Blood's Campaign

by Angus Donald

  There was no time to lose.

  He reached inside his shirt and his fingers closed around the iron key. He tried it in the lock of the cell’s door and, holding his breath, found that the lock turned easily. Clever Hogan! he thought. Urging his fellow prisoners to silence with a finger to his lips, Holcroft crept into the office. Matisse was fast asleep in the chair, a half-full bottle beside him. Holcroft wasted no time. He stepped over to the seaman, snatched up his bottle and cracked it hard over the man’s head. Matisse did not wake. He gave a jerk as the bottle smashed over his scalp. The air filled with the smell of cheap brandy, and the man’s scalp began to bleed profusely. But Matisse slumped down lower in the chair and was still.

  Holcroft crossed the room and looked out of the window. The sun was away up to his right, so he was looking more or less due east. It was perhaps two o’clock, maybe a little later. He could see a channel of the River Lee running outside the ancient walls, and beyond it a suburb of small, gaily painted houses in neat rows on a low-lying island. To the south-east he could see a large bowling green and the tiny figures of men at play on the smooth turf.

  How long would Narrey be at his dinner? An hour, two, at most, three? He would surely be returning soon – perhaps with soldiers, or with armed friends? He turned back to the room. First things first. He knelt down next to the unconscious form of Matisse and pulled off his boots. With them back on the rightful feet, Holcroft felt a good deal stronger. He took down a small-sword and scabbard from a hook on the walls, and slung them over his shoulder. Now booted and armed, he felt almost human again.

  He went over to the escritoire and tried the lid. It was locked. But levering with the sword blade, he burst it open in a few moments. He seized a mass of papers, some written in a numerical code, some en clair, all that he could find, and shoved them inside his filthy shirt. He pulled out the iron box and found two small sacks of louis d’or inside – about forty pounds’ worth of gold. That made him smile! He looked for anything else he could profitably carry away. There was a copy of a popular book, a small, leather-bound volume with a gilt-decorated spine. He took that too, shoving it inside his shirt with the papers.

  It was time to go.

  He seized a pair of keys from the shelf with all the iron implements of torture. He walked out into the corridor by the cells and went over to the larger cell. ‘Paul Smithson,’ he whispered. The Protestant merchant came to the bars. ‘Give me your cloak and hat now and I will give you the keys to your cell.’

  The prisoner nodded. The exchange was made.

  With the hat pulled low over his battered, swollen face, and swathed in the raggedy, mildew-smelling cloak, Holcroft went quietly down the curved staircase. The clerk at his desk looked up once, looked again at the man approaching him. He opened his mouth to say something, or call for help, and Holcroft was on him like a tiger. He seized the man by the scruff of his scrawny neck and slammed his head down on to the desk in front of him. He did it twice, hard as he could, and a third time, until the man slid unconscious from his stool.

  Holcroft peered out of the door. The courtyard was empty but for an old man humping a basket of firewood to one of the brick barrack houses, and a couple of red-coated sentries on either side of the door. But the soldiers would not move without orders. There was no sign of Narrey nor of anyone who might be a threat to him. He could hear the sound of the Protestant prisoners upstairs, calling to each other in delight at their newfound liberty, laughing. He walked out of the door, hat low over his eyes, pulling the cloak close around him.

  He reached the exit of the courtyard, a pair of wide-open double gates, and still no one had challenged him. He could not believe it was this easy. Outside the flow of foot traffic was heavy, he glanced to his right, looking north, and saw no one he recognised. No one seemed to pay him the slightest attention. In the distance he could make out the North Gate to the city by the bridge over the north channel of the River Lee and a knot of red-coated soldiery stopping people on foot and asking for papers before allowing them to pass through the portal. He turned south instinctively, hunching his back, keeping his head low.

  He remembered Hogan’s words to him that morning. ‘. . . Next time you are at liberty in the city, I’d recommend that you try the sign of the Dolphin by the South Gate. A fine place to rest up, take your ease . . . Mention my name if you ever find yourself there, say the Galloper sent you . . .’

