‘They’re bayonetting them, sir,’ sobbed Yelland, who’d been put to watch, his fair hair flopping over his eyes. ‘Men, women and bairns. If they run, they drown.’
He couldn’t bring himself to admit that they needed that quay cleared to have any chance of escape. It was just too cruel a thought to contemplate. ‘I’d like to stop it, Yelland. But if we show our noses outside that door it will be bayonets for us, if not something much worse. Now get some sleep, and put wadding in your ears if you can’t shut out the noise.’
Eveline and Pascalle had gone to their room. He thought about knocking, to say that they should, for safety’s sake, be ready to leave, but decided against it, unwilling to undergo another dose of Pascalle’s grief, and even less inclined to exchange so much as a look with Eveline, in case, in her eyes, he would see that he’d been the final victim of Rossignol’s deceit.
He found Celeste and Jean-Baptiste in the kitchens, sitting at the table, the young girl wearing an expression that exactly matched that of the boy, as she contemplated a repetition of her previous experiences.
‘Do you feel up to preparing some food?’
‘Why?’ she asked softly.
‘My men will need it, and so will you if we are to escape.’
‘Escape! To where?’
Markham, weary himself, couldn’t quite yet answer that. The French army was still camped all around the city, blocking off the land routes. Only the sea offered safety, and that was precarious to a man who had no idea how to navigate. But they couldn’t stay here. Almost any other building would do, as long as it allowed them to hide. But where that might be, he could not bring himself to guess. He needed to shut his eyes, if only for half an hour. Then perhaps he might be able to think straight.
‘Food, if you please.’ Before turning to leave, he laid his watch on the table. ‘I’m going to have a sleep on that chaise in the main hall. Please wake me in half an hour.’
The doors to the Rossignol rooms were shut. He passed by quietly, entering his own. Opening Frobisher’s sea-chest, he took out his best shoes and put them on, followed by a fresh shirt and the uniform coat, the pair of pistols and the cartouche containing powder and balls. He laughed inwardly, recalling how he had said that he’d return the valuable items. That was going to be a very difficult promise to keep. Returning to the hall, he lay back and closed his eyes.
Celeste woke him, as requested, laying his watch on his chest without saying a word. Markham pulled himself to his feet, his first conscious thought being that, if he’d dreamed at all, it hadn’t provided him with a way out of his predicament. Gathering Frobisher’s things, he crossed the courtyard. He’d barely entered the warehouse when the banging started on the heavily studded door that led to the quay.
‘Everybody up,’ he yelled as he ran for the first floor. He threw Frobisher’s possessions into the first available pair of hands, ordered the pistols to be loaded, and struggled out of his coat. Stepping over the bodies of Rossignol and Serota, he inched open one of the loading bay doors. Through the slight crack he saw a multitude of torches, and by their light that the harbour was full of floating corpses. He imagined the quayside being dark brown from their blood, interspersed with deep red pools where the cobbles sagged to form a puddle. The crowd, waving makeshift tricolours, clothing stained to match the red caps of liberty, had turned from their killing and was now milling outside the main entrance. Someone saw the door to the loading bay move, shouted and raised a hand to point, every eye then following the gesture. Markham slammed it shut as the crowd roared. The overall effect was indistinct, but the words ‘traitor’ and ‘guillotine’ were clear enough.
‘Halsey, get the Rossignol girls out of their room. Dymock, Hollick, I want the means to make a tricolour flag. Tear down the drapes if you have to. Those of you who’ve not got anything on your feet, search the house for footwear. And take anything you can find to use as a weapon.’
‘Which way will we get out?’ Rannoch asked softly. Markham, with no conviction at all, nodded towards the rear of the building, a notion which made little impression on the Scotsman. ‘If those intent on looting the place are out the front, sir, they will be at the back also.’
‘Check that, they might not have thought of it yet.’
Markham heard Rannoch call to Gibbons as he inched the door open again. A group of citizens were pushing their way through the mass of bodies, carrying a heavy ship’s spar big enough to batter the door down. Several missiles, accompanied by curses, flew in his direction, bouncing off the thick wood of the door as he slammed it shut.
