“’Bout a dozen hoss, Governour,” the thatch-haired private named Hatmaker told him. “Dragoons, some mounted officers. Mebbe forty, fifty foot ahind ’em, all Frenchies, look like. Blue an’ yeller, an bearskin shakoes, dressed putty much like the troopers.”
“Lauzun’s Legion.” Governour nodded. “Odd they sent so few. No one behind them?”
“I waited ’til they wuz past couple minutes afore I cut across country, Governour. Didn’t see nobody else.”
“We may have a chance after all,” Governour smiled wolfishly. “We shall stand and fight. Mark you this, though. We’re going to have to kill every last mother-son of them, or word gets out and we’ll never have a chance to escape. Mollow, take six riflemen with Mister Lewrie to stiffen his defenses up by the creek. Lewrie, you must cover everything north of the road and around the boats and the creek. Burge, you and Knevet take twelve men and guard behind the chevaux-de-frise in the woods a little north of the road and put some snipers along the lane. Don’t expose yourself until they charge right on top of you.”
“Right, Brother,” Burgess said, a trifle breathless.
“I’ll make my demonstration south of the road, and draw them onto me. I’ll hold my ground ’til over-run, but I think I can bleed ’em, and force ’em to seek a flank to turn, on my right, along the road and north of it,” Governour said, drawing in the dirt with the tip of his sword-bayonet. “Burgess, you’ll be my first surprise for them. Lewrie, you’ll be my last.”
“Aye?” he replied, feeling a trifle dubious a surprise.
“Hold your log redan up there until they pass you, and then fall on their flank. Do it from ambush, don’t risk your sailors in the open. They’re not used to our practice. Hold your ground and don’t be drawn unless I send a runner to tell you to advance south toward the road. If you don’t hear from me direct, hold your ground and keep the boats safe.”
“Let ’em get stuck into you and then kick ’em up the arse?” he said through dry lips. “I can do that.”
“Don’t fire too soon, or they get away. And if there are more of them behind this bunch, they may come your way to flank us even wider. Trust Mollow, he’s a veteran at this. If I break, I’ll fall back on you. Wait for us as long as you can, then get your people out of it.”
“Aye, Governour,” Alan agreed.
“In any case, wait no more than ten minutes after we have opened fire, and it should be over one way or another,” Governour concluded.
“The hell with that,” Alan told him, shaky but determined. “We’re in this together. If we fall back on the boats, we’ll just be grand targets splashing through the shallows. Might as well stand or fall on land, dammit to hell.”
“Well said, sailor,” Governour said, taking his hand and giving him a farewell shake. “Now let’s take our positions before they see us.”
Alan did not know what to expect once he got back to his hastily made positions up by the creek. Would the enemy come with drums and fifes like the Rebels that had marched into the parallels facing the Yorktown entrenchments, or would they come filtering through the woods like so many painted savages? He could see no sign of them as yet, and was dying of curiosity. He told his men they would have to stand their ground, just like guarding their bulwarks against boarders, gave them a short pep talk, which he did not much believe even as he said it, and knelt down by Mollow and another rifleman to wait out of sight.
About fifteen minutes later, a lone horseman came out of the trees on the far side of the tobacco fields on the road, about four hundred yards away, a fine figure in horizon blue and yellow on a splendid mount. He sat and studied the ground before him for a long moment, before three other riders cantered up to hold a short conference with him. Even at that distance, Alan could see that two were also Lauzun’s Legion officers in their hussar shakoes, and the third wore blue and white with a tricorne.
The riders stiffened in their saddles and pointed across the brown fields of neglected tobacco plants as Governour’s men stepped out of cover south of Alan’s vantage.
“Are they deranged to expose themselves like that?” Alan asked.
“Dem’stration,” the private next to him said, spitting a dollop of tobacco juice on the rotting log in front of him and wiping his lips. “Same’s bait, they is. Hey, here’s yer Frogs.”
