by Angus Donald
Francis, panting, said: ‘The boathouse is under there!’ He pointed to a dark opening below the walls. But Holcroft seemed not to hear him, he was instead now bounding up the stairs that led up to the roof of Charles’s Bastion.
Once at the top, Holcroft looked almost due west, squinting into the last red gleams of the sun. Across the mouth of the River Bandon, half a mile away, he could make out James Fort on the headland.
And in the water, midway between the two forts but heading south out to sea, was a small rowing boat, with two figures on board. One a burly type in a shapeless seaman’s hat efficiently manning the oars; the other slight and wrapped in a huge black cloak, with a black hat pulled low over his face.
They were about a hundred yards away, far beyond an accurate pistol or musket shot. Holcroft screamed, ‘Narrey!’ as loud as he could and the black-clad figure in the stern of the boat turned and looked back at the tall figure outlined by the setting sun on the seaward bastion. He raised a lazy hand in salute, twirling it elegantly at the wrist, and then turned back to the seaman and said a few words, evidently urging him to row faster.
‘This is not the end,’ said Holcroft. ‘This cannot be the end of this.’
He looked at the three men, the two big Inniskillingers, the doubled-over and wheezing form of Francis Waters – it was clear the officer was finished for a while at least. ‘Francis,’ he said to the gasping man, ‘give me your glass. Quick now. And you two men come along with me.’
He accepted the small collapsed telescope from Francis’s trembling hand, cast one final furious look at the rowing boat now in the middle of the Bandon channel and pulling steadily southwards, measuring distances with his eye. The two men in the boat cast monstrous black shadows in the last of the sun’s light.
‘Come on! Run with me, men, run!’ And Holcroft dashed down the steps.
*
The three of them pelted along the curtain wall, past the Cockpit Bastion, past the Flagstaff Bastion. They skidded to a halt by the main gate and fought their way through the crush of soldiery coming in and going out of the Fort across the bridge over the wide ditch. Once outside, the three men ran north, up the sloping road that led to the heights. Across fields scarred by the sappers’ assault trenches, past campfires and idling redcoats. Until at last they reached the No. 3 Battery. The twenty-four-pounders had already been hooked up to their carriages, ready to be hauled away in the morning. But God was good to Holcroft, for Roaring Meg was still emplaced, and Peaceable Bonner was polishing its bronze barrel with a rag, and looking up shocked, even fearful, as Holcroft and two huge infantrymen came charging up the hill towards him.
‘Is she . . . primed and . . . charged?’ Holcroft demanded, between gasps of agonising breath. His sides ached; his lungs were ablaze.
‘What?’ said Peaceable.
‘Is Roaring Meg loaded?’ asked Holcroft.
‘Of course not,’ said Peaceable, indignantly.
‘Load her now. Round shot. Fast as you can. Help him, Cully, and you, Ellis, go and find some gunners, matrosses, any man of the Ordnance – now!’
‘But why are we—’ said Bonner.
‘Don’t ask questions. Just do it. Time is vital.’
Fighting to regain his breath, Holcroft pulled out Francis’s telescope and trained it on the Bandon channel. There, there it was. He could see the boat was nearly at the open sea, at a distance of – perhaps – three thousand five hundred yards. It was impossible to say with true accuracy. The sea had no markers for reference. Holcroft lifted the glass a fraction, beyond the rowing boat, he could see the sleek, dark shape of a ship skulking behind the southernmost tip of the isthmus on which James Fort stood. A frigate, a damned French frigate, no doubt. It was clear where Narrey and his man were heading. If the ship did not move, the rowing boat would reach its side in about ten minutes.
There was just time. The Saker’s maximum range, Holcroft knew well, was four thousand yards. The rowing boat was just about within range. But the chances of hitting it were very slight indeed.
Holcroft whirled round. He saw Bonner at the muzzle, shoving a bag of powder inside its mouth. It was nearly full dark.
‘Give it an extra half pound,’ he said. ‘It’s a long shot.’
‘You’ll burst her breach, sir,’ said Bonner. ‘She’s a very old lady.’