‘The Rossignol girls have gone!’ yelled Halsey, his head appearing at the same time. ‘Cleared out by the look of it, though they’ve left most of their clothes.’
‘Damn! They must have slipped past me while I was asleep.’
Rannoch pushed past the marine corporal. ‘The mob out the back is thicker than the one in front, and they are at the timbers with an axe. We pushed the coach right up to the door to slow them up, and Gibbons is keeping watch.’
Pascalle and Eveline must have used the tunnels. In a city being put to the sack, the girls had only one place they could go to feel safe. That was to Fouquert. And the only thing they could offer him as an excuse for keeping their heads attached to their necks would be information about him and his men. One by one they’d drifted back, armed with knives and cleavers from the kitchens, all with something on their feet. Tully and Yelland looked particularly incongruous in highly polished dancing pumps.
‘Ettrick, Quinlan, search Picard’s study. There’s an escape route somewhere, and I need you to find it. Dornan, my pistols, if you please.’ Dornan passed them to him, without any attempt at haste, which earned him a glare. ‘Stand here. When I say so, push the door open. As soon as I’ve fired my pistols shut it again.’
Raising one, he nodded, and Dornan obliged. The men with the spar, the only regular grouping in an otherwise heaving mass, were easy to spot. He’d be lucky to actually hit them, but that didn’t matter, since a ball into the surrounding mob would cause enough panic to slow them down. The crash of the pistols, in the low-ceilinged chamber, was deafening, slowing Dornan’s reactions just enough to allow those below to aim several pieces of the torn-up pavé in his direction. One came right through the gap, forcing Markham to throw himself backwards to avoid serious injury.
He glared into Dornan’s bovine face. ‘A little swifter next time, if you please. Leech, Dymock, there’s a party with a battering ram below. You’ll see them as Dornan opens the door. Don’t bother to aim, just get as close as you can.’
Ettrick came up behind him as he began to reload the pistols, and tugged at his shirt so that he could whisper in his ear. ‘The study door was locked, but Quinlan picked it. One of the bookshelves has a handle at the back, but we was afraid to tug at it without your say-so.’
‘Good. Sergeant Rannoch, everyone bar Dymock and Leech into the hallway outside the study. Halsey, get Celeste and the boy, as well as any food they can carry. Schutte, take Yelland and set up something at the bottom of the stairs to start a fire.’
Dornan swung the door too wide, giving Markham a fleeting glimpse of the Grosse Tour, as the two men fired off the unfamiliar Spanish weapons. Even as he was yelling at him to shut the damn thing, he had the ridiculous notion of taking Rossignol’s unfinished painting with him. What a pleasure it would be to present it, as a wedding present, to Hanger! But there was no time for such fantasies. He didn’t have much hope that they would survive. And if they were to have any chance, they had to leave now.
At the bottom of the stairs Schutte and Yelland had stacked everything loose they could find around a barrel of turpentine, then placed a lantern on top. That last, hastily-fired salvo had gained little in the way of time. The crash, as the battering ram hit the door, reverberated round the chamber. The temptation to light it now was strong. But logic dictated that he wait until he knew they had an escape route themselves.
‘Get som
ething across that door to hold them up.’
Rannoch was in the hallway, loading a fowling piece that he’d found. Halsey was taking food from Celeste and Jean-Baptiste, passing it round, stuffing it into mouths where the hands were too occupied to receive it. Hollick had draped himself in the strands of the makeshift tricolour he’d been asked to find. Markham pushed past and joined Quinlan in the booklined study. They hadn’t even tried to conceal the handle properly. The dull bronze shone in the candlelight, the ledgers that were normally used to hide it thrown carelessly on the floor.
‘Quinlan, take this pistol. Aim it at the door. If there’s anyone on the other side, shoot them in the face.’
