In the Name of the King

by A L Berridge

  The guards at the lodge were obviously expecting us, they took one look at the safe-conduct and opened the gates right away. A cabo was already waiting to take us to join the company, but Gaspard told his story, said he’d report in officially tomorrow, and the cabo just looked weary and accepted it. Armies are the same everywhere. When officers start countermanding other officers’ orders there’s nothing you can do except try not to get stuck in the middle.

  André made us play it out till the end, so we stepped back and saluted the carriages as they filed through the gate. I watched them winding away from us down the drive, then lifted my eyes to what they were riding into and my heart seemed suddenly to stop.

  It wasn’t like the château at Verdâme, and it wasn’t like the barracks at Dax, it was like both of them together and much, much worse. The building was massive and stone-built, and even from this distance I could see all the soldiers wandering about like it was home. The grounds were swarming with them, and I guessed they’d got a full company of three hundred men, some billeted inside, others at the lodge, more in the outhouses and even some in bloody tents on the grass.

  ‘We can do it,’ said André. ‘We’ve done it before, we can do this too.’

  We couldn’t. Last time we’d had an army to help us and a detailed knowledge of the inside, but now we were just fourteen and knew no more about the building than what we could see.

  ‘Forget it,’ said Stefan bluntly. ‘Let the women sit it out and come home, there’s nothing we can do here. We couldn’t even get in.’

  André looked at the château, at the grounds, at the tents and the lodge, then he turned round to study the rest of us. I felt his eyes on me in an oddly detached way like I wasn’t me at all, then he looked in turn at Stefan, at Grimauld, at Charlot and Philibert, and last of all at the musketeer with glasses. Then he smiled.

  ‘Yes we can,’ he said. ‘We’re going in right now.’

  Twenty-Four

  Stefan Ravel

  If he’d given us more time to think about it I’d have told him to fuck off. But the lodge guards were already hovering to close the gates, so I said ‘All right’ like a good little soldier and dropped myself in it right up to the balls.

  We weren’t all going in, Abbé, just those with the best chance. Lelièvre couldn’t, he’d never have bluffed through his report to d’Estrada, and de Chouy couldn’t, he was too refined to pass for a foreign mercenary. We needed men on the outside anyway, people free to move without three hundred dons watching every step.

  André briefed Lelièvre at speed. ‘Tell them you don’t need all your men, you’re going to leave half here. Say I’m your abanderado and I’ll look after them, but they’re due a rest day after hard campaigning and have to be rostered off till you get back. That’s crucial, Gaspard, it’s no use if they start giving us duties. Can you do it?’

  Aristocratic sang froid has its moments. Lelièvre said ‘Relax, Dédé, I shall be both persuasive and eloquent. I shall also give him two pistoles, which may help more than either.’

  André grinned. ‘Make it five.’ He turned to the rest of us, said ‘Don’t worry, we’ll say you’re Walloons or Germans,’ then started confidently after Lelièvre towards the lodge.

  I watched them deciding our fate with the guards, and wasn’t even sure what to hope for. Oh, I’m all for audacity, and André had enough for a regiment, but I’d rather have had a day to work it out than approximately one minute. The others didn’t look too confident either, especially those without the gift of tongues. It was all very well to pretend we were foreigners, but we’d still come from a don regiment, we’d be expected to understand a bloody order.

  ‘We’ll be all right,’ said Jacques feebly. ‘I understand Spanish, so does Charlot, just watch us and do the same.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Grimauld, and spat unattractively. ‘But what if they wants us to do something different?’ He shouldered his piece, caught sight of our lone musketeer attempting to do the same, muttered ‘Dear, oh dear,’ and went wearily over to help him.

  It did seem a bit much to rope in the one German from my musketeers. I said ‘Go with the others, Henne, we’re all right with six.’

  He looked at me reproachfully through his eyeglasses. ‘But the Chevalier has chosen me, M. Ravel. Out of all our number he has chosen me.’ Poor sod. He hadn’t much brain and no sense of humour, I doubt he’d been picked first for anything in his whole little life.