‘Do it, Peaceable. And quickly.’
Holcroft attended to the sighting of the piece himself. There were a swarm of Ordnance men around Roaring Meg by now, summoned by John Ellis and also by the excitement in the air. Holcroft banged in the last wedge-shaped quoin, giving old Meg almost her maximum possible elevation.
‘Pierce the charge,’ bawled Holcroft. And Bonner plunged a thin spike through the vent hole to make a hole in the bag of powder in the barrel.
‘Prime the piece!’ Bonner slid a straw of fine powder into the vent hole.
‘Tend the match.’ A gunner brought up the burning cord on a linstock.
‘Have a care, everyone,’ said Holcroft. ‘Stay back in case she bursts.’
He took the linstock from the nervous-looking gunner and waved him away. ‘Give fire,’ he muttered to himself to complete the beloved ritual, and he touched the burning match to the vent hole.
Meg roared. And in the dying light Holcroft saw the flight of the ball as a darker line against the grey of dusk. The missile soared, arced, and sank down towards the slowly moving rowing boat.
It flew high overhead and splashed into the water fifty yards beyond it.
Holcroft said: ‘One more time, lads.’ He began the sacred and familiar litany of firing once again: ‘Advance the worm.’
‘Search the piece.’
‘Advance the sponge . . .’
Holcroft kept the glass to his eye as he spoke the soothing words. The boat was four hundred yards from the frigate, which had not moved.
The gun was loaded, charged and primed.
‘Give fire,’ said Holcroft.
The shot was long again and a few feet wide of the mark; it seemed the boat had changed its course slightly.
‘One last shot – take over charging,’ said Holcroft to Peaceable Bonner.
He knelt beside the barrel as the ritual began again. He put his right hand on the warm bronze of Roaring Meg’s body and closed his eyes.
No words were spoken out loud, but in his mind he said: ‘Enoch, can you hear me? Enoch Jackson, wherever you are now – in Heaven or in the other place, aid me now. Send your spirit to guide me. You know Meg as well as any man, you and she have fought together more times than I can count. For our long friendship, lend me your aid now.’ He opened his eyes and looked along the barrel. A little more elevation. Just a touch, and perhaps a fraction to the left. Was that Enoch’s advice or his own?
‘Joe Cully, come here,’ he said, ‘and bring that handspike.’
Between them, he and the big Inniskillinger shifted Meg no more than half an inch to the left. He slid an eighth-of-an-inch quoin under the barrel, tapped it home.
It was ready. It was nigh on full dark. Even with the glass trained on the rowing boat, now a short two hundred yards from the enemy frigate, he could barely make out more than a dark, moving lump on the water.
‘Give fire,’ he said quietly, and behind him he heard the old battle cannon roar one last time.
In the circle of the glass, for the longest time, the little boat ploughed on, the oars splashing gently in the black, black sea. Then the ball struck.
The iron sphere smashed down in the centre of the boat, crashing through the flimsy wooden floor, snapping the wooden craft in two. One moment, two men in a skiff were pulling slowly, placidly towards Salvation, the next chaos – broken wreckage, men struggling madly in the white-whipped water.
Then quiet again; all Holcroft could see was a few pieces of floating wood.
Historical note
Holcroft Blood was a real soldier, in fact, a minor historical hero. He is listed among the two dozen
or so officers of the English Artillery Train destined for Ireland in June 1689 as the Second Engineer; along with Jacob Richards, First Engineer; Claudius Barden, Third Engineer; and Obadiah Field, Gentleman of the Ordnance – all under the command of His Grace the Duke of Schomberg.
Yet I admit I have taken some artistic liberties with Holcroft’s character and career. For example, I have no good reason to suggest that he was, as I have described him, somewhere on the autism spectrum – not that his idiosyncrasies would have been described as such in the 17th century. My Holcroft is, I would say, semi-fictional.
