Seven Men of Gascony

by R. F Delderfield

  Nicholas spat on his leathery hands and swung his pick into the soft red earth.

  They all renewed their parole, Nicholas willingly, Jean grudgingly. The sergeant could see no prospects of escape, and as the months wore on, his nostalgia for the camp seemed to grow less acute and he began to take professional interest in the technical aspects of the task upon which they were engaged. The long breakwater was taking shape, curving away across the river basin towards the thatched roofs of Otterton, occasionally crumbling under the lash of the autumn gales but always rising again and penning the floodwater into the bell-mouth of the little estuary. Mr. Duke rubbed his hands gleefully and cracked jokes in execrable French as he walked up and down along the lines of docile labourers.

  A fine autumn followed the dry summer. All along the river banks the dwarf oaks and their skirts of tangled undergrowth turned myriad shades of bronze and russet. There was an invigorating nip in the air and a complementary quickening of rhythm in the line of picks and mattocks along the trenches. Gabriel painted often. Sometimes he tried to sketch a sunset over the purple hills on the far side of the Exe, sometimes applied himself to a portrait, a detail of the River Otter’s course, or a study of the heavy brown rollers surging up to the foot of the low cliffs at the completed end of the dyke wall.

  Gabriel was more than content with his fate. Quick to acquire languages, he learned to speak English with the accent and idiom of a Devonshire farm labourer. At night, over supper, he listened a good deal to Nicholas, whose fluent English gave him the key to many local problems and to the topics of conversation men discussed in the cider-houses at Otterton and Budley. Nicholas told them about the press-gang, and of the remarkable extent to which the whole population, high and low, were involved in the business of smuggling. Now and again he got hold of a soiled broadsheet from one of Mr. Duke’s more affable stewards and read them items of news from the Continent. It was in this way that they heard of Massena’s retreat into Spain and of the birth of Napoleon’s son, the King of Rome. Jean received the latter news with immense satisfaction, Nicholas with the grim comment “That settles the matter. We’ll be here for the rest of our lives!”

  It was Louis, considered the luckiest of them all, who ultimately cut the cable that bound them to this soft landscape. The jolt was dramatic and unexpected.

  They had been in England for nearly a year when Louis left the diggings for a job much closer to his heart.

  One morning as the five of them were tramping to work they were suddenly herded into the hedge by a fierce little man in a red coat, sitting a huge dappled thoroughbred. A moment later pandemonium broke out immediately ahead; the five Frenchmen watched with astonishment a pack of yelping hounds tear through a gap in the hedge and pour into a coppice of larch trees on the opposite side of the road. Nicholas told them that it was a foxhunt, the favourite winter sport of English squires and their yeoman tenantry. Louis’ expression grew wistful as his eyes turned from the magnificent mare of the huntsman to the string of splendid horses that fell into file behind the gap and streamed across the road in pursuit of the pack. The crisp air rang with the shouts of the riders and the continuous baying of the hounds as the hunt crashed through the yellowing undergrowth almost on the brush of the fox. There was something gloriously exhilarating in the scene—the huntsmen’s scarlet weaving its rich pattern against the dark green and gold of the copse, the flushed faces of the excited horsemen, oblivious of everything but the thrill of pursuit, the glitter of bridle chains and stirrup irons—that stirred in Jean memories of the plateau of Jena, where, early one morning, he had watched a light-cavalry charge after the exhausted infantry had spent all night dragging guns into position for the cannonade which was to dissolve Prussia’s clumsy legions in a cloud of battery smoke.

  When the horsemen had crashed into the copse Louis said: “God, they know how to breed!”

  They walked on in silence and Gabriel thought that he had not seen Louis so pensive since the night when he had watched him cropping the ears of the mule stolen to save Jean’s life after Busaco.

  Within a few hundred yards of the diggings they turned off and filed down a steep lane enclosed in the high, overgrown banks that were so common a feature of the place. At the end of the lane they came upon a lame mare, its reins held by a woman in a voluminous grey riding-habit. The huntress appeared to be in a bad temper. She was biting her thin lips with vexation and cursing in a deep voice. Gabriel noticed that her brow was still damp with perspiration and her skirts were splashed with mud.

