'My God!' Gilles murmured in shock and horror. 'How is it possible?'
'Never seen a battlefield before, eh?' Colonel Hamilton said. 'You've seen men die before, but cleanly, in a manner of speaking – by shot or steel? Grape-shot and shells do an altogether nastier job, crushing and tearing. No – it's not a pleasant sight.'
Dusk was falling. Everywhere, fires were being lit and the plain was dotted with points of light. The victors were manning the conquered redoubts and the last of the wounded were being moved out. Colonel de Gimat was carried off on a stretcher, along with the Chevalier de Lameth who was gravely wounded in the legs. Out on the water, the ships were lowering sail and on board the Ville de Paris, burly Admiral de Grasse was folding his telescope and hobbling back on two sticks to his armchair, cursing the gout in his toes. Silence hung over Yorktown and in both camps the exhausted men prepared for sleep. Darkness would bring its own blessed truce.
In the middle of the night, however, hostilities flared up again, like a flame from a badly smothered fire. Under cover of darkness Lord Cornwallis, having reached the end of his food and munitions, tried a desperate stroke. A handful of volunteers succeeded in quitting Yorktown secretly and reaching the French lines. They got through the first row of guns by passing themselves off as Americans and fell without warning on the second line. But even before orders could come from above, the Chevalier de Chastellux had flown to the support of the guns with half of the Bourbonnais regiment and some of Lauzun's hussars. It was all over in the twinkling of an eye. The volunteers were dead or captured and the last hope for the besieged was gone. No help could reach them now. The surrender could not be long postponed.
Sunrise found Lieutenant Goëlo and his Indian shadow on the way to the French camp. A servant of Fersen's had come to him just before daybreak to say that his master had sent for him urgently.
He found the Swede drinking coffee with his arm in a sling. His wound did not appear to be troubling him overmuch for, except for his empty coat sleeve, he was dressed with his usual care and elegance. He greeted the Frenchman with his characteristic melancholy smile.
'I apologize for calling you so early,' he said, pouring out, unasked, a large cup of coffee for his visitor. 'But I think you will forgive me when you know what it is I have to show you, and you will see that we have not much time. Drink this, all the same, for the morning is a cold one.'
Gilles swallowed the coffee gratefully. The warm, fragrant drink did him good, for he had not managed to sleep again after the disturbance in the night. But he wondered why the Swede was looking at him so earnestly. It was almost as though he had never seen him before and were trying to fix his features in his memory.
'Why do you look at me like that?' he could not help asking as he set down his empty cup.
'I think you will soon know why. Come with me.'
Gilles followed him into the other half of the tent which, like all those belonging to senior officers of the French regiments, was very large and a great deal more comfortable than its American counterparts. A wounded man was lying on a camp bed, watched over by another, dressed in black, who wiped his brow with a damp cloth from time to time.
It was dark in this part of the tent, the only light coming from a large lantern, and the head of the injured man was in shadow. His painful breathing filled the confined space but he uttered no complaint. Only, now and then, his hand clenched on the covers. A torn and bloodstained white uniform lay in a corner.
'On my way back here yesterday,' Axel explained in an undertone, 'I found this man dragging himself out of a reed-bed. He fell unconscious almost at my feet, so I could hardly help looking at him. What I saw so startled me that I had him brought here. Look—'
Motioning his servant to stand aside, he grasped the lantern and held it up over the bed so that the light fell on the man's face with its closed eyes.
For all his practised self-control, it seemed to Gilles as if the ground had been removed from under his feet, for what he saw was almost incredible. Allowing for a difference in age of some twenty or twenty-five years, the face that emerged from the shadows was his own.
The skin was grey and the face hollow with suffering and there were sinister shadows in it which seemed a very foretaste of the grave, but still the similarity was startling. There were the same strong jaw, the same clear-cut features, though the skin was tannned by much exposure to the sun, the same hawk nose, curved like the beak of a bird of prey, the same sardonic twist to the shapely mouth and the same straight brows that lifted slightly towards the temples – only the youth was lacking and the disillusionment much greater. Gilles had the frightening feeling that he was looking at himself as he would be after twenty or thirty years' hard living. It was like looking in some evil magician's mirror.