I have tried, however, whenever possible, to recount the true course of Holcroft’s life from the little we know of him. He was the third son of the notorious crown-stealer ‘Colonel’ Thomas Blood and his wife Mary. He enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1672 and served during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. He later joined the French service as a cadet and studied engineering and gunnery. During this period, I have my fictional Holcroft spying for Charles II, although I have no evidence except that the real man was mysteriously granted a sinecure in Ireland by the King, a job that would pay him a salary for which he never, as far as I can tell, did a stroke of work. He could well have been a spy for King Charles II – his father almost certainly was at various times.
In 1686, now back in London, Holcroft married Elizabeth, daughter of the barrister Richard King, and, before the Glorious Revolution in 1688, he served as a captain of pioneers in James II’s Royal Train of Artillery. Despite his loyal service with the old regime, when William and Mary came to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland, he remained with the Ordnance. And, in May 1689, he was appointed Second Engineer on the Artillery Train bound for Ireland to fight the rebels under James II – who after his ignominious departure from England had landed in the port of Kinsale in March 1689, with a small but efficient French army of six thousand men provided by his patron Louis XIV.
Unfortunately, I don’t know very much about Holcroft’s service in Ireland. One source says he fought at the siege of Carrickfergus in August 1689. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says only: ‘He served in all the major sieges and battles in the campaign in Ireland, and was wounded at Cavan in February 1690.’ It’s not a lot to go on – but it also gives a storyteller a lot of latitude. I hope the reader will not feel I have abused the privilege of ignorance.
*
Michael ‘Galloping’ Hogan was a real man, too. And I know even less about him. Even his name might be wrong. The respected historian John Childs, author of The Williamite Wars in Ireland 1688–1691 – a brilliant book that I used as my main source – gives his first name as Daniel. But everywhere else he is referred to as Michael Hogan. It may be there was more than one dashing fellow called Hogan who was a famously hard-riding raparee.
‘Galloping’ Hogan, a local man, guided Patrick Sarsfield’s cavalry to the ruins of Ballyneety Castle where they surprised the English Artillery Train camping there on August 11, 1690, on its approach to the siege of Limerick. The Irish killed or drove off the accompanying troops and, by stuffing the barrels of the cannon with captured gunpowder, they succeeded in destroying some, if not all of them, along with great quantities of other vital supplies. One English officer was captured at Ballyneety, and I decided, for my own narrative purposes, that this man should be Holcroft Blood.
The destruction of large amounts of war matériel at Ballyneety delayed the assault on Limerick, although not for very long. More guns were swiftly brought up, properly guarded this time, and on August 27, 1690, after a suitable breach had been made in the city’s medieval walls, the grenadiers of William’s Forlorn Hope made their assault. They were bloodily repulsed, thanks to the military expertise of Limerick’s French Governor Alexandre, Marquis de Boisseleau, who prepared the coupure described in the novel behind the breach and slaughtered hundreds of the attacking troops. Even the local civilians joined in the desperate fight, hurling missiles from the rooftops. The next day, with the autumn rains almost upon them, the superior English forces abandoned the siege of Limerick and, shortly afterwards, King William returned to England.
*
John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough (the future Duke) is also – obviously – a historical figure. Later in his glittering career, at the Battle of Blenheim in August 1704, the commander of all his field artillery was one Colonel Holcroft Blood, whose intelligent and courageous actions that victorious day brought the celebrated gunner a promotion to Brigadier-General.
I wanted John Churchill and Holcroft to be lifelong friends and have described them as such in all the novels, even going so far as to have Holcroft give him the affectionate nickname ‘Jack’. However, while they certainly would have known each other well, both moving in the highest English military circles, their long friendship is sadly a fiction.
However, the Earl of Marlborough did lead reinforcements from England in September 1690 and he did capture both Cork and Kinsale in short order.
Henri d’Erloncourt, my evil French spymaster, is entirely fictional, as is his entrapment at Kinsale, and escape after Charles Fort surrendered. So is his agent Agricola. I am sure the real Claudius Barden, Third Engineer of the Train, was a good and loyal officer, not the lazy joker I have made him out to be. He was said to be a fine mathematician, but he had the misfortune to be shot dead at the siege of Charles Fort and so, since I wanted the bad guy to get his deserts at the end of the tale, I recruited him posthumously for Narrey’s Irish network. My deepest apologies to any living members of his family for the slur on his name.
