A Shred of Honour

by David Donachie

  ‘I don’t quite get the lingo, sir,’ said Yelland, who, with his piping voice, sounded even more youthful than he looked. ‘But I think he’s after some help to fix his wheel.’

  ‘Why, in the name of God, didn’t they go with Elphinstone?’

  ‘What do you want me to do about it?’

  Markham, who’d lain back to rest by the dry stone wall, pulled himself to his feet, slapping at his uniform and sending forth a cloud of brown dust into the warm evening air. ‘I’m not even sure it can be repaired,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not as bad as all that,’ Yelland replied eagerly. ‘I had a look. The ball took the wheel off clean enough and only one of the spokes is stove in.’ His eyes dropped as Markham stared at him, the look full of curiosity. Yelland, when he spoke again, adopted a defensive tone. ‘He offered money for to have it done.’

  Markham laughed, which surprised the youngster, who’d prepared himself for at least a verbal drubbing, if not two dozen lashes. ‘Well you deserve something for all that running you did today. Make sure you charge a decent fee.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  They began to walk down the hill, watched by the men Markham had set to stand the first sentry duty. The last of the light was fading, with a promise of a clear starlit night ahead, one so bright that it should preclude a surreptitious approach by the enemy. They, having retrieved their dead and wounded, had moved forward again, and were now encamped across the Marseilles road.

  ‘Tell me, Yelland, how did you come to be in the regiment?’

  ‘No choice, your honour,’ he replied, without embarrassment. ‘It was that or transportation.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘A bit o’ fish poaching. Went back to the same spot too often. Thought the bailiff was as stupid as me.’

  Markham laughed, with just a trace of bitterness. ‘I doubt you’re alone amongst the Hebes.’

  ‘I ain’t, sir,’ he replied, adding a sneer. ‘And don’t you let those Lobsters fool you, neither. They’re as destined for the fires of hell as the rest of us.’

  They entered the inn, to find the family gathered round a table, eating from the supplies they’d brought in the coach. Judging by the feast before them they’d been determined not to starve. There were hams and cold chicken, beef and pork, fresh looking bread and ample wine. Celeste, now dressed in a cleaner, less tattered frock, stood in the background, her eyes ranging hungrily over the laden table.

  ‘Lieutenant, you will join us, I hope,’ said the father, beaming, his hand sweeping over the food.

  The women at the table nodded in agreement, while the boy stared straight ahead. Then the Frenchman saw Yelland, who’d stopped in the doorway, and he gave the soldier an inquiring stare. Markham, for the first time, had a chance to look at him properly; a squat, thick-set individual, his high colour was exaggerated by the candlelight, and quite probably by the amount of wine he’d consumed. He had lost his wig when he came off the box, and the close-cropped hair made his cheeks look much fatter.

  ‘I have not introduced myself, monsieur.’ He bowed his head as he continued, ‘Guillaume Rossignol. Will you oblige me by a loan of some of your soldiers to repair my wheel?’

  ‘Loan, sir? I understood you’d offered to pay hard money.’

  The split-second pause was enough to establish that he’d hoped to avoid the charge. Markham lifted his eyes to Celeste, standing in the shadows, her hands clasped together in front of her, as though she were cold. She’d brushed her hair, which made her look even younger than she had earlier.

  ‘I certainly hope you’ve paid for the use of this table.’

  Rossignol’s eyes swung round, to look in the same direction. His voice, when it boomed out a reply, had an air of falsehood. ‘Of course, before we depart.’

  ‘I think she would prefer to be paid out in kind,’ said Markham, looking at the food on the table. ‘If you can’t spare the victuals, then she may have that you wish to bestow on me.’

  ‘Come, sir, there is enough for everyone.’ The two men stared at each other for a moment, Rossignol’s eyes taking on a sad look. ‘I have offended you, Lieutenant, have I not?’

  He held up his hand to stop Markham replying, which was unnecessary, since the Irishman had no intention of doing any such thing. ‘Please don’t deny it. I’ve been thoughtless and you have, quite properly, checked me for it. Girls, a plate of food for this unfortunate, with some wine if she wishes it.’

