not leaving without you, Mister Steel.’
‘You bloody are. Get off the ship now, Sergeant. That’s a bloody order. Jump man.’
With Slaughter still protesting, Steel pushed at the Grenadier’s chest and toppled him over the side of the ship. He tumbled, arms sprawling, into the dinghy, his fall broken by Cussiter. Steel looked down and saw that neither of them was seriously hurt. Then he turned back towards the stairs. It was the only way. The explosion would alert the fleet and then perhaps they would have a chance before Trouin and his men reached the bombships.
Kneeling down, and with the pain from his bleeding leg growing ever more intense, Steel lit the fuse with care and prayed that he might still have time to jump clear. He watched it burn down the staircase and run along the lower deck towards the powder hold. Then he hobbled as fast as he could across the deck.
He had not quite reached the rail when the flame entered the first of the barrels. The explosion ripped through the heart of the old warship and Steel, his arms and legs flailing, half-jumped, and was half-blown high above the deck and out towards the sea. Around him all the air seemed to have been suddenly sucked out of the world and as he tried to stay conscious, he felt the pressure squeezing the eyes from his head and then he was falling in slow motion into an endless, weightless, suffocating void.
* * *
All afternoon he had stood on the deck of the small escort ship and watched what he could of the action on shore. Leaving the bombketches further out in the sea, he had come closer into the shore with the majority of the other ships, to have a better view of the assault. Now though it seemed to Lieutenant Forbes that it was over. Cheering seemed to be coming from the strand and the explosions had stopped. He turned from the rail and was about to descend to his cabin when without warning the sky was split in two by the biggest single explosion he had ever heard. To his left, just to the north of the town, the lowering greyness of the dusk was transformed into brilliant orange and the silhouette of a three-master was clearly visible. A man-o’-war, sailing out of Ostend. Forbes gasped.
But it was not so much the dying ship that alarmed him as the other vessel, a brigantine which was also illuminated by the flash. Running English colours, she was heading directly for one of his bombketches. But he was quite certain that this was no ship of theirs. She looked more like a pirate vessel. Forbes caught hold of one of the gawping sailors.
‘Make a signal to the admiral. Assume enemy in sight under false flag. Respectively suggest, sir, you engage enemy immediately to stop taking away bombships.’
He
need not have bothered. For Admiral Fairborne was well aware of what was happening and as Forbes peered through his telescope towards the brigantine, the Triton, the only ship left in the vicinity of the ketches, began to veer sharply and to come alongside Trouin’s vessel. The lieutenant watched in admiration as the great warship prepared to show her full might to the privateer. This was how Britons made war, he thought. This, surely was the very measure of glory.
* * *
And as Forbes looked on and waited for victory, another pair of eyes were held in rapt attention by the unfolding action. Clinging to the stern of the upturned dinghy, Steel supposed that he should count himself the most fortunate man alive. The explosion had blown him clear of the flagship and into the water. His only visible injuries were a few cuts from flying debris, although a sharp pain in his side told him that one if not more of his ribs had taken some of the force of the blast and might well be broken. Slaughter and Cussiter had also managed to climb upon the dinghy and Matt Taylor was clinging to an oar. A short distance away Thorogood, the cricketer, was sitting on a piece of the ship’s gallery that had been blasted away by the explosion. Of Sergeant Stringer though there was no sign. Steel could only presume that, wounded as he was, he must have sunk to the bottom. What was left of the Bellone was sinking now though Steel wondered how deep the bottom was so close to the harbour and prayed that the wreck would not block the port to allied supply ships. He could hear nothing but a buzzing in his ears and hoped that his deafness would not be permanent. His arms weak, his body aching and bloody, his wounded leg throbbing, he wondered how they might make it back to the shore. But his problems were dispelled as he saw the Triton come alongside Trouin’s ship and run out her guns to give the brigantine a pounding and blow the devil back to hell.