  Could Hogan be setting a trap for him? Trying to lure him into some place where he could be found easily and recaptured?

  That didn’t make any sense. Hogan had slipped him the key to facilitate his escape. He had already been ‘trapped’ in the cell and facing torture and death at Narrey’s hands. No, Hogan was a friend. Well, he was an enemy. But he had dealt straight with him, so far, and perhaps he was trying to make amends for leading him to his death. He’d have to trust Hogan. He didn’t have a choice.

  *

  The Dolphin was a mean, narrow house, which seemed to be slumped between its two neighbours like a drunk being escorted home on wavering legs between two more sober and taller companions. It was made of dirty bricks, with small, infrequent windows and backed on to the southern channel of the River Lee.

  Holcroft peered through a greasy window set in the low wide door and saw half a dozen drinkers inside, two at a counter and the rest gathered around a peat fire. Someone was playing a fiddle and he could hear the sounds of several voices singing. But when he pushed open the door and stepped inside all the conversations ceased, and the man on the fiddle stopped playing. It was a most uncomfortable sensation. There were seven people in the small, low, smoke-filled room, and all their eyes were fixed upon Holcroft. He noticed that several of them had a striking resemblance to each other: family members, no doubt.

  In the brittle silence, Holcroft walked over to the counter and said: ‘Brandy. A large tot of brandy.’ There were two men, one at either end of the beam. The man on the right looked Holcroft up and down slowly along his long, broken nose, studying him minutely from his dirty boots to the mildewed cloak to his battered, grossly swollen, blood-streaked face to his old torn hat.

  ‘Brandy,’ said Holcroft, slightly louder.

  The man behind the counter, a bald fellow with a straggly reddish beard, stared at him as if he had never heard of the spirit before.

  Holcroft said: ‘If you have no brandy, I will take a measure of gin, then.’

  ‘We are closed, Englishman,’ said the bearded man behind the counter.

  Holcroft fumbled in his waistband and fetched out a coin from one of the linen sacks he had purloined from Narrey’s strong box. He put the gold coin on the greasy counter with a click.

  ‘I’ll take that drink, sir, and buy one for every man in this place.’

  ‘Are you deaf? The tavern’s closed.’ The broken-nosed man was speaking. ‘This is a private gathering of friends. Go back to London, where you belong.’

  Holcroft could hear the scraping of stools behind him and feel the heavy approach of the men who had been by the fire. Holcroft made himself ready.

  ‘Go along, sir, there’s a good fellow,’ said the barman. ‘Go along to the Red Bear on the other side of South Gate Bridge. They’ll happily give you whatever it is you require there. No need for any unpleasantness in this house.’

  Holcroft’s character held a wide streak of stubbornness. It was not his finest trait, he knew, but he could sometimes not deny it. He often did things that he knew would result in trouble for him and for others. He did them anyway. Even weakened by weeks of prison, he believed he was a match, physically, for any man in this room. Maybe for several of them. And he was perfectly happy to prove it. Indeed, there was a part of him that welcomed the violence.

  ‘I will have my drink here. Not at the Red Bear, not in London. Here. This place was recommended to me by a friend. I will not leave till I’m served.’

  ‘And who might this friend be, then?’ said Broken-nose.

  Holcroft
looked across at the man. He had taken the initiative by speaking while the other men were silent. Broken-nose was their leader. This man was the one he would knock down first. Holcroft was a head taller than him. It should not be difficult. Holcroft shook his shoulders a little to loosen the muscles in his arms.

  ‘The man who recommended this fine establishment to me was called Hogan. Michael Hogan. He told me to tell you that the Galloper sent me. He said I’d receive a warm welcome at the Dolphin. Good food and drink, he said.’

  Broken-nose’s face cracked into a smile. He chuckled. ‘Good food? Old Mick always did have a sense of humour. But you shall have your drink. I can’t help but admire a fella who has already had seven shades kicked out of him but is still prepared to fight another seven men for a nip of brandy.’

