In the Name of the King

by A L Berridge

  Footsteps were approaching, only one man’s, but heavy as if he carried a great burden. Our German escort shooed us like chickens into the shadows and stood by the door with levelled bayonet, but the figure who appeared in the doorway was Stefan, and in his arms he carried Grimauld.

  ‘Heavier than he looks,’ he said, lowering the poor man carelessly to the straw. ‘Get them mounted and out, Henne, there’ll be all hell let loose in a moment.’

  Henne saluted him briskly but in the same moment came the clang of a great bell from the château’s tower, rung repeatedly and vigorously as if to rouse the soldiers in the encampments outside.

  Stefan grimaced. ‘Better make that now.’ He grabbed the bridle of Jacques’ horse and thrust it into Henne’s hand, then turned and ran back across the courtyard. Even the slap of his footsteps was drowned in the clamour of the great bell.

  Jacques de Roland

  I heard it but was too weary to care. My arm was aching, and I wasn’t even achieving much. The soldiers weren’t pressing forward any more, just jabbing in enough to keep us jumping, waiting for the moment they could grab and drag us down.

  ‘Not much longer,’ said André, and I thought he was right, one more swipe would finish me. ‘They’ll think of the backstairs in a minute and come at us from the billets.’

  I hadn’t even thought of that. ‘If they try the other wing they’ll get Charlot.’

  ‘They won’t get Charlot,’ he said, spiking one of the bolder ones in the arm. ‘You’ll see.’

  I tried not to think of Charlot, big and safe and solid on the backstairs. I lashed out at a big bearded man taking a determined step forward, I actually screamed at him to leave us alone, but someone was shouting below them now, an officer gathering them for the rush. I heard more yelling from the gallery and nearly threw down my sword in frustration as I realized they’d got us from both sides.

  A great tearing rip behind me forced me to look round. Charlot was there, single-handedly wrenching the wooden bench out of the plaster that fixed it to the wall.

  ‘Jacques,’ said André urgently, and I turned back to fence the rising press, hope shooting down into my hand so I forgot the pain in my arm and everything except what was happening behind. It was Stefan who was yelling, and he was saying ‘On three, got it? On three.’ It didn’t make sense, then I heard him yell ‘One!’ and it did. ‘Two!’ and I slashed at that bearded man as he turned to shout a warning, then ‘Three!’ and jumped back on to the gallery, as Charlot and Stefan hefted the bench between them and simply hurled it down the stairs.

  I wish I’d seen more of it, but I was running for the archway and couldn’t risk more than a glance. The soldiers were tumbling back on each other and the bench rolling over them, I heard cries of fear and pain and thought ‘Good, you bastards, you should have left us alone.’ Then we were clattering down the backstairs, down and into the barber’s room, through the police office which had a dead guard sprawled by the empty defaulters’ cells, through the clerks’ room and the open door into cool fresh air and night in the courtyard, and there was Tonnerre waiting for me like I’d dreamed, Tonnerre with Bernadette safe on his back.

  But that bloody bell was still banging and soldiers already running into the courtyard to see what was up. As I leapt on to Tonnerre I heard a shot zing past me and saw men firing down from the windows. The soldiers in the courtyard took cover in the confusion, it was our chance and we grabbed it. Charlot was taking off already with Jeanette, Stefan was screaming ‘Go, go!’ while ahead of me André urged Héros to the gallop, with Anne clinging on behind him. She was straddling the beast like a man and so was Bernadette, I didn’t need to worry about her, I could just get my head down and bloody charge.

  And I did, we all did, André was even shouting it as he pounded through the panicked infantry and on to the drive. He wasn’t firing the signal, there’d been enough shots from the windows to alert fifty Gaspards and I just hoped like hell he was ready. We were out of range of the château, no one was mounted to come after us, we were home and free except for that bloody gate. I fixed my eyes on the lodge in the distance and prayed.

  A crack of yellow light ahead of us, and I still wasn’t sure, it might be us being shot at, but then another and another, and men fleeing the gate in panic. It was open, standing wide open and the horsemen on the other side were Gaspard and Crespin. Spanish soldiers came pouring out of the hut opposite the lodge, but Crespin waved his hat and more shots broke out, one, two, three in quick succession, then a fourth at their retreating backs. Stefan had done a good job of training our musketeers.