And then a strange thing happened. Before the Triton could fire, with a thunderous volley the brigantine opened up with every gun on her port side against the great English warship. For an instant the two vessels were lost to sight in a welter of smoke and splintered wood. But as it blew away it became clear that Trouin’s ship had turned away after firing and was already making sail under the fresh wind, heading fast out into the open sea. Now at last the Triton’s guns blazed, but already Steel knew, the brigantine would be out of effective range. He looked on, incredulous, as Trouin and his men drew ever further away from the flotilla. Away from Ostend. And away from him. And this time, for once Steel realized that there was nothing he could do but watch. .
EPILOGUE
The stench of death hung about Ostend for weeks. But Steel did not care. He was going home. Not to Scotland, but at least across the Channel to London. For once the prospect of leave was filled with possibilities. Filled with Henrietta. A clap on the shoulder-blade surprised him from his reverie and re-awakened pain in his raw back. He tried not to wince.
Lord Orkney raised his glass towards Steel. Clapped him again on the shoulder: ‘You’re a credit to the army, Sir. A credit. Isn’t that so, your Grace? A credit.’
Steel smiled, mumbled his thanks and looked first at Marl-borough and then towards the door. The Duke was well aware that Steel wanted to leave; to find Lady Henrietta, set off for the port and the journey home. But he was damned if he was going to waste one iota of the glory that Steel’s action had brought to his command. He extended his arm to move Steel further into the tented room, where a group of officers stood in conversation.
‘Argyll. You’ve met Captain Steel?’
‘Indeed your Grace. We are well acquainted.’
The familiar face caught Steel with its cold grey eyes and he felt a chill pass through his body. Then he thought of Sergeant McKellar, lying dead on the cobbles and smiled back. And Argyll knew and looked away.
Other officers smiled at Steel. Muttered words of congratulation. Colonel Hawkins tapped him on the shoulder: ‘You look tired, Jack. You’ve earned your leave. That was well done.’
‘But we lost Trouin. And his crew.’
‘But we took the garrison, Jack. And the town.’
Cadogan spoke: ‘We have the port, Colonel, and that is what matters. That, after all was the prime objective. It was a great success and at such little cost’.
Steel could have punched him. At little cost perhaps for the army as a whole. Five hundred men. But how many of those had been from his company? He had lost too many good men in the assault and up there on the ramparts with Hansam. Thankfully the lieutenant himself and young Williams had both come through unhurt. But too many Grenadiers would stay in Ostend forever. He thought too of Brouwer and of Lejeune, of a widow and two fatherless children in a ruined city and of a mourning mother at the court of King Louis. He realized, not for the first time, how war brought all sorts together in grief.
But this was a time for joy. He was going home – that was, if he ever got away from this damn tent and the incessant hubbub of the general staff.
Thankfully, his hearing had returned within a day. Taylor had dressed his wounds, the scratches from the explosion and the deeper hurts inflicted by Trouin’s men. He had bound up Steel’s broken rib – a simple fracture – and applied an ointment to his bruises that Henrietta said smelt of saffron and turmeric.
He wondered what Arabella would make of his relationship with her cousin, knew that she might exact some subtle form of revenge and was strangely excited by that danger. Again Steel realized that his mind had wandered and that he had missed entirely what Marlborough had just said.
‘I’m very sorry, Sir. I …’
‘Sorry? Don’t be sorry, Steel. You have nothing for which to apologise. You have earned your leave. Earned it well. But don’t stay long, Steel. We need you back here with the army. Isn’t that right, Hawkins?’
The Colonel nodded: ‘Indeed, your Grace. Even now I have a mind to put the Captain to good use.’
Marlborough laughed and walked across the room to be welcomed into another group of officers.
Steel stared at the Colonel, who said nothing and took another long draught from the glass of wine which one of the Duke’s servants had just replenished: ‘You knew. You engineered the whole affair so that I should get her out.’
‘Now Jack, don’t jump to conclusions. That may well be so, but what does it do to conjecture now? She’s out. You’re safe and Ostend is ours.’
Steel thought for a moment: ‘Did the Duke know anything of your plan?’
Hawkins ignored the question.
