by Iain Gale
His words were cut short by the punch which the major landed hard in his stomach. Steel groaned.
Malbec stood back and shook his head. ‘Don’t be stupid, Captain. Save yourself unnecessary suffering. All I want to know are two things: your name, and the purpose of your mission. That’s all. Nothing more than two things. What harm can there be in that? And you are an honourable man. You know it is the honourable way out. And it will save you so much pain.’
Steel stared at him through half-shut eyes and shook his head. ‘Do you really think that I would ever consider betraying a confidence and my country? What code of honour do you follow, Malbec? None, I’ll wager. Certainly, none that I acknowledge.’
Malbec drew closer to him so that Steel could smell his breath with its pungent, lingering aroma of garlic and spices, while the scent of lavender also hung about him. He hissed in Steel’s face, spat out the words: ‘I’ll tell you the code of honour I follow, Captain: the code of honour that killed my wife and children in Le Havre. The code of honour of your Royal Navy. The code of honour that killed hundreds more innocent civilians at Ostend when your warships opened fire and sent their bombs raining down into its streets. That’s my code of honour, Captain. Surely you recognize it? Your generals invented it.’
Malbec paused and gazed at this troublesome British officer. He had spent some months in custody in England, under house arrest in the town of York. He had hoped that he might see the true nature of the British people, that the dreadful shadow might be lifted from his mind. But what he had seen was a nation not ground down by war but enjoying the bounties of victory and prosperity. Families happy together. It had made him only more bitter and determined to avenge his family’s death at every opportunity.
He whispered to Steel. ‘Don’t worry. By the time I’ve finished with you you’ll be begging to tell me your name.’ He turned to the Marquise. ‘My dear Marquise, perhaps you should leave now. I think that this will not be a sight for such eyes as yours.’
She smiled. ‘Oh, Claude, how can you think such a thing? You know that the one reason I am here is to keep a careful eye on your treatment of the captain. After all, he is mine, is he not?’
Malbec smiled. ‘True. It is as we arranged. I owe you so many debts and I did swear that you could take him. Once I have finished with him.’
‘And you also swore that you would leave him in good condition. Remember, Claude, a bargain is a bargain.’
Malbec shrugged, and Steel froze. So he was to be her prize. To what end, he could only imagine. Clearly their conversation was intended to be only too audible, to fill him with the terror of anticipation. She laughed.
Malbec smiled and looked at Steel. ‘What exactly do you have planned for our friend?’
She turned to Steel and stared at him with a look which chilled him to the bone. He looked away and found himself staring at the huge emerald pendant which hung at her breast.
‘I detest the British. So would you if you had seen your father die from the wounds he received in battle with them, blinded and unable to see his children grow up. And if you had nursed the ruin of a man, which was all they brought me of my husband. He had been reckoned one of the handsomest men in France, Captain. After the battle of Ramillies, when they brought him home, he was hideous. He had been wounded by your English dragoons. They had found him in a corner of the field, detached from his regiment and confused by a fall from his horse. There were four of them. He had surrendered, offered them his sword. It meant nothing. They still cut him down. One sabre cut slashed his face from above his right eye to his left jaw. Another took off his nose. As they did it, they were laughing. Then they left him to die. But he was a strong man. His servant brought him home, back to Agen. He died in my arms sobbing like a baby.’
She was trembling now. Pausing, she looked at Malbec and then back to Steel. ‘And so, Captain, I have sworn to be avenged against my husband’s murderers and their fellows. With you I intend to play a game of like for like. I shall take your eyes. The rest of you, however, I intend to preserve in as perfect and beautiful a state as you are now. And then I shall think of all the delicious ways in which you can amuse me. You will stay with me at my château at Agen. At least until I tire of you.’