  As the voltigeurs reached the end of the lane a broad-shouldered horseman cantered up, riding a cob. Seeing the woman, he reined in and shouted: “What is it, Lucy? A shoe?”

  Lucy Manaton, one of the hardest riders to hounds in the West Country, scowled at him.

  “That damned bar at the Rectory Gap, Roger. Somebody gets thrown every time we come through there. Why doesn’t Duke have his property attended to, curse him? A horse will be killed there some day!”

  “Are you hurt?”

  The woman laughed and, displaying her fine teeth, she looked almost pretty. Four of the Frenchmen glanced at her with interest. Living between billets and diggings, they seldom saw any women except one or two solid-looking girls on the farms. Nicholas observed that the woman seemed to have a dash of the French about her. Her hair, fastened in tight, coiled plaits, was jet black, like Nicholette’s. Her figure, in the becoming riding-habit, was straight and beautifully proportioned. She had not the usual look of the outdoor woman; her complexion was pale, her features pleasingly small and well made. Only her voice, unnaturally harsh and masculine, suggested the fact that she lived almost exclusively among men and horses, leaving her large house and adjacent farms in the high beech woods behind Knowle to the care of an unsupervised staff. For even when Lucy Manaton was at home she was generally to be found in the stables.

  The burly rider, Roger, swung himself out of the saddle and glanced at the mare’s injured foreleg, running his large hand lightly across an extensive graze. The cursory examination was expertly done, but even so the animal winced.

  Louis had barely glanced at the woman. He watched the man set down the hoof. The animal would not allow the injured leg to rest on the gravel.

  “You’d better get Burdock,” the man said shortly, and climbed back into his saddle.

  “Burdock’s more than a mile away by now!” muttered the woman, impatiently shrugging her shoulders; then, to the mare, “Come on, Roxy, you won’t hear the halloo for a month or more!”

  Louis went over to the horse and lifted the leg again. The woman opened her mouth to protest, but whatever she had been going to say was checked by the expression on Louis’ face. It was that of a young mother bending over a sick child. Even Old Jean noticed it and grinned.

  “Come on,” he said to the others, with a swift sidelong grin in Louis’ direction. The four of them went down the lane and left him bending over the mare.

  Presently the Frenchman looked up. He knew very little English and began to grope for the right words. Lucy Manaton cut him short, speaking perfect French.

  “What is it you need?”

  Louis told her that he wanted a pair of scissors and a roll of bandage.

  “I have them here!” she said and, opening a small saddle-bag, took out a pair of groom’s trimmers, packed in a small leather folder along with other stable equipment. Louis took the scissors and began to trim the wound. Lucy Manaton watched, fascinated by the speed and accuracy of the Frenchman’s fingers. Roxy, the mare, remained statuesque. So did the burley horseman, leaning forward over his saddle-bow. He knew Roxy’s temper and, knowing it, marvelled. The mare might never have been touched by any man save this silent young Frenchman.

  When the edges of the long wound had been shaved Louis splashed it with running water from the gutter brook. The horse trembled slightly, but remained still. Lucy Manaton bent and, whisking the hem of her skirt over her knees, tore a long, broad strip from the edge of he
r short petticoat. Louis reached for it without a word. The burley man laughed.

  “You’re in good hands, Lucy; I’ll move on and join the others!”

  “You needn’t bring Burdock!” she shouted as he applied his spurs and cantered off down the muddy lane.

  Louis finished the dressing in silence and Lucy Manaton watched him, a quiet smile puckering the corners of her hard mouth. Squire Branton, who had known Lucy since she was a child, always said that her horses inherited that mouth of hers within a week of entering Knowle stables. Nobody but Lucy could ride her horses and Lucy liked it that way. A horse had broken up her marriage with the young fop Vince a year before. He had been thrown by Roxy’s sire and had gone out, bruised and sullen, and shot the animal in its stall. The grooms said that Lucy would have cut his throat if he hadn’t packed up and gone off to London the same night. Nobody regretted the departure of Vince Manaton. Everybody knew that the marriage was certain to fail. Vince rode like a City alderman, and in the eyes of the local gentry and farmers this was a far more serious offence than his absurd foppery and extravagance. Now he was in London, aping the bucks at the clubs of St. James’s, and living far in excess of the allowance that Lucy gave him to stay away from her.