  We were nearly there. A shot barked from the lodge and Henne jerked in the saddle, his horse rearing in panic, but Charlot swerved to get a hand to the bridle and drag the beast after his own, Henne still hunched on its back. Another long barrel poked out as we drew level, but something roared right behind me and it disappeared. A pistol clattered on the road beside me, Bernadette slipped her other arm round me, and I understood. The musketeers fired again, the lodge went silent and we galloped clean past it, through the gate and on to the road with woods ahead of us, woods and beyond them open country, I dug in my heels and rode on.

  We went through Ossu like a forest fire. We were too many to stop, too fast to shoot at, and no one could even be sure who we were. We passed a few soldiers on half-hearted picket duty, but all I remember was the blur of white faces below us as we charged by. We galloped straight through the village and out of it, then we were back at the turning to farmland, and suddenly there were night-blue fields of waving crops on both sides.

  There was no one coming after us. We picked our way more steadily down the track, and I became aware of little noises about me, the creaking of saddles, the high trill of nightbirds and the soft brushing of wind over the fields. As we cleared the trees of the little wood I looked up and saw the moon. Its pale light outlined the tips of the corn stalks and shimmered whitely on a flat surface in the distance, making it glisten like a river in summer. It was the little road that divided the fields, and as Tonnerre finally crossed it I knew the ground under his hooves was France.

  Stefan Ravel

  No, Abbé, I didn’t think it very likely the dons would cross the border after us, but if they did I wanted them to see nothing but empty roads and the whole of France in front of them.

  So we stopped for the night at Malassise. The barn wasn’t the most comfortable of billets, but we’d left our heavy baggage there and it didn’t take much to make it like home. I tended to the wounded first, but there weren’t very many, I’m glad to say. My own hide was intact, and there wasn’t a mark on Lelièvre’s men, not one between them. He’d got the gate open by presenting his papers and saying he’d come back as ordered, then my musketeers simply lurked in the shadows and took pot-shots to stop them shutting it. Nice work if you can get it.

  The one I was worried about was Henne. It had looked like a chest-hit to me, but when I got the coat off him I found the wily bugger was wearing his Spanish cuirass underneath. Oh, he took a lot of ribbing, but the fact is the plate had all but stopped the bullet and it was hard to argue with that. He said confidentially ‘I like to be safe, Messieurs,’ and carefully stowed the dented armour in his bundle to show his admiring friends back home.

  Grimauld was another matter. He’d a pike-wound to the thigh which I cleaned and dressed, but a quick look at his other leg showed a nasty break above the ankle. The bone had already been twisted and crushed, I thought this might be a chance to get a decent surgeon to set the thing right, but there wasn’t much I could do for him now but strap it comfortably and give him brandy for the pain. He liked that part of it all right, he clung on to my flask and sucked at it like his mother’s breast.

  The rest were easy, and young Bernadette helped with the dressings. Anne’s was a pity, she was going to have a scar on that lovely white arm, which was one more little item Bouchard was going to have to pay for in the end, but she said listlessly it didn’t matter, she
always kept it covered anyway because of the scar on her wrist. I told her she was obviously hanging around with the wrong men, and earned a nasty little kick from André for my pains.

  He was a mess himself, of course, but none of it was going to be fatal. The cut to his neck was bad, I gave it a couple of stitches and hoped for the best, but the rest weren’t going to spill anything important. The one on the forehead might scar, but I told him a man wasn’t a man without d’Estrada’s mark on his face somewhere.

  He looked darkly at me. ‘You shouldn’t have tripped him, it was cheating.’

  I mopped the blood off his chest. ‘You weren’t going to beat him otherwise, you know that as well as I do.’

  He thought about it. ‘Well, he wasn’t going to beat me either, so we’ll just have to settle it next time.’

  There’s always a next time for people like André. I patched up the rest of him and kept my mouth firmly shut.

  But we hadn’t done badly this time, and the only man lost was Philibert. Jeanette was weeping for him, and Jacques not much better, but the one really moping was Anne. For the little Gascon, for her worthless brother, for the wounds on the rest of us, and all on the usual womanly grounds of it being her fault. She’d been strong enough all this time, but now it was over she sat huddled in André’s cloak like a feeble little girl.