He turned the handle and pulled, watching Quinlan’s screwed-up features and stiff shoulders for the first sign of trouble. As they relaxed, so did he. Stepping round the bookshelves, he looked into the void, his nose twitching at the musty smell that wafted out. There were stairs cut into the rock, and slipping down, lantern in hand, he saw that after a few yards the tunnel split in two.
‘They’re nearly through the doors at the back, sir,’ shouted Ettrick. ‘Sergeant sent me to tell you.’
Markham emerged from the tunnel as a shot rang out from behind the house. ‘Fetch the rest of the men from the warehouse. Tell Schutte to set light to that turpentine barrel. Get Rannoch and Gibbons in, then bar the back door. Everyone else in here.’
They crowded into the study, knocking over the round table as they filled the room. The heavy book with the embossed cover fell, sending Rossignol’s drawings flying. Jean-Baptiste let go of Celeste’s hands and scrabbled around picking them up. Halsey tried to stop the boy, since time was precious, but Celeste pushed him back, and got down on her knees to assist. Markham, watching, was vaguely aware that the drawings were numerous, and that some had been added to those he’d already looked at, these being coloured rather than just linear sketches.
By the time they were gathered Rannoch had shepherded the rest into the room to join them. ‘The door to the warehouse is bolted,’ he said, his speech controlled even in this dire emergency. ‘But that will not stop the flames. And I do not think the rear door to the house, a flimsy thing, will stand for long against those axes.’
‘We have a way,’ Markham replied, addressing them all, as he grasped the handle. ‘This leads to an old smuggling tunnel. God knows where it comes out. We can’t get out the front or the back without passing through that mob. And we can’t stay and hold the place. Even if we succeeded, Fouquert is bound to come here. That’s the man we tied to the back of the coach at Ollioules. I’ll leave you to guess at the fate you’ll have in his hands.’
The question of where they were to go, even if they did get clear of the Picard house, hung in the air. But no-one asked it, since without an opinion such an enquiry was worthless.
‘We may come out into a public place. Front and back, the crowd outside are scum. There’s not one of them who hasn’t committed murder since last night. If they get in your way, kill them. Rannoch, behind me. Halsey, you bring up the rear. Celeste and the boy in the middle. Quinlan, re-lock that study door.’ The soldier knelt down and pulled out a set of picks as they filed down the stairs to crowd into a small chamber at the bottom. ‘There has to be a way to shut that entrance, Halsey. Wait till Quinlan’s through. If there’s a bolt of some kind, use it.’
Markham was thinking back to the day he’d gone after Fouquert, and the way he’d disappeared, which meant he knew about these tunnels too. That was worrying, but it was a case of the lesser of two evils. One of these exits must lead to the alley into which he’d been chased, or to a building that backed onto it. But which one? They had little time in which to make a mistake. Looking at the floor, covered in the accumulated dust of ages, he saw the faint traces where something heavy had recently been dragged across it. It could only be Eveline and Pascalle, inadvertently leaving a trail to be followed.
There was a dull thud, that seemed to come at them through the very walls, which he hoped was the barrel of turpentine exploding. With luck the whole warehouse was now alight. In time, the fire would reach the top floor, and all those combustibles that had so worried Picard. Then, with luck, they would go up, taking the whole of the rampaging mob with them.
‘Wait here, while Rannoch and I go forward and look.’
They didn’t have to go far. The tunnel ended at a sort of spiral staircase, which rose to a wooden trapdoor. Rannoch, having first put his ear to the timber, and heard no sound, pushed gently. When it didn’t move, he tried more force, increasing that till the veins were standing out on his neck. He couldn’t even budge it a fraction, which indicated that it was either tightly bolted, or under something so heavy that it was impossible to lift.
‘We’ll have to try the other way,’ said Markham.
‘Well, let us hope that leads to somewhere,’ Rannoch replied. ‘It is for certain that we cannot go backwards.’
