by A L Berridge
Marcel got us in order. He was leading with Giulio, then it was Stefan and me with the boy on the rope, then Giles with the sack of explosives, and Cristoval at the back. Marcel adjusted his helmet, tucked in a stray bit of fair hair, then turned and walked through the gate, with the rest of us following like a line of ducklings.
We were in.
Colin Lefebvre
Clock struck nine. Minute or two later there’s the curé walking towards the barracks, leading the biggest congregation I’ve ever seen at a Compline. All carrying lighted candles, and the curé singing in Latin, all very innocent, but there was our own Edouard Poulain busy shepherding people down the south side of the Square, and Margot lining them up into a good thick screen. Curé looked a touch puzzled at that, wondering why they’re not all in a lump behind him, but there, wasn’t ever safe to tell him anything of that kind, he wasn’t someone you ever told a secret. Crowd finished forming, screen complete, and we couldn’t see the barracks any more. More to the point, they couldn’t see us.
We were the gibbet team, all of us big chaps, lying in the woods behind Les Étoiles waiting for the bang. Oaf Pinhead said the barracks team ought to have gone in sooner, he said ‘Dons won’t let that crowd stay there for ever. What if they’re gone by the time the bang comes?’
Durand the butcher, he said ‘Don’t be daft, Joe,’ he said. All right sort of chap, Durand, for all he was a Verdâmer. ‘Don’t want them hanging about those barracks longer than they need, do you?’
Pinhead said ‘More than their skins to think about here, Durand, but maybe your precious Sieur doesn’t care about that.’
Then wallop, out came Bettremieu Libert’s great boot and there was Pinhead yelping and saying ‘You’re crushing my hand, you Flemish bastard.’
Libert looked tranquil as a nun at Mass. He said ‘Pardon, Monsieur, my French is not so good. What was that you said about the Sieur of Dax?’
Jean-Marie Mercier
Our party were in the woods at the corner of the Dax-Verdâme Road, and our job was to dispose of the Gate Guards.
I think people were rather excited, because we’d never fought a cavalry action before. Robert was saying ‘This is more like it, Jean-Marie, now we’ll show the dons what we’re made of.’ Georges was actually bouncing in his saddle with eagerness.
I was less comfortable myself, because I’m not a very good rider and wasn’t quite sure about the enormous horse they’d given me. It was one of the newly captured Spanish ones, and I had the feeling it didn’t like me very much. Of course my job wasn’t as important as the others’. They were proper light cavalry, but Simon Moreau, Luc Pagnié and I were what Marcel called ‘carabins’, because we carried muskets instead of swords, and could actually dismount to fight. Hopefully we wouldn’t even have to do that, because there wasn’t to be any shooting except in emergencies. Bernard and Marin were in the woods with crossbows to deal with the long-range work instead.
The Dax clock struck the quarter. Clement Ansel said ‘Stand by, everybody. Any moment now.’
The leather of Georges’ saddle gave one excited squeak and was silent.
I’d never been on an action without André and Jacques before. Never.
Jacques Gilbert
It was dark when we first went in. The new extension wasn’t finished yet, and they obviously didn’t bother lighting it after the masons went home. The floor sounded like stone under my boots, but I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t even see my own feet. I concentrated on the white of the boy’s shirt ahead of me and stepped forward cautiously.
The dark began to get less black and more grey as we got nearer the inhabited bits. Gradually I made out a pattern on the floor, and saw it was the marble slabs they’d stolen from the hall at Ancre, those beautiful black and white squares like a giant chessboard. There were noises ahead now too, a deep murmur of voices, and a sudden burst of crude laughter.
We just kept walking. Arnould had given us a couple of choices of quiet places to set the mine, but even the nearest was the old lumber room of Le Soleil Splendide, and that was still a way to go. There was another rumble of laughter, then we passed an open door with candlelight spilling out on to the corridor, giving us tall, thin shadows that wobbled and stretched as we passed. I glimpsed beds inside the room, but only a few soldiers, and guessed the rest were on duty somewhere. One near the door glanced up as we passed, and I got my eyes down fast, like if I couldn’t see him then he couldn’t see me. It seemed to work all right, we just walked past with the boy hidden between us and the wall, and nobody said a word.