A body of cavalry appeared on the road, cantered past the officers, and formed a single line-abreast on either side of the muddy road, while one officer joined them. A second Legion officer walked his mount over to take position with a company of infantry that appeared behind the cavalry, these men in horizon blue tunics with yellow facings, white breeches and gaiters, and tall bearskin shakoes. They were four abreast as they wheeled south, halted once in the middle of the tobacco field, faced east and formed two ranks facing the North Carolina riflemen. To their flank, the cavalrymen drew their heavy sabers and flourished them in the late afternoon sun with appallingly good precision.
“Heh, Governour’s a puttin’ on a show fer ’em.” The private chuckled.
“Hatmaker, get yer fuckin’ haid down,” Mollow told him.
Governour had twelve men in a single rank, impossible odds even if they were riflemen, perhaps two hundred yards away from the waiting enemy ranks. As Alan watched, they went through a drill that Alan did not think such informal troops knew, while Governour stood to one end and called orders that wafted to his ears.
“Poise firelocks!”
“Like musket men.” Alan understood.
“Half cock firelocks! Handle cartridge!” Governour called, while a corporal beat the time with what seemed a half spontoon. “Prime pans!”
“They’ll think they’re reg’lars,” Mollow snickered. “Fooled more’n a few that way. Stupid bastards.”
“Shut pans! Charge with cartridge!”
The dozen men were pretending at that long range to load from the muzzle with cartridge, though their rifles were already loaded and ready to fire. At the word of command, they seemed to ply rammers, which were really their cleaning rods, and tamp down cartouches, resuming the rammers and coming to attention once more at the command “shoulder firelocks,” ordering arms and affixing bayonets, the long sword-bayonets which should have given the game away. But the foe still stood and watched as though mesmerized.
“Why don’t they just charge them?” Alan whispered.
“Honor,” Mollow spat, as though it was a dirty word.
Only when they had finished their evolutions did the senior Legion officer ride out from his lines to converse with Governour. They saluted each other punctiliously, their words unheard from a distance but obviously couched in tortured and convoluted syntax of two gentlemen expressing the highest respect and admiration for each other, no matter what they really thought of each other. The Frog was removing his shako and bowing from the waist, making a beckoning gesture as though he were granting permission to fire first to Governour, and Governour gave his own back, removing his wide-brimmed campaign hat and sweeping it across his chest, making a gesture to the waiting French troops in turn.
The Frenchman finally spurred his horse about and rode back to his men. He called out once more in a loud voice, and Alan could understand the last offer to surrender peaceably, which Governour spurned.
“Poise firelocks!” Governour called, unshouldering his own piece. “Take aim!”
The French troops at a word of command began to advance slowly, their muskets held out before them with the butts by their thighs and the muzzles up, with the bayonets glinting sharp silver. They were getting into decent musket range, for by firing at one hundred yards one could fire at the moon and achieve just as much good.
“Fire!” Governour shouted, bringing his arm down in an arc.
The rifles cracked, and ten men in the front rank of the French troops were punched backwards into their fellows by the weight of .65 caliber balls. Their own volley came a moment later as they halted and brought their weapons up to fire, but Alan was deligh
ted to see that the Volunteers had knelt down to reload, no longer playing the stiff regular musketeer, and the volley mostly went over their heads.
The cavalry, though, as though spurred into motion by the first noise of battle, lurched forward, their mounts hunkering their hindquarters down and the sabers sweeping off the shoulders to point at the Volunteers, blades held upside down and point slightly down at the charge.
Governour gave the infantry one more volley from a kneeling position, and then faded away back into the pines behind the zigzag fences as the spent powder smoke from his firing formed almost a solid wall through which his men went invisible. But the cavalry was almost upon them, out to one side and swinging in to jump those fences. The cavalrymen whooped and screamed, eager to put sword to the foe and show the dazed infantry who was the better fighter. In a torrent of Gaelic, Polish, German, or French, they came on like a tidal wave.
“Should we . . .” Alan began.
“Nah, Burgess’ll be makin’ his move ’bout now.” Mollow laughed.