  Lelièvre eyed her thoughtfully and opened another bottle of wine. ‘We should celebrate, my friends,’ he said. ‘Yes, we mourn our losses, but we have snatched the bride from under the nose of the pig Bouchard, we have taken on a whole nest of Spaniards and won.’

  Anne shook her head. ‘It’s not what we set out to do. You’ve all been so brave and done so much, but because of me it’s been for nothing. If André had gone after the treaty and not had to rescue me …’

  André wrapped his arm round her shoulders. ‘Is that really what you wish I’d done?’

  She looked up at him, and suddenly couldn’t say a word.

  ‘Well then,’ he said, giving her a little squeeze. ‘Don’t ever say it was for nothing.’

  Grimauld cleared his revolting throat. There was definitely more colour in his face, and I was willing to bet my flask was that much lighter too. ‘That’s right, laddie,’ he said importantly. ‘Young Philibert weren’t a hero for nothing. He kept them soldiers busy enough to buy me time.’

  ‘Time for what?’ I said, firmly removing my flask from his clutching fingers.

  He pulled a sheaf of papers out of his coat and chucked them on the floor. ‘That,’ he said, nodding at them. ‘Them papers there.’

  Jacques de Roland

  The sheet on top had the flamboyant signature of Fontrailles, and below it one I could hardly believe I was seeing. ‘Philip’, it said, just ‘Philip’. The King of bloody Spain.

  André touched it with his fingertips to be sure it was real. ‘But this … Grimauld, this is …’

  I turned over a page, then another to be sure. Next came a couple of newer sheets in a different script that clearly weren’t part of the treaty itself, but as I pushed them aside a name flashed out at me, one I knew better than anyone because it was my own. De Roland.

  It was a formal agreement drawn up in Bouchard’s name. His signature came first on a huge list with d’Estrada’s as witness, but above the names came a long paragraph describing services they’d all rendered, and one was to give evidence against André, Chevalier de Roland. It didn’t say ‘lie our bloody heads off’ but it might as well have done, you don’t get paid for speaking the truth. I realized the value of what I was holding, and when I remembered how nearly we hadn’t gone back for Grimauld my head went dizzy.

  André was poring over the long treaty, reading bits out and exclaiming. Cinq-Mars was named in a contre-lettre, so was Bouillon, and the King’s own brother Gaston d’Orléans. He scrunched his hands in his hair and stared at it in amazement.

  ‘It’s everything the Cardinal could possibly want.’ He looked up at us, eyes shining in the candlelight. ‘You know what you’ve done, all of you? You’ve saved France.’

  I took a deep breath and held out the other agreement. ‘This one clears you, André. This is your pardon.’

  He turned very slowly, the brightness gradually fading from his face. I said ‘Here, have a look,’ and shoved it into his hand.

  He looked at me with wide, dark eyes, then lowered his head to read. It seemed to take him a long time. At last he looked up and into the darkness at nothing. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘This should do it. Richelieu will … We’ll get this one to Richelieu too.’

  He stood up abruptly, and took a single step towards Grimauld. He said ‘You did it, you old bastard,’ and laid his hand lightly on his shoulder.

  ‘Payday, Chevalier?’ said Grimauld happily.

  ‘Payday,’ he said, and turned away. ‘I’ll see to the horses, they’ll need feeding and watering, someone’s got a long ride to the Cardinal at Noyons.’

  He went out, leaving an odd kind of hole in the barn and a silence no one liked to break. Then Stefan stretched out a long leg and prodded me with his boot. ‘What are you waiting for, stable boy?’

  I got up and went after André.

  He was in the smaller barn getting nosebags on the horses, but there was a clumsy impatience in the way he was working, and when Crespin’s mare tossed her head he tugged roughly on the bridle to bring her back.

  ‘Careful,’ I said, and fondled her ears.

  He turned for another bag. ‘Did you read that paper, Jacques?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It couldn’t be better.’

  ‘Better.’ He was overfilling the bag, the poor horse was going to have oats up its nose. ‘Did you see whose name it was in?’

  I took the bag off him and removed a fistful of fodder. ‘It wasn’t personal, just politics.’

  He made a furious noise and snatched another bag. ‘Politics! It wasn’t Fontrailles made them all lie, it was Bouchard. All this, the amende honorable, Anne, it was that bloody blond bastard and all because I fucking beat him.’ The oats were spilling between his fingers.