It was lighter now, there were sconces every few feet, and I saw for the first time how scruffy we looked and how crumpled our clothes were, and couldn’t remember if real Spanish soldiers looked that way, I had this mad urge to go outside and check. Then we reached a plaster archway, the old boards of Le Soleil Splendide were creaking under my feet, and that was better, I knew this place. The lumber room was close, and I knew that even better, I’d had my first kiss in there.
We turned off the main corridor down a branch that led to the courtyard, and there was the lumber room on our left. Marcel stopped and whispered to Giles.
‘Is it deep enough in? Can we do enough damage?’
Giles shrugged. ‘Deeper’s better if we want to draw guards from the front.’
Marcel hesitated. I was screaming at him in my head ‘No, it’s fine, let’s just do it and get out,’ but he looked back towards the main corridor and I knew he was thinking of going on to the pantry. Then the sound of tramping feet down the corridor decided him. He pushed open the lumber-room door and we all crowded in, anxious to get out of sight.
The room was bigger than I remembered, but everything else was different too. It was all clean and furnished, there was a bed in one corner and a tapestry and mirror on the wall, there was a bloody great desk off to one side, I remember staring stupidly at a vase of bright-red poppies. And behind it was a man, a man at the desk getting up at the sight of us, and it was bloody Capitán d’Estrada.
Stefan Ravel
I’ve been happier to see someone. We outnumbered him seven to one, but we were in the middle of the fucking barracks, and all he’d got to do was shout. Still, there was no turning back now, so I jerked my head at Cristoval to join us inside, then closed the door.
He didn’t seem suspicious. He snapped at Giulio, probably complaining we hadn’t knocked, then spotted André and stopped dead in mid-sentence. He came slowly out from behind his desk as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and Giulio started talking fast. Don’t ask me what he said, my Don-speak isn’t what it might be, but I guessed it was the official story that we’d caught the kid climbing back in over the Wall. I wasn’t really listening, I was more concerned with the fact the bastard wasn’t coming any nearer. He was too far away to grab, and if we rushed him he’d still have time to shout.
André kept his head. D’Estrada motioned him to approach, but the kid stayed where he was, forcing d’Estrada to come a step closer. I edged nearer. Marcel did the same.
D’Estrada ignored us, and spoke quietly to André as if the two of them were quite alone.
He said ‘Why did you come back?’ He sounded rather sad about it.
‘You know why,’ said André.
‘Yes,’ said d’Estrada softly, ‘I do. But I’m afraid you may have no army to come back to. I have taken steps to ensure it.’
I didn’t like the sound of that, but I got another step closer while he was saying it. Unfortunately d’Estrada looked up, and made an irritated shooing gesture, so I had to stay where I was.
‘What steps?’ said André.
D’Estrada smiled. ‘Would you like to talk to me? We don’t need to see the Colonel yet, we can speak quietly, you and I.’
Smooth bastard. More to the point, he was costing us time. I looked urgently at André, and his eyes flickered.
‘Well, Chevalier?’ said d’Estrada.
André mumbled something.
D’Estrada bent his head lower, and the kid spoke again, even quieter. D’Estrada brought his head right down, and that was it, Marcel was there in two strides, his musket crashing down hard on the back of the man’s neck.
We got a gag on him fast while he was out, but he still posed something of a problem, since neither Marcel nor André wanted him hurt, and we’d been planning to set off a mine two feet away from where he was lying. Oh yes, we could have carried him to safety, but the dons might just have asked questions if they’d seen us lugging their officer about like a sack of turnips. No, there was only one thing for it, we’d have to set the mine in the pantry.
The clock was striking quarter past already, so Marcel hurried the others on while I stayed to tie d’Estrada to his chair. He came round while I was doing it, so I punched him in the face to quieten him and finished securing his arms round the back. Then I walked round and looked at him.