Here was a fate Steel had never contemplated. What was more, Malbec, a brother officer bound by a code of honour that transcended allegiances, appeared to condone her barbarity. He knew that he must escape. Perhaps, he thought, if he only played for time he might have an opportunity to find a way out. He realized, however, that he would have to endure the next stage of the major’s interrogation. He wondered what now lay in store for him; something more sophisticated, no doubt, than the brutal Neanderthal pummelling he had already suffered. When, he wondered, would he lose his eyes? And how would it be done? He shuddered and tried desperately to find a means of escape.
At length Malbec broke away from his embrace with the Marquise and turned back to Steel. ‘You seem surprised, Captain, that an officer should behave in such a fashion. But you forget. I gave myself up at Ostend. I had seen too much blood for one day. In England as a prisoner I had supposed that I might at last be able to understand the people who had robbed me of my most precious possessions, my wife and children, killed at the bombardment of Le Havre by your navy. Instead I found only hatred for an indolent and bigoted nation. It merely served to fuel my loathing for your race. So now we intend to make you pay, Captain, pay for all the injustices perpetrated by your barbarous army. But in truth I can make it easier for you. You see the influence I hold over milady. Perhaps if you were to tell me the names of your accomplices, I might be able to sway her from her unpleasant plan. At least I might be able to save your sight.’
The Marquise shook her head. ‘Claude, you must not tease the poor captain. I am resolved. An eye for an eye.’
Steel was not really listening. If I can only manage to infuriate this man enough, he thought, he might just beat me into unconsciousness, and then at least they would have to wait until I was capable again of telling them Major Charpentier’s name. It was worth a go, as was anything that might give him more time – time to think of a plan of escape, anything.
Steel waited until Malbec’s face was close to his own, and then he spat at him, a mouthful of blood-streaked phlegm. The major recoiled and carefully wiped the muck from his cheek and mouth. Then with a sudden and unexpected swiftness he raised his arm and brought the fist crashing down upon Steel’s jaw, smashing his head to one side with a ferocity which shocked and surprised him and in an instant made him wonder whether another such blow from this man might break his neck. When it did come, an instant later, it did not do anything quite so dreadful. What it did do, though, was send him and the chair crashing to the floor, and as Steel slipped gratefully from consciousness he knew that his plan had succeeded.
Steel lay in the coal-black darkness and trembled with fear. He could not see, and for a few minutes now he had been putting off the moment. Now, though, he knew that he must do it. Slowly he reached up to his face and felt for his eyes. The first touch told him what he needed to know. There rather than the empty sockets he had feared, he could feel the roundness beneath the lids which proved that he still had his sight. The Marquise could not have yet fulfilled her terrible promise. There was no pain in that part of his head, which was more than could be said for the rest of his anatomy. He moved a leg and felt a twinge across the muscle and into the bone. He ran a hand across his face and felt the dried blood and the swollen, puffy tissue. By God but they had made a mess of him. Slowly, and with the experience of a dozen battles, he felt carefully up and down first one arm and then the other and then down both his legs, checking for possible fractures. As far as he could tell there were none. Yet.
Steel thanked God that his plan had worked and that he had passed out with the pain. It came to him, though, that soon they would come for him again and that this time their method might be such that he would crack and give away the name of the major. After
that he would be at the mercy of the Marquise, and that was not an option that he wanted in the least to explore. However it might be achieved, escape within the next few minutes was the only way, no matter how painful it might be and even if he died in the attempt.
He stood up and bumped his head on a low ceiling. Clearly he was no longer in the high basement cell. More than likely, he had been carried upstairs and thrown into some sort of an attic. Gradually his eyes became accustomed to the lack of light. Slowly, to his left he saw a square of light, which suggested the square outline of a small window. He walked across to it on the bare boards, listening lest they should squeak and being careful to feel his way first in case he might fall over some obstacle, but the room appeared to be empty. Reaching the wall, he felt at the window and eventually managed to lever up a small corner of what felt like a piece of wood that had been nailed into place. With a supreme effort, Steel pushed up on the wood, splintering it and cutting his hands. Instantly a shred of light flooded into the gloom and he knew that he had found a way out.