“But . . .” The infantry had fired the second rank volley into nothing, and then they came on at the charge themselves, now that they had an enemy on the run, wanting to be in at the kill before the cavalry earned all the honors. The mounted officer with them loped alongside them, waving his sword over his head and urging them on.
“Looky thar!” Hatmaker, the private soldier, called out over the sound of battle. “More o’ the shits.”
“Thort they wuzn’t ta come down hyar ’thout they brung a whole passel of ’em,” Mollow said, pointing out the second company of troops that was emerging on the road, led by the third officer in blue and white with the tricorne hat. “Virginia Militia, looks like.”
They were an outlandish-looking bunch of soldiers, some dressed in purplish long-fringed hunting shirts, some in castoff blue and white tunics over a variety of civilian breeches and waistcoats, some in gray or tan tunics without facings. They formed well enough, though, and came on at a trot, four columns abreast with ten men in each file, jogging forward to the north of the road through the tobacco plants as though they meant to flank the fighting and skirmish through the woods, swinging wide of the cavalry.
The change in sound from the south got Alan’s attention, and he turned his head to see the first cavalrymen spur their horses and soar up and over those fences. The roars of challenge changed to shrill and womanish screams as they came down on the double row of chevaux-de-frise that had been hidden in the shadows. Mounts neighed in pain and terror as they skewered themselves on the sharp wood spikes. Those cavalry that had been balked and were milling about in front of the fence suddenly came under fire from Burgess and his men, and gaudily dressed troopers were spilled from their saddles, their useless sabers spinning in the air.
There was time for Governour to get off a volley as well, directly in the face of the charging infantry, punching their officer off his horse before they faded back into the woods for the first of their lines of rifle pits, bringing the French charge to a sudden halt as half a dozen more of their men were smashed down. They stopped to reload, and the quicker-loading and quicker-firing snipers in the woods knocked down more of them before they could raise their weapons to return fire.
“Should we stand ready for this bunch?” Alan asked as the militia seemed to trot forward on a beeline for their own low dead-fall log ramparts.
“Lie down an’ keep quiet, now, but do ya be ready ta rise up an’ give ’em a volley when I give ya the word,” Corporal Knevet ordered, calm as a man in church.
“Steady, men,” Alan seconded him, crawling along his line of sailors, who clutched their borrowed rifles with white-knuckled hands. “You can get off two volleys to their one if you’re steady. They can’t face that. We’re going to give it to them point-blank and run their ragged arses all the way back to Gloucester Point.”
And I wouldn’t believe me for a second, he thought fearfully.
“On, boys, we got the bastards skinned!” the militia officer was encouraging his panting soldiers. He was off his horse, having left it in the rear, a heavyset, sweating man in a too-small uniform wrapped with a large red sash of command, with a gaudy bullion epaulette on each shoulder like a general, far above his true rank. Alan peered out from a gap between two of the mossy dead-fall logs as they came on, swishing through the weeds and the dried leaves of tobacco, their accoutrements jangling and thumping on their bodies, musket butts knocking against each other as they jogged shoulder to shoulder for comradely support.
“Now?” Alan asked Mollow.
“Not yit, be quiet, young’un,” Mollow cautioned. “They’s swingin’ off ta our left. Let ’em get in real close fuhst.”
“’Ware them logs thar!” someone yelled to their front.
“Shit,” Corporal Knevet groaned, realizing they had been spotted. “Stand to! Take aim . . . fire!”
They stood up from behind their barriers, to find the militia company not thirty yards away, turned slightly oblique to them and stumbling to a halt at the sight of their weapons. The volley was a blow to the heart, right in their astonished faces, a ragged crackling of shots that took the front rank and the nearest column of files down, so close Alan could see the blood fly from the nearest men struck.
“Load!” Alan cried, not knowing where his first shot had gone. His hands seemed to have plans of their own as he cranked the breech of the Ferguson open, flipped up the pan cover, and dug into the pouch at his side for a fresh cartridge to rip open with his teeth.
“Face left!” the officer was screaming, waving a huge straight sword and shoving numb survivors of that fatal volley off to his left to lead out the unharmed files. “Form two ranks!”
