Blood's Campaign

by Angus Donald

  Aphra had teased Holcroft about his gift: saying she needed cash not sugared fruit to pay a doctor to treat her condition, and no amount of sweet words, sweetmeats, or even sweet kisses would satisfy a London physician. Holcroft, short-tempered, had asked then whether he should take the gift back.

  If only she had said yes.

  But Aphra had apologised and they had awkwardly patched things up. A week later Holcroft was returning with a heavy purse of silver for her, a much more suitable tribute to a fine woman who had been so kind to him for so many years and who had offered him wise counsel, and a good deal of practical help, too, in the long, lonely years when he had been on secret service in France.

  Holcroft knocked at the door, and when there was no answer, presuming his friend to be asleep, turned the knob and poked his head around the jamb.

  The smell repulsed him, then drew him inside. A sickly, meaty odour.

  It was clear that Aphra had been dead for some days. She was seated on the floor by the bed, legs a-spraddle, head canted back on the mattress. She had vomited blood and some half-chewed yellowish matter and soiled herself thoroughly. She had also thrashed about as she died. Aphra Behn had clearly been poisoned. Holcroft had seen the effects of similar poisonings several times before and knew them all too well. And the cause of her death was lying innocuously on the floor beside her hand, the open camphor-wood box, now half empty of its sweet and deadly contents.

  In his grief and anger, Holcroft had quizzed Elizabeth very roughly and the origin of the camphor-wood box had been revealed. It had been given to his wife by Henri d’Erloncourt on the one occasion when they had dined at his apartments in White Hall – before Holcroft had discovered his true identity.

  Elizabeth had put the box of sweets away and forgotten it. Until Holcroft had found it, wrapped it in a ribbon, and delivered its deadly contents to Aphra.

  If only he had asked Elizabeth about the sweetmeats before taking them. If only Aphra had returned the gift to him, as he had angrily suggested. If only . . .

  The guilt he felt at being the agent of his friend’s death was like a six-pound ball in his chest. A weight pressing down on his heart. He cursed himself, he cursed God, he cursed Elizabeth, too. She cursed him right back – saying that the death was a result of his consorting with women of her type. Her type? Her type? There were no women of her magnificent type left in the world! There never would be one like her again! Holcroft had lost his temper, raged around their house in Mincing Lane, hurling furniture, pictures and crockery at the walls. Trying to smash his grief, to crush his sorrow. When Elizabeth called him a barbarian for his reckless destruction, he came close to striking her; but managed to stay his drawn-back fist in time.

  He drank heavily. He neglected his work at the Ordnance. And it was only at a private informal dinner in the Cockpit, in White Hall, with his friend Jack Churchill, before Lord Marlborough’s departure for the war in the Low Countries, that he found himself weeping into his brandy glass.

  It was Jack who told him that he was not to blame.

  ‘The fault is not yours,’ he said. ‘The man responsible is Narrey. He poisoned the ginger and sent it out into the world. Narrey hoped the tainted sweetmeat would kill you or Elizabeth. But he did not care who succumbed. It could have been a servant, a tradesman, anybody. The blame lies at his door.’

  The next morning, when Holcoft awoke with a throbbing head, he realised that Jack had spoken true. Narrey was to blame.

  And Holcroft truly began to hate.

  *

  ‘. . . And so, as a result of Major Richards’ very generous report, I am minded to be lenient with you, Captain Blood. I should by rights have you stripped of your command and immediately sent back to London in disgrace. But I have decided, instead, to give you a choice. Are you paying attention to me, Blood? Your thoughts seem to be elsewhere. Are you hearing me clearly? I no longer trust you to have command of His Majesty’s cannon. You may not remain with the Royal Train of Artillery. So this is the choice I lay before you: you may resign your commission in the Ordnance immediately and return to England as a private gentleman; or you may remain in Ireland and put your talents at the disposal of whomsoever I deem might profit by them.’

  Holcroft was silent. He was still musing on his poor, dead friend.