Half an hour later, his hands torn and bleeding from pulling at the rough wooden panels, Steel had managed to rip a length away, and now moonlight filled the little room through the small hole. It was a window. Cautiously he peered out and saw nothing but the sky and a rooftop perhaps some eighty yards away. He raised his head and peered down. He was, as he had surmised, in an attic room some forty feet above the ground. Directly below him lay a courtyard. He recognized it at once as the Cour Royale of the Invalides. So he was still in Paris. Thank God at least for that, he thought. Turning, he assessed his surroundings in the moonlight. The only access to the room save the window was the low door through which he must have been carried. There was no furniture to speak of, expect for a broken table and a pile of sheeting.
He walked over to the window and peered down again into the courtyard. He would have to act as fast as he could. Every moment now was precious. He pulled at the remaining slats of wood and threw them into the room to leave the window opening as wide as he could. Then, trying to remember the appearance of the roof, he eased open the window and, turning so that his back rested on the thin edge overlooking the sheer drop to the yard, he reached up with his hands to grasp the edge. The slates cut into his hands and his raw wrists, already lacerated by the leather straps, were grazed by the edge of the tiles. Making a supreme effort, Steel pulled as hard as he could and his body eased out of the window and hung above the courtyard. To anyone looking up now he knew that he would be in full view. He glanced down to check, and instantly thought better of it. His head began to swim with vertigo, and for an instant he thought he might let go of the roof. Recovering, he turned back and, looking up at the slates, managed to manoeuvre so that his feet were standing on the window ledge.
Gingerly, he grasped for the pieces of carved stonework. The sill was wide, and he used the round frame to brace his body and climb onto the roof. A wolf, carved around the window frame, became a useful handhold. Pulling himself up with them, he managed to move one foot up onto the roof and searched around for a ledge of slate. Then slowly he moved on and up the roof and managed to get his other leg free of the window until he was hanging on the very edge of the slope. Little by little, tile by tile, Steel pulled himself up the steep angle of the roof until he was at the top.
He had hoped to find a chimney stack down which he might climb, but there was none here. In the centre of the roof, however, he could make out a lantern. He could see it quite plainly, some thirty feet from where he balanced, with a steep slope on either side. The only way to reach it would be along the apex of the roof itself. Steel lowered himself down until one of his legs hung on either side of the roof and slowly began to ease himself along. It was not the most comfortable of journeys and he realized that this must be what it felt like to suffer the infernal other ranks’ regimental punishment of ‘riding the horse’ where a miscreant soldier would be made to sit astride a wooden horse, his legs weighted down. It seemed to take forever, and the further Steel went the more agonizing his progress became until he felt as if the roof would cut him in two.
At length, however, he reached the tall lantern. It was a small, domed structure of roughly his own height from the apex with six sides. Steel recalled a similar structure at his family home at Carniston which sat on the stable block allowing air in to the horses. How many times had he and Alexander used it as a means to reach their nightly rendezvous with girls from the village in the hay loft? If this lantern was built in the same way then one of the sides would have to be a door. He pushed at each of them, gingerly moving around the roof. Four of them did not yield, and then on the east side, as he pushed, it slowly creaked open. Steel pressed himself to the stonework, anxious lest the noise might have alerted someone. But, to his great relief, the courtyard below was still quite empty and no one had yet raised the alarm. Steel peered into the darkness within the lantern. A chill breeze told him that it might well be a drop of seventy feet. Carefully, he reached inside and smiled as he felt familiar handholds. It was a ventilation shaft, exactly like the one at Carniston. He climbed in and began to descend.
If Steel had thought that any other part of his escape thus far had been difficult, they seemed as naught now compared with his current situation. He reckoned that he might if lucky be halfway down the shaft within the lantern. He had no way of knowing, for it was pitch black, the only light being at the top where the door met the sky. Every step was a new danger, every rung of the slippery ladder to be carefully negotiated. And the dark was smothering him. Several times he almost panicked. He thought of his sergeant, Jacob Slaughter, with his fear of dark enclosed spaces, thought of the tunnel in the walls of Ostend where Slaughter’s panic had almost cost them their lives, and thought how then he himself had steadied the sergeant. That was what ultimately drove him on, that and the knowledge that there was no way back, save to certain death.