  Well, it was too late now. André and Lelièvre came back with a mounted cabo in tow, Lelièvre and the lucky ones galloped off with suspicious haste, and we were left in the hands of the Spanish army. They weren’t very enthusiastic, I’m bound to say, the cabo just muttered something in don speak and started morosely down the drive, but I can’t say that bothered me. What mattered was that he was leading us right into the château itself.

  We followed him through a stone archway to a grassed courtyard with a fountain, and in through a side door to the ground floor where the military and livestock were housed. Not us, of course, nothing so useful, the cabo told André all the inside billets were taken and we’d have to go under canvas in the grounds, but at least our horses would be comfortable.

  We handed ours to the gloomy horse-master, loaded ourselves with baggage, and followed our cabo across the courtyard to the main administration area. It was like a lot of these big châteaux, with no passageway, just a lot of rooms leading each to the next. We went through a nest of pen-pushers, a police office with defaulters’ cells, a barber’s room with a spiral staircase rising out of the back, then finally into a sub-office of the fiscal militaire where we were presented with a quill and a dirty piece of paper and invited to sign our names. I watched André writing his, and suppressed a smile when I saw he was calling himself ‘de Castilla’.

  Next was the anteroom to the furiel mayor’s office, and off it the stores. A yellow-faced don handed us out a six-man tent and talked a lot of gibberish which apparently meant it was coming out of our pay, but he wouldn’t give André his own till the kid forked out gold. That’s the one good thing about Spanish domination, there isn’t anywhere in Europe that doesn’t accept the pistole. It was just as well, as it happened, since the tent was all we were getting, and everything else we’d have to buy from the sutlers in the grounds.

  And there we were, Abbé, soldiers in the army of glorious Spain herself. André led us back outside, reported to an alférez, which is the dons’ idea of a lieutenant, was told to bugger off and not bother him, then cheerfully chose our pitches as close as possible to the château and got us to erect our tents. He was sharing one with Philibert, whom he’d had the sense to introduce as his servant, but the rest of us had a single tent between five, of which one was bloody Charlot who needed half a field just for his legs. We were supposed to be what they called las camerados, a bunch of men who sleep and mess together and bond for the greater good of the tercio, but all I could think was if the rest of las camerados were as ill-assorted as we were then Spain had better surrender right now.

  It’s a strange thing, the illusion of security offered by a few feet of flimsy canvas, and it was remarkably tempting to stay hidden right behind it. But our only safety was in a good solid plan, so I braved the open lawn to find the man who’d talked us into this madness.

  There he stood, legs apart and arms folded, watching critically as Philibert and Jacques struggled to erect his personal tent. He looked every inch the kind of arrogant young bastard you find in officers’ ranks anywhere.

  I muttered ‘You ought to take the plate off, no one wears it off duty.’

  He never varied his imperious expression. ‘I can’t, my shirt’s bloody under it. Give them a hand with the tent, will you, then I can get changed.’

  He couldn’t muck in himself while the occupants of the next tent were watching, but I still suspected he was enjoying it. When I next looked round he gave me an encouraging grin and told me to put my back into it.

  I wandered back up t
o him when we’d finished, saluted respectfully and said ‘This isn’t a fucking game.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ he said, and for a moment something fierce flashed in his eyes. He turned to look at the château, and I saw it then, Abbé, what was boiling underneath. His freedom, the future of his country, the woman he loved and the chance to destroy the man who’d humiliated him, all those things were to be had if he could just get through those walls, and it’s possible in his place I’d have felt a little strongly myself.

  I said ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a plan, have you?’

  He turned and looked vaguely at me, so I said it again.

  ‘I’ll think of something,’ he said dismissively. ‘I’ve got to, haven’t I?’

  I looked at Philibert standing anxiously at the entrance to the tent, then at Jacques trying hard not to look towards the watching soldiers. I thought of the others in our own tent, Henne’s trusting gaze, and the underlying smells of blood and sweat and fear.

  I said ‘Yes, little general. I think you have.’