  ‘I am minded to send you to the west, Blood, to offer your services to Colonel Zachariah Tiffin. He has raised an infantry regiment in Inniskilling – one of several fighting units recruited from that big-hearted Protestant town – and he has a great need of experienced officers. Colonel Tiffin is engaged at present with hunting down raparees in the Erne Valley. His men are a wild bunch: brave and eager for the fray but also ill-disciplined, disrespectful of authority and insubordinate – I have no doubt they will match your own character very well.’

  Holcroft said nothing. He was now thinking of the last glimpse he had had of Narrey’s dirty face before Schomberg’s horse had intervened – a frightened face, a face that recognises too late the inevitable approach of Nemesis. He held on to that image in his mind. It comforted him. He smiled coldly to himself.

  ‘Captain Blood, I am speaking to you. You will answer me now. Which do you choose? Will you resign your commission and go home? Or will you go west to serve with Colonel Tiffin’s Inniskillingers? I require you to answer me!’

  Holcroft looked at the angry old man with his feet in the reeking bath of hot herb water. There was no choice to be made, none at all. While Narrey was at large in Ireland, Holcroft would remain until vengeance had been meted out.

  ‘I am Nemesis,’ Holcroft said out loud.

  ‘What, sir? What are you babbling? Answer my question this instant.’

  ‘I’ll go west, sir, to Inniskilling. I will serve in Colonel Tiffin’s Regiment.’

  Chapter Seven

  Thursday, October 3, 1689

  The wagon clattered through the narrow brick tunnel and emerged into the surprisingly large yard that belonged to the Bull, a coaching inn on the main road to Dublin outside the county town of Longford. The Irish driver hauled on the reins and called out soft words of calm in his own language to the team of six snorting, stamping, lather-streaked horses as he turned them in a tight circle and came to a halt by the side of a long low building, pocked with many small, square windows.

  A slight man in a heavy black woollen cloak, with a broad-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes, stepped down stiffly, awkwardly, from his perch on a canvas-covered chest in the bed of the wagon. As his cloak swung open his left arm was revealed to be injured, bandaged in fresh linen and supported by a sling made from sheer black silk. He was followed from the wagon by a larger, more muscular fellow wearing a blue military-style coat, a sword at his side and a tricorn hat on his wigless head, who vaulted down beside him, landing like a dancer, and offered his arm as a support for the other.

  The two men – the injured man clutching the robust fellow’s arm – made their way into the tap room of the Bull Inn, with the larger fellow calling out a jovial greeting in strongly accented English as they entered and, finding the place deserted, leading his companion to a rickety table by the peat fire and helping him into a chair.

  Major du Clos went up to the board and, pulling a pistol from his belt, rapped hard on the counter with the butt and called out: ‘God’s blessings upon this house! Landlord! Landlord there!’

  The innkeeper appeared a few moments later, rubbing a sleep-creased face and staring in stupid surprise at the big man with a pistol in his hands standing at the counter. ‘Good day to you, sir,’ he said. ‘How may I serve you?’

  ‘We shall require your best meal and some wine and a pair of rooms for the night,’ said du Clos, producing a gold piece from his waistcoat pocket and placing it on the counter.

  The man’s eyes fixed on the gold. ‘Just as you say, sir: it shall be nothing but the best for two fine gentlemen such as yourselves.’

  Du Clos joined Henri d’Erloncourt at the table by the fire. He
looked around the long, low, narrow room, noting the thick drifts of greasy sawdust on the floor and the few spindly tables and chairs, many cracked and broken, the damp and peeling plaster revealing ancient faded brickwork, a massive stuffed bull’s head mounted on the wall, with a hook protruding from its shiny black nose on which a brass ring was hung, the ring attached to a thin cord reaching to the ceiling. But the most obvious feature of the space was the absence of any other customers.

  ‘Not a soul,’ he said to his companion in French. ‘Not even a passing beggar or stray dog. What the Devil does the landlord live on, do you suppose?’

  Henri looked at him from under his hat brim. ‘Oh, John Gaffrey makes a pretty penny in the right season. I suspect our friend ordered him to keep the place empty for our meeting.’

  ‘You told him noon, yes? It must be past that now.’

  ‘He will come, Guillaume; don’t be so anxious. He seeks to make an entrance.’

  The landlord brought wine to the table and two filthy goblets, along with cheese, butter, oatcakes, a slab of fatty boiled bacon and a bowl of radishes.