‘We needed to get to Trouin. To stop him from taking complete control of the channel coast. We had to have some means of luring him into the town, of persuading him to stay until we could take the port. Her ladyship seemed to be the obvious answer. He likes a pretty girl.’
‘But he got away. You risked her life and he got away.’
‘But we did take the town, Jack. And you heard Lord Cadogan. That’s what we came here for. Isn’t it?’
Steel shook his head. Such intrigue was lost upon him. He was merely a soldier.
* * *
And so Steel sailed for England with Henrietta. The bells of St Margarets rang out in his honour and at last the Queen put her name to the letter of commission for his Captaincy. And later that month the same ship that had taken him to Dover docked there again to offload its cargo of French prisoners, officers on parole. And Claude Malbec did what he had sworn he never would and set foot on English soil. And at the same moment an ocean away, on another ship – a fine brigantine bobbing at anchor in a shallow, palm-fringed bay – another man also counted himself lucky to be out of Ostend. And he swatted away the flies and drank down another glass of madiera and cursed at the heat and the dearth of pretty girls. But the worst of his curses he reserved for a tall Captain of Grenadiers.
HISTORICAL NOTE
Unlike Blenheim, the battle of Ramillies was Marlborough’s victory alone. As his biographer Winston Churchill rightly opines, even his detractors cannot ascribe it to Eugene or another of his generals. It was a brilliant display of generalship and arguably the highpo
int of his career. Indeed the weeks succeeding it saw him at the very pinnacle of his achievement, lauded by a nation and praised at home. He was though, as in this book, reluctant to accept the proffered position of governor of the Netherlands, rightly foreseeing the problems it would bring.
Ostend, along with Dunkirk and St Malo was, as Cadogan points out, a nest of privateers and thus a thorn in the side of any British force on the continent. It was chiefly for this reason that it was taken and to provide a necessary port of supply for the army. While the rescue of Lady Henrietta Vaughan is as fictional as her character, the pirates are not, although we do not know for certain whether the very real figure of René Duglay-Trouin was present among them at Ostend. In 1706 he appears to have taken part in an action off the coast of Brazil. Trouin was indeed a favourite of Louis XIV who considered him a loyal Frenchman and he often tended to deceive the enemy by fighting under an English flag. He was certainly ruthless although his penchant for torture as depicted here has no personal basis but is founded on the habits and code of conduct of his fellow pirates of this particularly savage era. The year after Ostend he beat an English flotilla in the Battle of the Lizard and in 1711 captured Rio de Janiero. In 1709 Trouin was ennobled and took the motto Dedit haec insignia virtus, ‘Bravery gave him nobility’. By that stage his kill total was 16 warships and more than 300 merchant vessels from the Englsih and Dutch fleets. In later life he commanded the French fleet at St Malo. He died in 1736. Ten ships of the French navy have been named in his honour and his statue stands today in St Malo.
I may also seem a little heavy-handed with my depiction of the callousness of John, 2nd Duke of Argyll (1678–1743) and it is not my intention to offend that illustrious family. However, it is well documented that he had a sincere loathing of Jacobitism and was utterly ruthless as a soldier, as well as unquestionably brave. He was also noted for his fiery temper and tendency to be vindictive. In the heat of battle he was always at the front and while he had the capacity to be merciful, on occasion his passions would surely have overcome his reason. Notably he fought a duel in 1710 with a Colonel who accused him of having changed political parties and won, wounding the Colonel. He was a Whig fundamentalist, believing in a modern world based on logic rather than sentiment and superstition: the world that Steel sees emerging around him. It was Argyll too who was one of the instrumental figures in the Act of Union of 1707, only a year after his actions at Ramillies and Ostend. He was among those responsible for the eventual fall of Marlborough and himself rose to be Commander-in-Chief of the British Army. He lies in Westminster Abbey in an elaborate tomb designed by a Frenchman. This is not his first fictional outing. Argyll also appears in Scott’s Heart of Midlothian as an old man with a softer, more merciful heart.