'Do you know who – who he is?' he stammered.
Fersen's shoulders lifted slightly.
'A man of the Touraine regiment, one of those belonging to the Marquis de Saint-Simon that the fleet picked up in the West Indies. But he is none the less a Breton – as you are. All that I have been able to learn about him is that his name is Pierre Barac'h, and that he comes from Retz.'
Gilles said nothing. He was remembering, as though it were before his eyes, a page of the old book which he had read once in his godfather's house at Hennebont, a page of Breton armorial bearings.
'Lord of Botloy, of Lézardrieux, of Plessis-Eon, of Kermeno, of Coetmeur, of Barac'h…' And at the same time he seemed to hear the Abbé de Talhouët's voice saying: 'He was called Pierre…'
Was it possible that fate had brought him face to face at last with the one man who, all his short life, had haunted his dreams like an unattainable mirage? In a daze, he bent over the still form, eagerly studying the reflection of his own face, a reflection which did so much to explain his mother's unrelenting hatred. How that hatred must have grown year by year as he, Gilles, had grown and as his resemblance to the man whose memory she loathed became more unmistakable.
Gazing at the still face, his feelings were a mixture of joy and despair, and that despair told him that his heart was not mistaken. He had longed so deeply for this man, longed so to give him all the love which Marie-Jeanne rejected, that his longing had come true. And now he was going to die, without knowing he left anyone to grieve for him, without so much as a sign of affection between them.
Axel's voice came to him as though through a mist.
'When we fought, that time in Brest, you told me you have never known your father, that—'
'That I was a bastard. You need not be afraid to say it, Count. I'm used to it.'
'I am not afraid of it. There have been famous bastards. What was your father's name?'
'Pierre – Pierre de Tournemine.'
'Do you know – what were his arms?'
'A simple shield quartered or and azure, with the device Aultre n'auray?
Without a word, the Swede put something into his hand. Gilles' fingers closed themselves round it instinctively. It was a heavy gold ring, a signet with an enamelled seal depicting precisely the heraldic device he had just described. His eyes blurred with tears as he gazed down without surprise at the blue and gold circle in his hand and after a moment he lifted it and touched it very reverently with his lips. Then he gave it back to Fersen.
'Where did you find it? On his finger?'
'No. He carried this ring in a little leather bag worn on a thong round his neck. I'll put it back now.'
He did so, so deftly that the wounded man seemed scarcely aware of him. But a moment afterwards he stirred and uttered a faint moan.
'He is gravely injured, is he not?' Gilles said, his heart wrung. 'He is going to die—'
'Yes. A shell has shattered his left hip, but he may live for a few hours yet – or even days. At present he is under the influence of a sedative drug which my faithful Sven, who has some skill in medicines, has given to him.'
Gilles looked for the first time at the man they had found seated by the bed. Unlike
the Count's other servants, he was not in livery but wore a plain black suit which told Gilles nothing.
'You have not seen him before,' the Count said. 'He joined me only in the spring. My sister Sophie sent him because she worried about me. He's a clever fellow. Your father could not be in better hands.'
Gilles' heart leapt at the word, yet even so he demurred, a little sadly.
'Do not call him so. It may be that he would not care for it.'
The Swede's eyes met his steadily.
'It would surprise me, seeing what you are. Or else we are both wrong and he is not your father, for in that case he would not deserve to be.'
The wounded man was growing increasingly restless and Sven urged the two of them gently to the other side of the tent.
'You must let him rest,' he said. 'I will give him something to make him sleep until this evening.'
'Can't I stay with him?' Gilles begged. 'I will keep very still. I won't—'
'No. He is a little better and I think that by this evening he may recover consciousness. Come back then.'