  Du Clos took a mouthful of the wine and nearly spat it out on the table. He buttered an oatcake, munched it down with a slice of cheese. He took another sip of wine and then got up and began to stab the peat fire with an iron poker, trying to liven the feeble glow without much success. The landlord had disappeared again and the quiet was heavy on the air, smothering, like a thick musty horse blanket. The major began to prowl around the room, peering out of the many square windows at the coach yard outside and the lone wagon – now abandoned by its driver and without the six horses but still with its high load of tarpaulin-shrouded boxes and chests. It was raining again, not heavily but with persistence. The surfaces of the black tarpaulin gleamed silver in the weak light.

  ‘He’s not coming today,’ he said over his shoulder to Henri. ‘He’d be a fool to come out in this. He’s at home with a bottle by his own warm hearth.’

  ‘The Irish pay no regard to the weather,’ said Henri. ‘None at all. And I’m not sure our man has a warm hearth to call his own. He’ll come to us, Guillaume. He is only an hour late. That’s nothing for a man like him.’

  Major du Clos went over to the bull’s head. He unhooked the brass ring and taking a couple of steps back he let it swing on its string towards the hook on the animal’s snout. The ring missed and swung back towards the Frenchman.

  Du Clos frowned. He prided himself on his skill in physical matters. He was an excellent pistol shot and a master of the sword. He could dance well, and wrestle and throw men like a professional, too. He swung the ring again, giving it a sideways push so that the metal hoop moved in a flattened circle up to the hook and then back towards him. Once again, he missed the hook.

  ‘Damn thing,’ he muttered. He tried again without success.

  He began to take the game seriously now, standing fore-square on and measuring the swing of the ring on its cord carefully with his eye. He released the ring and watched its progress towards the bull’s nose. It ran straight as an arrow, chinked off the brass hook and came wobbling back towards him.

  He tried again. Another miss.

  ‘Something is wrong with it. Some piece of Irish trickery,’ he said aloud. He hurled the brass ring at the bull’s head and it bounced off one of the beast’s glass eyes with a click. There was the sound of clattering hooves on cobbles, a neighing of many horses and, abandoning his game, Major du Clos turned and strode over to one of the tiny windows.

  The courtyard was a mass of horses and movement, there must have been forty men and beasts milling around outside, the riders calling out to each other in high spirits. They were a raggedy bunch, lean, dirty, villainous – but that was to be expected: each dressed in any old style, coats in hues from russet to faded gold, sky blue to mossy green. Hats were broad-brimmed beaver-skin with plumes, or simple plaited straw sunshades, or the huge floppy cloth caps of workmen; some wore old-fashioned Spanish-style Morion helmets, others sported lobster-tail pots; yet others were bareheaded or wore greasy rain-bedraggled periwigs. Each man, du Clos noted, was heavily armed and none of them alike: swords, long knives, short-handled axes were common, and a few bore pikes cut down to the more manageable length of six feet; a fearsome selection of hammers, shillelaghs and nail-spiked clubs dangled from the saddlebows. But few pistols were to be seen and only one man, that he noticed, was carrying a musket – an ancient wheel-lock with its mechanism fouled by rust, dried weeds and mud. It would be more use as a bludgeon than a firearm, du Clos suspected, even if its owner possessed powder and shot, and knew how to load, prime and fire the weapon, which he very much doubted.

  Du Clos turned and looked at his master, who had not moved from his place by the fire. ‘He’s here,’ he said, unnecessarily.

  Henri d’Erloncourt remained seated but he pulled the black cloak over his injured arm in its sling, and clapped the wide hat back on his red-gold head.

  ‘Bring him to here,’ he said, pointing to a spot in front of his table. ‘Don’t ask him to sit; don’t be too friendly; don’t offer him anything to eat or drink.’

  *

  The chief of the raparees slapped open the inn door and strode into the taproom. He twirled his hand vaguely in greeting at Guillaume du Clos, who was standing by the door, and gesturing in an ushering motion at the more distant figure of Henri d’Erloncourt, seated at the table by the peat fire. The outlaw ignored his sweeping arms and swaggered across the room, jinked behind the counter and poured himself a tankard of reddish-coloured ale from the barrel. There was no sign of the landlord. The man sighed happily, flopped his hat on the counter, a battered tricorn with a long pheasant’s feather poked through the hat-band, and drank the tankard to the dregs, before burping loudly, nodding amiably at the two foreigners and immediately pouring himself another drink.