Mollow, Knevet, Hatmaker, and the other soldiers got off another volley as they shambled into order, quickly followed by Alan and his men, who were less familiar and comfortable with the rifles. Alan saw some of his sailors grounding their rifles to begin the process of loading from the muzzle, as they had been trained on the Brown Bess muskets aboard the ship, before coming to their senses, or being swatted by a senior hand.
More enemy soldiers were being laid out on the ground, groaning and crying in terror as they were hit.
“Front rank, kneel! Take aim . . . fire!” the militia officer yelled.
They got off a volley, and at that close range it was deadly, no matter that half the militiamen had not even bothered to do more than stick their muzzles in the right direction. Volunteers and sailors shrieked in agony as they were smacked down behind the log barrier, which suddenly seemed to be about knee high instead of waist deep.
“Charge ’em!” the officer screamed.
“Fire when ready!” Alan screamed back, trying to be heard over all the noise. Rifles cracked, his own slamming back into his shoulder, and the white-bearded older man who had been running at him was struck on the breastbone and was slammed backwards as though jerked on a rope to drop to the ground with his heels flying in the air.
“Better fall back ta the boats,” Knevet suggested.
“Once my boys run, there’s no stoppin’ ’em,” Alan shouted right into his face. The enemy charge was coming forward, bayonets pointing for them big as ploughshares and shining wickedly.
The men were fumbling at the loading and firing of their Fergusons, hands trembling like fresh-killed cocks at the sight of the enemy at the charge. If they waited to get off a last volley, they would be all over them, and he was still outnumbered.
“Boarders!” Alan howled, drawing his pair of dragoon pistols and dropping the Ferguson. “Away boarders! Take ’em, Desperates!”
Alan brought up the first pistol in his right hand, aimed, and lit off the charge as his men began to surge forward over the barrier to meet the militiamen. He did not hear the explosion, but a ragged man with a half spontoon leveled like a pike spouted a scarlet bloom below his chin.
Alan dropped the spent pistol and transferred the other to his right hand. He fired, and a soldier in dirty bl
ue and white almost up to the barrier gave a great silent scream, and his waistcoat turned red over one lung.
Then Alan was over the barrier himself, cutlass in his right hand and one of his own pistols in his left. A bayonet lunged for him, and he nicked his blade into the wood of the fore-stock, shoving it out of the way, then slashed back to his right, inside the soldier’s guard. He sank his cutlass into flesh and bone on the man’s right arm, knocking him down to the dust and the weeds, chopped downward again and laid his opponent’s face open. Another man was close, and Alan brought up his pistol and fired. There was a soft pop, but that man’s face writhed in terror and he dropped away, clutching at his stomach and dropping the musket that had been near to taking Alan in the chest.
There was a lot of screaming going on, but he heard little of it, for he moved in an unreal fog, a swirling, shifting kaleidoscope of colors through which he waded. Grays and blues and tans, flesh and blood, dark wood and bright metal. He discharged his last pistol somewhere along the way and had no idea where the ball went, found his dirk in one hand and the cutlass in the other as he slipped in under someone’s guard and took the man in the abdomen. He was in among the trampled and broken dry tobacco plants, slashing about as though he was cutting a path through them to get at the enemy.
He came face to face with the sweaty, obese enemy officer with the glittering epaulettes, his hat gone and his eyes huge with fear and shock. The man brought up that heavy straight sword, big as a Scottish claymore, but Alan smashed it aside as easily as a feather and the man opened his mouth to scream before he turned to flee, dropping his sword in fright.
Alan seemed to float forward like some vengeful Greek god masquerading as a man in the Iliad under the walls of Troy; he brought down that heavy cutlass blade and cut the officer’s back open, tumbling him into the dirt and mud of the field between the tobacco rows, brought it down again and almost severed the head from the shoulders, hacked on the body until he began to hear things beside the ringing in his ears.
“Load up!” someone was ordering. “Load ’an face the road!”
The French Admiral Page 35