What you’ve got to remember, M. l’Abbé, is that for two years this man had been our main opposition. Oh, I knew why they didn’t want him killed, I suppose he posed some defence against the worst excesses of Don Francisco, but he was still the enemy, and I found it hard to see why they made such a pet of him. It’s always the same in this world, Abbé, punish the poor sod who actually does the job, but let the man who ordered it go free. So I looked at him tied to his own chair with Marcel’s dirty handkerchief stuffed in his mouth, and yes, I’ll admit it gave me a certain satisfaction.
But the bastard looked back at me, and I’d seen that look before. You get it on the faces of aristocrats if you dawdle in front of their carriages, you get it on the faces of their servants if they think your boots are going to muddy their floor or your breath offend the air their masters breathe. Oh, I’ve seen it, Abbé. I’ve seen it on the face of a sanctimonious officer sentencing a boy of eighteen to run the gauntlet that killed him, all for getting drunk after a day of hell in the trenches at La Mothe.
And here it was again, that old look, with enough moral superiority oozing out of it to paint the Vatican. This animal, he was thinking, this stinking, uncouth animal, who knows no better than to strike a helpless gentleman who’s acting out of the finest dictates of honour. This animal with no feelings and no soul.
I took out my knife.
Jacques Gilbert
It was only a minute’s walk to the pantry. We were getting nearer the big mess rooms and deeper into the heart of the barracks, we must have passed at least a dozen soldiers on the way, but no one stopped us, they just saw the boy and laughed, and some actually clapped Giulio on the back. No one seemed bothered by not recognizing us. I suppose the new arrivals didn’t know many people yet, and the old lot just thought we were new.
The pantry was up a tiny dog-leg corridor and totally private. Marcel posted Giulio and Cristoval to stage a conversation outside the door, then the rest of us shot in and got on with it. The curé’s demonstration could be broken up any minute, and we were running out of time.
It was very squashed inside, because the shelves took up so much space. They jutted out all round the walls, laden with bottles of fruit and vinegar, and jars of honey and shrivelled red berries, and there wasn’t much room on the floor either, we had to pull out two flour barrels so Giles could set the mine against the outside wall to blast out into the courtyard. Marcel poured the gunpowder into two huge pickling jars to make a second explosion by the inner door, while I untied the boy’s hands and gave him the cloak and helmet out of my pack to cover his clothes and hair. He’d been a password to get us in, but people were bound to ask questions if they saw us trying to take him out. He hadn’t got a sword, of course, but we arranged the cloak to cover his hip and thought it would do. No one had looked closely at us so far, and I couldn’t imagine why they would now.
We worked fast, and Giles was just trimming the second length of slow match when Stefan finally sidled in to join us. I wondered what had taken him so long, but he didn’t say, he just smiled rather unpleasantly and asked if we were ready to get the fuck out.
Me and André were to leave first with the Spanish speakers while the others stayed to light the fuses. Marcel said seven men running were bound to attract attention, whereas three could just look like horseplay. It sort of made sense, but I guessed he was just making sure the boy got out safely, and maybe the Spanish speakers too. They weren’t fighters, either of them, they were only helping us out, it wasn’t right to put them in more danger than we could help.
We walked out of the dog-leg, back into the main corridor, past the turning to the lumber room, and ahead of us the corridor was greying into the darkness of the uninhabited part. I pictured the flambeaux outside the back entrance, and Bruno’s team waiting to welcome us, then the horses just thirty seconds away behind the mill. The Dax clock struck half past.
We were coming up to that dormitory we’d passed on the way in, the last obstacle before the gate and freedom. I kept my eyes turned away, it had worked before and would work again now. Then there were footsteps ahead of us, and I looked up to see soldiers coming out, five of them, dressed for business and heading into the barracks like it was their turn for duty. It didn’t matter, we’d passed loads already, we’d pass these too.
‘Can’t go out that way,’ said a voice. ‘You’re new, aren’t you? No way out that way.’