  That had Markham raising an eyebrow. Only a few hours before he had referred to Celeste as a wretch. His eyes took in the rest of the family as the girls complied, with their father fussing at them to add more to the plate. None shared common features. The elder daughter was plump, quite heavily powdered with dark brown eyes. But the other, whom he’d caught the briefest glimpse of earlier, had her father’s blue eyes, his fair skin, and was fortunately free from any trace of his bulk. Indeed, as she half stood to fill the plate, he could see that she was slim and graceful. Earlier, she’d worn a cloak. Now, her low-cut dress revealed a becoming décolletage. Her sister, with a greater endowment of flesh and a similarly low-cut garment, looked overblown. Both girls had smooth hands, and showed an elegance in their movements that denoted a decent upbringing.

  Rossignol, satisfied that their work was progressing properly, turned back to Markham, and observed the direction of his gaze. ‘And here I find I have failed to introduce my daughters, Eveline and Pascalle.’

  Since both curtsied in unison, he had no idea who answered to which name. He was just about to blurt out the question when Yelland, who had not understood a single word of the exchange, coughed loudly to remind them of his presence.

  ‘Tell Sergeant Rannoch to light the fires,’ he snapped. ‘You can then start work on the coach. I’ll see you get your fee.’

  ‘It’ll take a few of the lads, sir.’

  ‘I’m sure there’ll be enough payment to go round.’

  As Yelland left Markham swung his eyes back to the table. Rossignol was beaming at him, which might mean that he’d noted the confusion. So he looked at the boy sitting at the end of the table: pale-skinned, expressionless of face, he had large luminous brown eyes which were utterly uninterested in his surroundings.

  ‘Jean-Baptiste, a friend of the family, Lieutenant,’ said Rossignol. ‘Whom we have taken under our wing for protection. I’m afraid that recent events in his life have affected him. He is, you will observe, rather witless.’

  ‘Deaf?’

  ‘No. Nor dumb. Just cocooned in a world of his own.’

  The pretty daughter had taken the heaped plate, plus a cup of wine, to Celeste, who looked like a waif by comparison. As she turned to come back she raised her eyes and smiled at Markham. At the same moment, Rossignol solved the problem of her identity.

  ‘Thank you, Eveline. You have helped to save your father from being a boor. Now I must apologise to our guest, and hope that he will allow that panic can affect a man’s natural behaviour. Come Lieutenant, join us. You must, after such resounding victories, be famished.’

  Markham might have said something modest if the words had produced a look of admiration from Eveline. He sat down opposite, accepting a cup of wine without taking his eyes off her. That earned him another smile, repeated several times as her father explained to his distracted guest how they had come to be here.

  ‘The murder of the King was a tragedy, and I cannot tell you how much I fear for the poor Queen. Separated from her children these last months and kept alone in a cell, she is constantly threatened with a similar fate. If an entire nation could be consigned to hell, that punishment would fit such a crime. Those madmen in Paris wished to kill any person of quality, especially those who owned land.’

  ‘The newspapers in England have reported every gory detail, monsieur. And since you are fleeing, in such a handsome coach and with such elegant creatures, you are, I presume, at risk.’

  The words were addressed to both women, but he made sure that Eveline kn
ew they were intended for her.

  ‘Certainly, monsieur, though not because of my personal worth. I am a maître, a lawyer, who had the good fortune to represent some of the most elevated families in France. I had hoped that my daughters would give a lustre to our family that I could not gain myself.’

  ‘They are certainly lustrous enough, monsieur,’ Markham replied, which produced a bowed head from Eveline and a simpering response from her sister.

  ‘You are most gallant,’ said their father.

  The door crashed open as Halsey burst in. His face, instead of being the smooth visage Markham remembered, was lined with worry. ‘There’s men moving down through the hills behind us!’