*
The war in Ireland did not end with the capture of the southern ports of Cork and Kinsale. The bulk of the French troops departed but the war rumbled on for another year. There was a terrible bloody battle at Aughrim, at which the Irish were crushed, and a second siege of Limerick, which ended when the city surrendered in September 1691. A peace treaty was signed in October that year and, as part of the agreement, the surviving men of the Jacobite Army, some fourteen thousand of them, and ten thousand women, were provided with ships and allowed to go into exile in France to continue serving James, an exodus known to history as the Flight of the Wild Geese. They were led by Patrick Sarsfield, and among their number was the hard-riding raparee nicknamed ‘Galloping’ Hogan.
Acknowledgements
Many people make a book and I’d like to thank just some of them here for their hard work on Blood’s Campaign and the other novels in the Blood series. Firstly, Katherine Armstrong, Martin Fletcher and the rest of the excellent team at Zaffre, for their eagle-eyed editing of the text, their insightful suggestions for improvement, and their tireless support of the series. Secondly, my hard-working agent Ian Drury, who gave me the inspired idea that I should make Holcroft just a little bit autistic. I’m proud of my creation but Ian’s superb notion helped to lift him out of the ordinary run of muscular military heroes.
On a trip to Drogheda in July 2017, my friend Ruadh Butler, author of Swordland and several other excellent novels about Irish medieval history, accompanied me on a tour of the Boyne battlefield on a blisteringly hot day, happily discussing where the English Artillery Train might have arrayed their cannon, showing me where the Dutch Blue Guards made their magnificent river crossing, and kindly driving me along some of the routes the foot-sore soldiers of the two warring kings would have tramped in victory and defeat.
My guru for all things related to 17th-century cannon is the immensely knowledgeable Roger Emmerson of, among other re-enactment organisations, the group Colonel Holcroft Blood’s Ordnance, who demonstrated the firing of his field guns on several noisy occasions and patiently answered all my technical gunnery enquiries.
Finally there are the historians whom I have not had the pleasure of meeting but whose work I have read and greatly admired. John Childs, author of The Williamite Wars, I have mentioned above, but I would also like to thank Gerard Fitzgibbon, whose book Kingdom Overthrown: Ireland and the Battle for Europe 1688–1691 was a joy to read, br
illiantly researched and beautifully written. Michael McNally was extremely helpful on many details of the prominent people involved in this theatre and his Osprey book Battle of the Boyne 1690: The Irish campaign for the English crown is an excellent guide to this battle and the overall campaign. They have given me the building blocks with which to construct my own story and all I can offer in return are my sincere and heartfelt thanks. Any factual errors are, of course, entirely my own.
Angus Donald
Tonbridge, April 18, 2019
About the Author
Angus Donald was born in China and educated at Marlborough College and Edinburgh University. For over twenty years he was a journalist in Hong Kong, India, Afghanistan and London. He now works and writes in Kent with his wife and two children.
www.angusdonaldbooks.com
Also by Angus Donald
Blood’s Game
Blood’s Revolution
Also from the trilogy. . .
Blood’s Game
SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA SHARPE BOOKS GOLD CROWN AWARD.
THE THRILLING NEW SERIES FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE ‘OUTLAW CHRONICLES’. PERFECT FOR FANS OF BERNARD CORNWELL AND CONN IGGULDEN.
AFTER THE TUDORS CAME THE STUARTS . . .
London, Winter 1670.
Holcroft Blood has entered the employ of the Duke of Buckingham, one of the most powerful men in the kingdom after the king. It is here that his education really begins. With a gift for numbers and decoding ciphers, Holcroft soon proves invaluable to the Duke, but when he’s pushed into a betrayal he risks everything for revenge.
His father, Colonel Thomas Blood, has fallen on hard times. A man used to fighting, he lives by his wits and survives by whatever means necessary. When he’s asked to commit treason by stealing the crown jewels, he puts himself and his family in a dangerous situation – one that may end at the gallows.