I looked up and my heart seemed to kick me in the chest. I knew him, I didn’t need the bandage on his hand to recognize him, it was that sodding escort from yesterday, the one who caused all the trouble. Behind me Giulio said in his best cabo’s voice ‘There is for me, soldier,’ and the escort’s eyes lifted towards him, then he saw the boy.
It was so bloody unlucky. Loads of soldiers had seen André yesterday, they’d seen a boy with long black hair in a torn white shirt, but this one had seen him close up, he’d looked right in his face. His eyes widened at once, and I saw him reaching for his sword. I hadn’t time to think, I punched him with my left hand and scrabbled out my sword with my right. I was the only swordsman, it was up to me, I threw myself at the next and lunged before he’d even had time to draw, I just stabbed him and yelled to the others ‘Get out, get out!’
But they couldn’t, could they, the bastard soldiers were between us and the way out. I pulled out fast, but that bloody escort was back up to me again, I hadn’t hit hard enough, and the other three were pressing forward, drawing as they came, there were four of them, four, I couldn’t hold. I fumbled my sword back into position and clashed it hard against the escort’s, but he twisted his blade and threw mine aside. He shouldn’t have been able to do that, he was a foot soldier, he was nobody, but he was big and strong and somehow knew how to use a sword, I only just recovered in time for the parry. The others were coming, there was a big gap to my right for them to push through, and behind it was the boy, unarmed and helpless, I think I screamed in rage. I was hitting out, battement, battement, get out of my face, you bastards, and then the gap beside me closed, there was another body there with a sword in his hand. It was Cristoval, the other Spanish speaker, he’d never fought in his life, but he’d drawn his sword and was standing beside me.
Just his being there steadied me. I feinted at the escort, turned and parried the next man, twist and flip his blade up, back to the escort, but he was lunging, I only just got the parry across in time. Behind me the boy was screaming at Giulio ‘The sword, give me your sword!’ and a fierce hope sprang up in me, André with a sword would see us all through. Cristoval was struggling, he was up against a big bastard, he couldn’t do it, he’d never do it, and the fifth man was yelling for help, and someone was going to hear him, someone was going to hear and come at us from behind.
I wasn’t good enough, I’d got to be better. I slashed out at the escort and engaged again with the other, but Cristoval was falling back beside me, he was giving ground, sword dropping, arms going up to ward off the blows, and then his man pushed him right behind me, I couldn’t see him any more, there was only this awful grunt and the sound of h
is fall. His man was through, and I couldn’t turn, I was still fighting two, I couldn’t get a thrust in either of them, I was having to turn too quickly between them. There’s a clash of blades behind me, and it’s a good, decisive sound, coup sec, that’s got to be the boy. Relief sluiced over me like sweat. I walloped the escort’s sword down, nothing pretty, I just bashed it out of the way, ducked low in the spin and thrust my other man clean in the guts.
But for a second I’m vulnerable, I’ve not allowed time to pull out, the escort’s thrusting, then there’s a blade slicing in between us, and there’s André, finished with Cristoval’s man already and taking on the escort, I’m free to pull out and go for the fifth man. He was young and unbearded, he looked scared as shit, but he was the last one left and behind him the way out. I went straight at him, jump and lunge, but my right foot shot suddenly away from me, my whole weight pitched forward, there’s blood on the marble and I’m slipping, stamping my left foot down hard to stop myself splitting in two. The soldier leaps at me, suddenly confident, but I’m falling as he lunges and he only scratches my shoulder, I’m on the floor, sick and dizzy, and he’s coming at me again to finish the job. Then somehow, impossibly, André’s there. He’s still fencing the escort but he’s spun out towards us, his blade flicking my man’s up and away, he’s got them both. A dark shape appears in the doorway they all came out of, someone’s asking sleepily what the hell is going on, and I feel stupid, stupid, I can’t think why I assumed there weren’t more, but there are, there’s a sixth man.
I’m aware of everything. The sixth man grabbing for his sword, the wall cold against my back as I slide myself up trying to clear my head, Giulio groping on the floor, to take a sword from one of the dead men, footsteps running towards us down the corridor. And André, fighting two of them and suddenly fighting three.