'Come and sup with me,' Fersen said. 'And do not worry. I'll call you if anything should happen. Leave that Indian of yours with me and I will send him to you at need. And trust me, my friend. I believe that it was God's hand set this man in my path. You may rely on me to do all I can to help. For one thing, I am going to send for one of the army chaplains – if one can be found willing to set foot inside a protestant's tent.'
He put his arm affectionately round the younger man and gave him a brotherly hug, then steered him outside to where Pongo waited, arms folded across his chest, as motionless as a statue carved out of mahogany. He received the order to remain at Count Fersen's bidding with his customary impassivity, merely seating himself, cross-legged, outside the tent, prepared to stay there without food or drink, without so much as twitching an eyebrow, for as long as it might please the man he had chosen to call master.
Gilles went back to his own quarters like a man walking in his sleep. He neither saw nor heard anything, although he passed through an army wild with joy because of the scrap of white cloth which now fluttered above the besieged town where before the British flag had flown. It was surrender. Cornwallis was giving up and asking for a parley. This might well be the end of five years' struggle and wretchedness but for the first time, Gilles did not feel involved. Nothing mattered to him just then but his own inner turmoil.
He walked blindly straight into the arms of Tim who barred his way exuberantly.
'Well! Where are you off to, looking like a death's head on a mopstick? We've won! Everyone's rejoicing, and you look as though you've just come back from the dead!'
'I think perhaps I have. I'm even beginning to think I may be mad – or dreaming. Something unbelievable has happened to me this past hour.'
Tim's laughter died on his lips. Without taking his arm from the other's shoulders, he looked closely into his strained face.
'That's what friends are for,' he said seriously. 'To believe the unbelievable. And I'm your friend. So let's have it.'
He steered Gilles into his tent and fed him a stiff measure of rum, of which he seemed to possess an inexhaustible supply, and watched with satisfaction as the colour crept back into his friend's wan face.
'I heard that the Swedish colonel had sent word for you,' he said. 'La Fayette is furious, and with reason, perhaps, if he is the cause of your being in this state.'
'Damn La Fayette and his warped ideas!' Gilles said violently. 'Except for you, I can't think of anyone in the world who would have done for me what Fersen has. Listen.'
Tim listened without interruption to his halting account. Even when he had done, his expression did not change but he took Gilles by the hand and led him over to the rough little wooden cross which, like a good Christian, the Breton had hung on his tent pole.
'The Swede is right,' he said at last. 'There is God's hand in this. Let's pray together that He may spare your father long enough to know he has a son.'
'How do you know he hasn't others? How do you know it will please him?'
'I don't,' Tim admitted frankly. 'But a man who has a regular home and family doesn't go about under a false name. So we'll pray.'
Gilles knelt meekly beside his friend and together they prayed in the words of their different religions. He felt better for it, although he still held himself aloof from the general rejoicings. He could not keep his thoughts from that fragile canvas shelter in which a life was flickering on the verge of extinction, a life which had suddenly become amazingly precious to him.
'Stay in your tent,' Tim advised him. 'I'll say you have a fever. The fighting is all over. You will not be needed.'
When Pongo made his appearance, at about five o'clock, Gilles' heart sank but, before he could open his mouth, the Indian reassured him with a gesture.
'Man not yet gone to join his ancestors,' he said. He held out a folded sheet of paper. 'Your friend gave me the paper which talks to bring you.'
The note consisted of a single line only.
'Come,' Fersen had written, 'and have the goodness to wear the uniform I sent you.'
Half an hour later, washed, shaved, brushed, combed and bewigged, Gilles quitted his tent like a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, transformed as if by magic into a brilliant officer of the king's army. Tim, smoking his pipe in the shade of a ragged pine, greeted his appearance with an oath of admiration.
'By Abraham and all the prophets,' he exclaimed, 'you outshine the sun! Here,' he added, 'Colonel Hamilton told me to bring you his horse, thinking you were bound to be in a hurry.' He led the animal out from behind the tree, where it had been waiting, ready saddled.