  Carlos Corvacho

  Oh no, Señor, I’d never deny it was a very bold thing to do. To join our own army right under our noses, well, you can only laugh, can’t you? Not but what it wasn’t rather foolhardy when you think about it, but there, it’s all down to luck in the end, isn’t it?

  But we knew there was something up all right, there was no fooling my Capitán. It was your young lady gave it away, as ill at ease as she was, and all but shuddering whenever her fiancé looked at her. My gentleman says ‘We’re right about this, Carlos, she’s here for her own reasons and we need to find out double quick what they are.’

  He never let it show, though, not my Capitán, he greets her warm as an old friend. ‘Satisfy me on one thing, Mademoiselle,’ says he, holding both her hands. ‘De Roland could never have raided your château without help from the inside, and I’ve always had my suspicions that help came from you. Am I right?’

  She lowers her lashes demurely. ‘We all helped,’ she says. ‘But it was André de Roland who deserves the credit and no one else.’

  There was no shuddering when she said that name, Señor, she blushes pink as a rose, and very fetching it is too. My gentleman smiles.

  ‘Perhaps,’ says he. ‘But I know who was my most worthy adversary, and am so very glad we are now of the same side.’

  Now there’s nothing in that a lady could take offence at, but her blush deepens dark red and she hides her face fast. Over her head my Capitán’s eyes meet mine, and there’s triumph in them, Señor, his old hunting look when he knows he’s got a scent. She’s no more on our side than Richelieu his own self, and she still loves de Roland to boot. If that isn’t trouble in a nest full of conspirators such as we’d got here, well, I ask you, Señor, what is?

  I never let her out of sight after that, or not in a manner of speaking. I watched her to her room and saw she had no one in with her but her maid, and she never stirred hand nor foot outside of it all morning. Her companion wandered around a little, that I did see, the one called ‘Jeanette’, is that right, Senor? She walked up and down the gallery taking notice of everything, but there was nothing untoward in it, I’m sure. She was a very friendly lady, Mlle Jeanette, stopped to talk to me more than once, and I’m guessing she hadn’t much in the way of presentable male company at home.

  Then at noon your Mademoiselle’s safe under my own eyes again as they all come into my Capitán’s rooms for the signing of the treaty. Our job was easy enough, to witness the arrangements they’d made among their own selves and sign to say Spain would respect them, but it’s a nasty business to my mind, nothing a gentleman would want to put his name to. Your Mlle Anne’s father, he’s the worst. ‘Where’s my name?’ says he. ‘Two hundred thousand livres I’ve given, and there’s no mention of du Pré in this whole document!’ ‘Oh, there is, Papa,’ says Bouchard, his voice sweet and sour like a Moorish delicacy gone off. ‘Here, where it says “family dependants of the Duc de Montmorency”. When I become your son-in-law I believe that will be you.’ Your poor Mlle Anne closes her eyes in shame, and I can’t say I wonder at it. My Capitán’s of the same mind himself, which makes it all the more pity we have to break her as we do.

  Oh yes, Señor, we’re all but sure of it now. When my gentleman takes the paper to the éscritoire the company’s eyes are burning on it at every move. They all watch the lid closed, the lock turn, even the key dropping into my Capitán’s doublet, all but your Mlle Anne, who sits with her head resolutely turned away as if she’s not the slightest interest in the matter. And no more she might have, Señor, if I hadn’t been watching close enough to see her following the whole business in the glass.

  That’s what she’s after, that document. Not that she’s a chance of getting it with guards on the door every minute, but it casts what you might call a serious light on our situation. She won’t be alone in it, not a slip of a girl like that, and for all we know there’s a force outside planning an assault on the château itself. My gentleman says no, there’s not a French army big enough in the region, but he still has the guards on the gate doubled for what he says is ‘just in case’, and takes a little extra precaution to protect his own room.

  He doesn’t like not knowing, Señor, and that’s the truth. I put a couple of men on to watching Mlle du Pré’s door with orders to follow whoever comes out, but it’s my gentleman prowling up and down like an animal that’s caged. ‘We have to force her hand,’ he says to me. ‘She’ll lie low and wait till our guard’s down, we have to make her act now.’