  Someone laughed. The fiddler began to play once more.

  *

  Broken-nose was truly named Patrick McCarthy, and known universally as Mack. He was the owner of the Dolphin with his brother Seamus, the red-bearded man who tended the counter, and they were distant cousins of Michael Hogan’s, as were three of the other men in the tavern that afternoon. More importantly than their kinship, Mack and Hogan were old friends who had done plenty of lucrative private business together in Cork and along the coast before the wars.

  Mack’s business was contraband. Brandy, wine, tobacco and tea were the main commodities he dealt in – but he had also on occasion smuggled gunpowder, gold and even people to England or France or even across the ocean to the American colonies. The war had been both good and bad for business. With the French and English navies in the Irish Sea, stopping and searching shipping at will, many a valuable illegal cargo had been lost to the authorities. On the other hand, the war bred scarcity, and that pushed up the prices of certain items that many people required for their pleasures.

  Mack and his friends had no stake in the war, they claimed. The English had always taxed trade, and that was resented, but that taxation on brandy and tea and so on gave birth to Mack’s business. Then King James had landed less than twenty miles down the road in the port of Kinsale. Had the Catholic King abolished taxes on wine from France and tobacco from Virginia? He had not. Mack and the men of the Dolphin did not care who ruled in Dublin as long as they were left in peace to carry on their businesses. Their loyalties were to the people they trusted, family and friends. Not to causes or countries. Holcroft was a friend of Hogan’s therefore Holcroft was to be treated as a friend. If he should betray them, he would be treated as a mortal enemy. No threats were made but it was clear that should Holcroft transgress in any way he would be killed.

  Mack cheerfully shared this information with Holcroft when he showed him down a carefully hidden trap-door in the kitchen into a tunnel that led into a dim, damp cellar underneath the next-door house – which Mack also owned through intermediaries. The cellar was large, filled with barrels and boxes of merchandise and open to the River Lee through an iron-barred watergate. It was not especially warm, and Mack warned Holcroft that he could not have a light after sunset, as it would shine through the one small barred window high on the street-side wall. It was, in fact, disturbingly like a prison. However, Mack provided Holcroft with a dozen blankets and cushions; a basin of hot water, soap and a towel, and a clean shirt and drawers. And furnished him with a bottle of brandy and a small keg of ale. His wife, a well-fed matron, brought him a tray containing a tureen of hot turnip soup, a large chunk of ham, a small round cheese, two loaves of bread and a pat of fresh butter.

  Holcroft, when he had washed himself, changed his linen, eaten and drunk to his heart’s content, felt like the fairy earl of some underground realm.

  Three days later, he no longer felt like an earl: he was bored and restless and, although he was well fed, clean and comfortable – apart from his face which still throbbed and ached like the devil – he wondered if by escaping from the Old Tower he had merely exchanged one prison for another.

  Michael Hogan came to see him on the fifth day. He was suddenly just there in the cellar leaning on a huge box of tea, marked ‘Property of the Honourable Company’, holding out a bottle of brandy and grinning at Holcroft.

  Holcroft had been sitting in a nest of blankets and cushions in the patch of light from the window, reading the book he had stolen from Narrey’s escritoire – a tedious religious allegory that was not at all suited to his straightforward tastes – and he jumped to his feet when he saw Hogan.

  ‘Look at the state of you,’ said the Irishman. ‘I’ve eaten beefsteaks that were more beautiful and less battered than your ugly map.’

  Holcroft touched his still-swollen unshaven jaw, and the lumps around his eye sockets. He had not seen a mirror for longer than he could remember but he was sure that in the aftermath of Matisse’s beating he looked gruesome.

  ‘I’ve you to thank for some of it,’ he said. ‘And I do thank you, sincerely.’

  ‘Think nothing of it. Can’t stand the wee French shite. Once I’d had my money, there was nothing between us . . . So, here you are. In the pink, then?’