  I dropped my own bag and gripped his wrists. ‘It’s all right, André. It’s over.’

  His arms stayed rigid. ‘I’ve got to get him, Jacques. I’ve just got to. I’ve got to …’

  His breathing was suddenly harsh and jagged, his shoulders straining, his wrists tightened under my fingers as his hands clenched. The next breath came as a gasp, then there was voice in it and I knew.

  I dropped his wrists and grappled him into my arms. I was ready for resistance but there wasn’t any, he clutched me like to stop himself falling, one arm smack round my shoulders, the other crushing hard against my back. I squeezed him back till I could hardly breathe with it, and for a moment we simply clung to each other in the dark. His breathing slowed, caught, then slowed again, and gradually I felt him relax. Everything was quiet around us except for the stolid munching of horses. I rested my forehead against his, but we neither of us spoke a word, because there wasn’t a single thing left in the world to say.

  Twenty-Seven

  Stefan Ravel

  It was a start. We’d got thousands of pissed-off Spaniards just across the border, but admit it, Abbé, it was a fucking good start.

  We didn’t waste it either. De Chouy caught up with Richelieu on the 11th, and I’m told the man practically got off his deathbed and danced. Personally I didn’t care if he performed a fucking ballet as long as it was out of our hands. Oh yes, Bouchard was our affair, André would have killed the Cardinal himself if he’d tried to lay hands on him, but the rest were for Richelieu and he was welcome to them.

  And by Christ he had them. He got word to the King on the 12th, and next day they arrested Cinq-Mars himself. It was all very discreet, nothing to alarm anyone while Richelieu scooped up the rest. Fontrailles was on to it, he slipped out of Narbonne the night before it blew, but Bouillon was so unsuspicious they got him mid-shag in a barn at Casale. Orléans was cannier, but ev
en he couldn’t wriggle his way out of his name on that treaty. The King was beginning to think that executing a Bourbon might not be such a bad idea after all, and poor old Gaston was forced to do the usual and drop everyone in it but himself.

  De Chouy hung about Lyons while the trial was going on, but I can’t say we had much interest in it. Bouchard was still in Flanders and unlikely to be tempted out for a while, so we packed Anne off to the Comtesse for the sake of propriety and went back to our cosy little hidey-hole at the Porchiers to wait it all out.

  The Spaniards did the same. All that panic over Honnecourt, and they never put a foot over the border the whole summer. Oh yes, we knew why, de Melo had been so confident of his invitation he’d scattered his troops all over the Rhineland, he’d have struggled to muster two tercios by the time he knew no one was asking him anywhere. It wouldn’t stop him another time, we knew that too, but I imagined it would take a little while before he found another ally to help him get rid of Richelieu. And yes, dear Abbé, there’s your proof that even Stefan Ravel doesn’t think of everything.

  He didn’t know everything either. There were some surprising things came out at the trial, such as the attempt to assassinate Richelieu that rumour said the King himself had approved. Oh, fuck knows, I can only tell you the whole thing stank. Bouillon kept his head in return for ceding the Sedan, Orléans got away with publicly rapped knuckles, and Fontrailles was permitted to exile himself at his family estate. The only people executed were a young innocent called de Thou and poor Cinq-Mars himself.

  Me, I didn’t give a toss, I was only waiting for them to do something important like clearing André’s name. He needed that pardon, Abbé, he needed the freedom to go after the bastards who really needed their heads detaching, but naturally Richelieu wanted to deal with his own little vendettas first, and it wasn’t till mid-October that the Comte brought news.

  It was a grey day, I remember, the rain hadn’t let up all morning and André and Jacques were fencing in the barn. It was quite spectacular when they did it indoors, Abbé, a man needed to tuck himself well out of the way while they flung themselves about, leaping and charging and bouncing off the walls. Oh, I still used to watch them, other opportunities for entertainment being somewhat limited in a field of sprouts. Grimauld did too, he’d lounge in the straw making unhelpful suggestions, furtively scratching under his leg cast when he thought I wasn’t looking. Bernadette always watched. She’d sit with her knees drawn under her chin and her arms tight round them, saying ‘Go on, Jacques, go on, you can beat him,’ in a voice she probably thought was under her breath.