'How did he know? Did someone tell him?'
'Not I, at all events. I've just seen him for the first time today and he looked to be in even greater haste than you. He practically thrust the creature into my arms and ran.'
But Gilles was already in the saddle. It was no use trying to understand. Today was evidently a day of miracles. A few minutes' gallop brought him to the tent. The flaps were wide open but he hesitated in the doorway, a prey to an unwonted nervousness. He had taken off his hat and tucked it under his arm when Fersen's familiar voice reached him, calling encouragingly: 'Come in, my friend. We have been waiting for you.'
Gilles walked a couple of steps, then pulled up short, feeling his brass gorget suddenly uncomfortably tight. Propped on a pile of pillows and rolled overcoats, the wounded man was watching him.
The bed had been carried into the main part of the tent and set down in the centre of it, like a throne or an altar. A clean white shirt rose and fell with the dying man's panting breath. For dying he was, beyond a doubt. Pierre de Tournemine was paler even than he had been in the morning and the shadows round his eyes were darker, but his eyes, the same clear blue as Gilles' own, were wide open and looked straight at him.
They fastened on the young man with a kind of eagerness, taking silent note of his face, of his athletic figure, the slightly arrogant tilt of his head, his hands and the whitened knuckles of the one that gripped the brim of his black hat. It was no more than a few seconds but to Gilles it seemed a lifetime. He was caught between hope and fear of what those dry lips, which Sven moistened from time to time, would say. When the words came at last, the voice was so low and weak that they seemed to emerge from the depths of the earth itself.
'So – you are Marie-Jeanne's child? Count Fersen told me—My God! If I had only known – so many things might have been different – so many things—And now I have so little time—Come here—Come here – my son.'
Gilles took one faltering step and fell on his knees beside the bed, his eyes filled with tears.
'Father!' he cried, overwhelmed by the sound of that one short word which it was his to utter for the first time in his life. 'Father, I have thought of you so often. I have called you—'
The dying man's hand groped feebly for his and held it. It felt as cold and dry as a bird's claw.
'You did not hate me, then? Your mother did not teach you to hate me? She – she was so bitter against me.'
'She never spoke of you at all.'
'Then who – who? Oh God, I want to know. Tell me! Tell me about yourself – about your childhood. A bastard – that's what you were. And it was my fault, I suppose. But hers too. I loved her, you see, and she loved me. Oh, not for long! Only for a moment – for a single night. The night she came to me. But afterwards – she took it all back. She drew away from me and when I begged her to leave everything – to come with me to Africa to be my wife, she spurned me with horror. She called me the devil. Talk to me, my son. Tell me about yourself. I have so little time to know you.'
Axel appeared, a pale figure on the far side of the bed, and bent over him.
'May I ask you to postpone your talk for a moment, sir,' he said gently. 'Those you were expecting are here. Everything is ready.'
The grey lips parted in a faint smile.
'You are very right. I must use the minutes I have left as best I may. Ask them to come in. Lift me up, my son.'
The tent filled silently with a brilliant throng. Standing with his hand still locked in his father's, Gilles stared in amazement as there entered the Vicomte de Noailles, the Comte de Charlus, the Duc de Lauzun, resplendent in his red dolman, the Marquis de Saint-Simon, the Comte de Deux-Ponts and, finally, General Rochambeau in person. The others grouped themselves on either side of him and a monk appeared, his brown robe a striking contrast to their splendid uniforms. The dying man greeted them with a smile and a nod.
'I have to thank you, gentlemen, for coming here – to help me to right the gravest of the wrongs I have done before – before I meet my Maker. God has been good to me. He has seen to it that my line shall not die out with my own miserable life. Unknown to myself, I left a son behind me in France, to be brought up by his mother under her own name. That son stands before you now, gentlemen, and I ask you to witness the solemn declaration which I shall make now, in my last hour.'
Falcon 1 - The Lure of the Falcon Page 40