  Markham’s wine went flying as he jumped to his feet. ‘Have the French outflanked us?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s soldiers. They ain’t fired off a single shot. They don’t want to be spotted, I reckon. And they’re dressed wrong. It might be them deserters. All I know is there’s a rate of ’em. I left Leech and the others to keep an eye out.’

  Celeste shuddered just as he said the word ‘deserters’. Rossignol had gone pale, and his daughters had their hands to their mouths. Markham was cursing himself for a fool. He’d forgotten to mention deserters to Elphinstone. Not that it would have made much difference. The Scotsman’s opinion of him, since their original meeting, had been reshaped by de Lisle. Both men would probably have dismissed such information as irrelevant. It was anything but now.

  ‘Tell Rannoch, if he’s lit those fires, to douse the damn things. He’s to pull the men off the crest and get them back down into the village. And Halsey, inform them that this is no time for anything other than their very best. If they fall into the hands of these fellows, they could end up suffering the fate of this girl’s father.’

  Chapter seven

  The night, apart from the sound of the crickets, had been silent. But it came alive as the first shot was fired by one of the marines Halsey had left behind. Markham cursed the uncertainty that left him unsure of where to go. He needed to both see the threat and try to evaluate it, but he also had to be sure that those dug in on the hill facing west obeyed quickly the instructions he’d sent with the marine corporal. Exiting from the village he came across Yelland, Dornan, Quinlan and Ettrick. They’d stopped work on the coach and, alerted by Halsey, were staring in the direction of this new hazard.

  ‘Yelland, get that damned thing fixed if you can. We might need it to get the women out of here.’

  He passed on, pulling out his pistol before cutting up into the hills to the northern side of the Toulon road, tracing the path he’d used earlier to set the guard. The noise of a large party, seemingly oblivious to any threat to their safety, floated over the night air. The clink of a bayonet scabbard, a few feet away, alerted him to the presence of the men Halsey had left to shadow them. Kneeling down he called out ‘Hebe’, which was returned from a point just to his left. Looking closely he could barely make out the crossed white bands of the marine uniform.

  ‘To me,’ he whispered. The man slithered over immediately.

  ‘It’s Leech, sir.’

  ‘How many are there?’

  ‘Hundreds of the buggers, and not a bit bothered about noise an’ the like. It’s as if they don’t know we’re here.’

  ‘Did you see if they were armed?’

  ‘They looks to have muskets and pikes. If you get close enough you can see them set against the night sky.’

  Markham went forward, half crouched, till he could observe for himself what he meant. The French were using the top of the hill to make their way, their numbers more obvious by the noise rather than anything he could actually see. But he did observe the silhouetted weaponry attached to each human form. According to Fouquert (who, to spare the ladies blushes, had been tied up in the back room of the inn), the revolutionary sailors had escaped with everything they needed to fight. He was nagged by several questions. Having taken to the hills, why were they now coming back down to the valley? Did they know about his detachment holding the village? Perhaps, having seen Elphinstone withdrawing, they assumed the road to be clear. But then why not use it?

  ‘When sorrows come,’ he said quietly to himself, ‘they come not single spies, but in battalions.’

  ‘What?’ asked Leech, who had sidled up to join him.

  ‘Nothing. Where are the other men?’

  ‘In the bushes right in front of you,’ the marine replied, in a manner which was well short of that required for a ranker addressing an officer. But this was not the place to reprimand him, nor was there time. The landscape ahead, narrowing into the steep-sided valley, meant that these French sailors would have to descend to the road soon to pass through Ollioules. They couldn’t do so without discovering his presence, and since the British were behind them, and freedom lay to the west, it was very likely that they would fight. That would leave him trapped between two forces, in a situation where the noise of one battle could very well alert the army encamped on the Marseilles road.

  There was no reason to assume that these men would prove any better than their fellow countrymen. But, if they were French sailors, they had one thing the soldiers lacked, and that was a purpose born of desperation. The ill-trained men who’d set out to march to Toulon had the option to withdraw to relative safety. These sailors could not. Security for them lay beyond those who would oppose them, which would make their attempts to break through more dangerous. And he was going to be faced with a defensive night action commanding men who’d shown scant ability to either comprehend or obey his orders in full daylight.