  Lucy was an odd, impulsive creature, with even more of the characteristics of her French mother than of her fox-hunting father, Squire Lammater. Hardly anybody remembered her mother, whom the Squire had brought home after his Little Tour. She had died within a year or two of the marriage and the Squire had been left to bring up Lucy alone. He taught her to ride, to judge horseflesh, to swear and to intimidate servants. For the rest she had managed as best she could under a French governess who was so terrified by the Squire’s oaths that she did not speak in his presence throughout the twenty years of her servitude.

  It was not until many weeks later that Jean, Nicholas and the others learned about Lucy Manaton. Louis went back to Knowle with her the morning that he doctored Roxy. She was so impressed by his skill and by the mare’s docility under his hands that she told him to stay in the lane whilst she approached the foreman engineer of the works and bullied the officer into allowing her to borrow Louis for the day. The same afternoon Lucy rode over to Mr. Duke’s seat at Otterton and obtained his permission to employ Louis as a groom. There were nearly a score of horses at High Knowle, most of them thoroughbreds, and the stable staff were notoriously overworked. Mr. Duke, dubious of the legal position, went over to Lord Rolle at Bicton and asked if it were permissible for a private person to employ a prisoner of war in this capacity. Lord Rolle had been an old friend of Lucy’s father and instantly gave his assent. One man would make no appreciable difference to the progress of Dukey’s Folly down at the river mouth.

  So Lucy went back to High Knowle with an official-looking document bearing Louis’ name and prisoner’s number. She found her new groom engrossed in a tour of the stables, passing from stall to stall, patting shining flanks and stroking soft muzzles. If he had been asked to choose an occupation from every vacancy in Europe Louis would have elected to stay at High Knowle as groom to Lucy Manaton.

  They gave him a billet in a loft above the stables, but he did not use it much. Every time a horse coughed he was down the ladder like a man escaping from a blazing building. His enthusiasm was considered somewhat eccentric by the other stablemen, but his undeniable skill and quiet good humour soon won their friendship. They called him “Froggylad” and left it at that. Not only did he relieve them of a vast amount of work and with the utmost cheerfulness, but he seemed, in addition, to have a soothing effect upon their mistress, whose tantrums had sometimes driven them all to stupefy their senses at the cider jack.

  Louis did not quite forget his comrades at Bicton. Two or three times a week he borrowed a cob and rode over of an evening, taking with him a supply of highly flavoured pasties specially made for him by the wife of one of the gamekeepers, a mountainous, motherly soul called Aggie. Aggie’s sister, Thirza, as thin and sour as Aggie was fat and expansive, disapproved of the bakings and of Frenchmen in general and told Aggie not to be such a fool. All English prisoners in the hands of the French, she declared, were fattened, killed off and made into pasties. Everybody knew that the French Emperor, Boney, encouraged cannibalism. Had she not seen pamphlets depicting Napoleon and his men toasting captured children on their bayonets before a camp-fire? Aggie listened to Thirza, but was not impressed. She believed well of everyone, even of Napoleon, and if he was as bad as everybody said it must be because he had had a wicked mother.

  The autumn and winter passed uneventfully. Spring came in and with it weeks of rain, flooding the diggings and bringing the work to a temporary standstill. Day after day the men had to abandon tools and take shelter along the bank under the dwarf oaks.