  I said ‘We can wait, can’t we, Señor? They’re only staying a few days, she’ll have to make her move soon.’

  ‘And what if we can’t counter it?’ says he. ‘What if she’s only gathering intelligence for a raid after she’s gone?’ He picks up her empty Madeira glass and runs his finger silky-soft round the rim, for all the world like reading her thoughts from her touch. ‘No, it has to be on our terms and at a time of our choosing.’

  I knew that look on him, I’d seen it often enough when he was playing chess, but this was a woman, and no more predicting them than a cat. I said ‘A girl like this, who knows what can push her into something rash?’

  Round the rim his finger goes, and then it stops. ‘A girl like this,’ he says, and puts the glass down in the exact same spot he took it from. ‘Well, I think we know what she’s afraid of, don’t you?’

  Jacques de Roland

  We sort of clung to the tents to begin with, but by noon Grimauld was sitting with our neighbours telling funny stories about chasing fellow Walloons at the Battle of Honnecourt. He’d got it from our own troops, of course, but you’d never have known it, he was saying ‘No, you’ve got it all wrong, see,’ and had them laughing at every word. Henne was with them too, nodding and not saying much, but Grimauld rolled his eyes and said ‘German,’ and people laughed kindly and patted him on the back.

  It was harder for me and Charlot because we weren’t sure how things worked in the ranks, but we sat and polished muskets like I did in the Occupied Army and it felt comfortable and familiar. Philibert was even more at home. I saw him haggling furiously with the sutlers over the price of a cooking pot, his voice getting shriller and his gestures getting wilder till they just threw up their hands and gave in. Stefan was just Stefan of course, like he’d probably been in every regiment he’d ever belonged to. He lounged by our tent smoking his horrible pipe and telling everyone to fuck off.

  Even the language wasn’t a problem. Most armies have got mercenaries, they’ve been in occupied towns and fought alongside foreign allies, there’s hardly a soldier doesn’t speak a bit of at least three languages. There was even a bunch of Italians from the Strozzi a few tents down, and they weren’t having any difficulty getting by. Everyone was friendly and chatty, it started to feel like this was our own army and we were perfectly safe.

  But we weren’t, of course, we’d got a job to do and not much time to do it. We’d
be found out as soon as Gaspard didn’t come back, and André maybe even sooner. He was an officer, d’Estrada was bound to want to meet him, the alférez said he’d probably have been invited for dinner already if the château hadn’t been busy with guests. As soon as we heard the treaty was signed we’d do the raid and get out.

  We started by making a way to communicate with Gaspard. There hadn’t been time to arrange anything clever, he was just going to come back at midnight and slink round the outside for a letter, but André’d promised to hang something over the wall to show him where to look. I wasn’t sure about that, I mean the wall was twelve feet high and people were sort of bound to notice us shinning up it, but at the rear of the château we found an orchard of apple trees that seemed perfect. Soldiers were camped round that side too, but they couldn’t pitch tents where the trees were so close and we were able to get right to the back without anyone looking. André tied his handkerchief to the tip of a branch growing over the wall, then scribbled a note asking Gaspard to be here at six tomorrow, wrapped it round a stone and simply chucked it over.

  We gathered dead branches to look like we’d been collecting firewood, then set off to walk round the château itself. That was more depressing, because it actually looked easy to break into. There was a door on every side, and only two pikemen guarding each of them. All the rooms on the upper storeys had open balconies like extra bits of floor stuck out into the air, and it would have been the simplest thing in the world to get a grapnel hook on the railings and nip up a rope. There were twenty different ways into that house, but the second you turned round you realized there were none at all.

  The soldiers. They were camped on every side with nothing to do but lounge round their cooking fires and watch other people. They looked up even when we just walked by, we couldn’t have put a hand on the walls without fifty of them giving an alarm. They’d be maybe less suspicious on our own side of the building where they knew us by sight, but they were so bloody friendly they’d have probably come after us to see what we were doing.