  ‘Gather the men,’ he whispered, ‘and follow me back down the track. When we get down to the road, double back to the village and find Halsey. Tell him, if he hasn’t managed it already, that he has about twenty minutes to carry out my last instructions.’

  It was hard to know what alerted the French. A clink of metal, or the flash of something bright? One man, closer than the rest, shouted and that was taken up by the others. Suddenly there was a hail of muskets balls flying about British ears.

  ‘Hebes! Out of here. Move!’

  Markham shouted as he stood upright, firing off his pistol wildly, more for effect than with the hope of actually hitting anyone. Then he turned and ran, vaguely aware of the slithering sounds of his own men right at his heels. There was a sudden cry of alarm, which quickly turned to pain, that overlaid by the sound of a fall and a bone breaking. Markham stopped as another marine cannoned into him, knocking him into a thick bush that scratched as much as it supported him. He shot out a hand and grabbed at a second Lobster running past, hauling him up short.

  ‘Who’s down?’

  ‘God knows,’ the marine panted, the whites of his panic-stricken eyes very obvious in the moonlight.

  ‘We can’t leave him, not after what they did to that poor sod who owned the inn.’

  They heard the whimpering as soon as they stopped talking, faint over their heaving breath. Markham pulled the reluctant marine up the slope towards the sound, ears tuned to the noise of their pursuers crashing through the undergrowth above them.

  ‘Fire off your musket,’ Markham said as they found the fellow who’d been injured.

  ‘I can’t see no-one.’

  ‘Just do it, man, never mind if you hit anything!’

  The whimpering, as he knelt down, was drowned out by the crash of the Brown Bess over his head. From above them came a cry of pain as the ball took someone. Suddenly the sound of pursuit ceased, a brief respite while the French checked that they were not in danger too. Markham grabbed the wounded Lobster’s musket and fired it through the scrub. There was no sound of it hitting flesh and bone, but it produced many an anguished cry as the Frenchmen vied to tell each other to stay low, that they were at risk, and to call out to their special friends for reassurance.

  ‘Take my arm,’ Markham said to the man on the ground, vaguely aware that the other marine was reloading. When he leant forward he realised that it was Leec
h.

  ‘Can’t walk. Leg’s gone,’

  ‘Then I’ll have to damn well carry you,’ he hissed. ‘Take my bloody arm.’

  As the man complied the musket above him crashed out again, producing another series of shouts. He couldn’t be sure if he’d heard right, but it seemed to him that several of their pursuers had identified not only their position, but now knew that they were only facing one weapon. The shouts were changing from those urging caution to others calling for a renewed attack, with only the fear of being first acting as a brake to their efforts. Markham hauled hard to raise the marine, and once he was upright lifted him on to his shoulder.

  ‘Stay at my back,’ he gasped, to the other man.

  They stumbled down the hill, slithering and sliding on the bone-dry, rock-covered scree. As they emerged on to the roadway, Markham emitted a breathless curse. Ahead, on the road, stood a milling group of the enemy. Some of his pursuers, who’d probably been ahead of the main body, had got there before him. Their gaze was fixed on the indistinct shapes of the houses of Ollioules, and very likely the retreating backs of the rest of Halsey’s piquet, who ran on well ahead of their officer. Without stopping he plunged into the scrub on the other side of the road, praying that the man covering his back would have the sense to follow. In amongst a group of olive trees he came to a halt, falling to his knees, his breath searing his chest. As gently as he could he laid the wounded man on the ground, only realising when he rolled over that the marine had passed out with the pain.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Dymock.’

  ‘Stay with Leech, and keep out of sight.’

  ‘There’s a rate of them frogs?’

  ‘They’re not interested in you,’ Markham replied testily, covering his own uncertainty. ‘They’re interested in getting to safety, which means going through the village.’