  Old Jean’s spirits touched bottom and even Nicholas became unreasonably depressed by the continual drizzle and the dripping countryside. Gabriel was unable to paint out of doors and after a few attempts at portraits flung his sketchbook back into the shot box which they used as a communal kit-locker. Dominique alone remained cheerful. During the long periods when the men were not able to work and were amusing themselves with woodcarvings which they sold for a few coppers to local families, he was asked to fiddle a good deal. He even learned half a dozen English tunes, including “Robin Adair,” “Allan Water” and “Early One Morning.” He also sang one or two West Country folk-songs about pigs and lovesick shepherds. His rendering of these in the original dialect, blended with a strong Gascon accent, was received by the English technicians with loud laughter. Dominique did not mind this; he took it for applause, which indeed it was in the circumstances, for laughter meant encores and Dominique fiddled until his fingers were raw.

  Meanwhile at High Knowle something happened which cost Louis his job.

  Lucy Manaton had taken to spending a good many of her evenings in the stables. She had, indeed, always crossed the yard at least once in the interval between her lonely dinner and retirement to bed, but during the latter part of the winter, when the weather was so bad, several of the horses had been sick and Louis was kept up most of the night for the best part of a month.

  Looking down from her bedroom in the west turret of the rambling old house, Lucy often saw the gleam of Louis’ hornlantern through the open upper half of a stable door. One night, unable to sleep, she slipped on a bodice and skirt, took a bottle of wine from the kitchen table and crossed the yard to the stables. She found Louis sitting on a milking-stool beside Patch, the sturdy pony that they used for the dog-cart when Harris, Lucy’s aged butler, had occasion to drive into Exeter to market.

  Lucy had been restless during the past few weeks. Vince, the husband for whom she now felt nothing but vague contempt, had been pestering her again for money. He had lost a good deal at cards and she had been obliged to mortgage one of the estate’s larger farms in order to clear his debts and give him a fresh start. Her lawyer warned her that this sort of thing could not continue. Although she spent hardly anything on herself—she was never seen out of riding-habit, and even these clothes were so frayed and stained that they were a standing joke in the neighbourhood—her expenses were heavy at High Knowle and Vince had run through something like four thousand pounds since they had parted. She persuaded the lawyer to write Vince a letter telling him that he could expect no further help from his wife in excess of his usual quarterly allowance. If he went on spending he would have to return home and see about selling up. Although the ultimatum was her own idea, Lucy approved the letter unwillingly. The prospect of putting her horses up for auction made her sick with dismay.

  It was only recently that she had become conscious of her isolation. She had been content to live in a world of her own, a world in which her horses were allied with memories of her stamping, swearing father and a house full of half-drunken men. She had never resented the way her father had treated her. He was a man and she expected men to be coarse and stupid. But her father had at least been a man in the physical sense,
a fearless horseman, a two-and-a-half-bottle toper who knew how to use his fists in a community passionately devoted to the Fancy. She had once seen him stand up for a dozen rounds with Hammer Toe Charlie, the Bristol smith, who had fought 104 rounds against the Cornish favourite over at Crediton.

  In his brusque way he had been kind to her and had shown infinite patience in teaching her to ride when she was a child of six. Had he lived he would never have let the family marry her off to a weakling like Vince mainly because his father had a seat in Parliament. She had never liked her husband, nor had he ever made the slightest attempt to win her affection. There had been a few dismal months of heavy drinking and furious quarrels, then that frightful scene when he went out and shot poor Hannibal. She still dreamed of that night, and since the incident Hannibal’s stall had always been left empty. She passed it now, on her way down the flagged alley towards the winking lantern hooked above the stall where the young Frenchman sat with fat little Patch.

  Louis looked up and smiled when he saw her. He was not surprised by her visit. There is an implicit understanding between people who share their feeling for horses. Lucy thought him almost handsome with half his face in shadow and the yellow light of the candle flame falling on his dark curls and thin, intelligent face. He looked young, eager and gentle and she felt exhilarated by their kinship. Because of him the image of her French mother’s portrait in the hall stirred in her mind.

  She poured some wine into a small beaker that she found on the shelf above his head. He sipped gratefully and it struck her that he looked excessively tired. He could not have had much sleep since Patch had begun to ail. When he set down the beaker she refilled it and said: “Did you have any supper tonight?”