This proved a much longer tunnel, which twisted and turned so that they soon lost any sense of direction. If there were exits, they weren’t visible in the light from his lantern. Frustrated, Markham called a halt and stood still for a moment, feeling the temperature rise as the heat of. candle, added to human bodies, filled the confined space. He was trying to get his bearings, conjuring up a picture of the study, its position in the house, and the turns they’d taken.
With everyone still and silent, he heard clearly the first high-pitched squeaks. The noise didn’t increase slowly, it arrived suddenly, filling the whole of their narrow tunnel till it was difficult to communicate.
‘Get the boy off the ground!’ he bellowed. ‘And Celeste. The rest of you, open your legs as wide as you can.’
Seconds later he felt the first of the rats run over his shoes, picking up at the same time a faint trace of the smell of smoke. Within seconds, the tunnel was flooded with the creatures, scratching and biting as they sought escape from the threat of the flames behind them. The Picard warehouse would have been home to these vermin. Now that it was ablaze, they were heading for safety. Markham, lantern held high, watched the writhing grey sea of bodies ahead of him. He didn’t like rats at all. But in their flight they were certainly heading for a way out.
The frenzy soon passed, a few stragglers disappearing out of the circle of his light. Celeste and Jean-Baptiste were put back on the ground, and with a quick word to ensure that everyone was all right, Markham set off again. His step was certain now, but his thoughts were anything but. For all the distance they were covering, they’d not come across a single exit.
‘That looks like a ladder ahead,’ said Rannoch.
His hand was pointing over Markham’s shoulder to where the worn wooden rungs disappeared into a dark, narrow shaft. The rest of the tunnel was nothing but a black hole beyond the range of his lantern. Opening it, he exposed the flame, which didn’t even flicker in the still, fetid air. He walked forward, only to find himself standing in front of solid rock.
‘Let’s hope this one isn’t blocked as well, Rannoch,’ he whispered, as he returned to the group. Handing the lantern to his sergeant, he took off his sword and pulled his pistols from his belt. Both, in the narrow shaft above his head, were too bulky to be anything other than an impediment. ‘I’ll take your bayonet, if you don’t mind.’
Grasping the lowest rung, he began to haul himself up. There was barely enough space in the shaft to accommodate him, and no light at all, since his own body blocked what little filtered up from below. And it was hot. Through his shirt he could feel the bricks of the right-hand wall getting hotter, at one point close to causing actual pain. He eased himself up a bit further, every sense alert for the exit that this must surely lead to, aware that the bricks were now merely warm. He could smell nothing but the acrid reek of long-dry dust. No crack of white appeared, the gap at the base of a door that would indicate an escape route, so that he was forced to blink, just to make sure his eyes were actually open. Then, as the bricks grew hot again, the top of his he
ad touched unyielding stone, and he could ascend no further.
Hanging on the ladder, Markham fought the sense of panic induced by his disappointment and dark isolation. There had to be a way out, or the ladder served no purpose. He racked his brains for a solution based on logic. Hot bricks at his side could not hold a way out, since they must be a lot warmer on the other side. Why were they warm? It had to be some kind of fire. And given the construction of his narrow shaft, and the number of rungs he’d climbed, were these bricks part of a chimney?
If there was an exit, it could only be on two of the four sides. One was blocked by the ladder, the other by heat. If it was a chimney then the logical place to conceal an entrance was at the side, not the front. He descended slowly, tapping very gently on the wall to his left. The hollow sound, as the stone changed to wood, made every nerve in his body jump. Scrabbling around for a handle proved fruitless, so, placing his knees and hands against the searing bricks, he used his back to push hard.
The wrenching, tearing sound barely registered, since Markham was too busy trying to grab a rung to stop himself falling. Fine dust filled his nostrils and his mouth, making him gag and sneeze. Something furry landed on his face and, fearing a rat, he screamed and lashed out. The light that suddenly flooded in, as another door crashed open, blinded him, so it was several seconds before he realised that the dust that filled the air was powder, and the creature he was trying to fight off, which seemed to envelope half of his arm, was a full-bottomed wig.
A Shred of Honour Page 34