  ‘I’m fine. Bored. I want to get out of Cork but Mack tells me the soldiers are still searching for me. He says I must lay low here for a week or more.’

  ‘Aye, seems sensible. They’re scouring the countryside – horse patrols on every road – saying there is a murderous English spy on the loose. There’s a bounty of two hundred pounds in gold on your head. That would be the Frenchman’s doing. I even saw a squad of redcoats knocking on doors in Tuckey’s Lane as I passed on the way here. Asking for a tall man with a face like a ploughed field.’

  Holcroft said nothing. He had hoped that his escape might somehow have been forgotten. But Henri d’Erloncourt was not a man to forget or forgive. He thought – two hundred pounds for his head! That would tempt a saint. He looked suspiciously at Hogan – he was no saint. The Irishman smiled at him. ‘Have a drink,’ he said, throwing over the brandy bottle.

  Holcroft caught the half-full bottle in the air and pulled out the stopper. He took a long swallow. Fine stuff. He passed the bottle back to Hogan.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Hogan said.

  ‘What am I thinking?’

  ‘You’re surely thinking – can I really trust this handsome Irish fella not to betray me for the gold? Well, let me set your suspicious English heart at rest, my friend. I cannot go anywhere near Monsieur le Comte d’Erloncourt for the rest of my life. Or his. Those Protestant merchants you set free – most of them went straight home to their wives and families and were rounded up again by the city militia the very same day. They were only given the merest glimpse of those instruments in the fire before they were squealing to monsieur exactly what happened, how you had a key in your shirt, opened the door your own self – and who is the only man who could possibly have given you that key? The famous Michael “Galloping” Hogan, that’s who. If I go near Henri d’Erloncourt again, I’m in the same leaky boat as you, my ugly English friend.’

  Holcroft nodded. ‘I am sorry for it. So you will hide down here with me?’

  ‘No, I leave Cork in an hour or so. I’ve business to attend to in the west. A transaction to make. I’m putting the Frenchman’s gold to good use, Major Blood. Buying myself a little piece of hillside near Killarney, a ram and fifty ewes. If you’re ever down that way, when this nonsense is done, come and find me and we’ll share a tankard or two and a bite of my own roast mutton.’

  ‘I’ll do that, Hogan. Once again, I thank you for your kindness. But before you go, I must ask something. It is a delicate matter. May I ask?’

  Hogan looked puzzled. ‘Ask away, then.’

  ‘You told me, on the road, that Lady Caroline Chichester had something of a reputation. What did you mean by that?’

  ‘Now, don’t let us fall out, Major. I meant nothing much by the remark. I collect you are besotted with the girl. I meant no disrespect to your lady-love.’

  ‘No, I won’t take offence. My word on it. It is just that I
have been sitting and thinking of her a good deal and I wondered why you said what you did.’

  Hogan looked a little embarrassed. ‘Well, she . . . well, Lady Caroline has something of an ill reputation. As a tease. And a troublemaker. She flirts with all the men, but won’t take it any further, if you know what I mean. Promises Heaven but actually gives men Hell . . . by which I mean nothing but angry frustration. She often has several fellas on her line – she enjoys it most, they say, when they fight each other for her favours. Apologies, Blood, but that is what the gossips say about Lady Caroline. Her mother died giving birth to her, and she had no aunts or elder sisters to raise her the right way. She’s always done as she pleased. Plays with men as if they were her dolls. Paddy Sarsfield had a go-around with her before the war; they stepped out a dozen times – and you should hear him rant about her. He fought a duel for her honour, too, and killed a man. Another poor deluded fool who thought he was in love with her.’

  ‘I see,’ said Holcroft. He could not meet Hogan’s eye.

  ‘Well, I’d best be off then,’ said the Irishman. ‘Mack’s got a man who will take me over the walls tonight. So . . . I’ll take my leave of you.’

  ‘Goodbye, Hogan,’ said Holcroft dully. ‘Travel safely.’