His limbs ached – his whole frame, it seemed. Then he was aware in the blackness that the air had become somehow different and that his breathing was less hollow, somehow more audible. The only explanation must be that he was nearing the bottom of the shaft. He placed his foot on the next rung and found that it was not there. Momentary panic gave way to relief as, reaching down a little farther, the ball of his foot touched solidity. He took a few moments to get his bearings, and began cautiously to feel his way along a low tunnel. He felt with his feet, and after a few yards found an opening, or rather a hole, no more than two feet wide, in the floor. Sitting on the edge, Steel lowered himself down and found himself squatting in a tunnel. The roof was well made, of curved brick, and the floor hardened. He wondered what on earth might have been the purpose of this route originally. Whatever, that was not important now. He began to crawl along the tunnel, and after what may have been minutes or as much as a full hour, the wounds on his hands having been reopened by the surface of the floor, he began to sense the air changing and the passage becoming lighter. Then the roof of the tunnel opened up above him and another narrow shaft rose through the earth. He stood up and found that by climbing on a rudimentary staircase of rough stone, placed there for just that purpose, it was possible to touch the closure at the top. He pushed and was rewarded by movement. Taking a deep breath and praying that he would not come up directly beneath a sentry, Steel pushed harder and felt the wooden lid of the tunnel moving across grass. With a final effort he pulled himself up, and in a few moments was clambering into the fresh night air.
Steel gathered his thoughts and recovered his breath. His body felt like lead. He was bleeding badly from his hands and from the cut on his head which had reopened during his flight. He crouched on the grass and looked around in the moonlight; he could not see any sign of a sentry. His first thought was to return to Simpson’s house, but then he remembered that Malbec had told him they were waiting for Simpson. The only other option in a friendless enemy city was to find his brother. Alexander had told him that he had temporary lodgings in one of the dormitor
y houses outside the main building – the very houses Steel now realized he must be looking at. He knew that Alexander’s apartment lay near the rue de Grenelle, and he tried to get his bearings. The dome rose behind him, and for a few seconds Steel stared at it before working out that he was facing east. By sheer luck he was on the right side. Now his only challenge was to find which of the three blocks housed his brother. At that instant he heard footsteps on the gravel path and a second later came the shout he had dreaded.
‘Halte! Qui va là?’
Inspired, Steel replied in poor French, deliberately slurring his words, ‘It’s me. Private O’Driscoll, Your Honour. I’m a little unwell.’
The sentry approached Steel, who saw that the man had a levelled musket tipped with a bayonet pointed at his chest. ‘You’re drunk. And you’ve been in a fight. It’s the guardroom for you, my Irish friend.’
Still acting the part, Steel raised his hands. ‘Don’t shoot, Your Honour. I’ll come quietly. Yes, I may have had a drop of the hard stuff, but then we’re all soldiers here, aren’t we, my friend? No need for your gun. I’ll come quietly. I’ll do my punishment.’
The Frenchman smiled and half dropped his weapon. Steel seized the chance. Taking the man by surprise, he brought his right hand, now clenched in a fist, crashing down on the sentry’s skull, knocking him to the ground. The musket, thankfully not loaded, fell to the grass. Steel picked it up and before the sentry had time to come to his senses drove it down through the darkness hard into the man’s chest. He heard a brief gurgle and then the body went limp. Pulling out the bayonet, Steel quickly stripped the corpse of its white coat and slipped it on. It was a little tight, he thought, but it would do. He took the man’s tricorn hat and placed it on his head. Then, picking up the musket, he positioned it in his left arm at the port and began to walk slowly and in a straight line along the gravel.