  ‘You’ll be the two French gentlemen,’ he said. It was a statement not a question. ‘Old John Gaffrey gave you something to eat and drink then.’

  The raparee nodded to himself, and drank his second pint of ale in three sucking draughts and began to pour himself another potful. He was a sturdy forty-something man of middle height with sun-darkened unshaven cheeks and long, lank greying hair that was swept back from his forehead and fell to his shoulders in a heavy curtain. He wore a coat the colour of a well-grazed field, vivid green in patches and muddy brown elsewhere, with a thick baldrick across his chest from which hung a heavy, curved, brass-hilted cutlass.

  ‘Thirsty,’ he said. But once he had filled his pint he set it down on the counter and looked at the men. ‘You won’t join me in a drop of the good stuff.’

  Again du Clos was not sure if this was a question. ‘Come and speak with us by the fire, sir,’ he said, gesturing towards Henri and his table.

  ‘I’m well enough here,’ the man replied, with a smile. ‘Close to the tap.’

  Major du Clos did not know what to do. He was caught standing in the centre of the room, midway between his master and the man they had come to meet. He briefly considered trying to man-handle the Irishman over to the table by the fire, and abandoned the idea. The man’s hard grey eyes were on him, and it was almost as if he could tell what was in the Frenchman’s mind.

  There was a scrape of a chair on the wooden floor, Henri was getting slowly to his feet. He began to walk – it was more of a pathetic hobble – across the floor towards the counter, his feet dragging through the sawdust a little more than they might do, to du Clos’ knowing eye. His hat was pulled low but his cloak had been allowed to fall open and display the bandaged arm.

  Ah, yes, thought du Clos, a change of tactics.

  ‘You will forgive my sloth,’ Henri said, labouring towards the Irishman and the counter, panting slightly as he spoke. ‘I was bombarded by the English at Carrickfergus and suffered an inconvenience. I shall be with you momentarily.’

  ‘Jesus, man, my apologies,’ said the raparee leaping out from behind the counter. ‘That was damn rude of
me. Sit down, man. Here, sit yourself . . .’

  The Irishman guided Henri back to the fire, into his chair and hauled over one for himself. He went to the counter to collect his pint pot and to du Clos’ intense irritation, he paused on the way across the floor to seize the brass ring dangling on its cord and, with a casual flick, send it looping unerringly to tinkle and settle on the hook in the stuffed bull’s black nose.

  ‘I am called Narrey,’ Henri began. ‘Just Narrey, no other name. This is my associate Guillaume. You, I presume, are Captain Michael Daniel Hogan. Correct?’

  ‘I’ve no commission just at the moment. But I’m a captain of men. And they call me Galloping Hogan. Or plain Mick Hogan. At your service, monsieur.’

  ‘General Sarsfield said you were a good man,’ Henri said, smiling warmly at the man in the chair next to him. ‘He sends you his dearest love and told me to ask you the name of that charming maid you both met in Borrisokane?’

  Hogan laughed. ‘Paddy Sarsfield hates my guts. He says I’m an upstart rogue and a God-damned Tipperary thief, and I suspect he’d hang me from the nearest oak if he didn’t sorely need me and my men to kill the English for him.’

  Henri laughed along with him, a high-pitched sound more like a giggle.

  ‘And the pretty maid?’ Henry said, just managing to control his merriment. ‘What was her name again? General Sarsfield said you’d surely remember her.’

  ‘He’s a sly one, is old Paddy – always with his tricks and signs, his watchwords and tests. But I suppose that’s the world we live in. No trust. Too many liars. Too many traitors. You seek to confirm that I’m who I say I am; right, monsieur? You wish to be sure I am truly Michael Daniel Hogan Esquire.’

  ‘That is exactly so, monsieur,’ said Henri, suddenly very solemn.

  ‘And what of it, if I’m not Hogan? What then?’ He looked over at Major du Clos who was somehow a good deal closer than before, his hand resting on his pistol butt.